Hitchhikers (22 page)

By the time the sun shines into my eyes,
waking me, I feel thoroughly exhausted. For a few moments I can’t
move my arms and legs and I wonder if I’m back in my dream. Then I
feel the pinpricks of sensation seeping back into my limbs. I lie
there, looking up at the bright sunlight through the tree branches
until I can move again, however sorely.

“Zeke?” He’s sleeping practically in the
embers of the fire. “Zeke, time to get up.” I nudge him with the
toe of my boot.

A growl rises from within his scarf.

a challenge

I swallow.

“Come on.”

“Leave me alone,” he snarls, and now his
weird half-wolf muzzle emerges from its hiding place, where I’d
almost forgotten how freakish it looked. I step back and he rolls,
rises into a crouch.

a challenge fight force him to submit

The nausea and dizziness roll over me. “Knock
it off, Zeke,” I snarl back, shaking as I try to keep myself
human.

From the look in Zeke’s eyes, I know he is
not in control. My hands clench into fists as my vision blurs. Zeke
isn’t in control, and if I don’t keep myself in control, I could
wake up to find Zeke torn into pieces.

(or maybe he’ll tear me into pieces)

fight dominate he must submit if he wishes to
be part of your pack

I swallow, take some deep breaths, all the
while keeping eye contact. I stand over him. “Zeke, calm down. No
one needs to fight. We’re friends, right?”

He definitely growls at me this time. A thick
blob of drool leaks out from his deformed mouth. His teeth look
very sharp.

“It’s probably the wolf in you that’s making
you act this way. You just have to control the wolf part. Try
taking some deep breaths.”

He shifts in his crouch, looking even more
wolfish than before. This trying to talk him down definitely isn’t
working.

he will only listen to his alpha wolf make
him listen

I need to protect him. It’s my fault he’s a
monster now. If I end up having to fight him, it’s only another
setback to finding Kayla, to keeping my promise to protect her.

“Zeke,” I growl at him. “I am the leader
here. I will take care of you. And if you attack me, I will kill
you.”

I didn’t mean to say that last part, but now
that it’s out, I realize it’s true. He needs to make a choice. If
he chooses to be my enemy, I will end up killing him. A simple
fact.

His gaze flickers downward in recognition
that I am his leader.

“Good. Now get up. We need to get
moving.”

It’s strange how Zeke’s demeanor changes
after I threaten him. He’s still hard to read, with his face all
covered, but he comes along and follows directions without the
weird moodiness of yesterday. Around noontime I pull him deeper
into the trees alongside the road and ask him to wait. In seconds I
shed my clothes and turn wolf.

A family of rabbits has dug a burrow nearby,
and I sniff it out, then kill two.

When I return to Zeke, relieved that he
hasn’t run off, he is starting up a fire. He stares at me while I
transform, then quickly averts his eyes.

“It’s weird,” he says finally. “I could smell
what you caught. I figured cooked rabbit would taste better.” He
throws more wood onto the flames as I zip up my jeans. “Have you
always been… this way?”

I unsheathe my knife and start preparing the
rabbits. “I guess. I mean, I was born this way… but I didn’t know
it until I turned thirteen. That was the first time I changed.”

“Didn’t you know you were different, though?
Before?”

I shrug.

Zeke comes over and starts on the other
rabbit as I’m skinning the first. “I can smell things I never
thought had a smell. I can hear things that must be miles away like
they’re right next to me.” He looks at me. “You must have
known.”

“I had no idea,” I say.

I almost can’t believe it myself, but growing
up I was so isolated. My parents and Kayla, they all had the same
powerful senses. It didn’t seem abnormal. They never told me I was
abnormal.

(would’ve been nice if they had, maybe then I
wouldn’t have spent three years running from myself)

Only the kids at school, but they were mean
about everything.

what did you say danny you think i smell like
shit well smell this

The swirlies in the boys’ bathroom, one time
getting upended into the trash can in the cafeteria. The constant
headaches from the too-loud chatter of a hundred children all at
once, the scraping of chalk on the blackboard, the stink of the
dumpster behind the school.

look who smells now but you always smelled
like trash didn’t you danny you and your drunk-ass dad down there
in that trailer your whore of a mother

My grip tightens around the knife and I rip
out the rabbits innards with enough force to spray its coagulating
blood across the snow.

