Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland

by Carlton Mellick III

  She makes the first move, attacking with one of her axes. He blocks with a chainsaw, and she strikes with the other axe. He blocks that, then swings a third chainsaw at her ribs. With her lightning reflexes, she leaps back just in time.

  Kongun smiles. “You Bitches might be fast, but you’re not fast enough.”

  He raises all six of his chainsaws out, pointing them in all directions. From above, he must look like an asterisk. Then he spins toward her, the chainsaws moving like helicopter blades. She hacks down at his waist, but Kongun just needs to bend one elbow to block it, leaving her head open to his whirlwind chainsaw attack. She ducks just in

  time, but loses a braided lock of hair.

  “Take this thing down,” Talon yells at me, as she notices I’m not doing my job.

  I look away to figure out the controls on this beast. It is only a computer keyboard with some levers and switches. I move some levers, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. The beast continues rampaging the city no matter what I press.

  Looking back, the two fight like clashing cyclones. Kongun moves like a spider, striking and spinning with his many arms. Talon, with her two axes and quick reflexes, is able to block and counter every assault.

  I rip the keyboard out and toss it over the side of the wolf’s neck. If I’m not able to control him at least nobody else will be. I go to the brain of the wolf and rip out the computer board, wires slip out of its wet flesh, blood gushes out of the holes. Grandpa told me that the brain might be the nerve center of a living being, but much of it doesn’t actually feel much pain. With this in mind, I strike at the creature’s neural tissue using the sickle-sword. If it can’t feel it then hopefully it won’t jerk me off of its back. As I cut, I look back to Talon and Kongun.

  Kongun has the upper hand. He has too many arms for Talon to avoid. Even if she gets behind him, he is somehow able to block her strikes blindly with the arms on his back. As soon as the Captain finally cuts her, right along the side of her torso, he smiles. Then unleashes a battery of attacks, spinning and slicing in multiple directions. He forces Talon up against the edge of the wolf’s back.

  Talon drops down into the fur and, with both of her feet, kicks him in his belly. He stumbles backwards, his arms twirling chaotically to catch his balance. Talon swings at his chest, but he is able to block even when off balance. She hooks his wrist behind the chainsaw with the axe head, and pulls down. The chainsaw cuts down on one of the limbs on his chest, amputating it down the middle. The severed chainsaw arm falls and lands by his foot. As Kongun screams, he steps too close to the chainsaw buzzing at his feet, and it cuts through his ankle.

  He falls back. Before he hits the fur, Talon brings an axe down into his forehead. He dies instantly, but doesn’t fall. The axe is so deep in his skull that he hangs in midair.

  His chainsaw arms dangle, and as his face slides off of the blade of the axe, four of the buzzing saws cut into the flesh of the hermaphrodite mammoth.

  The beast roars below us and shakes its hide, trying to fling us off. I grab onto the edge of Kroger’s skull cap, as Talon hangs onto the fur.

  Talon kicks Kongun’s body off of the wolf’s back, and the creature stops shaking. She gets to her feet and rushes to help me. Together, we chop and slice the beast’s brain until its mind finally shuts off. It lets out a whimper and comes crashing down onto a small McDonald’s restaurant.

  Before we hit the ground, Talon grabs me and leaps from the wolf’s back. We land safely away, in a field, surrounded by nu-cows that slither around us like a herd of snails.

  When we get back to the fight, there is only one enemy left standing. It is Mayor McCheese. He fires his shotguns at the crowd as they circle him. There are Fry Guys, McDonaldland citizens, wolf girls, and even other mutants, who all want a piece of him. He shouts at them, limping with a broken leg as he fires. Even after he blows a hole through a yellow Fry Guy’s chest, they keep coming.

  Guy steps out of the crowd and shoots him in the back with a handgun. The Mayor staggers forward. Then he whips around to aim his shotgun at my brother, but before it is fired Guy shoots him in the chest. The Mayor drops his weapon.

