Polaris Skies

Chapter 15

The sun glared down, unfriendly and burning. An unusual day. Chill air, however, crept across the land like an infestation of spiders. Rust coloured leaves whisked across the ground, frost nodules glimmering on the rims. The skeletal trees snipped and snapped against each other. The thick of the forest waned into pasture land as they pressed their advance through the wilds. The pastures were as dry and forlorn as the woods were. The first house they stumbled upon sat as shattered ruins. A plethora of green weeds twined through its splintered rafters.

The first real growth they had seen for miles. White flowers dotted across the plants. "Disturbing, but pretty," Zola crooned as she went to touch one of the flowers.

Benj pulled her away quickly. "Spiderwort. Guys, we need to get out of this area fast!"

Yeller stared at him in confusion. Nat slumped against the blond, weary and dazed. Benj pushed his hair back in frustration. "This isn't the time to be standing around here talking science."

"What is it?" Zola asked him, concerned at his outburst.

"Indicator of radiation." He pulled his shift, letting his wolf run.

A shocked silence fell on the group as they comprehended his meaning. "Shit!" Deck allowed the wolf forward to shift. Hana took to the sky, sending feathers across the grey heavens. The group raced down the dirt road until their lungs gave out.

A bombed-out town greeted them with a rakish grin at the end of the field of spiderwort. Skeleton towers reached bony fingers into the skyline as blackened, ashen houses were the marker gravestones of many families.

The hackles rose on the wolves' backs. Blood dripped down the white wolf's limping legs, but the creature refused to let Nat have his body back until they reached the city. They were walking down a road by the name of Houston when a rustling bang issued out from an alley behind a set of houses.

A group of youths in grungy jeans and ripped t-shirts strutted out from behind garbage cans and rubble. Hair, greased and matted, streamed down their backs like so many slithering snakes. Gleaming sneers plastered their ashen faces. Their eyes were dilated and bloodshot, their stare zombie-like.

"Hey, boys, what we got here?" One of the lankier children chuckled to his buddies as he swung a long, thin plank and hit the side of a trash can with a loud bang. They hissed and chuckled to themselves. "We got mutts. Are we up for some food?" The boy that spoke first egged on his comrades. He had a shock of greasy black hair that hung in his morbid grey eyes. He pushed at it once and glanced back at his friends. Sun Hee's wolf quivered behind Deck's. Zola whined.

"Why aren't these walking meatcicles running?" A blond teen sneered, disappointed with the game. Benj's tail tucked under his legs and his lips raised to show bared teeth.

Deck glanced at Nat, his mind whirling, trying to remember how he had linked with him the first time. Nat's wolf limped, the holes in his shoulders oozing. Deck's mind slipped from its chaotic state and inched on a tracer path past his wolf. Nat, should we show ourselves, fight, go?

Nat glanced sharply back at the wolf. Let's scram. There's no use in us showing ourselves. These guys are on something. They arent seeing the world around them. You can see it in their skin tone, the way they're standing. Nat shook himself, taunting the teens.

"Let's eat!" The ringleader waved the group forward. Skeletal children crawled from every nook and cranny of the buildings like so many cockroaches.

Hana watched from the rooftops, having flown above the group since sighting the first bombed outhouse. She ran along the rusty metal beams of a ransacked, crumbling office building before taking to the air once more.