by Lynn Red
Her vision went red and narrow. The only thing she could see were the bikers bearing down on Jake and Erik, and the stumpy runt commanding them as she screeched into some kind of walkie-talkie from the corner where she hid.
“Damn,” Mali heard Erik say as she clipped a shifting biker with a claw. Her jeans tore with her thrashing. Her seam split halfway up her fur-covered thigh and when she turned back to Jake and Erik to see them both transformed, a very good feeling washed over her. This was going to work. This was really going to work, and they were really going to survive. She hadn’t been so sure just a few moments before, but the three of them working together had her convinced that everything was going to be fine.
Well, that and Petunia squawking so angrily into her handset that the raging bunny was shaking and sputtering instead of talking with any sort of coherence. It was hard to understand what she was saying, exactly, but after Mali gave a biker a big boot to the mouth, which sent him flying through the air until he smashed into the wall directly to Petunia’s left, Petunia froze.
“I said come get me goddamnit!” she hissed. “Everything’s going to shit! I’m not going down, not like this. Come get me!”
Jimmy Dutch was on Mali. The normally slack-jawed, brainless wolf was snarling and spitting with rage. His patchy, grungy fur was just like his beard: stringy, unkempt, and decidedly not fresh smelling. It wasn’t just his stench that was strong, either. He locked his claws around Mali’s throat, and squeezed so hard she thought her eyes were going to pop out of her skull. Jimmy lifted her off the ground and then slammed her into a 1970’s vintage wood panel that exploded out around her with the impact. She let out a blasting roar, swiped him across the face with a claw and then delivered a savage backhand.
Jimmy smiled at her, blood running down his lupine snout and covering his teeth. “Jake! Erik!” she shouted, “could use some help!”
“They ain’t helpin’ you, little girl,” Jimmy said as the blood dripped down his chin. “They’d be lucky to be helpin’ themselves. You got ‘em chained, boys?” he asked.
She heard Jake grunt, and a moment later Erik groaned. “How? When did...?”
“Doesn’t matter!” Petunia squeaked. “I win! I win! I really won!” She started shaking so hard that the only way she could let out the rest of the kinetic backflow that had built up in her tiny body was to start hopping in place. “You’re all screwed! String ‘em up, boys, and let’s get the hell out of here!”
A deep, rumbling, thundering sound was coming down the hallway and seemed just about to overrun them. It was booming, almost painfully so, and with her sensitive hearing, the rumbling bass of extremely heavy footsteps, and then a roar so loud it sounded like thunder, shook Mali to the core. She could hardly stand the noise, but when she realized the bikers were reeling too, it gave her a shot of relief. Her head might be aching, but this was her chance.
She charged forward, catching Jimmy Dutch off guard. She head butted him viciously in the nose, and shoved him backward. He went flying over the table in the middle of the room. He skidded over the surface and tumbled back into Petunia.
All the while, the noise coming down the hall was getting louder and louder until the thundering was in the next room, where Jake and Mali had climbed through the ceiling. “Hey Erik! Where you at? Jenga told me to come here!”
The bikers yanked the chains, almost crushing Jake and Erik together. “Atlas?” Erik eked out. “I’ve never been happier to see this ridiculous thing.”
“Not a thing!” Atlas shouted. The smell came before sight. An extremely pungent aroma, something like a mixture of lilac and Axe Body Spray—cologne for young men who really want to make sure you know their wearing cologne—flooded her senses, and was almost as painful as the thundering noise. “You in here?” his words were slow and halting, as though he was struggling to speak, though he knew how.
“Atlas! In here! Just, uh, come through the wall!” he turned to Jake as the two of them struggled in their bonds. “You know how to do drywall, right? I feel like I heard from Ma that you were doing that at some point.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Jake managed to say, and then with a crash that would make the Kool-Aid Man proud as a new papa, plaster and sheetrock exploded in a white cloud. “Oh hi Erik,” the slow-speaking giant said. When he emerged from the cloud, his green skin was covered in white, with flakes of building material matted into the corners of his eyes and his mouth. “Hi lady!” he said when he saw Mali, who was just about the least ladylike she’d ever been. “Hi?” she answered in a question. “What in the hell...?”
