WOLVES
Sam Evans packed up his backpack, stressed out about the fact that his family was now homeless and they were all having problems getting things together. He'd raised them as much money as he possibly could and left them in the middle of the night, with a note of his love and how he did not want to be more of a burden. He was practically a grown man now. There was no need to bring his mother and father stress and to take away from what they gained for his two younger siblings. The blonde put on his red hoodie, looked at them one last time and set out for his grandmother's house.
If Sam remembered correctly, his parents had not spoken to his grandmother in years, since she remained in the woods when the famine hit. They still loved her and hoped that she would be alright on her own, but that old firecracker refused to go a step outside of the house that her husband built her. "It'll take more than a few wolves to get this old coot out of her rightful home!" She said when Dwight and Mary tried to force her to leave with them. The woods were no longer safe!
It was one of the first places that people retreated to when the famine hit. They all tried to find homes in the woods - whether in caves, in tents, posted up in treetops, or cabins... Those who owned cabins in the woods had the choice to abandon them, share them with strangers, or constantly defend them against looters. With two small children and a young teenager, the Evans did not want to try to fight. "We'll find a house in the city and stock it up with everything that we can," Dwight urged.
"My basement is stocked. I'm not moving a tick," the old lady said. That was one of the last memories Sam had of her. His parents spoke of her like she was dead already, but he wanted to have faith that she had somehow made it. He wanted to hope that he could find her and hopefully help her to defend what he hoped was still hers...
The woman cried and pounded on the door, "Please, Miss! I saw you earlier! I know that you're in there!" She cried out. "There are wolves on my trail and I have my young daughter with me!" She cried.
How unfortunate that was! Everyone knew not to open the door when wolves were afoot. Still, the old lady cracked the door and a woman and her teenage girl rushed inside. "She ain't that young," the old lady commented.
"No, she ain't," the black woman said as she shut and locked the door.
"Y'all wolves?" The woman asked.
"I am," the woman said, "But, I'm not here to eat you, Granny. I promise... I just didn't want them getting to my daughter. She's been through enough these past few years. I've managed for her not to ever have to be like me." She cupped her daughter's face and looked at Granny, "Thank you for letting us in."
"Well, we might as well go into the basement, if the wolves are about," Granny said and lead them to the entrance, from behind them.
The next morning, Mercedes woke up and smelled something marvelous cooking. She rushed out of the basement, not seeing her mother nor the old lady and found her mom in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. "Mama, is that meat I smell?"
"Yeah, Babe. I went and found a few rabbits for you, today," she answered.
Mercedes smiled brightly. It had been years since she had homecooking. She'd mostly eaten wild animals charred by campfire, void of seasonings with a bit of wild vegetation. Now, this place smelled like real food. "Where is the Granny?" She asked.
"Oh, her?" Her mother asked, and chuckled, "She's in bed," she said with the wave of her hand. There was something about how her mom had said that which alarmed her. She went through the large cabin, searching for the woman's bedroom. She found a bed and saw the woman in it. She was almost satisfied... until she saw the blood. She gasped and rushed to the woman to see that she had a stump where her leg had been the previous night and it was crudely tied and tended to.. like out in the wilderness injuries. "What happened?" She asked.
The old lady was obviously in exquisite pain as she groaned, "The wolf.. the... wolf..."
"Mama?" Mercedes asked and cried.
"She's going to eat me," the old woman said.
Her mother was a wolf. She had been for quite some time. No - not those things that you'd see on television. It wasn't like someone bit you and turned you into this. But, after not being able to eat for a time, a long time... there simply were fewer options. Even vegetation, even wild animals were scarce. Some people kept chickens, some kept rabbits, and they had to defend their lands with ferocity, raising their food in secret, as to not become victims of robbery. But, the wolves would feed on mankind. Cannibals who hunted in packs - usually keeping their food supply alive as they stripped different portions. Traveling in packs - they didn't have the luxury of a freezer. Wolves had to keep their food alive as long as possible. If Mrs. Jones thought that Mercedes would sit idle while she did that to this poor woman, she was mistaken!
