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Reluctantly, I paused and looked back toward him.
“What?”
“Where are you going?”
I debated whether to tell him, but I realized that I genuinely had no idea where Pario City was or how to get there. Seven Rock was isolated, miles from any major hub. When the power failed here, it took weeks for service to be restored, and more often than not, the townsfolk opted to live off-grid, warming our houses with firewood.
“Pario City.”
Waverly audibly gasped, shock tinging his face.
“And how, pray tell, do you imagine getting there? I know you’re a big, bad wolf and all, but even you can’t manage that trek without some kind of vehicle.”
I frowned. “Ihavea vehicle,” I replied, thinking of my dilapidated pick-up, rusting in the garage adjacent to the cabin.
I barely used the thing but to bounce around the country roads and make my deliveries every week.
Waverly snorted loudly.
“You do realize that Pario City is a region and half away, don’t you? You won’t make it halfway there in Old Smokey.”
I stared at him, realizing that I had no idea what his unit of measurement meant. I’d barely ventured out of Seven Rock five times since finding myself there.
“I’ll figure it out,” I insisted, turning back to begin my journey.
“Sure,” Waverly snickered. “Or you’ll die.”
Another shiver rushed through me, but I didn’t let Waverly see how much his comment affected me. If being buried alive hadn’t killed me, and the past two hundred years had not aged me at all, would lack of proper transportation finally do it? I highly doubted it.
* * *
Unfortunately,Waverly proved to be a good prophet, and Old Smokey barely made it out of Seven Rock before the engine seized up and she began to sputter, dying on the side of a lonely highway among a thick of trees without another vehicle in sight. For a while, I marched along the road, hoping to flag down a passerby, but as the evening rolled into sheer blackness, only the light of the moon guiding my path, I recognized I couldn’t walk all the way to Pario City—at least according to the map I’d grabbed from Carlyle’s Gas on the way out of Seven Rock. There were days of travel ahead in this fashion, and I was already off to a shit start without a car.
I had no choice but to hoof it, shimmying the pack onto the sooty-black fur of my back to stalk along the roads until I found myself on the most awe-inspiring sight I’d ever seen. Dawn broke over the horizon by now, glinting off the metallic structures in front of me, the shapes unlike any I’d ever seen before.
“What is this?” I breathed to myself aloud. The honk of a car horn forced me back, and a streak of white whizzed past me. It took me a solid minute to realize that it had been a car.
Shaking my head, I trotted forward, distinctly aware now that I was still in my wolf form. I had to retreat and shift. I didn’t know if this place was familiar with my kind. Suddenly, I was naked, vulnerable.
But I wasn’t afraid.
I was furious.
Is this what I’ve been missing while I’ve been holed up in Seven Rock for all these years? Has the world grown around me, and I’ve remained the same?
It was a weird thing to be angry about. The choice had been mine to stay in Seven Rock after my years of acting like a wandering nomad. But I couldn’t have envisioned that things had changed so dramatically beyond the little provincial hamlet where I’d remained.
Hastily dressing, my fists closed at my side, I headed toward the glinting glass and metal structures, heart pounding in anticipation. I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Sure, I’d heard stories about these places, but nothing prepared me for what laid in front of me.
The whole atmosphere changed the second I stepped foot onto the concrete of the city. People bumped past me, devices pressed to their ears, their mouths moving in conversation.
“…the paperwork as soon as I get back to the office,” one woman cried frantically, her heels clicking as she hit my shoulder. She didn’t even notice as she rushed away.
“…after work, baby,” another man spoke into the rectangular piece at his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring all the toys we used last time. And I won’t forget batteries, I promise.”
He caught my baffled look and scowled.
“What are you looking at, perv?” he snapped, glowering at me before crossing against the copious amounts of traffic.
