by Pixie Unger
“I want to go home to my family.”
She could feel Craig’s fear at that. How did that work? This had to be the brain damage.
“It is up to you, but if you are going to go home to your family, you should definitely have the MRI first.”
Sarah was a bit irritated by that. “But not if I go with you?”
“Sean has PTSD. We know how to work with people who are…”
“Mentally compromised?”
“If you like.”
She could smell when Maybe-Kentucky came in. Leather and oil. “Is that Marv?”
Two startled noises. “Yeah. It’s me. How did you know?”
Sarah wasn’t sure how to explain that.
After a moment of awkward silence, Marv continued. “We made arrangements for you to be seen at the Devin Clinic. You will go by ambulance in a few hours.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“You don’t need to. It’s our responsibility to take care of you.”
Sarah sighed. “It was a wet night. Sean warned me to be careful. If I sue, the only people who win will be the lawyers.”
“You don’t have to sue. If you aren’t happy with how this turns out, you can leave and you will still be financially taken care of. We wanna know you will be OK.”
Shit. The garage didn’t look that well off. Was there some gang related drug money or something that was paying for all of this? Ah hell, Craig had said the garage was owned by a ‘family’ and whoever they were, the doctor and nurses were afraid of them.
“It’s OK.” Marv reassured her. “Don’t be afraid. You are safe. No one is going to hurt you. It’s gonna be OK.”
Craig asked, “Are you ready for round two, or do you need to go back to bed now?”
Sarah didn’t say anything. She was sitting here, wearing only a pile of towels, with two strange men in the room. Why wasn’t she more freaked out by that? Part of it was that Molly was here and she wasn’t bothered by either of them.
Marv said, “I’ll just go arrange the transfer with the staff, OK?”
Sarah nodded.
Marv left.
“OK,” she said. “Round two.”
Chapter 3
1250 AD - The Great Ulfurinn Loss.
Maive Black commits suicide. She had been chained to a wall in the Black dungeon for the past 63 years, available to any pack member who wanted her. She hung herself with her chain. Mass suicides began with 87% of the Ulfurinn population successfully ending their own lives in the next five years.
Frost giant raiders began sending raiding parties to Earth.
September 6th
“I wish Molly was coming with me.”
There was the absolute silence that Sarah wasn’t quite used to yet. The guys from the garage always took a moment of silence any time she said anything. It was a little odd. Almost like they were taking a moment to talk silently among themselves before answering.
Sarah had been afraid to go to sleep last night. She was afraid that she wouldn’t wake up again. Sean had been sitting with her. He wasn’t as good at reading out loud as Mac. In the morning her head still hurt but her vision was better. She could make out shapes instead of just blobs. She wasn’t exactly keen to mention this, some jackass would just start shining light in her eyes again.
They had let her drink those old people protein shakes for supper. She felt really hungry, but hadn’t been able to talk her way into some solid food. Plus she had the embarrassment of having to use a commode rather than being allowed to use the bathroom. She didn’t even feel like she could complain about that since they had to leave to ward to even find her a commode. It wasn’t something they stocked on the coma ward.
She woke up so hungry she was begging for toast or crackers or anything. She was told they didn’t want her to aspirate on the trip. Sarah suspected this was retaliation for her making the doctor pull out her feeding tube. By the time the ambulance arrived, she was so hungry she just curled into a ball on her bed and cried. Molly had climbed into bed to snuggle up against her.
After a pause, one of the paramedics, Tim, finally said, “You can bring your service dog. They are allowed.”
Sarah opened her mouth to point out Molly wasn’t a service dog. Then she closed it and waited to see if anyone else would mention that.
Marv cleared his throat, “Sarah, I wanna send someone to make sure you're taken care of. I was thinking of sending Mac. If you wanna take someone else, that’s fine. But you gotta stay with whoever you take. No wandering off, understand?”
Biting back the urge to make a snarky comment about not wandering off to walk into walls she couldn’t see, Sarah nodded. She was pretty sure she could talk Mac into sneaking her some real food.
“Ok,” Nicole, the other paramedic said, “Do you want to try to stand and transfer to the stretcher or would you be happier letting us transfer you?”
Sarah was surprised at that. “I’m allowed to stand?”
“We can give it a try, as long as you promise to tell us if you start feeling light headed,” Nicole replied calmly.
The transfer went fairly well. Sarah’s legs felt shaky, like she had overdone it in the gym. They got her all strapped in and Tim and Mac wheeled her out to the ambulance bay. Then they waited.
A few minutes later, Nicole turned up with three coffees, a peppermint tea and a takeaway order of waffles from the staff cafeteria. “Sorry, Sarah. I’m not willing to give you syrup or bacon, but if you can keep these down, we’ll try something a bit more adventurous for lunch.”
“You’re feeding me?”
“Sure!” Nicole sounded surprised. “There aren’t many of us Ulfurinns; we have to stick together.”
Sarah frowned. “What’s an Ulfurinn?”
There was the silence. Again.
“Are y’all doing sign language or something? What’s with all the long dramatic pauses?”
Nicole snorted. “Y’all. Good lord, you are already starting to talk like Marv. That is awesome.”
