Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) (20 page)

Suzannah picked up the deck of cards, sliding them anxiously through her fingers. When she spoke, her words were shaded with both fear and strength. “I hope you don’t hate Anton too much, Nowen. He did something awful to you, but then he paid the ultimate price in trying to fix it.”

Nowen shook her head. “I don’t hate him. He was used by Vuk, used and then thrown away. Vuk already has a lot to answer for, and Anton is one more mark on the list.”

“There was something else I was wondering about, Nowen.” Sage said. Suzannah snorted and gave the girl a gentle nudge on the shoulder. “Ain’t we had enough interesting stuff for one day?” the woman said.

“What?” Nowen asked.

“Well, I was thinking about how we’re going to get away from the black-shirts.”

Suzannah started shuffling the deck of cards. “We’ve already decided on that, honey. Gonna find us some bikes, travel at night, hide in the day.”

“Yeah, I know. And hope the black-shirts don’t have night-vision goggles like you see in the movies. What I was wondering was this: why haven’t we seen any of those, uh,
vukodlak
?’ Sage stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

Nowen stared at the girl, dumbfounded.
Why the hell didn’t I think about that? Too caught up in my own problems?
“I don’t know.”

“You said, back at Eli’s house, that that was what Vuk was doing. Creating more
vukodlak
. I was wondering why we haven’t seen any of them.”

“Oh, fuck me.” Suzannah’s eyes widened. “Oh, hell, if they start hunting us with werewolves, we’re screwed.”

The panic coming from the red-haired woman was almost palpable. Nowen raised her hands in a placating gesture. “Calm down. We can’t worry about everything. I can tell you what I think might be going on.” She waited until Suzannah seemed calmer and then continued. “I have nothing to base this on except what Vuk said to me, and my own thoughts. Right after I was captured I was still in my human shape. Vuk had me starved for a few days, hoping to make me more amenable, and then he came into the building and talked. From what he said,
vukodlak
are not that numerous. Never have been. It’s not an easy transition, I gathered, and the new
vukodlak
needs constant watching and, I don’t know, ‘mentoring’ from the one that created it. Vuk called me a ‘feral’, a wild wolf that, before the Flux, would have been killed because of the threat I would have posed to other vukodlak. Now, though, he wanted to keep me alive. Even when the wolf and I fought him at every turn, even when we killed the white wolf, Livia, he kept us alive. He
needed
us, for some plan of his. Needed every
vukodlak
he could get.”

“And his plan is to make more of you.” Suzannah said.

“It’s what makes sense to me. We are immune to both Flux and the bite of a Rev. We can live off the land, we can kill the Revs without much danger to ourselves, and can you think of a better way to infiltrate an enemy camp? The world as it is now is not easy on humans. But
vukodlak
? It’s a playground.”

Suzannah leaned back, a look somewhere between thoughtful and horrified on her face. Sage caught Nowen’s gaze. “Ok. But why haven’t we seen any yet?”

Nowen shrugged. “I’m sorry, Sage, but I don’t know. All I can think is that Vuk’s not having much luck creating them. Other than Livia, I don’t know how many
vukodlak
he has.”

“Is he one?”

“I...don’t know. He never changed, even when we killed Livia and tried to attack him.”

Suzannah clapped her hands loudly together, breaking the solemn mood. “Well, thank you both for some wonderful nightmare fuel. I won’t be falling asleep anytime soon, so who wants to play a game of cards?”

Chapter Twenty

Nowen crouched next to a moving van and checked the next street over. She felt, more than heard, Sage and Suzannah join her in the shelter of the van. The sky had been cloudy all day but had cleared up before sunset; now a half-moon had risen and Nowen both blessed and cursed its light. The same illumination that helped them avoid danger also made them targets.

They had left the shelter of the thrift store just after nightfall. The stars had spilled across the sky in frozen glory as Nowen led the other two on an arching path away from where the New Heaven patrols ranged. The patrols had been active all day, agitating the Revs and inadvertently clearing a passage for Nowen and her companions. The noise of the patrols’ engines and music had died off with sunset and now the night was still.

Nowen motioned for the other two to come close and in the shelter of their bodies she switched on a small penlight and studied the map, ripped from a several-years-old phone book. Nowen checked the street sign and flipped the ragged paper around in her hands to orient herself.

