Feral (7 page)

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H
alf an inch of freezing rain was all it had taken to yank the power line straight from the electric weatherhead on the roof of the Cains' rental . . . and from the other two houses sharing the winding road.

But the storm didn't stop there—it kept pummeling Peculiar, long after every light on the horizon died, enveloping the town in two full inches of sheer ice. Trees rustled in the wind, their smaller branches clinking together. Larger limbs groaned incessantly—and as the weight of the ice pressed harder, they began to pop, filling the air with sounds like shots from a firing range. Every once in a while, a limb would break free, jingle like a falling chandelier, then explode against the air with a furious
boom
the moment it struck the ground.

The relentless noise kept Claire awake that night as she lay on the living room couch by the fireplace, struggling to find even brief moments of sleep as her father snored in a nearby chair. There were other sounds, too—the kind of rural chatter that had never filtered in through her Chicago bedroom window: an owl, the lonesome wail of a distant coyote, and a soft hum that she recognized as the absence of any sound at all. It struck Claire that this was the first time she had ever been somewhere that she couldn't hear a single car—no engines, no tires splashing in puddles, no horns.
Even stillness has its own strange buzz
, she thought.

A wild growl and a scream made Claire rise up, toss off her blankets, and race across the living room to her father.

“Dad,” she hissed. “Dad.”

Dr. Cain bolted up, scrambling to find his glasses.

“What is it?” he asked as he pushed the wire frames up his nose. “What's the matter?”

“
Listen
,” Claire whispered as the desperate wail filled the air again. “Someone's hurt,” she insisted. “Someone's screaming. There it is again! I think it's a girl.”

Dr. Cain put his hand on Claire's shoulder. “It's a bobcat,” he told her. “Probably fighting with some other animal.” He paused, looking at her. “Are you okay? Do you want to get up for a minute? Pretty sure I threw a deck of cards in my suitcase. Challenge you to a mean game of Go Fish till you're tired again.”

Claire smiled. “No,” she whispered. “That's okay. Go back to sleep.”

She covered herself back up, but somehow, the popping of the trees seemed oddly familiar to Claire. Frightening. Especially when the air in between the popping was filled with that high-pitched scream.

Hours later, dawn finally broke to reveal that nature had only added to the misery being heaped upon the residents of Peculiar; a heavy layer of fog had persisted that night, hovering over the ground, twirling from the ice-covered branches, slinking through the air in clumps and swirls. The moisture-heavy fog added another coating of ice, weighing down the last of the still-attached tree limbs—and the main power line running down Claire's street, in between transformers.

She tried to busy herself, as the morning hours progressed. She flapped out the front door in her naval trench to beat at the ice on her front step with a hammer in an effort to make the entryway less slippery. She placed skillets of water on the front porch, and retrieved them when they were frozen, sliding them into the old refrigerator. The ice, she hoped, would turn their fridge into a kind of giant cooler, help preserve the few tidbits on the shelves. Dr. Cain had cautioned her against putting their perishables in the ice along their back porch, like she had first intended. “Might bring hungry animals to the door,” he told her.

Which only made her remember the bobcat's scream.

As if all that wasn't enough, three additional inches of snow fell that afternoon. By the time night arrived—marking a full twenty-four hours without power—the whiteness of the new-fallen snow reflected both the light of the full moon and the weird blue glow emanating from the whining, busted transformer near Claire's house. The reflecting light made the world still feel dimly lit, even a full hour after sunset.

While Dr. Cain heated canned chili on their gas stove, Claire emerged from the house with a large piece of cardboard tucked under one arm—a sign made from one of their few moving boxes. She clutched a roll of duct tape and a box cutter—both of which she'd found in the garage.

The world around her looked as though it had been suspended in a chunk of Lucite as Claire stomped toward the curb, while the giant hulking silhouette from across the street stood in his window, staring. He'd
been
staring at her all day—every single time she'd stepped from the house. Claire tried to convince herself it didn't mean anything, that he was probably a combination of worried and bored, just like everyone else in town.