(it was a long time ago)

(none of that was as bad as what dad did)

It’s all in the past, and besides, they
didn’t pick on me very often. Mostly because I could hear them
coming and hide. I thought they bullied me because I wasn’t a
townie or a rancher. I thought they bullied me because my family
was white trash.

Definitely not because I was a werewolf.

After we’ve eaten, put out the fire, and
started walking again, I offer Zeke my idea. “Do you know how to
drive a car?”

“I drove my dad’s truck a couple of times.
Like two feet forward, or backing up.”

I nod. “That’s good.”

“What, you don’t know how to drive?”

“No.”

“Really? I figured you were old enough to
have your license already.”

“Nope, just turned sixteen a couple months
ago.”

“So… if we were to steal a car, you could
drive it?”

“Driving on a highway is a lot different from
backing the truck up in front of my house.” We walk on for a few
more minutes. “Besides, you’d need to find a car with keys. I don’t
know how to hotwire a car. And it’d have to be an automatic. I have
no idea how to drive standard.”

“It won’t be that hard.”

By nightfall the big green highway signs tell
us we are nearing Hyannis. There’s some traffic on the road, but
not much. No one slows down for us, anyway. No one wants to pick up
two hitchhikers.

“Let’s go down into a neighborhood,” I
suggest. “We check cars in people’s driveways. There’s gotta be
some trusting person who leaves their keys in their unlocked
car.”

We hit the houses where the lights are off.
It’s pitch black out now, most people in bed. Zeke takes one side
of the street while I take the other. It gets to be a routine. Open
the door as quietly as possible. Check the ignition first. Then the
visor, then under the floor mat, then the glove box. Then close the
door as quietly as possible and move on to the next car. I find a
set of keys in a Dodge Ram truck, then notice the stick shift. Zeke
hasn’t signaled me yet, so I guess he’s having the same luck as I
am.

We’re about halfway down a street called
Manderson Ave. when I smell the dog.

It’s on Zeke’s side, kept in on a screened
porch. We must be downwind, because it hasn’t scented us yet. From
across the street I watch Zeke go right into the driveway and open
the car door. He must not have smelled the dog, or maybe he doesn’t
realize the sort of effect our kind have on dogs.

I shut the door of the Honda I was checking
and lope across the street.

“Zeke,” I whisper as loudly as I can.

He sees me coming and looks around,
presumably to see if the owners of the house are still asleep. All
the lights are still off, and so he shrugs at me and continues
searching the car.

Maybe it’s my footsteps slapping against the
pavement, or maybe it’s the muffled “Yes!” coming from within
Zeke’s scarf. Maybe the scent of us two together. The dog launches
out of sleep and into a barking frenzy.

“This one has keys!” Zeke says, not even
whispering as a light goes on upstairs.

I don’t say anything. I shove him into the
driver’s seat and climb over him.

He takes the hint and closes the car door,
puts the key in the ignition.

Then he stares at the steering wheel.

“What are you waiting for?” I hiss. The dog
is leaping up against the screens on the porch, its nails
scratching. White strings of saliva fly out from its snapping jaws.
“Let’s go!”

I’m not sure what Zeke says, because most of
it is lost in a growl. His mittened hands are clenched into
fists.

“No, no, let’s just go,” I say. “You don’t
need to fight that dog. Come on. Just turn the key and go!” Inside
the house, heavy footsteps are coming down the stairs. Soon the
owner is going to stop being pissed at his dog for waking him up
and start being pissed at the two delinquents stealing his car.

A growl rises from my own throat as I pull
Zeke over to the passenger side hard enough to knock his head
against the window. I settle into the driver’s seat and turn the
key. The car – a messy compact – grumbles to life. I stare at the
shifter. Reverse, I need to reverse. There’s a red R, must be
reverse. I slide the shift to the R.

Zeke roars with vocal chords that are no
longer human.

