Running with the Pack

Katya did not nod, or make an encouraging noise. She sat in her chair, back straight, shoulders relaxed. The cane she never used lay at her feet, the wooden grain satin-smooth. Katya was old now, but she had not always been so, and she knew what would follow. The girl was seeking a reminder of what she already knew, had forgotten in her years out in the world, where people wore civilization as though it was more than a veneer.



“I want to howl my pain. I want to bite his hand when he dares touch me. I want to cuddle and tell him it’s okay, I forgive him, I understand, and hear the same words from him, so we can let it go, move on. I need to move on, and I can’t, because he can’t and I don’t know what to do.”



The words fell from her mouth like well-chewed meat, soft and broken-down. Katya felt exhaustion in her bones, exhaustion and sadness growing as the words filled the air between them. Nobody had ever told this child anything, and Katya felt a growl grow in her throat. Who were her people, to have been so careless?



You cannot choose whom you love. Not human, not were. But it was safer to be human. Kinder to be human, and not so fierce.



The girl went on, her voice crackling. “I feel like I’m chasing my tail, only I have three tails and only one jaw. And I try to talk to my friends and they look at me like I’m insane, and give advice that doesn’t fit, and all I can do is change and run, and it feels all right for a moment and then I’m back and everything’s the same.”



She looked at the older woman, despair in her eyes. “Does that make any sense?”



“None at all,” Katya said, in the voice that said Yes, it makes perfect sense, I understand.



She had not always been an old woman. Once her skin had been dusky-smooth as well. Her eyes had been bright, her heart fierce, and she had loved a man who could not match her, and would not let her go.



You could not choose where your heart went. You could only suffer the consequences.



The girl finished speaking, draining the dregs of her tea and placing it with exaggerated care, as though she were drunk, on the small round table beside her, the glass top perfectly polished, the cast iron legs weather-washed and nicked. Like her, like this girl: a survivor.



“I don’t know what to do.”



Katya did not give advice. She did not make promises, and she did not lie.



The girl had a faraway look in her eyes, the kind that looked at something distant, invisible. “I don’t want to hurt him. But I will. I’ll gut him, if I have to, to get away. He doesn’t get that.”



Katya closed her eyes, the powder-dry skin softening in repose.



They never do. Not until it is too late.



They both heard the howl rising, and both turned to look; a motorcycle, turning down the street, cutting the engine in front of Katya’s house, the rumbling echo fading into the sky above the houses. He swung his leg over the beast, removing his helmet and placing it on the handlebar. A handsome creature, as strong and lithe as the girl. Each motion was precise, steady, the moves of a surgeon, or a painter.



“Oh, fuck.”



The girl’s words were soft, barely whispered, but Katya felt her jaw drop open slightly in sympathetic laughter, a wolf’s humor trumping any human shell.



The boy strode up the walk, standing at the base of the stairs, glaring up at them. He was angry, so angry; Katya could feel the heat of his rage simmering above his skin. The girl was angry too, but she controlled it, holding it within. Females have more understanding, they know how to embrace their emotions, offering them up to the Moon, racing them down until they’re manageable, shifting them into calories burned, not words said.



An alpha female thinks long-term, survival of the species. Males know only kill, or die.



“Get down here!” His voice was hoarse, his gaze not angry but despairing. He does not understand; he will not leave without her, not willingly.



He is were; he should know better. But they have no choice, none of them.



“Humans are fortunate,” Katya says, speaking as much to her own memories as the flesh and blood girl in front of her. Too late, the lesson comes. “They can let go of love. It fades, dims, becomes a pleasant memory. They can choose to part as friends.



They didn’t, all too often, but they had that choice.



“We are made from stronger passions, and domestication has neither stripped nor blunted us. We have only two options: turn love to hate, or love until we die.”



The words were no comfort. A were who loved was a mighty thing. A were who hated . . .



Freedom, like love, has a price.



“I can’t do this.”



But the girl stands, her body slim but muscled, her head high and her eyes clear, staring down her fate, and Katya knows that she can.



IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING



MOLLY TANZER



My daughter turned into a lamb and I ate her.



