Even through the silver bars of his cage, bolted down behind the partition that separated the front and back of their panel van, Kane could see that Leann was stressed. Two hours of driving the icy interstate up from Oklahoma City would wear on anyone. He couldn't help her drive, so he was glad he could make her laugh.
"You're telling me Mikael Behrens showed up to one of your parties?" Leann said. "No joke, the Mikael Behrens? Did he sing, too?"
She'd opened the window between the compartments as soon as they got on the highway, away from the judgmental eyes of their teammates. Now it was just the two of them, on a mission Leann had engineered.
"He said he had a cold," Kane replied. "Didn't hurt his appetite any. I made a white gazpacho, sautéed summer squash, a chateaubriand with béarnaise, and a sorbet." What kind of sorbet, though? He frowned, trying to remember. Then he sighed. You couldn't get food like that now. The Calamity had cities turning in on themselves.
But that was what their mission was about. When no one else would lend Kansas City a hand, it was Leann's idea to send just one wolf—Kane—to stem the tide.
"There's your trouble, then," Leann said. "Shoulda stuck with sandwiches." Leann wasn't much of a cook, but she was constantly trying to get Kane to give her recipes for sandwiches. "A sandwich doesn't need a recipe," he'd say. Then he'd give her sandwich advice anyway. In the post-Calamity world, a sandwich was something attainable.
Kane couldn't see Leann's eyes, but he could imagine their small dark points, dancing to the rhythm of the laugh in her voice. He hugged his arms tighter around his midsection. The interstate around them was the kind of vast featureless expanse that only three days of snow could create, a white ribbon speeding toward them, barely visible through unfogged patches of windshield.
Leann started to say something, but he didn't hear what, because that was when they hit the ice patch. Leann slammed on the brakes and the van skidded. They cleared the guard rails in time to slide right into the ditch. There was a thump, and Kane blacked out.
Kane woke with a sharp pain in his right arm. His stirring arm. He tried to move it and almost threw up where he sat. The wrist hung at a sickening angle.
"Leann?" he called. Nothing. He couldn't see her from where he was sprawled.
He must've broken his arm hitting it against the silver-plated bars of the cage. The cage door was busted now, the structure bent so that it wouldn't latch. He could leave at any time.
But what about Leann?
Back in Oklahoma, Appleton almost never let him leave the cage. The head of Crisis Team Five liked to say that "safety first" was his watchword. It was clear he judged Kane to be anything but safe.
At first, Kane agreed with Appleton. After all, Kane had turned himself in. When he woke up in the alley behind the restaurant with blood on his hands, he knew it wasn't safe for him to walk around free. But he'd thought it would be different, working with a crisis team. Homeland Security was always on TV talking about how changelings like Kane were going to turn the tide of the Calamity. They were saviors, an antibody response to the walking dead.
Heroes.
As far as Kane could tell, though, Appleton valued Kane for exactly one trait: when he was a wolf, he'd eat absolutely anything. Which was why he and Leann were on their way to Kansas City. Leann's analysis showed that sending just one wolf to the beleaguered city could double its chances of holding out until real help could arrive.
Leann. Kane pushed himself to his feet with his good arm, keeping the broken one pressed against his body. He couldn't help moving it a little and a twinge of pain raced through him. He looked through the compartment window. Leann was slumped head down against the steering wheel. He called her name again but she didn't answer. That made it urgent.
He grabbed at the handle of the van's back door. It took him a second to figure out how to get the leverage to raise the roll-up door with one hand. Every move jostled his broken arm. When he lifted the door high enough for the springs to take hold, he stumbled out into the biting wind. His boots disappeared into the snow. Everything was white until he painted it orange by throwing up.
When the heaving stopped, he ate some snow, then loped to the front of the van. Another door to fight with, long seconds as he yanked at the handle and finally jerked it open and slid into the passenger seat, shutting the door against the wind.
