As soon as my body goes past her teeth, into the creature’s mouth, I accept my destiny. If I’m fated to be dog food, then so be it. But as the wolf’s mouth closes around my body, Pippi yanks the rope and pulls me out. The beast’s mouth closes, without me inside. It locks its eyes on me again, licks its lips again. Then Pippi lowers me back into its mouth. As the wolf bites down, Pippi pulls me out in the nick of time.
Pippi’s laughs fill the woods. She continues to tease the wolf with my body. She lowers me, the wolf bites, and she pulls me back up. But each time, she lowers me deeper into the mouth to see how far she can get before pulling me out. It is a game to her. The wolf is getting angry, growling. It salivates so much that spit and drool splatter out across me every time it tries to take a bite.
Pippi drops the rope and I fall completely inside the wolf’s mouth. My body splats against its tongue. I feel wet taste buds between my fingers as my face peers down the dark chasm of Tessa’s throat. Her growling vibrates through my entire body. Right when I feel the wolf’s mouth closing and her throat muscles squeezing together to gulp me down, I am sucked out into the air again.
Tessa is now leaping up into the air, snapping at me, barking loudly. Pippi is cackling, wanting it to last as long as possible. I try not to scream. I know she wants me screaming before she lets me go.
A black form leaps over Tessa’s head, diving from an adjacent tree toward Pippi. It is November. She punches Pippi so hard that the girl falls from the tree. I drop only a few feet before Nova seizes the rope.
Pippi catches herself on a branch just above me. As Nova pulls me up, the wolf gets even more ferocious, leaping up and biting at the air mere inches away from me. Pippi pulls a throwing knife from her ankle and tosses it at the rope. The knife pierces the center of the cable, lodging itself up to the handle, but the rope does not snap. Yet. By the time Pippi pulls another knife, Nova already has me by the ankle. Pippi aims her second knife for my head.
As the knife darts at my face, Nova yanks my body into the air and I find myself standing safely on the branch next to her. Nova seems to be just as strong as Pippi. She doesn’t even look at me as I wrap my arms around the trunk of the tree, focusing instead on her opponent. She jumps down to the branch below and punches Pippi before she can draw another knife. She punches her in the throat and then punches her in the stomach.
Pippi begins crying and gagging, trying to breathe through her damaged windpipe. Nova kicks her in the kneecap, causing her leg to twist sideways, knocking her off balance. Pippi falls from the branch, but Nova catches her by the ankle.
Now it is Pippi dangling over the giant wolf’s maw. The bratty wolf girl shrieks as the beast leaps for her, snapping and growling at her.
“Tessa, no!” Pippi cries at the wolf. “It’s me! It’s Pippi!”
Nova holds her there for a moment.
“Do you want me to drop you?” she asks.
Pippi cries in response. Then she says, “Tessa, it’s me...”
“It’s not nice to tease our big sisters with food,” Nova says. “Do you want me to give her what she wants?”
“No,” Pippi cries.
“Are you sure?” Nova says, lowering her a foot.
Pippi shrieks. “No!”
“I want you to give me Daniel,” Nova says.
“He’s my Meat,” Pippi says.
“I could just feed you to Tessa,” Nova says, leaning her in even closer to the wolf’s reach. “After you are dead, I can claim him as my own.”
“Fine,” Pippi says.
“You’ll give him to me?” Nova asks.
“He’s yours,” she says. “Have him. I don’t want him anymore.”
“Promise?” Nova asks. “On your word as a Warrior, promise you will leave him alone and never speak of this to anyone.”
“I promise,” Pippi says.
When Nova lifts Pippi back onto the branch, Pippi’s eyes are drowning in tears, her voice is croaking, she can hardly catch her breath.
“If you fuck with me again I will kill you,” Nova says, glaring deep into the girl’s eyes.
Pippi doesn’t respond. She leaps out of the tree into the next one, climbs down and runs out of the woods. The giant wolf stays below us, instead of following after the girl. Its eyes still locked on me.