  Another mutant shoots him. Then Pippi fires a burst of machinegun bullets into his stomach. He refuses to go down. He picks up a sledge hammer by his feet and limps across the sidewalk. A long tongue dangles from his hamburger bun mouth. As he raises it over his head, Slayer shoots him though a pickle on his face. The Mayor drops the sledgehammer. He drops to his knees.

  Then, the citizens and ex-citizens of McDonaldland, with knives and spears and axes, take apart the Mayor’s giant hamburger head, to get to the small human brain buried within.

  After it’s all over, the surviving Fry Guys point their weapons at the wolf girls and rebel mutants. The McDonaldland citizens back away.

  As she looks down at the barrel of a gun, Talon says, “We just saved your shitty town. The least you could do is let us leave in peace.”

  The Fry Guys hold their ground. There are about a dozen of them. Most of them are young yellow Fry Guys, just out of training. Blood and charcoal is caked to their skin as they stare down the mutants and wolf girls with crazed looks in their eyes. There are only three mutants and, of the Warriors, only Talon, Pippi, Slayer, and two others remain.

  Guy, the only blue-suited Fry Guy in the vicinity, steps forward. He walks into the center of the face-off, standing in Mayor McCheese’s head mush. He faces the Fry Guys.

  “Lower your weapons,” he orders the yellow Fry Guys.

  They don’t lower their weapons. Too combat-shocked to even comprehend language. Guy has to lower some of their guns for them. The rest follow suit. The mutants and wolf girls lower their weapons as well.

  What is going on around here?” yells a voice from the back of the crowd.

  When we turn around, we see five old men in black business suits with red and yellow ties coming down the street toward us with a group of red Fry Guys. I’ve never seen any of them before, but they appear to be some of the executives of The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation. They are in good shape for McDonaldland citizens and I’m surprised how old they are. Even my grandfather never looked that old.

  When they arrive, the red Fry Guys immediately separate the citizens from the rest of us. They push them back as far as they can, and surround us as if we are prisoners, including my brother.

  “Who’s in charge here?” asks the leader of the group, a man with white pointy eyebrows.

  Guy steps forward. “I’m Guy Togg, First Lieutenant of the Fry Guy Force.”

  “Where’s Chief Charles?” they ask.

  “Dead,” I say.

  The executive glares at me. When he sees my extra limbs, a look of disgust crosses his face.

  “What are these people doing here?” he says, staring down all of the outsiders. “They must be evacuated immediately.”

  “They helped save the city,” Guy says.

  “Yes, well that was quite decent of them,” says the executive with the white pointy eyebrows, “but we certainly can’t allow them to stay, now can we?”

  Guy just smoothes his mustache at him.

  “I don’t have time for this,” says the executive. “Corporate Headquarters has been destroyed. The CEO is dead.” He sticks his finger in Fry’s chest. “As the highest ranking officer, I’m putting you in charge of this. Get these people out of here and barricade the hole in the wall before any more of those wolves get in here.”

  As he walks away, he looks up at the giant body of Kroger in the middle of the city. He points up at the dead wolf, and says, “And get rid of that thing, too.”

  Guy salutes them. Then he orders a red Fry Guy to oversee the reconstruction of the city gate and another one to oversee the removal of Kroger. When both Fry Guys look at him as if he is crazy for giving them such enormous tasks after such a grueling battle, he tells them, “You’re Fry Guys. You’ll figure it out.”

  As my brother escorts us out of town, passing throug
h my old neighborhood, now in ruins, Pippi walks alongside me with a smile on her face. Killing so many people was like the best sex she has ever experienced in her life. She is so satisfied with her experience that she is glowing.

  “Look what I got,” Pippi says to me.

  She digs in her pocket and pulls out five human eyeballs, each one of them from a unique person. She shows them to me like an excited little boy showing his parents his bug collection.

  “You should have gotten one of the Mayor’s eyes,” I tell her. “Did you see how big they were?”

