Page 70 of Hateful
I get to where I last saw him, but he’s not on the trail. He must have tried to take a shortcut to cut me off.
I pause for a moment, listening, heart pounding in my ears.
The momentary screams have stopped, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I think I hear footsteps, a twig snapping in the underbrush. Wielding my near-useless stick, I creep closer to the edge of the trail and squint through the trees, hoping that I’m wrong, that the wolves aren’t attacking Heath.
Hoping for the first time that this is all some elaborate prank by the rest of The Brotherhood.
But there’s another snarl, another non-human snarl, and it soundsclose.
I turn in that direction and run off the trail, my feet carrying me where every other part of my body is screaming for me not to go. The growls and rough footsteps get louder.
I burst through the underbrush into a clearing. Heath lies on the ground with his arms protectively over his head. Two wolves crouch along the edge of the trees and stalk toward him.
I don’t wait to find out why Heath isn’t running. There isn’t time for that. The wolves look like they’re right about to lunge, their eyes greedily fixed on Heath’s exposed neck.
I just open my mouth and scream, raising my stick high.
The wolves are startled, but not as startled as I am when a third leaps out of the bushes toward me. My eyes widen as I take in the blur of its form. I don’t think I ever realized just howbigwolves are. I’ve seen them in pictures and movies, but never up close; not even in a zoo. The one sprinting toward me with its lip curling and its teeth bared has a head as big as my torso.
Its snout alone is longer than my head. Its massive paws pound the ground as it rushes toward me, each of its teeth as long as my fingers, its claws digging into the dirt.
I scream and wave my stick at it. The wolf dodges under the stick, corrects its course, and slides to a stop.
“Alex?” Heath asks confusedly, his head lolling to the side as if he’s struggling to keep it upright—though out of fear or injury, I can’t tell.
Has he already been bitten? Did he break something while running?
I don’t know. The thoughts, the possibilities, are shooting through my head like a confusing whirlwind.
“Busy right now!” My voice comes out high-pitched and panicky, but it startles the wolf, and it takes a step back. I keep waving my stick like a sword in front of me, the wolf’s eyes watching it closely until, to my great relief, it starts to back slowly away.
Heath whimpers and ducks his head again as the two wolves near him snap their jaws. I yell some more, wave my arms, and brandish my stick until they look over at me instead. I must look like some sort of crazy harpy.
Now I have three wolves stalking toward me with bared teeth. I don’t know how I expected that to go, but here I am.
“Get!” I shout, jerking my arms around. I feel like one of those inflatable things with weird noodle arms that sit outside car dealerships, flapping in the wind. I used to love those things as a kid. I wonder if they’re terrified like this every single day of their life.
Stop thinking about stupid shit,I tell myself firmly.Is that really the last thing you want to be thinking about before you die?
“Get!” Heath yells, his voice mingling with my own as I shout out a second time.
The sound of it makes me glance back in his direction.
The wolves have turned their attention from him now, and he’s managed to get a stick half the length of mine in his hand. He springs to his feet and whacks one of the wolves on the butt.
“No, don’t!” I cry, but he’s already done it. The wolf whirls on him and snarls so loud I think there’s a lion nearby. “You have to scare it off. You can’t actuallyhitit.”
I keep waving my arms—and the stick—above my head, trying to look like something these creatures aren’t readily going to try to make a snack out of. I must’ve read something about this somewhere. I don’t know if it’s what I’msupposed to do …but it does seem to be working.
Heath’s eyes flick from the wolves—who have now stopped snarling and are just regarding me with interest—to me, ridiculous as I may look. To my surprise he copies me without question, throwing out his arms and staring down at the wolf he hit before.
It takes a few moments, but that wolf stops snarling, too. Now we’re all just motionless in a clearing. No big deal. I’m just having a standoff with some wolves.
Just another day, really.
I take a step back and this time, the wolves don’t follow. They continue to watch me almost suspiciously. There’s a spark of intelligence in their eyes. They’re gorgeous creatures, I have to admit, though I’m terrified of them. My heart thumps even as I take in the pretty golden color of their eyes and the thick white fur of their bellies. Absurdly, I want to pet them, which I realize is of course out of the question.
One by one, they lower their tails.