Nova climbs up the tree to my branch and sits me down.
“I thought there was nothing you could do?” I ask her.
She looks at me with her cold eyes and gives me a look as if she regrets having saved me.
“I didn’t think I could live with myself if I just let it happen,” Nova says.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
I look down at the beast growling below.
“Now what?” I say.
“She won’t leave until she is fed,” Nova says. “Pippi got her too hungry to just walk away now. We’ll have to wait and hope she gives up soon.”
“You should have just fed Pippi to her,” I say. “That would have been easier.”
Nova snaps at me. “Pippi is a rotten little brat, but she is still my Warrior sister. She just needed to be taught a lesson.”
“Pippi doesn’t see you or any of the other Warriors as her sisters,” I say. “She was pretty much responsible for getting your sister, Mars, killed today. You would have been doing your group a huge favor by killing her.”
Nova doesn’t respond to that, so I don’t push the topic.
“We should be silent,” Nova says. “And keep as still as possible. Tessa will get bored sooner if there isn’t any sound or movement coming from us.”
I stay quiet for a moment, then I say. “I missed you, November.”
She takes my hand in her elongated fingers, but she doesn’t say another word.
I used to sit with Nova in trees a lot when we were kids. She was usually always happy when she was up in the trees. It was her escape from the world.
Sometimes, though, she was quiet and reflective. When she was in a bad mood, she would go up in a tree to work out her problems. During these times, she would either ask me to leave her alone or we would sit together in silence.
Usually, when this happened, it was something her father did to piss her off. He was a domineering son of a bitch who always wanted her to be a normal girl, follow the rules, stay away from troublemakers like me. But she never listened to him. Nova was wild. She would break rules just out of spite. But, still, sometimes he would get to her. Sometimes he would make her feel so miserable that all she could do was hide in a tree. I don’t know why November loved her father so much.
Sitting in the tree, I wish I could think of more pleasant times with Nova. There were so many moments where we would talk for hours up in the trees. But, sitting here in silence, all I can think about is how her father used to make her so sad. Then he had her kicked out of town after being raped at gunpoint.
Tessa does not leave. She sits at the bottom of the tree, waiting.
An hour passes. We hear motorcycles coming near. The leading motorcycle is Hyena, who cackles through the woods as she rides. She is dragging the yellow Fry Guy through the dirt, tied to a long rope. When the large wolf sees the bloody mess of the man, she goes for it. Hyena speeds through the trees, the wolf chasing after, leading it out of our vicinity.
Nova helps me climb down the tree. Once we get to the ground, we see a crew of pissed off wolf girls standing by their bikes, staring us down. Pippi, with a swollen neck and a black eye, stands in the back. Slayer stands in the front. Athena and Casper are on her sides.
Slayer is too pissed off to speak, she just stares us down. She also is still in a lot of pain, too much pain to be as aggressive as she wants to be. Pippi seems too scared to approach Nova. She hides behind Slayer. So it is Athena and Casper who come forward to confront us.
Casper draws her saw-toothed sword and holds it out in front of her. Athena pulls out a long club with rusty spikes sticking out of it. They circle us, as if we are prey.
“You try to k
ill your own sister for this Meat?” Casper says, snarling at Nova.
Casper’s voice is low and raspy.
Athena, frizzing her motley colors of hair, smacks her spiked club into the dirt as she circles us. She says, “You betray us, after all we have done for you?”
Athena’s voice is high-pitched and squeaky.
“I didn’t try to kill her,” Nova says. “If I wanted her dead she would be dead.”
Casper scratches her sword against a tree as she passes it. “You attacked her and forced her to give you her property. That’s stealing.”
“Stealing property from a sister is a terrible sin,” Athena says.
“This man was my property before he was Pippi’s,” Nova says. “I was just stealing back what was rightfully mine.”
“You sicken me,” Casper says, spitting at her feet. “Meat is only Meat.”
