He hadn’t used salvia before but Johnny B said it was better than anything from the family medicine cabinet and way more potent than regular weed. Johnny said it was “freakin’ cool,” like “rock ’n’ roll fireworks squeezing your brain, convincing you that you could fly.”
Dawson thought the stuff looked harmless. Green, the color of sage, with wide leaves and similar to something he’d find in his mom’s old flower beds. God, he missed his mom. Dawson squashed some more of the plant into a tight wad and stuck it into his mouth between his teeth and cheek like chewing tobacco, no longer wincing at the bitter flavor.
Johnny had called the plant “Sally-D” and told them that the Indians used it for healing. “It’ll clear your sinuses, clean out your guts, soothe your aches and erase the static in your brain.”
However, he also sounded this excited last week when he had them all snort the Oxycoxin he’d crushed into fine particles. He had been able to confiscate only two of the pills from his mom’s medicine cabinet so the effects—when crushed and spread out among a dozen kids—didn’t quite live up to Johnny’s promises. But here he was, once again, sounding like an infomercial, working his magic and getting them to give it a try, all in the hopes of feeling good and being cool.
Now, less than a minute after Dawson’s second hit he felt light-headed, a pleasant mind-tickling buzz disconnected him from the others so that he watched them stumble and laugh and point at the sky. But it was like he was watching from another room, another time zone and in slow motion from a faraway galaxy right outside his bedroom window. Maybe on a big screen TV.
Dawson was thinking of infomercials, hearing silly rap jingles accompanied by a deep bass rhythm pounding, pounding, pounding at the base of his skull. Tree branches started to sway. Their trunks multiplied, by twos then threes.
That’s when he saw the red eyes.
They were hidden in the bush, back behind Kyle and Lucas, right behind Amanda.
Fiery dots watched, darting back and forth.
How could the others not see this creature?
Dawson opened his mouth to warn them but no sound came out. He lifted his arm to point but he didn’t recognize his hand, yellow and green, almost fluorescent in the flashing strobe light that came out of the treetops. The light became jerks and waves of purple and blue, crackling through the branches.
That’s when Dawson first smelled the heat. Almost like someone had left on a hot iron for too long. Then suddenly the smell was stronger, reminding him of scorched hot dogs on an open campfire—black, crispy, burnt meat. Then he remembered they hadn’t brought any food.
The sensation started as a tingle. Static electricity traveled the airwaves. The others felt it, too. They weren’t “oohing” and “aahing” anymore. Instead, they stumbled, heads tilted upward, searching the treetops.
Dawson looked back at the brush for the fiery red eyes. Gone.
His head swiveled. His eyes scanned the area, only now his eyes moved jerk by jerk. He could hear a mechanical click in his head like his eyes had become a machine. Each blink scraped like a camera shutter, open and closed. Every movement ticked and echoed in his head. His nostrils flared, sucking in air that singed his lungs. A metallic taste stuck in his throat.
The next flash of light sizzled, leaving a tail of live sparks.
This time Dawson heard shouts of surprise. Then cries of pain.
Suddenly the fiery red eyes came running out of the brush. They came racing straight at Dawson from across the campsite. A hooded wolf, blazing white with teeth bared and sparks of light shooting from its outstretched arms.
Dawson raised his own arm, aimed the Taser and pulled the trigger.
The creature reeled back, fell and sprawled in the leaves, kicking up glowing stars that shot out of a bed of pine needles. Dawson didn’t wait for the creature to spring to its haunches. He turned and started running, or at least, his feet did. The rest of him felt carried, pushed, shoved into the forest by a force stronger than his own two feet.
It was all he could do to raise his arms and protect his face from the branches that snapped and tore at his clothes and slashed his skin. He couldn’t see. The pounding at the base of his skull drowned out all other sound. The flashes were hot and bright behind him. Total dark, in front of him.
He hit the wire hard and the jolt of electricity knocked him off his feet. He stumbled and felt his skin pierced and caught like a fish on a hook, only a thousand hooks. The pain wrapped arrows around his entire body and stabbed him from every direction.
By the time Dawson Hayes hit the ground, his shirt was slick with blood.