Page 2 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Something heavy pinned my leg to the muddy earth. It took a full minute for me to come back to myself. My vision was blurred, and my head spun. I coughed, tasting the foul metallic tang of blood on my tongue. I must’ve bitten it in the fall.

Trying to get my bearings, I took stock of what’d happened. Between the cloud cover and the rain there was almost no light. I had to rely on the flashes of lightning to see by, and they seemed to be growing sparser. The bolts hitting further away. That was a good thing, at least.

Ok, this isn’t so bad, I told myself, shivering as rivulets of rainwater cascaded down my face and the icy wind whipped sharp leaves and debris at my head.

Shielding myself from the brunt of it, I saw that the hunting blind had fallen, the metal bolts that were holding it in place had been gouged out of the tree. My leg—or more accurately, my ankle was stuck beneath the wooden platform that made the floor.

But the blind was still more or less in one piece. When the lightning flashed again, I could see that the roof was torn and flapping. But it could be repaired.

I’d never get the damned thing back up into the trees, but shelter was shelter. I’d just have to be extra careful with open food if I had to be earthbound.

This is ok. I’m ok.

My teeth began chattering and I realized I needed to get free if I was going to be able to do anything. Surely there was something still dry inside the tent? Maybe I should try to make it back to the main road. Or call—no, I couldn’t call anyone.

I grit my teeth together to stop the chattering and tried pulling on my leg.

I bit back a scream, only able to rein in the worst of the pained keening sound.

I moved it again, this time remaining conscious of what I felt, like Dad taught me.

There was no grinding. The pain wasn’t in the bone itself, or at least, I didn’t think so.

A sprain then. A bad one, but I didn’t think the bone was broken.

Moving myself in closer to the corner of the blind, I managed to get my fingers beneath the base, earning myself a nasty splinter.

I heaved the wooden platform with everything I had, grunting as my shoulders felt like they were going to tear. I couldn’t move it. Not enough to get free. I hastily wiped the water from my eyes, but only managed to add mud to the mix.

Groaning in frustration, I clenched my fists and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of my own heartbeat and the blood rushing in my ears. I was reminded of a time when me and Dad were out here in a storm. It hadn’t been as bad as this one.

I’d been so frightened. My little seven-year-old mind had conjured all sorts of terrifying images.

Of tornadoes. Of monsters in the dark. Of dying, or worse; losing the only family I had left.

But as he lit the small lamp in the blind, casting his long shadow over the wall as it rippled in the wind, I remembered what he told me.

It’s only a storm, Allie Grace, he said in that soothing deep timbre he had. Just close your eyes. It’ll be over soon, and then the sun will come out just like it did yesterday.

Promise? Promise, kiddo.

I took a deep, stabilizing breath and pushed it out, determination setting my jaw. I felt around in the grass, finding as the lightning struck again that there was a thick branch a few feet away.

Sliding in the mud and molting leaves, I reached for it with trembling fingers, stretching my arm as far as it would go. My fingers closed around the tip and I pulled, dragging it over to me. I felt the solidness of the branch in my hands. It was heavy. At least four inches thick.

It would work.

I jammed the end of it under the base of the blind and used all my body weight to pull it down, lifting the platform the few inches I needed to wriggle my ankle free.

As soon as it was out, I let go of the branch and collapsed against the ground, grinning like a fool. “Fuck you,” I called into the howling wind and whipping rain.

I laughed.

“That all you got?” I shouted into the trees, up at the sky.

When my breaths steadied, I hobbled to my feet and went to see what I could do to salvage my makeshift home and its contents. Though the rain still poured down in a fury, it seemed the worst of the storm was passing. The sun would come out tomorrow, and I would get through this.

It was just a hiccup.

The annoying kind that stuck around for a while, but still only a hiccup.

Peering into a slit in the heavy canvas fabric, I saw that all my clothing, bedding, and books were completely soaked. Fuck my life.

A glimmer of silver caught my eye and I snaked my hand in to retrieve my cell phone. It was beyond dead. Or worse, maybe it was water damaged. I couldn’t afford another one. It would take all the savings I had left.

