Hound

By Charlie O’Brien

Fifteen-year-old Bex Ramirez, and her older brother Theodore, have spent the past few years on the road trying to find a place to fit in. They have been lucky so far - dodging hunters as they travel through the midwest. Bex is sick of constantly moving from town to town, and keeps hoping desperately that they will one day settle down. One early morning, the siblings enter the sleepy town of Nora Springs, Iowa, hoping to stay for a few days undetected. However, things are about to get a lot more dangerous for them. The idyllic rural town is not the safe haven they were seeking; and the siblings' arrival have begun to attract attention from the wrong sort of people. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlie O’Brien
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201568375

Book preview

For my amazing niece and nephews

I love you, kiddos.

Ich liebe euch drei Kinder sehr.

CHAPTER ONE

We’d been walking for hours. I wasn’t exactly sure what time it was, but it was a bleak wintry night. We’d started walking at sunset, though that felt like eons ago. Since then, we’d been plunged into a miserable darkness that matched my mood quite well. I couldn’t even distract myself by watching the changing scenery as we trekked across the frozen ground. The highway stretched on for miles, like a darkened ribbon cutting its way through the infinite cornfields and ditches, without a single mountain or large hill. Truth be told, I didn’t like Iowa much. I wasn’t particularly fond of how flat everything was. I was unused to being able to stand in one place, and see so much – I preferred being near the ocean. I guess even after all this time, I was just unused to being landlocked. Didn’t feel natural. I reckoned it probably never would.

I stumbled, my feet nearly betraying me I took another laborious step forward. My feet were two slabs of ice; the numbed lack of feeling in my extremities made me clumsy as I tried to stay upright on the icy road. All of my concentration was simply focused on plodding one foot in front of the other, over and over. It felt like we would never arrive at our destination; time seemed to stand still, as if we’d be trapped walking along this same godforsaken road for the rest of our lives – or, until we froze to death in the ditch along the way.

My body ached. I could feel the chill deep in my bones. And though I wanted desperately to beg my brother for a break, I tried to push past it. I knew that if we stopped and took a break, I might never get started again. I might just sit down in the snow, and never get up again. So onwards I must go.

It was extremely dangerous to fall asleep in the snow. I had read stories online of people doing that during bad snowstorms – they would stop to take a break, and end up getting hyperthermia, or frostbite and losing their hands or feet. People died from exposure all the time. I didn’t want to end up like those poor unfortunate people. I didn’t want to turn into a human popsicle. I felt like those hikers on Mount Everest who had long since perished, used as trail markers. I didn’t want to end up like Green Boots, the man who had died in the extreme conditions more than twenty years ago.

Even for a wolf like me, who could generate more body heat than a regular human, I was still at great risk. My increased body temperature gave me the advantage of staying alive longer in a winter storm like this one. My core temperature was high enough to keep me alive. And yet, my body still craved sleep. My eyelids had been drooping for some time, and my brain felt foggy from being out in the cold for so long.

Maybe it would’ve helped if we’d had enough money to buy decent winter clothes. I was painfully aware of how severely underdressed me and my brother both were. We were from the East Coast, so the concept of snow wasn’t a completely unfamiliar concept. But not like this. I wasn’t accustomed to the harsh Iowan winter, the frigid temperatures, the massive amount of snow.

I wished I had a pair of decent winter boots, or hiking boots. Something with good ankle support, nice treads, and possibly even steel-toes. As it were, I was freezing in my holey socks, and my threadbare jeans. The stinging wind tore through my clothes like a knife, and I wished for the thousandth time that night that we’d have caught a ride out of town, instead of hoofing it like we were currently doing. But the few cars that had passed us hadn’t stopped. They had just kept on going. I had stared so longingly at those receding tail lights, hoping desperately that one of the drivers would take pity on us, and let us hop in the back. Even for just part of the ride, just to warm up. But they hadn’t, and so we had no choice but to plough through the thick, heavy snow.

I had been hoping to travel through Iowa in a few months’ time. Preferably May, Or June, when the area was much warmer. I think it’d have been nice, then. But things hadn’t gone according to plan. We’d been forced to move through the state a few months earlier than we’d expected.

My older brother, Theodore, had a pair of light brown waterproof, insulated Carhartt boots. He’d bought them at a thrift store when we’d passed through Peoria a few months ago. He’d bought them for thirty bucks, which was a pretty damned good deal, since we were broke, and I knew for a fact that they were worth about five times that at retail price. They were half a size too big for them, but that was okay. We’d stuffed wads of toilet paper into the boots to help them fit (and to cut down on the chafing). Besides, it was so cold that Theodore was always wearing two pairs of socks. One regular thin pair he’d got at the shelter a month back, and another thicker woolly pair of socks over that.

He’d grow into those boots soon enough, I was certain of that. Theodore had had another growth spurt recently. I knew this to be true, because when he lifted up his arms over his head, Theodore’s thin wrists stuck out of his long-sleeved shirts, as his sleeves failed to cover his wrists properly. It’d be time to go shopping soon enough, whenever we got enough money. His pants were barely reaching his boots anymore; they now tended to sit above his ankle bone, which meant that he constantly had to tug them down. His jeans were letting snow into his boots much more frequently than they should.  Mine were, too.

I didn’t mind clothes shopping. Thrift stores were relatively cheap, and although the majority of their clothes were outdated fashion, I liked sifting through the merchandise until I found a nice gem or two. Best part was always that whenever we had to get Theodore new clothes, I’d get to keep his old ones (at least, the ones that were in good condition), and we’d toss the rest into the bin at Sally Ann’s, or in the trash, if they were ripped or stained beyond repair.

