James Smith - Hybrid

He dropped down beside her and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shut up!”

She tried to stand but couldn’t put weight on the injured foot. She scanned the trees. A pair of golden eyes buried in wet, black fur hid in the tall grass and stared back. She yanked on his arm and pointed. He reached for a dead branch on a log and wrenched it off, then jabbed the air above his head with his weapon and shouted.

The wolf exploded from the weeds.

Like some kind of fool, he stood and heaved the limb at the charging animal and struck it in the head with a blow that toppled the beast into the dirt. It quickly recovered and stood with an arched back, bracing for another attack.

Then her dream was shattered in a blink. Her boyfriend from back East, so handsome and caring, raced away like that bat from hell she had always heard about. She curled into a ball and covered her face while she prayed to God Almighty and sobbed. The cawing ravens gathered on the ground about her. Through the fingers covering her eyes she watched as the wolf jumped high over her head and chased after her friend. She could’ve told him you can’t outrun a creature from the wild. Running away was nothing more than a tease. He probably didn’t learn things like that in college.

The wolf broke into a gallop, tail curled above its backbone, snout held high as it sniffed fear in its prey. It circled about him while he ran, nipping at his heels as if taking down a frightened lamb. The wolf leaped high and slammed its paws against his victim’s back, smashing him into the weeds. He kicked wildly as his screams pierced the air.

As the wolf buried its open jaws into his neck, both of his fists hammered away at the attacker. The wolf chomped deeper into his throat. Twisting and wrenching, it battered his head into the stone-hard ground causing his pretty hair to flap about like a flag in a storm.

Finally, his body lay still. Then it twitched. Madly at first, but soon only in clumsy jerks.

The wolf unlocked its jaws and turned in her direction. She tried again to stand but grimaced and dropped back down. Her injured ankle had begun to swell. She snaked on her belly through the weeds toward the dead branch he’d used as a weapon. Gripping it firmly, she used it as a crutch to heave herself up to her feet.

The wolf loped toward her. She hobbled with all of the speed she could muster to a fir tree and lifted her good foot up onto a lower limb. After dropping the crutch, she reached up to a branch with both hands, yanked upward, and stepped onto the limb. It snapped. She fell to the ground with a jolt and tumbled backwards. Her ankle throbbed while she crawled to the tree trunk again and stretched high for a larger branch. Squeezing her thigh muscles, she grunted up the tree, hand over hand, one limb at a time as the scorched bark scraped like sandpaper against her face. She shimmied higher until she could cram her body into the thick green branches. Comforted by the sweet smell of pinesap, she spread apart the limbs to peek through the fog bank that was now closing in.

His body and her fantasy of what might have been, lay in a pool of blood. A swarm of cackling ravens battled over pieces of his shredded flesh. If only she could remember his name.

She wrapped her arms around the tree and hugged it passionately as if there was no one else to hold. Mashing her cheek tightly against the bark, she could sense the feeble tremor of claws grating on the trunk below.

Molly’sATV skidded over the rocks as a chilling rain fell. According to the odometer she’d gone four miles over the narrow trail blazed only for hiking. She was forced to steer around fallen trees and over the tops of smaller ones lying charred and scattered like pickup sticks. Stopping often, she called out for Charlene.

When the wind died, the rain settled into a drizzle through a hazy curtain of fog. She picked up speed until the mist grew heavier and reduced visibility to only a few yards. The vague image of a boulder appeared on her path. Maneuvering closer, she braked too hard and killed the engine.

Mother of Mary!

Blinded by the blowing rain and fog, she had driven into the middle of a herd of bison. If she’d glanced away from the trail for even a split-second, she would’ve rammed one of them anchored on the path. Shivering, she sat motionless and thanked the Lord that her blustering arrival hadn’t invited a stampede. She zipped up her jacket to the neckline and pulled the hood over her head.

As she sat and patiently waited for the herd to move on, she thought about the Judge’s advice. The night before he’d argued that, for once, Deputy Harlan Ward might be right. What can you do, Molly? How often did abuse go on in families around America? The way to approach the problem, the Judge had said, was to call the Loudermilks. “Tell ‘em we’d both like to stop over. Begin by offering our friendship and trust.”

“Bullshit,” she’d responded. Not quite a retort to persuade a judge or jury, but she wouldn’t stand for a young woman—just a girl, really—being treated as if she was a piece of meat. Beaten and raped within the sacred shrine of her own family. How were you supposed to begin by “offering your hand in friendship”? In no way would she tolerate that kind of violence going on anywhere near the place she called home. If the Judge chose to stay out of it, fine. Let him try to sleep on it. She’d read once—and long remembered how the passage struck her—that the only thing needed for evil to win out was for good people to do nothing.

When the fog finally began to lift, the herd meandered. Among the last to budge, one young bull lay in a patch of dirt thirty yards away. When she started the engine, the frightened animal jerked around and stared at the intruder that had come to life. Streams of vapor gushed from his mammoth nostrils in pulses. He lumbered toward the ATV and gradually gathered speed.

With no desire to discover what he had in mind, Molly reached behind and opened a storage compartment where she kept a twelve-gauge Remington loaded for action. She held the weapon high and fired one barrel followed by the other. Startled, the confused creature turned and jogged back to the herd. Molly sped away and didn’t slow down until the last bison was out of sight.

The rain stopped and the skies cleared. The late afternoon sun drifted in and out through the low clouds. Arriving in a field by a stream, she cut the engine and repeated the calls for Charlene while opening and closing her fists to relieve her aching hands.

The wilderness swallowed her hopeless shouts. The whole damned venture was a waste. She wanted to kick herself for thinking it might be otherwise. Her thoughts began to overwhelm her when a flash of sunlight bounced off an object in the grass. She climbed off the ATV and walked toward it. A backpack on a metal frame lay on the ground with a small tent rolled up on top. A smaller pack was nearby and she yanked it up and unzipped it. There were panties, packages of snacks, a Bible with a red cover the size of her palm, and a couple of tampons.

A flock of black birds were feeding among the weeds. When she headed in their direction, they scattered away from a mixture of mud and what appeared to be dried blood. The scratched up and furrowed dirt quickly suggested a vicious fight among animals had taken place.

Charlene jolted upright when gunshots rang out across the valley. Then came the roar of an engine.

They were coming after her. She knew they would, in time. Joseph Vincent—him and his sister wives. She’d wrapped her legs around the trunk of a fir tree at the junction of two limbs and sat anchored ten feet above ground. She pulled the knife with the scrimshaw handle from her pocket and snapped out the blade. Clinging to the tree with her thighs, she dragged clumps of her wet hair down to her shoulders and grabbed one fistful at a time. She sliced the steel blade across the strands and let them fly into the wind.