I jammed it deep into my front pocket, hopeful that I could find a way to fix it.

That’s when I heard it. Higher up the mountainside.

A sort of rumbling, rushing noise. Growing louder by the second. It wasn’t thunder. I could still hear the deep growl of the clouds as they moved further south. This was something else.

I limped to the edge of the tent and tried to see past it into the forest.

Were the trees further up moving? I shook my head, wondering if I’d hit it too hard in the fall. I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes of rainwater and tried to make sense of it. The trees were moving.

I gasped.

It’s a mudslide…

My heart leaped into my throat and I took off into the trees. It was coming down the slope of the mountain fast. But if I could just get to the outside edge of it before it hit, I could…

Dad.

I stopped, my hard breaths clouding in the night as I stared sadly back at the battered tent laying in the brush.

I clamped my mouth shut with an audible click.

Cursing myself, I ran back, my ankle protesting each step.

It took me a second to get the photo unpinned from the tent, and by the time I did, the mudslide was nearly upon me.

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

The ground under my feet shifted as I ran, trying to make me lose my footing. Trying to suck me down. I just had to get to the edge of it. I’d been caught in one of these before, but I’d been on my old Yamaha 250.

Go diagonal, I remembered that much. Run down and away. Don’t stop until it’s far behind you.

Except my ankle was about to give out, and any second now a heaving tree root was going to send me sprawling. I couldn’t move fast enough.

A streak of white to my left caught my eye and I saw an animal running in the same direction and pattern I was. As it neared, its front paws tearing up loose dirt, its snout twisted in an angry snarl, I saw what it was.

A wolf. Huge and powerful with muscles rippling beneath its fur. Its eyes seemed to glow in the dark. One of them somewhere between copper and gold. And the other the same but with a bright fleck of green. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Pity then, that the beast would probably eat me if we both made it out of the landslide in one piece.

I tried to put distance between me and the wolf, but as I side stepped to the right, my foot caught on something sharp in the dirt and I went down hard, losing my breath.

The wolf charged the last few feet to me, its glowing gold and green eyes fixed to mine. I couldn’t breathe. The mudslide was sucking me down, pulling me away. And every time I tried to yank my legs free to stand up, they got sucked back down again.

I realized too late that the photo was no longer in my hand and scanned the shifting dirt for it. But the last picture I had of him was already being sucked down into the mud more than six feet away. His grinning face vanished beneath the cold earth.

A vice gripped my heart and hot tears carved twin trails down my cheeks.

My entire body was covered in cold grime and I coughed as some made its way into my mouth.

When I looked up again, the wolf was there.

Close enough that I could smell its loamy breath and feel its warmth.

The thing was larger this close up. Double the size of a normal wolf.

The fucker must have been on goddamned steroids.

Make it quick, I thought, my throat going dry as I closed my eyes.

A cold nose pressed insistently against my temple and I jerked back, my eyes snapping back open. The wolf made a pained sound in its throat and something in its eyes struck me.

A kindness.

Was it…was it trying to help me?

The ground beneath us shifted again, heaving up from beneath. It was enough to jostle my legs free as we continued to slide down the side of the mountain. The ground shook as a tree fell five feet to my left.

I had to move. I couldn’t stay here, or I’d be killed.

Tentatively, I reached out a hand, pushing it into the wolf ’s thick fur. It lowered its head, still making small sounds in its throat and shuffling its feet to keep them atop the moving dirt.

When it made no move to attack me, I fisted my hand into its fur.

Then reached my other hand up and did the same.

As soon as my hand was secured, the wolf began to pull.

It dragged me over the dirt, between moving trees.

I resisted the urge to scream as all manor of rocks and dirt and sharp debris scraped my side.

It stopped suddenly and put its body lower for me to readjust my position.

I moved one hand so I could grip its opposite side, and when the wolf lifted its body the second time, I was laying over its back. Its knobby spine jabbed into my breastbone, but it was a hell of a lot better than being drug over the forest floor.

