Raised by Wolves

Chapter 54

CHAPTER 54

CHESTER POINTS TO the break in the trees at the edge of his meadow. “That’s where they went in,” he says confidently. He wishes he actually felt that confident. “There’s a deer path nearby that runs east-west for a few miles before turning north. I’m thinking they took that for a while.”

“Unless someone’s chasin’ ’em, animals always take the quickest route to where they’re going,” Hardy says. “These kids won’t be no different.” His raspy, know-it-all voice sets Chester’s teeth on edge.

“But where are they going?” asks Sam Dean. Sam, who lives ten miles outside of town on a struggling farm, is skinny and tanned. Kinda looks like a human version of beef jerky. “Chief? You got any idea?”

“I think I might,” Chester says.

Of course, it all depends on believing what Kai and Holo had told him. If he doesn’t, he’s got nothing. But if he does , then there aren’t too many places they could be.

“We have to go to where the wolves are,” he says.

When he says the word wolves , he sees the men’s eyes go dark. Their faces get tight and vicious.

They hate wolves.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t own livestock. Doesn’t matter that bad weather kills more sheep than wolves do. That coyotes kill more sheep than wolves do. Less than one percent of livestock deaths: on average, that’s all wolves can be blamed for.

It just doesn’t matter.

“We’ll find the kids and shoot the wolves,” Sam Dean says.

“No, we won’t,” Chester says. “We have one objective here, and that is finding Kai and Holo.”

But they aren’t listening to him. Every man goes to his truck and comes back with a gun.

Sam pats his .22, snug in its holster. “You never know what you’re going to run into in the woods at night.”

“Or who,” Hardy adds.

Chester looks each man in the eye in turn. “There will be no shooting ,” he says slowly, “unless you are in imminent danger of being mauled by a wild animal. Do you understand me?”

“Takin’ all the fun out of it,” Sam’s cousin Jimmy says.

“Do you men understand me?” Chester repeats. Louder, so they know he’s serious. “Because if you don’t, you can go on back home now.”

They grumble. Nod.

“Good. All right, let’s go.”

They fall in line behind him as he heads down the deer trail. Soon the woods are dark. Chester turns on his flashlight. The men walk quietly along the path, sweeping the trees with their own narrow beams of light.

There’s no point in calling for Kai and Holo. They’ve got several hours’ head start, and they don’t want to be found. Still, it’s hard for him not to shout their names. Hard not to plead with them to come back. So Chester just keeps on walking, trusting instinct to help him stay on the right path.

Eventually, around two o’clock in the morning, the search party stops to rest. Chester leans against a tree trunk and closes his eyes.

Wind rustles leaves. Branches crack. A few men snore.

Chester feels exhausted and wide awake at the same time. On edge, too. He has the powerful sense that they don’t belong here. That they are intruders in this wild night world.

Far off, he hears the faint howl of a wolf. Then another joins it.

Somewhere in the darkness, two children he has come to love are running away from him.

And part of him wonders if maybe they would be safer if he would just let them go.