“Atlas!” Erik shouted. “They’re trying to hurt the pretty lady! Get ‘em!”
“What?!” Atlas thundered, his green face quaking and his enormous, bear-like fists trembling with what Mali assumed was either rage or... well, it had to be rage. “You don’t hurt lady!”
The bikers all recoiled at once. They realized, perhaps, that their entire existence was just about to be brought to an abrupt end by this enormous, curious-smelling, marauder. He stomped forward, grabbing one of them with a meaty paw and flinging him backward into the wall. The biker let out a very soft grunt, and then slumped forward into a limp, quivering mess. Next, Atlas turned his attention to the two bikers still holding Erik and Jake in chains. Atlas smiled at them, which they took to mean something very violent.
He bounded toward them like a kid who just had his first turn with the football. Erik and Jake both twisted away before he dove, and in the next second, Atlas plucked both bikers up by the head, holding them up in the air before clapping them together once, then again. The two bodies fell like sacks of toothpaste, almost oozing as they hit the floor. Jimmy Dutch climbed to his feet and surveyed the destruction. Petunia had resumed staring with her mouth wide open, a look that wasn’t very good, but was all she could manage.
Mali’s eyes had yet to shrink from the size of cereal bowls, and even though she’d begun the slow transformation to her human frame, her senses were still horribly, wonderfully alive. “Hi Erik!” Atlas shouted, lifting up both wolf brothers by the chain around their legs. He dangled them in the air, and smiled his bizarre, gawking, open-mouthed grin while the two wolves swung helplessly.
“Atlas! Where are you?!” A panicked old man clad in a Hawaiian shirt featuring what looked like canna flowers, ’57 Chevys and hula dancer silhouettes, charged into the room. His feet were a blur of painted toenails and ankle bracelets, and his beard a mish-mash of braided-in chicken feet, things that resembled charm bracelet trinkets. “Put them down Atla—no wait, don’t drop them, do it easy. There we are, just like that. Good, good.”
With amazing gentleness, the enormous—and Mali just realized, sewn together—bear or zombie or whatever he was, laid the two wolves down and unhooked the massive chains before helping them to their feet. The chain fell in a tangle around Atlas’s enormous, tree-trunk legs.
He brushed them off and smiled broadly, drooling just a little. Mali was overwhelmed with a very strange, and extremely powerful desire to hug the giant green bear man, but when she got nearer, the smell of frat house put her off.
“Let’s get the hell outta here!” Jimmy Dutch had been forgotten in all the excitement and carnival-like action. He had made what was probably the first good decision of his life when he ran across the room, collected Petunia in his arms like a baby and ran for the hole in the wall Atlas produced. Petunia screeched and thrashed, but she was no match physically for the clumsily-running wolf.
Even if she had gone back to her fully human form, along with torn pants and a shirt that was split almost all the way down the middle, Mali’s agility was still lupine. Without thinking, she lunged across the room ahead of Jimmy and his protesting bundle of joy. Like quicksilver, she snatched up the hook end of the chain, and ran back. The chain snapped taut, and even though Mali flipped a somersault at the torque, Atlas didn’t move an inch. He just stood there smiling, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him except for patting
Erik and Jake on the head like they were small children.
Sirens outside heralded the arrival of Jamesburg Police Department’s first responders. They were close enough that Petunia knew she had to make a quick exit. She was so preoccupied with the imminent arrival of law enforcement that for once, her awareness wasn’t quite what it should have been.
Jimmy Dutch, too, was completely unaware of the obstacle in front of him, and wasn’t interested in listening to Petunia’s wild screeching. “You idiot!” she cried out, but before she could give him any more verbal abuse, the wolf’s plodding feet ran straight into the chain, and as he went sprawling, Petunia flew through the air, straight at Atlas, who turned around just in time to see the angry football, and catch her.
