Pop the Clutch

by Eric J. Guignard

  Three secretaries had died before her.

  Ducking, she felt the wind of the werewolf’s swipe, but the claws flashed past her without inflicting injury. She came up kicking, catching the beast in the stomach and knocking it off balance.

  Arcane must have been playing possum, because suddenly he jumped on the wolf from behind, wrestled the animal to the soggy ground, Beverly jumping into the fray with him, to hold the creature down as the doctor shoved the flask into the wolf’s open mouth and poured the contents down its throat.

  The wolf coughed, fought, kicked them off, then rose, peered down at Beverly like it was about to rip out her throat, then suddenly its eyes rolled back into its head and the wolf shuddered head to foot, before falling backward, out cold.

  Looking to Arcane, she said, “Did you poison it?”

  Rising, brushing the swamp grime off his Edwardian coat as best he could, Arcane said, “Better—I got him dead drunk.”

  “What?” she asked, incredulous.

  They watched as, gradually, the supine lupine figure transformed back into Howie—albeit, a nearly naked Howie. Covering the passed-out man’s shivering torso with his jacket, Arcane said, “The fog, I finally determined, came from Cape Canaveral.”

  “That’s so far away!” Beverly said.

  Arcane nodded. “But they send waste through the swamp on trains, and one of them derailed yesterday. It must have leaked and caused the fog that turned Howie here into a human throwback who resembled what we think of as a werewolf.”

  Her mind was reeling. “Why didn’t it do the same to Liz?”

  “Because she had alcohol in her system. Somehow that counteracted the effects of the fog on her. I’ll have to do more testing later, but to put it in layman’s terms, the alcohol turned him back.”

  “Amazing. I was worried . . . so worried . . . ”

  “Well, anyone would worry facing a beast like Howie here.”

  “No, I mean . . . I thought you were dead.”

  “Well, I am dead. Didn’t Mother tell you?”

  Arcane and Waldrop loaded the unconscious Howie in back of the Jeep, and Arcane sat back there with him, pistol in hand, just in case. Up front, Liz sat in Beverly’s lap, on purpose this time, but the blonde’s eyes were on her husband, adoringly.

  Back at the General Store, Liz clung to Waldrop like he might disappear if she let go. When night had fallen, Howie and the band howled at the moon, with no chance of transforming, at least not into werewolves. The owner served them beer on break now, not Coke.

  Beverly found Arcane sulking in a corner as the band rocked the house.

  “Have you eaten anything?” she asked. “The barbecue here’s really something.”

  He frowned at her. “I thought Mother had explained! The dead don’t eat.”

  “Oh, I know. She told me all about it. Quite well-preserved, your mother.”

  “She does look good, for her age.”

  “Which is?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. One-hundred-something?”

  She decided to let that pass. “You should eat, and drink. You don’t want to be impolite, do you? You want to stay on Waldrop’s good side, after all—who knows when the next swamp thing will crop up.”

  Arcane nodded at this sage advice. “Well-reasoned. I believe you will make an excellent secretary.”

  Surprisingly, she agreed.

  He ate a full rack of ribs and had several beers—so did she, just in the case that green fog rolled back in. Then she said to him, “You cured your patient, Doctor—why aren’t you smiling?”

  He gave her a sour look.

  Hoping to cheer him up, Beverly asked, “You want to dance?”

  “To this noise?” he asked, and shivered. “Honestly, Mrs. Raith, I believe I liked him better as a werewolf.”

  * * *

  MAX ALLAN COLLINS received the 2017 Grand Master “Edgar” by Mystery Writers of America. The MWA’s Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.

  He is the author of the Shamus-winning Nathan Heller historical thrillers (Better Dead) and the graphic novel Road to Perdition, basis for the Academy Award-winning film. His innovative ’70s series, Quarry, has been revived by Hard Case Crime (Quarry’s Climax) and became a Cinemax TV series. He has completed ten posthumous Mickey Spillane novels (Killing Town) and is the co-author (with his wife Barbara Collins) of the award-winning Trash ’n’ Treasures comic cozy mystery series, beginning with Antiques Roadkill through the current Antiques Wanted.