"Leann, honey, you're gonna be all right." He lifted her head carefully. She seemed to be breathing okay but she didn't respond when he moved her. She was bleeding a little from a cut on her forehead. The metallic tang of the blood in the air reminded Kane how hungry he was.
But he couldn't think of that now. He opened the glove compartment, found a first-aid kit, and started fumbling with the bandages. It was awkward trying to move in the cab without jostling his arm, but he persevered, using his elbow to pinch the kit against his body.
Now he sniffed. There was something in the air he hadn't noticed before. Brown mustard. A bit of basil and olive oil. He looked down. A small cooler had slid out from under the passenger seat and spilled open in the crash. He'd almost stepped on them: a pair of sandwiches, each wrapped separately in wax paper. Real food.
His mouth watered. It had sat there in the cooler for hours and he didn't care. When he was a sous chef in Dallas, he'd thrown out better food. Now he'd have cheerfully killed for it. He reached down for them. With his right arm.
The pain drove the smell out of his mind. He yowled, then he took a deep breath, swapped hands, and grabbed one of the sandwiches. Roast beef, balsamic vinaigrette and parmesan cheese. Had Leann made these? He'd said something to her about basil with roast beef once. He unwrapped one and took a bite. It was heavenly. He gulped the rest of it down.
How long had it been? Just bread and meat, but all of it cooked for once, none of it spoiled. He slipped the other sandwich into his shirt as his mind raced ahead. He was still hungry. But he needed to plan. He was going to need some kind of a sling for his arm. And he needed to get into a coat. The jacket he'd been wearing in the cage wasn't going to cut it with the engine off.
But they were going to need help in any case. Leann's purse was on the floor of the passenger side. He found her phone, and when the screen lit up he sighed with relief. He dialed the Oklahoma office. But when he heard the voice that answered, he knew his luck was running true to form.
"Hey, Leann, how's the trip? That wolf give you any problems?"
Appleton was the last person Kane wanted to talk to, but as he'd come to expect since the Calamity, he didn't have any good options. "This is Kane. We hit ice about two hours out of town. We're in the ditch in the middle of nowhere, and Leann's unconscious. Can you find a militia group or someone to come pick us up?"
Appleton swore. "I knew I shouldn't have sent her out there alone. What happened, Kane? Is Leann all right?" He didn't ask how Kane was. Appleton had thought the one-wolf expedition was a great idea until Leann volunteered to drive.
"She's okay, best I can tell," Kane said. "Just knocked out. She's breathing fine, anyway. More than that, you'd need a doc to check her over. But it's cold here and getting colder."
Appleton swore again. "I'm picking up your GPS now. Database says we don't have anybody who can get to you before we can." He shouted something to someone on the other side of the line.
Kane knew the small towns along the highways were either deserted or hunkered down for the duration. He looked at the time on the phone. Only a couple of hours till moonrise. "It's getting dark," he said. They both knew the walking dead were more likely to stroll in the nighttime.
"I've already got a squad gearing up. But I'm assuming you're out of the cage?" Appleton said. When Kane didn't respond, Appleton swore a third time. Then his voice became oddly measured. "Can you lock yourself back in?"
"No, the cage is all bent. Anyway, I have to keep watch over Leann."
He could picture the frown on Appleton's face as he composed his next words. "Think about it, Kane. Think about what brought you to us in the first place. Your priority has to be getting far away from her before the moon rises. You know that, right?"
Bereft of its usual sneers, Kane almost didn't recognize Appleton's voice. "I can't leave her alone." They didn't know what the crash might have attracted.
"It's not what might be coming that worries me, Kane," Appleton said. "If you head south now, you can let the wolf out as soon as the urge hits you. Follow the highway, and we can pick you up on our way in."
A squad wasn't going to take the time to stop and net a feral Kane when they were on their way to save Leann. The best he could hope for from them was a silver bullet. "I leave her now, and we're both dead," he muttered.
