This wasn't working. He couldn't do enough damage with a tree branch. He ran toward the hood of the car. It was low enough that he could jump onto the hood and then onto the roof.
Now he could play king of the hill with the zombies while he caught his breath.
The zombies, though, could climb up as easily as he could. He found he had to keep defending the front end while watching for the grasping hands of others around the edges.
That's when he heard it. The moaning was getting louder. He looked toward the tree line. Dozens of zombies, pouring out of the trees and running toward the road, fifty yards away from him.
"Change of plan," he muttered.
He leapt off the roof and started running toward the mob near the trees. He glanced back: his pals from the van had joined the chase. Up ahead, the mob was joyfully converging on him. He felt like a slow quarterback who'd unwisely decided to make a run for it.
But as the dead became a wall around him, he let go of everything he was holding back. His muscles expanded and his blood boiled. He let the sling fall as his bones fused together. His jaw stretched and his teeth grew. He threw his head back and howled.
His prey lacked the sense to run. They didn't understand that this was no longer a fight, but a feast. He struck with tooth and claw and his prey fell. The moon rose higher and he grew stronger. He smashed their skulls and tasted their brains. What had disgusted him before seemed like poetic justice, and not merely the best way to ensure they didn't get back up again.
Finally he stood in a circle of the fallen, breathing hard. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. Movement, fifty yards away.
He bounded towards them, two body lengths at a stride. His teeth closed around the neck of one that was trying to scale the van. He leapt to the top of it, a metal hill he could now defend against all comers. It was familiar. It felt right.
When a hand reached for him, he grasped it as if to shake hands, pulled its owner up to the top, then slashed its head off.
At last there was only stillness around him. He gnawed on an arm while he listened. Nothing moved. But there was still something that bothered him. An enticing smell, and right below his feet.
He jumped down and stood next to the door. He found his paws knew what to do to open it.
The smell that had brought him here… he wanted it and didn't want it. It was something he shouldn't have. But the wolf didn't care about that. The wolf smelled fresh meat.
Then he smelled something else he'd missed.
The shouting brought him back to full alert. It was so cold on top of the van, he was on the verge of dozing off. As soon as he heard the shouts, he looked up and saw the two SUVs heading their way. The SUVs stopped a couple of car lengths away and eight men jumped out, fanning out around the van with weapons drawn.
Kane saw that Appleton was with them, looking awkward in his tactical vest, though his sidearm seemed to fit his hand okay.
When there was a break in the shouting, Kane spoke. "I'm putting the gun down." He set it on the roof. Then he stood up, slowly, counting off each movement, until he was standing tall with his hands high in the air. He put his hands behind his head.
The team checked the zombies in pairs, one member covering another as they poked at the bodies with rifles. Then they checked the cab and found Leann.
"She's okay," came the call, and everyone relaxed.
When it seemed safe, Kane jumped down. He let them lead him to the silver cage in the back of one of the SUVs.
They made it to Kansas City in time to take the wind out of the outbreak there. Appleton was hailed as a hero. Kane got all the brains he could eat.
A week later he was back in the cage. Leann came to see him. She seemed shy.
"How'd you do it?" she said. "No one's ever held back from the change during a full moon."
"Oh," he said. "No, I didn't hold back."
"You changed and then you sat on top of that van and left me alone, fighting off zombies? Quite the hero."
"Not exactly," he said.
He'd crouched there in the cab on the moonlight-dappled seats, listening to her breathing for a whole minute. At that range he could hear the blood rushing through her veins. Then he smelled it again. Basil and vinaigrette. The wax paper package was on the seat next to her, with his name written on it in magic marker. "I changed back. I'm sorry, though," he said.
She stared at him. "You changed back, during a full moon." She shook her head. "What on earth are you sorry for?"
"I ate your sandwich," he said. He still had the wax paper in his jacket pockets. Two pieces. One with his name, and one with hers.
"You remembered the basil," he said. "I could hardly eat you after that."
About the Author
Aaron DaMommio has had stories published in Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories Showcase, and Mirror Dance.
The Dove of Assisi
Troy Tang
Once upon a time there lived a young dragon, whose cave lay nestled within a great deep forest in the lush green land of Italy. The nearest village was many miles away—quite a way on foot, and only a little less by wing—and its inhabitants enjoyed a life of the finest quality. Plump, woolly sheep dotted the hills around the forest, accompanied by fat, sleek cows. In summer, the wheat-fields hummed with flies and farmers and the rhythmic swish of the scythe. It should have been a wonderful village for a young dragon like ours—after all, there were lots of good things to eat, and no dragon-hunters to bother him.
But it wasn't.
Perhaps an example will suffice. As we all know, dragons are meant to do three things: steal, hoard, and breathe fire. One day, in the woods near the old dragon's hunting grounds, a particularly plump cow presented itself for the taking. The new dragon crept out, the trapper sounded his bugle, and the villagers came a-whooping, waving pitchforks and scythes and torches and even the odd sword. But instead of baring his huge teeth or beating the air with his wings or even snarling, the dragon scrabbled around and flew off as fast as his wings could carry him, leaving some very disappointed villagers.