  MATTHEW V. CLEMENS—A frequent co-conspirator with Max Allan Collins, they have collaborated on twenty-four novels. The pair has also written comic books, graphic novels, jigsaw puzzles, and their short stories were collected in My Lolita Complex and Other Tales of Sex and Violence. They have also appeared in numerous anthologies including Hardboiled Horror, Hollywood & Crime, and Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  Their latest Thomas & Mercer thriller, Executive Order, was released in April, 2017.

  Clemens has also had short stories published in the anthologies Occupied Earth and Killing Malmon. With Pat Gipple, he co-authored the true crime book Dead Water: The Klindt Affair.

  You can learn more at www.matthewclemens.com.

  * * *

  LAB EXPERIMENT TURF WAR

  by Jeff Strand

  “You gonna step aside and let us pass, or is there gonna be trouble?”

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” asked the teenager with a high crewcut and grasshopper arms. “This is Doctor Baleful’s territory!”

  The kid with the cigarette dangling from his mouth and leaking pustules sneered as the two gangs faced off against each other in the middle of a hot sidewalk. “Says who?”

  “What do you mean, ‘says who’?” asked Grasshopper Boy, who’d tried desperately but unsuccessfully to acquire the nickname ‘Grasshopper Man’ instead. “Everybody knows this is Baleful turf. If I were you, I’d take my buddies and scram.”

  The three other lab experiments (Coyote Kid, Joey Dead-No-More, and Wally Two-Head) behind Grasshopper Boy stepped forward in a group display of leather-jacketed menace.

  “I don’t see Baleful’s name on this street,” said the kid with the oozing pustules. “You see his name, Danny?”

  “Nope,” said a kid with seven eyes, three of which were on his face, hidden behind dark sunglasses. (He’d added the extra lens himself.)

  “You see his name, Alan?”

  “Nope,” said a kid who would have been short even if his body wasn’t missing from the waist down.

  “You see his name, Harold?”

  “Nope,” said a kid with the arms of a praying mantis coming through his sleeveless letterman jacket.

  “Gee, none of my associates see Doctor Baleful’s name on this street,” said the kid with the pustules. “As far as I’m concerned, that makes this Doctor Awry’s turf.”

  Joey Dead-No-More groaned, and it wasn’t in disbelief at what he’d heard.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked the kid with the pustules.

  “Aw, he used to be dead.” Grasshopper Boy spat at the ground and ran one appendage through his greased pompadour.

  “I can see that. What made him dead?”

  “Car wreck.”

  “Looks like it was a car explosion.”

  “Yeah,” Grasshopper Boy said. “And that’s why Doctor Baleful is the best mad scientist in this part of the city. Let’s see Doctor Awry put somebody back together when they look like Joey did after he got pulled from the wreckage.”

  “Can he even talk?”

  “Well, no. He barely had any neck left.”

  The kid with the flowing pustules snorted.

  “Hey, he walks just fine though,” Grasshopper Boy insisted. “Doctor Awry couldn’t have pulled that off.”


  “If he was one of Doctor Awry’s experiments, he’d be singin’ and lindy hoppin’ like Bill Haley!” The kid hopped a couple times in what was apparently supposed to be a dance move, causing several of his pustules to spurt even more freely.

  “Ha!” said Grasshopper Boy. Chrome chains clinked as Coyote Kid and one of Wally Two-Head’s heads also laughed. “Doctor Awry ain’t even a real mad scientist. Everybody knows he’s just as sane as can be!”

  “You take that back!”

  “You guys don’t even have nicknames. What kind of unholy experiments don’t have nicknames? Danny, Alan, Harold . . . there’s no menace! What’s your name?”

  “Frank.”

  “Not even Oozing Frank?”

  “Just Frank.”

  “What a joke,” Grasshopper Boy said.

  Frank flicked his cigarette into the middle of the contested sidewalk, where it landed at Grasshopper Boy’s motorcycle-booted feet. Then he pointed to Wally Two-Head. “If Doctor Baleful is so amazing, how come only one of his heads is alive?”

  “I’m a work in progress,” Wally’s good head said.

