The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group

by Catherine Jinks

  Then I returned to my fuzzy-haired friend, who had fallen to his knees in despair.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I assured him. ‘Look – see? I had to get this.’

  He was sobbing too hard to ask why. But his expression, as he stared at the beer can, told me exactly what he was thinking.

  He was thinking, What the hell use is a beer can?

  ‘I’m gunna make a shim. I’ve done it before.’ Not only that, I had successfully used my beer-can shim to pick a lock. ‘You can tear this stuff with your bare hands, if you fold it properly first.’

  ‘How – how—’

  ‘Just gimme a minute, all right?’

  I can’t pretend it was easy, making that shim. Ripping up aluminium requires a lot of patience; unless you concentrate hard, you end up with crooked rips (not to mention cut fingers). With so much whimpering going on, I found it hard to focus.

  ‘So what’s your name?’ I said at last, when the impatient atmosphere got too much for me. I wanted to distract the guy from his fretting and fuming. ‘Mine’s Toby Vandevelde.’

  ‘I’m Sergio. Pereira.’

  ‘How long have you been here, Sergio?’

  ‘I dunno. How should I know? They took my watch. I got no calendar . . .’ He sounded peevish, but at least he wasn’t jigging up and down. ‘I guess you’re a werewolf too, huh?’ he said, wringing the tears from his eyes.

  I grunted, not quite sure how to respond. The jury was still out on my status as a werewolf . . .

  ‘It’s a family curse,’ Sergio continued. ‘That’s what the priest told us. My parents thought I had a demon in me, but when they called the priest, he couldn’t get rid of it. He said it was genetic. Seventh son. You know?’

  ‘Mmmm . . .’

  ‘They didn’t believe him. They didn’t believe that they had bad blood, so they tried to beat the devil out of me. They locked me in a pizza oven.’

  ‘A pizza oven?’

  ‘Wood-fired. You know. Very thick.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘When the police found out, they put me in a foster home. Is that what happened to you?’

  ‘Nuh.’ I was nearly finished. ‘I live with my mum.’

  ‘Does she lock you up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you haven’t killed her?’

  ‘Of course not!’ He was beginning to freak me out. I didn’t want to listen to any more of his weird family history. ‘Okay – so this is done, now. I just have to haul the drum over here . . .’

  ‘I killed someone. It wasn’t my fault. Gary and Lincoln – they made me do it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Boy, I was squirming. ‘Hang on a tick.’

  ‘They wanted me to!’ he groaned. ‘I woke up and he was dead! I couldn’t help it!’

  ‘Sure – fine – but d’you think we could talk about this later, please?’ The drum was even heavier than I’d expected. I found myself panting as I dragged it towards the gate. Meanwhile, Sergio just went on and on and on, as if he couldn’t shut his trap.

  ‘They said they were police,’ he gabbled. ‘That’s why I went with them. They knew my name. They knew where I was living. I thought, “They must be police.” But they weren’t . . .’

  I climbed up onto the drum, trying to ignore his high-pitched chatter. By stretching my arms above my head, I could reach the padlock without too much trouble. I soon realised, however, that actually picking the damn lock wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. Not from that position.

  ‘I don’t know how they found out where I was,’ Sergio was saying. ‘Someone must have told them all about me. Like my dad. Or my brother. Maybe my dad was scared that I’d come and get him one night. Maybe he wanted someone else to lock me up.’

  Fiddle, fiddle. Flick, flick. I was sweating bullets, and my arms were beginning to shake. Come on, I thought, you bastard lock!

  ‘Except that Dad didn’t know my address,’ Sergio added. ‘The social worker wouldn’t tell him. That was her story, anyway. Maybe she was lying. Maybe she was the one who told Gary.’

  ‘Goddammit!’ That lock just wouldn’t cooperate. So I took a couple of long, deep breaths before trying again.

  Flick-flick. Flick-flick-flick.

  ‘It could have been her,’ croaked Sergio, oblivious to my struggles. He was staring off into space. ‘She knew where I was. But so did the lawyer. And Dr Olsen. And Dr Passlow. And Mrs Tennant—’

  ‘Dr Passlow?’ I interrupted, cutting him off. ‘You know Dr Passlow?’

