Page 1 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
Chapter 1
She was just getting the hang of the ambulance when she hit the wolf.
The thing was bulky and difficult to control (the ambulance, not the wolf), and whenever she got it back from its semiannual mechanically induced coma, it took her a few minutes to get the hang of driving it again.
She stood on the brakes
(oh shit oh shit oh shit)
and braced for the double-thump of the tires running over the animal, which didn’t come.
Lila Kai collapsed back into her seat, her heart pounding so hard she could taste metal. She pulled over to the side of the street. Astreet, not a country road on the way from nowhere to somewhere. This was Lilydale, not Hastings. And even Hastings didn’t have wolves in their streets. Just deer. So what the hell?
She put the ambulance in Park, kept the engine running, and hopped down. She checked the headlights—nothing. The side of the road—nothing. She even took a tentative couple of steps into the brown brush lining the ditch
(don’t think about the zillions of horror movies that start like this)
—nothing. No wolf, limping or otherwise. Or…coyote, maybe?
Which made sense, now that she thought about it. Because whatever it was, it hadn’t been just huge, it had been fast, too. It had come out of nowhere and to nowhere it returned, all in the space of half a second. Maybe she just clipped it.
Is that a metaphor for something? Life? Death? Taxes? Transitions? Romance?
Mmmm…probably not the latter. There was just no way to twist clipping a random wolf into an allegory about her nonexistent dating life. The fact that she’d given even half a second of thought to that was proof that she needed to lay off the Cosmos (the drinkandthe magazine).
She went back to her decommissioned ambulance, rebuckled her seat belt, put it in Drive, checked her rearview, ignored the urge to ponder more metaphors-that-weren’t, then pulled out, and headed back toward her rental house. The adrenaline rush had been unwelcome as always, but—
“Goddamnit!”
Two kids had darted out from nowhere
(what the hell is up with this street?)
and were flagging her down, waving their little arms around so fast they looked like little bony windmills in a gale.
This time, at least, she didn’t have to stand on the brakes, and once she had stopped, she rolled down her window. “What’s going on, li’l weirdos?”
Both children were gesturing frantically. “C’mere, you have to help, she’s hurt!”
And more than a few horror movies start likethis,too.
Again with park, unbuckling, opening door, climbing out. The boy and girl who had jumped in front of her looked like they were about eight, dressed in the de rigeur kid gear of jeans and sweatshirts and battered sneakers. They had the corn-fed reddish-blond looks of many Minnesotans. “Who’s hurt?”
“I dunno, she just is, we found her, comeon. Bring your ambulance gear!”
“It’s not an ambulance.”
“’Course it’s an ambulance!”
“No, I mean it’s decommissioned, so it’s not really an amb—”
Tiring of her explanation, the girl seized Lila’s hand and started hauling her up the street. Lila looked behind her, half expecting to see the wolf creeping up on them and felt a little let down to see the way was clear. Which was insane. Strange enough to see such a creature underanycircumstances, never mind smack in the middle of town. But she wanted to see it again; how was that for nuts?
I probably need a nap.
The girl hauled on her hand again and hooked left
“Jeez, kid. Do you work out?”