The wolf had us out of the brunt of it faster than I could have dreamed, its sides heaving with the additional effort of hauling a second body.

When the groaning sound of moving earth stopped and I thought it was clear, I let go and slid from the wolf ’s back, feeling like the whole world was spinning.

My shoulders and biceps ached from clinging to the animal that’d saved my life.

I rolled over and retched into the bushes.

Please don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me.

The words were like a mantra in my head, but when the spinning finally subsided and I chanced a glance at the enormous wolf, I found it watching me.

And not in an I’m going to eat you way. In a curious way, with its head tilted to one side. There was something unnerving in its stare, though. Something intelligent that made my skin crawl. Wolves were smart. Most animals were. But this was more than that.

I spat bile into the mud and wiped the corner of my mouth. “Um…” I started, afraid if I spoke too loudly it would break the spell and jerk the string that would ring the proverbial dinner bell. “Thank you.”

It continued to stare. “You…you can go now.” It didn’t budge.

Okay then.

I used a nearby tree to help me stand, gripping the rough bark hard enough to aggravate several cuts I didn’t know I had on my hands. I winced, hopping on one foot. It felt like my ankle had swelled to double its size.

When I finally dared to take my eyes off the wolf still watching me intently, I noticed three things.

I couldn’t feel my toes or my fingertips.

I had no fucking idea where I was.

The storm had finally ended.

Great.

The wolf turned and lumbered into the trees. I watched it go and something tugged at my chest. Without that wolf, I’d probably be dead right now. Buried beneath a good six feet of earth. No one would’ve ever found me.

My eyes burned, and I wasn’t sure if it was more from the dirt still inside them or the threat of tears. “Bye,” I whispered as it vanished into the dark, and scanned the trees around me to try to figure out where I was.

If I just kept moving down, I would make it to the main road. The mudslide had probably taken me most of the way already. It shouldn’t be far.

I started to move and cried out at the pain in my ankle. Pins and needles from the numbness radiated up my calves like little daggers.

The sound of the wolf ’s panting alerted me that it’d returned and the hairs on my neck rose as I spun. It was holding a long stick in its jaws. Long fangs stark white against the damp wood. It dropped the stick at my feet, and I reached down for it, careful to keep my movements slow.

It was long and sturdy. Mostly straight except for a crook near the top. The perfect walking stick.

“Smart pooch,” I muttered under my breath, side eyeing the huge wolf.

It moved several steps to the east and then waited. I narrowed my gaze. When I tried to move a couple steps south, the wolf let loose a low growl. I stopped. It moved another two steps to the east and then paused, waiting with its head tilted back to watch me.

“You want me to follow you?” I spoke through chattering teeth, my voice hoarse.

With ears pricked to listen for my advance, it began to move further into the woods with slow steps.

“Uh…I need to get to town…” I told it, not really knowing why the hell I was arguing with a wild animal.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do when I got to town, but at least there would be shelter in case the storm came back.

Judging by the sky, it was only a couple more hours until sunrise.

I could wait outside the school until the janitors went through.

Then what? The other part of my brain rationalized. You have no clothes. No money for food. Your schoolbooks, boots, and wallet are all back in the blind, probably buried somewhere in the mountainside.

And if someone sees you covered in mud and leaves from head to toe, they’re going to think they’ve just sighted bigfoot.

The seriousness of what happened finally hit me like a punch to the gut. A weight on my chest made it hard to breathe. What was I going to do?

The wolf barked, still waiting for me to follow it.

I pursed my lips, looking to the direction I thought was south, and back to the wolf.

What the hell…I thought. I didn’t know where the fuck I was anyway, and the wolf hadn’t eaten me yet. I had to hope it was leading me to shelter and not to a pack of other wolves it wanted to share its dinner with.

It barked again.

I used the walking stick to help me along, limping to follow the oversized fleabag with all the strength I had left. “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “I’m coming. But if you eat me, I’m going to make sure the devil saves a special place for you in hell.”