Guide to surviving, chapter 15 (Patreon)

Stella skidded to a halt, crashing into Alicia when her paws couldn’t find purchase on the concrete. They went down in a tangle of limbs and tails and whines. Shame burned Stella, and in a blink, Alicia was human again.

“Hey, you’re doing well. You’ve only had four legs for a couple of hours, and you’re already jumping like a champ. You’re just braking like… something less successful.”

The guilt grew worse, and that knocked Stella out of her wolf form. Apparently that particular emotion only fit inside the wolf brain for a limited amount of time. Then Stella had to give up either the wolf or the thought. Stella scrambled to pull free, painfully aware of her nudity now that she had her neurotic human brain back. She was starting to understand the appeal of living in the wolf skin. “I can’t get traction.” She grabbed one of the threadbare sheets Chad had left for them and wrapped it around herself. Unrequited lust—another feeling that did fit inside a wolfy brain. And given how easy it was for wolfy Stella to indulge in the urge to tackle wolfy Alicia, that feeling was getting worse.

“You can’t just stop. You have to slow down but keep your paws moving so you don’t skid.”

“Easier said that done,” Stella said as she sat on the ground to study the bottoms of her feet. They were already healed, although she felt the phantom pains from the road rash she’d given herself.

“Yeah, it is,” Alicia agreed as she dropped onto the floor next to Stella.

“Do you think you could…” Stella waved a hand toward the pile of fabric.

“Can what?” Alicia sounded genuinely confused.

“Can cover up.” Stella tried hard to avoid squeaking, but her voice went up.

“Oh.” Alicia grabbed some fabric and shoved it under her armpits so the drape covered her front. At least now Stella could look at her.

“Are we doing to talk about this?”

“You mean your smell? It’s fine. Normal. Considering I’m out of practice with humans, I’m complimented that you think of me like that, and…” Alicia turned to look at Stella, and her words petered off when she caught the expression on Stella face. Either that or she felt the abject humiliation radiating off Stella. This was a nightmare. A complete nightmare.

“It’s normal,” Alicia added softly.

Stella collapsed backward and thunked her head against the concrete. “Ow.”

“Don’t slam your head into the concrete, and it won’t hurt.”

“Don’t bring up my stupid hormones and I won’t sham my head into the concrete.”

“I was trying to be reassuring,” Alicia snapped.

“Well, you suck at it.”

For a long time, silence reigned. Alicia said softly, “I know. I always have.”

Great. She was trapped in the apocalypse with a socially awkward werewolf.  “When did people start being so stupid?” Stella asked as she stared at the unlit florescent lights above.

Alicia moved away, but she still had one foot close enough to Stella’s leg that Stella felt the heat against her skin. “Are you talking about you or me?”

“Neither. Well, mostly neither.” Alicia had decided to take in Stella and continued to firmly reject all the Scrappy family members. So maybe she was talking about Alicia a little. “I don’t think Sally was the kind of woman who approved of rape by coercion before zombies. Do you think there are stupid spores floating around in the air?”

“From her point of view, what she did was logical. She’s right that having a magic user in the group would change the odds, and when she dies, the family is going to be in trouble. I don’t know that they’ll be able to hang onto this place.”

“She could have formed a much bigger group. Some town members still live in their houses and raid their neighbors for food. I know the Hernandezes always had a huge garden. They would have helped raise food. And I don’t know… maybe they could have built something strong enough to survive my psychopathic brother.”

“Did your father survive your psychopathic brother?” Alicia asked.

Stella rolled her head to one side and glared.

“I’m not saying my family was any better,” she defended herself. “When all this started, they had the wolf ceremony for me. I don't remember it, because it traumatizes the brain to have a magical wolf move in. But they thought this was just one more pandemic. All they cared about was making sure I couldn’t catch a virus. They never considered what it would mean for a wolf spirit to lose an entire pack within a year of joining.” Alicia rubbed a hand over her face, and echoes of the earlier pain reverberated through Stella’s ribs.

Stella wanted to push her everyone-is-stupid argument, but it felt like kicking a wolf when she was down.“We all thought that when the news first came out.”

“And then when it became clear this was a magical pandemic, they develop this illogical belief that they could save everyone. And instead, they just invited murderers into our home.” Alicia closed her eyes.

“That's what I mean. My father thought that anyone who had kids my age or younger must be good. When did adults become so stupid?”

Alicia grimaced and shrugged. “I don't think they were stupid.”

“I do.”

“They were used to the world being a certain way. They had all these rules in their head about how things worked, and those rules didn't account for zombies.”

“So by trying to apply old rules to a new situation, you are agreeing that they were stupid.” There was cobweb attaching the third and fourth lights. That had been an adventurous spider to span that distance. Stella wished her father were in the room right now so that she could scream at him, so that she could tell him how much she resented him for leaving her alone with all of this.

