Fuck it, Micah thought. We’re about to die anyway. He can be mad in his coffin. Micah grabbed Zeke’s hand in a terror grip, and to his surprise Zeke squeezed back. The gun was still pointing at the spot directly between Zeke’s eyes, drawing all of his attention. Zeke took a deep, steadying breath and relaxed, gazing at the barrel of the gun like a long-lost lover. No, Micah thought. No, damn it Zeke, not today.

“We’ll help you,” Micah said quickly. “We’ll bring the others.”

“Excellent choice,” Kenneth said with a wolfish grin, setting the gun back in his lap. “I expect the full number to be in the mountain valley next month. I will be watching you. If you try to run, I will kill you. If you try to warn the humans, I will kill you. If you try to organize a coup against me, I will kill you. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yep,” Micah said with a nod. “Bring the werewolves, keep our mouths shut, or death. Crystal clear.”

“Perfect,” Kenneth purred. “Stay right here. I’ll have Jacob bring you something to wear.”

Zeke whirled on Micah the moment the door closed behind Kenneth.

“Why?” He demanded.

“Because I’d rather have time to figure out how to get out of this than get shot to death today,” Micah said exasperatedly. “I mean, unless you’re so invested in being right that you can’t see the bigger picture.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know that being in love with me will make me die. You know that so strongly that you are completely incapable of accepting any alternative. You gave up just then, completely gave up. Because of what you think you know.” Fury vibrated in Micah’s chest, making his voice shake.

“That’s not....”

“You were going to straight up sacrifice us both to protect your superstition!”

The door slammed open before Zeke could respond. Jacob sullenly tossed a pile of clothes at them.

“Kenneth says you’re free to go. Bus runs every hour. Bus money in the pockets.” He trudged away and slammed the door behind him.

“Think he wanted to see bodies today,” Micah said with a cringe. “Ugh. They’re both creeps.”

Zeke didn’t respond. He dressed in the ill-fitting jeans and shirt and stuffed his feet into the cheap moccasin-style tennis shoes, and Micah quickly followed suit. The clothes fit him slightly better, but they both still looked as if they had fallen off the back of a thrift store truck. Eyes watched them from all directions as they crossed the barren ranch, crunching over the light dusting of snow which had appeared overnight. In spite of their disagreement, they drew close together.

Ranch hands stopped whatever work they were doing to watch them cross the dusty property. Neighbors stood on their porches, squinting hard in their direction. Even the rabbits and hawks seemed to pause their life-or-death games for a moment to observe the pair of werewolves leave their prison cell to embark on their terrible task. The cold wind did not keep Micah from sweating under the gaze, and it was with great relief that he collapsed on the bench inside the covered bus stop.

“Everybody’s creepy out here,” he said, wrinkling his nose with distaste.

“I think they’re all werewolves,” Zeke said absently. “I’m not sure why. A smell or a look or...something. They just don’t look right.”

“I bet we don’t either, to some people,” Micah mused. “I wonder how many of my students watched me get my ass kicked last night.”

“None of them,” Zeke told him. “The kids all took off as soon as Kenneth was distracted. They watched you brawl pretty good, though.”

“Great,” Micah sighed. He sat up suddenly, rigid with panic. “What day is it?”

“Um...Saturday, I think? Yeah, Saturday. First full moon was Wednesday night.”

“Oh thank God,” Micah collapsed again, limp with relief. “I thought I no-called on the school.”

“Not unless you were teaching Saturday classes,” Zeke said mildly. “When the hell is this bus getting here?”

“Whenever it damn well pleases,” Micah sighed. “We should do something to pass the time.”

“Like?”

“Like talk about why you’re so dead-set on staying miserable.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Zeke sighed and leaned against the wall of the bus stop shelter. “It’s not intentional. It’s just...inevitable.”

Micah propped himself up on his elbows. “Inevitable? You think that you being miserable is inevitable?”

Zeke shot him a look which said, you don’t?

“Alright, look. Sit down, you’re about to get one of Mr. Mitchell’s signature lectures.” Micah stood and struck his lecturing pose as Zeke sat down with a wry twist of his lips.

“Of all the worldviews and perceptions on the planet, there are two which are most prevalent. They also happen to be polar opposites, and each one covers a wide range of sub-ideas.” He clasped his hands behind his back, projecting as if to the classroom. “The first of these ideas is predestination. The idea that someone or some force is controlling the lives of every person on the planet. Everyone has heard a variation of this: it wasn’t meant to be, God willing, everything happens for a reason, et cetera. You get the idea? Good.”

