Red Moon by Benjamin Percy Read Free Book Online Page A

want to throw off the covers and stumble down the hall and crunch through a bowl of cereal and scrub his armpits under the hot spray of the shower and pull on the new jeans and polo his mom bought him at the mall especially for this day, his first day at Old Mountain High.
    She is already gone, his mother, off to show a house. But on the counter, beneath his keys, she has left him a note. Good luck, it reads. I love you! Her handwriting reminds him of barbed wire. He crumples up the paper and tosses it in the garbage can on his way out the door.
    His black Wrangler sits in the driveway. It is his first car, a gift bought thirdhand by his mother to help with the transition. “I know this isn’t easy,” she said when she dropped the keys in his palm. “And I want you to be happy. I hope this helps a little.” She tries. She really does. Saying “I love you,” every chance she gets. Asking if he wants to talk, if not to her, then somebody else?—she knows a therapist who could help. “No, thanks,” he tells her. “I’m not into that,” and when she asks what he means by that , he says, “Talking.”
    The passenger-side headlight is cracked and gives off a weak, sputtery glow. Duct tape holds together sections of the soft top, which at high speeds flaps and whistles like a panicked gathering of birds. Wherever he parks he leaves behind puddles of oil and antifreeze dusted over with rust. Regardless of its disrepair, he kind of loves the Jeep.
    Bits of quartz catch the sun and flash from the gravel driveway when he drives down it and turns onto the blacktop that will carry him the five miles to school. Here, along the shoulder, is where the news vans parked a month ago, the reporters huddled next to the mailbox, the cameras trained at the house like howitzers. They were waiting for him to come out, and when he didn’t, they eventually left. He did only one interview—and that was enough. He didn’t have anything to say. Everyone had died except for him. Not because he did anything special. But because he hid beneath a body and played dead. That wasn’t something to retell, relive—that was something to forget.
     
    The worst moment, the moment when he felt a gust of debilitating fear blow through him, was after they landed, after the plane skidded and braked along the runway and the river of blood came rushing down the aisle. They taxied a short distance and Patrick was certain that in these final moments the lycan would discover him, certain the police or military would grenade the plane, certain he wouldn’t make it—he couldn’t possibly make it. There had been too much death, too much to escape. In a way, he already felt like a corpse himself, unmoving, barely breathing, soaked in gore.
    He couldn’t see them, but he could sense them, the huddle of squad cars, fire trucks, ambulances, all with their lights flashing. Then, over the loudspeakers, came the pilot’s voice: “You’re going down, you fucking dog.” In response the lycan made a sound like sheets of metal being torn in half.
    With the woman’s body draped over him, her arms wrapped around him in a limp hug and her chin resting sharply against the top of his head, Patrick could see nothing except her blood-splattered blouse and the patterned cloth of his seat cushion. He didn’t dare to reposition her, not even an inch, afraid of the noise he might make.
    He could hear the thing moving up and down the aisle, its feet—or paws—or whatever they were—thudding into bodies and squelching through blood, so much blood, soaked into the thin carpeting, the foam cushions, his clothes, everything around Patrick tacky and sloshing with it. When the plane at last came to a rocking halt, he could hear its claws against the plastic, fumbling with the emergency door a few rows ahead of him. There was a sudden wind, a burst of sunlight, when the lycan tore it away.
    Immediately the bullets came ripping through the opening—and into its body. Patrick