Leader Ch.2: Wolf

"Mom!? Dad!? Sarah!?" I yelled out scared and shivered as I huddled my arms together close to my chest. My entire body was covered with dry mud and sore burning cuts that steamed up at my aching face. I squinted my eyes shut with fright, remembering how long it had been since I had actually been scared of something. I began to recall the hiking trip that was supposed to be my "adventurous highlight of my life" according to my parents, which had turned out to prove in my favor, as a nightmare.

My parents thought that it would be so much fun to take my little sister Sarah and I out hiking with my Aunt Mabel, Uncle Ted with my three cousins Sam, Kris and Monika to their lodge that they camped at every year. We had all met at the lodge on that misty clear morning on March the second, ready for a long day on the mountainside trail that my parents had raved about all week long while I had been studying for my SATs.

I hated the outdoors; I thought that it was a waste of time being outside when you could be inside playing on computer or video games. Unlike my sister, I wasn't into sports, I lifted weights yea to toughen up my muscles which were still and firm but nothing more than that. I always got an A+ in my gym classes just because I’d push it in school and every year I'd have at least one invitation into a sport team at my school... but it's not me. I hated the idea of coming here to this stupid mountain in the first place, but my parents had promised me that if I at least held onto my sanity for the month out here then when we got back home then I'd get our old Firebird for my 18th birthday within the next two months.

When we started out early in the morning, heading out onto the trail, and the very first thing that I did was slip on my headphones with my favorite hard rock band. I loved loud songs that could make your ears bleed even though my mom disapproved. I was letting myself go for once, just trying to relax as much as I could as I trudged behind my persistent family members with my music blaring in my ears. It wasn’t until I accidentally tripped over a tree root that stuck out of the ground as if it were reaching out for me and wrapped around my leg so I couldn’t do anything but fall onto the soggy, wet ground, that I actually felt like something was defiantly going to happen to us.

It had rained on the trip up to the airport in the middle of nowhere and when we had gone out hiking, it was still rather muddy, which was another thing that encouraged my parents. They said that messy was fun and fun was needed in life, but my fun was waiting for me back at home in the garage, not here at the Swamp Bottom Mountain Range.

"Aw man!" I yelled angrily as I looked at my leg. "God *bunny*!" I slowly stood back up and wiped off my pants when I realized my younger sister Sarah stood in front of me with a tired expression on her six-year-old freckled face while her gangly arms crossed over her chest. My eyes just glared down at her quite annoyed at her as it was. "What!?"

"Stop complaining! It's nice out here! Mom and dad even said that if we're QUIET enough then we can see a deer or fox!" she said angrily as if I had just broken the biggest law in the history of the world.

"Maybe even a unicorn right?" I said sarcastically shaking my head frustratedly as I continued to force my way through the trail and glared up at my mom and dad who walked beside my aunt and uncle who were giving directions. At least, they were trying to give directions while my sister kept trying to look at the map my aunt held in her hands, asking what everything was every time a new location was brought up. I was so tired of my sister, always talking to me about how cute animals were, pretty, furry, ‘oh they’re so cute!’ I sighed heavily. "Mom! How long will this hike be!?"

"For goodness sake Nate, can't you just enjoy the scenery for once? We've only been hiking for a half hour so far!" my mom replied frustratedly back to me when my dad wrapped his arm around her then kissed her cheek to soften her up some. I rolled my eyes ignorantly and turned up my music but when I didn't hear a thing, I took out my CD player and looked at it.

"What in the world!?" I exclaimed loudly and looked at the screen on the front of the player then almost about threw it into the muddy ground. "I’m out of batteries!? SON OF A-"

"NATE!" my dad yelled at me angrily as he turned around completely, making us all stop. "Behave yourself, quiet down and don't worry about it, we'll recharge your CD player when we get back to the lodge. Act like an adult for once!" I glared at him as he turned back around and held up my hand with a single finger wave. That's what he always said, we’ll do it later, but I'd always have to be the one to remind them when they'd forget.