  Sergio goggled up at me. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Dr Glen Passlow? From Mount Druitt hospital?’

  Sergio shook his head. ‘I’ve never been to Mount Druitt,’ he mumbled. ‘I come from Orange. They took me to Orange Base Hospital . . .’

  But he was missing the point. ‘Paediatrician?’ I pressed. ‘Balding? Ginger hair? Ring a bell?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I guess,’ he faltered. ‘Except that he was in Orange.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘When were you in hospital?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He thought for a minute. ‘I was in hospital after the pizza oven. Before I went to foster care. And I was in foster care for three months.’

  ‘There you are, then. He could have moved hospitals.’ I suddenly realised that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing, so I fixed my attention on the padlock again. Flick, flick. Flick-flick-flick. ‘If you ask me,’ I said, conscious that my face was growing hot with the effort of keeping my arms raised, ‘Dr Passlow must have something to do with this. Unless it was the priest. What was your priest’s name? Was he called Ramon Alvarez?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he ever mention anyone called Ramon Alvarez?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Sergio sounded completely dazed.

  ‘What about Reuben Schneider? Have you heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sanford Plackett? Nina Harrison? Bridget Doherty?’

  ‘Why are you asking me this?’ Sergio whined. ‘I don’t know any of those people. Why should I?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ At that moment something went click – and the padlock released its clenched jaw. I can’t tell you how unbelievably good it felt when that happened. I was so surprised, I nearly fell off my drum.

  ‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve done it!’ The chain clinked as I pulled it through the bars. ‘Look! Oh my God!’

  ‘Shh! Not so loud!’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Sorry,’ I muttered, climbing down to the dusty floor. It occurred to me that the chain would make a very good weapon. ‘We should keep this,’ I proposed, swinging it like a lasso. ‘I bet you could really hurt someone with it.’

  But Sergio wasn’t listening. He had pushed the gate open, and was squeezing through the gap he’d made for himself. Without even stopping to say ‘thank you’, he bolted past me down the tunnel.

  ‘Hey! Wait!’ I called after him. ‘What about the drum?’

  ‘Shh!’ He hit the brakes and whirled around. ‘Stop shouting!’

  ‘I’m not shouting. I’m asking nicely.’ Lowering my voice to a hiss, I fixed him with a stony glare. ‘You wanna help me with this drum, or what?’

  To give him his due, he came straight back. Though he didn’t say anything that I actually wanted to hear (like ‘sorry’ or ‘thanks’ or even ‘I owe you’), he picked up one end of the drum and began to retrace his steps – facing backwards.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, from the other end of the drum. I’d slung the chain around my neck like a scarf. ‘We should do this sideways.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’ll fall.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘You will if you can’t see where you’re going,’ I insisted. ‘It’s dark down there.’

  ‘Just hurry, will you?’ He was frantic. ‘Stop farting about!’

  With a shrug I gave in – and we shuffled off into the shad
ows. Sure enough, Sergio soon came a cropper; because he was moving too fast and couldn’t see where he was going, he caught his heel in a shallow dip that caused him to sit down abruptly, dropping his end of the drum.

  It made a hollow bong as it hit the ground.

  ‘See? I told you.’ Impatiently I readjusted the thing until it was sitting at a sensible angle, with each end facing a wall. ‘If we do it like this, we can both keep our eyes peeled, and it’ll be much quicker . . .’ I trailed off when I realised that he was crying again. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’

  ‘I’ll never get out,’ he sobbed. ‘I’ll never get out.’

  ‘Course you will. We’re nearly there.’

  ‘I’m gunna die in this hole . . .’

  ‘Sergio!’ I spoke sharply because he was dragging me down. His terror was infectious. ‘Snap out of it! Stop being such a wuss!’

  ‘You dunno what’s it like,’ he moaned, then yelped as I gave him a hard little kick on the shin. ‘Ouch! What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m getting you out of here, okay? Stand up!’

  ‘All right, all right. You don’t have to yell at me . . .’

