Chapter 3

Conor and I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the clock on the wall rather than the images on the TV screen. After all, we were the only news story in our town. Two siblings wounded in an animal attack while on a camping trip. It was a goldmine to a small town news broadcaster. They could probably tell me more about the attack than I actually knew. Conor and I were scheduled for therapy visits from now until infinity, probably, to deal with the memories we were clearly “repressing”.

 

“I heard it was an animal attack on the news before anyone told me,” Conor suddenly broke in. “The nurse turned the TV on just before I woke up. Suddenly my senior picture was staring back at me and the line on the bottom said ‘Siblings Survive Brutal Animal Attack’.”

 

“I just got told I was bitten,” I said, turning my attention from the clock toward my brother. “The nurse didn’t seem to care.”

 

“Did you have Nurse Caruso? Nurse Morel told me about her.”

 

I giggled quietly, shaking my head despite the pain in my neck. “If you were resorting to gossiping with the nurses, you really must have been bored.”

 

“Don’t get me started. Dad kept bringing me field guides to read.”

 

            My laugh was cut short suddenly by a bang on the front door. I looked at Conor, raising an eyebrow. We both checked our phones, but the last text either of us got came just a few minutes before from our mom. Traffic was ridiculous, and they were just leaving the hospital. She said it looked like they would be gridlocked for a while. No one said they were coming over. And no one who was stopping by for a cordial visit would start it off by pounding on the door like that.

 

“I’ll go check through the peephole,” I told Conor, ignoring his protests that I just stay put.

 

            As I slowly stood up, there was another round of banging, this time even louder than before. I gripped the back of my chair for just a moment before making my way toward the front door, trying to avoid going by any open windows on the way. I rose up on my toes a bit to see through the peephole, but there was nothing outside. Even in the growing darkness, the only thing that could be seen through the small hole was my neighbor’s house and the empty street. I made my way over to the living room window, pushing the curtains aside just a bit from the corner so I could see more, but there was nothing. Not a soul was in sight. The sun was even practically gone as the final sliver of gold slipped behind the horizon.

 

“Oh, hey!” I called to Conor. “It’s a full moon tonight!”

 

“Maeve!”

 

            Conor’s shout was followed by the sound of a chair crashing to the floor. I spun around, making it to the kitchen before I even realized my feet were moving. I had to grip the side of the doorway to keep myself from collapsing when my knees buckled at the sight of my brother passed out on the floor, blood trickling out of his mouth. There was no one to be seen, but I could hear the sound of feet moving around somewhere on the first floor. Hopeful that I had some time before whoever it was circled their way around back to the kitchen, I rushed forward to kneel next to Conor. When I rolled him over, the split on his lip was the last of my concerns after realizing a syringe was sticking out of his neck.

 

            Just as I placed my hand on the plastic syringe to pull it out, I felt the sharp point of a needle press into my own neck. The effects of whatever was in the needle worked so quickly that I was too weighted down to even try to swat at the hand before they were finished injecting the tranquilizer. My entire body went numb, and my senses faded too quickly for me to process anything other than someone dressed in black moving to push me too the side before I slumped over Conor’s unconscious body. I heard a thud, but I had no clue if it was my own body or not.

 

 

            Whatever tranquilizing drug our abductor had used, I’d never experienced anything remotely like it. And I’d just spent over a week heavily sedated in a state hospital. Fading into unconsciousness had been quick, but the jerk back into full consciousness and alertness was even quicker.

 

            My head slammed against something hard as my eyes flew open, taking in absolutely every single sight possible. I was in a trunk of what seemed to be a fairly big truck, with windows along the side and the back that gave a view out to a thickly wooded area with just a few dim streams of life struggling through the branches. Lying near the door of the trunk was Conor, his glasses askew and his body resting at an odd angle. When I tried to move my hands to tap him, I found that they were shackled together. The chains in between the cuffs sounding almost like someone snickering as they clinked away. My legs were already stretched out, but when I tried to kick them a bit to make some noise against the side of the trunk, I discovered my ankles were shackled, too.

 

“Conor! Conor!” I shouted to him, not caring how loud I was. After all, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Just to be sure, I pressed my ear against the barrier between the trunk and the cab, but I could hear nothing. “Conor! Wake up!”