“What conversation are we having? I’m out of practice with English, so you’re going to have to be explicit.”

“Explicit.” Stella chuckled. After a few seconds, the evolved into a full belly laugh that left her gasping.

“Oh my god, are you six?” Alicia demanded, but she radiated joy as she used her toes to shove Stella’s leg.

Stella flipped her off, but immediately regretted it when Alicia captured her finger and bit it with dull, human teeth.

“Now who’s six?” Stella reclaimed her offended digit, but she couldn’t control the laughter that still escaped.

“Why won’t you consider any of the family members when you took me into your pack?” Stella asked. The words sucked all laughter from the room.

“I explained. I can’t build a new pack until I know we’re secure.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen ever,” Stella said.

Alicia stood and headed for the door to the blacksmith shop.

“Why did you pick me if you’re so determined to never have a pack again?” Stella demanded as she sat up.

Alicia whirled around. “I didn’t say I would never have another pack. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“A post-apocalyptic world isn’t safe. It won’t ever be, so if you wait until we’re secure, then logically, that would be never. And if that’s how you feel, why did you pick me?”

Alicia threw up her hands. “You were dying. Would you rather I let you die?”

Stella got up, her muscles still tingling from multiple transformations, and for a second, she struggled to find her balance with two spindly legs. Humans were such a graceless species. “You had already chosen me before that happened. Chad went running to get you, but you could have stayed at the treehouse. You could have told him that you wouldn’t risk losing another pack. Hell, with my brother on the move, you could have retreated before the big fight. So don’t tell me you didn’t make a choice.”

“I didn’t mean to choose you.”

“Well that makes perfect not-sense, as in not even a little sense.” Stella crossed her arms over her chest and then had to scramble to keep her sheet from slipping to the ground.

Alicia huffed. “Everyone else smells dangerous. Desperate. Panicked. You were an island of normal in all that. You lived your life and read your books and gardened and made me feel like maybe there was something other than the apocalypse.” Alicia sounded miserable. “It was a fantasy, and I let my wolf get attached before my human brain realized. And then you saved me. You treated me like pack. I didn’t choose you. You chose me.”

Normal. In a million years, Stella had not thought someone would call her normal. Neurotic. Depressed. Angry. In need of therapy—but weren’t they all these days. So many words applied to her, but not normal. Even Sally had known that. Hell, Sally hadn’t thought she was good enough to have one of Geoff’s potentially magic offspring, and how creepy was that?

“I’m pretty sure I was depressed. Having no desire to keep on living does tend to minimize the desperation,” Stella pointed out. “And I am trying to find a reason to go on living. In the short term, learning to be a wolf works. Running on four feet is much easier than on two. In the long term, I can’t carry any more guilt, Alicia. You can’t lose pack. I can’t feel like one more death is on my shoulders.”

Alicia cocked her head to one side and studied Stella.

“My father was an idiot for trusting those boys, but I had my suspicions and didn’t say anything. I was the one who was so slow to pack up my shit that my mother got bit. I should have warned some of these survivors about the boys in the school, and I never have. Everyone one of those is a burden I carry. If you make me walk away from the Scrappy family and I find out that all these kids ended up dead or enslaved…” Stella swallowed as her heart pounded painfully hard. She could feel it trying to escape her ribs.

“None of that was your fault,” Alicia said. She tried to rest a hand on Stella’s arm, but Stella took a step back.

“All my fault, no. But I’ve done a million little things. When I was in school, I had a teacher. When the class would close up early, she would make us take out a calculator and figure out how much of her time we would steal if wasted that much time every day. Closing our books four minutes early times five days is twenty minutes a week, and four weeks in a month is eighty minutes a mont, and that turned into some number I can’t do in my head for a school year of nine months. I feel like I’ve wasted enough minutes to fill a lifetime. I can’t…” Stella swallowed. “I can’t walk away. Maybe we can slow my brother down or bluff him or find a place for the family to go. Maybe we can get the zombies to attack him or get my brother and the assholes at the school to go to war, preferably without us being in the middle. Hell, I don’t know, maybe we make a sacrifice to the wolf gods. Are there wolf gods?” Stella looked at Alicia.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. But my family was Presbyterian.”

Even though Alicia delivered the line with a perfectly straight face, Presbyterian was the funniest thing Stella had ever heard. She started laughing, and laughed so hard that she stumbled to one side and had to sit her butt on the concrete. Even then she couldn’t stop. She laughed until tears rolled down her face and Alicia crouched, her hands braced on Stella’s knees. Even the warmth of Alicia’s palms against her skin and the bare flesh where Alicia’s sheet had slipped couldn’t stop the raging hysteria. Eventually Stella swallowed the worst of her emotions and sat gasping for air.

“Okay, we’ll try something,” Alicia said. “I don’t know what we can do, but we can try to save the witch and her crazy family.”

“People in glass houses,” Stella said as she considered her own mental state. Alicia just sighed.