The Wolf With the Silver Blue Hands

by Eric Ellert

  "Hush."

  A minute later the first logs were sucked into the turbines and the shock-pow-crack-pow sound of gears seizing up repeated again and again making the damn vibrate. The lights went out all over the distance landscape. The fence stopped humming and the tire iron fell to the ground.

  "You're sure?" Mrs. Rochambeau asked.

  "Yes."

  "Would you do me the honor?"

  Moren finally understood why they'd had a French Revolution; for the tone of the aristocrat's voice not the weight of their hands. Had they only had some manners she wouldn't have had to read about it. "Right." Moren cut open a section of fence with her claws. The links snapped away so easily, she wanted to go it again, but looked around; the cops might come.

  "That's right don't leave a mess. We don't want people to follow."

  She stepped inside the hole, Moren just after her. The air here was frigid, a bright sun and a blue sky. Moren could smell campfire smoke.

  "You sure about this?"

  "Yes I am sure, little girl. I am very sure. What have I dreamed of for so many years."

  "But why didn't you just go?" Moren became so afraid she swore her brain hurt and she thought of the bubbling silver water that had turned her hands blue. Crossing through might even kill her. Mrs. Rochambeau would not know or care. Then again, forget it. She took a step forward. Nothing happened. She smiled, sure she'd be ok. She even felt enchanted as if leaving the first footprint on the moon, and finding air and trees and streams and a new start. She might do anything here, become anything she wanted here, right now, no waiting in smelly classrooms or getting a driver's license.

  "Deary," Mrs. Rochambeau said. "Forgive me my temper earlier, but I wanted to tell you something. This Emily Van whatever her name is, could have the sum of all the women of France who had ever lived in her face, if she would only find it in herself. You as well, I think."

  "Mo-ren," a ghostly voice called over the miles echoing in the hills.

  "That's Karen's voice," Moren said.

  "No that's impossible."

  Moren stepped forward; she stepped back; she tapped the fence just to be sure someone hadn't snuck up behind them and turned it back on. "I have to go."

  "She is dead. No, don't, come back."

  Moren ran back through the fence.

  Mrs. Rochambeau yelled, but when Moren turned, the fence showed night as if turning on a different clock. In the distance she saw a figure running down a hill. It could have been Mrs. Rochambeau, but when Moren looked more closely, the figure was dressed in skins.

  Thunder rumbled, then lighting. It hit a tree, then a rock, then Mrs. Rochambeau, once, twice, three times.

  "Mrs. Rochambeau," Moren yelled. "Mrs. Rochambeau."

  Moren took a step back into the Back Beyond, but Karen yelled her name again and she ran on her bad feet back down the road toward the sound.

  ***

  She made it all the way to town, thinking they'd all be in the town square by the nasty statue, but she caught a sent and followed the lost highway at the edge of the school.

  She got to the top of the rise. Karen stood on the edge, still in her torn baby doll dress. She had cuts on her arms as if she'd spent the night roaming the forest alone.

  "Karen, you're alive." Moren hugged her, thankful she'd reverted to form.

  Karen pushed her away, her arms too strong, the her face too troubled. When Moren looked closer Karen had radiation burns on her face.

  "Tried to get out. It's bad out there when you get a couple of miles away. If you eat the food, it's real bad."

  "What are you doing here?"

  Moren heard a car engine long before it arrived. Her ears must be better in any form. The bright headlights blinded her for a moment.

  Mrs. C co got out. Behind her came a long line of candlelights, like a Japanese flower ceremony. People from the town, she could smell them from here.

  "Come on, Karen," Moren said, pulling her near, wondering if she could make the leap with Karen in tow.

  "No This is what we do. You come back like a freakin' Cylon."

  Moren thought of a hundred things to say but only mumbled, "Girls didn't watch Battlestar Galactica. What are you saying?"

  "Mom told me," Karen said, pointing at Mrs. C.

  Moren felt some danger she couldn't finger and turned into werewolf.