  “That other head is dead and rotting. Looks like it’s gonna fall right off. Even the stitching ain’t any good. What’s the point of that surgery if the other head isn’t going to do anything? Any seamstress can sew a severed head onto somebody’s shoulder.”

  “Oh yeah?” Frank asked. “But would any seamstress cut off an innocent victim’s head to use in the experiment? You think Doctor Baleful just happened to find a head lying around on the street?”

  “So he’s a serial killer. My great-uncle was a serial killer. That’s nothing special.”

  “Well, look at you and look at Harold.”

  “I’m looking,” Grasshopper Boy said.

  “It’s the same work, but you’ve got the arms of a grasshopper and he’s got the arms of a praying mantis. Which is more impressive?”

  “Grasshopper by far.”

  Harold gaped at Grasshopper Boy. “You’re nuts! Nobody’s scared of lousy grasshoppers! Praying mantises are fearsome insects that brutally murder their spouses!”

  “But were they a biblical plague?”

  “You’re thinking of locusts.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No they’re not.”

  “Enough of this,” Frank said, raising a class-ringed fist. “You gonna step aside and let us pass, or is there gonna be trouble?”

  “I already told you, this is Baleful turf. You got someplace to go, you can take the long way around. You ain’t passin’ through here.”

  “Your grasshopper arms don’t even move that well,” Harold went on, gloating. “Look how articulated my praying mantis arms are. I could play a guitar if I wanted. I bet you couldn’t even play a tambourine.”

  “I could play six tambourines at once if I wanted!”

  Wally’s second head fell off. It lay there at his high top sneakers, unmoving.

  Everyone stared at it for a couple moments until Frank asked, “Are you going to put it back on?”

  “I don’t really like to touch it,” Wally admitted.

  “Well, you’d better pick it up or there’ll be trouble. Nobody litters on Baleful turf.”

  Wally hesitated, then picked the head up by its duck’s ass hair and held it at arm’s length.

  “I’m going to count to three,” Grasshopper Boy said. “If you’re still here when I’m done, it’ll be messy. One . . . ”

  “You might as well not waste time counting the last two numbers,” Frank interrupted. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Fine!” Grasshopper Boy said.

  Coyote Kid took out a switchblade from his pressed jeans and snapped it open. Wally did the same with the hand that wasn’t holding a head. Joey Dead-No-More just groaned and stumbled a bit. Grasshopper Boy, who had a switchblade in his pocket but couldn’t actually hold it with his grasshopper appendages, did nothing.

  On the other side, Frank took out his own switchblade. Danny took out a switchblade and glared with all seven of his eyes, even the ones that were under his cuffed tee-shirt. Alan had no pockets since his half-body didn’t allow him to wear pants, so he just held out his hand as if a switchblade were in it. Harold removed a switchblade from his pocket with his fully articulated praying mantis hands, spun it around, tossed it in the air and caught it, then snapped open the blade with dramatic flourish.

  Then they all stepped forward, except Alan.

  “Stop!” a voice cried out.

  Everybody turned to look, except Joey Dead-No-More.

  It was Sue, her red neck scarf fluttering behind as she ran between the two gangs. “Stop this right now! You don’t have to fight!”

  “Sue, what are you doing here?” Frank asked.

  “You know her?” asked Grasshopper Boy.

  “Know her? Why, she’s only the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood. We’ll be married someday.”

  “Married?” Grasshopper Boy scrunched up his face in disgust. “Sue, you’re going to marry that oozing freak?”

  Sue looked at the ground. “The pustules came after we started going steady, but I refuse to let them get in the way of our love.”

  “No way! I won’t let you marry an Awry!”

  “Who are you to say?” Frank demanded.

  “I’m her brother!”

  Frank turned to Sue, aghast. “Your brother’s a Baleful?”

  A tear ran down Sue’s face. She wiped it away, smearing her blue mascara. “I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t . . . I know how you get!”

  “How about how I get?” Grasshopper Boy asked. “You can’t go steady with an Awry! I forbid it!”

  “It’s too late,” Sue said.

  “It’s never too late to break up with a filthy Awry!”

  “I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m carrying his baby!”

  “You’re . . . what?”