  I did, though. I had to yell at him at least twice – once when he thought he’d heard a noise (and nearly lost the plot), and another time when his legs suddenly buckled, for no apparent reason, so that he slid to his knees with a squeak of dismay.

  ‘I can’t breathe!’ he croaked. ‘I can’t – I can’t—’

  ‘You’re fine,’ I said crossly.

  ‘I feel sick!’

  ‘It’s just a panic attack,’ I hazarded. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘It is! I can’t see!’

  ‘Of course you can’t see. It’s pitch black in this tunnel.’ He didn’t move, though, and I lost my temper. ‘Get up! Right now! Or I’ll leave you here!’

  ‘No! Don’t leave me!’

  ‘I will if you don’t move!’ Needless to say, this was an empty threat. Without Sergio’s help, I had no way of climbing out of the pool. But he was too distraught to remember this all-important fact – and I certainly wasn’t about to remind him of it. ‘You don’t hear me complain, and my head is splitting!’ I concluded. ‘So why don’t you just suck it up and gimme a break?’

  When at last we arrived at the hatch, I was fully prepared to punch Sergio in the nose if he gave me any more trouble. I realise now that I was being unfair. The poor guy was half-crazy, thanks to what he’d been through; it wasn’t his fault that he kept sniffing and whining and being a total nuisance. Luckily the fresh air did wonders for him. As soon as I pushed the hatch open, his mood changed. He became a different person, enthusiastically spouting helpful suggestions while we manoeuvred our drum through the narrow opening.

  ‘We forgot the sheets!’ he lamented. ‘Should I go back for them?’

  ‘No.’ I couldn’t believe he was even offering. ‘We can use the chain instead. It might be long enough.’

  ‘I wish we had a torch,’ he whispered, scanning the rim of the pool. Above us, the moon was still glowing in an inky sky. ‘I wish we had shoes.’

  ‘Yeah. Well – I wish we had a lot of things.’

  ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘It doesn’t smell like a town, does it?’

  I flashed him a look, thinking: So you really are like me. For the first time, I felt as if we were on exactly the same wavelength. ‘You can smell that, huh?’ I inquired.

  ‘Yeah. Can’t you?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘What about trying a corner? That corner over there might work, don’t you think?’

  I agreed. The corner of the pool was a good place to start. By wedging myself into the angle where two walls met, I would have more support while Sergio was balancing on my shoulders. That was Sergio’s theory, anyway – and it made a lot of sense. So we positioned our steel drum in one corner; then I gave Sergio my chain and climbed onto the drum, before Sergio tried to climb onto me.

  Boy, he was heavy. I hadn’t been expecting such a dead weight. When I squatted down so that he could sit on my shoulders, I wasn’t able to rise again. Even with my forearms pressed against the enfolding walls, I didn’t have what it took to launch him skywards. My knees weren’t strong enough.

  ‘Okay, wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll get off so you can stand up. Then I’ll start again.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I wasn’t reassured. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to pretend you’re a ladder,’ he rejoined. And that’s exactly what he did. While I stood with my shoulders hunched, my chin tucked into my chest and my face pushed into the corner, Sergio hoisted himself onto my back. Using my hipbones as footholds, he wriggled up until his knees were clamped on either side of my neck.

  I was surprised at how nimble he was, until I remembered how nimble I was. Perhaps he had quick-growing hair as well.

  ‘This is great!’ he breathed. ‘I can almost touch the edge!’

  ‘Ow! Ouch!’ It felt as if my collarbones were about to snap. ‘Be careful . . .’

  ‘I’m gunna stand up now. Okay?’

  ‘Hang on—’

  ‘I won’t tread on your ears, I promise,’ he assured me.

  The next bit was dire. I couldn’t help squealing. He placed one foot on my left shoulder and shoved down hard, before lurching upright with a mighty grunt. I nearly toppled.

  ‘Look out!’ I squawked.

  ‘Got it! I got it!’

  ‘Yeowch!’

  ‘Gimme a push, quick!’

  I did my best. Bracing myself against the wall, I reached up to grip his ankles. Then I gave a huge shove, nearly dislocating half a dozen joints in the process.

