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Writer's pictureMorgan Forte

Sneak Peek: The Last True Wilds

As promised, here's a very small sneak peek at my second book, THE LAST TRUE WILDS.



Here's the pitch:

YELLOWJACKETS x SQUID GAME x WILDER GIRLS When their tour guide is killed on a bush drive in South Africa, six veterinary interns will have to make a thousand mile trek through the most dangerous place on earth with a single tank of gas, an increasingly untrustworthy leader, and the imminent threat of wild animals all around them--but the most dangerous obstacle hides behind the lenses of wildlife cameras hidden everywhere they go; someone is watching, and getting out alive is not an option.

Part One:

Erica

Willow Lake, Georgia








1


I’m washing dishes under the flickering kitchen light when the door swings open. The hair on the back of my neck raises, and I hold my breath because I don’t want to smell the liquor the gust carried in. My brain fills in the gaps for me every time, though, and without inhaling, I smell it. I smell it anyway. I squeeze my eyes shut, lowering my head, and I keep scrubbing the pan he’d left on the stove two days ago.

          “Hell are you doin’ up, Rikki?” Dad asks, his speech slurred.

          If someone who didn’t know him had heard that sentence, it’d be impossible to know what he said.           Understanding Dad’s drunk talk was a lot like how moms understand what their toddlers are saying, even though they only use fragments of words, leftover syllables, and a mixture of primal grunts.

          “Just washin’ dishes.” My voice is low and quiet, non-confrontational.

          “Where’s your sister?”

          “Sleepin’.”

          “She do her homework?” he calls from the living room, his tongue twisting over words that shouldn’t make a tongue twist.

          I want to ask when he started giving two shits about Lacey’s homework. He hasn’t seen that girl in almost a week. He’s gone when she gets home from school and passed out when she’s headed to the bus stop in the morning. I’d be surprised if he remembered what she looked like.

          “We did it together earlier,” I say instead of spitting the vitriol soaking into my gums.

          “Hmmph,” he grunts. “It’s just a good thing you’re so damn smart, huh?”

          I don’t respond to that. He doesn’t say those words fondly. He says them like they’re funny. Like he’s telling an inside joke nobody else is in on. He’s always hated that I’m smart. He knows my intelligence is a steel shovel made for digging me and Lacey out of this shit-hole, and that scares him to death.

          He stumbles into the kitchen, flicking the light switch. The air stifles as the space between us shrinks. My shoulder blades draw together; my skin prickles.

          “Big light’s broken. I’ll go to the store tomorrow and get a new bulb for it,” I whisper as I continue to scrub the pan. It’s already clean, but I don’t want to disturb the current of events. I don’t want to put the dish on the drying rack and pick up a new one, so he doesn’t take too much notice of me or what I’m doing.

          My Dad’s a drunk, but he ain’t violent. Just scary. When he’s like this, I mean. It’s like he becomes his own shadow. Strangely hollow, but only seemingly so. That darkness is swimming, filled to the brim with shades of violet and dark blue; it’s his sadness and grief, his anger and fear—he becomes it, and loses everything else. It looks hollow, but it ain’t.

          “It ain’t the bulb,” Dad says. The dining chair scrapes the linoleum floors as he drags it out, flopping himself into it like he’s soaking wet and weighs eight-hundred pounds. “It’s the electrical.”

          I swallow. “Well, this lamp works fine.” 

          I gesture to the measly, flickering lamp I moved from my desk to the windowsill. The lamp’s hanging by a thread. I got it for my eighth grade graduation, and that was four years ago. But we couldn’t afford an electrician, so, it’d have to do.

          “Can’t have that plugged in so close to the sink, Rikki! Are you fuckin’ dumb?”

          The chair legs claw at the linoleum again, and I feel the floor bubble from the movement like a wave.

          “It’s not plugged in close to the sink, Dad, the chord’s long! It’s by the fridge!”

          He quiets down, but I feel his presence right behind me. “I forget you ain’t stupid like your mama.”

          I grind my teeth, but say nothing.

          “You’re just too smart, huh?” He chuckles.

          I don’t turn around to look at him. I keep scrubbing.

          “Is that why you got accepted into this…” He pauses, dipping his giant hand into his pocket.

          I freeze, my heart thundering against my ribs.

          I forgot to check the mail today.

