The wolf girls gather around Nova, Talon, and Grandma.
Grandma says, “Nova has committed a terrible crime against her sister, Pippi. She has been found guilty of assault, thievery, and the endangerment of a sister’s life. Nova will be stripped of her rank and all of her possessions. Her punishment will be Trial by Claw, which will be carried out immediately.”
The wolf girls stomp their feet and howl. They create a circle, stomping their feet in rhythm as if they are banging on drums. Talon brings Nova, naked and bound, into the center of the circle. Once she is in place, the women end their stomps.
“Nova,” Grandma says. “As you know, committing a crime against a sister is the same as committing a crime against all your sisters. So retribution will be carried out by each and every one of your sisters. The severity of your punishment from each sister will be left to their individual judgments. Do you understand?”
November nods her head at Grandma.
“Then let us begin.”
The wolf girls howl and begin stomping their feet again. Venus is the first to enter the circle with Nova. She swipes at Nova’s back with her green paw and then steps out of the ring. Judging by the crowd’s booing, it was a weak cut.
Athena comes up next and slashes her on the back with her claws, in the exact same spot as Venus, but this cut is so deep that blood splashes from Nova’s skin. Casper takes Athena’s place and attacks Nova’s face with her claws, right across her cheek and nose. Hyena yips and cackles when she enters the ring, leaping into the air and stabbing her claws right into Nova’s side.
One at a time, the wolf girls approach Nova, cut her with their claws, and then step out. Some of them cut her deeply, others just barely scratch her. The only one who doesn’t cause any damage at all is the little girl, Ashley, who just runs up to Nova, presses her hand against her thigh for a second, and then runs back to her place. But no matter how big a cut she is given, Nova does not cry out for any of them.
The final three are Talon, Slayer, and Pippi. When Talon enters the ring, she claws Nova across the palms. The crowd gasps when she does this. They stop howling and stomping. It doesn’t look very painful, so cutting across the palms must mean something dishonorable among the wolf girls. The crowd is still silent when Slayer enters the circle. Slayer, with her incredibly wolf-like claws, cuts her on the ass. The cut causes a lot of bleeding, but I’m surprised she didn’t slash her in a more tender area. It’s almost as if she pitied her, or was too weak from her own wound to do more damage than that.
When Pippi enters, the eyes of every woman in the crowd widen. Pippi looks sternly at Nova. She touches the bruised and swollen spots on her face. Pippi approaches Nova. She holds her hands out, extending her claws. Then she digs her nails beneath Nova’s shoulders as deep as she can go. For the first time, Nova cries out. She cries at the top of her lungs. And her cries only turn into shrieks as Pippi drags her nails down her chest, ripping deep trenches into her flesh. Pippi cuts as slowly as she possibly can, tearing eight enormous gashes down her body. She slices down her breasts, over her belly, and down her thighs. Nova doesn’t stop screaming until Pippi is finished.
When the trial is complete, Nova is standing there, quivering, covered in blood. Judging by the number of scars covering Nova’s body, I realize that she has been through this ceremony a number of times before. This one, however, was probably the worst of them. Even among the Warriors, Nova has been an outsider.
Pippi doesn’t leave the circle after her turn is done. She just stands there, smiling, admiring the damage she has caused. Then Pippi sticks out her tongue and laps at Nova’s wounds. She licks the claw mark from Nova’s thigh, up her belly, over her breast, to her neck. I can’t tell if she did it as a way of forgiving Nova or a way of humiliating her further. Pippi whispers something into her ear. Then Nova falls to her knees and collapses in the mud.
Grandma tends to Nova’s wounds personally. She cleans out the gashes with water, applies ointment from a clay pot, and wraps her in clean bandages. When she is finished, Grandma hugs her, as if she genuinely cares about her. The old gray wolf woman is quick to punish her children and quick to forgive. They don’t speak a word to each other throughout this.
