Guide to surviving, chapter 14 (Patreon)

Chad led them through the hole broken into the side of the store, through a blacksmith shop with stacks of scavenged metal. If the family moved, they would have to leave all this. Maybe they deserved that. Sally had created a harem with her son at the center, and that seemed like the sort of evil that deserved to lose everything. However, leaving this behind would mean letting Jordan claim it.

He’d said he had a girlfriend, but after seeing what Sally had done, Stella was second-guessing his word choice. If the kindly old grandmother condoned rape by coercion, then…

Chad led them to the far side where a rough-fit door leaned drunkenly on its hinges. He pulled the door open, the bottom scraping across the concrete floor. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said.

“Don’t you sleep in with the others?” Stella followed him into a huge room that had been stripped bare. Glass windows that had once probably held signs for big holiday sales were protected by security grates, and where the glass had been broken out, reinforced by plywood. In the far corner, a tent was set up, but the echoing, abandoned store made it look pathetic and small.

“The others are uncomfortable around me.”

“Whose fault is that?” Alicia asked without any compassion.

Chad glared at her before turning his attention to Stella. “You can transform in here. I can drag in some equipment for you to practice jumping. It takes a little coordination to figure out where to put all your paws when you land.”

“So, you weren’t born a shifter?” Stella asked.

“No one is born a shifter,” Alicia said. “The animal spirit is summoned, and it can either choose to join with us or not, but we’re not genetically different than an untouched human.”

Stella knew that, and from the unamused look on Alicia’s face, she disliked having to repeat the fact. Chad cleared his throat. “So, what is the plan?” he asked.

“We’re getting her comfortable in her fur and then we’re leaving.”

“You plan to leave kids to die?” Chad took a step forward, and Alicia gave him a cold look.

“What do you care? They aren’t your kids. In fact, it seems like Sally isn’t going to let you have kids at all.” Alicia took some perverse pleasure as Chad flinched.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let kids die. I won’t leave them behind with her psychopathic brother moving into the neighborhood.” Chad poked a thumb in Stella’s direction. Stella didn’t want to know how Chad had come to that conclusion so quickly. Alicia and Chad didn’t know the lovely stories from Jordan’s past, so that wasn’t it.

“There are kids all over the world dying because of the apocalypse,” Alicia said, but Stella could feel discomfort crawling between her ribs. Those were Alicia’s feelings. Weird.

“Don’t you think we should save as many as we can?”

“People could have banded together. They could have helped each other. They didn’t. They were all so busy trying to steal resources from their neighbors that they destroyed themselves. We aren’t obligated to fix their problems,” Alicia said, but misery stained her skin and seeped into Stella. She didn’t want to leave the children behind, but their options were limited. She was right that the parents would have to come along, and large groups on the move tended to attract zombies.

And she was right about people too. Stella had helped her father raid stores so they could stock the cabin. They had taken way more than they needed, and yeah, that meant they had the resources to take others in later, but… Maybe some of those people needed help because they had gone to the stores Stella had helped raid. Panic didn’t make for logical or kind decision-making.

Stella had a flash of brilliance, or at least she would have called it brilliant if it hadn’t been stupidly obvious. “Couldn’t you make all the parents werewolves?” Stella asked. “That way each mother could look after her own child.”

Both Alicia and Chad looked at her incredulously.

“What?”

Chad raised both hands in a gesture of surrender and retreated to the blacksmith’s space.

“What?” Stella asked again.

“I can’t turn everyone into a wolf.” Alicia’s voice had a bit of growl in it.

“Is it a hard spell or ceremony or whatever?” Stella didn’t want Alicia to put her own health at risk.

“No, not at all.” Alicia picked a wall and sank down to sit cross-legged. “You were bleeding. I was bleeding after jumping the wall, and when you started to die, I howled. That was it.”

“That’s it?” That felt anticlimactic.

“Yep. At least now I know why my parents were so paranoid about us losing bodily fluids.” Alicia shrugged. “However, if I call the wolf, that means it’s my pack. It’s part of me.” She grimaced.

Stella sat next to her, their knees touching, and rubbed her ribs. “Is that why I can feel you, feel your emotions?”

“You can?” Alicia looked at her sharply.

“Um. Yeah? And I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t want everyone that close. It’s awkward. Super awkward. Crazy awkward.” Stella lost her train of thought for a minute.  “But we can’t let kids die, and from what I’m feeling from you, you already know that. So even if it’s supes uncomfortable giving everyone the secret decoder ring for your emotions, it’s better than letting kids die.”