          Chills run up the sides of my neck as I hear the crinkle of an envelope, and finally turn to face him.

          “Who’s Doctor Poosha?”

          I clear my throat, eyes glued to the envelope. It’s shiny and brightly colored, and it has pictures of South Africa’s Big 5 printed all over it.

          Oh, my god. I got in.

          “Um—it’s Puja.”

          “Don’t fuckin’ correct me!” he shouts. His voice is big, and it fills the space like a mythological animal. One too big for a double wide, and too big for this room. I press my back against the counter. The water is still running behind me. “Who is she? What the hell is this?” He shakes the envelope in my face. “The fuck are you trying to go to damn Africa for?”

          “It’s not—it’s nothing.”

          “That’s right, it ain’t, cause I ain’t paying for you to do no crazy ass shit like this. Pre-veterinary—you ain’t going to college, Rikki. We already done talked about this. You ain’t gettin’ in, and we ain’t got no money to send you. So what’s your plan here, girl?”

          “I ain’t got one,” I whisper, tears rushing into my face as the envelope crinkles in his angry hands.

          Slowly, I find his eyes. They’re almost black tonight. He’s got the same, dirty camouflage hat on that he always wears, the bill folded at a grotesque angle. His frown is more of a snarl, his front teeth showing slightly under his scruffy lip. A lump of dip is tucked above his chin, and his thick, unkempt eyebrows are drawn together like magnets.

          “You ain’t runnin’ out on me,” he says. He’s still yelling, but he’s calmed down a little.

          I shake my head. “I ain’t. Can I just—can I see it?” I ask, daring to reach for the envelope.

          He staggers back, crashing into the dining table. He howls as the table pushes into his lower back, and the disturbance causes a rare unfinished can of beer to tip over, spilling across the table. “God dammit, Rikki!”

I spring into action, turning the water off and ripping the one hand towel we have off the stove, soaking it in the spill. The creaking of a door interrupts me. My head snaps up, my eyes fixed on the swimming plunge of darkness at the end of the long hallway. A sliver of yellow light streaks across the hall, skipping over a loose laminate floorboard.

          “Rikki?” a faint voice calls groggily.

          I glance at Dad, giving him a hard look. He sets his jaw, his eyes falling on the spilled can of beer.

          “Lace, go back to bed and I’ll be right there to tell you a story.”

          Half of her little face appears against the doorframe. Her eye flicks to Dad. I hope she doesn’t remember this night—distant voices yelling, staring at the back of Dad’s shirt as my horrified face peers over his shoulder. The smell of beer wafting down the stifled hallway, the air thick with the faded odor of cigarettes and damp plaster walls with peeling wallpaper. That was my childhood. I don’t want it to be hers.

          “I’m sorry, Dad,” I say after she reluctantly disappears back into her room. “I’m sorry. I got you a twelve pack on my way home—I—how ‘bout you go sit down and I’ll crack you a new one?”

          His angry eyes turn just a bit lighter. “You got me a twelve-pack?”

          I nod. In case this happened. In case he found out.

          “How’d you do that?”

          “The guy outside the 7-Eleven on my way home from school. He, uh, he helps the kids out sometimes. I saw you was running low so I got you some today.”

          He nods, his mouth curling into half-snicker. He stands up straight, shaking the envelope. “Alright, then,           Rikki. I’ma go lay down, then.”

          I eye the envelope. He catches my glance and takes his other hand to the paper, ripping it in half. “Won’t be needin’ this, then, neither.”

          I hold my breath as a tear rolls out of the corner of my eye. He rips the envelope again before smushing the pieces of my future into the beer-soaked table top. My eyes flash up to him, and unintentionally, I narrow them in anger.

          “What?” He laughs as the vibrant colors from the envelope bleed into each other. “I was just helpin’.”

          He continues to laugh as he stumbles into the living room, collapsing on our deflated brown couch. The TV flicks on, and I quickly lean down, collecting the scraps of the letter, prying the thick, beer-soaked envelope material away from the paper inside. I try to unfold the pieces and put them back together, but the black ink has bled all over, and it’s completely illegible except for the big CONGRATULATIONS smeared across the middle. The tears continue to fall as I desperately try to read the instructions for what to do next. It’s useless. The letter is ruined.

          “Hey, Rikki?” Dad calls over Nascar. “I’ll take that beer now.”

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