It wasn’t my fault—I mean, it was, it is. It is still my fault, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew not what I did, that was an expression, or something similar, at least. I knit the sweater, but how could I know about the other? Times were lean, dire even. We were so cold. I should have put two and two together, as the expression used to be. Simple math. In high school I struggled through algebra and geometry, but I dropped trig. I could do the easy stuff, I used that later, keeping the books at the yarn store, but I liked more to work with my hands, cooking, and crafts. Knitting, of course.



Now the school is closed. I mean, no, it is open, but open to the sky; the roof caved in because we stripped the shingles, took everything salvageable, so though it is closed it is still open, empty, like a skin. Like her skin. What was left of it.



Things get worse before they get better, that was another expression, and it was like that for me, for a time, even after the corn-sickness. Darkest before the dawn. That was another way they used to say the same thing. Things get worse before they better, it’s darkest before the dawn, but now things are just worse, and I don’t like daylight very much any more.



The funny thing is, I thought I was safe. I didn’t eat anything with corn syrup in it, never-ever, and I never let Elsbet eat it either. I’ve always been into natural living, now more than ever, I suppose, green, eco-friendly. I’d talk to others about it on internet forums, I once drove down to Boulder to go to a workshop on minimizing my carbon footprint. The news was full of global warming and consumerism, the sheep flu that mutated and mutated, sheep, then people, then cats, ferrets even, spreading, people were dying, it was bad. The government rushed to find a vaccine but I didn’t take it. Jimmy did, he said it was all right, said they’d tested it enough. He wanted Elsbet to get it but I wouldn’t allow it; there’s mercury in vaccines, I read an article about it in Mother Jones.



Why they never talked about the dangers of corn we’ll never know, but that’s what did it. I figured it out for myself, after everything. Not the stuff on the cob, though that was dangerous enough, but the syrup and the derivatives and the isolates and whatever. I always said that stuff would be the death of us, but I was speaking metaphorically. I thought. Just an expression. I was talking about heart disease and cancer, not actually the corn itself, but what it did to your body, spiked your blood sugar, made you fat, rotted your teeth, made kids too hyper to learn. But in the end, it was the actual corn, not just the long-term stuff, and it got all of us, in its own way.



I thought I was doing the right things, and I guess it turns out I was. Maybe. If I think about it, remember, or if I look at old cans when I find them, cat food, even, it all had corn. Animal feed. Envelopes, the sweet taste when you licked them. I knew something would happen, I mean, if you mess with the genetics of something enough, how can you tell what it will do in the real world? It isn’t natural. I knew it. I figured it out. For myself.



We had been GMO-free in our house for years, but it didn’t save Jimmy. He loved soda, that’s how it got him. He had gone to the doctor’s office, I remember that, Jimmy got vaccinated that day. It was the first day they had it where we were, in the boonies or the sticks, as they used to say, before everywhere was the boonies. I stayed at the yarn store while he waited in line for hours to get it, and then he went to the vet to get the vaccine for Smokey, she was his cat from before we were married, and he insisted. I had told him to get gas, and he got a soda while he was there. I saw the cup in the trash. That night we watched the news and heard there had been a rash of hospitalizations, people sick, they didn’t know what was wrong. We turned it off. They said to call poison control if you had unexplained abdominal cramping, vomiting, bloody diarrhea.



I fed Smokey. She had a routine, she’d meow and meow when I opened the can, purring around my legs. When she was done she’d lick her whiskers and roll on her back, but that night, she stopped halfway through her dinner, stood up on her hind legs, howled at us, started walking around. Elsbet started crying. We called the all-night vet but they weren’t there, just the voice mail. Finally we got Smokey into her carrier, but when we drove by, the place was dark. A lot of places were dark. Houses. Like I said, it all happened so fast, it felt like overnight, now that I think back on it. So we shut Smokey in the basement with some water and a blanket, we didn’t know what else to do. Elsbet was so sad, she was three and she loved the kitty so much. We put in a video because nothing any of us liked was on. Most of the stations were just test patterns anyways.