  “I’m going to be a mother, and he’s going to be a father, and together we’re going to be parents and get out of this place!”

  “Whoa, hold on, wait a minute,” Frank said, taking a step back. “Are you, uh, are you sure it’s mine?”

  Sue nodded, patting fondly at the bottom of her cropped cardigan sweater. “I’m sure. You’re my one and only true love.”

  “You’re positive? I mean, think hard. What about that one night we were drinking after the sock hop? There were a couple of minutes when we weren’t together. What about when you went out into the woods? Anything could have happened, right?”

  “It’s yours, Frank. There’s nobody else.”

  Frank wiped some perspiration and pus from his forehead. “Okay, well, that’s interesting news.”

  “It can’t be true!” Grasshopper Boy shouted. “I can’t have a boil-covered nephew!”

  “They aren’t boils, they’re pustules,” Sue explained. “And that’s not how science works. Our baby will be beautiful if it’s a girl or handsome if it’s a boy!”

  “You two seem like you have a lot to talk about,” Frank said, edging away. “My buddies and I were just passing through, and we don’t want to interrupt an important discussion between siblings, so we’ll be on our way.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Grasshopper Boy said. “No Awry impregnates my sister and gets away with it!”

  “Please, Kingsley—”

  “Don’t call me Kingsley! I’m Grasshopper Man now!”

  “Grasshopper Boy,” Coyote Kid corrected.

  Grasshopper Boy pointed at Frank, as well as he could. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

  “I know,” Frank said, sadly. He stared at his class ring. “I’m not ready to be a father. I’m gonna have to drop out of school, and get a job, and I’ll never have time to hang out with my friends anymore. I was going to make something of my life, you know? I was going to be a famous stuntman. That dream is over.”

  “How could you be a stuntman?” Grasshopper Boy asked. “You’d leak all over the floor where yo
u’re doing a dangerous stunt and break your neck.”

  “I’d wrap myself in absorbent cloth first. Jeez.”

  “Stop it, you two!” Sue shouted. “This has gone far enough. The Awrys and the Balefuls need to stop this ridiculous turf war!”

  “It’s not ridiculous,” said Grasshopper Boy. “I don’t like the implication that we’re here goofing off. This is serious stuff. We have to protect what’s ours.”

  Sue shook her head. “You’re all grotesque lab experiments. There’s no reason to fight. Think what you could accomplish if you joined forces.”

  “That’ll never happen! I’d never join forces with an Awry! Never!”

  “But I’m an Awry!”

  “Not if you don’t marry him.”

  “You don’t understand.” Sue wiped away more tears as she unbuttoned her cardigan. “Do you remember that time doctors told me I had a bad heart and only six weeks to live?”

  “Of course. You said you got better.”

  “I lied.” Sue ripped open her shirt underneath, revealing a grisly scar on her chest. “Doctor Awry gave me a goat heart!”

  Grasshopper Boy gasped. “Close your shirt! I can see part of your bra lace!”

  “I’m a deranged Doctor Awry experiment just like them!”

  “Nooooooooooo!”

  The other experiments all looked down at the sidewalk, awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact.

  “I’m sorry!” Sue wailed.

  “If you needed a heart transplant, why didn’t you go to Doctor Baleful?”

  “I did! He wanted to stick a monkey heart in me. I’m no monkey!”

  Grasshopper Boy turned to Frank. “Did you know about this?”

  “No. I saw the gnarly scar, obviously, but I never really asked about it.”

  “I’m a Baleful by blood,” Sue said. “But I’m an Awry by love and surgery. And I just know that you can work out your differences. It doesn’t have to be the Awrys versus the Balefuls! Together, you can be the Awfuls.”

  Everybody looked around, considering the idea.

  “Nope,” Grasshopper Boy said. “Balefuls forever!”

  The rival gangs rushed at each other. Switchblades slashed across body parts. Danny bellowed in pain as two of his seven eyes were punctured. Wally took a blade to both his original head and the one he was carrying. Joey Dead-No-More fell over without being stabbed. Coyote Kid went full feral with the smell of blood in the air and tore off Harold’s praying mantis arms with his teeth, right at their delicately articulated joints.