“We have to get you out of here,” Guy tells me from the back of the cage.
Both Krall and Guy are looking at me, concerned about what Pippi is going to do to me now.
“I don’t want to leave without Nova,” I say.
“You don’t belong together anymore,” he tells me. “Your presence here is only causing her trouble. She would be better off if you left.”
“Even if I could escape, where would I go?”
“The other camp,” Guy says. “Your place is with the men’s army. Her place is with this army.”
“I don’t want to join that army,” I say.
“If you stay here you will be killed,” he says. “You are not allowed back in McDonaldland. You would not survive out in the wild alone. There is only one option for you.”
“But if I joined that army,” I say. “Nova would be my enemy, wouldn’t she?”
Guy exhales through his mustache.
“In the wasteland,” Guy says. “Men and women just can’t be together. It will never work between you two. You are destined to be enemies.”
I shake my head.
“It would have been better if you had never reunited in the wasteland.”
Talon comes to our cage with Ashley hugging her leg.
“She says you have not been playing with her when she asks you to,” Talon says to Guy.
Guy grunts.
“You must do as she tells you to do,” Talon says. “If she wants you to play then you play.”
“I am a man,” Guy says. “I do not play with children.”
Talon opens the cage for Guy to exit.
Guy does not move.
“Are you really going to protest to playing with a little girl?” Krall asks him. “Pete’s owner rented him to a woman who raped him and then ate him alive. Your brother’s owner wants to kill him for fun. All your owner wants is for you to play with her. But you complain?”
Guy looks at Krall, then leaves the cage.
I know my brother. He is a proud man. It hurts his pride to be ordered around by a child. His pride is more important to him than living or dying, so he doesn’t consider himself as lucky as Krall does.
Ashley hugs herself to Guy’s leg as he walks away from the cage with her. He steps slowly, looking down at the weird girl like some kind of pesky canine humping his leg. If we weren’t in such a dreadful situation I would have found my brother’s awkwardness hilarious.
My brother was always awkward around children, especially his own. He was proud of them. He liked to show them off like trophies. But he never seemed very comfortable around them.
His first child was the worst for him. Molly would hand him the child and he would just look at it, like he wasn’t sure what to do with the thing. It would make me laugh when the look of panic would cross his face as the baby would crawl across the floor toward him.
Even though it was just a baby, he would not stand for it breaking the rules. His biggest rule was that the baby didn’t spit up on his Fry Guy uniform. Of course, the baby didn’t know any better. Whenever it spit up on his uniform, he would punish the baby by having it sit in the corner by itself to reflect on what it had done.
He expected his children to be responsible, mature adults instantaneously upon birth. He did not have the patience to deal with their infantile behavior. He did not approve of crying, bed-wetting, runny noses, or monsters under the bed.
It’s good that he had Molly. If she wasn’t around, Guy would have probably gone completely insane trying to control his kids’ childish conduct.
Talon doesn’t leave with Guy and Ashley. She stays by the cage, staring at me.
“Is it true?” Talon says. “Were you and Nova in love when you lived in the walled city?”
I nod my he
ad. “I loved her more than anyone.”
She looks down for a moment. When she looks back there are tears in her eyes. They drip down her hairless snout. Her sudden emotion causes me to inch back a little.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
For some reason her tears are beginning to make me cry. The only thought that goes through my mind is that Nova has just died from her wounds and this is her way of telling me, but that couldn’t be it. Nova looked like she would easily recover.
“I wish it would have worked out for you,” she says. “I wish Nova would have captured you rather than Pippi. I wish anybody would have captured you rather than Pippi.”
She puts her paw on the cage.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
This is the toughest warrior of the wolf women. I doubt many people have ever seen her cry like this. At first, her tears made me feel confused and worried. But now, still confused, I also feel somewhat honored.
Engine sounds fill the woods.
