The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 6: Mayfly (Parts 2 & 3 of 11)

The warm sun bathed her skin. It was a feeling Amy had not experienced in as long as she could remember. There was a pleasure to basking in the golden rays, until the rocky ground beneath her became apparent, then the totality of her nakedness hit her and she was wide awake and sitting up.

Last night when the change had taken hold, all of her fears and worries disappeared. Amy had given into abandon and run wild and free. Now she would pay the price for that. What lost corner of the world was she waking up in? She expected to see the empty expanse of the desert, like she had on that morning four years before.

A white Chevrolet zipped down the road less than ten feet from the drainage ditch where she lay. The road she was near was fairly busy and cars began to pass at regular intervals. Across the street, lush green meadows of a golf course stretched out. A foursome stopped their electric cart. They were too far away to notice Amy unless they were looking, but she covered her chest with her arm anyway. There was a familiarity about at all that she couldn't place.

Houses lined the top of the hill behind her. And further down the road, commercial building formed a suburban shopping area that fell short of being a real town.

While in her wolf form she had returned to civilization.

No. Not just civilization. Home. She had come home.

Blue Bell Crescent was just over that ridge and down that road to the left was the middle-school she had attended. She remembered the mall with the book shop and the grocery store. She was home.

She was also naked, penniless, and a good fifty miles from where she was supposed to meet R.J.

I'm screwed, she thought.

How long was it until the police picked her up? Once they had her, they'd match her to the Amber Alert and contact the Agency in no time.

Panic fluttered around her head like a trapped moth. She spoke out loud to calm it. "Pull yourself together. Do you want to prove Ylva right? Don't be a stupid little girl. You're one of the most cunning, fearsome creatures on Earth. Time to start acting like it."

The first thing she needed was to cover up. She needed clothes not just for modesty but to blend in. She had two options: the houses or the stores. A house might be easier to break into but at this early hour it was more likely she'd come across people on the residential streets. So she headed toward the strip malls, where she had some ideas of how to find some clothes, if she was lucky.

It was slow going as she picked her way through the trench beside the road, keeping low and out of site. Occasionally, a car tire would spit out a piece of gravel at her like a bullet. Amy tried not to think of her sore feet and how at this pace, the town might be in full swing by the time she reached it. Instead, she tried to remember last night.

It was a blur of shifting images. She had killed. She knew it with perfect certainty, even if what and how often wasn't coming back to her. Had she massacred people again? Taken out some peaceful neighborhood? She didn't think so. There had been fur. And if her hunger was any judge, she couldn't have found much prey.

When the ditch ended, Amy moved away from the road and traveled down the laneway that few besides delivery vehicles used. There was enough scrub growing by the road to shield her, if she was careful.

At the post office, she found what she was hoping for. Off on the side of the parking lot there was the charity bin. The blue steel container like an oversized mailbox waited in the shade of a tree for people to make donations to the less fortunate, just as it had when her mother would drop off their outgrown school clothes. It was padlocked but overflowing. A black garbage bag had been stuffed into the mouth of the deposit slot and abandoned after it failed to go all the way in.