Casper cuts my arm with her saw-like sword, just enough to break the skin. Then Athena swings her club at my legs.
As she’s leaning down to swing, Nova leaps into the air and kicks Athena in the face. The multi-colored wolf girl falls back, unable to finish her swing.
“That’s it,” Casper says, swinging her sword at Nova’s face.
Nova ducks and jams her two long fingers up the girl’s nose. She sticks them so far up there that Casper begins twitching, almost paralyzed, unable to fight back. Nova sneers at her, gripping her face like a McBowling ball, digging her fingers in even deeper.
“Don’t you fucking touch my man,” she says, snarling in Casper’s face, “ever again.”
Slayer just watches. She doesn’t speak or join in. Pippi continues to hide in the back.
Athena gets onto her feet and slams the blunt end of her club into Nova’s kidney. Nova topples over, releasing Casper from the nose-grip. Once the fingers are free, Casper pukes into the grass. Blood leaks from her nostrils and she coughs and sneezes at the pain.
While Nova is stunned, Athena comes down on her. I
try running between them, but Athena just punches me in the eye. With one punch, I crumble to the ground.
Athena wraps her club around Nova’s neck and pulls her back. The spikes dig into her throat, but Athena does not apply enough pressure to pierce the skin. When Casper finishes coughing and wheezing, she punches Nova in the stomach. Nova doesn’t cry out.
“Get her!” Pippi cries.
Casper punches her again.
“Kill her!” Pippi says.
Casper punches her in the face, then holds her jagged sword at Nova’s mouth, as if wondering whether or not she should ram the sword up November’s nostrils as payback.
“Cut her fucking face off!” Pippi yells.
“Enough!” shouts a voice from behind.
It is Talon.
The wolf girls recoil. Casper lowers her weapon and Athena releases her grip around Nova’s neck. Talon steps forward. The green-haired wolf girl is with her.
“Venus told me what happened,” Talon says. Then she looks at Pippi. “You should have come to me with this.”
Then she glares at Athena and Casper, who shrink in the presence of their Alpha leader.
“I will not stand for Warriors taking justice into their own hands. Nova will be punished in the Warrior way, not your own.”
She turns to November.
“You have committed crimes against your own sister,” Talon says. “You attacked her and stole her property. You are under arrest.”
Nova tries to defend herself. “What about my property? They just stole my Meat that I captured today and fed it to Tessa. They must give me this Meat,” she points at me, “to replace it.”
Talon doesn’t even look at her anymore. “You have broken the law. You no longer have the right to own property.”
“Casper,” she says to the pierced wolf girl. “Tie them up and bring them back to camp.”
Casper gets to work.
Then Talon looks at the wolf girl with the crazy colored hair. “Athena, track down Hyena and tell her to come back to camp.”
Athena goes to her bike and gets on her way.
“Pippi, Slayer, let’s go,” Talon says.
Then we set off for the camp.
When we get back to the camp, I am separated from November and put back in the cage. Nova is taken into Grandma’s tent with Talon. Pippi, Slayer, and Casper are left behind. While Nova is answering for her crime, Casper and Slayer seem to be confronting the green-haired girl, Venus, for squealing on them. With Talon and Nova preoccupied, Pippi takes the opportunity to deal with me.
The red-headed girl comes to my cage and kneels down to talk to me. She isn’t her usual smiling and giggling self. The look on her face is one of pure wrath.
“Next time, that bitch won’t be there to stop me,” she tells me.
That’s all she says. She stands up and goes back to her friends, rubbing her bruises with her paw.
While waiting to see what is going to happen to November, I watch the women who confronted us in the woods: Athena and Casper.
Athena, the motley-haired wolf girl, is sitting by a fire with containers of ink. She has a gun-shaped needle and is tattooing herself with it, drawing what looks to be a red dragon. I’m not sure why, but something about her looks familiar.
