Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I don’t agree with that, but he doesn’t care. My father feels justified in what he did and all the arguing in the world isn’t going to change it. I didn’t want to see him again. He didn’t look for me, and I didn’t look for him.
I turn. “I’m going to go back to the city,” I tell him. “You can keep the rest of them. If this is what they want, this is what they can have. Good luck to all of you.”
“Not so fast,” he says, gripping me by the arm. “You’re staying here.”
“Why? You told me I made my choice, now let me make it.” I try to pull away, but his grip tightens on me.
“Uh-uh,” he says. “I don’t want a daughter of mine giving birth to a Regent pup. I’ve got a better idea. You stay here. With us. You embrace the thing you were always meant to be. All you need is enough flesh.”
“What does that mean?”
“The more you have, the more you will want to have. The more you hunger, the more you feed, the more you understand what it is to consume the weak, the stronger you become.”
He hauls me through the encampment to a big tent at the back. Inside this tent is a commercial large dog crate designed to keep a German Shepherd or similar sized dog. There are chew and claw marks all over it, and when he pushes me down and into it, I find that it has a stinking blanket and nothing else.
“Why?” I ask the question, already knowing the answer. He wants revenge on the version of me that didn’t become the one he thought I should be.
“When is a better question,” he says. “And the answer to that is as long as it takes.”
* * *
There is one cage in this den, and that is the one I find myself in.
“You’ll get hungry, and when you do, you’ll eat the way you used to.”
“What do you mean, used to?”
He grins, flashing white teeth that are at odds with the rust-red stains of his sins. “I fed you well as a pup,” he says. “You were such a good eater when you were small.”
Thankfully we are interrupted before he can play ‘here comes the airplane’ with the flesh of a human being. One of the lookouts comes scooting in with a great deal of exuberance.
“Regent hunters are out at the road,” the scout says. “Oh, hi, Nicky.”
I give a small wave from inside the crate. No point getting too dramatic about this. I am going to try to use my sway with them once my father goes out to do something psychotic. It won’t be long before he feels the need to hunt and kill. That is the one thing I know about him for sure.
“Run them off,” he says. “I’ll move the girl. Help me with her crate first.”
With the assistance of a guy who used to answer to me, my father loads my crate onto the back of an old pickup.
Forestry trails this deep are often not maintained and rarely drivable, but of course my father has found a way around that. Tracks have been cut into the bush from the back, and they run around the park and I guess probably eventually join up with a road somewhere nobody expects them to.
“Rex is going to find me,” I tell him as he starts strapping my crate down. “He won’t let me go.”
“What makes you so certain he cares that much about you?”
“I owe him for a new bed,” I deadpan.
My father laughs. “More than I needed to know, but I’m sure you’re right.”
“That’s not what I meant. You’re not going to be able to outrun Regent in this old bucket. He has helicopters.”
“Yes. And I am sure he deployed them when you first fled, and yet I am the one who has you, and you’ve killed someone. Forgive me if I don’t rate your overfunded pretty boy.”
He gets in the truck and starts driving. Behind us, I see the strays covering over the tracks with leaves and brush. They had this planned well enough that anybody who comes this way is going to think they’ve just found a camp of unhoused people.
But the wolves will smell better. They’ll know better. There’s no way…
My father turns the wheel hard right and into a riverbed where the river flows. This is going to be much harder to follow. But still, Rex will know if the track doesn’t continue on the other side that we had to go one way or the other.
He’s going to find me.
The rickety rocking of the crate going back and forth over the riverbed makes me feel ill. It goes on for what feels like miles. Then we get onto another path that eventually leads inside a tunnel. At first, I am afraid that my mad father has driven into a train tunnel. Then I realize it’s a mine, and that is not much better. In fact, I’m going to say it is worse. Train tunnels sometimes have a light at the end of them. Mines don’t. The further in we go, the deeper, darker, and more dangerous it is going to get.