I hit the gas, managing to keep my hands on
the steering wheel despite the fact that they are trying to change
into clawed paws. As the car spins backward into the street, the
pads of my hands slip.

A tearing sound fills the air as Zeke’s
clothes split.

“Go go go,” I tell myself. If I can get Zeke
away from that dog’s sound and scent, maybe he will calm down. The
numbers on the shifter aren’t corresponding for me. There’s no G
for Go, no F for Forward. What is N? What is D, and D2? I try
N.

Nothing happens.

“Why the fuck is there a gear that does
nothing?” I yell, slamming the shifter clumsily to the next one
down, D. The car lurches forward. “Yes!”

Zeke is scrabbling at the door handle, doubly
awkward with his mittens and the paws inside of them. Most of his
clothes are still on him, though split to accommodate the change.
His face has elongated into a wolfish muzzle, but there’s no fur. I
tear my gaze away from him to hunt for the button that will lock
all the doors, it doesn’t seem to be there. And I’m still driving,
sliding across the icy road much faster than I want to be.

Finally I find the button, and just in time,
too – I’m at Route 2, sliding into the road, my foot pressing down
on the brake. Bright lights, a long blaring horn, Zeke slams
sideways then on top of me, then he rights himself. The car slides
off the road and into a low snow bank. Stops. Finally.

I take a moment to breathe and get myself
together. The windshield has fogged up and is slowly clearing with
the heat blowing. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

I look at Zeke.

“You’d better get a little closer to human,”
I tell him. When he stares at me blankly, helplessly

(I don’t know how to do this)

I growl at him. “Change back!” I bark. The
slightest hesitation from him, a shifting of his eyes and I’m on
him, holding him with my stare. “Human. Now.”

With our eyes locked together, his pupils
dilate. Beneath my hands I feel his body shifting. I return to the
driver’s seat, still maintaining eye contact.

“That’s better.”

I take up the wheel again, relieved that the
snow bank has kept the car from rolling away.

“How did you do that?” Zeke asks. His voice
is clear now. I glance at him – there’s no trace left of the wolf
in his face. “It’s like your voice… did something. Activated the
change. You told me to change and I had to do it.”

I say nothing. Keep my eyes on the icy black
road ahead. It did feel like that, like a pull on my brain, a push
of energy, giving him my power to control the transformation. Kayla
never mentioned anything like this, although she did something
similar a few times. Calmed me down so I didn’t change. Some kind
of psychic injection of calmness.

It’s interesting but I can’t think too much
on it. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel. It hits me: I’m
driving for the first time.

I wake up with a start, my breath frosting
into the air. It only takes me a moment to remember that Zeke and I
pulled into a WalMart parking lot late last night and fell asleep.
Zeke’s still conked out, his seat reclined and his fist curled
under his chin.

Of course, then I also have to recall that
Zeke is now an orphan no thanks to me, and that I’m driving a
stolen car that by now has probably been reported to the
police.

With that in mind, I start up the car and get
the hell out of there. Zeke mumbles something and falls back to
sleep. What a stupid idea. We thought it’d be for the best parking
at a 24-hour WalMart, where people wouldn’t wonder why a car was
parked there all night. But now the sun is up and everyone in the
world must have seen us sleeping. And WalMart parking lots have
security cameras. We should’ve found some deserted road and parked
there, where no police cruiser would happen to drive by and see two
teenagers crashed out in a car and run the plates.

We were damn lucky not to get caught.

I find myself on a highway, Route 2 East. Of
course, the opposite direction I want to go. I don’t dare try to
figure out how to change direction and continue driving at exactly
the speed limit while cars zoom by. Don’t want to attract any
attention to ourselves.

“I’m hungry,” Zeke says a short time
later.

“Got any money?” I ask.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

We’re quiet for a time, until Zeke’s
stomach’s rumbling gets too loud. He switches on the radio, and
punches through the radio’s preset buttons. Classic rock, heavy
metal, pop rock, commercial jingle, more classic rock. “Dad always
liked listening to the news.” It’s impossible to mistake the
sadness in his voice. Finally he stops on a station playing Led
Zeppelin.