A sharp gasp drew her attention back to Anton. His ash-grey eyes were as wide as dinner plates and all the color had drained from his face, leaving it the exact shade of moonlight. He yanked the collar of his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth and motioned for her to do the same.
“What’s your problem?” Nowen asked.
“I think I know what killed all these people, and if I’m right, we need to get the hell out of here.” There was a frightening urgency in his words and the fine hairs on her arms rose in response.
She walked toward him, and like a partner in a strange dance to which she didn’t know the steps he stepped backwards and away. “What? What do you think happened here?” Anger tinged her words.
Even through the muffling shirt fabric his fear was evident. “Plague.”
They sat in the idling car at the far end of the mall’s parking lot. Anton had the cold air blasting but sweat still beaded on his forehead. He took a pull off a steel-colored flask he’d had stashed somewhere. Nowen caught the bitter smell of alcohol. Brittle rainbow reflections thrown by the sun bouncing off the abandoned cars stabbed through her eyes. A headache sank its teeth into her temples and she was suddenly, ravenously, hungry.
“You don’t know that it’s a plague.” she said, picking up the loose thread of their argument conversation.
Anton, his gaze locked through the windshield on something she couldn’t see, spoke in a flat monotone. “Gotta be some kind of plague. What else could kill all those people and not leave a mark?”
“It could be just about anything, Anton. Without doctors or hospitals, a simple illness could wipe out a group of people easily. The flu, for example. Or maybe they ate something bad. Or, hell, maybe they were poisoned.”
Anton whipped his head around to face her. “What the fuck?! Are you saying the New Heavenites poisoned them all?” His outraged words seemed to echo in the small interior of the car.
Nowen closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples, willing the headache away before she snapped. “No, Anton, that’s not what I’m saying. But there’s no need to go jumping to the wrong conclusion right away.”
“And there’s every possibility that it’s not the wrong conclusion. We should take precautions, just to be safe.”
“Ok, fine.” Nowen looked inward at the wolf. We know we can survive a Rev bite. How about the plague? The wolf snarled and turned her back on the human. Why are you so grumpy? Quicksilver images of sunlit forests, dark velvet nights, and the cold white light of the moon on a fresh fall of snow was her response. I know you want to go home. Me, too. I’d forgotten how frustrating humans can be. But this could be very important to both of us. Bear with me. She realized Anton was speaking and opened her eyes, bringing all her energy to bear on what he was saying.
“-not ready to give up on New Heaven having just one outpost in a city this side.”
“Hmm.” Nowen murmured, non-committedly. What’s he talking about?
“Good, glad you agree. We’ll just check the city, give it a quick once-over, and see if there is another outpost.” Anton put the car into gear, driving out of the parking lot and onto the street, turning away from the highway.
Damn. How much will this delay the trip north? Should I just hit him? She entertained the thought seriously for a moment. No. But I don’t think I trust him. Much more of this wandering around nonsense and I’ll head north myself. It can’t be too difficult to find this place.
Her throat was dry. She smacked her lips and it was like rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together. “You have something to drink?” she asked Anton.
Silently, he held the flask out.
“I was thinking more along the lines of water.”
“Nope. I drank up the last of what I had last night. I’ll stop somewhere and get some, ok?”
Nowen grunted in agreement and turned to look out her window. Shops, restaurants, gas stations, and strip malls lined both sides of this stretch of road for at least a couple of miles. Some of the buildings showed signs of long-ago depredation, with broken windows and scattered goods. Other sights pointed to human activity fairly recently, like the burned out McDonald’s that still smoldered, ghost-grey wisps of smoke trailing away on the breeze. Bodies and the remnants of bodies, so weather-damaged that it was impossible to tell which had been Revs and which had been human, littered the streets and sidewalks like discarded dolls. As they rolled slowly through a clogged intersection Nowen saw a body in a police uniform lying slumped against the driver’s side door of a cruiser. Dried blood sprayed out in a fan from behind the misshapen head.