  She grumbles at me and puts the eyes back in her pocket. “These are better,” she says.

  We walk a ways further in silence. Pippi is practically skipping down the road, smiling at all the destruction like she’s a kid looking at toys in a McToy store. She’s never been within McDonaldland before, but she seems more excited by the wreckage than the wonders of the civilization.

  She turns to me and says, “Nova’s going to flip when she sees you’re still alive.”

  My eyes light up. “She’s okay?”

  She nods. “Yeah, the coward stayed back with the wounded. She says you got gobbled up by that Biggie.” She points at Kroger’s corpse sticking out from the buildings behind us. “I’m impressed that you and Talon cut your way out of there. I didn’t know it was possible.”

  I nod my head and stop listening to her, impatient to see Nova again. She’s going to be so excited to see me.

  Outside of McDonaldland, I scan the landscape for my Novey. There are bodies and smoking vehicles covering the battlefield. I see Fry Guys walking through the wreckage, looking for survivors. In the distance, the wounded mutants are driving away in smashed up vehicles that are so damaged they can hardly move.

  Then I see a handful of wolf girls by the remains of a truck. I recognize Hyena and Apple. They are sitting in the back of the pickup, licking their wounds and smoking McCigarettes they must have scavenged from Fry Guy bodies. I see Nova’s back, covered in so much dirt that I can’t make out the strip of fur that goes down her spine. She is tending to one of the fallen Warriors, tying a splint onto her broken leg.

  When she turns around, her eyes lock with mine and her mouth drops open with shock. I run up to her and give her a hug.

  “You’re alive?” she says.

  She probably can’t tell if she is dreaming or awake.

  “I saw you eaten,” she says.

  I point at Talon. “We escaped.”

  “Talon’s alive, too?”

  “We took down Kroger and Mayor McCheese,” I say. “We won.”

  Nova wraps her arms around me and I kiss her cheek.

  “I have to help my sisters,” she tells me. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I nod at her.

  When she’s done with the wounded, Nova wanders off. I follow after her.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To look for my father,” she says. “I have some unfinished business with him.”

  Then she walks away.

  “Nova,” I say.

  She keeps walking.

  I run after her and grab her by the arms.

  “Nova, he’s dead,” I say.

  “What?” Her eyes widen.

  “I saw it myself,” I say. “He’s gone.”

  Her eyes water up and she shakes me loose. Then she turns her back and puts her hand in her face. Her long fingers extend all the way past her forehead. For some reason, I become offended when I see her crying over that bastard.

  “Nova ...” I approach her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” she says.

  “Look,” I say. “He was a son of a bitch. Forget about him.”

  She turns and looks at me with anger. “He was my father!”

  I step back.

  Then I say, “Nova, I know what he did to you. He told me all about it.”

  Her expression is at first stunned, then furious. I tell her the story of why her father raped her. I don’t think she ever knew. I don’t think she ever got an explanation. Perhaps that was the unfinished business she had with him.

  “You don’t understand,” she says, attacking me as if she blames me for everything that happened to her, rather than her father.

  “He was a sick fucking asshole,” I tell her. “He deserved to die.”

  She pushes me away from her so hard that I fall down. “Fuck you, Daniel!”

  Then she runs away, off into the woods.

  On the way back to the Warrior camp, I ride with Talon and Apple. Guy stayed with his people. He said he wanted to check on Molly and his kids, then he would catch up with me later. I didn’t believe him, but he gave me his word and a man like Guy always honors his word. He said there was somebody back at the camp he had to pay his respects to.

  “I can’t believe they just turned us away,” Apple says. “After all we did for them.”

  “It’s the way it should be,” Talon says. “We don’t belong with their kind.”

  When we arrive at the camp, Slayer and Krall run at each other so hard that they nearly knock each other down. She picks him up and spins him around her. Then they embrace.

