Adaptation: book I (2 page)

“You would have been wolf food if I hadn’t. Get some rest, Carmella. We’ll talk in the morning. I broke a pain capsule open into some water and spooned it into you. You’ll be sleepy for a while, but maybe you’ll sleep through some of the pain. I had to sew your leg up, but it only took six stitches, one on each puncture.” The old woman smiled ruefully.

Carmella considered the likelihood of a staph infection. Maybe it was the mention of the painkillers or the trauma of her attack, but Carmella fell asleep.

When she awoke, Carmella’s bladder felt as if it would explode. She slid off the side of the bed gingerly, and as she stood, her leg nearly buckled when pain flared in her calf. She sat and pulled up her pants leg to examine the wound. Although covered in a clean bandage, it had begun to seep. She carefully pried the tape away exposing an angry wound, the uninjured flesh ringed with iodine. Relieved, she secured the bandage. Maggie might have been dirty, but she knew to keep a wound clean.

Carmella stood and stumbled out of the room on the narrow path through the trash, careful not to topple towers of junk rising to the ceiling on either side of her. “Maggie?”

She came to a landing with a stairwell leading down. Boxes stacked to the ceiling lined the corridor, and Carmella tried not to lean against them as she limped to the stairs. How had that skinny old woman managed to get her up these stairs?

Carmella eased down the stairs and looked around. What should have been a living room on her right was a mess of chaos. At least upstairs there was some semblance of order. It was as if someone had flung trash into the room. Another room to her left was in a similar state. Rotting food, opened cans, and human and animal waste littered the floor.

Grimacing, Carmella made her way outside. “Maggie?”

A cat came scurrying out the door and almost made Carmella fall.

“Carmella,” Maggie called. “Come down around the side. I’m picking tomatoes. There’s a patch of poison ivy so leave it be. Leaves of three, leave it be.”

Carmella followed the voice and saw the woman tending to a small garden. Maggie had a basket filled with fresh lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and Carmella’s stomach groaned in hunger.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Maggie smiled.

“Good morning. Um, where can I …”

“Pee? Anywhere you want. You gotta poop, there’s toilet tissue in the spare room upstairs.”

“Anywhere?” Carmella looked around.

“God don’t care and neither do I.”

Later they ate a salad dressed in vinegar and oil.

“Have you seen any people come through here?” Carmella asked as they sat on the porch.

Maggie speared a slice of tomato and plunged it into her mouth. “No.” She chewed. “Not since the Blobs carried the people away on the trucks. I’d hear the trucks morning noon and night for months. And then it just stopped.” Maggie stopped chewing and stared off into the distance. “I hid. They come through here looking. But they couldn’t find me. I guess they thought the place was abandoned. They
ain’t been back. Didn’t have the manpower to check a place twice. Man power.” She laughed. “Why didn’t you go with them?”

How could she even ask that? She stared at the old woman. “Because I’m a human and this is my home. And no fucking alien is going to come down and force me away from it!” She placed her hand on her belly and thought about Micah and Jody. They were buried here on earth, and here is where she would stay.

Micah …

Her breath hitched in her chest. They’d killed her baby, and the rest of them could believe their lies but she wouldn’t. She knew their purpose had been to take the humans. It had been their plan all along. The Blobs. That name was a kindness they didn’t deserve.
They were a scourge that brought the ultimate genocide against the entire human race. And after the mass death and suicides, what was left was carried away to Earth 2.

But there was no Earth 2. There was only Earth! The other was only an alien world, and she would kill anyone or anything that tried to take her from her world!

She stayed with Maggie while she healed and was expected to stay on. It was unsaid. Humans who had found each other would naturally gravitate to each other. Maggie, however, could not tolerate having her things touched. She had allowed Carmella to stay but hadn’t given her a space. When she had tried to move some things into the hallway and out of a spare bedroom, Maggie had gone into a tirade.

“Where is my cat? I can’t find my cat!” Maggie searched hours for Kitty, the cat that Carmella had inadvertently allowed to escape the week before. Carmella carried her gun and went out searching for the cat, not wanting to admit to what she’d done. And despite being deathly afraid of wolves, she searched for hours, never finding Kitty.

When she had gone back to the farmhouse, all of the items that Carmella had moved out of the spare bedroom had been returned—
and
more.

“I can’t
find
anything when you move shit around!” Maggie screamed. “Just leave it all alone! Don’t touch my things!”

Carmella had said nothing, and the next day Maggie had calmed although still distraught about the missing cat. She left a can of tuna sitting out on the front porch and wrung her hands.

“Kitty will be all right, Maggie,” Carmella said. “Animals adapt to the wild, even when they’re domesticated.”

Maggie picked at the lice in her hair sullenly.

“Maggie,” Carmella said, broaching a subject she knew had to be discussed. “When was the last time you bathed? Honey, your hair needs a good scrubbing. You have things living in it.”

“Fuck you,” Maggie said, turning cold eyes on her. “You let my cat out, didn’t you? Admit it! You let her out!”

“She—I didn’t know you had a cat and—”

Maggie flew at her with her hands clawed, going for her face. If Carmella hadn’t fallen the woman would have gouged out her eyes.

“Bitch!” Maggie screamed. “Bitch! You let my baby get away!”

Maggie was stronger than she looked, and it took all that she had to keep Maggie’s gnarled hands from her face. Carmella had to knee Maggie in the stomach to end the attack.

“You’re crazy!” Carmella screamed. “I didn’t mean it! It was an accident!”

She ran into the house and grabbed her satchel. She didn’t want the clothes because they were probably infested with lice, but she needed her satchel and her guns. She hurried down the stairs where Maggie was waiting for her with a knife.

