I look back at Hyena. Her rifle is hanging casually from her hands as she strolls behind us. Her eyes focused on June bugs and grasshoppers. Any type of movement instinctively grabs her attention. Guy waits until she turns her head, her eyes locked on a bumble bee flying over her head, then he kicks her gun out of her hands.
Before she can react, Guy has the rifle pointed at Hyena’s gut. She sneers and foams at him. The look on Guy’s face seems like he is about to shoot her. The look on Hyena’s black face seems like she is trying to figure out a way to rip Guy’s head off without being shot.
“He just wants to warn his people about the attack,” I tell Hyena. “He doesn’t want to shoot you.”
She doesn’t seem to care, and I’m not too sure Guy doesn’t want to shoot her. We slowly back away. Hyena bends her spotted hyena legs, as if ready to pounce. Then my brother and I turn and run away.
Hyena doesn’t just let us go. Once we are out of shooting range, she charges toward us. She gets down on all fours and runs like a cheetah, hopping through the air. Soon she is no longer moving on the ground but pouncing from tree to tree.
We run through the woods. Guy points the gun at the trees, as if ready to shoot Hyena if she gets too close.
“Don’t shoot her,” I say.
He grumbles at me and lowers his weapon.
Hyena disappears. We don’t know where she went until we see her jumping down from a tree ahead of us. She kicks Guy in the face with her clawed feet and he goes down, then retrieves her rifle and hits me in the stomach with the butt of the gun.
She puts her hyena foot onto Guy’s chest, the sharpened toenails poking into the skin of his neck. She cackles at us, but doesn’t say anything.
Then we hear screaming coming from the woods. Male screams. Hyena picks us off of the ground and then leads us at gunpoint toward the noise.
We hide behind some bushes and see two men running from a giant wolf. When they come into a better view, I realize that I recognize them. It is Robby and one of his Outlander friends from the facility.
The blonde wolf snatches Robby up by the leg and then thrashes him around, trying to break his neck. He shrieks and punches at the wolf’s muzzle. As the wolf thrashes, Robby’s leg rips off at the pelvis and his body flies over the trees. The wolf swallows his leg and then smells around for the rest of him. Before Robby can be found, the other Outlander catches the wolf’s attention and it chases after him.
When we get to Robby’s body, he is still alive. The ground is already covered in a pool of blood. He’s just about bled to death already. I go to him, sit next to him.
“Daniel!” he cries.
“What happened?”
“The Mayor,” he says, struggling to stay conscious. “He found out about our plan. Some of us escaped, but he had the rest of us killed. He’s changed the date of the attack. He’s attacking McDonaldland today.”
Guy’s eyes go wide at him.
“He also knows about the Bitches,” he says. “He knows they’re going to help protect McDonaldland, so he plans to attack them first. He plans to take out the Bitches, then attack McDonaldland.”
“But I couldn’t convince them to help,” I tell him. “The Warriors never were going to join forces with the Fry Guys.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Robby says. “The Outlanders are already on their way. They know where the Bitches’ camp is. They’ll be attacking any minute.”
Before I can ask him anything else, he closes his eyes and his muscles relax. A deep breath escapes from his lungs as he dies. When I look up at Guy and Hyena, they nod their heads. Then we run back to the Warrior camp.
By the time we arrive, it’s already too late. The camp looks like a tornado has passed through. We haven’t even been gone an hour and the Outlanders have attacked, destroyed the wolf girl army, and moved on. Smoke billows out of burning vehicles and barbequed flesh.
Trees have fallen around the perimeter of the camp. Cars are turned over, smashed into the ground. Bodies litter the landscape. Not a single wolf girl was left standing.
“What could have done this?” Hyena says.
We go through the camp, checking the bodies for pulses. Nothing. The only one moving is Casper. One of her arms is missing. She crawls through the mud toward Grandma’s body.