  Nova doesn’t even look at me once we get there. Now she is not only distant with me, but completely pissed off. I guess she has the right to be mad at me for what I said about the Chief. No matter what he did to her, he was still her father.

  They bury their dead and have a mass funeral. The graves line the campsite, with Grandma’s resting mound in the center. Once they were almost two hundred strong, now the Warriors are but nineteen women. During the ceremony, Talon explains that these hunting grounds are their home. They will rest peacefully here. However, she wants to take the surviving Warriors far away, deep into the wasteland. She says there are other civilizations to the south who might accept them, or maybe they will be good targets for future raids. None of the wolf women object.

  Krall decides not to go with them. He believes they will be fine without his skills, but the Outlander camp is in need of medical attention. He says they might even need guidance or leadership, which he can also provide.

  I’m surprised that Slayer is not disappointed to see him go. She seems happy for him. Perhaps it is just an act. When they say goodbye, it is awkward. Slayer waves her paw bashfully with a little smile.

  As she turns away from him, Krall grabs her by the arm and pulls her close to him. He kisses her deeply, despite the hair and teeth and black dog lips. She is uncomfortable with it at first, but then gives in. She wraps herself around him and kisses him back. Judging by her reaction, I believe it is the only time they have ever kissed. It goes on for a very long time, and instead of looking away all of the wolf girls cheer and howl for them. Slayer practically has to rip herself away from him in order to get herself to stop.

  She smiles in a daze as they separate. Krall blows her a kiss and gets into a vehicle. He honks the horn and waves at everyone with three hands as he drives away. I doubt Krall and Slayer will ever see each other again, but they both seem fine with that. They both seem happy to have just spent the time they did together, satisfied with only the memories. Perhaps they know it will never work out and want to depart on a pleasant note.

  Later in the day, I find my brother alone in the center of the camp. He stands over Ashley’s grave, looking down at the tiny mound of dirt with a flower sticking out of its top.

  I come up behind him. He doesn’t seem to be standing in mourning. He stands there with his back straight and his head held high, as if he was proud to have known the girl. In his hands, he holds the drawing of himself. He has put it in a frame that he took from his home. Although the drawing was not quite finished—everything was drawn perfectly except for Guy’s missing mustache—he still nods his head in approval at the fine work of art.

  When he hears my footsteps coming closer, he turns his head to look at me. I notice that he has shaved off his mustache, so that it would match Ashley’
s drawing of himself. So that her last creation in this world would indeed be complete.

  He continues admiring the painting as I approach him.

  “I’ll be heading back soon,” he tells me. “There’s a lot of work that needs to get done.”

  I nod at him.

  He says, “With the Chief dead, I’ll most likely replace him. I’ll at least become Deputy Chief. Things are going to change in McDonaldland. I don’t how long it’s going to take, but things are going to change.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ll let wolf girls and mutants back in any time soon, will they?” I ask.

  He grunts. “Maybe someday.”

  We only spend another ten minutes together before he has to go. I shake his hand, knowing that I’ll probably never see him again. After all of this, I’ve come to understand my brother a little better. Perhaps he has come to understand a little of me.

  When he goes, he takes the painting with him. He turns and gives me a salute, as if I were an honored Fry Guy hero. I salute him back. Looking at his clean shaven face, all I can think about is how stupid he looks without his mustache.

  The Warriors take down their camp and get ready to move out, far into the wilds of the wasteland. Nova is packing up her tent and supplies, and stuffing them into the back of Apple’s car.

  I go to her and place my hand on her upper arm.

  “I’m sorry about what I said back there,” I tell her.

  She pauses and then nods her head.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she says. “You were right. I just overreacted.”

  “It wasn’t fair of me to bring that up,” I say.

  She returns to packing her belongings. When she is finished, we take a walk in the woods together. We find a tree to climb and sit up there, staring across the landscape. She holds my hand and I put two of my arms around her.

  “I don’t want you to come with us,” she says.

  Her hand becomes limp around mine.

  “What?” I ask.