  Mrs. C gave a signal with her hand and winked. "Go on, sweetie."

  "Faudron," Karen shouted in a voice that sounded just like Moren's.

  Everything was happening too fast. Moren turned and when she turned, Karen waived "I'll see you in the back beyond."

  And jumped off the highway.

  Moren tried to lift her feet, but all she did was tremble. She leapt after Karen, but gravity was gravity and Karen had a head start. She landed on a car with a vinyl roof and bounced twice, squish-squish.

  Moren's fall took hours in her mind. The graduating years' of so many classes covered the tops of so many cars. She shouldn't think of such things, but it seemed so rude, that new cars would cover the old class numbers as they drove off the edge, unable to bear the fenced-in town that pretended it was in 1973, because in 1974 they started sacrificing their 14-year-olds to the night and the night had given them years and years unchanging. All it took was 12 hours they chose not to remember and numbers on the top of cars.

  Moren misjudged the distance and landed flat, Everything hurt, but if anything was damaged, it must have healed because she could move fast and leapt from car to car.

  When she got to Karen, she was gone, still like rocks in rain, sinking into the night's mud. All around her, below the tops of the cars, lay the faded-flowers they must have dropped to ease their consciousness and have a group cry.

  Moren cradled Karen's head, and so very slowly, just like in the movies, a pool of blood formed under Karen and grew.

  Up above they lingered, with candles in parade.

  Moren howled.

  Chapter 29

  Faudron started the Lincoln. Only one headlight worked but it was enough to keep the werewolves away. She could imagine them hiding when they heard the v8 rumble, disappearing just in time, their eyes glowing when the headlight hit the road, so wanting the hunt, so loathing any human intrusion. She was going to go and get help, somewhere. But when she started the engine, a figure stepped into the light. Faudron raised the pistol, though she didn't even know where the safety was or if the silver ammo was any good.

  It jumped in the air, four legs, wet fur steam rising off it into the air, but it was standing in the water. Faudron held her breath for a moment but the creature didn't burn.

  "Don't shoot," it said.

  "Lama," Faudron whispered.

  "Please help him."

  "Find Moren."

  "No."

  "Why do you these things? It serves no purpose. I can't do this alone."

  "Yes, come." The lama staggered forward, brushed past Faudron, went to the dock and jumped in the water.

  Faudron dove in after it and grabbed on to the saddle and let it pull her along.

  Somewhere in the middle, it twitched its legs and kicked out in four directions at once. "Shit," it said. Its heart beat four times. It stopped and sank.

  "Lama," Faudron said and tried to grab it, but with the rifle and the water in her heavy boots dragging her down, she had to let it go. As it sank, it turned into a Nord woman, her long hair blowing in the current like a dying mermaid and Faudron supposed that mermaids did die, from time to time. She wished she'd liked her better than she had.

  She managed to get the boots off and kick to the surface, her lungs aching afraid to turn around in case she lost her sense of direction. She needed to make it to the island, though she wasn't quite sure how far it was.

  She swam, sure her wind would give up and by the time she made it to shallow water, she was barley flopping, her mouth just above the surface and where was the beach? With no energy left, Faudron kicked out one more time.

  He
r feet hit the top of the breakwater that surrounded the island. The dock was behind her, the field partly flooded, the flagpole a hundred yards away; a figure lay on the toppled-cannon.

  She dove underwater, kicked along the bottom and pulled herself along with her hands, eels and garbage brushing her face. When she stopped, she was only a few feet from Rau. The eels were already nipping at the blood, swimming around his legs, gnawing at each other's tales. She tried to grab them but they slipped through her fingers. They scattered when Faudron kicked the water.

  She sloshed through the water until she got to Rau. The hideous blades stuck out of his chest. She touched his cold face. He stirred; his eyes focused on her and he forced a smile.

  "Show off; you would 'x', trying to pass for a statue." She cried at all the blood on his chest, more seeping out of his sleeves. "How much time do you have?"

  "Till dawn, I'll be given that. Go. They're about."

