Pack Read Online Free Page B

nodded. He pointed at me. “Piz?”
    â€œLydia,” I corrected, and succeeded in rolling over. How long had I been out?
    â€œLeeee-dah.” He nodded again, pointed at himself. “Piz?”
    â€œHuck.” I pushed myself upright on shaking arms. The trailer wasn’t a wreck, like it might have been if I’d been out of commission for longer than overnight. “Huckleberry.”
    â€œHuck.” He could say that with little trouble. A satisfied smile dawned on his small face. “ Huck. ”
    It stank in here, but the reek was comforting. So many smells my head reeled, flashing through me and telling me all sorts of disconnected, jumbled things. Boy-smell, me-smell, Oscar-smell, all clearly distinguishable, and ghosts of the former owners of the trailer, as well. The ugly stink of things outside that sent a shiver up my back, a prickling rasping against my filthy shirt.
    The boy hopped down. Amazingly light on his feet, but the whole trailer rocked. He was heavy because of muscle packed onto his skinny frame.
    I peered through the hole in my jeans. No trace of the bite. Nothing. Smooth, unmarked flesh.
    What the hell?
    Oscar buried his nose in my hair. The ecstasy of licking continued, and when I started shoving his nose away so I could run my hands over him he thought it was a game and rolled onto his back, his fluffy belly exposed and his ribs whole under his skin. Not even tender, given by how he begged for a good scratching all over.
    That wasn’t a dream. I scrubbed at the crust on my face while Oscar wriggled, trying to induce me to keep up the petting. The stuff on my top lip would not budge.
    If it wasn’t a dream, then what was it? I looked at the kid, he looked at me, and my nose twitched.
    Those eyes, the iris and lids swallowing the whites. His shoulders bulking out as he lowered himself, fine fur racing over his narrow, blood- and mud-spotted chest as his bones crackled.
    The air left me again. Not human.
    But he wasn’t Other either, was he? He’d driven them off, and bathed in the fire. Saved Oscar.
    Was he Other? Or had the world been weirder than anyone guessed even before the lights in the sky and the claws in the dark?
    Did it matter?
    â€œGod,” I whispered, and put my head down between my knees. Nausea roared through me, but at least I didn’t throw up.
    Whatever he was, the kid was mine now. And by the prickling all over my arms and legs, fur poking through skin with a wild-sweet pain, I began to get an idea of what had actually happened.
    I couldn’t afford to go crazy-hallucinating, and I couldn’t afford to go batshit trying to deny what my own eyes were telling me. If I could teach Huck to talk, I could maybe ask a couple questions, and figure all this out.
    Which would be nice, but it didn’t change the basic fact I’d woken up with while my hometown rocked with screams and wailing and crunch-slurping all around me one cold winter night.
    Survive first. Figure out the rest of it later.
    Â Â 
    By the time sunset came we were miles away and moving at a steady clip on the deserted freeway. I was guessing that the lights in the sky would be coming a lot further south tonight. There was a campground an hour or so away, or we could just keep moving.
    Oscar sat next to me on the truck’s bench seat, as usual, tongue lolling. The kid had his face pressed against the wind coming through his half-open window, and snuffled deeply every so often. I didn’t blame him; the smells were concentrated, hitting the brain like a mainlined drug, and I had to keep my window up and my hand cupped over my mouth to filter out some of the distraction.
    The ridge of scar on my top lip, as if I’d had a harelip, too, was sensitive. The tear healed quickly, but I was guessing something happened to the shape of the mouth when the…fur…came. Other things shifted around too, but I didn’t have time to experiment now.
    The