“You’re insane.” Carmella raised her hands to show that she wasn’t holding a weapon. “I’m leaving, okay? Don’t worry. I’ll be out of your hair.”

“You’re not leaving me, too! You’re staying!”

Carmella’s heart began to pound in her chest. “I’m not a pet, Maggie. You can’t keep me locked in the house like I’m some damned animal!”

Maggie looked confused, dropped the knife, and shook her head. “I’m—no
no no. You can stay. I won’t …”

Carmella relaxed. “I can’t live like this. I’m sorry.” She rushed past the woman, who grabbed for her with strong hands, but Carmella easily shook her loose. She ran for her bike, tossing her satchel over her shoulder. She had to kick-start it with her injured leg, and it would hurt but she soon forgot about that when she saw Maggie come rushing out of the house holding the knife and yelling like a wild woman.

Carmella cursed and kick-started the bike. She gunned it into life, almost flipping it when she added too much gas.

Maggie shrieked and brought back her arm, stabbing down as Carmella took off in a cloud of dust.

Carmella sat
in her kitchen
eating
her dinner. Her time with Maggie had caused her to garner certain habits. She washed daily and kept her dreadlocks neat and tidy. She kept her farmhouse in immaculate condition, sweeping, dusting, and mopping on a regular basis, maybe even to excess. She never allowed her trash to accumulate, and once a week she carried the unusable portion to the pit.

But not on Sundays.

On Sundays she had her bath, cooked Sunday dinner, read some, and sat out on the porch hoping that Wolf would come by to visit. She always saved the chicken butt for him, and if he didn’t show up, she placed it in the icebox until he did come. Then she’d warm it up on her cook stove and put it in his special bowl for him and the pups.

She smiled to herself. She’d finished the paperback book by the time it had grown dark, and with a sigh she ambled inside and lit the kerosene lantern. Maybe Wolf would come tomorrow. She thought about Maggie and she thought about Kitty, whom she had carelessly released. The cat had probably never returned to the woman, unlike Wolf. He always returned home. That was another difference between the two women. Carmella hadn’t kept Wolf a prisoner.

It had taken her several months after leaving Maggie’s farm to find her new home. By then she was on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. The farm had evidently served as a horse farm though the horses had long since left by the time she had arrived. The barn was the deciding factor. She had an unreasonable fear of wolves. and the barn was large enough to house the animals she wanted to keep locked away at night. The house itself was simple from the outside, but inside the prior inhabitants had spent a great deal of money making it a nice home. There was a chicken coop, a pen for pigs, and a large garden that was sadly overgrown.

And Carmella loved it.

Many of the chickens were still present, and a horse once showed up and took off, but Carmella had to find the cows—which attracted the bull, a goat, and some wild turkeys. It was a lot of hard work. The wolves kept picking off the chickens and killed the goat in the middle of the day. Although scared, she got her rifle and guns and went out hunting. It was early spring but still cold, snow covering the ground. It was her first winter there, and she assumed the bitter cold was what made the wolves desperate enough to approach the farm during the day.

It wasn’t hard to follow their tracks so she was thankful for the cold weather. The trail of blood helped as well. After a few hours she came to a cave. Damn! Even a fool knew better than to go into a cave with wolves. But she didn’t have to worry. Two scrawny wolves came out, baring teeth and growling aggressively. Carmella didn’t think, shooting and killing them both. She didn’t need their pelts. She could easily go to Macy’s or Walmart or any number of department stores up in Cincinnati for all the clothes her heart desired. But it was a shame to waste the fresh meat. As she prepared to butcher one of the animals, she heard a sound that made her heart slow.

It was the sound of a wolf puppy crying.

Carmella cursed as she looked at the gaunt animal carcasses. Damn, a family of wolves. They had been trying to feed their babies. It was stupid, she knew, but she crawled carefully into the cave and saw a ball of fur whining in the corner. Just one. Carmella reached out, and the pup sniffed her hand, crawling to her without hesitation. Something in Carmella’s chest seemed to open up and flare to life. She picked up the little pup and held it by the scruff of its neck while she examined it critically. Shit, he was a little boy who pissed and whined, but he was too adorable. Carmella placed it into her coat and followed her tracks back home. She didn’t have the heart to eat his parents.

She named the pup Wolf. She didn’t want to give the little one a real name because she hoped not to become too attached. But Wolf became a welcome distraction from her tedious life. He was so cute, and his antics caused her to laugh often. She bathed him and brushed his fur, and to keep Wolf from crying all night, she let him cuddle against her in bed. She carried him up and down the stairs until he learned to do it on his own. He once jumped at a mouse and cowered in the corner, whining for her to rescue him. He hid under the bed whenever he left a mess on the floor. And if she couldn’t find him, she knew to search for his mess. She took him with her while she hunted and taught him how to corral the animals without killing a chicken.

As he grew to full size, Wolf continued to be as gentle as ever and still tried to climb into her lap for a nap or into her bed to fall asleep against her warm body. She knew that she was every bit Wolf’s mother as the one she had slaughtered, and he had become her child. Not that she missed Micah any less. But having Wolf allowed her to stop thinking about her own lost child, and for a while her hatred receded.

One day when they had gone out to corral the animals, Wolf became distracted and sniffed the area. He threw his head back and howled, the sound making her skin crawl. Carmella had never heard him make such a sound. It took her a long time to get him to come back home, and that night he was restless. Carmella wouldn’t let him out, and he whined at the door all night long. As soon as she went out the next morning to milk the cows, Wolf dashed out and went running at full speed into the field.

“Wolf!” She ran after him with only a pistol in the waistband of her jeans, but it didn’t take long for Wolf to disappear from her sight. All she could do was scream out his name. “Wolf!” When she thought about Kitty and what she’d done to Maggie all those years ago, she began to cry hysterically as she apologized over and over.