(Free To Read) Bad Moon chapter 47; run

One more day. Twenty-four fleeting hours until the bad moon.

A day had come and passed, and from what Gunner had told him, his next shower was due.

They want you clean. Of lice, or ticks, or anything that could possibly carry your blood to another person, he’d said in one too many words. The showers burn, I know. It’s their way of disinfecting you. They’ll get hotter. Come soon, they’ll shave you down, stick you in that wheelchair and roll you off to the exam room. You need to get out before that happens, kid. Once they have you sedated, that’s it. They’re going to start test after test. And you’ll be trapped here. Like me.

So Jaylin laid low and he planned. He planned with a kind of vengeance in his tired, burning chest. All his life he’d been a victim to one person or another, be it Tyler or Eduardo or his own father. He took the short end of the stick all his life and he had grown too tired of disputing his mistreatments to even try anymore. It was as if all this time, he’d been telling himself, don’t fight it; you don’t have the muscles. And he was done with the insecurities and the helplessness and the short ends. He was done being a victim.

The moment he’d taped up the leak in the vents and the heavy bombinate of chemicals had stopped weighing on his brain, so did the helplessness. That pathetic, lifeless, forfeiting feeling. He hated that feeling. He wanted to know what it was like to be strong like Tisper. Fearless like his mother. Brilliant like Quentin. But all he had was himself and it was hard colluding with his own worst enemy.

At least Gunner stuck around in the evenings. And though he swore he wouldn’t play a part in the escape, he still left things behind, tucked away in the inconspicuous darkness. An extra roll of toilet paper, a flathead screwdriver and enough meat to keep a flame burning in Jaylin.

He had three goals in mind. Get through that vent, find Olivia and the werewolves and get out.

In the darkness, Gunner couldn’t present him with a map, but he described the blueprints by word. A straight line through the vent until he reached an intersecting pathway. Then he was to make a right, and his escape would be a fifteen-foot vertical climb.

After that, he’d cut the courtyard to the building straight across. The other wolves would be there. He’d find them, he’d find Olivia. They’d all escape together and everything would be fine. Everything would work out. He had to believe that.

But if there was one thing Jaylin didn’t account for, it was the chrysalis. He woke that morning with his fingers locked in a fist. They were paralyzed, his hands. Stuck in a hard involuntary curl. And when he finally forced his fingers to straighten, one by one, there was a pain that came with it—slow and sharp like serrated blades had been ripped from the pads of his palm.

He didn’t understand how it could happen. How his fingers could grow an inch in length, how his nails had turned to talons, claws so sharp they’d embedded themselves into the flesh all night without him knowing.

And his jaw—his jaw ached like every tooth had shifted, twisted position on their own accord. And he could feel it, his canines long and slender, his premolars sharp like edged pearl. So sharp, it pricked when he felt along them with his tongue.

For the first hour, Jaylin did nothing but writhe in the pain of it, twisting in his sheets, sobbing into his pillow and wringing his right arm like squeezing it off was his only resolve.

Eventually, Dr. Peterson pricked him with a needle—something that absolved his pain. At least enough that he could think properly, keep his head on straight and his thoughts aligned. The plan. The plan. Remember the plan.

Step one. Find a way to the shower vents.

He knew already that it was going to take time to unscrew the vents. And he knew that there was no chance that he’d get away with harboring his screwdriver to his next shower—not when the nurses were dressing him down and examining every inch of his body.

So instead, Jaylin took the roll of toilet paper that Gunner had given him. Piece by piece, he unrolled the paper into the shallow water of the toilet bowl and flushed.

It took nearly five minutes of banging on the glass wall before someone finally came. A large man, thick-browed with the kind of hooded blaze in his eyes that made Jaylin slip back a step in the path of his glower.

The frightening man didn’t say a word. It was Jaylin who found his courage to press against the glass again. “I need to use the toilet.”

“You’ve got one,” the man gnarred.

“It’s clogged. I need to go now.”

The stranger peered into the cell, straightened out his back like a meerkat and scanned the tiny space. When he saw the toilet water spilling over onto the tile floor, he turned and left the room the same way he’d come, not a word offered in his absence.

Jaylin felt the silent exit hit him with all the force of a truck. He wondered if he failed, heartbeat plucking at his eardrums, the blackened skin of his palms sweat and burned like he’d dipped his hands in fire. And even with the pain in his legs, he paced from here to there, here to there.

