Alex walked with his head down, his eyes on his feet, not thinking too hard about where he was going, as long as it was away from school. His headphones were deafeningly loud, and it gave the world a surreal and almost cinematic feel, somehow. He took a certain satisfaction in that. The streetlights bled yellow light, yellow like the moon, and Alex threaded a path between them, trying to stay in the puddles of dark in between the sulfur light.
He kept walking, simply because he had nothing else to do. One more absence from afternoon class wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference — as a matter of fact, his chances of joining the rest of his class as a senior next year were kind of up in the air, due almost entirely to lack of effort on his part. Not because of his grades, of course; he’d been careful to always be an average student, no matter the subject. But his attendance had slipped from ‘barely acceptable’ last year to ‘frequently absent without reason’ this year, and he’d been placed on academic probation for it. At the very least, that meant summer school. And Alex did not want any more school than he had already.
It wasn’t so much the classes that he wanted to avoid, he thought, glancing at the windows of a used clothing shop he passed, oddly fixated on the way they caught and reflected the jaundiced light. Mostly, he wanted to avoid the people.
For as long as he could remember, Alex had wanted to go someplace where no one knew him; no one knew about his parents, no one knew the whole ugly story. After his grandmother had died last year, he’d almost done it, too. He’d even bought bus tickets to Los Angeles, and spent several evenings trying to figure out how to fit his meager possessions into a single duffel bag. It had been comforting, puzzling through what he would need and what he could do without, a little bit like freedom. But he’d known, even at the time that he wouldn’t go through with it.
It was alright, Alex decided, kicking the crushed remains of an aluminum can into the gutter, to admit it — he was afraid to leave. This town — a wretched little suburb in the orbit of Bakersfield — was the only place he’d ever been, unless you counted the places where he’d been locked up. The idea of going somewhere new, where no one knew him, was something that Alex played with on the bad days, a comforting fantasy. The reality of it terrified him. Outside of being alone all the time, Alex figured, his life right now was pretty comfortable. And he’d spent the better part of the last eight years alone, which was nearly long enough for him to convince himself that he didn’t mind it.
He was surprised to find himself at the entrance to the park. Alex figured that his body had brought him here, the park where he often slept when ditching school, on some form of auto-pilot. He’d found it while wandering around the area, cutting class one day, in an anonymous neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. He didn’t even know what the park’s name was, if it even had a name. It wasn’t the worst destination he could have picked, actually, as the park was deserted and he wanted to sit down somewhere. He turned off the music, but left his ear buds in, as he headed through the park gates.
He trudged along the muddy sidewalk bordering the lake, careful to keep his grey sneakers dry, not entirely sure why he bothered. He reached the play structure and sat down, leaned his back up against it, closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything. The important thing, he knew, was not to think about what he was going to do next, once he graduated, once school was over with.
Because then he would panic. After all, he didn’t have a clue.
The lake smelled awful; a marshy, rotten-egg stink that was probably the reason Alex had the park to himself. It didn’t bother him that much. He had low expectations in general, and life had been obliging in meeting those expectations. The important thing was that the park was empty, not the smell of the bird shit saturated water. Alex tried not to wonder. Tried to not think. It was a skill, one that he had honed through years of confinement and observation, when he couldn’t sleep anymore, and he’d gotten good at it. Normally it was easy for him to empty his head, but tonight it didn’t seem to be working. The more he tried to quiet his mind, the more it tried to wander.
Alex looked out at the foul water, the few stars peaking reluctantly through the smog, the cluster of bare branches and tangled briar that edged the park, and felt sorry for himself. He spent much of his time here sleeping and feeling sorry for himself, but he wasn’t tired enough to sleep right now.
It wasn’t a sound that startled him. It couldn’t have been, because they made no noise. But something snapped Alex out of his reverie, made him open his eyes, and then made him take a second, harder look, after the first revealed nothing.
At the edge of the park, something was moving out of the brush; actually, Alex realized that it was a number of something’s. Large and long-limbed, too big for dogs, but moving on all fours. Silent grey shapes moving out of the scrub and across the mud and dead grass, their eyes shining in the long shadows of dusk, reflecting the yellow moon.
He was surprised to feel no fear whatsoever, only a vague sense of ridiculousness. So this is it, world, he thought madly. Mauled by… are they wolves? Wolves in a city park, in the early evening, wearing grey sneakers that he’d bought online and still wasn’t totally sure that he liked. He could imagine the gossip the next day. Oh, Alex Warner, you know, that fucked-up kid, did you hear? Eaten by fucking wolves.
He could not tear his gaze away from the lead grey form, with its terrible burning yellow eyes, as it moved toward him with what seemed like deliberate slowness. It crossed the distance between them with a graceful, compact stride, pink tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, across a row of sharp white teeth.
He stepped backward involuntarily, banging into the metal bars of the climbing structure, pain radiating out from his shoulder and elbow where they hit. He closed his eyes and waited to feel teeth, then, waited to feel hot breath on his neck and then what he imagined would be horrible suffering — and he felt a consuming panic wash over him, a raw tide of fear and resentment against the injustice of the entire situation. Eaten by wolves. Or did they just bite you to death? Did they actually eat you? Alex wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter that much. Fucking wolves.