As the hike slowly continued I caught myself looking around at the trees, mist and mud. "Interesting...," I muttered to myself under my breath when I saw a pair of eyes staring at me in the shade of one of the trees. A shiver ran down my spine, making my eyes narrow defensively and kept walking. I looked down at my feet and saw that my shoe strings were untied and caked completely in mud. "Oh great, this day just keeps getting better and better." I bent down and brushed off the mud from the shoe strings as my hands got slimy and grimy, making me laugh slightly.

"If I laid a finger of this mud in Sarah's head she'd lose it for sure!" I laughed and tied my shoe strings together when I looked back up to rub my hands over Sarah’s head, my heart stopped. My parents, aunt and uncle, cousins and sister had all disappeared.

"I knew my mom should have stuck with the map! Aunt Mabel can’t tell the difference between left and right foot if she was going in circles!" I complained, sighed and looked on the ground for any track of their footprints. "It's still wet, I may not be a boy scout but I'm sure-" my mind was distracted from a shadow amongst the trees again that had seemed to move. Another shiver ran down my back as I heard a soft growl, like the one that my neighbor's dog would make when we came near his bowl of food at dinner time but this growl was much more frightening and a bit louder.

"Mom? Dad!?" I looked around and slowly began to walk again deeper and deeper into the forest when finally the sun had risen completely. "Oh good, here we go; now I can see! But where are they!? Mom! Dad!”

Bushes all around me rustled when a couple of chipmunks scurried across my path in front of me, startling me but I laughed and shook my head at them. "Another thing Sarah would probably say was probably cute," I laughed when I turned around and saw a kitten like animal. Its ears and eyes were a lot bigger, not to mention the entire body! It was a sandy golden color with what looked like tiger stripes all over itself with even some Dalmatian spots over its back. Its tail was short and stubby, not to mention that its nails looked like they hadn’t been trimmed in a year.

I smiled, knelt down and held out my hand. "Hey there bud," I laughed and smirked when the kitten hissed at me then swatted my hand away from it frighteningly, digging its claws into my shoe but retracted them just as quickly then darted back behind a tree. I huffed with anger and chased after the kitten in a hot pursuit once it left its cover behind the bark of the tree until I heard the loud growling again, this time accompanied by savage hissing. I turned around and my entire body froze like a deer on the road.

A real bobcat stood in front of me now, hissing and snarling at me ferociously while its kitten stepped out from behind it, hissing at me. When the huge cat began to move towards me, my legs picked up and I slowly started run into the forest, crying out my parents and sister's name countless times, hearing the twigs and plants breaking as the bobcat sprinted after me.

"SARAH! MOM! DAD!" I yelled as I darted under fallen tree branches and over cut down stubs of trees. "HELP!" I could hear the bobcat's harsh and angered breathing behind me, almost able to feel its teeth and claws dig into the back of my shoes. I kept running, looking behind me skittishly every now and then when I fell forward into a pile of mud face first. “*bunny*!”

The bobcat hissed and pounced onto my back, slashing at it with its claws and teeth, trying to get past my heavy black hoodie. I swatted at its rough side with my arms when I firmly lifted my leg to kick its butt hard. I felt the bobcat jump then immediately attacked my leg. I groaned lowly in pain as I felt it tear at my jeans and bite into my thin skin. It bit deeper and deeper into my skin while I let out an angered holler of aggression when I heard a rumble of growls as the sky grew darker within seconds and a clap of thunder struck the sky. The bobcat released my leg from its teeth and put its front claw on my back and snarled into the darkness.

I looked up at the darkened shadows surrounding me and shivered again when I saw two huge alligators racing towards the bobcat and I. The bobcat hissed at them, only to leap off of me and hissed at the reptiles angrily as it landed perfectly in front of my face. I took my chance while within an instant I had forced myself to get up on my feet and scrambled out of the reach of the bobcat then staggered over to a bunch of bushes where another tree root reached out and tripped me. The rain begun to spit down onto me slowly when I realized that the ground was beginning to act as if the rain were pouring down as the ground itself immediately softened at the moisture and turned into thick mud, just like a sponge.

Pain surged through my body as I began to smell the fragrance of rain come to my nose and mud when the raucous of the fighting between the alligators or crocodiles with the bobcat behind me was caught by my ears. I grabbed onto a nearby tree branch and hoisted myself onto my feet that ached terribly. My leg was still bleeding from the harsh bite of the bobcat and my back was tied in knots as I limped in the opposite direction of the fighting, breathing heavily with a tight chest and began to even cough harshly until I collapsed in a heap of shivering, coughing bundle of pain.

