Wolves Read Online Free Page B

listen. To triangulate on the sound of the gunfire. It is growing sparse now. But other things are growing louder, and now Huxley cannot blame it on his imagination. He cannot blame it on the wind. The sound of it is very clear.
    Screaming.
    There is a certain quality to it that Huxley has heard before and it strikes him down so hard, he actually halts and goes to a knee, feels like his chest is being compressed. It is not the screams of men. It is the screams of women and children. It is not mournful. It is electrically charged, and it makes his blood run cold and boil all at once. It is terror and anguish, with nothing left to hold it back.
    â€œWhat are they doing?” he chokes.
    â€œYou know what they’re doing,” Jay hisses back.
    Huxley knows. He knows very well what they are doing, because he’s seen it before. Those screams are the sound of children watching their fathers’ throats being cut, watching their mothers thrown to the ground and raped. It is the sound of men being as cruel as they can imagine how to be.
    Huxley kneels in the dirt, shaking. If I had a gun , he keeps thinking.
    But even if he had a gun, it would still be two on ten.
    Ahead of them there is just the slightest berm in the dirt, and beyond that a dip in the land. Huxley knows that this slight valley is where the massacre is happening. It is less than half a mile from them, but he stays where he is. Because there is nothing that he can do. Nothing but listen to the sounds and let them eat away at him.
    He looks at dirt. Closes his eyes. Be still , he tells himself. Be still and let it wash over you. You are a stone at the bottom of a river. You are hard rock. The water wears you down, but it only makes you smoother. And the smoother and harder you are, the less the flow can affect you.
    This is the only way to make it. This is the only way to think clearly in the midst of all of this. You have to harden yourself. You have to convince yourself that it won’t affect you. It doesn’t affect you. You are river rock.
    After a time, the screams are not so horrible.
    The gunfire tapers off. The screaming peters out. Now there are occasional shouts. The sound of laughter drifting over the desert wind. The sun dies in the west. In the east, a fire begins to glow.
    â€œThey’re making camp,” Jay says. He is sitting with his legs folded under him, picking at a piece of dry grass, his movements sharp and bitter.
    â€œMaybe they’re just burning things,” Huxley says.
    They stay put for another hour, and in that time all sound stops, and the glow of the fire wans. Huxley is thirsty, he remembers, because his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth. And he needs food. They cannot sit there forever. Even if it is dark. They are just sitting out in the open. And maybe … 
    â€œMaybe there’s water,” Huxley says quietly.
    Jay makes an ugly noise.
    Huxley labors to his feet. “I think they left. I don’t think they’re making camp there.”
    Jay flicks his fingertips. “Alright. Let’s check it out.”
    They creep forward, quickly at first, but as they approach the top of the small rise that will provide them a view of the slight valley, they slow down and crawl on their bellies. At the top of the hill they look over at the dark land that spreads out in front of them. The only way they can tell anything is there in all the darkness is because there are two fires still burning, though the flames are low.
    It is enough to just barely illuminate what is around. They cannot see details. But they can see the stillness. Whatever is around those two fires, it isn’t alive. The slavers did not camp here tonight.
    Huxley and Jay squirm their way over the top of the rise, so the blooming stars will not backlight their silhouettes and give them away, even though Huxley is almost certain that there is no one there. No one alive, anyway. He circles the camp a bit, heading