Old logging road, Jane thought.
Logging humans stole trees from land. Was reason two for hunger times. Fire that followed was three. Killed mountains for many-more-than-five years. No live prey anywhere. Man is stupid. Man is dangerous.
Jane did not respond. Soon found place where wolves changed from man to wolf. Old bloody bones scattered on ground. Cold, old chickens, wrapped in smelly plastic. Blood full of water and smelling rank. Looked back at logging road, thinking. Man-wolves came here on machine, like car but not like car. Changed. Hunted. Came back, got on machine, and left. Why? I asked Jane. I do not smell blood from hunt. They did not bring down prey.
Jane drew in air like hiss of snake. They came to make more. They came to turn humans. They entered campground on, Jane tried to count back days, but was tired and confused, maybe Friday night. Crap. They were here and they bit someone and they left. They bit a lot of people that night.
And people are gone. Full of werewolf sickness. No way to track who they bit.
Jane cursed. Some words are bad, some are not, but all are just words. Humans are confusing. I headed along wolf trail, following scent and spoor. Found two places where humans had been bitten. One was abandoned house, full of mold and roaches and rats. Human man had been sleeping there, had not bathed, had fouled his own den for days. Jane called him squatter. Wolves had bitten him and left. Man had left too, stinking of blood and fear. Outside, smelled where he had gotten in car and driven off.
Impossible to find, now, Jane thought at me. It’s like an epidemic. If he gets away, and he turns furry, he’ll try to bite humans. Crap, crap, and double freaking crap.
Moved on, following scent trail. Other place was campsite near river. Man and woman had been together. They had fought wolves. Both had died and been eaten.
No one had discovered bodies. Humans cannot smell fresh death. Humans do not see when buzzards mark place of the dead. Jane would tell humans. Snarl on face, I left and padded to river to wash old human blood from paws. Dawn was not far off. The mist of river had risen, as if trying to reach up to clouds pushing in through the sky where sun fell at night. I stepped into river and drank, letting water wash paws, cool belly. And leaped onto rock, then to another, and then a hard, strong leap to middle of river, to a boulder larger than the others, gray and brown in the night. Standing high above water, to see world. Good place to see the sun.
*
The sun was rising over the eastern curve of the river when I shifted back, in the middle of the river. Beast had lain down on a night-cool rock out in the open, the river rushing around the boulder, a soft, pulsing froth. She had watched the sky lighten to a dull gray, her belly still full. Happy. Ignoring my pleas to return to land. And at the last moment, before the sun’s rays slanted over the earth, she had let me shift back. And there I was, in the middle of the French Broad River. Naked and exposed. And no way back to shore without a river-swim rock-crawl. Beast thought it was funny, her hacking laughter clear in the back of my mind. I’m not sure if her sense of humor is peculiar to her or is shared by all cats. I have a feeling that it’s a little bit of both and that my own sense of justice and making the punishment fit the crime had altered her cat-humor.
The water wasn’t high enough to swim, and the light wasn’t bright enough to see through the surface. By the time I was back to shore, I was bruised and bleeding from contact with underwater rocks, had a scrape on one shin, and was half drowned from falling into holes with no apparent bottom. Wet and smelling of river, I opened my go-bag, pulled out crushed, wet, wrinkled clothes and flip-flops, and dressed in the golden light, hoping no one was up and about to see me. Dang Beast.