“Let me go! God, what is that smell?” Petunia’s legs were going like tiny, fur-covered pistons against Atlas’s chest. “Let me go!”
“No,” Atlas said, his slow, booming voice dragging one syllable into about eight seconds. “I don’t... think... so?” He cuddled her to his chest like a tiny, angry baby, as the sirens outside stopped and a small group of uniformed officers, led by one of them about twice the size of the others, but still quite a bit smaller than Atlas, filed in. Atlas boomed laughter, and prodded Petunia in the ribs.
“You again?” the big man asked. “I thought you did your time and you were heading down the straight and narrow. Or whatever it is you want to follow that isn’t being a criminal and trying to blow up the town. Was she trying to blow up the town again?”
“Nah, Ash, this time she was just trying to blackmail me into giving her a million bucks and a city car to escape. She tried capturing my brother Jake, and his girlfriend, Mali, who he illegally turned into a werewolf to save her life. They escaped, and then she ratcheted things up. I’m not even really sure what her plan was here, but—”
“I was trying to make you pay me, you jackass!” Petunia shouted. “I just want to get out of here!”
“Oh right,” Erik said, completely ignoring Petunia. “This is Ash Morgan. He’s a detective in the PD.”
“Lieutenant now,” Ash said. “Either way, good to meet you both. And thanks for the hand, Atlas,” Ash patted the big thing on the shoulder. “I don’t know what we’d do without you. Although, you could maybe try switching cologne. That one’s pretty, uh, pungent.”
“What?” Petunia squawked. “You aren’t gonna arrest them? They broke the law!”
“Uh, you know, kidnapping is illegal, you know,” Ash said. “And in my mind, occupying the courthouse and terrorizing the town is a little worse than saving someone’s life. And that’s all politics anyway. I’d call him a hero, not a zero.”
Ash grinned proudly. “Get it? Not... a... Right, anyway, officers, take her in. I’m tired and I want some hamburgers.”
As the cops, and the squirming bunny, filed out of the room, Izzy returned with Frederick in tow.
“That was... something,” Mali said, after a few moments of trying to process what in the world had just happened. “Am I supposed to believe this is just another day in the life of a Jamesburg resident?”
“Welcome to town,” Erik said, scratching his head. “You staying this time, Jake?”
Izzy and Erik’s cub climbed up his dad’s leg, and perched on his shoulder. Izzy put her arm around Erik. “Say yes,” she said. “Erik needs someone to keep him reasonable. And I could use someone to hang out with too. It isn’t like there are a lot of human... former humans, around here to talk with.”
Jake grabbed Mali’s hand. “I can’t speak for her,” he said, “but there isn’t anywhere I’d rather be.”
“Someone wise once said,” Mali started speaking with gravitas to spare, “home is wherever we’re together. I think this is gonna be a hell of an adventure. But you know what I could really use right now?”
Jake squeezed her hand, slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “A long night of conversation and cuddling?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, “but before that, I could really use a burger.”
After the peals of laughter subsided, and everyone started through the door to find a place to put Mali and Jake up until they could find a place of their own, Izzy paused, then turned back to the demolished conference room. She smiled, and shook her head.
“Jamesburg,” she sighed, “gotta love it.”
11
“So what’s it like?” Izzy asked, pushing back from the meat-covered table and patting her overly full belly. “The whole werewolf thing, I mean. I’ve asked Erik about it, but he’s, you know, Erik, and not the most reliable source of information.”
“Hey!” Erik protested, around a mouthful of burger and bun. Instead of continuing, he was happy to just keep chewing.
Mali took a deep breath and let it out in a long, dwindling sigh before she took another long pull from her beer bottle. “You know,” she finally started, “I can’t even really say. It’s weird, but at first I remember things like smelling all kinds of things I never smelled and hearing different birds and being able to tell which one was which.”
Jake let out a short laugh. “Yeah, she talked about that one for a long, long time.”
