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

hands, wondering how the hell I’d even use it if the wolves suddenly decide to charge. And it crosses my head that even if I’m not supposed to run, I couldn’t avert the instinct to do so if they charged now.
                “What do we do if they come?” I ask quickly.
                “They are coming,” she says, and as she says it, one of the wolves takes a slow step toward us, without a snarl or a growl, and then the one next to it does the same. As if they’re trying to cut the distance before we run.
                “Don’t run. One more thing to try. Get your arms out like me,” she says. For the first time I take my eyes off of the wolves and see how she’s widened out, displaying her arms like long wings, one of which has the silver dagger of her knife as a talon. I mimic her, hoping she’s right and that it stops the advance of the wolves. But it doesn’t. And as if in slow motion, they just continue their movement directly toward us, walling us in toward the beach.
        “Walk back,” she says. And then, flicking my eyes rapidly from the wolves to her, I follow her steps so that I’m no farther from the wolves than she is. Together we walk back, and every few steps, the wolves take a quick few of their own and stop. Maze makes another call, a loud maniac cry this time, but the wolves reply with their own. One of them snarls a low threatening rumble. Maze shuts up and keeps going back. I follow, and it’s the same pattern—the wolves wait until we’re almost twenty feet away, but then they quickly shoot forward and gain the ground back.
                “They want us in the open,” Maze says.
                “We’ll be in the open if we keep going,” I warn her.
                “Can’t help that now,” she says as if everything will be alright. I watch the wolves’ glowing eyes flicker off as we retreat, and then back on as they launch up quickly to cover the lost ground. And then, one of them disappears. Right into the side of the forest.
                “What do we do?” I say, starting to panic.
                “You always say you’re as fast as me,” she says.
                “ Maze… ” I say as we take another few steps. Behind us I can hear the crashing of the surf. The edge of the wide open white sand.
                “Prove it.”
                “What?” I say in disbelief, the idea that she thinks we should try to outrun them all of the sudden hitting me like an insane death wish.
                “They hate the surf. If we make it even close to the water, we’re safe.”
                All I can think of is the impossibility of outrunning them. That there’s no way in hell I am going to make it all the way across the sinking sand without one of these creatures biting into my neck. Tearing my leg down first to trip me. The feeling of teeth piercing my skin and my muscles starts to play through my head, like preparation for an almost certain fate.
                “When the other one breaks out of the woods, that’s when we turn and go. Got it?” she says as we take our first steps that feel soft—the first part of the dunes. And then, in the blink of an eye, it feels like we’re almost halfway across the beach. And I start to know—she was all wrong. They never wanted to attack us. Because the one wolf we can still see is just watching us, staring from the trailhead before the dunes, right at the edge of the woods. Like he doesn’t want to step one paw on the sand or give chase at all. And that’s when it happens—from almost forty feet in the other direction, where the forest curves down closer to the hard sand, the other wolf launches onto the beach at full speed. In the same instant, the one at the trailhead bolts forward, the sight of his partner electrifying his body into lightning speed, his whole frame bucking in a line