Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)

-37-

happy birthday to me...

Humming low so no one can hear over the truck's roaring engine. My uncle Red was driving; my father and my uncle Buck filled the rest of the front seat. I was crammed in the back with the spare tire. Not a real seat, just a blanket thrown over the wheel well in the six inches of space.

I didn't complain, because this was special. I could feel it. Usually my birthday consisted of my mom laboring over a cake, and my cousin Kayla coming over. My presents were usually clothes, stuff I needed. My mom tried hard to make it festive, but Dad and Uncle Red were never around. It was like Dad always forgot, or just didn't care. This year, my thirteenth birthday, Dad woke me up real early. "We're going on a trip," he told me.

"A trip? Like a hunting trip?" Lots of kids at school went on hunting trips with their fathers. Maybe now that I was thirteen Dad would take me on one. Maybe Dad was always gone because he was off hunting.

"Yeah, something like that," he said. "Get dressed. We're leaving in ten minutes."

So I pulled on my jeans and a flannel shirt, my boots. I was a bit surprised to find my uncles in the truck already, but it made sense. It was a hunting trip. All the men were going.

We drove until there were no more houses and trees crowded against the windows. Then Uncle Red parked and we started hiking. None of them had guns or anything. Uncle Buck had a flask that he passed to my dad and Uncle Red.

The hiking was hard. "Get a move on," my dad snapped at me when I'd fall behind.

If I tried to get ahead, one of them would grab me by the collar of my shirt and yank me back. "Age before beauty," Uncle Buck said once, and my dad and Uncle Red roared with laughter.

The way the three of them were carrying on, it was almost like I didn't exist. I kept my head down and tried not to feel sorry for myself. It was my birthday and Dad was barely paying attention to me except when he'd put a foot on my ass and kick me forward. "We're not there yet. No rest stops."

I wasn't entirely sure how they knew where we were going. I vacillated between thinking they must have been here a million times and thinking they were drunk and we were never going to find our way home. There was no path that I could see. They ducked through the brush and trees, splashed through tiny streams and climbed up rocks. I checked my watch. It was well past lunchtime. My stomach growled. We'd eaten breakfast on the drive out, but that was five hours ago.

Finally, sometime around three, I asked if we were going to stop to eat.

"It's best if you're hungry," my dad said, not even looking at me.

I wanted to ask if wasn't he hungry, and why didn't they bring any food if they knew we were going to be hiking so long. But I still wanted to trust my dad. He knows what he's doing, I kept telling myself. I just wished I knew what he was doing.

The October sky had begun to darken by the time we stopped. I could barely walk anymore, although I could tell my father and uncles weren't as tired as I was. Once I had caught my breath and sat up from where I had collapsed on the ground, I saw that we were in a clearing. The forest loomed up around us, filtering the orange sun into long shadows.

My father and uncles were just staring at me. I tried not to be self-conscious about this as I turned my head this way and that to try to figure out where we had ended up. There was no cabin, no hunting blind. Nothing. It was just a patch of dirt in the middle of the woods.

"Now we wait," said my father to my uncles. They all hunkered down and started talking quietly, passing the flask back and forth without offering me a sip. I was mighty thirsty.

I didn't have the energy to ask what they were waiting for. I flopped onto my back and stared up at the jewel tones of the sky. After a short time I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke up I was disoriented. The dark was so dark. I looked around wildly for my dad but I couldn't find him. My watch had a glowing face and I looked at the time. Almost midnight. Once the glow disappeared, my eyes started to adjust to the darkness.

In the light of the moon, I could see the eerie green eyes of my father and uncles, watching me.

That was when I started to feel really weird. My stomach cramped so bad I bent over double, and my skin became slick with a sheen of sweat. I thought I was going to throw up. My vision swam and tilted, making the nausea worse.

I can't be sure what I saw then.

I can't be sure, but it still wakes me up in terror and cold sweat some nights.

With my pulse pounding in my head and my vision gone, I only felt this struggle to stay in one piece as my body felt like it was being torn apart. The darkness interceded for a time that was still painful, and when it all cleared I lay for a long time staring up at those same stars, gulping the fresh woodsy air and feeling better than I ever had.

That feeling lasted until I sat up and saw what I'd done.

They were dead. All dead. Torn apart. I gagged and spun away but it was everywhere. Entrails strewn about the clearing, dripping from the bushes. I couldn't even tell what was my father and what were my uncles. Even the shreds of their flannel shirts were black with soaked blood. Pale bits shone through the dark liquid, and it took me until I was crashing through the forest several minutes later to realize those were bones.

I had completely destroyed three grown men.