Guy goes straight to the spot where he left Ashley. She lies in the dirt, tattoo ink splattered on her dress, a bullet hole in her chest. She is not moving. The drawing of Guy is in her hands. She didn’t even have time to draw the mustache on his face. When my brother sees her, he just stands above her, looking down. He picks up the cardboard drawing of himself and holds it in front of his face so that I don’t see the tears.
Some wolf girls begin coming in from the woods, from all sides. A lot of them had escaped the carnage. Like us, there are some who have no idea what happened. When I see Nova, I go to her and wrap my arms around her. Apple and Pippi are the only other wolf girls I recognize.
Krall and Slayer are the last to arrive at the camp. They have smiles on their faces until they see the destruction. Slayer is stopped in her tracks at the sight of her dead friends, but Krall rushes forward to help the wounded. He goes to Casper and Grandma first. Grandma isn’t breathing. A shotgun blast has torn her torso to a bloody pulp. Pippi, Nova, and several other wolf girls gather around her, all in complete disbelief. Even Pippi seems ready to weep.
Casper has her one arm wrapped around Grandma’s body. She also tries to hug her with her stump, which is blackened as if she had cauterized it herself by sticking it inside of a fire pit after it was severed. Krall tries to give Casper medical attention, but the pierced wolf girl insists he go look after the other wounded.
Talon is found face down in the mud beneath a collapsed tent. She is unconscious, but still breathing. When Krall gets her to her feet, she doesn’t seem to recall anything that happened. Krall checks to see if she has a concussion, but she seems to be okay. Hyena goes to her and fills her in on the situation.
The Warriors have been cut down to a third of their original number. Only a few dozen of them remain alive, and many of those are wounded. Some of them are in bad shape. Krall tries to save the ones in critical condition, but many of them are hopeless cases.
The wolf girls look at Talon for guidance. Their leader has fallen and now it is up to her to take her place. They gather around her. They are angry and distressed. They want vengeance.
“This will not go unpunished,” Talon says to them. “The Meat must pay for what they have done!”
They stomp their feet and cheer.
“Who wants blood?” she cries to her sisters.
The Warriors raise their fists and bark.
“The Meat are on their way to attack the walled city as we speak,” she says. “They think we’re out of this fight. They won’t even see us coming. Now, who wants to show the Meat how sharp our claws are?”
The Warriors shout and howl.
“We’ll tear them apart!” Slayer yells.
“We’ll feast on their bones!” Pippi cries.
The Warriors raise their weapons and bark.
“We go now!” Talon yells. “Leave the wounded and dead where they lie! Take only what you need to kill! We will not give up until we taste their blood in our teeth!”
The wolf women go for their weapons and check on their vehicles. Only five cars and two motorcycles are still operational. Pippi and Slayer take the bikes. Nova and Apple take one of the vehicles.
Casper refuses to stay with the wounded. She can no longer ride a bike properly with her one arm, so she gets into the back of Apple’s vehicle with Nova.
Krall tells Casper, “You can’t fight in your condition.”
She just sneers at him and says, “There’s no way I’m backing out of this.” Then she takes her seat next to Nova on the roof of the car.
Slayer pulls her bike up next to Krall.
“You coming?” she asks.
“No,” Krall responds. “I’ve got wor
k to do here.”
She rides off.
“She could have at least said goodbye or something,” I say to Krall.
“That’s the way she is,” Krall tells me with a smile, before walking off to the wounded.
Guy takes a shotgun from a fallen Warrior and gets into the back of a truck. At first, the wolf girls in the truck sneer at him. He is not permitted to fight.
“You need all the help you can get,” Guy says, the look on his face is just as vengeful as any of the women’s.
They don’t argue with him.
Following Guy’s lead, I take a machine gun and some ammo from the dead and go to Nova’s vehicle.
“I’m coming with you,” I say to her.
“Stay here,” Nova says.
I get into the car anyway, riding shotgun next to Apple. Nova peeks her head down from the roof into my window at me.
“You’re just going to be a liability,” she says to me.
“If I die I’d rather it be with you,” I say.