“You’re ducking my question.”
“Yes, yes I am. But I promise to explain once your vision clears up.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“It will.” That was Tim. “You should eat those waffles before they get cold.”
They were toaster waffles that had gotten a bit soft in the warming tray in the cafeteria, but, right now, they were the best damn waffles Sarah had ever eaten. Nonetheless, she saved the last bite for Molly.
“Why did you do that?” Nicole asked.
Sarah considered this. “Molly ended up at the pound after an animal neglect complaint. She was extremely malnourished when I got her. I haven’t been able to feed her in weeks. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Mac was the one who broke the silence this time. “We’ve been taking care of her. We figured out which food you were feeding her. She’s been going for runs with us. She’s part of the pack - um… family now.”
“Um, I wanted to ask - How come you’re called Mac? Is that short for something? You aren’t Scottish. You sound like you are from The Geordie Shore or something.”
Silence.
“Yeah. I used to live around there. Um… They call me Mac, like that old song, Mac the knife. Uh, my Glasgow smile is a bit more noticeable than Gus’s.”
“What’s a Glasgow smile?”
Uncomfortable silence.
Nicole coughed. “At some point someone carved Mac’s face up a bit.”
“Oh.” Sarah thought about that for a moment. “What’s your real name?”
“James.”
“Mind if I call you James?”
Awkward silence.
“You can if you want, but no one will know who you’re talking about. Mac is fine.”
“And someone did that to Gus, too?”
Mac sighed. “Me and him were, um, in a gang before we got jobs at Marv’s garage. The… head of the gang would slice everyone as, um, part of the initiation.”
&n
bsp; Sarah didn't know what to say to that.
Nicole asked, “Marv seems like a pretty decent guy.”
“Yeah. He took us in when he didn’t haveta. We have good jobs and nice place to live. He’s a good… boss.”
Tim cleared his throat from the driver’s seat. “We still have a long way to go. Maybe you two should let Sarah get some rest.”
The shapes and smells that were Mac and Nicole leaned away.
“Mac?” Sarah asked. “Um… if it won’t bother Tim and Nicole, could you read to me some more?”
Mac nodded. “Any requests?” He pulled out her kindle.
“Hogfather?”
Mac nodded again and turned on the kindle. “Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.”
Sarah drifted off to sleep without noticing that she had been able to see Mac nod.
September 7th
Jonathan Black’s favourite daughter was reading a medical file. It was one of the more interesting things she had come across. August 22nd, the woman had a significant bleed into the occipital lobe of her brain. Today’s fMRI showed only a small area of damage. At this rate, Nicole wouldn’t be surprised if it was completely repaired in a few days. According to Sarah, her vision had gone from only being able to see light and dark on September 5th, to merely needed a pair of strong glasses today.
Nicole couldn’t wait to see how Sarah’s vision tested tomorrow.
Still, the pack’s leader should have come for this next bit. Marv was an odd duck, but new puppies needed a firm hand and Mac wasn’t up to insisting on anything.
Fuck.
She could do it, if necessary, but that wasn’t ideal.
She wasn’t sure what to think of Mac. He was attentive. That was good. Sarah was relatively relaxed around him. That was even better. Marv seemed to be under the impression that his pack should be given free rein. That was… problematic. Sarah was, of course, free to choose her own path.
As long as she made the right choice. Going off on her own was the equivalent of rolling in bacon grease and crawling into the tiger cage. There were rules in place to make sure visitors to the zoo didn’t do that for a reason. Just like there were rules in place to prevent Ulfurinns from roaming around unattended. Follow the rules and no one got hurt.
The tricky part was explaining that.
Nicole rolled her shoulders back, cracking the joints in her shoulders and her neck. Part of her wanted to just get this over with. The rest of her thought it would be easier to pull off once Sarah could see properly.
It wasn’t that difficult to arrange for Sarah’s parents to be waiting at the clinic when Sarah had arrived. The Black’s lawyers had already been working on them for some time. It hadn’t been difficult to point out that Sarah was getting the very best care. After all, she had been diagnosed as brain dead, yet here she was still awake and very much alive. It was a simple thing to point out that if they took legal action against the garage, that very best care would stop until the legal matter could be dealt with.
In the meantime, it had been mildly entertaining watching them each try to completely ignore the other. They had just arranged themselves to not be in the same room together after the progress meeting. A quiet word with Sarah suggested this might have been the first time they were in the same room since their divorce thirteen years ago.
The encounter had made Nicole feel better in that they were two of the most self absorbed people she had ever met. They wouldn’t cause a problem if they didn’t get to see Sarah that often.
September 9th
Nicole was sitting with Sarah and Mac. “Your vision is back to twenty/twenty and most of the muscle atrophy has reversed.” She sighed and tried to figure how to broach the next bit. As luck would have it, Sarah helped.
“OK, so I don’t pretend to understand brain injuries, but how is the muscle thing possible? At this point, I’m guessing that there must have been a mix up with the original MRI. My name on some other patient’s file or something. But how did I gain twenty pounds of muscle in four days? That just doesn’t seem possible.”