  "We'll follow the wall."

  She noticed Kau's dead horse a few yards away, hurried to it and pulled the life preserver from its stiff neck and floated Rau back to the missing shore.

  By some good luck the ship beneath the water glowed. A whirlpool of eels swam directly above it, churning the water. Faudron removed Rau's life preserver, bent down and picked up a stone from the sea wall to weight them, and pulled Rau over the edge.

  They sank too fast, the pressure building up in Faudron's ears until she was sure they'd pop. Below her, the light was so bright. Her heavy boots landed on top, but the metal was soft. Electricity ran up her legs, then up her arms and her arms were flopping about without her say so. She must have yelled because bubbles flew up from her mouth, moving the eels out of the way as they floated to the surface. She slipped further in until the glow made it impossible to see anything else.

  ***

  The next thing she knew she was standing in a marble-covered hall as large as Grand Central Station, her breath echoing against the ceiling, the broken windows above her letting in the smell of broken sewers, burning asphalt and burning hair. Some explosives went off in the distance in timed patterns like 16-inch salvos from guns in Victory at Sea. She turned around, her eyes not yet adjusted to the dark. She felt for Rau, but sensed he'd been removed and had a bad feeling she'd been standing here for quite some time. The explosions went off again and a cloud of dust poured into the windows, carrying a carrion smell and she knew what they must have smelled fleeing Manhattan on its last day.

  A light went on in the distance revealing five men at a table across the hall.

  "May I come closer? Where's Rau?"

  They did not move or speak.

  "Where's my mother?"

  Silence.

  "I know my father is here. I'm going to approach." She took a step forward.

  Four men wearing some type of chem-bio suits grabbed her and shot her with an injection, then sprayed her with some burning liquid in the mouth, ear, nose, eyes.

  Whatever it was mad her double over trying to clear it out of her throat. When she could see again, she was standing before the desk, the burning sensation bearable. She closed her eyes. The men in bio suits had been women with skin like frogs, their grip strong, yet pliant.

  "You can surely understand," one of the men behind the table said with his mind.

  Faudron swallowed the liquid left in her mouth from the spray. It burned as it went down. If these things thought with their minds like Rau when his guard was down, their minds could be read as well.

  She barely had to try to hear. They'd altered their DNA so often they could not hold their shape, had no shape, nor center. From man to lizard to amphibian to a bag of goo on the floor like an octopus without all the brains, that's where they were headed, not to mention the enemy who shelled them. "I spy," Faudron said.

  The one in the center smiled, stood and gestured. Rau was wheeled out in a tube much like the one he had at home.

  Faudron ran to the coffin, for that is what it seemed, and pressed herself against the frosted-glass. Within, Rau breathed and for a moment opened his eyes, then closed them. "For how long, a day a month, a lifetime?" Faudron asked.

  They would not answer.

  The man gestured to another coffin.

  At first, Faudron waited for an explanation, then realized they'd meant it for her. "And there I'd sleep like Cinderella or is it Snow White?"

  "Snow white," one of them said.

  "You have seen the movie?"

  "I have seen them all. I know you all so well."

  In a moment of clarity she saw them as they really were, amphibious, frog-faced, hideous, monsters, from a dead planet. Even a lizard could hate; they could not even feel.

  She looked out the great windows and recognized the stars close to home, but where was the moon? "We are on the moon, aren't we? You have no home. No more?"

  He gave no answer but by the expression on his humorless face, she'd stung him.

  "And so you would steal our past?"

  "You are not using it."

  She stepped back and touched the glass over Rau's face. "I have a sister I must help."

  They conversed as if she was absurd but after a moment he smiled and nodded.

  "This way, one of the creatures said.

  What else could Faudron call them, even if they and Rau were one?

  The creature grabbed Faudron by the arm and led her down a long hall with what looked like elevators on either wall. There were no signs or markers and she had trouble deciding on one and doubled-back, dragging Faudron with her, but something must have gone wrong because the woman's appearance kept changing from amphibious to human, like a flickering light bulb.