“Ok, the next street is N. Seventh. We’ll turn right, and follow it for awhile. We’re going to have to cross I-90, no choice about that, but Seventh will take us out to the railroad tracks.” Nowen paused in her whispered recitation, checking for any disagreement. In the waning moonlight the girl and the woman’s faces were serious and unquestioning. She continued. “The tracks turn and go along I-90 eventually, but for right now this is the best way. Stay off the highway, say out of sight, and try to find some transportation.” She folded the map and slid it back into her coat pocket. The coat, a puffy red thing with sleeves that were just a little too short, had come from the thrift store. Suzannah had liberated a long faux-fur jacket and Sage a deep purple hooded sweatshirt that fell almost to her knees, and while the scavenged clothes provided warmth on a cool night like this, Nowen knew it would not be enough once winter came.

Nowen took one last glance and then rose from her crouch and darted across the street. A spot on her back, high up between her shoulder blades, itched in anticipation of a bullet finding its way to her. There was no way to tell if any black-shirts were tracking them now and the uncertainty was like a straight razor across her nerves.

She reached the next corner and dropped down next to an overgrown hedge to wait for the other two to catch up. Once they did she pointed straight ahead, up the long and silent street that stretched away from them. Suzannah took the lead, with Sage in the middle and Nowen last, and they made their halting way up the thoroughfare, darting from one bit of cover to the next.

Nowen found the absolute silence unnerving. Nothing moved; no birds, no insects, not even the wind, a near-constant of late. Each sprint across open space was a few seconds of terror. Each pause in her progress from point to point was harder and harder to move on from.
I loved the night, once.
Now the empty world loomed over her, an unseen wave that could fall and consume her at any moment.

Someone hissed at her and she looked away from the sky to see Suzannah waving her forward. She joined the red-haired woman in the shadow of a wood fence that at one time, she was sure, had made the homeowners feel safe and secure. At first she couldn’t see the girl; then a blur of movement flashed across the white stone of a driveway halfway up the block. Suzannah grabbed her hand and led her at a trot in Sage’s wake.

The block of N. Seventh they were on continued straight as far as Nowen could see in the pale light. Off to the right, however, was a huge parking lot, the metal of abandoned cars glinting here and there in the moonlight. At one side of the lot Nowen could distinguish the long outline of a building that seemed to stretch as long as the parking lot. Suzannah leaned in and whispered in Nowen’s ear: “Walmart. Let’s go shopping!”

Nowen shook her head. “We don’t know that it’s safe. And what’s the possibility that anything’s even left?” she whispered back.

Sage was there suddenly, materializing seemingly out of nowhere. She joined Nowen and Suzannah in their huddle. “It looks ok. I don’t see anything moving - Revs or black-shirts. Let’s go.” The girl said, slightly out-of-breath.

“And can you see through walls?!” Nowen startled herself with the vehemence of her words. “We don’t know how safe it is. We need to keep moving, put as much space between us and New Heaven as we possibly can.”

Suzannah laid a hand on Nowen’s shoulder. “Look, think about it. You’re right, the black-shirts have probably swept through and taken most of the goodies. But look at the size of that building! It’s fucking huge! I can’t believe those jackasses could have taken everything out of there. And as for the CZs - uh, Revs - the black-shirts would have taken care of them when they cleaned the place out.” She turned to Sage. “Right? Tell me that doesn’t make sense.”

The girl stood with her back to the moon, and her face was shadowed as she said “Nowen, Suzannah is right. If nothing else, we could get bikes here. And there could be other stuff, too. It’s worth a look.”

Nowen looked at the building across the sea of the parking lot. “Fine. But maybe we should wait until morning.”

“Nah. We need to do it now. We got flashlights, and weren’t you just saying you wanted to get as far away from New Heaven as possible?” Suzannah turned away as she spoke and started off across the lot. “So, let’s get in, get out, and get away.”

Nowen could feel Sage’s eyes on her and then the girl turned and followed Suzannah. Nowen took a couple of halting steps forward. Her feet touched down on the line where the grassy verge gave way to hard-top and she froze.

