WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) by Joseph Turkot Read Free Book Online

the fear build, or to plan our passage more patiently and carefully, she asks me for a boost. I want to warn her again— no Maze, we have to wait until we see them cross back to the other side of the field— but I bottle it up. It’s almost a little bit easier than it was on the roof of the world in the heart of the Deadlands when she went to the ledge. But even now, as she jumps off my back, the urge doesn’t subside. I want to resist, tell her it’s not safe yet, that we shouldn’t. Even though I know the wolves will probably never reappear, and we’ll waste the rest of the daylight if we wait. I think of the fact that she’s been out here more than twice. Somehow, I convince myself that it must mean that the wolves really aren’t out to kill us, since Maze is still alive and breathing. I follow her over the fence. My feet crash onto the gravel on the other side and we start our long walk, right into the wide open meadow, across the field and toward the stone road.
     
    By the time we reach the woods, there still hasn’t been another sign of the wolves. Then, in just another moment, we’re pushing through the first hanging vines and walking on the old stones. Maze keeps her eyes on all sides at once, the dense tree trunks, somehow alert to noises I can’t distinguish from the sounds our own feet make on the sticks and leaves that crunch with each step. It’s when we’re almost to the main road, the wide and smooth beach path that will take us home, that Maze tells me she sees them.
                “They’re watching us.”
                “What?” is all I manage to whisper.
                “They’re going to block us—push us away from the road to town. They want to get us out on the beach,” she says, almost between her teeth so that I have to struggle to make out her words. I look left, right where the beach path steers away toward Acadia, where we should make our turn and jog the last ten minutes to town, and there they are. Two wolves. Their eyes softly reflect the hanging red glow of the sun, enough to give them away in the shadow. And they don’t move one bit. Instead, they watch from the edge of the forest, thinking we don’t see them.
            “Maybe they’ll go away,” I say, hoping Maze will stay put. But then, she starts calling out. The craziest noises I’ve ever heard. Like some kind of monster gorilla or something. I wait, and see her edging bit by bit away from me, out toward the split in the road. I want to scream at her to get back, to stop, but I don’t. I just let her do it. Finally, when she realizes the wolves haven’t moved one bit, that they’re not afraid at all, she comes back to me.
                “Okay, they’re going to run us out to the beach,” she says, as if she’s somehow, through her wild beast calls, entered their minds, and now knows exactly what they’re planning.
                “How do you know that?” I ask, the quiver in my voice obvious now.
                “You remember I told you I’ve been to the Deadlands a lot?” she says.
                “Yeah.”
                “Let’s just say the wolves come with that.” And then, without a word of instruction for me, she takes a step, and then another, until she’s out in the middle of the road. And the same as she predicted it, the wolves take their own steps to match hers, putting their hulking gray frames almost into the road now, blocking the way back to Acadia. And I realize that Maze is right—there’re only two choices now. We stand our ground and fight them, or we go back to the beach. And as I follow her out onto the road, she instructs me to do just the opposite of what my gut is yelling at me to do.
                “ Do not run ,” she says. “Run and you’re dead.”
                I freeze without questioning her logic, and all I do is try to keep the knife steady in my