Then I kiss her upside-down mouth. She accepts the kiss passionately and doesn’t seem like she wants to stop. We continue until Talon peeks her head in at Apple.
“Slayer is going to lead the attack,” Talon says. “I’ll be getting recruits and will meet up with you shortly.”
The girls nod at her.
Then the small motorcade rides off, toward the walled city, ready to do battle.
The sun is high in the sky as we hit the road leading to McDonaldland. I can hear Casper and Nova moving around on the roof of the car. There is a small platform up there with a spiked railing around it to keep them from falling off the top. Within the cab, I am alone with Apple. Her yellow Asian eyes focused on the road, getting herself emotionally prepared for what is to come.
To break the awkward silence, I ask, “Why do they call you Apple?”
She looks at me, then looks back at the road.
“I can shoot an apple off of a man’s head from a hundred yards away.”
“Really?” I ask.
“No.” She smiles. “I just really like apples.”
I am about to laugh, but hold my smile as I see Pippi riding up alongside the vehicle to stare me down. She is juggling a throwing knife in one free hand, looking up at Nova and then down at me. It’s like she is threatening to put the knife into November’s head.
“You should be riding with me,” Pippi yells.
I break eye contact with her and stare forward. She continues eyeing me until the road thins out and she slows down to bring up the rear of the group.
When we get to the great wall of McDonaldland, the fight between mutants and Fry Guys has already begun. Machinegun fire can be heard echoing through the valley, as hundreds of men scramble on the battlefield near the gates. Dozens of vehicles collide. Red, yellow, and blue suited men fall below the feet of multi-limbed mutants. And in the center of it all, there is an enormous beast with eight limbs nearly as high as the great city wall.
“What the fuck is that?” Apple says when she sees the creature.
It’s Kroger the Mighty, the multi-limbed hermaphroditic gargantuan wolf. And riding on top of the beast, I see the giant hamburger head of Mayor McCheese.
The Mayor is riding the creature like an ant on a horse, directing it to tear down the city wall. The Fry Guys are already losing the fight. Whichever men are not taken down by mutants disappear within the massive jaws of Kroger the Mighty.
The great beast slashes at the great wall with its many claws. Although the wall is made of steel, it is able to create large dents and claw marks. The Mayor commands it to crush its weight down on the wall in an attempt to bring it down.
Slayer, on her motorcycle at the head of the pack, raises her weapon. The Warriors get into formation and charge straight into the skirmish, before the mutants notice what is coming up from behind.
The Warriors cut down the mutants that get in their way. With their attention on the Fry Guys, several Outlanders fall before they even realize the small army is attacking at their rear.
Slayer acts as a perfect spearhead. She guns down every mutant in her path, and takes down every Fry Guy as well. Her black fur ruffling in the wind quickly becomes sticky with blood.
As our vehicle enters the combat, Nova takes down mutants with her crossbow and Casper decapitates passing Fry Guys with her saw-toothed sword. I point my gun out the window and fire randomly at the crowd. My stomach becomes queasy as I see the mutants fall. I know some of them are just normal people, like myself, who had become victims of the parasite. Many of them probably don’t even want to fight. Perhaps they only do so for fear of what the Mayor might do to them if they disobey.
Pippi speeds past us from behind, throwing knives into two mutants at once. A big smile is on her face. She has never been in a battle this size before, and she seems to be loving every second of it so far.
Ahead, I see Guy firing his shotgun at mutants. Hyena and three other wolf girls are in the back of the truck with him, firing on the Outlanders. None of them in that truck appear to be targeting Fry Guys, as if they do so out of respect for my brother.
Of the Outlanders, I recognize the bald mutant, Captain Kongun, leading the foot soldiers. He has pistols in all six of his hands. Since he has two arms on his chest and two arms on his back, he is able to fire in all directions at once. As of now, he is only fighting the Fry Guys, but once he comes after the Warriors he will be a lethal opponent.