No living humans could be seen, but there were Revs here, and the sound of the car’s engine was like a siren’s song to them. By the time Anton had driven three blocks from the mall the rising moans from the undead was echoing down the street.
Nowen shifted uneasily in her seat. The wolf was eager to answer the challenge put forth by the dead-not-dead Revs, even if the human was not. “Anton, do you have any weapons in this car?”
He looked over, the startled expression on his face letting her know that only now was he noticing the increasing noise of the Revs. “Uh, I got my gun.”
“Nothing else?”
He shook his head, the white-blonde hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. Suddenly his eyes widened and he swung the car sharply to the left, speeding through another intersection and up a sharp incline. “Look! We can get weapons there!” he said as he motioned with his head.
At the top of the steep hill was a small collection of buildings, all done in a similar style of brown clapboard facades. Anton drove the car about in a tight circle through the cracked pavement of the parking lot, stopping in front of one store. “See? Perfect!” he said as he shut the engine off and hopped out of the car.
Nowen followed, slower and more cautiously. The day was moving into the afternoon and high, puffy white clouds sailed across the sky, dragging their shadows over the ground. She paused with one hand on her open door and took in her surroundings. A large sign on a metal post proclaimed that these were the ‘Old West Shoppes’, and they looked more deserted than the rest of Cheyenne. There was only one other car besides theirs, a dusty pine-green station wagon that sat listlessly on four flat tires in front of a jewelry store. Anton was heading towards a pawn shop, and a lawyer’s office was in-between the two stores. There were no bodies of any kind that she could see, and when she looked back down the hill only a few Revs were visible, attempting and mostly failing to stagger up the steep incline.
Nowen walked through the knee-high grass that was forcing its way up through the pavement. She joined Anton in front of the pawn shop. “Good idea, Anton.”
Anton pressed his face up to the dark window, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the sun. “Thanks, but we gotta get in there first.”
A planter filled with rocks and a dead shrub of some kind stood nearby. She selected a white rock the size of a large potato and hefted it in her hand as she studied the window. “Break the glass.”
The young man looked back over his shoulder. “Sure, but only if you can bend iron bars, too.” He stepped over to the door and gently turned the handle; the door swung inward silently. “Whatta you know - that worked!”
Nowen followed him into the gloomy interior of the pawn shop. The front windows were tinted, effectively dimming the sunlight. She blinked and concentrated, bringing forward the wolf’s vision, and the world bloomed in pale shades around her. A smooth wood counter to her right, thickly layered with dust, ran almost the width of the store. A display of heavy-duty flashlights sat next to the first register. She pulled one loose and tried the power button; a cone of harsh, bright light sprang out. She handed it to Anton.
“What do you want to get first?” he whispered as he shone the light around the store. Nowen’s gaze fell on a rack of knives and she walked over to the selection. The unsheathed blades flickered in the half-gloom. Anton moved up beside her and softly asked “Don’t you want a g
un?”
She shook her head brusquely and reached for a particularly wicked-looking blade, longer than her hand and set in a black leather pommel. A faint sound pricked her ears and she froze.
Anton grew still and she heard him draw in a breath. She turned her head to look at him, one finger in front of her lips. He nodded his understanding, and she focused on the sound she’d heard.
There! Near the back of the store! Something...alive? Nowen scented the air but the sweat and tension rolling off Anton overwhelmed her nose. She slipped her feet out of the loose tennis shoes she was wearing. Anton touched her elbow but she shook him off and moved into a hunched-over crouch. Wisely the young man stayed behind as she crept down the aisle in front of her, bare feet making no sound on the warm tile floor.
Halfway down the aisle she paused and listened. Whatever it was that was making the sound, it seemed to be moving towards her. A squirrel? A cat, or dog? Something to eat, perhaps. The wolf perked up at this. Nowen slid forward another foot, moving as quietly as dust through a sunbeam. The end of the aisle was almost there, and with the wolf’s heightened hearing she could tell that the animal was just around the corner. She gathered herself, balancing on the balls of her feet, and when the animal took one more step she lunged forward, clawed hands reaching out to grab and pierce.