Zeke propped his chin in his hand and watched Micah with growing amusement.

“The second worldview is self-determination. This view states that each individual is solely responsible for their own lives and destinies, and no matter what everybody can get to where they need to be if they apply themselves properly. Key phrases for this worldview include: pull yourself up by your bootstraps, shoot for the moon, and ‘I’m a libertarian’.”

He earned a chuckle with that, which was gratifying. His students were generally too inexperienced to notice.

“Unfortunately, neither of these world views is true on their own. If one is to let go and let God decide everything about their lives, they will quickly lose whatever momentum they were given at birth, and will find themselves floundering under a mountain of debt in a trailer park somewhere, wondering if they just didn’t pray hard enough. The second ignores conditions of life which are beyond a person’s control, and when ignored, these things cannot be addressed or overcome. The suffragette movement is a clear historical example of this: when women identified and called out the unfair power balance, which was a barrier around their powers of self-determination, they were able to eliminate it.”

“Alright, so a proper world view is balanced. What’s your point?”

“Please do not interrupt.” Micah had his full teacher persona on full blast, and Zeke seemed to be finding it endlessly entertaining. “In order to successfully navigate life in a fulfilling way, a person must determine which items are within his control, and which are not. A person who makes themselves responsible for everything will drive themselves mad with guilt, grief, and depression every time something completely natural happens; a death, for example. A person who claims responsibility for nothing will be eternally infantile. So! Your homework for this evening....”

“You’re giving me homework?”

“... is to identify a source of friction in your own life...for example, your best friend is ready and willing to go the distance with you, but you’re scared...and determine which parts of that problem are under your control, and which are not.”

“Oh, Mr. Mitchell,” Zeke said, raising his hand with a sarcastic tilt of his eyebrow. “Are these questions going to be on the test?”

“Good question, Zeke. These questions are the test.”

Zeke smirked and shook his head. He looked as if he were about to say something else, but the bus pulled up before he could form it. For such a rural route, the bus seemed pretty packed, making real conversation impossible. They batted quippy small talk around for an hour until they reached Dogshead, then climbed off the bus. Micah’s parents were his most pressing concern at the moment, and Zeke had just realized that he had been neglecting his responsibilities to his father; or, rather, his responsibilities to his brother as they applied to his father. He still hadn’t quite figured out how to categorize how he felt about the situation.

“I’ll come with you first,” Zeke said. “Get a read on the situation. Then I’ll go check on the boys.”

“I’ll tag along,” Micah offered with a half-shrug. “If you want me to.”

“Yeah,” Zeke said neutrally. “If you want.”

The parade of cars sat outside Brandy’s house once more, but there were more now. The convoy extended out past the end of the lane and into the empty desert, filling it up like a junk yard. Trepidation wriggled in Micah’s chest as they strode up the walk to the house and rang the bell.

“Couldn’t you just walk in?” Zeke asked.

“I could,” Micah admitted. “But I’d rather get a sense of what I’m walking in to. She’s good at projecting that kind of thing.”

She certainly projected today. Frazzled, frayed, and at the end of her rope, Brandy yanked the door open with wild eyes.

“Micah, you’re a teacher. Get in here, there’s too many of them, they’ve eaten everything and they won’t sit still.”

Micah chuckled as he followed her inside, then his heart sank. The house was literally filled with teenagers, and they spilled out the back door to fill up the back yard. Brandy hadn’t been exaggerating; the kids refused to sit still. They paced or wrestled, ran, screamed, flirted and talked, all while the adults sat in a tight cluster in the living room. Well they aren’t going to listen if you look scared, Micah thought with a roll of his eyes.

He stuck two fingers in his mouth and let go with a shrill whistle. Instant silence fell over the house as all eyes turned to him.

“Listen up! Ninth graders, sit here. Tenth, sit there. Cop a squat, don’t waste time looking for a seat. Eleventh, there. Twelfth, there.”

After a lot of shuffling, tripping, and giggling, the teenagers managed to arrange themselves in roughly the way he had told them to. Now that everyone was inside, the air quickly grew stiflingly humid.

“New plan,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Ninth and tenth, stay where you are. The rest of you, outside. We’ll switch in a few minutes.”

Sighs, flounces, and eye rolls answered him. He ignored them, remaining stoic and silent until they did as he said.

