Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership over Wolf's Rain, any cannon characters who may make an appearance or the Wolf's Rain universe. Any characters who are created in this story are strictly figments created for this story.
Notes: This story takes place after the conclusion of the anime Wolf's Rain and in the modern suburban time period.
I took out the songs for this chapter to get it up faster, however, if you would like me to continue putting songs in then I will.
Chapter Three
Runaway Train
Her scream.
Like the sound of brakes clenching, tires scraping off rubber on asphalt. Like the haunting cackle of gunfire spat from the hungry muzzle of metal jaws. Like the crushing push of blood in your head, adrenaline threatening to burst you like the surfacing fizz in a bottle of booze.
But nothing lingers like the silence that follows.
On instinct he reached for her. She turned to run, at least some flicker of sense burning in her maddened mind, but even in his abused state he was faster than her.
He pulled her close and slapped his hand over her mouth. Her groceries tumbled to the ground, abandoned in the primordial flight response. She squirmed, doing her best to bellow through the palm of his hand, but all she managed to produce were the pathetic murmurs of a stifled animal.
"Shut up!" he growled, but it only served to break her down into wailing. She squinted her eyes, but she couldn't stop the tears from leaking out of the corners. They slid down her round cheeks before seeping underneath the palm of his hand, making his grip slick.
The little town that Tate had grown into may not have seen a generation of youth willing to sink cold steel in another man's back, but they were still a town of fighters—a town who faced up to the threat of bears and the attacks of wild dog packs without quailing.
Tate's scream sent doors flying open, rifles and shotguns hitched across their chests as they followed the path to the source of the outcry. Yet to see the stranger standing there holding the youngest member of their town as a hostage put a stutter in their steps. Cailean hobbled off of the slanted porch with her, holding her tight. The townsfolk gathered in a semi-circle—angry faces, angry fists. They watched with sharp, shrewd eyes, waiting for him to make a mistake as they crept in on him.
The crowd parted slightly, making room for a man to push himself forward in an old wheelchair whose tires squeaked everything third rotation. Cailean could tell that one leg was shriveled, perhaps from lack of use, the knobby knee sticking up through the pant leg. The other stopped short just after the knee, and the nub flexed with the contortions of the man's body as his arms worked the shaky tires.
"Let her go." His voice was gravelly, somehow matching the rough graying stubble on his chin, bushy brows and sagging brown eyes. Cailean's eyes flickered through the faces surrounding him, but there was none amongst them that seemed willing to grant leeway—no one who would hesitate to fire the second he gave them the chance. And if he let her go? Then they would hold all of the cards—guns and hostage alike.
"Look, I won't hurt you, I just want to get out of here. Call them off," Cailean whispered to her. She trembled in his arms, shaking like the flickering leaves on the old forest trees in an August wind. "Do you understand?" Tate didn't respond, but her red-rimmed eyes flashed towards him, watching him from beneath her soggy lashes, the whites showing like a cornered animal.
"Listen, Tate, it's going to be alright," said the man in the wheel chair. "You're going to be just fine." Cailean had no plans on taking her into the forest with him—he wanted nothing more than to escape. But how could this grizzled old, chair trapped man know anything about that?
"Just stay where you are and I promise I won't hurt her," Cailean growled from over her shoulder. He began to back away, though his eyes never strayed from the semi-circle of townsmen whose knuckles whitened on the stocks of their guns. He felt the ground carefully as he crept away, certain not to stumble on the dirt and gravel. Still they waited, bodies knotted, the corners of their eyes tight.
The landscape changed beneath his feet—from the crunching dirt to the springy, spongy feeling of wet grass. The forest yawned behind them, like a leafy green lion. It opened its mouth to allow them to pass through the jagged, bark covered teeth and swallowed them whole.
The villagers watched, unaccustomed to such a loss in their homely little town. They had been wronged, like the ace card shark cheated out of his money at his own table. They watched him go, anger in their eyes, sadness in the creases of their work worn wrinkles.
But they didn't follow
"Neil, what does this one mean?" Cailean held up his hand to show him the tattered little paper rectangles. Time had worn the white edges brown and the red and black a faded pink and gray, but Neil carried them anyways, calling them his 'lucky deck'.
"It means you should go all in," he grumbled from around his cigarette, plucking a card from his hand and setting it face down on the table for handing in on his turn. He reached up to scratch his chin thoughtfully, perhaps considering the possibilities that he held.
"Liar," Cailean scoffed.
"Then stop asking me," Neil answered with a grin. He plucked the cigarette from his lips, flicked the ashes nonchalantly onto the floor and downed a healthy gulp of golden whiskey from the bottle clutched unsteadily in his hands. How he managed to hold on to everything at once Cailean wasn't sure.
"You're the one who made me play."
"I wish you'd make your turn already," Neil griped.
"Well excuse me for considering my options." Neil glanced up from his cards, and the lines in his forehead deepened. The dim light of the flickering overhead bulb cast his blue eyes into shadow—the haunted expression looked strange for a normally cheery face. "What?" Cailean ventured.
"What are you, a scientist? Considering your options? We ain't got no options."
"I'm not, but I kind of wish I was," Cailean murmured. The soft beat of silence slipped by, noticed too much by those in the room.
"Why you gotta be so different from us, huh?" Neil asked. He had hushed his voice to keep the guys in the next room from overhearing—not that they could hear much over their own raucous cries that rose in time to the wins and loses of their teams.
"Because he's not one of us, Neil. You know that, man," Caleb snapped. He slapped the five cards in his hand down onto the table, tired of staring at his hand and waiting for his turn. He couldn't have seen the way that Neil carefully refused to look at him—how his eyes met Cailean's and lingered; how his jaw tightened until the muscles in his neck looked like iron cords haphazardly wrapped in prickling flesh.
