Little Wolves - By Thomas Maltman Page 0,91
blurring, like they were both already dead, walking together in some other afterlife. “I need shoes,” she said when they reached the door. “They’re in the other room.” Where was he taking her? Next door, to the church? The graveyard?
“Keep going,” he said in the low voice.
Outside the snow felt good under her bare soles, woke her up from her dreamy disconnect, but when she spotted Grizz Fallon’s truck under the yard lamp, all hope fled. Kelan absently opened the door for her and shut it once she climbed in. He went around to the passenger side and swung himself up. The gun lay in his lap as he passed her the keys. “Don’t flood the engine. You do anything stupid, I’ll blow your face off.”
After what she had been through, the threat sounded weak, pathetic. Her cheeks flushed as sudden anger coursed inside her. “Like Seth did your father?” The words left her before she even knew what she was saying.
“Shut up. Start the engine.”
“You asked him to meet you that day in the corn, but he didn’t follow your instructions, did he? He wasn’t supposed to stop at the parsonage. Your dad wasn’t supposed to be there.”
The winter storm sweeping down from the prairies, the wind blasting. Full dark and the rest of the town huddled in their homes with televisions turned up loud. In answer Kelan pressed the barrel of his shotgun up under her jawbone, shutting her mouth. “Please,” he said. “Just start the truck.”
Once they left the driveway, she knew without being told to take the road heading out of town. Clara knew where they were going, though she had never been there. The place where they kept hell. Helle. Hellir. Infernal. A cave. A hidden region. Kelan, dazed, was talking to her the whole time. He was sorry, but Seth didn’t have the stomach for it. Seth was a chickenshit. And Clara, she was a witness. He needed her to see. Once she saw she would understand. Through the thin nightgown Clara felt the itchy wool blanket Grizz had thrown over the seat. The cab smelled of manure, an earthy, pungent scent.
Thick wet snowflakes clung to the wipers, icing over the windows. Soon it would freeze solid, and they would be driving blind. Clara found the defroster, but when she looked up again her headlights illuminated a huge dog. Not a dog, a coyote. Clara tapped the brakes, and the vehicle skated, a thousand pounds of steel drifting unmoored on the ice.
“What the fuck?” Kelan said. “Run it over.” Her hand pressed the horn, but no sound came out. The gray, its muzzle bearded with ice, stayed planted in the road. She jammed on the brakes and the truck wheeled into a full spin.
Kelan reached across and tried to yank the wheel in the same direction as the spin. His shotgun slipped to the cab’s floor. She heard the blast, smelled acrid gunpowder. They were turning, spinning in circles as the truck whipped around on a patch of ice before slipping backward toward one of the steep ditches bordering either side of the road. It caught, held on the lip, and then the snowbank gave way, and they plunged down the ditch. Dimly, Clara heard her own voice, high and shrill, before the roof caved in, and her face slammed the steering wheel.
WHEN CLARA WOKE, HER heartbeat pulsed in her forehead, and she realized she was upside down, clamped in by the steering wheel, her scalp torn and bleeding. Her side cramped, the baby pressing on her internal organs. Alive, the baby was alive inside her. The backwash of the headlights against the snowbank illuminated the cab. Beside her Kelan stirred, his face a red smear, one eye crusted shut. Clara touched her ribs. Bruised or broken, she didn’t know.
She found she could move her legs, wedged under the steering wheel, and she wormed her way out. Clara pushed at her door, but it was jammed shut. The rear window had shattered, snow sweeping in to fill the cab. Clara crawled under the overhanging seats to the opening. Just as she reached it, Kelan grasped her ankle. She lashed out with her other leg, kicked him in the face, and kept crawling. Halfway through the window, she cried out. The snow had hidden serrated glass teeth, and these bit deeply into her shoulder and back. She forced her way out, a sound like a ripped sheet inside her as she dropped into the dark