Nicole relaxed. “The original MRI wasn’t wrong. You slipped in the garage and fractured your skull on the concrete. Marv made a decision, a hard decision, to save your life.”
Sarah frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The garage, and some of this clinic and about 0.02% of the population are werewolves.”
Sarah stared at her. Then giggled nervously, then said, “OK. Apparently, I still have some brain damage, because I just heard werewolves instead of whatever you actually said.”
Nicole looked at Mac. “Show her.”
Mac stripped down to his shorts and sort of… exploded, but only about six inches outward. Suddenly, there was the classic movie monster werewolf where he had been standing. Half way between a face and a snout, rangy fur or hair all over, talons, and of course the fangs. Sarah jumped out of her chair and backed up. Molly looked completely relaxed. The creature made the sort of whining talking noises Sarah associated with huskies.
Nicole nodded, “He says you don’t have to be afraid, you are part of his pack and he would never hurt you.”
Sarah was staring at him. He was taller than Mac would be standing on his tiptoes. Which he kind of was since his feet had changed. He had to be over seven feet just now. And suddenly hairy.
“How does that work?” she asked, allowing the small details to distract her from the fact that she was looking at a wolf man. “Where does the hair come from? Does it all fall out when you change back?”
Nicole nodded. “It falls out and disintegrates. It takes energy to change and grow the fur. Generally, Lupers - that’s male werewolves - need a minimum of 6000 calories a day, if they are going to be changing back and forth.”
“Why is Molly OK with this?”
More doggy noises. “He says the pack has been taking care of her for weeks, she is used to them already.” Nicole translated.
“You can understand that?”
“Oh, yes. It is its own language. It takes some practice, like learning any new language. You will learn it eventually.”
Sarah fell silent, trying to process all of that. “Can you change back now, please?” He did. “Does that hurt?”
Mac was watching her carefully. “Nah. It’s sorta like a full body sneeze. If you’ve been one shape for a while, it feels good. Like a really good stretch after sleeping in a bad bed.”
“That gang you were in… were they..” Sarah trailed off but nodded at Mac, “um… was that before or after you…” she shrugged helplessly, unable to bring herself to say ‘became a werewolf.’
“Right before. If it were after, my scars would have healed up better. My old alpha, he liked to mark his prey, then stalk them for a few weeks. He was part of a knife gang in Glasgow in the 1920’s. Him and Gus. You don’t have to worry about him, though. Marv -” Mac stopped abruptly.
“Marv what?” Sarah asked nervously.
Nicole stepped forward. “Sarah, it’s ok. You don’t have to be afraid, but I need you to understand that we can’t let werewolves go to prison. They would infect the whole population. We need to be very careful about letting people find out about us.”
“Marv killed him, didn’t he?”
Mac was still watching her. “Yes. Marv and Craig were passing through his territory. He challenged Marv and lost. Marv took in me and Gus. The other two that had been in the pack went one county over and joined the pack there. Lupers do best in packs. You need someone to watch your back. Marv is a good guy. He actually cares if we are happy and taken care of. Not everyone’s like that.”
Sarah sat down. “You said Marv infected me. How does that work?”
Nicole coughed and looked down for a moment to hide a smile. “It is transmitted by saliva into bone marrow at sites of stem cell production. If you noticed the scarring on Mac’s knee, that’s where his infection happened.”
“But I
don’t have any bite marks.”
“Nah, we know how it works now. Gus used Marv’s drool and a meat syringe to inject the infection into your hip bone.”
Sarah stared at Mac in horror.
“Um…” he said. “You were already almost dead,” he added helpfully.
“That thing Craig said about me staying with you… That’s because I’m going to turn into a werewolf?”
The silence went on too long.
“That’s a yes, isn’t? I have to go stay with the people who -”
“Who saved your life.” Nicole interrupted quickly. “And, no, you don’t have to stay with them. But you do need to find some pack to stay with and Marv’s is pretty laid back. It would probably be a good fit for you. You don’t actually get to change shape the way Mac does. Women don’t. Our infection protects us from the guys. They call us Ulfurinn and we call them Lupers.”
Sarah took a breath and forced herself to relax.
Nicole asked, “Are you OK? There is usually a lot more denial than this.”
Sarah shrugged, “To paraphrase my favourite author, ‘Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot werewolf telling you them’.”
Chapter 4
1310- Turning the Tide
Jonathan Black rose to power and gathered the Dogs of War to drive back the invaders. It was a long and bloody battle with mass infections in 1317-1319 as an attempt to convert enough Humies to successfully repel the invaders. The Dogs of Wars emptied entire villages to increase their numbers. They were successful, but many, both humans and war dogs, were lost.
September 9th
Mac took Sarah back to the room they had been sharing. Two twin hospital beds, two hospital dressers, a large four piece bathroom. She followed him in silence. Mac wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s still me. I’m still the person who read to you and -”
“Stop! Just... stop!” Sarah blurted out. “I need to think.”
Molly whined and headbutted Sarah’s hand. Sarah absentmindedly scratched Molly’s head and gently pulled her ears. “Is… everyone… I mean all of you that came to visit me in the hospital… are you all… infected?”