There are some moments when instinct grips the wisest—the instance that a dog makes eye contact, it's body squares off and it's mouth opens slightly; that split second when a car comes screaming around the corner in a flash of gaudy paint, brights outshining the street lights that stand like watching guardians.
It had been dangerous territory from the second that Jay had taken Cailean under his wing.
"Neil-" Cailean started.
"What does it mean to be one of us?" Neil asked. Cailean leaned in, straining to hear what he had said, but Caleb seemed to hear him just fine. Caleb narrowed his eyes, sensing the challenge, tasting the palpability of it. They didn't need Cailean to look for something to fight over, but he knew that he was fuel to the fire.
"It means to be a brother. It means honor," Caleb snarled, rising out of his chair. Neil didn't rise to meet him. His eyes still had not left Cailean's, and somehow that was more frightening than if he had broken into one of their normal fist fights.
"Honor, Caleb?" Neil snorted, shaking his head. Finally, he turned on Caleb and stood. The bottle of whiskey still dangled loosely in his fingers—comfortable, knowing. If it came to it Neil could have used anything as a weapon and the whiskey bottle seemed like too unfair of an advantage. "Who was it that pulled you out of the crash? Who was it that killed the guys that had you and brought you home? Who was it that took a bullet to save your miserable fucking life?" His voice rose with each passing question until it rebounded off of the little square plaster walls.
Cailean turned away, trying not to look at the mounting argument, but he could see that the guys had muted the TV and turned towards the source of the racket. They didn't look amused—it was too common an occurrence to think it humorous. They were capable, quiet, waiting to make sure they weren't needed to intervene if one of them pulled heat.
Past them the team made a shot. The basketball rebounded off of the hoop and was caught by the opposite team member, who dribbled it back to the other side of the court.
Glass shattered, whiskey dribbled on the floor, the table legs screeched on the linoleum as it flipped. Poker chips clattered on the ground whimsically; cards fluttered to the floor, like fifty-two wingless little birds, where they died in silence.
He was bleeding and he knew it.
The stitches must have ripped, but somewhere along the way he had only just begun to feel it. They had stumbled across a road an hour ago and he had passed it by—it would do him no good if a crowd of angry townsfolk followed it and found that he had been dumb enough to walk on it the whole way.
There was no denying the usefulness of it now, though.
Eventually her hopeless sniveling had slid away into silence. His grip on her loosened the farther they went, and the less he cared about whether or not she stayed with him. They would be prepared to find him the next time, and a hostage would not do him as much good when the time came. Eventually, he barely held her wrist as they walked, weaving and winding in between the trees in search of a way out. He paused for a moment, and cast about the stark wilderness for some sign of differentiation.
"You're lost, aren't you?" It was the first time she had spoke and it sent his skin crawling, reminding him that he had endangered the life of another human being. He glared back at her, pursing his lips together in a tidy frown.
"I'm not… lost. I'm just…"
"What? Just what?" Tate quirked an eyebrow at him and barely managed to hide a cheeky grin.
"Admiring the view," he snapped. "I'm a tourist don't you know." Any direction seemed as good of a choice as the next, so he settled on a quick came of 'eeny-meeny' and headed towards a cluster stand of oaks that looked like it might be somewhat different from the next. He couldn't smell the city on the wind and he missed the familiar oil-stain scent of the lair.
"I don't see your camera and map," she retorted.
"A map? There's a map?" Cailean turned towards her, hopeful, at least, that there might be a way out of the nightmare.
"No," she admitted hesitantly, clutching her hands together and pressing her bow-shaped lips into a small pout. "But I know the way back."
"Back? Back? Are you crazy? I'm not going back there," Cailean barked, spinning away from her. A soft tug on his sleeve stopped him in his tracks, and he met her doleful eyes curiously.
"You're bleeding," she mumbled. He glanced down to the stain growing on his shirt and snatched his sleeve back from her.
"So?"
"Look, I know you don't like me, but…" Tate glanced down and wiggled her toes in her tennis shoes thoughtfully.
"But, what?" Cailean asked in spite of himself. He leaned forward, waiting for her response.
"But if you want to get out of here you're going to have to trust me," Tate said.
"What's wrong, Cailean?" Jay asked, leaning back in the patchy old office chair to watch the boy amble in, clutching a bag of frozen peas to his face.
"Caleb hit me," he mumbled, settling down on the floor next to Jay's seat as he often did when Caleb attacked him. The occasions were rare, but it wasn't getting hit that bothered him. Fighting back wasn't a problem, but Caleb said things.
"Let me see," Jay demanded. He reached out and pried the frozen bag away, lifting his brow and staring down at the battle wound. "Yah, he got you good, didn't he? Did you get him back?" he asked, turning back to the task he had been attending before he was interrupted.
"Yah."
"How?" Jay asked. He didn't look up from his work as he slid the oil cloth down his hand gun.
"I knocked his stupid baby teeth out. Now he has a stupid gap."
"Oh ho!" Jay broke into the rough growl of laughter that reminded Cailean of what it might be like to hear a Wolverine on Nitrous Oxide. It was enough for him to turn the office chair around and clap a heavy hand on Cailean's scrawny shoulder.
He could feel Jay's calluses through the cloth of his shirt, rough like everything else about the man. "Thattaboy!" he said through a yellowing smile. "Keep up the good work. Someday you'll be strong enough to be a symbol for us all." He turned back to his work, then, but his praise still rang in Cailean's ears.
He stood, leaving the bag of frozen peas behind, but hesitated to see the face peering in on them through the open doorway, his hazel eyes nearly hidden beneath his furrowed brow. Caleb's mouth was puckered as though he had bitten into a rotten fruit.
Note: Thank you for reading the latest chapter of "Heaven Can Wait". I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear feedback from you!