Beginnings

by J. S. Frankel

  He tapped the side of his head. “Well, I have most of it, anyway. The rest, Bolson wrote down what I needed to know. How much and what type of chemical to put in, how to set the chamber up…it’s all there.” He held up the file as proof.

  “You would have died without the treatment,” Angela cut in and squeezed Paul’s shoulder. Her fingers lingered on his arm for a few seconds before she withdrew her hand. The very touch of her hand imparted a sense of solidity, but all the same, the idea of being different, made him wonder just what he’d become.

  “I’m a werewolf?” he asked.

  A state of disbelief swept over him, but he couldn’t discount his improved senses. Everything from sounds and smells came through in a whirl that was almost three-dimensional. It was as if he could discern the layers and gradations within each sound, smell—even color.

  Aside from feeling better than he had in a long time, he felt much stronger. Focusing on his aural skills, he heard Angela’s heartbeat, rapid yet steady. The fluttering of a moth’s wings and the scratch-scratch sound of an ant crawling across the floor came through clearly.

  The smell of the water inside Ooze’s suit, a kind of brackish, marshy odor, filtered through. It was different, yet not unpleasant. A double-dozen more sensations came at once, yet he was somehow able to differentiate between them and place them in order and they did not bother him. “So,” he asked again after contemplating what he’d seen in the mirror, “I’m a werewolf?”

  With a tiny giggle accompanied by a shrug, she said, “You are. That was the last creature Bolson managed to create on paper, but he never synthesized one. And,” she hesitated, “he’d never tried it on a human before—”

  “It was a prototype, designed for humans,” Ooze cut in. “It has nothing to do with stem cells. Congrats, man, you’re the first recipient.” He formed his hand into the shape of a microphone and held it out. “Tell us how you feel.”

  Sarcasm was so not needed at this point, and Angela slapped the hand away. With a somber expression, she said, “I guess you’re feeling sort of how I feel. I was created from my maker’s cells, so I guess I’m human in a way like you said, but I’ve n-never…” Her voice caught. “I’ve never known what it’s like to be human.”

  While she’d come to terms with being what she was, a sense of disorientation made Paul’s knees go weak. In a daze, he tottered over to the box-bed and sat down. “So…what am I now?”

  Ooze moved over and slid his squishy rump onto the boxes beside him. His voice came out somber. “Sorry for the wisecrack before. From what I can figure out, you’re a hybrid. Bolson’s notes didn’t account for this because he’d never had a human subject before and I don’t have a download. Still, since you are human, there’s no chance of decay, so you’re all set.”

  Decay…a five–letter word meaning death. Then again, death also had five letters. Looking at Angela, Paul said, “Simpson told me about you. He said they’d solved the decay factor.”

  Ooze chuckled and a series of bubbles danced in his suit. “It turns out Simpson was only partially right. The decay factor in Angela’s case meant normal decay, like any other person. By person, I mean human, and that means aging naturally. It seems that when she drank your blood, it somehow helped to enhance her condition. I’ve got a lot of data to go over, so maybe one day I’ll figure it all out.”

  As he spoke, Paul’s sense of wonder returned. “So…” he said slowly, “all of this means she’ll—”

  “Live a normal life,” Ooze interrupted. “Like you will…only neither of you is exactly normal. Me, too, or Sandstorm, for that matter,” he added.

  He reached over to a small table then he held up a test tube. Inside it was a smear of pinkish material. “See this?” he asked. “Angela took that from CF’s remains. I’m not sure, but I think we can reconstitute him. I mean, it’s going to take some time to get the proper materials, mix the correct amount of chemical compounds and all that. Then we have to think about building another chamber, but I think we can bring him back. I might even be able to upgrade him.”

  Upgrade him or keep him dense—that was the question. A smile broke over Paul’s face. “I want him back just as he was.”

  “I thought you’d say that,” said Angela, grinning now, and she pointed at the exit. “Door’s over there. It’s night, so there’s no chance of you meeting anyone. Just…stick to the forests.”