And then there was a thunder at the back door—heavy metal bashing into the cell wall. A woman stepped in, and he couldn’t be sure of who it was. This woman and the ones who’d last taken him to the showers all looked the same, but he never saw beneath their caps and masks.

“Come,” she said, pushing a wheelchair forward.

Jaylin objected firmly, “I can walk.”

The woman looked him over with a cloud of suspicion, then shoved the wheelchair aside and gestured him closer with her hands instead. Jaylin walked to her—made sure it looked like a chore. Beyond his charade, each step felt like needles underfoot, but mostly it was his hands that ached. They stung and burned as they hung by his sides, open wounds taking in the crude air. He made it seem like more though—like he was nearly too weak to stand. Certainly too weak to try and escape.

She led him down the hall again, in the direction of the vinyl strips. Jaylin knew there was a bathroom around, he’d seen the employee restroom sign the first time they’d brought him here. His memory served him well, and he found the sign a few good paces down the hall. It was close to the shower room, but not close enough. Goddammit. Not close at all.

He thought it would be a quick slip from one to the other, but it was impossible to make the distance without getting caught. He searched for the screwdriver with the back of his fingers, feeling the hard plastic handle hidden in the waistline of his shorts. The metal bunted into his hips with each small step and he tried to keep his strides short to avoid any blood.

He had three options: he could go back to his cell and think up a new plan; he could stash the screwdriver in the bathroom—try to get it back for his shower; or he could reach for it now, take it from beneath his gown and stab the woman—free himself and run while she bled out on the dappled cement.

But her hands held his arm in a gentle way, and all this time she’d been using herself to support his weight. She didn’t drag him off with malevolence like a wholly evil person would do. And Jaylin suddenly felt sick to the thought of hurting her. She had a family. She had a life. She was sucked into this mess, just like he was. He couldn’t harm an innocent person.

But what the hell was his alternative?

Please. Give me something. Anything.

And then, like the universe had heard his plea, every faint yellow light that washed these powder walls died into darkness—and for a moment, every sound in the place died with it. Jaylin could hear the voices, speaking in an upset. The rasp of walkie-talkies, crackling like fire, and the sound of footsteps clapping against cement.

“Is it an outage?”

“Why aren’t the generators kicking on?”

And with voices echoing from every inch and corner of the wing, Jaylin broke from the woman’s hold and he ran. Shouts followed him, but he knew this hallway made things sound much closer than they were. His feet numb, he sprinted along the alabaster ground. His hands numb, he felt the cold popcorned walls until he found the vinyl strips. But it was as if his nerves were buried beneath his black pelt, and Jaylin couldn’t feel the tiles under his touch. He didn’t know if he’d slipped into the right room. Not until he smelled the bleach and heard the slow drip of a tall faucet.

And then the lights inside—the one single naked bulb blinked on and Jaylin winced at the white. Everything around him, so white. He was sick of the color.

He could hear it in the distance—the faint droning of electricity, feeding back into the building. With the power back and the lights on their side, they’d come looking for him. He had to hurry.

He took the screwdriver from his shorts and held the metal in his mouth, gripping at the tiles in the wall, planting his foot on the cross handle of the faucet. And as Jaylin reached above for the neck of the tall showerhead, he was almost thankful for his monstrous hand. For how long his fingers had grown, how easily his talons latched into the divots of the metal and the caulking in the cracks of the walls.

Jaylin hiked himself up, pushing off of the tiles with the pads of his numb feet. He slipped once on condensation, but he held himself easily by his grip on the sturdy showerhead. Balanced there, he reached out with the screwdriver in hand.

The first two screws were no match for the flathead, but the third took him a solid minute, stretched out entirely on the strength of one arm. Twisting the device with fingers that worked too improperly to feel a thing. Then by the fourth screw, he was trembling. Legs quaking, arm giving out under his weight. He managed one last twist before his feet slipped and he hit the shower floor, hard on his hip.

Quickly, Jaylin stashed the screwdriver back into the waist of his shorts, the patter of footsteps closing in. The door hurled open and the woman stood there, her fiery face cloaked by her white medical mask, her heavy bosom rising and falling as four men in dark suits circled around him.

“There he is,” she squawked. “He—it tried to escape. Back to its cell, take it back!”

And Jaylin was jerked up to his feet, hands wrenched behind him. The cold slapped around his wrists again and he tried not to cry out at the burn. He really tried.