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Kennedy…
“They aren’t answering their phones.” Kennedy hit the side of her fist against the dash in a rhythm. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Were they dead? Sleeping in a hotel? Had they made it to Nan’s house? Her Mom and Nana could already be buried in Nan’s backyard for all she knew. David was stoic beside her, focused on the road.
The hospital and the cops had taken forever. She’d had to get real fucking insistent about a lawyer to get the officers to back up and let them leave. On speaker phone, she had called her old coworker Doug who, God bless him, had fallen immediately into an impressive performance pretending to be a lawyer. She was endlessly surprised by all the things he had a flare for.
Five more miles to Nan’s house and every block they turned into seemed to slow time. She asked David, “Do we really have to go 25 through here?”
David pointed to a few kids standing by the side of the road, waiting for their bus. She grimaced. “I suppose we shouldn’t take out a pack of first graders.”
“Probably not. I don’t even think the wolves would be able to rationalize that.”
“Do they kill that many humans?”
“Cull, not kill. There is a difference.”
“Defined by who? Them?”
“You are being harsh. They don’t kill humans because they hate them. The Wolves kill them because they still have hope for their kind. They are trying to save them.”
Kennedy swiveled in her seat. “How does that make sense?”
“Culling strengthens a herd. It removes the ill, the dangerous, the infirm.”
“So they cull cripples?”
He arched a brow and blew out a frustrated puff of air. “No. The contamination in the species isn’t physical, it’s in the soul. They cull evil. Snip it, like pruning a sick plant. The problem with humans is it doesn’t matter how deeply the farmer cuts. There is still rot in every tree in the orchard. Cruelty and evil rise. Things like rape, murder, child abuse.”
“If you believe human beings are so awful, why don’t you kill them all? Or is that a thing bears are afraid to do?”
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He shrugged and took another corner a little wide. “The way Old Joe tells it. Bears decided to focus on their own bloodlines and leave the humans to rot when it became clear that there was no way to cull hard enough to save the plant. They figured human beings would die out on their own without intervention and there would be more room on the planet for what was to come next.”
“Bears?”
“Us and others. It’s amazing humans have survived this long, as much as they like to poison the earth and kill each other. Joe thought their species would exterminate themselves in his lifetime. They might have if world war 2 had gone a little differently.”
“And that is how you feel? You’d just want me and my friends to be gone from the earth.”
“You aren’t human, Kendie.”
She stared forward. “I still feel like I am.”
“I am sad for you, if that is true.” They turned on Nan’s street only to be met with three police cars with their lights flashing, blocking the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Let me out.” She reached for the door handle.
“Not a chance.” He didn’t change his speed. David turned the truck around smoothly, tucking back into a neighbor’s driveway. He was already calling someone on his phone as they headed back the way they came.
She couldn’t hear many of the words that were spoken on the other end of the line. “Who are you talking to?” She pulled his arm, frustrated that he wasn’t talking to her too. “Put them on speaker is my Mom okay?”
“Be patient, Kendie, Terry has Mom and Nana. Give me a moment.” He grunted into the phone, speaking in bear now. Growling low, he picked up his speed, even though there were still kids waiting. A bus pulled to a stop in the distance. He jerked the wheel to the right and took a hard right to avoid having to stop. Two lefts, and David was nodding.
He said, “I see it. Yes. I have the right street. Fourth house.”
As he pulled up into a stranger’s driveway, a woman came bursting through the front door, red smeared on her hands and shirt. David flung his door open, serious and focused. “Get out Kendie. Your Mom shot someone and we need to help if we can.”
“Why did she shoot someone?” He dropped out of the car without answering, so she didn’t know what else to do but follow. “David!”
She smelled the woman on the air, her fear, the musk of a wolf. David moved swiftly toward her. “I spoke to Terry. Is the tracker still alive?”
“Yes. He came crawling into the yard. I didn’t know what to do. I’d just sent my son out the front door with his packed lunch when I smelled his blood. So much blood.” She showed him her red hands. “I don’t think you can help. It’s bad. He is barely breathing. I didn’t know what to do, so I packed the wound.”
David gripped Kennedy’s hand and pulled her toward the door. “Ansel sent us to help. Kendie is a healer. We might be able to save him. ”
Kennedy said, “The hell I am. Terry is the one in the family with medical skill.” She tried to set her heals but David tugged her forward, stronger than she had expected. Still a damn bear, even in his human shape.
When she saw the wounded man, her heart sank. David’s face filled with sorrow and fear. He said, “This man was protecting them, and your mother shot him.”
The man lay sprawled on the kitchen floor in his wolf form, large and sleek. His fur was so dark gray it was almost black. When she approached him, his luminous eyes opened, and he tried to draw back from her, too weak to move the weight of his body. The hole in his chest, after returning to his human shape, didn’t look survivable.
The woman said, “I don’t think there is anything you can do.”
Kennedy sank to her knees, pulled free the packing to release a gout of blood, and shoved her hand into his chest.