Red Moon Rising

21. deep

Chapter Song: SAIL - AWOLNATION

XX

Fuck me for choosing to travel so far from civilization. Fuck civilization for driving me away. Fuck those trappers for ruining my arm.

The first aid kit in Mikey's backpack was largely useless, but I did clean the wound before bandaging it with strips of cloth from the bottom of his shirt. I used his belt to fashion a sort of sling, which I've tried to conceal beneath the collar of Cameron's shirt. I'm wearing clothing from two men whose blood was just in my mouth. I'm eating the food that I stole from their packs. And as the evening wears steadily into night, I find it hard to summon remorse for killing them. Truthfully, it was me or them. I have no doubt that Mikey was telling the truth about what they had planned for me, and what he would do to me if I didn't comply. And I have no doubt that I'm not the first one he'd said those words to. But the thought that I try to push away now is that moment by the stream, after I'd washed the last bit of blood out of the flannel.

Cameron's scent still clung to the shirt, and it occurred to me that I could follow that scent to wherever they came from. That maybe they were staying in the aforementioned cabin, and that maybe there would be others there who would have wished me the kind of suffering that these two intended to deliver. Maybe, I could have killed the rest of them.

My thoughts keep slipping back to the idea, of leaving a trail of blood behind me as I pass through northwestern Minnesota. But my right arm, my dominant arm, is worthless to me now. I won't even be able to walk properly if I shift. And I've never even shot a pistol, only a rifle—unfortunately you need two hands to hold one of those. It's the idea of it that make me grit my teeth, that for a moment I thought about killing beyond when I'm defending myself. I'm not necessarily a pacifist—I think that shitty people sometimes need shitty things to happen to them—but I've never had a penchant for murder. There was only one time before, when I thought about killing someone, and it wasn't some impulse like this. I'd planned exactly how I would do it.

I would have killed them, too, if not for my dad and Cam. It was three years ago, the night after Tasha was raped. She'd gone into town with dad and Patrick to get supplies, and someone correctly guessed that they were traveling from Rust Cove. It was only a second that she fell behind, but two men pulled her into the back of a pickup truck and drove off before either of them could do anything. Tom set the whole department looking for her, but most of his uniforms weren't interested, and those that did give a shit couldn't find her anywhere. It was Tom that finally came across her, beaten and bloody in a ditch west of Grand Marais. I'll never forget the sight of him carrying her from his cruiser toward our house, her body looking frail and tiny wrapped in his coat. He'd begged her to go to the hospital, to get a rape kit, to press charges. But Tasha said that they'd used condoms, and they had Nebraska plates. Any difficulty we already had prosecuting across pack lines would be multiplied a hundredfold over state lines.

I think it was the first time that Tom fully understood exactly what's at stake for us. We were in the middle of another treaty negotiation at the time that would extend our legal protections under U.S. law for personal injury. Tasha told him in the way only she can, more adult than she ought to be, that pursuing the matter when there wasn't enough evidence, when we technically couldn't pursue a legal case anyway, would only complicate current negotiations. Tom could only drive back to his precinct, intent that if he ever found the men he'd put the fear of god in them and nothing more.

That night, I borrowed a rifle from the stock and began to head east through our territory. Because I'd realized something, lying awake in bed—Jim Jacobs had mentioned two weeks earlier that his cousins from Nebraska would be visiting for a hunting trip. He tells us these things so we'll have an understanding that, when the full moon comes, he and his buddies will be ready for us if we step foot onto his property. Somewhere inside of me, I'd already decided to kill every man in that house.