by Strand, Jeff
There were several vehicles, and the names of everybody in the compound, including Eugene. Ally was at the top, though her name was misspelled as "Allie." He touched her name.
A message popped up. "Enter Passcode."
Damn.
He had to call J.P. He touched the phone icon and tried to think about what he was going to say. J.P. would be furious, but he'd also ordered Eugene and Ally to be killed, so he didn't really have the right to be upset.
Should he say anything about Wesley?
He was a terrible liar. But admitting that he'd shot Wesley in the head with a silver bullet seemed like a bad idea.
He made the call.
* * *
"You need to turn on the news," said Diane, walking into J.P.'s office.
"I don't have a TV in here."
"Then you need to find one."
"Is it more shit with George and Lou?" He could see that they were on the move again, finally, but they still weren't answering his calls.
"Nope. Reports of a Bigfoot-like creature jumping out of a car in the middle of the highway only a few miles from here. Witnesses say it ran off and the car sped away."
"Oh, for Christ's sake..." How could this have gone any worse?
His phone rang. He waved Diane away. He had no secrets from her, but he didn't want her to watch him have a complete meltdown if this call wasn't good news.
"Yeah?"
"J.P.?" It was Eugene, sounding frantic.
"Where are you? What's going on?"
"Wesley went rogue! He took out a gun and tried to kill Ally! We wrestled the gun out of his hand and I've got him in the trunk, but the stress made Ally transform and she got out of the car and ran off!"
J.P. squeezed his eyes shut and made a strong effort not to scream in rage.
"All right," he said. "We'll sort this out. Stay put and we'll come get you."
"No," said Eugene. "I need to find her before she gets hurt or hurts somebody. I need the passcode so I can track her."
"I said to stay put. It's too risky."
"I'm not staying put when Ally could be in danger. Give me the code."
J.P. decided that continuing to protest was a bad idea. He didn't want to arouse any more suspicion in Eugene. "It's 5-2-9-2-4-6."
"5-2-4-2-9-6. Got it."
"No, 5-2-9-2-4-6."
"What did I say?"
"Keep me on the phone and switch to the tracking app."
"Okay."
The call went dead. J.P. immediately called him back.
"Sorry," said Eugene. "I accidentally hung up on you. I'm in the app now. 5...?"
J.P. read him the numbers one at a time.
"I'm in," Eugene told him. "She's only a mile away. I'll call you when I find her."
J.P. hurried out of his office. He cursed under his breath for the entire duration of his walk down the hallway. "Diane!" he called out.
She turned around and walked over to him.
J.P. lowered his voice. "Wesley screwed up, big-time. I'm going to go out and collect them myself."
"You don't want to take anybody else with you? Just to be safe?"
J.P. shook his head. "I'll need them to trust me. I knew Wesley had issues, but I didn't think he was incompetent."
"You should have skipped the ruse and just killed them here."
"Yes, because murdering a teenage girl would go over so well around here. What if she screamed? The plan was fine. Silver bullet to Ally's head, silver bullet to Eugene's head, done. How did he mess that up?"
"The news report says that the car was driving erratically. Almost hit a couple of other cars. Door was wide open while it was driving. It stopped, and a hairy beast ran out and got away."
J.P. immediately understood the implications of what she was saying. Wesley's orders had been to drive a few miles away from the compound, tell them that his stomach was hurting because of all the stress, find a private spot, and then execute them. Even if he deviated from the plan, he wouldn't start trying to shoot them while driving the car on the highway.
Maybe Ally or Eugene had caught a glimpse of the gun?
So? Why shouldn't Wesley have a gun?
But if Eugene truly believed that Wesley had gone rogue, why would he lie about the circumstances?
J.P. wasn't sure how it had played out, but Eugene definitely knew that Wesley wasn't acting of his own volition.
Okay. Fine. This wasn't disastrous yet. Ally was fifteen and Eugene was a jittery mess. He still had the upper hand.
"Are you still going alone?" asked Diane.
"Yes," he said. "But gather all of the trainees. Have them pack for an overnight trip. I want them to be ready to go by the time I get back. A van full of werewolves should be enough to clean up the loose end of George and Lou, don't you think?"
* * *
Ally wasn't moving, so it didn't take Eugene long to catch up to where the dot on the screen said she was located. It was a small Mexican restaurant, with several cars in the parking lot. He assumed she hadn't gone inside, since he didn't hear screaming. He parked in the back, where nobody was likely to walk past the car, and if somebody did, he'd stay close enough to distract them from the dead body.
He got out of the car. "Ally?" he called out. "Ally?"
"I'm here," said Ally's voice, from behind a Dumpster.
"Oh, thank God," said Eugene, hurrying toward her.
"Don't come over here!" she said.
Eugene stopped running. "What's wrong? Are you in trouble?"
"I tore through my clothes and they came off while I was running."
"Right, right, I should've thought of that. Be right back."
Eugene returned to the car, popped open the trunk, and unzipped Ally's duffel bag. He grabbed some clothes and walked back to the Dumpster.