“Alright, Mom, they’re sitting still. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to figure out who they all are, who their parents are, whether their parents are also werewolves, and why they are allowed to go out fighting and fucking every month,” Brandy said irritably.

Some of the kids looked proud, some irritated, and some ashamed. Micah zeroed in on that last bunch. He grabbed a legal pad and a pen from his mom’s desk, picking his way across folded knees as he did so. Finally he perched on the arm of the couch (which his mother would generally yell at him about, but it was literally the only place left to sit), and pointed to a red-faced blonde girl in the ninth grade section.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“Chelsea Knight,” she whispered.

“Parents?”

“Mom’s Abigail Crest. Dad’s gone.”

“Is your mom a werewolf?”

Chelsea shook her head, staring at the ground.

“And why were you out in the canyon last night?”

Chelsea shrugged. Micah waited. The silence thickened, making her squirm. Finally, with a labored sigh, Chelsea spoke.

“Mom works nights,” she explained finally. “She doesn’t know. About any of this. I didn’t want to tell her, she’s already like super stressed all the time. I just...didn’t want to be alone. It’s scary.”

“And who bit you?” Micah asked, adding a question.

Chelsea’s blush deepened, and she distinctly avoided looking at the tenth-grade section, where another girl was distinctly avoiding looking at her.

“I need to map the gene,” Micah said gently. “Nobody’s in trouble right now. But the sooner we can get to the bottom of this, the better it will be for everybody.”

Chelsea nodded and sighed again. “April Lester,” she said quietly.

Micah looked at the other girl. “Is that you, April?” He asked.

She nodded.

Micah’s questions went on like that until he had categorized and mapped every kid in the room. He sketched a visual aid to help him keep track of who bit whom, and the trail led to the eleventh grade class. Once that was finished, he called for the groups to switch, and began the process all over again. In the end, he had his patient zero; Jessi Queen, Gloria’s first born, who was not present.

“He’s at work,” Gloria said apologetically. “He’s an adult now, you know.”

“Yeah,” Micah said angrily. “What kind of adult preys on kids like this?”

“Well he was in high school at the time....”

“Meaning the rest of these kids would have been in elementary school,” Micah snapped. “I have no fewer than ten kids here who say they were bitten by Jessi, and he is the only one who was born a werewolf in this entire group. And look at this, Gloria. All of these kids come from broken homes, or foster homes, or no homes. He deliberately targeted the underdogs, so to speak, to pass this on. Now why do you think he would do that?”

“I...I don’t know,” Gloria said, wrinkling her brow. “Maybe he felt like an outcast himself. Yes, that would make sense. Wouldn’t it?”

“No,” Micah said, trembling with fury. “If he was turning his own age group, maybe. But he targeted kids, little kids. That’s either a sick puppy or a marionette. Where does he work?”

“None of your business,” Gloria said, suddenly finding her confidence. “I won’t let you hurt him.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Micah growled unconvincingly. “I’m just going to talk to him.”

“What for? Tell me what you want to know, I’ll talk to him.” Gloria lifted her chin defiantly.

Micah cast a look of helpless fury at his mother.

“Gloria,” she snapped. “I have exactly zero patience right now. Micah isn’t going to touch your kid. Tell him what he needs to know.”

“No,” Gloria said, her black eyes flashing. “This isn’t Jessi’s fault, he couldn’t help what he was.”

“He could help what he did with what he was,” Brandy shot back. “For the love of Christ, Gloria, do you want this to keep spreading?”

“It’s not like he’s doing it now,” Gloria said staunchly. “It’s all in the past.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Zeke muttered.

He snatched Gloria’s purse from beneath her chair without her noticing and pulled out her phone. Brandy and Gloria continued to bicker as he scrolled through her contacts. “Jessi Work” was right where it should have been. He searched the internet for the phone number, and struck gold. With a triumphant grin, he sent a screen shot to Micah’s phone and put everything back where it came from. Micah’s phone chimed from the entertainment center where he had left it the night before, and he dodged milling teenagers to reach it.

“Haha! Mom, Zeke and I are going to go get lunch. You want anything from Chick’n Mash?”

Gloria paled and Brandy grinned evilly. She pulled out her own purse and shoved a wad of cash at him.

“Get enough for everybody,” she said. “And godspeed.”

“Chicken’s so greasy,” Gloria complained pointedly. “Why not subs instead?”

“Nice try,” Zeke whispered in her ear as he stood.

“Back in while,” Micah sang.