"MOM! Da-" I coughed hard, feeling something come up my throat from my stomach but slid back down into my stomach. I held my mouth as I coughed harder and slowly reached down to hold my leg as it scorched with burning pain. I looked up to the sky, watching the clouds growing darker and darker. The smell of the now pouring rain became thicker and thicker as rain drops met my face sharply, when my hand sunk into the muddy ground. I coughed harder, stood up uneasily and tried to walk again only to feel a pull on my tattered and muddy jeans. I turned myself halfway around and jumped to see one of the alligators tugging at my heel. I tried to kick it away but fell into the mud once more.

The alligator growled and got on top of me, lashing its teeth around me as rain drops began to pour down slowly in a sprinkle even more than it already had been. My eyes half closed with pain when I felt the alligator fall off of me roughly tossing me slightly with it. I managed to open my eyes to see a huge dark dog looking animal barking and snarling at the alligator as it stepped across to me.

Soon there was another snarling dog coming from behind me as the wind picked up and leaves blew everywhere, sticking onto the mud covered on my clothing. I was able to catch the sounds of the fight between the large dogs and alligator when after a while, I felt a tug on my hoodie jacket when my eyes completely closed and my world went black.

~ * ~

Now here I was, alone in a dark, dirty cave that seemed to be in the ground and had woken up with that silvery reddish dog that had snarled behind me the night before. I looked at my hands and legs blindly and when the dog had disappeared, I curled up and began to worry about getting home. I didn't know where I was or how I even got inside the dry cave but faced the facts that nothing was going to help me now. I stared down at my leg and knew something had to be done about the gashes inserted into it. I ripped off the bottom lining of my hoodie and wrapped it tightly around my wound, wincing as the pain of the bruises around the wound sparked.

The dogs, the bobcat or the reptiles would more than likely come back sometime to finish me off. I couldn't move though, my body ached and every muscle and bone was strained to its absolute max. I began to force myself to move again to a different position other than laying down when I heard whining outside of the cavern entrance.

I jumped and jumped slightly as the silver reddish dog came back into the cave. I held my arm out to protect me. "BACK! GET AWAY!" I yelled at it frightened but it slowly inched towards me and laid down on its stomach as it had done before.

"AWAY!" I kicked at it slightly with my good leg but it didn't even bite at me this time. I stared at its face when it opened its mouth to let its tongue hang out until I saw the white fangs stick out of the mouth. "Wolf... you're a wolf! I… didn't know they had wolves here..." The wolf whined and growled slightly at me as if it was afraid itself.

The wolf whined at me and reached out towards my still outstretched arm with its nose but I pulled away from it immediately. "Go away! Shoo!" I yelled at it and turned my head away. "If you leave it alone... it'll leave you alone... right? Oh why couldn’t I remember that when I saw that stupid bobcat kitten!? Stupid animals…"

I shook my head ashamed when out of nowhere I felt something on my arm. I jumped and pulled my arm away from the wolf that had rested its nose on it. "Can't you understand!? LEAVE! Please just leave me alone! Please! I’m being polite!" This one sided argument went on and on for about another hour it felt like until I sighed and glared at the wolf. "You ganna eat me or what?"

I looked at the wolf confused and noticed that its fur was matted down with mud and what looked like died up blood. I could see slightly visible cuts and scars on its coat that seemed similar to the cuts on my heel, before noticing that its tail wasn't all that much different than a golden retriever's bushy tail. It swung back and forth friendly-like while a ray of warmth seemed to glow from the wolf’s body which seemed to calm me.

"I'm Nate Creed... oh this is dumb…" I said softly, growing a bit more comfortable until the wolf huffed at me, causing me to jump. "I'll... call you Wolf... ok? Wolf? You a nice wolf… Wolf?” I looked at the floor to reminisce with my own thoughts quickly then sighed with a shake of my head. “Ummm... right..." The wolf huffed at me once more but this time, it was my turn to stare in wonder. What in the world is this wolf doing here?