"The ground is kind of gross," he said. He closed his eyes and held out her clothing. "I promise my eyes are closed."
He heard her quickly approach and snatch the garments out of his hand, then he heard her go behind the Dumpster again.
"This shirt doesn't go with these pants," she informed him.
"Sorry. I didn't look at them closely."
"I'm joking, Eugene."
Eugene gave an appreciative laugh.
A minute later, she walked over to him. "You can open your eyes now."
Eugene opened his eyes. Ally looked unhurt.
"You didn't have to keep them closed all this time. I was behind the Dumpster."
"Well, too late now."
They started to walk toward the car. Eugene stopped suddenly.
"Wait," he said.
"What?"
"You should know that—" He glanced around to make sure nobody else was in the parking lot, then lowered his voice. "I shot Wesley in the head and his body is still in the front seat."
"Oh, shit."
"So you should sit in the back."
"I will."
They got back in the car.
"How'd you find me?" Ally asked.
"I tracked you by scent."
"Wait, what?"
"You didn't know I could do that?"
"You're not a real—"
"I can joke, too."
"For your first-ever joke, that was a pretty good one," said Ally.
"I've made jokes before."
"We'll have to agree to disagree. How'd you find me?"
"The thing we were using to track George and Lou works on all of us. I guess we were all chipped at some point, like dogs or cats."
"So J.P. knows where we are all the time?"
"Yeah."
"That's not good."
"No," Eugene agreed.
"Then we just need to stay ahead of him."
"That sounds easy. Probably not as easy as it sounds."
The phone rang. It didn't display the name of the caller, but Eugene had a pretty good feeling that it was J.P. He answered and put it on speaker.
"Did you find her?" J.P. asked.
"Yes."
<
br /> "Was she hurt?"
Eugene wasn't sure if he should lie or not. He decided to go with the truth. "No."
"Good. Are you two on your way back?"
"We're not coming back," said Ally. "Our plans haven't changed just because of the thing with Wesley. We're going to find George and Lou."
"I'd rather you return to the compound," said J.P.
"That's not going to happen," Ally told him. "If you leave us alone, we promise we'll be quiet about everything that's going on. If you come after us, I swear we'll blab about this to anybody who will listen. You don't want the FBI raiding your place."
J.P. was silent for a moment.
"May I suggest an alternative?"
"Sure."
"If you say a single word to anybody, we will hunt you down and capture you. Unless you are prepared to start scooping out chunks of your own body to try to find the tracker chip, we will find you. But I'd actually encourage you to rip yourselves apart searching for it, because when we capture you we will assign somebody the task of torturing you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until you're dead. And when you're dead, we'll bring you back to life like we did Lou and Ivan, and we will torture you until you're dead again. And then we will continue to repeat this pattern until there's nothing left of your bodies to bring back to life. How does that sound, little girl?"
Eugene glanced back at Ally. She looked pale and sick to her stomach.
"We won't say anything," Eugene said.
"I want to hear it from her."
"We'll be quiet," said Ally. "But we're not coming back."
"I'll respect that decision. When you find George and Lou, give them a message. Tell them to finish the job they were given. Tell them that The Melt is coming. They'll know what I mean. And tell George that the whole torture, kill, resurrect, torture loop applies to him, too. Should I have you repeat that back to me, or do you understand the message?"
"I understand it," said Ally.
"Perfect. Goodbye."
"Wait," said Eugene. "I need the passcode again so we can track them."
"Write it down this time."
"I will."
"5-2-9-2-4-6."
"Thank you."
Eugene switched to the tracking app, entered the code, and selected Lou from the list.
"You okay?" he asked Ally.
"Not really."
"Me either."
* * *
J.P. began deleting names, leaving only George, Lou, Ivan, Ally, and Eugene. He was chipped himself, just in case he was ever kidnapped and in need of rescue. He was the only one with administrator privileges with this app, so Ally wouldn't be able to delete herself or her friends from the list. He'd know where they were. They wouldn't know where he was.
He couldn't fit all twelve werewolves into one vehicle. They'd have to caravan it.
This wasn't how he wanted things to go. At least, not this soon.
But now he had to admit that he was looking forward to all of the bloodshed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Self Examination
"What do you think I am?" asked Lou.
"Some guy named Lou," said George.
Lou was no longer bleeding. There were several bullet holes in his chest, and at some point they'd have to remove those bullets, which would suck. For now, Lou seemed to be perfectly fine for a gentleman who'd been shot so many times and lived.
"I'm serious," said Lou.
"I know you're serious. What do you want me to tell you? That you've become one of the undead, doomed to roam the earth draining blood from innocent victims? Apparently when they brought you back to life they did too good of a job. I don't know what to say beyond that."
"You could have said something besides the draining blood from innocent victims part."
"Look, I get that this is messing with your head, but if I got shot a whole bunch of times and shook it off like a leg cramp, I'd think it was a pretty sweet deal."
"I didn't shake it off like a leg cramp. There was a lot of blood and pain."
"You shook it off better than most people who got shot that many times and lost that much blood. I'm not saying that you should start calling yourself Miracle Lou and devoting your entire life to spreading gospel, but I honestly don't see how this is such a bad thing."