Talon stands up. There are dozens of vehicles and motorcycles coming toward us through the forest. Headlights brighten the trees. The voices of men yell and holler all around us. Talon pulls the axes off of her back and runs away from the cage.
The wolf girls in the camp all get to their feet and rush to their tents or their vehicles to arm themselves. But the attackers arrive too soon, before any of them are ready.
Mutant men in armored trucks crash through the perimeter, emptying their machine guns into the women. Two wolf girls are shredded by bullets and tossed over a campfire. Another huge muscled beast of a woman roars in the center of the camp, firing a shotgun at the invaders, only to be quickly run over by a massive six-wheeled vehicle.
I look across the camp for any sign of Nova, but she must still be in Grandma’s tent. As the trucks blaze through the camp, unloading on every armed and unarmed wolf woman, I see Guy carrying the little girl away from the center of the conflict, using his own body to shield her from the gunfire.
I notice the door of the cage has been left unlocked. I’m not sure whether Talon left it that way on purpose or not. I look at Krall and he nods his head.
The first thing we see when we get out of the cage is a man with four arms and four legs riding his motorcycle past us. He is able to ride his motorcycle and fire machine guns at the same time. Unfortunately, he only has two pairs of eyes, so when he passes by he only sees us with his peripheral vision and doesn’t realize that we are male prisoners. His bullets fire over our heads as we duck. Even though he is able to shoot and ride at the same time, it appears as though he is not able to aim proficiently while riding.
We crawl behind an overturned Warrior vehicle, trying to get across the camp to Guy and hopefully Nova. A truck slams into one of the parked Warrior vehicles ahead of us, tossing it into the car we’re hiding behind. In the back of the truck, a fat, bearded man with eight arms holds eight semi-automatic pistols, firing them at the wolf girls who try to get to their cars.
Venus is one of the girls he shoots at. She leaps into a car before the bullets can hit her, but one of her friends isn’t as lucky. She falls dead against the car door, her blood splattering against Venus’ green fur. The green-haired girl fires her .50 Magnum at the eight-armed man, but misses. He’s able to get off too many shots for her to aim properly. The bearded man jumps from the back of the truck before it drives too far out of range for his guns. He steps slowly, firing eight guns at a time as fast as a machine gun, and with the advantage of being able to fire in eight different directions at once. As he closes in, Venus is not even able to fire a single round. She just ducks behind the seat, covering her head.
He steps slowly, firing eight guns at a time as fast as a machine gun, and with the advantage of being able to fire in eight different directions at once. As he closes in, Venus is not even able to fire a single round. She just ducks behind the seat, covering her head.
The man gets within five feet of the car when three of his limbs fall from his body. He cries out, turning around to see an axe landing in his face. Talon hacks him two more times just to make sure he is dead. Then she pulls Venus from the vehicle and pushes her in the direction of Grandma’s tent.
Talon seems to be fine with taking the men on single-handedly. She runs at one of the six-wheeled armored vehicles, which look more like tanks than trucks. The four men on the top of the vehicle firing at her are just not quick enough. Once she leaps fifteen feet off of the ground and lands on the roof of the vehicle, her two axes chop into two of their backs before they can even turn around. One of them points his gun at her and is sliced down the middle. The last just trips over his seven legs as she decapitates him from behind, his head bouncing off the roof of the vehicle onto the driver’s side windshield.
Although Talon is able to take down the men quickly, her sisters are being cut down just as easily. All around her, she sees them fall. Many of them are able to kill a man or two before they die, but others fall before they can fire even a single round.
I notice that there are many different kinds of mutants. Although most of them are of the multi-limbed variety, there are also other mutations. Some of them have blistered lizardy skin. Others have eyes that bulge out of the sockets. Some of them have large swollen heads twice the size of their bodies. One of these swollen-headed mutants standing on the roof of a vehicle has a very strange deformity. It appears as though his head is in the shape of a giant hamburger.
