Alice

The very air inside the diner spelled disaster. And that, too, in the middle of the week. I’d only been in Rapid Falls a week and had only started this job two days ago, but even I knew the diner, which normally hosted truckers and lumberjacks as its main patrons, was never this empty. Not at eight P.M.

My heart began racing in my chest. I turned around, hoping Estelle, the diner manager, would be there, making some semi-racist remark about it being hard times due to this or that. But Estelle wasn’t there. What’s worse was that the backdoor was locked. Reason failed me as fear started seeping in from every pore. From the window, I could make out the outlines of the burly figures standing in wait, but not much else. Not the shape of the passing colors, not the lush conifers that rose along the slopes of the hill, and not the sight of the moon either.

Black shadows against a blacker nothingness. They stood there menacingly, ambushing the front of the diner. My gut told me that there would be some in the back as well. Escape was not an option.

The only person besides me in the diner was a guy wearing a cap with the American map drawn on it. He took occasional sips from his black coffee. He seemed to be completely unaffected by the sudden emptiness of the diner and by the sudden appearance of the shadows in the parking lot.

My fingers dialed 9-1-1 on my cellphone, then I remembered that you could actually end up going to jail if you were making a fraudulent call. I slid the phone back into my pocket. My hands did wrap around the abominably humungous kitchen knife that was still lying on the shelf from fifteen minutes ago when I’d sliced the apple pie into eight pieces.

I tucked the knife behind me and started making my way to the backdoor. It was a synchronized movement. As I moved a step backward, the shadows approached. I could see their eyes glowing red. It might be the neon sign of the diner reflecting on the surface of their eyes, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Hey, excuse me, sir,” I said, my voice barely a whimper. “But we’re closing the diner. You’re going to have to leave.”

Back in Chicago, this sort of thing wouldn’t fly. For one, I’d never worked at a diner back in Chicago. No, I was a dignified indie quality-assurance tester at a game development studio back in the Windy City. We didn’t get pop-ins from strange-looking men unless they were some artsy, bohemian voice recorders. The closest Rapid Falls had to a game development studio was a store that sold pirated PlayStations and Xboxes at half the market price with all the big games pre-installed. Between that and the only other job opening in this town, I decided to be a waiter at Pablo’s Diner. A girl needed to earn.

The man at the end of the diner didn’t regard me at all. He kept slurping his coffee. If only I could make out his face or any other prominent feature that would let me identify him. The only thing I could tell was that he was a lumberjack, given his plaid shirt, his leather jacket, his work boots, and his ripped jeans. He was as tall and broad as the men waiting outside.

Panic gripped me the more I stayed in my position, my hold on the knife tightening, leaving a mark on my palm.

What happened next, happened fast.

The trail of dark clouds in the sky cleared, giving way to the full moon as it shone brightly on the dark landscape outside. This seemed to drive the twelve hunkering men into a frenzy. They raced toward the door maddeningly.

I rushed for the backdoor, the knife still in my hand. I shot one look at the guy at the counter. He seemed unfazed by any of the proceedings, still sipping his coffee. There could not have been that much coffee in his mug. At this point, I was sure the guy was feigning.

I could hear the crash of the doors behind me but couldn’t afford to look behind. I threw myself onto the backdoor. As it happened, it was locked from the outside, but given my inertia and the force of the impact, I threw it open, leaving it barely hanging on the hinges.

Sometimes, my feats of strength left me feeling amazed at my potential. This wasn’t one of those times. After decades of being banged recklessly by line cooks, waiters, and managers, the backdoor was just a flimsy excuse of a partition, nothing more.

My body froze in terror as I stared at the scene behind the diner. Estelle, it turned out, hadn’t ran. She lay dead in a pool of her own blood, her neck ripped out, her face etched with terror.

Kneeling over her, with its muzzle dripping crimson, was an unnaturally large wolf. This time there was no neon sign to confuse me about the red coming out of its eyes. The glow came from the wolf’s eyes, that was for certain.

Instinctively, I brought my knife up in front of me, even though I knew that it would do nothing to save me from the monstrosity now creeping up to me, growling, snarling its teeth.

“Running won’t do you favors, little girl,” the wolf said. Yet it didn’t move its mouth. I could somehow hear his voice inside my head.

Behind me, there was a steep slope leading to the top of Rapid Fall’s tallest hill. Beyond that was the reservation. Regular folks such as me weren’t allowed there, but between life and death, what choice did I have?

I threw the knife at the approaching wolf, and without seeing if it had struck its mark, I used that moment of distraction to climb up the slope. I heard a high-pitched yelp come from behind, meaning my knife had indeed found purchase somewhere in the wolf’s body.

I didn’t have time to turn back and look. The more I climbed the hill, the steeper it got. I used the trees for support as I crawled up on all fours, heading faster for the hilltop. How was it that I had heard the wolf speak?

I was on my meds. Mom made it certain that I stuck to the schedule ever since the fiasco in Chicago. I was sure that I hadn’t hallucinated the voice, just as I hadn’t hallucinated those men standing outside the diner (or were they really men?), just as I hadn’t hallucinated Estelle lying dead on the ground.

If this was how I was meant to die, so be it. At least I would face my death with some semblance of bravery and courage. I would make my last stand on the top of the hill.