SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

Cullie moaned again and fell into a coughing fit. George looked his way and then started untying Mark. There was no way in hell he could offer comfort to a man whose entire body was basically one raw nerve ending. He imagined that any place he touched would just add to his already considerable pain.

Mark waited patiently while he finished untying him and then started rubbing his wrists, trying to get blood back into hands that looked almost blue even in the darkness.

While Mark worked on untying his ankles, George dug into his waterproof coat and prayed that the zipper had kept his meager supplies dry. He found the map and, yes, his lighter.

The lighter worked just fine and even the meager light it offered was enough to let him see that something was written on the map. Mark watched him while he read the message. “’Justice is served. You are free to go.’”

“Free to go my ass! There’s nowhere to go!” Mark was pissed off. George was still unsettlingly happy to be alive.

“We’ve got the map. We can find our way back.” He was trying to be reasonable. It wasn’t working as well as he would have liked.

“What about Cullie? What about Ellen and Lou? Hell, what about your fucking girlfriend, George?”

He clenched his jaw. “Her name is Cheryl. When we get out of here we’ll figure it all out.”

Mark was shaking with cold, his clothes half frozen to his body and his feet stripped of everything but a ratty looking pair of socks.

“I don’t have the answers, Mark. I’m still trying to figure all of this out!” George felt his temper rising and decided not to stop it. He’d had all he could take of Mark and Cullie browbeating him. Jesus! He’d been in a fight with werewolves earlier in the night and now he just wanted to celebrate being alive for five minutes without Mark riding his ass.

He looked at his watch and was shocked to see it was only a little after eleven PM.

“Okay, if we’re going to live through this shit, we need a fire.”

  Mark looked his way and then gestured. “There’s a dozen broken pews around here. Let’s gather some up.” He limped toward them and George saw the ugly wounds on his leg.

George killed the flame from the lighter and started gathering wood; mostly small pieces at first, kindling for the larger boards.

Ten minutes later they had a fire and light and warmth enough to give him a hope of not freezing to death. He also had a dead lighter. The Bic wasn’t meant to last forever and it gave up the ghost by the time they’d managed to get the blaze going.

“We’ll wait out the storm. When it’s all over with, we’ll try to find our way to somewhere. I saw a road earlier.” He shut his mouth, remembering the cops and the lady he’d seen on that road and how his actions had lead to them being slaughtered. He sighed and told Mark what he could remember. “Maybe there will still be cars there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a chance to get out of this.”

“What about Cullie?” Mark looked over at their friend, who was still shivering violently, his face turned away from the heat.

“What about him?”

“We have to get him help. He’s dying.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do for him, Mark. He’s lost—“ he bit back the nervous voice in his head that started screaming about lost flesh— “he’s lost a lot of blood. Even if we get him out of here, he doesn’t even have a coat. He’ll freeze to death out there.”

“This is insane.”

George looked at him for a long time without speaking, as his body started warming up. “Yeah, it is. This is fucked up beyond all repair.”

“Why didn’t they just kill us?”

“I don’t know.” That was the end of their conversations for a while. They sat in uncomfortable silence that was broken only by Cullie’s fevered moans and the winds that pushed through the openings and tried to steal what little heat they managed to capture.

* * *

The Hillside Township Emergency Center welcomed the men, despite their nudity. If a few people looked concerned or amused, they pushed those thoughts aside as Roland handed over Allison Lassiter.

He didn’t wait around to talk to anyone, but turned around and headed back into the blizzard. There were still things that had to be taken care of, still dangers left for him and his to deal with.

They had only run a portion of the distance back to the house when John veered away from them and toward the woods where they had left the men.

Whatever he did, it was John’s decision to make.

They’d discussed that earlier.

Roland had made his proclamation and John had given a great deal of thought to what to do. Both Loman and Heatherly had fought well and done all they could to survive. As Landers had handled the worst of the crimes, John decided to let them have another chance at living. In the end, he’d left them at the church.

“I told Landers if he lived through it, I would let him go.” He said the words softly.

“What do you think his chances are?”

“I bit him and let him live.”