Still, though—he gave her the heebie-jeebies.

Claire frowned at him as she sliced off a piece of tape with her cutter. The blade, sharp and slender, raw and dangerous, flashed in the bluish glow from the transformer.

She finished taping her sign—in which she spoke directly to Peculiar's power company—to the metal trash can at the edge of her yard: NO POWER—WEATHERHEAD UNDAMAGED. READY FOR HOOKUP written in thick black marker.

The sign was a bit overdramatic, maybe. But Claire didn't think she could stand another night lying in the living room listening to the sounds of snapping limbs. Their creaking and groaning drew goose bumps all over her skin. It made her heart beat like the world's fastest metronome. It forced fearful sweat to break out on her forehead. And though she had thought about it off and on as the hours had passed, she still could not figure out why.

Besides, the utility company's work trucks had circled in the distance all day. She had seen them from her bedroom window as she'd tried to fill her hours by unpacking. Workers in white buckets had been visible as they'd tried to reattach lines. For some reason, it felt as though they were avoiding her street.

Now, beneath the building pressure of glistening limbs, the road's main power line sagged even farther, threatening to completely pull free from the transformer.

With one more gust, the transformer sparked, spitting orange rain.

Claire shrieked, raising her arm over her head. When the sparks died, she lowered her arms and reached into her coat pocket. She dialed the number for Missouri Electric—which she'd memorized, by this point—with the box cutter still in one hand.

The same busy signal bleated into her ear. She growled in frustration, hung up, and dialed another number.
9-1—

She paused. Staring at the numbers on her screen, her ears filled with the sound of stomping feet—a whole gang running.

She gritted her teeth as she closed her eyes, let her thumb land on the final “1,” and held the phone to her ear.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” the 911 operator asked, as Claire hugged herself, still gripping the handle of her box cutter.

“I have a live line in the street,” Claire said, telling herself that this would be the solution. “Three of them, actually. The lines to the houses on this street have all been ripped free. And the main line that runs down the road is about to get ripped from the transformer, too. I—”

“Ma'am,” the tired voice answered, “that's a matter for the power company. If you are not in any immediate physical danger—if this is not a dire emergency—”

Claire's jaw chattered as she gestured toward her own house's line, illuminated by the transformer's glow that lay black and coiled in the ditch, like a snake ready to strike. “Three live lines,” she repeated, as if she were surprised the operator couldn't see it herself. “Tomorrow, if we get any sun at all, they'll be laying in melting snow. That's an emergency, isn't it? Besides,” she went on, “I've—I've tried the power company all day, but I keep getting a busy signal. And their trucks just keep circling around here without ever coming down our street.”

“Ma'am, the power company is responding to priority issues.”

Claire sighed loudly into the phone. The selfish side of her—the side that hated how afraid her dad was of burst water pipes, the side that wanted to stop wrapping her feet in Saran Wrap to hold warmth in her shoes, the side that could not stand the idea of another night without a TV or radio to cover up the awful, brutal popping of limbs (God, the noise was worse even than the bobcat's wail, somehow)—wanted to ask what could possibly be a bigger priority than heading into day two with no power in subzero weather.

“Ma'am,” the operator barked, “Missouri Electric has been doing an admirable job of reattaching lines, considering the magnitude of this storm. I'm sure it's a long wait on your road, but you'll just have to be patient.”

Another gust of wind forced the tiniest slivers of branches to jingle like charm bracelets. Behind Claire, the transformer threw sparks the size of golf balls.

In her attempt to get out of the way, Claire tripped over her own feet and fell from the street straight into the edge of her yard, her hip slamming painfully against the small curve of a shallow drainage ditch. She threw her left hand out to catch herself before her face hit the ground, too. Her cell flew out of her grip and her palm burned as it pressed through three inches of snow. Her coat had pulled back from her body as she'd spun downward; cold seeped straight through the side of her jeans. The fall sent echoes of pain through the once-broken and stitched-together bones that had already been aching since the start of the storm.