 

            I scooted forward, prodding at his good leg with the heels of my shoes until he jolted awake just as quickly as I had. He was completely startled, swearing loudly when his motions were inhibited by the handcuffs on his own wrists and ankles. I clapped my hands a few times to get his attention, even taking it upon myself to fix his glasses for him when he finally looked at me with wide eyes.

 

“Where are we?” he asked.

 

“Somewhere in the woods,” I replied, but that was hardly helpful. Caroling was covered in wooded area, and so were most of the towns that surrounded it. The scents of pine trees was so strong in this particular area that I could smell it even through the closed up truck. “I-I just came to. I don’t know how long we were out.”

 

“Did you see the guy?” He sighed when I shook my head. “I barely saw him. One second he was there, and I tried to swing at him, but my arm…”

 

            Our gazes both turned toward his arm, where a cast once took up from his elbow down to his fingers. Now it was just bare skin with a few remnants of the plaster, as though the cast had been torn clean off. He moved his fingers on that hand and stretched his arm out, not flinching in the slightest as he moved. I glanced down at my own bandaged wrist with my jaw gaping slightly. I turned it about only a little at first, then more and more, even pressing it hard against the floor, but there was no pain. It was completely healed, and the bruises and scratches that covered my arms and legs had entirely vanished.

 

            Slowly, I raised my hands up to feel along where a bandage was still wrapped around my neck. I picked at the sides until it loosened before tearing it right off with a sudden rush of strength. Before I even touched the skin, I could tell from the way Conor was staring at me that the skin was perfectly healed. One touch and I couldn’t feel even a small bump where the once nearly fatal injury had been.

 

“I had a bite on my side,” Conor said in one breath, already lifting up the side of his shirt and trying awkwardly to get the bandage off with the handcuffs inhibiting him. “It must be… but how? What were we drugged with? Who-”

 

            There was a sudden tear in Conor’s bandage, causing us both to freeze. His once trimmed down nails were no longer visible, and instead claws stuck out of elongated and more muscular looking fingers than he actually had. Through the tear, healed skin could be seen, but that wasn’t the focus anymore.

 

“Conor, what’s wrong with your hands?” I asked him, my eyes slowly drifting down to look at my own hands. Nails still in tact. For now, at least.

 

“My knuckles seem a bit, uh, hairier than they used to,” he replied in a distant voice.

 

“And the cla-claws?”

 

            I clenched my jaw together as a sudden pain shot through all along it, as if my bones were bending and elongating at quadruple speed. A sharp point nicked the side of my tongue, and it took me a moment to realize it was my own tooth. When the excruciating pain stopped much sooner than I’d expected, I opened my mouth a few times to see if it ached. I rubbed along the side of my chin, my hand freezing when I felt the significant difference in my own anatomy. Without cause and without warning, my entire jaw had completely altered itself, and my teeth had grown larger and sharpened. With my mouth closed tight, my breath came out in harsh, labored patterns through my nostrils as my hands began to shake.

 

“What’s happening to us?” I demanded of Conor, always assuming he had all the answers.

 

“Just take a few breaths,” he suggested, but the moment he lifted his hands we both flinched away from his claws.

 

“I’m trying!” A strange, rumbling sound erupted out of my throat suddenly. All I wanted to do was scream, but I feared the same sound might come out again, only louder. “We need to get out of here.”

 

            Conor’s hands flew to his jaw suddenly, and I knew immediately what was about to happen. As I reached up to feel along my own face again, I felt the tip of my nails hit my skin. My nails were never that long or that thick. I launched myself forward at the window as Conor literally growled behind me, clearly in pain. I slammed my fists against the window to try to smash through it with a feeling of strength I’d never experienced before. As hard as I tried, it didn’t do even the smallest bit of damage. I spun around, lying on my back and using my two legs to kick forward to knock a hole through the barrier between us and the cab of the car. Conor stayed in the truck, trying desperately to fiddle with the trunk door despite his new claws as I crawled through to the front seat.

 

            The car looked as though it’d been entirely cleaned out of anything. There was no radio, no mirrors, the glovebox was empty, the armrest was empty, and the doors were all locked. I tried to click on the button to unlock them nearly a hundred times before finally giving up. Absolutely none of the wiring in the car worked, and getting old-school with an escape didn’t seem probable. The windows were just as shatter-proof as the ones in the trunk, but the steering wheel proved to not be as invincible when I accidentally tore it straight off the dashboard out of frustration. Behind me, Conor had a very steady string of loud profanities on a continuous loop as he couldn’t manage to outsmart the trunk door or his handcuffs. He slammed his hands against the door until he started to bleed, the scent reaching me before I could snap my head to look back at him. Before he could even try to blot away the blood, the wound was already closed up perfectly.