Again the night seemed too close, too heavy. The parking lot was a sea of midnight, the cars just reefs in that black ocean. A certainty filled her that, if she took one step forward, she would sink beneath the waves and never be seen. The thought of crossing the dark lot, not knowing what danger could be lying in wait, was enough to send cold water through her veins. The thought of entering that darker building turned her bones to ice. She could see Suzannah and Sage were already half-way across the lot.
I can’t let them go in there alone. If there’s trouble, they’ll need me.
There seemed to be nothing on this earth that would carry her forward, and she could hear her breathing rasping fast and anguished in her chest.

She tilted her head up to look at the stars.
I used to love the night.
We
used to love the night. Where are you, wolf? I’m fragile and human without you. I never realized how much I need you. And miss you.
The stars doubled and trebled in her vision, the bright points running together into a smear of faint, faint light. Nowen swayed. She was going to fall to her knees, she knew, fall to her knees and then to the ground where she would lie forever, crushed under the weight of her fears.

Damn him.
A spark kindled.
Vuk. Damn him. Damn him for what he did to us.
The spark flickered and grew, and Nowen fed it all her hate.
Hate. I’ve never felt this before. Even Tuck, and Oliver, and Matt...they were annoyances, obstacles to my goal. Killing Tuck was enjoyable, but not done out of hate. Ah, but Vuk...he has shown me how to hate.
The spark was a flame and then a fire, pure white heat that melted the ice keeping her locked in fear
.

Nowen looked away from the stars. The night still pressed against her but she held firm to her burning hate and found that she could move again. She strode after Sage and Suzannah, catching up to them near the closest entrance.

Suzannah glanced up at Nowen’s approach and then turned back to the girl, obviously continuing a conversation. “And so help me God, if you get any damn asparagus I will kill you.”

Sage’s teeth flashed white as she grinned. “No promises.” She looked up at Nowen. “Are we ready to go in?”

Nowen flashed her penlight across the entrance. The glass in the double set of sliding doors had been smashed out, probably long ago. An overturned shopping cart lay near a large wooden swing set. A body dangled from the cross bar that held the swings; it was too dark to tell how old the body was.

The doors showed only darkness.
Anything could be in there.
Nowen quashed that thought and looked at Sage. “You’ve seen and heard nothing?” The girl nodded eagerly. Nowen caught Suzannah’s eyes; the same eagerness was there. “Ok, let’s go. But carefully, please!”

Suzannah laughed. “Yes, mother!” She pulled two large flashlights from the tote bag looped over her shoulder and passed one to Sage as they approached the entrance. Nowen slid the penlight into her coat pocket, switching it for the flashlight stowed there. She joined the other two and together they switched on their lights.

They had entered near the produce section. Nowen led the way, sliding her light over the empty stands that had once held fruit and vegetables.
Nothing rotten...someone got here right as things were falling apart and cleaned it out.
She stopped at the canned food aisles. The shelves were as empty as the produce section.

Sage moved up next to her, clutching a handful of store-branded tote bags. She shone her light down the aisles, and the disappointment in her voice was evident when she spoke. “Nothing? They left nothing behind?”

Suzannah called softly from behind them. “Hey, I’m gonna go check the pharmacy.”

Nowen looked at the red-haired woman. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up.”

In the reflection of her flashlight Suzannah’s face was hollow-cheeked and alien but the exasperation as she rolled her eyes was easy to read. “This isn’t a horror movie. Ol’ Man Jenkins ain’t gonna jump out from behind the tampons and yell ‘Boo!’“

Nowen took a step forward and laid her hands on the other woman’s shoulders. “Suzannah, either take this seriously or go wait outside.”

Suzannah sighed, but the light-hearted look left her face. “Ok. Sorry. I am taking this seriously. This is just how I handle stressful situations - I get a smart-mouth.” She looked around, and then stooped to the floor. When she rose she held a thin piece of metal that used to be part of a sign. “Look, I even got a weapon.”

“I still think it’s a bad idea. Just, be careful, ok? And call out if you run into trouble.”

Suzannah flipped the metal piece in a cocky salute, and then she turned and was gone. Nowen watched as the dark swallowed her up, only the bouncing cone of light indicating that Suzannah was still even there.
Damn, this is a bad idea. What if she runs into trouble? What if we do? We should just leave, all of us, right now. There’ll be other places to scavenge.