At the very last moment the animal’s scent hit her. Human?! Nowen couldn’t stop her forward momentum but she was able to throw her hands wide of the small body she slammed into. Her claws screeched along the floor. A low grunt came from beneath her and she rolled onto her side and then up into a crouch. Anton ran up behind her, the flashlight’s illumination bobbing wildly over a wall of clothing before it settled on the child that lay on the floor in front of them.
Chapter Seven
Nowen stood at the front of the pawn shop, leaning against the counter and watching as Anton tried to entice the child into talking. She tossed aside the bag of beef jerky she had just devoured and grabbed another one from the dusty metal display rack. A dark, glass-fronted cooler yielded bottles of water, and she grabbed three of them and headed to the back of the store.
She crouched in the yellowish circle of light thrown out by the flashlight and tossed Anton a bottle of water. Ripping open the plastic bag of jerky, she held it out to the child. “Eat.”
The child (Nowen thought it was a girl) looked at her solemnly. She had a head full of thick curls that looked to be either reddish or brownish. The bones of her face jutted against the olive-toned skin. In the dim light the child’s eyes were as black and bottomless as the night sky. She was dirty and her clothes, a flannel shirt over tan pants, were ragged and threadbare. Nowen shook the bag and the girl reached in and pulled out a piece of jerky. Slowly she began to eat it, and Nowen turned to Anton and offered him the bag.
Chewing on his own piece of tough meat, Anton shook his head. “How the hell did you get her to listen to you? I’ve been talking all nice and sweet and she ignores me, but you bark orders like a drill sergeant and she responds!”
Nowen shrugged as she opened one of the water bottles and passed it to the child. “How old do you think she is?” Anton continued.
“She’s right there. Ask her.” Nowen said.
“You ask her. She doesn’t like me.”
Nowen sighed and sat down on the floor. She looked at the girl, who was methodically shredding a piece of jerky and watching the pieces drift to the floor. Nowen snapped her fingers. The child raised her dark eyes to meet Nowen’s own amber ones.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The girl just stared.
“I’m Nowen, and this is Anton. Now, what’s your name?”
“Come on, sweetie, what’s your name?” Anton chimed in.
The bottomless black eyes moved from Nowen’s face to Anton’s and then back again.
Another obstacle. Maybe I should just slip away tonight and make my own way north...”Can you talk?” Nowen asked, her frustration with the situation shadowing her words.
The child nodded, slowly.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Anton shoved Nowen’s shoulder, hard. “Christ, what the hell’s wrong with you?! Don’t yell at the poor girl; who knows what she’s been through! If she doesn’t want to talk, then-”
“Sage.” The word was quieter than a footstep but stopped Anton mid-sentence. He and Nowen looked at the girl. “Wait, what? What was that?” he said.
The girl stared at Nowen. “Sage.” Her voice might have been a hairs-breadth louder.
“Sage. Is that your name?” Nowen asked.
A solemn nod.
“How old are you?”
Again the low, quiet voice. “Ten. No, eleven.”
“Where are your parents?”
The girl looked down at the pile of shredded beef jerky. She ran her finger through the fragments, tracing circles and spirals.
Anton nudged Nowen and jerked his head towards the front of the store. She rose and followed him to the counter, where they turned as one and looked back at Sage, who was now scooping up the shreds and eating them.
“Well, we can’t leave her here. How long do you think she’s been alone?” Anton asked as he wiped sweat off his brow.
“No telling. If she wants to come, she can. Either way, I’d like to get going.” Nowen looked out the front door, trying to judge the time by the position of the sun. Suddenly she stiffened.
Anton grunted. “We can’t leave her here - she’s just a little girl!”