"Kane, so help me, if you hurt her, I'll hunt you down if it takes the rest of my life."
Kane thought he'd never heard Appleton sound so sincere.
If Appleton had his way, Kane would never eat something as simple as a proper sandwich again. When he was a wolf, Kane only cared about finding his next meal. He wasn't picky about where it came from. Friend or foe were all the same when he was under the influence of the moon. And wolf-Kane was happy to scavenge.
The slow shamble of zombies made them easy prey, the rank taste was no deterrent, and his wolf-body healed their infectious bites in seconds. But a zombie whose brain he ate couldn't recover.
The last time Kane had eaten his fill was in Norman. Team Five rode into the city's stadium to rescue evacuees from an army of the dead, and Kane plowed through the hordes with abandon. But that was days ago. He'd had precisely one sandwich to eat in the time since. Appleton liked to keep his weapons sharp.
He stepped out into the cold. The front end of the van was in bad shape. He didn't see any hope of getting the van moving again. He headed for the cargo door.
He grabbed a shirt from his bag and started tying it into a sling, using his teeth to substitute for his damaged arm. The movements brought pain so strong he felt a fresh bout of nausea, and had to pause and gasp for breath. The urge to change into the wolf was strong. The pain would disappear, bone and flesh knitting together before his eyes, if he only allowed himself to change. But he couldn't risk doing that, not with both Leann and the moon so near.
The arm still ached after that but at least every movement wasn't agonizing. He put his coat on over that, then he stuffed his clothes back into the bag and carried them back to the cab, where he started piling them over Leann. Then he got the rifle from the rack in back of the cab and set it next to her.
Kane felt it like an itch between his shoulder blades. The moon was coming up fast. He had a decision to make.
He'd been happy to take this trip. Happy that Leann was willing to solo with him, and happy to get away from Appleton, even if it was only for a week. Plus he knew with only one person guarding him, there was a chance he could make his escape. He'd planned to spend his thirties yelling at sous chefs of his own, not being launched from a cage at shambling horrors, one monster aimed at the others.
But Leann had never treated him as anything other than a person. When she asked how his missions went, Kane put aside how much he hated to revisit the time he spent as a wolf, and told her how it felt to be a watcher in his own body, eating his way through the hordes, with Appleton egging him on.
He'd been working on control. He felt like it had eluded him from that first night when the moon spoke to him, waking a new hunger. Appleton hadn't noticed, but Kane knew he'd been making progress.
Still. He couldn't risk Leann's life. He pulled the remaining sandwich out of his shirt and set it on the upholstery in case Leann woke up hungry. Then he zipped up his jacket and headed out into the snow.
He heard the moans when he was a hundred yards from the van. He glanced at the sky. He shouldn't be anywhere near Leann. But when he looked back, he saw movement at the tree line.
If he loosed the wolf now, his arm would be made whole. He'd grow taller and stronger and win a fur coat. He could lope effortlessly toward the zombies with the speed of a hunter, and savage them with his long canines.
He could feast on their brains.
His stomach churned, but he wasn't letting that roast beef go so easily. Instead, he breathed in the cold air, turned back toward the van, and broke into a jog. The moon was rising, but it was still maybe twenty minutes from its zenith.
He should have taken the rifle. But he'd expected to wolf out as soon as he was far enough from the van. And with a broken arm, he could hardly use it.
Still, he'd watched ordinary folk fight zombies plenty of times. He kept his eyes open as he ran and grabbed the first large branch he found near the road.
When he reached the van there were three of them crawling all over it, looking for a way into the cab. They didn't even look up as he rushed among them swinging. He howled in pain and exultation as he laid about him with the branch.
He gritted his teeth as one of the dead shoved at him, jostling his broken arm. He whacked it with the branch, and it reeled back, but another one came at him.
This wasn't working. He couldn't do enough damage with a tree branch. He ran toward the hood of the car. It was low enough that he could jump onto the hood and then onto the roof.