  Feeling a sense of possibility, Paul lifted the garage door and cautiously peered outside. Fortunately, the streets were empty. It was cold, but he didn’t feel it. Having warm fur helped guard against the cold.

  Instead, he took a deep breath and inhaled the smells, faint as they were, of a winter’s night. The rabbit droppings ten feet to his left, the smell of the water—clean now—and the musky and somewhat oily smell of an owl’s feathers…they all came to his nose and he reveled in the sensation. “So this is what being enhanced means,” he said softly, wonder in every word.

  He began to run. His muscles bunched and swelled under his clothes, and it came as both a thrill as well as distinct relief that he didn’t have to bend over and lope as a true wolf would. Instead, he ran upright down the road and he ran fast, very fast. The houses soon gave way to trees and they whizzed by him. His steps were quick and sure and he hit no branches and made very little noise as he made his way through the forest.

  An immense pile of logs perhaps twenty feet high stood in his way, and in what had to be the most immediate revelation, he realized that he could not only jump over this pile but also jump way over it.

  His muscles worked in concert, and with a powerful spring from his legs, he leapt up and caught hold of a tree’s trunk perhaps thirty feet off the ground. “Oh yeah,” he breathed. “I like it!”

  With another spring, he launched himself at another tree and yet another, hanging onto the trunks with powerful hands. He didn’t have claws, though, just abnormally strong fingers.

  Perhaps a minute later, much faster than any normal person would, he emerged on the other side of the forest and felt his heart rate slow down. A lonely road lay in front of him and he started down it, only to halt in his tracks as he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Cautiously, he crept to the side of the road and hid until the car passed by.

  As the sounds of the car faded, so did his previous air of confidence. “What am I doing out here?” he asked, but only heard the whisper of the wind. “What if someone sees me?”

  He pivoted on the ball of his foot then raced back to the house. Walking into the garage, he found Ooze and Angela waiting expectantly. Ooze held Bolson’s file and was flipping through it, murmuring at a few things. Angela’s face wore a questioning look as if to ask, Well, is it everything you thought it would be?

  For his part, Paul was surprised to find he wasn’t even out of breath. Not even a bead of sweat dripped from his forehead. This was…

  “Pretty radical for you, isn’t it?” Angela interrupted his thoughts. “So how was your first run?”

  “Decent,” he responded, still at a loss over what else to say. “I, uh, just don’t know how to handle this. I mean, look at me.”

  “I am,” said Angela as she went over to him. “And I see someone cute and special—just like Ooze and Sandstorm and just like me.”

  Mind whirling with the possibilities, Paul sat down on the cot. “I, um…what do we do now?”

  Ooze got up, waving the diary in front of him. “Let’s total up the scorecard on you, shall we? You just went for your test drive. You can run fast, yes?”

  “Yeah…and I can jump pretty high, too.”

  A smile formed in the watery mixture. “You’ll be able to do more than that.” He pointed to the diary. “This is cutting edge stuff. If I’m reading this right, you’ll have enhanced speed, strength and regenerative abilities. What more could you want?”

  Thinking about it, nothing immediately came to mind. “So…I’m going to live a long time…and that’s cool,” Paul said. The implicati
ons of an enhanced life span hadn’t hit home yet, but the powers thing…very different. And now he was different. “So what do we do?”

  “While you were gone,” Ooze said, “I took a little inventory. You know the dresser where the cash was?”

  “Yeah, I do, and so what?”

  “It didn’t get burned. Apparently, the guys from Rallan were in such a hurry to take me and CF down the first time, they never bothered to look and the fire didn’t touch it. There’s about five hundred thousand dollars there. It isn’t a fortune, but it should be enough to start you and your girlfriend off.”

  Paul felt his own face grow hot. “Well, yeah, that’s cool, but…you didn’t answer me before. What do we do now?”

  Angela took up the slack and linked her arm with his. “You remember the guy who owned Rallan?”

  Peterson—Andres Peterson… “Yeah, I do,” Paul replied, his mind working overtime. “You think that we should pay him a visit?”