His words faded away as Nowen walked to the door. The sleek silver car shimmered under the afternoon sun. Revs wandered through the small parking lot, their grey-green skin and yellow eyes all the more disturbing in the warm light. They were creatures made for the night, she thought, more easily accepted when seen in the shadows. She counted ten or so of the things, and more were slowly staggering up the hill toward the little collection of buildings.
She spoke without turning. “We’ve got trouble.”
Anton rushed up next to her. “Oh, shit.”
“I’ll check for a back exit to this place. You-”
“I’ll get some stuff together. Water, food, weapons.” He was turning away as he spoke, heading deeper into the store.
Nowen stood at the door another moment, watching the Revs. Their unnatural state was anathema to the wolf, and the wild animal’s desire to destroy them was bleeding over into her human mind. She licked her lips and growled, very softly.
Something tugged at her. She looked down to see Sage standing there, one grubby hand grasping the hem of Nowen’s sweatshirt. “What?” Nowen asked.
The girl raised her free hand and pointed to the opposite corner of the pawn shop. “Back door.” she whispered.
“A way out?” Nowen asked. At Sage’s solemn nod she grabbed the small hand in hers and said “Show me.”
Nowen paused as they passed the knife display and grabbed the blade she had noticed earlier. Behind it was a belt and sheath, and as she followed the girl through the gloomy interior she strapped the sheath on and slid the knife home.
Sage led the way through a small room that held a couple of file cabinets and a massive safe. A heavy metal door was set in the back wall of this room, and at Sage’s push it swung slowly open.
Nowen pushed the girl aside and grabbed the door before it opened completely. “Whoa! There could be Revs out there.” Silently Sage stepped back and Nowen cautiously looked out.
The ground behind the pawn shop fell sharply away. Stubby bushes and weeds studded the hillside. At the bottom of the hill was an old, boxy van. It was dust-covered and the front windshield was cracked but whole.
Nowen looked at the back edge of the door; scratch marks in the paint showed where the door had been forced open. “Sage, is this how you got in?”
The girl nodded. In the sunlight Nowen could see that her eyes were not black at all but a deep, dark brown. Sage pointed at the van. “Papa and me lived there. Papa opened the door. But
the bad man inside chased us out.”
“And then what happened?”
“I ran to the van. The bad man chased Papa that way.” She waved toward the front of the building, and then fell silent for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. “Papa never came back.”
Nowen looked at the battered old van. “So you’ve been living in the van? For how long?”
Sage shook her head.
Nowen sighed. “Ok. Go help Anton. Tell him I’m going to try and draw the Revs away from the car, and for you guys to be ready to go once it’s clear.”
Sage nodded and ran back into the shop. Nowen waited until the door had closed completely, and then headed to the front of the buildings.
A Rev in the rags of an orange-flowered sundress swayed slightly as she stood near a dumpster. Her autumn-yellow eyes stared at nothing, and her spindly fingers twitched absently at the end of her limp arms. A tattoo, a vine of ivy and roses, was still visible around her neck.
Nowen studied the Rev. The undead creature had staggered away from the main group still moving through the parking lot and now stood at an offset angle from where Nowen crouched. The Rev was shorter than Nowen and looked to have been an older woman when she’d died; a tangle of matted grey hair fell just past the bony shoulders.
Nowen scooped up a handful of gravel, glancing at the other Revs. When she was sure that none of them were facing her direction she tossed the gravel past the solitary Rev. The pebbles skittered across the pavement and the Rev whipped her head around, tracking the sound.
Nowen was up and running before the last bit of gravel hit the ground, drawing her knife as she ran. In the space of a heartbeat she was behind the Rev, grabbing a handful of the filthy hair with her left hand and yanking the Rev’s head back. Yellow eyes rolled toward her. Mottled, discolored lips opened as the Rev began to moan and Nowen drove the knife blade through the woman’s forehead. Bone crunched like eggshells and a viscous, foul-smelling liquid oozed from the wound.
Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) Page 4