  ‘Gnnn!’ Flailing around desperately, he caught me a glancing blow on the head with his foot. ‘Aah-aah—’

  ‘Yeowch!’

  Suddenly the weight was off my shoulders. I could breathe again. My arms and neck were aching.

  I peered up and saw the black silhouette of a leg against a paler, star-studded canopy.

  ‘Sergio?’

  ‘Ooof!’ The leg vanished.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Ow!’ A pause. ‘Bloody hell!’ he continued, his voice sounding faint and muffled. ‘There’s razor wire!’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’ I’d forgotten to warn him.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s not high. I’m stepping over it.’

  I heard a scuffling noise, followed by a few more grunts. I waited. And waited.

  ‘Sergio?’ When he didn’t speak, I began to feel scared. ‘Sergio?’

  ‘Aw, jeez . . .’ he said at last. His tone wasn’t encouraging. ‘Aw, jeez.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is bad. It looks bad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s the desert. It looks like the desert. I can’t really . . . it’s so dark.’

  ‘Aren’t there any houses?’

  ‘No. Yes. There’s one, I think.’

  ‘Where? Is it close?’

  But Sergio didn’t seem to hear. Once again, he was losing his cool.

  ‘This fence is bad,’ he quavered. ‘It’s got barbed wire on top. We’ll never get over that.’

  I frowned. ‘Didn’t you say you could step over it?’ I asked, kneading my sore muscles.

  ‘That’s the razor wire. That’s different. Oh!’ He caught his breath. ‘Oh, man!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, wow!’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ I was ready to throttle him. ‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘I think it’s . . . hang on . . . just let me . . .’

  I tried to be patient. As he squeaked and cursed and scurried about overhead, I clenched my fists and closed my eyes. You can do this, I told myself. You’re halfway there. You’re gunna make it.

  Then a metallic clank reached my ears – and my eyelids snapped open.

  ‘Hey! Hey, Toby!’ Sergio spluttered. I glanced up
to see his fuzzy hair glinting in the moonlight. ‘Guess what I found?’

  He was so excited that I jumped to conclusions.

  ‘A phone!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A bus stop?’

  ‘It’s a ladder!’ he shrilled. ‘And there’s a gate in the fence! With a padlock!’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘All you have to do is pick the lock!’ He was practically hyperventilating. ‘Just one lock and we’ll be out! Free! We can make a run for it!’ At this point he broke off with a gasp, left momentarily speechless as something dreadful occurred to him. ‘You still have that shim, don’t you?’ he finally found the strength to ask. ‘Toby? Did you keep it? Did you keep the shim?’

  Well, of course I’d kept the shim. It was in my pocket. I told Sergio this before instructing him, fiercely, to pass me the damn ladder.

  ‘Just push it down here, will you?’ I urged. ‘I wanna get the hell out!’

  ‘It’s heavy.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Be careful. I might drop it.’

  But he didn’t. With a lot of scraping and swearing, he lowered it into the pool until I was able to grab the bottom rung – which seemed to be made of aluminium. The whole ladder clanged and rattled as I guided it into position; aluminium’s much noisier than wood when it bounces off a tiled wall.

  ‘Shh!’ Sergio hissed, getting more and more anxious. ‘Keep it down, or they’ll hear!’

  ‘I’m trying. Okay? I’m not doing it on purpose.’

  ‘They could be in that house. They might not be asleep . . .’

  Though the ladder was certainly long enough, it didn’t feel very stable. Even with Sergio holding the shafts up top, the whole thing creaked and shook with every rung that I climbed. At last, however, I reached the edge of the pool, where Sergio was squatting on a narrow strip of concrete between a razor-sharp tripwire and a four-metre drop back into the pool.

  ‘Jesus.’ That tripwire was the first thing I saw from the topmost rung. Moonlight glinted off jagged shards of steel shaped like deadly bow-ties. The wire itself was about twenty centimetres off the ground; it had been threaded through a kind of picket fence made from widely spaced, raggedly cut lengths of metal pipe. ‘What the hell is that for?’ I wheezed.