As I look more closely, I suddenly recognize this woman from when she lived in McDonaldland. Her real name isn’t Athena. I think it was Samantha. Athena was just her stage name. When Casper and Venus sit beside her, I realize that I recognize the two of them as well. They all used to be famous in McDonaldand, about seven years ago.
They were in a band called The Griddler Girls, which was McDonaldland’s official musical act for a little less than a year. In McDonaldland, creating your own music is pretty much illegal. There is only one official band allowed in McDonaldland at a time. Before The Griddler Girls it was The Happy Meal Gang, a rock group featuring 10-year-olds, and before that it was Mac Tonight, a lounge singer with a moon-shaped face. The point of these bands was to entertain the young people in McDonaldland, while also promoting McDonald’s food and values.
The Griddler Girls were supposed to be a hip all-girl rock group. There were five of them: A singer, a drummer, a bass guitar player, and two guitarists. They were the most successful McDonaldland band in decades, because they really connected with the teens. They sang happy songs about Chicken McNuggets and holding hands.
But the Griddler Girls started to change their image without the permission of The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation. While researching ancient rock bands, the Griddler Girls came across a long dead style of music called Punk Rock. They read about their sounds, styles, and attitude. That’s the type of music they wanted to play.
Then they started dying their hair multiple colors, piercing themselves, getting tattoos, dying their clothes black and ripping them up into new original styles. They only played one show as punks, and it was a show that McDonaldland would never forget.
There was Athena, the singer, with her crazy dyed hair and tattoos screaming about rebelling against the government. Then there was Casper, the lead guitar player, who had a dozen metal rings pierced into her face, with a tall black mohawk. There was Venus, the drummer, who had a short green pixie haircut and wore a green Fry Guy uniform to be ironic. There were two other girls, one with long purple hair and another with dark red hair and a lot of black makeup. I wonder if one of them was the dead wolf girl, Mars.
I went to the first half of that show. I was on a date with some annoying, ugly girl my brother forced me to go out with. She was fat and conservative. She was always quoting passages from the McDonald’s Bible.
Her favorite band was The Griddler Girls, which was a band I didn’t care for. I liked to make up my own songs and whistle them in my head, just as grandpa used to do. When I saw The Griddler Girls perform their new punk songs, this conservative girl was pissed off. I, on the other hand, was highly entertained. It made me happy to see these girls playing their own music, dressing in their
own style, and flipping off the authorities.
They were definitely trying to inspire change and ignite rebellion in the hearts of their teenaged audience. Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only person who appreciated their performance. Everyone else in the crowd was upset and angry. They didn’t like these songs. They didn’t like what they were saying about the McDonald’s government and religion.
Some people stayed behind to boo the girls and throw milk shakes at them, while the majority of people just left the stadium to go home. The girl I was with forced me to get her out of there. I wanted to keep watching, but she was insistent. I told her I would take her home only if she promised never to talk to me again. She agreed.
I wasn’t there to witness it, but I heard that The Griddler Girls were escorted out of McDonaldland after that performance. They were the only girls I knew who had been kicked out of McDonaldland for doing something besides having sex. Within a week, McDonaldland had a new act: Skaberry Milkshake. This band renewed the ancient music called ska while promoting McDonald’s milkshakes.
It’s weird to see The Griddler Girls again. They don’t look the same as they used to. Since entering the wasteland, they have started to have sex or at least masturbate, causing their wolf features to manifest. They have also expanded on their punk styles, with more tattoos, piercings, and accessories than they had in the city. They have also become angry and violent.
These days, instead of playing instruments and reviving punk music, they are riding motorcycles and killing Fry Guys. They are also bullies who wanted to kill my Novey. It is depressing to think of what becomes of the people once they enter the wasteland. I used to think of them as heroes, now I just think of them as petty thugs.
Nova doesn’t leave Grandma’s tent until dusk. I watch from my cage as she is taken out to the center of the camp. She has been stripped of all her clothes and her hands are tied behind her back.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland Page 11
