Lupus

Chapter 3:

JAY

“Damn.”

Wow that must suck.

I couldn’t help but wonder why she was telling me this. And why the hell did she save me? I didn’t even know her, and I knew she didn’t know me … or did she?

I never left the bed after she told me her story. My body wouldn’t let me. My mind kept going back to what this girl looked like in the parking lot as she killed and disposed of the creatures. I didn’t even know what she said as she left just then. Something about meat?

As I saw her leave I thought about how bad my life had been lately. How I had been living in a store, hiding there when no one was around. Whenever one of those “sol lupus” things came to the store, I would try not to breathe so it wouldn’t hear me. I was scared to death, totally unsure as to whether I would come out alive. I know I’ve been doing that wrong now, but it has worked for this long.

I ended up living on my own not because I was old enough to drink and had enough money to rent an apartment or something. No, that wasn’t the way it happened.

At sixteen years of age, I came home from school one day and my parents and sister came rushing out of the house with their suitcases full. All I heard from my dad was that we had to leave because he had a big job opportunity in Italy. I immediately knew that I didn’t want to leave my hometown – not at that time – and Italy was too far away for me.

My sister was only seven years old, so wherever my parents went, she went.

I tried to tell them that I would go and stay with Grandpa and Grandma so that I could finish school off, and then I’d meet them in Italy. But my father didn’t like that very much because I was talking about my mom’s parents. I still don’t know what happened between them, and I never got the chance to figure it out. Not knowing is probably better. My parents didn’t take my suggestion very well and it escalated into another argument.

My mother had my sister in the car with all of their things, and my things were surprisingly still in the house in the suitcases, from what my mother told me anyway. I never made it in the house to check.

As we argued and discussed, loudly by the way, the reasons for leaving and me staying, I heard someone scream like they were in a horror movie. After that it felt like I was living in one.

The first time I saw it, the thing was coming out of our neighbors’ house. My parents immediately jumped in the car and drove away. Before I turned around to see them, they were already gone. I still wonder why they didn’t tell me to get into the car or tell me to hurry up, but deep down I guess I don’t really want to know the answer. They probably thought I would jump in when I heard the engine start. Or they were so shocked that they didn’t know what to say to me.

So with them gone, I ran as fast as I could into the house to grab what I thought would be useful to have and to protect myself. Now, that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

When I ran inside, the thing followed me, slamming in through the front door.

I grabbed the biggest knife I had, and took my I.D. with me. I don’t know why I grabbed the I.D. – probably out of a habit. I ran to the basement door near the kitchen and hid there, under the house, for who knows how long. My dad built a door to go under the house in case we had a tornado or something. There were no tornados in Colorado, but he was a paranoid person. And I didn’t know much about our State, so I didn’t really look at the natural disasters in our area.

As I sat in a dirt hole, I thought about how a knife could possibly protect me from this thing. I looked at it, flipped it over and thought to myself, did I really know how to use one of these? Before I could answer my own question, I heard the beast crash down the stairs. I listened closely to its breathing and its footsteps. The other bad choice I made was hiding under the stairs. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Once I saw its huge feet on the bottom step, I heard a loud scream that sounded like it was coming from down the street. That was my guess, but it could have been anywhere because the sounds here bounce off the houses so easily. I always said that the houses were too close together.

The scream got the thing out of the house – the beast ran so fast it was like he would lose a race, or his lunch. I heard a loud bang and when I felt like it was safe, I walked up the basement stairs and slowly opened the door that led into the house. I saw that there was a huge hole in the hallway wall in front of me.

I quickly looked around to see if there was anyone else in the house and was glad that I saw nobody, alive or dead, or as a creature.

I ran out of there as fast as I could, dashing down the street towards where I thought it would be safe. The only place that came to my mind was the school. I hated school, but with how big that place was, I thought it would be the best place to play hide-and-seek with these monsters, or whatever they were.

I knew it wasn’t a game, but I felt better feeling like it was one, rather than thinking about how I might die at the end of it.

While I was running, I saw my parent’s car. It was completely destroyed and only my sister was in it, alive but unconscious. My parents were nowhere to be seen. I tried to get my sister out before she woke up, but once I tried to open the door, she woke up.

She was yelling at me to get her out but with that noise came the creatures again. Some older lady, one of her teachers I think, came and tried to help me get her out. Once we did, we ran to her car and drove as fast as we could.

However, the problem continued even when we got to a store to get supplies.

As we grabbed what we could and filled the car, I forgot to get what we should have. Water. When I went back to grab some, there was none left. Running back out to go to the car, I saw that it was gone. I was left alone, again. I was so mad that I started to hit everything that I came in contact with and knocked everything down in the store. No one thought I was crazy, because everyone was running around and trying to get out of that place. Nobody cared.

After my rampage, I kept running. I ran to who knows where and stopped after a day or two. When I saw a store that was still stocked with food and water, I stayed there until I felt like leaving. I eventually found a particular store that had things that I needed to survive, and I never left. That was one of the best things I had ever done.

The day the girl – more like a women – saved me, she didn’t save my sister. I couldn’t believe it. My sister was in that smashed up Volkswagen. I had no idea whose car it was but I didn’t care. She was alive and that was all that mattered. I had run to her as fast as I could. But before I knew it, a woman was holding me down and hiding me as the thing killed my sister.

I didn’t know what to say or do as I watched her burn my sister to ashes. I felt relieved when I saw that she was alive, and still felt relieved when she was dead and out of this crazy world. However, I should have been the one to die, not her. She was too young to die, but also too young to go through a world like this one. At least she didn’t have to worry about any of this anymore.

As my mind raced back to the present, I smelled food. My mouth started to water, since I hadn’t eaten in two days, so

I got up to see what there was to eat. The girl was outside walking around and watching the woods carefully.
I grabbed some “mystery-meat” for myself, and some for her. When I looked up, I saw that she had on brown working boots, black jeans that showed off her curves in the back nicely, and a black tank top. On her back were the arrows in their pack, while she held the bow and an arrow ready to aim at any moment. Her short black hair was up in a tiny ponytail.

I walked out the front door and met her as she was turning around and walking towards the front of the cabin. She caught my eye as I handed her some meat and said, “Thanks.”

We both stood there eating and watching the woods around us.

After a couple of moments, and having finished the meat, which was surprisingly not that bad, I decided to tell her who she killed. “That girl that was stuck in the car,” I began to say, turning to look at her, “was my sister.”

She faced me and we both stood there for a second before she turned back to the woods and said, “The first or the second one?”

There were three people in that fight. The girl that changed and the wolf. I saw it all happen even though Owl may not have noticed it.

I closed my eyes and let out a breath. When I opened my eyes I saw that she was now looking at me waiting for an answer. “The second one.”

“I’m sorry.” She turned back to the woods. We stood there in silence for a few moments until she spoke again. “You want to go somewhere?”

“Where?”

“You ask too many questions.” She went to lock up the cabin and came out with the food that she had out on the counter along with the weapons that she had on the bed. She put them in the trunk of her car. This girl didn’t beat around the bush.

It wasn’t long before we were in her car and going deeper into the woods.