"For shame," said the baker, tucking his rolling pin back into his belt. "What a coward."
"Such a thin one, too," said the threshers. "We're going back to the fields."
"He's not a very good dragon," said rosy-cheeked Gianna, the most beautiful girl in the village, who had come to watch the fun.
"No, he isn't," agreed everyone, and they followed her all the way back home.
Our dragon went home, too. There was nothing in his cave save bones and a single coin of ancient gold. The coin had a hawkish man with leaves on his head on one side, surrounded by letters, and a woman with a sword and a sheaf on the other. On rainy days, he liked to pry the coin out and tap it with his biggest claw, which was as long as your left hand's index finger and thick as the last two. Dragons like the sound of metal. The bones were piled very high, mouse-bones and wishbones and the odd old dog's, but they were not the type of bones that any respectable dragon would be seen lounging over.
Our dragon had two squirrels and a thrush for dinner, and then he went to sleep. While he was snoring, little Pietro crept into his cave, squeaked, and ran out laughing. And that was how the whole village learned that their dragon was not just a terrible thief, but only hoarded bones.
"Our very own dragon," groaned the blacksmith over his dinner of rye bread, ham and lentils. "How will we face those louts from the city? They have one that's a field long, and bright purple to boot, and every month it eats twenty cows and ten sheep. And ours is whiter than my bottom."
"Just terrible," agreed his wife amiably. "More water, Gianna dear."
"Well," said beautiful Gianna, passing the jug with the cultivated air of a rural dilettante, "I think you’re all being quite horrid. Think of it from the poor dragon’s point of view. Why, if he could talk, I’d bet he’d tell you that he didn’t like the way you looked, either."
The blacksmith snorted, rolled his eyes to heaven, then ripped
his slice of bread asunder. Gianna gave her most offended huff. It was the blacksmith’s wife who made to reconcile them, having, as mothers tend to do, a brighter brain than her daughter’s and a damper fuse than her husband’s.
"Now, now, dears," said the good woman, "you both know very well that dragons can’t talk—although I do suppose it would be rather interesting. Imagine that, Father, a talking dragon! Why, they’d come to us from miles around. Even the city doesn’t have one of those."
Father Adorno, who was seated at the table with them, wiped his mouth and looked solemn. He was a stern silvery man, not given to sentiment, and knew, among other things, that the village's old dragon had only been kept at bay because he was nearly toothless, that every week the city paid their dragon-hunters fifty silver pieces, and that young worms could grow older.
"I would beseech the help of San Giorgio," he said, and nothing more.
And so the months passed. There was one thing left for our dragon to do, which was breathe fire. He did breathe fire, or at least he tried. But it was more smoke than anything, a very weak and spindly fire, speckled quite often with dragon-spit. Sometimes, the village boys would sneak into his cave, holding sticks stabbed through with bits of raw meat, and see how many they could roast without getting singed. And as they scrambled out of the cave, laughing, with blue meat sagging from their wilting sticks, the dragon would curl up and look vaguely befuddled.
"I am meant to be a big and scary dragon," he told himself, "but instead I am small and weak. And the boys look very tender, but I cannot get at them. I cannot even breathe fire properly."
Now, dragons are smart, especially the weak ones. Unlike his little brother, the komodo dragon, who turns sluggish and lazy in the cold, the real dragon has a fire deep inside him, which keeps him cozy and alert even in the bitterest winter night. And because our dragon was small and weak, he had to think and plot and plan more than the big dragons, who roar and gnash and shake the world, spit a few blinding gouts of flame, and then swoop in amongst the panicked crowd and eat the stragglers. They are used to getting their way, the big dragons, but big our dragon was not.
So there he lay in his little cave, thinking, tapping his one coin, and munching the miller's housecat.
"I need a name," he decided. "All the great dragons have names."
It was not his intention to take a name like the one your parents gave you. Dragons have their own dragon names, but no one can pronounce them. No human can understand what a dragon is saying without a lifetime of practice, and as a rule, dragons do not come out to chat very often. No, what our dragon wanted was more like a nickname.
"I will eat my first person," he decided, "and then I will drag him out into the middle of the village. They will be so afraid that they will give me a name."
He did not know why he wanted to be feared, only that it felt very proper for a dragon.
At that moment, he heard a soft braying, and the dull pad of hooves on the forest floor. It was a donkey, he realized, and donkeys were smaller than horses, if a bit more ornery. He spat out the last fluffy bit of cat's-tail, crawled to the mouth of his cave, and watched.
