The hippie Carter Nash's 1963 Volkswagen van cut through the blizzard like an intrepid ship through a stormy sea.
Alan could barely make out the edges of the gravel and snow-packed road, straining to see through the large, wet snowflakes that reflected the headlights.
Nash slowed the van to a halt at a crossroad and looked to him in the passenger seat for directions.
"Keep going straight. Maybe three or four more miles, and we're there."
Nash flipped a toggle switch, and an orange 4WD blinked on the windshield display. The van surged forward.
"I installed this after my last trip north. Most of America you don't need four-wheel drive, but I been learnin you do, if you want to see the most beautiful places," spoke the hippie, not taking his eyes off the road.
Back in Polson, at the scene of the accident, it hadn't taken much for Nash to convince them to pile into the van. He told them to hurry because he didn't know if the thing he'd hit was dead or not. Gwen and Francis huddled together on the sleeper bed in the back while the Greta sat on the floor, gently rocking with her hands over her face.
Nash had asked Alan to navigate the back roads. He thought it best to avoid Highway 93, the main artery of the Mission Valley, because he'd seen what he said were a hundred suspicious vehicles with tinted windows watching the main routes in and out of Polson. At one point, men in trench coats had halted him by standing in the middle of the road. They didn't say anything, just scrutinized him carefully through the window before finally stepping aside. He was certain they were searching for those who had attended the concert.
After Comstock's invasion, Nash, nursing minor injuries, had hightailed it to his van, which he'd kept parked down by the river, as he was familiar with the gluts traffic during concerts and festivals. It was well past midnight when the snowstorm hit. He decided to roll south an hour and a half to Missoula—hippie Mecca of the Rocky Mountains—and find a place to lie low off the grid. However, curiosity got the best of him, and he cruised by the scene of the crime. That was when he spotted Alan's car spinning out of the café parking lot, pursued by a werewolf or what damn sure looked like a werewolf to him.
Curiosity killed the cat, and he'd turned the corner onto Main Street just in time to see the black sedan broadside Alan's self-drive. With the pedal to the metal, he doled out a bit of retributive justice to the damned shapeshifter and rammed the sonuvabitch for all Ol' Betsy was worth.
"The thing with werewolves," Nash said quietly so not to be overheard in the back, "is ya don't know they're fuckin dead less you shoot em with a silver bullet right in the ticker or between their eyeballs."
Alan didn't know what to say. He'd seen what he had seen, yet the scientific part of his brain groped for a rational explanation to the night's chaos. He did not believe in the supernatural, so for now, he was operating on the explanation that whoever had attacked the sheriff's department had done so with vicious dogs trained to kill.
The lights of Joe's Jiffy Stop appeared faint through the blizzard. They paused at the intersection to observe the establishment before crossing Highway 93. The only vehicle in the large parking lot was the broken-down drone semi-truck. The forgotten vehicle was heaped with fluffy pillows of snow. A neon sign blinking HOT FOOD & BEER beckoned them to the warmth inside.
"I think we're okay. Sometimes you got to trust your refuge," said Nash. He accelerated through the drift across the highway and pulled around back, out of sight of anyone passing by.
Little Joe was behind his counter, holding a shotgun across his lap when they entered, the copper doorbells ringing gayly overhead. "Sorry, all closed up," he said and pointed the gun in their general direction. He looked at Gwen, Nash, and the Greta. When he saw Francis, he pumped a round into the chamber.
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"Christ, Joe," said Gwen, "put that damn thing down. Something's happened."
"Goddamn right something's happened. Scanner's been on overload for the last hour. They're looking for you, Deputy Wolf. And you, Dr. Smith. And him." He pointed the gun at the boy.
"Francis," Alan said.
"I know who he is, and I don't need his kind of trouble."
"Can we get to White Owl's cave?" Alan asked.
Little Joe scoffed. "You can bet that canyon is crawling with all manner of vicious things," said the fat store clerk. "There's a chant on tonight. Didn't you tell them, boy?"
Francis looked down.
"Figures. And now I'd like you to leave before they smell your stink in here."
"They can't track me. They can only track the guitar," Francis whispered.
"Or your magic."
"I'm done. I'm not doing any more magic. I hate magic!"
"You can't help yourself, and you know it."
"Take it easy." Alan turned to Nash. "Let's keep going. We can make it to my place—"
"No, you can't," interrupted Little Joe. "They blocked the highway north and south." He let out an exasperated sigh and lowered his gun. "Damnit. Pull your rig into the garage. You can use the lounge. I'm going into lockdown mode due to weather and strange-ass shit! Stay away from the windows." Little Joe looked at Francis and added, "And no fucking singing. I swear to God, if I hear so much as a note out you... I'm doing this for White Owl. Only because I owe that old witch one last favor."
The boy nodded, eyes wide, lips pressed tightly together.
Little Joe acknowledged the Greta by tapping the barrel of the shotgun to his forehead. "Our mother the Earth," he said.
The woman stared blankly forward.
Alan, Francis, Gwen, and the Greta sat at the deli counter while Nash and Little Joe put the van into the garage.
Francis leaned forward and put his head down. His hair matted to the side of his face. Alan wanted to pull it away and tuck it behind his ear like a mother might for her child. He looked at the ceiling for that baptismal rain, but it was just the Jiffy Stop. A clock with digital blue hands and a red second hand displayed the hour. 3:52:52AM.
3:53:03AM. Gwen reached across Francis's back and grabbed his arm. Their eyes met. She looked tired.
The Greta was rocking like a pendulum.
Nash and Little Joe returned and locked the front with a heavy chain and padlock, then pulled down a steel security gate he secured with another, larger padlock. Finally, he pressed a button under the counter that lowered the arm at the entrance to the parking lot.
Joe's Jiffy Stop had seen little use since the shipping industry had gone full AI. Now it was a storage area packed with old gambling and arcade machines, expired candy and beer, and t-shirts that just wouldn't sell anymore—a museum of tacky relics.
The trucker's lounge consisted of a dining area with comfortable booths by large, barred windows that looked down on the old self-driving semi and beyond to the highway obscured by snowfall. Down a short hallway were the restrooms and showers. A sign scrolled HOT SHOWER ½ OFF ON RAINY DAYS! A television room with a sofa and several oversized recliners glowed with the ambient light cast by a bank of arcade machines from another era that would now and then play a quiet electronic tune or a heroic call to the melancholy emptiness of their existence. By and by, he noticed Francis shyly acknowledging the video games, as any boy would, a trove of lost treasures waiting to be rediscovered.
Little Joe threw down a pile of cardboard boxes and duct tape and told Alan and Nash to block out all the windows but to cut out a couple of peepholes. As they were doing this, he shut off the lights to the building, charging stations, and parking lot, dousing their world into the soft blues and reds of the neon LED signs and other electronic gizmos that populated random places throughout the store.
A faint EDM track played over the speaker system. A childhood memory returned to him, of his father spending late hours at Joe's on the poker machines, trying to win a month's worth of rent. While Alan dropped quarters into the latest arrivals in the arcade and tried to flirt with the beautiful Indian girls who drifted in like truants with nothing better to do at their wrecked homes among the lodge poles, or take a beating from their angry cousins who cursed White boys falling in love with their kind. This was where he'd first met Zoey. How old was he back then? No older than Francis is now—and she, a little younger. Eventually, she would let him kiss her and slip his fingers into her shirt. Meanwhile, both their old men gambled nickels and sipped their complimentary beers.
There had always been that music playing in the background. He took a deep breath and pushed the memory down into the darkness where it belonged.