  Ooze chuckled. “Hey, he’s not so clued out after all.”

  Angela flipped her hair back. Her voice held a confidence it hadn’t had before. “I’ll second that. I’m down with what I am—now. I don’t know what it’s like to be human, not entirely, but I can learn. Even if I’m different, it doesn’t matter.”

  “No?” Paul asked.

  A broad and beautiful smile shone out and lit up the room. “No, it doesn’t. Because you’re with me and that’s all that counts. I still want to find out more about this Peterson guy and what he’s really up to. Besides, I don’t care for snow. I’d like to try swimming for a change.”

  That settled it. It was time to pack up the van and head for warmer climes. “When do we move?” he asked.

  “Just as soon as I get the materials I need,” Ooze answered. “Once we’re ready, we go out and do what others can’t.”

  * * * *

  Los Angeles, Hollywood and Vine

  Midnight, Six Months Later

  The alleyway was dark and Paul saw the young woman cower in fear. She was obviously unaware of the kind of area of town she’d wandered into. This was one of the worst sections of the downtown area. Who cared about how famous this place was during the day? By night, it became a grid of terror.

  Call it bad luck. She’d gone down the wrong alley. A fence lay at the far end of the alley, twenty feet away. When she’d turned to leave, Paul had seen the men come to block off her escape.

  “You shouldn’t be out at night,” one of the men said. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a bright orange shirt that denoted him as a Scummer, he nodded at his six friends. “It could get dangerous.”

  The man who’d spoken chuckled. This kind of thing would usually be easy for them, he knew. As Los Angeles’ premiere take-‘em-out experts, they had a code, Paul had learned—turn no potential member away. Black, white, Asian or mixed, they did not discriminate and asked only loyalty and respect.

  He also knew that because of the recent activities, strength in numbers was the way they’d decided to go. It had to be that way, as the past ten days had been pretty dire for them. In that time period, a number of their men had been smacked around and subsequently arrested.

  However, the smackdowns hadn’t come from the cops, but from Paul’s crew. Some of their members had sworn they’d seen a zombie, while others said something about fast-moving water or shifting sand or monsters.

  Monsters… Paul had heard their speculation that it had to be a BS story. The gang had heard about them showing up in New York, but here? No way did they believe that was going to happen.

  Snapping back to the moment at hand, Paul saw the leader turn his attention to the victim. “So I’m going to ask you,” he said in an almost friendly tone. “What should we do with you?”

  Crawling on her hands and knees, the woman scurried toward the exit, but the Scummers tossed her back. In desperation, she looked around and naturally the streets were devoid of anything resembling law and order.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “I didn’t do anything to you. I just want to go home.”

  With a sigh that transitioned into a chortle, the leader took another step toward her. “But you did do something, girlie,” he said as a malicious grin crossed his worse than ugly features. “You were walking on the streets. That makes you scum in my book. So we’re going to clean the streets, and…”

  Paul decided he’d seen and heard enough, so he gave the signal.

  The leader suddenly stopped as a whisper of wind rushed by him, formed a barrier and pushed him and his men back. He tapped the switchblade in his left pocket and the gun in his waistband.

  The wind grew in intensity, and Paul could see the leader’s feelings change. “Guys, we should leave now,” he said.

  “You’re not leaving yet,” Paul said, growling from the entrance.

  The leader whirled around, watching as Paul dropped in from around twenty feet off the ground. He wore a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt over his now taut, well-muscled frame.

  The leader smirked and brought out his pistol. With a snap of his fingers, his minions did the same. “If you’re trying to scare me, buddy, you’re not doing a very good job of it. You’re a little short to be bustin’ heads…”

  His voice trailed off when Paul stepped forward into the alleyway and rolled up his sleeves to expose hairy, muscular forearms. He lowered his fangs—practice helped, and now he could control them at will—but he adopted a more relaxed stance. “Maybe I’m not,” he said and made a come-here gesture. “But if you think I’m not so tough, then you can deal with my friend.”