Guy is nowhere to be seen. He must have escaped into the woods. I’m surprised he hasn’t joined the mutants in the fight against the Warriors. I’m sure that’s what he would have wanted me to do, but all I care about right now is making sure Nova is safe.
Krall and I pick up some machine guns from dead mutants and run across the camp into Grandma’s tent. If any wolf women were to see us with these guns they would shoot us on the spot, but we take the risk. This is my chance to escape, but I don’t want to do it without Nova.
Grandma’s tent is filled with blood and bullet holes. There is one woman’s body in here, but it is neither Grandma’s nor Nova’s. We go through the back door of the tent. Out here, the woods are filled with crashed vehicles, mostly mutant trucks. A small group of wolf women defend the rear of their camp here. They are spread out through the trees, shooting at the trucks and motorcycles coming their way.
I see Grandma fighting with them. She does not appear to be a defenseless old lady, even though she is much older than any human being I have ever met before. With an ornate golden shotgun, Grandma blows holes into every vehicle that gets in her range. She aims for the tires first, then the passengers.
Krall and I decide to stay far away from this fight. Nova doesn’t appear to be among these girls, so we head into the woods away from the battle.
We circle the camp for what seems like hours, though it has probably only been minutes, keeping our distance from the perimeter and away from the fight. The sounds of gunfire and roaring engines echo through the forest in all directions around us.
Heading toward a large bonfire far away from camp, we crouch behind bushes to see what is going on. There is an overturned Warrior vehicle. It was a large van that had been used to transport pregnant wolf women or the younger, weaker women who did not yet have the skills for battle. The van had crashed into a mutant truck. While the truck had exploded into a mountain of flames, the van is only just now beginning to catch fire.
There are still many women alive, hiding in the van. Outside the vehicle, there are a handful of wolf women, protecting their weaker sisters, as dozens of mutants close in on them. Some of the mutants circle the van on motorcycles, firing handguns. Other mutants are on foot, carrying multiple swords and axes in their many hands.
There are already four dead Warriors lying in the dirt. Pippi is among them, although she appears to only be unconscious. I can see her bloodied face in the firelight. Her eyes are closed and her breathing fast. Still standing, I see Slayer, Casper, Athena, and Hyena, as well as two othe
rs: one with Asian eyes and one in a horned helmet.
The one in the horned helmet dies before I get a better look at her, shot from behind by one of the mutants on motorcycles.
Casper hacks into a mutant with her saw-toothed sword as he approaches the van. Her blade doesn’t just slice through him, it shreds his flesh like a chainsaw. Athena clubs another mutant with such power that his head explodes into nothing, his brains spraying against the side of the van in tiny wet pieces. Slayer and Hyena are the only two with guns. They fire conservatively, as if they are both running low on ammo. Slayer is at the front of the van, while Hyena takes the middle. The two wolf girls who were guarding the rear have already fallen and I doubt the others have even realized it yet.
The fire is spreading across the van. The women inside begin banging on the back door, trying to get out. The door is jammed. They scream, trying to get the attention of Slayer and the others, but their protectors are too busy fighting off the mutants to notice them.
When Krall sees this, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Stay here,” he tells me, as he runs out of the bushes toward the van.
I decide to follow him.
When we get to the van, the women are crying and panicked. Some of them are not conscious. Krall picks up a rock and slams it against the glass, but it doesn’t break. Bullet proof. Krall drops his gun and picks up an axe from a fallen Warrior and jams the blade into the crack of the door, then tries to pry it open. I take a knife from a dead mutant and try to do the same. It bends open an inch, but that’s all.
We ignore the guns fired around us as we work on the door. A mutant circles around the back of the van on his motorcycle, firing a handgun at us as he rides. He only shoots twice, missing both times. Krall removes his hand from the axe and grabs his gun. Before the mutant on the bike rides away, Krall fires his machine gun into the man’s back. Then he goes back to work on the door.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland Page 12