We’d left Floyd in the evening, at my brother’s insistence. He didn’t like staying in one place for too long. I suppose he thought it was too risky, because maybe someone might catch on to who we were. Or rather, what we were. That was Theodore’s way - we had to keep moving; that was the only way to stay ahead of the curve. They can’t catch us if we keep moving, and hopefully, they’d leave us alone if we kept our heads down and tried to blend in.

If it had been up to me, I’d have stayed in Floyd for a few days longer. The town had seemed relatively safe, and though it was a small town, I found it to be quite aesthetically pleasing. Even in the end of March, when everything was shrouded in snow, I still found that it was beautiful. Snow-covered houses and trees made for good pictures, but it sucked to always feel so frozen to the bone. I had taken a few pictures of the area, enjoying the greyish-pink mist, as the snowflake fell to the ground, collecting together in tiny clumps on people’s eyelashes, and on their jackets. I had taken a few photos of Theodore that had turned out quite well; he was very photogenic, even if he sometimes got annoyed by the sheer number of photos I took during our travels.

But no matter how much I would’ve liked to have stayed longer in Floyd, it wasn’t my decision to make. Theodore was the eldest. He was the one that chose when we stayed (which was rare), and when we packed up and moved on. It was Theodore who had found the rural town questionable; he habitually had bad vibes from places or people, and we would move on. Sometimes I wished that more of our decisions were fifty-fifty, but that wasn’t the case. And when I did protest or try to change his mind about a decision, he would often choose to overrule my vote. He was the eldest; that was how we’d always done things, how our parents had taught us. They’d instilled in us the importance of having a leader. All his life, Theodore had been told he would be the Alpha when he was old enough to form his own pack. I envied him a little, although I knew that being an Alpha was not just a great leadership position – it was also quite burdensome. The pack’s safety must always come first, above all else. The world wasn’t always accommodating for werewolves, or other such creatures. Alone, we were vulnerable. In a pack, wolves were strong.

In the past, Theodore has told me how he finds it annoying that I always cling to each new place that we pass through. Time and again, he’s told me not to get too attached to places or people that cross our path; they’re all temporary people, and temporary towns. Most times, we only stay a night or two before moving on. This has been our norm for four years running. There have been so many towns, so many long endless greyhound trips across state lines when we could afford that luxury, so many freight trains we’d hopped, highways we’d hitchhiked, that many of the places we’d encountered had disappeared from memory. Many of them have blended together in a giant mess, until I can only remember them in glimpses, street names, or businesses flashing into my mind.

I reckon that if it weren’t for my meticulous field journal, I’d have easily forgotten the majority of places we’d stepped foot in by the time we’d left the town’s limits. I wrote down what town or city we stayed in, the duration, and who we met on the road. It was partially out of necessity, but also for my own records. I just wanted to be able to look back, and reread the names and places, to jog my memory. And as much as I’d hate to admit it, I know that Theodore is mostly right – I fell in love with places so easily, because I wanted to put down roots. I wanted to stay in one place long enough to form memories, and to live in a proper house again. I wanted to stay in one place, even though I know deep down that that would put us in too much danger – it would jeopardize everything Theodore and I have worked for. I couldn’t do that to him.

As I walked down the highway, my feet sinking into slushy, grey snow on the edge of the road, all I could think about was my next hot meal. I yawned, wondering where we’d stay once we arrived in Nora Springs. We hadn’t done any research as to campgrounds, or cheap hotels in the area. I suppose Theodore was planning on winging it. He did that sometimes. Mostly, he was methodical. He had everything mapped out on his phone, lists of hostels, and the occasional place we could crash – friends of our late parents, or people he regularly conversed with online. People who were sympathetic to our plight, or the occasional punk house that let us crash at their house for the night.

I thought back on our recent travels. Earlier, we had caught a ride with a trucker in Shell Rock, where we’d camped out in the woods for two days. Nearly froze my ass off out there, when we’d woken up to six inches of fresh snow on the ground in the morning, the snow quickly accumulating as we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed the tent.

Theodore had gotten spooked, when this group of men had stared at us from across the restaurant when we’d eaten lunch at Dugan’s restaurant. I figured it was probably because we were in great need of a shower and a washing machine, and we had our huge backpacks sitting on the seats opposite us. I don’t know if they meant us any harm, but Theodore had insisted that it was too big a risk to stay. Before that, we’d stayed in Cedar Falls in an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of town.

This was the norm for the past few years, living out of our backpacks. Sometimes, I’d imagine that Theodore and I were backpacking across Europe, trying to make our eccentric lifestyle seem more intriguing. But truth be told, I had never set foot outside the United States. Mom was from Saskatchewan, but she’d moved stateside in her teens. That’s when she’d met Dad. I didn’t even have a passport, or anything. I didn’t have a home address, or a phone number. I was untethered by all that stuff, I guess. Theodore had a phone, but it was a cheap burner phone he’d bought at the drugstore in Sioux Falls last year. And we barely used it to call anyone. He mostly had it to keep in contact with some of our friends, people who he trusted implicitly to let them know what town we were in, what our next destination was. More of a business contact, than anything else. We used it mostly to pick up free wifi whenever we could find it. I had never had a phone of my own. I missed my friends, most of who I hadn’t talked to in ages. I couldn’t relate to them anymore. We’d left town abruptly when I was eleven, and Theodore was thirteen. Four years, but it felt like twice that.

I tugged my toque down over my ears, my breath coming out in tiny white puffs. I was glad for my layers – undershirt, long sleeved Henley, t-shirt, hoody, jacket. Even so, I was freezing. At least I had a toque, and mitts. I had a spare set of dry gloves in my bag, but I didn’t want to take off my backpack to dig them out. My hands were so frozen, that I didn’t know if I’d even be able to unzip the damned thing.

We were walking along