"It's just weird is all."
"Well, yeah it's weird. Nobody is saying it isn't weird. It's also weird that you got your hand bitten off by a werewolf, but that was also bad. I'm not sure this is bad. Would I want to die and get brought back to life with the ability to survive gunshot wounds? No. But if I did die, and I did get brought back to life, would I be pleased about this new discovery? I believe I would."
"I'm not complaining about it," said Lou. "You're right—it's better than the irony of getting killed again so soon after the first time. It just makes me want to talk to a therapist."
"There probably aren't any that specialize in that sort of thing."
"Probably not."
"But you know, if we ever go back to our old jobs, which I'm sure we never will, our rate could go way up. Let's say you stole a bunch of drug money. Two big guys—you and me—show up to suggest that you give the money back. Previously I'd break a couple of thumbs, or maybe you'd carve a fancy design into their arm, but now we could actually let them shoot you. Or stab you, or whatever. And then you wouldn't die. That would scare the shit out of them. They'd tell all of their friends to behave unless they wanted Lou and George to show up at their door. Now that would be some effective intimidation."
"If all of their friends behaved, we wouldn't be needed as often and our business would decrease. We'd make ourselves obsolete."
"That's true," said George. "That's very true. Anyway, I'm not trying to solidify any future plans—I'm just spitballing here."
"Also, getting shot really hurt. I mean, it really, really hurt. It still hurts. I don't want it to ever happen again. And I sure as hell don't want to get stabbed."
"All right. It was a terrible idea. I admit it."
"You know what really upsets me?" Lou asked.
"What?"
"Ivan is back there where he can't hear anything. This conversation would be driving him insane."
George chuckled. "Yeah. That's too bad."
"We'd keep it going for at least another twenty minutes if he could hear us."
"Oh, I could do forty or fifty minutes if I knew it made him unhappy." George yawned.
"You need me to take over?"
"Nah. Actually, yeah. Just long enough for me to get a quick nap."
They pulled off at the next rest area, checked to make sure Ivan wasn't dead (he wasn't), and switched places. The truck seat didn't recline, so George used the window as a pillow and went to sleep.
* * *
When he woke up, it was completely dark out.
"How long did I sleep?"
"A while," said Lou.
"Why didn't you wake me up?"
"Because nobody was trying to kill us."
"Well, that's good."
"Go back to sleep."
"Aren't you tired?"
Lou shook his head. "I'm sure I'll be able to sleep again at some point, but it's not going to happen anytime soon."
"Then, yeah, I'm going back to sleep. Poke me if you need me."
"Good night."
* * *
George woke up to the sensation of being poked in his side.
"I need you," said Lou.
"What's wrong?"
Lou tapped the rear-view mirror. A car was tailgating them, flashing its headlights.
"Well, shit."
"What do you think?" Lou asked. "Outrun them? Try to run them off the road?"
"Maybe they mean us no harm."
"Sure, that's the way things have been working out for us."
"It could be J.P. with his finger on the Melt button."
"And it could be more gangsters vowing revenge."
"I dunno," said George. "At som
e point we've got to run out of people vowing revenge for Mr. Dewey. How beloved could that fucker be?"
The car behind them began to honk.
"Okay," said George, "I'm gonna say that since we've left a trail of mutilated thugs behind us, somebody wanting to kill us isn't going to flash their headlights and honk their horn to get us to pull over. They'd just follow us and kill us when we weren't suspecting it."
"Your call," said Lou. "You're the one who'll die, not me."
"Let's get off at the next exit, and stop somewhere brightly lit."
A few minutes later, they stopped at a convenience store. The car pulled up alongside them, and the back window rolled down.
"Hi," said Ally, waving.
George and Lou got out of the car, as did Ally and Eugene. There were hugs all around.
"What the hell is going on?" asked Ivan, sitting up.
"It doesn't concern you," said George. "Lie back down or we'll dump you on the side of the road."
Ivan lay back down.
"It's so good to see you guys," said Lou. "Guess who's a zombie now?"
"He's not a zombie," said George. "So what are you doing here? Don't answer that with 'Looking for you.' My actual question was, why were you looking for us? Did J.P. send you?"
"Not quite," said Ally. "He's not really happy with us right now."
"I killed Wesley," said Eugene.
"On purpose?" George asked.
"Yeah. He was a wolf at the time. I think I'm getting ahead of Ally's story. I'm glad you two are okay."
"We're okay, if you don't count brain damage, but Ivan's a broken mess. He can't do the job anymore, so we were taking him back."
Ivan sat up again. "What the fucking shit did you just say?"
"I was dead serious about leaving you by the side of the road," George warned, even though he wasn't.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Eugene.
"Broken legs. Mangled wrists. He can't even completely change anymore."
"That's a pretty big problem," said Ally. "J.P. said to tell you to finish the job you were given, or The Melt is coming. I don't know if it was a global warming reference or what."
"No," said Lou. "It was not a global warming reference."
"Do you have a way to contact him?" George asked. "Maybe we can explain ourselves."