The man on the donkey was very thin, with scabs and bruises all across his face. There was a large bald patch on the crown of his head, shaved around his pate so that his hair hung out like the crust of a hollowed pie. He wore a strange brown tunic, as rough as the sacks the miller kept his flour in, tied at the waist with a length of rope. His beard was thin and wispy. And as the donkey plodded along, the thin man sang a cheerful song. The song was in French, but even if you know French you would have a hard time understanding it. This was a very long time ago, after all. It went something like this:
Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor,
and all blessing.
* * *
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.
* * *
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Now, that is what we have from the Italian, as it was written down later—or rather, Umbrian, which is a type of Italian they spoke back then. But our dragon did not need any Italian or Umbrian or even French to understand it. Dragons can understand all the languages of the world, though they cannot speak them. And so our dragon decided that while this thin man might be stringy and lean and therefore bad eating, he was not very likely to put up a fight, especially if he sang songs like that in the middle of an unknown wood. Our dragon drew himself up to his full height, blew a great hacking puff of smoke, and flapped through the trees and down in front of the man like a big white pigeon.
The donkey gave a hee of surprise, and then a terrified haw. The thin man looked up, surprised; but it was the surprise of having an unexpected friend show up at your doorstep, and not the surprise of having a plow-horse–sized dragon land three feet in front of your face.
"I am going to eat you, thin man," said the dragon a little sheepishly, "and there is nothing you can do about it."
The thin man put a hand on his donkey's quivering neck, lowering himself slowly to the ground. The donkey stamped its hind hoof and grunted nervously.
"Go hence, Brother Donkey," said the thin man in Umbrian, "and may God be with you. Thank you for bearing me thus far."
The donkey bolted. Our dragon began to feel rather excited. This might actually work.
"Yes," he said, "that's right. Now, I've never actually eaten anyone before, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit slow with the chewing. I really don't want to hurt you that much—oh, but you can't understand me, can you?"
The thin man looked up at him and smiled. It was a very gentle smile, and though the man's lips were cracked and parched with the sun and his teeth were all crooked it was much nicer than any of the sneers that the villagers gave him, even beautiful Gianna's.
"But I can," he said in perfect Dragon.
To say that our dragon was shocked would be an understatement. You might as well call the sea slightly wet.
"How?" he squeaked, accidentally sending a plume of smoke into the thin man's face.
"It is the gift of God, Brother Dragon," replied the man, wiping the soot politely off his face. "I have been sent with the blessings of my Lord Pope to the village up ahead. I have come to preach penance and sacred poverty, and to do mercy unto their poor and sick."
His hands, black and grubby, moved like flickering flames as he talked. Despite himself, our dragon was intrigued.
"What's your name, thin man?"
"I was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone. But now I am Francesco, your brother."
Our dragon blinked. It was a kind of shuttering of his pale chalky eyes.
"But that doesn't make any sense. You can't be the brother of the sun and that donkey and me. You're just a man. You should be scared right now, or running for your life."
"On the contrary, Brother Dragon, we are all sons and daughters of the Most High. How can I be afraid, when my lady Sister Oak is right beside me, and my lord Brother Wind is fanning my face, and my blessed mother, Sister Earth, holds me like the hands of Our Father? How can I be afraid of Little Sister Death, when I own nothing, and will pass to my true abode at her demure touch? I am the least of my brothers and the poorest of servants, but my family—ah! how great it is!"
Francesco spread his hands, and his eyes danced in the dragon's way.
"You may eat me now," he said, with perfect sincerity. "Perhaps it is ordained."
But our dragon was beginning to have second thoughts about eating this Francesco. He seemed a bit addled, with all his talk of mud mothers who were also soil sisters and looked like big men's arms—but he could also speak Dragon.
He stopped, sounding quite miserable. Francesco looked at him with something strange in his eyes. Not hard like anger or watery like fear, but soft and sweet like dew.
Kindness?
"You need a name, do you not, Brother Dragon?"
"How... how did you know?"
"A little bird told me," smiled Francesco. "Come, stay still."
The man moved closer, then, as if seized by a sudden impulse reached out and placed his hands on our dragon's snout.
"Your scales are very beautiful," he said wonderingly. "White as snow."
Our dragon, who had never been called beautiful once in his life, looked terribly embarrassed. Francesco closed his eyes.
"You are Colombano, the Dove. Praise God, and do His will."
Now, what our dragon felt on becoming Colombano was a bit like what you feel after jumping into a hot bath on a rainy day, when you let the warmth sneak straight into your bones. He felt right all the way through, as if he had always been Colombano but only just realized it.
"Thin man?"
"Yes, Brother Colombano?"
"Wait here. I have something for you."
Dragons don't smile, because when they try they look horrendous. But as Colombano flew back up through the trees, scattering leaves like feathers from a burst pillow, there was a lightness in his wings that made him feel like a sunbeam. He whipped into his cave, nosing and clawing through the scattered white bones. To his surprise, when he came back Francesco was still waiting for him.
"Here you go, thin man," mumbled Colombano, proffering the glinting coin between his teeth. "You may take this."
Fell Beasts and Fair Page 32
