Free Wolf Running by Toni Boughton Page B

merchandise displays. In an open case near the front, long-dead flowers shimmered with frost. The silence inside was more absolute than the silence outside, and the crunch of her snow-covered boots was loud and intrusive.
    Nowen moved through the store, studying the department signs hanging from the ceiling until she saw the one she wanted. She turned down an aisle of fabric bolts, stepping over the body of a large woman sprawled across the floor. The Rev twitched at her passing and tried to rise, but the intense cold had slowed the obese woman almost to a standstill, and Nowen didn’t even slow down. She saw other bodies as she walked. Some were truly dead, gnawed bones rising from their shredded and torn flesh. More were undead, but in the grip of winter they were as easily dismissed as their former prey.
    Nowen reached her target, the far back corner of the store devoted to camping and hunting. A glass-faced gun display drew her attention, and she looked at the rifles and shotguns and pistols gleaming coldly in the beam of her flashlight for a moment before turning away.
    She found an empty shopping cart nearby, and dragged it behind her as she searched the aisles for what she needed. She looked over the sleeping bags before deciding on a sleek black one that advertised that it would keep the occupant warm to thirty degrees below zero. She tossed it into the cart, where it was shortly joined by a multi-tool, several packages of fire-starters, and a hunting knife that came with a handy sheath and belt. She traded her flashlight for the convenience of a head-lamp and threw a couple of spares into the cart, then looked over her cache. Combined with what she had already scavenged from the few houses near her own, she felt satisfied that she was as prepared as she was going to be.
    Nowen was almost to the front of the store when a sign pointing the way to the garden department caught her eye. Flux had struck just before the beginning of summer, and the gardening supplies were still on display, waiting for buyers that would never come. On a peg-board wall, next to rakes and hedge clippers, she found a long-handled axe. When she swung it the blade cleaved the air with a low whistle. She hefted it to her shoulder and headed back to her cart.
    The sleeping bag went on her back, tied just above the waist. She strapped the knife belt around her hips and put the rest of her supplies in a canvas tote-bag. She slipped the axe handle between the belt and her jeans, grabbed the bag, and left the quiet building.
    A light breeze had sprung up, bringing with it a hint of colder air. Nowen looked to the west, where a bank of grey clouds was building up along the Snowy Range. She turned her back on the approaching storm and headed for home.

 
    Chapter Eight
    Then
    Nowen dreamed.
    She is running through a forest. It is twilight. The trees are black strokes of ink against the setting sun. They tower above her, rising so high they disappear into the darkening sky. The forest floor unravels beneath her. Pine needles and dead leaves, small mushrooms as pale as milk, tiny skittering things that flee from her as she flees from something else. A shadow is chasing her, something with glowing eyes and sharp teeth, and it is waiting only for the fall of true night to reveal itself. The dying sun sinks below the horizon. In the totality of her despair she wheels around to face that which is following her and sees-
    Nowen shot up in bed. Cold sweat beaded her forehead and her heart trip-hammered in her chest so hard her scrub top trembled. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. The utter, mindless fear she had experienced in her dream was frightening in and of itself. She breathed slowly, trying to slow her heartbeat, trying to wash the remnants of the run through the forest from her mind.
    The absence of snoring alerted her to the fact that she was alone in the dark room. A shaft of moonlight fell on Jamie’s empty bed and