“Feeling pack member’s emotions isn’t common.” Alicia studied Stella. “However, your pack is more than family. Pack is everything. You’ll jump into a zombie horde to reach one. You’ll feel like your flesh is being carved off your body when you lose one.” Her voice grew quiet. “Lose enough and you’ll lose yourself.”

“Oh.” Stella picked at the hem of her pants. Alicia had lost her pack once, and if she built another pack, there was a chance of that happening again, especially if they were forced to run. The apocalypse was fairly settled at this point, so any place with resources would be claimed by survivors. Two of them could chisel out a tiny corner, but moving a whole family in would require a fight. Shit.

A heavy thump interrupted Stella’s musings. Chad dragged an enormous sawhorse through the door. “This should give you a good target to practice jumping. It’s solid enough that you won’t break it if you crash into it.”

“And what about breaking me?” Stella’s voice went embarrassingly squeaky.

“You’re wolf-touched. You’ll live,” Alicia said without sympathy. “So, you need to access your wolf.” She stood, brushed off her pants and then looked at Stella. Stella looked back. Alicia made an impatient gesture with her hand, and Stella returned an exaggerated version of the same gesture.

Chad guffawed.

“Don’t you start.” Alicia poked a finger at him, and Chad again raised his hands in surrender. He did that a lot.

“I’m guessing you played ‘wolf’ as a child,” he said.

Alicia crossed her arms over her chest, and Stella shot to her feet so she would be in a position to intervene in any argument. Instead, Chad turned to her. “When wolf-touched have children, the children often grow up ‘playing’ wolf. It means they access their inner wolf without really thinking about it.”

“And you didn’t grow up playing cat, I assume.”

Chad shrugged. “Cats are more solitary. They tend to have one child at a time because big families come with lots of friends and chaos and socialization. Not really their thing. My parents adored each other, but my father travelled at least three or four months out of the year because they needed space to keep their marriage healthy. I grew up playing video games.”

“Okay, so how did you access your cat?”

“You already know.”

“Um, fairly sure I don’t. I’m fairly sure I don’t know anything about you. I mean, I can make guesses based on the fact your parents aren’t here, and I think you’re a good guy based off your desire to protect the kids, but that doesn’t give me a crystal ball that let’s me see how you manage your inner cat.”

“I have no idea where my parents are. My father was quarantined in another country because he was on a business trip and he believed the news when they said the disease would be easily handled using existing quarantine laws. My mother and I split up after she helped me complete the cat trials, which are much more complex. But once I had my own cat, it was uncomfortable for us to live together.”

Something strange passed across Alicia’s expression. She knew something, and Stella was going to figure out what as soon as she had some time alone with the other woman.

“That doesn’t tell me how you switch into your cat form.”

“I thought we’d changed the subject. You brought up my parents.”

“Enough,” Alicia interrupted. “I assume he’s talking about how I helped you find your human skin. If you think like a human, you become human. Do the same in reverse.”

“Small problem. I’m not a wolf, so I don’t know how they think.”

“You are a wolf. You just have to let go of the more complex feelings that are associated with your human side. When my sisters and I played wolves, we growled and fought over toys and curled around each other to watch television. We had simple, strong feelings.” Alicia frowned. “It’s hard to explain. My family embraced their wolves, and when I was with them, I just felt the wolf.”

Grief stabbed Stella between the ribs. Her own pain and guilt for her father’s death was drowned by a loss so profound that she couldn’t breathe. Stella grabbed Alicia’s arm to stay upright, and the feeling retreated like a floodwater, leaving behind the detritus of feelings Stella couldn’t place.

“Sorry,” Alicia offered softly.

Stella nodded, not yet able to speak through the echoes of agony that still rang in her ears.

“You wolves are all about pack, so think about your pack member,” Chad said. “Think about Alicia.”

Stella wasn’t sure that would help given that her feelings for Alicia were complicated. Thinking about her gave her stomach flutters and made her deeply afraid that she was risking making a fool of herself. She knew on a visceral level that Alicia needed pack. Alicia had called a wolf spirit for her, so she clearly considered Stella pack and loved her like pack. However, love had many different meanings. Stella didn’t want to vomit her feelings up only to get the “love you like a sister” speech. Stella had heard that one before, although not since the world had ended. World ending minimized her opportunities for romantic humiliation.

“Focus on me,” Alicia said. Her body twisted and reformed into a wolf with sad eyes. Stella tried to protest that unhelpful suggestion, but she yelped as fire embraced her arms and legs. And then she found herself on four paws, standing next to a very wolfy Alicia.