The Runaway: A Werewolf Story

Chapter 1

Bad things happen to everyone.

While Olive knew that to be true, she still felt like more bad things happened to her than the average person. Maybe she had just been born unlucky. Or cursed. Her current situation may have been coloring her mood, but it felt like her whole life was built on tragedy and misfortune. You aren't a bad person and you did what you had to. To survive. She reminded herself of this over and over as she trudged along the crumbling highway shoulder. If the lonely two-lane road could be called a highway at all. He was dead now and she was safe, that was all that mattered. Granted she had no plan and no money, so safe was relative. How she yearned to go back in time and chose another path. Hell, to be someone else entirely.

The harsh wind tossed her hair and peppered her with dirt and grit. Her whole body hurt, especially her tender and most likely broken rib. Hands jammed in her pockets, she kept her eyes down, and spit out the dirt and hair when it stuck to her lips. She was cold, tired, and aching. What she really wanted was to lie down and rest for a lifetime.

The sky overhead was dark for mid-afternoon and the clouds were violent in their movements. The leaves on the trees along the road were blowing inside out and she vaguely remembered her mother telling her that foretold rain. And she was without an umbrella, a proper coat, or a plan for that matter. Rain would certainly add a cherry to her perfect day. The air felt electric-charged, the world around her eerily vacant and unfamiliar. She wore a thin jean jacket and her teeth chattered with the rapidly dropping temp. If only she'd had more time, she would have packed for colder weather, she could have done a hundred things better.

When she'd gotten off the bus at the furthest stop she could afford, she learned the station was little more than a bench and a quickly shuttering- up window attached to a tiny town hall. She'd asked the ticket taker, attempting to not look suspicious and surely failing, which direction would take her to the next town closer to the border. Lady said a few miles up the state highway, but the town wasn't much bigger. She'd been walking for an hour or so, thumb ready to reach out, but hadn't seen one car pass, which in and of itself felt odd. Without any other options, being out of enough money to get anywhere and with no one around, she just kept walking. The wind was slowing her down, but surely, she'd walked the "few" miles. She figured midafternoon on a weekday that someone was out on the roads, running errands, picking up kids, and going to the store. That some good Samaritan would pick her up. But there was no one.

Walking along, without a soul knowing where she was, she felt profoundly alone. If she died, no one would even know where to look. The thought kept spinning around her head, causing her pulse to race. She felt vulnerable with the thick woods crowding in on either side, so dark she couldn't see more than a few feet inside them. She was a city kid, raised in tenements and tall apartment blocks. She didn't like the feeling of being watched from the woods. What even lived in the woods this far north? Were there bears? Coyotes? Rabid moose? She hated to admit that she had no idea what kind of animals even lived in the woods in upstate New York.

She pressed on, hastening her pace in part to keep her warm, and in part to get her faster to wherever was ahead.

***

When Olive did reach the next town, she was dismayed to see the few shop fronts were mostly boarded up, windows papered over long enough they'd all faded to yellow. The houses were ramshackle, the roads in disrepair; everything man-made seemed to be falling into ruin. Nature was taking back the rusty cars on blocks in front yards, and the lopsided picket fences had long since folded over and were strangled by vines. Creepy. Not even a dog barking to show anyone still lived in the town at all.

As she passed an old church, which she realized was mostly burnt up and little more than the front facade and doorway facing the street, she heard the rumble of thunder, and the dark clouds overhead made good on their threat. An icy, heavy rain came pouring down in sheets. She hunkered under the overhang of the church for an hour waiting it out, but she couldn't stay there shivering all night. She'd need to find shelter, either inside the burnt remains of the building, or keep moving. In the end, she decided to keep walking and hope that the rain would end soon.