Across the street, a front door flopped open in a burst, and the faceless silhouette emerged wearing a leather jacket that only emphasized his girth. His enormous shoulders took up the sky like a billboard.

Claire shivered at the sight of the giant coming toward her. “No, no, no,” she pleaded, struggling to find the cell phone she'd dropped. She gripped her box cutter even tighter as she slipped again, banging her tailbone against the road.

The figure clomped across the street, showing no sign of discomfort as brutal gusts sent tiny frozen pellets flying into his face.

Claire could see him clearly now as his boots thudded closer—see his face, not just the black outline of his head. The indentions of his scowl deepened in the glow from the transformer.

“Stop,” she ordered, her voice the high pitch of panic. She raised her weapon, holding the point toward the towering hulk. “
Stop
,” she tried again. God, the guy was big. He could be a full-blown psychopath, for all Claire knew. He sure as hell looked like one.

She could see her cell—or at least the small rectangle in the snow where it had fallen; she slipped once more as she tried to push herself forward. The tips of her fingers burned against the cold as she clawed through the snow and pawed at the solid layer of ice beneath, attempting to grab her phone. The man paused just behind her, looming over her in a way that made her feel like a June bug wiggling on its back, struggling to right itself.

When he squatted, reaching for her, Claire screamed, her voice slicing through the still night air.

“Oh, hush,” he grumbled as she squirmed.

“Watch it—” Claire shouted. “I'm—talking to 911,” she lied. “I'm—”

The man lunged forward and grabbed her wrist with one enormous hand, his tight grip making her relax her fingers. She whimpered as he snatched the box cutter away from her.

“Please,” she begged as she scrambled, trying desperately to get to her feet.

“They teach you that move in some self-defense class in Chicago?” he asked.

The softness in his voice made Claire stop. “Say what?” she panted.

“It's a great move—sliding around on ice with a knife in your hand.”

She flinched when he retracted the blade.

He was young, she realized, now that she was staring right at him. The face beneath the black stocking cap was no older than her own.

He snorted, shaking his head. “The sheriff lives at the end of the road,” he said, pointing. “It looks like favoritism if we get power first. But they'll be here,” he said, nodding at her sign. “Believe me.”

Now that he was standing close, Claire found something oddly calming about him. Maybe, she thought, it was because there were no expectations. No eyes staring out from his face pleading with her to be okay.

“How'd you know we came from Chicago?” she asked, still suspicious. “Or
did
you know? Was it a guess?” She pointed at the plates on the back of the Gremlin. “You assume everybody from Illinois lives in Chicago?”

“Claire Cain, junior,” he recited. “Agreed to spend her dad's sabbatical semester in Missouri, while the geology professor-slash-paleontologist did his scientific
thing
in a just-discovered cave on the outskirts of Peculiar.”

“How did you
know
?”

“Everybody knows,” another voice rang out. When Claire turned, she found herself staring at the girl from 'Bout Out—the blonde who'd been looking for her friend. Her pretty face was engulfed by a black wool hat with earflaps. She stood securely, even on a section of road that dipped slightly, angling toward the ditch.

The girl was wearing cleats, Claire realized, tugged on over a pair of hiking boots. Claire felt a bit foolish from her spot on the ground, the chill of the ice biting through her jeans into her backside. She struggled to right herself; the boy from across the street reached out to help her.

“I guess it's true, the way word travels in a small town,” Claire said.

“Even faster when your dad's the sheriff,” the girl agreed. “I'm Becca Holman,” she added, introducing herself. “My family's at the end of the road.” She pointed toward the same house that the boy from across the street had already identified as the sheriff's place. A gust of wind made her butter-colored hair ripple out from under her hat like a sheet of silk. “Looks like you've met Rich.”