Not one thing, he thought, not one thing in my entire life ever made sense. His whole body went numb and shook, waiting for an impact, waiting for sharp teeth and blinding pain. Not one thing had made sense.
He waited for what felt long a time before cautiously opening his eyes.
On some level, he must have been expecting an intervention — how else, Alex thought, could he explain his strange acceptance of the Japanese woman running toward him, through the center of the wolf pack, a semiautomatic in either hand. She moved fast, faster than he would have thought possible across the muddy ground, but that didn’t faze him much either. He could even accept she appeared to be shooting without looking, in two directions, with what appeared to be some accuracy — one of the wolves was crumpled and yowling in a pool of its own blood, while another crawled toward the brush on its belly, dragging its wounded back legs behind it. Alex wasn’t sure why he wasn’t more surprised. Maybe years of science fiction films had prepared him for it.
But, Alex could swear, even at a distance, that the woman was smiling a little bit. And that, for reasons he could not understand, was what was freaking him out.
For a second, anyway. Until Alex remembered the wolves trying to eat him.
She crossed the final distance between them in a few bounding steps, and then stopped close enough that Alex could make out her features — long, straight black hair, sharp features, those weird pants that cut off at the mid-calf, red lips curled into what was unmistakably a smile. Probably a few years older than him, but Alex couldn’t say for sure.
“Hey…”
Alex cursed his lameness. Unfortunately, his second attempt was no better.
“Hey, what the fuck?”
She rolled her eyes at him, and Alex immediately regretted saying anything. Which he had to admit was basically par for the course.
She came up to his shoulder, making her the shortest person he had ever found intimidating. She was lithe and compact, underneath a denim jacket heavily splattered with mud, and what Alex could only assume was werewolf blood. Despite the situation, Alex found himself wondering how old she was.
Then he noticed her eyes. They were startling — impossibly brilliant red irises set in grotesquely bloodshot eyes.
“That was really amazing…”
He tried for any sort of facial expression, but didn’t feel that he accomplished much.
She shook her head at him and sighed, ejecting the clips from both of her pistols directly on to the mud. She pulled two new clips from the side pocket of her jacket and slotted them both in place, all without seeming to pay much attention to the process. Her eyes stayed on his face for a moment, and he thought for sure he was going to get yelled at — but then she turned her back to him, and faced out into the park again.
“The Weir aren’t dead, boy,” she said, her voice flat, lacking all inflection. “Stay close to me if you want to live.”
Alex followed her gaze and saw she was right. The four wolves she hadn’t shot were fanned out in front of them, about fifty feet away, and advancing cautiously. Behind them, another group appeared to be descending from the scrub into the park proper, moving in their direction.
“Oh fuck,” Alex said softly, realizing that he had assumed, with no basis whatsoever, that he was saved the moment the woman had showed up, guns blazing.
Stupid. He had no good reason to be hopeful.
“Um, can’t you just, you know, shoot them?”
Alex heard the hysteria in his voice, and he hated it. Sweat poured down his back, and when the wind hit, he was abruptly very cold. He gritted his teeth, and attempted to stop shivering. When that didn’t work, all he could do was try and convince himself that he was shaking from the cold.
“I did,” she said, over her shoulder, in the same flat voice. “Those aren’t wolves, boy. They won’t die or run away because they’ve been shot a few times. And I don’t have enough bullets or time to kill all of them.”
Alex took a tentative step toward her back, and then, when she didn’t lash out at him, another. The part of his mind that seemed totally unconcerned with his impending death wondered how long her hair was when she didn’t have it tied back, and what it would feel like if he touched it. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the suicidal triviality.
“Um, well, can I, that is… can I help you?” Alex said nervously, his voice squeaking when she glanced coolly over her shoulder at him. He waited a moment for her to respond, and then continued on in a panic when she didn’t.
“I mean, I’ve never shot a gun or anything, but maybe I could…” Alex trailed off, and struggled to find a suitable way to complete the sentence. “I dunno, distract them or something? I mean, they’re here for me, right? So, if I run off that way, they’ll follow me — maybe you could get out of here and, um, go for help…”
For a moment, he was sure that she would laugh. He almost wanted to laugh himself. She had run through the park shooting at wolves with both hands, without needing to aim. Who could possibly help her? And had he really offered himself as bait?
“No.”
Her voice was flat, and the answer came without a moment’s hesitation. Alex looked down in shame, his face burning. What had he been thinking? Obviously, he was dead weight in this scenario. He wished he had simply shut up, and let himself be rescued.
When he looked up, he was surprised to see her glance at him over her shoulder, the pistols in her hands autonomously tracking the circling wolves. For the first time when she looked at him, she didn’t seem angry. As angry, anyway.
“That’s more than I expected from you,” she said in a softer voice, turning back to the advancing pack. “But, we cannot hope to run, not now.”
“Then what…”
Alex started to speak, and then trailed off, not even sure what he was going to ask. Despite the advancing wolves, what she said hit him right in the chest, and he felt a mad urge to rush out, to put himself between this stranger and the wolves, solely to prove her right, that he had something to offer. He could only marvel at his ability to think about such things in the face of impending doom.
“I will buy us time,” the woman said, not looking back. “Stay behind me.”
She pointed both of her guns straight ahead, at the closest of the grey shapes, but the sound when she fired was much less dramatic than what Alex had expected, and he felt inexplicably disappointed.