  CF stepped into the alleyway behind him and let out a grunt. “Do I clean now?”

  Paul shook his head and said in a conversational manner, “Wait for it. You can do it later.”

  “Oh…holy crap,” the gang leader uttered as his eyes bugged out. The gun fell from his hand and he began to shiver. “You’re…you’re…”

  “Monsters,” CF grated, and his response made the gang leader practically keel over from sheer fright. Seeing a wolf-man and a zombie, both of whom looked very capable of doing major damage, could do that to a person.

  As for the other gang members, they dropped their weapons and did a U-turn, heading for the fence, only to stop when they saw Angela, who’d landed lightly behind them. Her being there cut off all possibility of escape.

  “So which one of us do you want to take on first,” she asked in a tone most pleasant as she sauntered over to the leader in order to grab him by his shoulder and shake him. “Me or my boyfriend?”

  A stain appeared on the front of the leader’s trousers and he gibbered, “He’s your… He’s your boyfriend?”

  Angela tossed him to the wall where he hit hard and slid down, arms and legs splayed out like a broken Raggedy Andy doll. Her grin, fangs out and white teeth shining, made him cower, but she roughly grabbed his chin and forced his head up.

  “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend,” she said in a voice softer than silk. “And you heard about New York, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t think they watch much television,” Paul supplied as he dispatched two of the punks with lightning fast punches. That left four others, and they fell to their knees without a peep. “But these guys look pretty smart.”

  Shaking like a leaf caught in the eye of a storm, the Scummer leader whipped out his switchblade and brandished it. Angela smirked, and in a lightning quick movement, she plucked it from his grasp. “A new toy,” she said, just before snapping it in two. “You got anything else?”

  Fear-sweat sparkled on the leader’s brow and his voice shook with dread. “What are you guys?”

  “I’ll tell you just this once,” Angela answered in a sweet tone laced with iron. She bent over and shoved her face an inch away from his. “We’re your nightmares come true, the ones you don’t talk about. Only this time, I want you to give everyone a message. We’re here and we’re staying.”

  “But you’re leaving,” Paul added. “Right now, so get
out!”

  The four remaining men plus their leader did as ordered, scrambling all over themselves in a frantic attempt to escape. CF stood to the side in order to let them pass, and they escaped into the night.

  After they’d gone, Paul turned his attention to the young woman who was staring at them with wide eyes and he slowly raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “Hey, don’t worry about us,” he said. “We’re here to help you…as in, you know, everyone?”

  “Help us?” she squeaked.

  Angela offered a cool and collected smile that spoke of future crime-fighting efforts. “Yeah, help you. You and everyone else, like he said.” She indicated Paul and CF with a wave of her hand. “So go home. Be safe.”

  With an uncertain look on her face, the woman got to her feet and ran out. A van pulled up to the edge of the alley. The window rolled down to reveal Ooze at the wheel. “Hey, CF,” he called out. “Climb aboard. You’re hungry, right?”

  CF nodded and silently got in. As the van drove off in a whirl of dust, Angela soared to the top of the building, and Paul clambered up the wall using his fingers and toes to dig into the brick and find a hold. Once on top, they joined hands and stared up at the moon. “You’re not going to howl, are you?” she asked.

  Miffed at her sense of humor, he gently shoved her. “Well, I don’t know. The moon’s sort of nice looking. Are you going to hang upside down after we go home?”

  “There’s a first time for everything.” She grinned and waved her arm at the sprawling city before them. “C’mon. I don’t want to go home yet.” She fingered something on her belt. A small black box pulsed out a tiny red light. “These are clever little trackers, aren’t they?”

  Paul dug into his pocket and came out with the same device. “Ooze is pretty inventive.”

  Angela put her arms around his waist. She took his tracker and turned it off then turned hers off as well. “I’d say we’ve done our good deed for tonight, but the rest of the evening is still up for grabs,” she said, her voice soft and heading toward the realm of something more than a kiss. “The question is what you’re up for.”