“I did not!” she punched him playfully on the arm. “Well okay maybe, but it was like getting a big, giant HD TV after having nothing but an 80s console set for my whole life. You know that feeling when you realize that football players have faces?”
Izzy burst out a laugh. “Or when you get your first pair of glasses as a kid?” she snorted. “For me it was realizing that tree leaves were all single items that blew my mind.”
The two girls laughed, but neither of the life-long werewolves had much of a clue why. “Why should that be a surprise?” Jake asked. “I mean, didn’t you know what leaves were?”
“It’s, uh,” Izzy began, and then trailed off as she tried to figure out how in the hell to explain human physical failings. “You know how every so often, wolves get all heated up and so horny it’s impossible to be around them?”
“Happens for me every day,” Erik interjected, with a half-smile and a cocked eyebrow. Izzy gave him a brief “Ugh” before moving on.
“Wait, no,” she said, “that’s a terrible analogy. Oh well, I got to make fun of you two horny dogs, so that’s good enough for me.” Mali was now howling with laughter so hard her face was starting to turn purple. By the time she calmed down enough to breathe normally, everyone was staring at her.
“I don’t know what you think’s gonna happen to you,” Jake said with a devilish grin. “It ain’t like it only happens to boy dogs.”
Mali frowned, but only for a second. “I mean,” she started, “at least if it’s me doing it, then you don’t have to worry about being too aggressive.”
“I don’t think I have to worry about that much anyway,” Jake said, squeezing her hand and smiling. “Do I?”
Erik and Izzy both started laughing, but at the same time, looked toward one another. “So,” Erik asked, “what’s next? You said you were staying, but where are you going? You can stay here as long as you want.”
“And as long as you can stand living with a two and a half year old werewolf cub,” Izzy added with a laugh. Mali joined her.
“What was that like?” Mali asked. “You’re not exactly a hoss, Izzy, how the hell did you manage to push out a werewolf?”
Izzy shook her head, blushing slightly and laughing. “It was a long, long, heavy process. I don’t remember most of it, and not because of drugs, although those helped some. I think what really knocked my memory out was... well, you know how when you have a car wreck or something like that, and your brain just blocks out the trauma so you can keep living normally without turning into a twitchy mess every single time you make a left turn?”
Mali’s eyes were wide as she nodded.
“Yeah, that,” Izzy said. “He’s also lucky that he’s cute as hell because otherwise, I’d be keeping a running tally of broken glasses, broken chairs, broken tables and broken toy
s to present to him upon graduation from high school as an invoice. I think I’d call it ‘Freddie’s Destruction Bill’ and laugh when he thinks I actually expect him to come up with the thousands of dollars.”
Jake squeezed Mali’s hand, and she looked in his direction to catch a disarming, and surprisingly vulnerable misty look in his eyes. “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” she asked, facing Jake, but addressing everyone. “My grandma told me the best prank you could ever play on a kid. What you do is you make a fake UFO. You know, like a real hokey looking flying saucer. And then—”
Erik and Izzy were already starting to laugh, and she hadn’t even finished the build-up yet. Still, the beer was starting to work its magic, and it looked like Izzy’s wine was working too. “Go on, Izzy urged Mali. “I’ll explain in a second.”
She and Erik were still laughing, but Mali soldiered on. “Anyway, you make a hokey looking UFO and take a picture of the kid halfway in and halfway out of it. Then when they’re a good age to mess with ‘em, you show them the picture and say something was always off about them.”
Izzy and Erik howled again with laughter, but when she looked back at Jake, he was still just staring at her, still with that glassy, smitten, dumbfounded look on his face.
Mali, suddenly, got the joke. After she joined in, Jake snapped out of his love-induced stupor. “Wait, what’s going on?” he asked. “What’s happening?”
A half second later, the little baby monitor came to life with a wail. “Oh there’s that, too,” Izzy said. “He’s never not hungry. I’m just glad he’s moved on to normal food. There’s another story I could tell you some time, if you think you have the stomach for it.”