  She finally chose a door and pressed the button and when the door opened, she pushed Faudron inside.

  "Hey," Faudron shouted, pounding on the door as the lights went out and water seeped under the door.

  At first it was just a trickle, then it rose to an inch of water on the carpeted-floor. The water rose to her knees, then her waste.

  Her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket just to see the blue light it gave off and when she flipped it open, the screen showed the Doctor Zaius-like person, sitting on a rock, smoking a cigarette from a long holder, lecturing someone just off screen. Whoever had made this must have had a sense of humor because Faudron could tell he was wearing a bad fitting mask, like the background extras in those movies did.

  He ran across the screen throwing his feces at someone. "I told you not to come here any longer." He was out of breath when he was done. He turned and stared at Faudron as if she'd rudely disturbed him. "I can smell you from here." He paused for a moment. "Ah, all right." He ran into the surf and stopped at an elevator door standing in the water. "Help me you fool," he said.

  Faudron pulled at the door until she got it halfway open. It appeared to be stuck between floors; water and sand poured in but the Doc pulled her out of the elevator and they waded to shore.

  "Get the phone, yes,," Zaius said. "That's it. I really hate doing this."

  They hurried to shore and sat by a fire.

  "What am I doing here?"

  "I'd like to know that myself."

  The cliffs behind them, the desert shore, she was in the end of the movie, after Taylor had left and though the place felt real, the distance before her was just a back drop.

  "Quite right," he said. He ran to it, lifted a corner and it peeled away like a curtain. Beyond lay the wasted highway near home, ending in the air, below, a werewolf broken on top of a car.

  "Is this real?" Faudron asked.

  "Maybe, maybe not, depends how things play out. In time."

  The water rose and came up to her legs. She tried to run but the undertow pulled the sand out from under her. She fell and was dragged from shore, tumbling along the bottom.

  When she came to the surface, the world was made of water and fog, no sure direction to take. No, the water was still, and fresh. It smelled like home. She stood. She was standing on the island, next
to the flagpole, the water her prison, having risen up to her waist.

  No way to swim to her house, she hadn't the strength and they knew it better than she did, cruel, strange creatures. She staggered to the building with the spacesuits, took her jacket off and tossed it at the fence, the metal zipper sending up sparks, then setting it on fire.

  Around her, the wolves howled from the treetops making them look like monkeys in the wind.

  The fence shook, parts of it melting, then all the lights went out and she climbed the fence, cutting herself on the barbed-wire and landing in the water on the other side. She froze, still expecting a shock.

  She got up and pulled open the box by the keypad and fired off the flair gun within. "Kau, you miserable bastard. I need you."

  No one answered but he must be near because every wolf in every tree went silent, their eyes glowing as they watched her.

  Soon, he slipped from the fog, looking human, tested the fence shyly then leaned his weight on it. "I am so glad you are here."

  "Why?"

  "There is a new queen."

  He had to mean Moren. If there was something to get into, she got into it. "No."

  "Yes, the dear Moren but a queen must be wise. Can you not hear the drums? They draw her."

  "Does she not rule them and you?"

  "But she does not rule the Mayor and the tattooed lady; every kennel needs a keeper. I think it is a law of some kind." He sang a verse from La Vie en Rose. "You know it's not such a bad song when recorded properly."

  Faudron climbed up the fire ladder at the side of the building, but when she got to the top, she missed a step and started to fall. Kau jumped up on the roof, grabbed her hand, pulled her up and placed her down again on the roof. He stared into her eyes a moment then went to the toy harpsichord in the corner and played a few notes. "Would you like to hear a story 'bout how I was wronged, what drove me to this, what made this very personal Hades I've managed to maintain? Well it's not forthcoming. I was no good long before this. And I'll never leave, for if I do, someone's bound to hang me." He played a few notes and bit at the air. "For stickin' rabies needles in kiddies just to hear the little bastards cry. Call it what you will but that's what it was. Then makin' them werewolves anyway. Good fun, that."