Now he could play king of the hill with the zombies while he caught his breath.
The zombies, though, could climb up as easily as he could. He found he had to keep defending the front end while watching for the grasping hands of others around the edges.
That's when he heard it. The moaning was getting louder. He looked toward the tree line. Dozens of zombies, pouring out of the trees and running toward the road, fifty yards away from him.
"Change of plan," he muttered.
He leapt off the roof and started running toward the mob near the trees. He glanced back: his pals from the van had joined the chase. Up ahead, the mob was joyfully converging on him. He felt like a slow quarterback who'd unwisely decided to make a run for it.
But as the dead became a wall around him, he let go of everything he was holding back. His muscles expanded and his blood boiled. He let the sling fall as his bones fused together. His jaw stretched and his teeth grew. He threw his head back and howled.
His prey lacked the sense to run. They didn't understand that this was no longer a fight, but a feast. He struck with tooth and claw and his prey fell. The moon rose higher and he grew stronger. He smashed their skulls and tasted their brains. What had disgusted him before seemed like poetic justice, and not merely the best way to ensure they didn't get back up again.
Finally he stood in a circle of the fallen, breathing hard. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. Movement, fifty yards away.
He bounded towards them, two body lengths at a stride. His teeth closed around the neck of one that was trying to scale the van. He leapt to the top of it, a metal hill he could now defend against all comers. It was familiar. It felt right.
When a hand reached for him, he grasped it as if to shake hands, pulled its owner up to the top, then slashed its head off.
At last there was only stillness around him. He gnawed on an arm while he listened. Nothing moved. But there was still something that bothered him. An enticing smell, and right below his feet.
He jumped down and stood next to the door. He found his paws knew what to do to open it.
The smell that had brought him here… he wanted it and didn't want it. It was something he shouldn't have. But the wolf didn't care about that. The wolf smelled fresh meat.
Then he smelled something else he'd missed.
The shouting brought him back to full alert. It was so cold on top of the van, he was on the verge of dozing off. As soon as he heard the shouts, he looked up and saw the two SUVs heading their way. The SUVs stopped a couple of car lengths away and eight men jumped out, fanning out around the van with weapons drawn.
Kane saw that Appleton was with them, looking awkward in his tactical vest, though his sidearm seemed to fit his hand okay.
When there was a break in the shouting, Kane spoke. "I'm putting the gun down." He set it on the roof. Then he stood up, slowly, counting off each movement, until he was standing tall with his hands high in the air. He put his hands behind his head.
The team checked the zombies in pairs, one member covering another as they poked at the bodies with rifles. Then they checked the cab and found Leann.
"She's okay," came the call, and everyone relaxed.
When it seemed safe, Kane jumped down. He let them lead him to the silver cage in the back of one of the SUVs.
They made it to Kansas City in time to take the wind out of the outbreak there. Appleton was hailed as a hero. Kane got all the brains he could eat.
A week later he was back in the cage. Leann came to see him. She seemed shy.
"How'd you do it?" she said. "No one's ever held back from the change during a full moon."
"Oh," he said. "No, I didn't hold back."
"You changed and then you sat on top of that van and left me alone, fighting off zombies? Quite the hero."
"Not exactly," he said.
He'd crouched there in the cab on the moonlight-dappled seats, listening to her breathing for a whole minute. At that range he could hear the blood rushing through her veins. Then he smelled it again. Basil and vinaigrette. The wax paper package was on the seat next to her, with his name written on it in magic marker. "I changed back. I'm sorry, though," he said.
She stared at him. "You changed back, during a full moon." She shook her head. "What on earth are you sorry for?"
"I ate your sandwich," he said. He still had the wax paper in his jacket pockets. Two pieces. One with his name, and one with hers.
"You remembered the basil," he said. "I could hardly eat you after that."
About the Author
Aaron DaMommio has had stories published in Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories Showcase, and Mirror Dance.