Mercedes stormed back into the kitchen, "What is in that breakfast?" She asked.
"Rabbits, for you, young lady!" The woman told her.
"But, the old woman was so nice! Mama, she didn't have to help us, but she did!"
"And she will continue to help. It is much safer for me to have a viable food source here than to have to hunt. You can be sustained by the wild animals and I will be sustained by her. Everything is running out. These woods are still a bit lush, because they haven't been ransacked by traveling packs, yet. Eventually, you're going to have to eat human flesh someday, but I want to hold off on it for as long as we can. These woods still have some animal life in them and only a pack or two of wolves. We can settle here for a long time. Longer than ever before, Mercedes. I'm thinking that since we've finally found a cabin and you're so voluptuous, we can lure wolves here and we can eat them, when the animal life dries up, instead of moving along to other woods."
"Don't hurt the old lady again and we can stay here for however long you like. If something happens to her, I promise, I'll leave and go out on my own in the woods."
"Oh, Care Bear - you aren't capable of doing that. You would die in an instant."
"I'll do it if you hurt that woman who was so kind to try to give us shelter!"
Her mother rolled her eyes and said, "Fine. Go wash up and get prepared I have to test out our new method - see if we're capable of luring wolves."
"You have got to stop doing that," Puck said to Finn, as he looked through their current catch's effects.
"Why?" Finn wondered.
"Because, you make yourself miserable, when you do. You do it every time and it rubs off on everyone else, when we should just be glad that we got to eat again. You make conversations with the travel snacks and look at IDs and all that sh*t... it bums me out."
Finn commented, "I don't ever want to be comfortable with eating other people to survive. I want to remember that its horrible, that our lives are terrible, and I want to remember that even though this... Rachel... is our food today, she used to be someone's baby, someone's daughter, someone's friend, maybe even had a lover. There used to be normal people and normal lives and there still are some out there. And people like us eat them." He shuddered and shut the wallet.
"Thank you for spoiling my leg of Rachel," Puck said and dropped a chunk of meat onto Finn's lap.
Finn chuckled and picked it up. "Its barely even cooked, Puck. You're gonna die if you keep doing this. Sickness from food poisoning is a slow, painful death."
"Naw, Mike'll put an axe to me before it got that far. Anyway, we were low on fire so everyone's meat from last night is a little raw."
"We're low on fire again?" Finn asked and looked over at Tina.
She sighed and got up, leaving her chunk of meat with Quinn, "Keep an eye on this, will ya? Gotta talk to Pack Master..."
Mike's arms were folded as he watched the woods from the hillside. "We're getting low on fire," Tina told him. "Puck and Finn are gonna go into the city and try to gather more stuff for it."
"Tell them to get more gas too," he said. "The jeep's a little low. It won't make another trip if they don't." She nodded and kissed him on the lips before setting off back to their campsite. Mike's eyes quickly alerted to something in the distance. Actually, there were two things... far apart, but the first one caught him particularly off guard, because she looked familiar - a girl, on the porch of a cabin that they had been inside of and through many times before, and left as a means to bait unsuspecting sheep who wandered inside, hoping for shelter - she obviously had not missed many meals, and from the chimney in that place, Mike saw smoke coming out... who would be so stupid, unless it was purposeful to draw someone in?
The other thing was several miles away. A loner of the sheep class, as far as Mike could tell. He had regular clothing. Nothing torn or custom or even that dirty, from what Mike could see. And one thing that he did that no wolf would ever do, besides traveling alone, was to be so damned conspicuous. He was wearing red and Mike thought that he looked pretty well fed, himself. Mike let out a loud howl and his friends began to gather around him. They all stood there with him, looking down upon young Sam Evans.
Puck slapped Finn on the back and said, "We might get to keep legless Rachel around for a bit longer."