Not long into the battle, Talon comes down from the hills. She is riding atop the giant black alpha wolf toward the gates of McDonaldland. Behind her, a pack of wolves two dozen strong follow suit. They come in all sizes, from those which are as big as cars to those which are as large as buses.
They swoop down the hillside and dive into the battle, flipping mutant trucks and cars. As Talon reaches the center of the field, she leaps from the black wolf and lands in the back of a mutant truck. Swinging both axes, she chops men so powerfully that their limp bodies fly into the air and down under the wheels of passing vehicles.
Many of the wolves go straight for Kroger. They leap up and bite at its many legs, snapping at it like piranhas. When the black wolf digs its fangs deep into one of Kroger’s thighs, the massive beast shrieks and topples downward. It only falls to a seated position, but it still crushes two mutant trucks and one Warrior vehicle as it lands.
With the giant wolves on our side, the Warriors quickly gain the upper hand in the battle. Many of the mutants don’t even stand to fight the beasts, they just turn and run away.
As we drive through the chaos, I watch as a brown wolf bites a mutant in half, his four legs still keeping the rest of his body standing upright. Then I see a great blonde wolf, raping a man in the bed of an Outlander truck, with the entire vehicle crushed under the monster’s belly.
Outside the window, I watch Pippi as she squeals with joy. She rides her motorcycle under a wolf’s legs, then fires her gun into a wounded mutant trying to crawl to safety under an abandoned truck.
The great wall has cracked open a little, but not enough for it to fall. After noticing that the tides of the war have changed, the Mayor directs Kroger away from the wall toward the battle. He points the mammoth at the female wolves, which are mere rabbits in comparison to Kroger. And like a rabbit, Kroger snatches one up in its enormous jaws and thrashes it until its neck breaks. Then the creature goes for another one.
I see a Warrior vehicle ahead burst into flames as it is hit with a Molotov cocktail. It crashes into an abandoned Fry Guy van and explodes. Another Warrior vehicle loses both its gunners, with only a spear-wielding woman left to joust the mutants they pass.
After Kroger kills a third wolf, the smaller beasts back away, growling. The Mayor has the hermaphrodite wolf charge the wolves and the Warriors, to take them down as quickly as possible so that he can get back to tearing down the wall.
We drive in circles around the battlefield, steering clear of the big sisters, taking out mutant after mutant. N
ova must be running low on arrows, because she fires only when an enemy is close and she is guaranteed a hit. Casper is malicious with her strikes. All I see is her long saw-like sword come swinging down next to my open window, shredding the men into pieces as we drive by.
Apple focuses on driving, but she also fires a pistol into men whenever she gets a chance or whenever they get too close to her side of the vehicle. I focus on shooting the men in the distance, to weaken the numbers of the group before we get to them.
We pass Talon as we drive. She is standing atop a truck that is turned on its side, pulling an axe out of the driver’s giant mutant head. When she notices what has happened to the wolves that she led into battle, she turns her attention to Kroger and Mayor McCheese.
She raises both axes out to her sides and howls. As the hermaphrodite beast charges at the black alpha wolf, Talon runs through the battlefield toward it. The black wolf holds its ground, snarling up at the massive creature. Talon hops high into the air and lands on the black wolf’s back.
As Kroger comes forward, Talon runs through the black wolf’s fur. She leaps off the alpha’s forehead just as Kroger opens its massive jaws, and her axe lands square in the nose of the beast.
Like a mere bug hanging from Kroger’s snout, Talon chops at the creature’s lips and nostrils. The hermaphrodite backs up, shaking its head in pain, as if it is being stung repeatedly by wasps. The black wolf comes at Kroger and bites its leg.
Talon continues to chop with her free axe. Kroger kicks the alpha wolf away from it with one of its spare legs, then turns its attention to the irritant on the tip of its nose.
I see Talon looking up at Mayor McCheese, and the Mayor looking down at her. She holds her axe back, aiming it at the man’s head. But before she throws, Kroger jerks her off of his snout and then snatches her in the air. In just a single gulp, Talon is gone.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland Page 21