 

“Someone gave us something at the hospital,” Conor suddenly said, his eyes going so wide he looked manic. “It’s the only reasonable explanation. They injected us with some weird chemicals and stuff. And the guy who broke in, he had to bring us to a location far away from people. We’re probably being watched. Big Brother: Freak Edition.”

 

“You don’t know we’re far from people,” I tried to point out to him.

 

“Well, I don’t hear or-or smell anyone nearby.”

 

            I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that was stupid, that of course he couldn’t smell someone who wasn’t within a couple feet of him. It took only a second for me to realize he was entirely right. Taking a moment to just sit there, I realized almost instantly just how much I was aware of. The scents of the forest, the earth, the scents that were carried on the air from a small river that had to be at least a mile and a half away. Small animals skittered around the car and birds took off from trees four miles away. Anything close-by was amplified almost exponentially, and it was only then I realized we’d been talking in low whispers since we woke up. It’d sounded so normal to both of us.

 

            And he was right, too, about the lack of people. There was nobody nearby. I couldn’t smell the fumes of a car, or even any gas in the truck’s engine. I inched a little closer to the window, trying not to feel too embarrassed as I took a whiff of the corner of it. I wasn’t used to being able to discern scents so well and so distinctively, but I also knew that whatever I was smelling, it wasn’t natural, or even technically man-made. It almost didn’t seem to be of this planet or dimension. How could I tell all that by a smell? What the hell had this drug done to my brain? Was it just a drug?

 

“Something very weird is going on,” I muttered, leaning my head against the cool of the window to sooth a sudden throbbing headache.

 

“Really? Huh. Hadn’t noticed.”

 

I shot a look at Conor out of the corner of my eyes. “I meant weirder than just creepy science experiments.”

 

            Conor glanced out the window of the opposite side of the trunk, looking as though he was about to give a response. His eyes suddenly locked on something above, though, and for a moment, his entire body went rigid. The only light coming through the branches now was the bright moonlight, and one beam illuminated Conor’s whole face. His eyes quickly dilated before his head snapped to look at me, his teeth bared to reveal sharp canines. I scrambled back more, staring at the points of his teeth that seemed to have grown even sharper and the claws that had gotten longer. His stance was entirely animalistic, with the hair along his arms and face growing thicker.

 

“Conor…” I muttered quietly. “Conor, are you okay?”

 

            He let out a deep growl, not even needing to open his mouth. Where fear should have run through my veins in that moment, adrenaline did. I leapt forward as best I could, trying to shove him to the side and get him to snap out of whatever he was going through. I grabbed the side of the window to steady myself, looking out and catching sight of the full moon as it hung above the trees.

 

            In that moment it almost felt as though pure melted, still boiling silver seeped into my skin and veins, mixing with adrenaline and excitement. Whatever amount of strength I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt now, and I wanted nothing more than to break out of this claustrophobic hell and these chains and run. I wanted to chase. I wanted to hunt. Never in my life have I wanted to be free so badly, and yet never in my life had I been so constrained. It drove me mad. And then the adrenaline and excitement were replaced with an immeasurable fury.

 

            I needed to get out.

 

            Conor and I both started slamming our arms against the windows and scratching at them, even trying to use our teeth to get through the glass. I had no patience for this, and there was no way I was spending my entire night trapped in the trunk of a truck. Conor must have had the very same sentiment as he suddenly threw his whole body across the trunk at the window, only to crumple to the ground and leave not even a sliver in the glass. Our efforts only continued to increase, and the trunk was filled with the sound of snarls and growls we didn’t even process as coming from our own mouths. There was no human thought or rationale that went through our minds, no way to focus on anything other than getting out. What we would do when we got out involved too much planning ahead.

 

            It was tiring, painful work. But all the bruises and cuts healed almost instantly. The handcuffs eventually snapped off from too much stress on the weak chains that were nothing next to our strength that night. The higher the moon rose, the more we needed to break free. It became exhausting, the continual beating and fighting against something that wouldn’t budge. We tore apart the inside of the car, but there was no way for us to break out. Eventually our bodies gave out long before our minds wanted to. The toll we put on our bodies should have been more than any human could withstand. And it was very obvious in that moment that humanity was no longer the species we belonged to.