by Mia Archer
The people closest to the window went into a mad scramble to get away. I’d never understood how crowds could get to the point that they crushed people before, but seeing it working on a small scale gave me a pretty good idea of exactly how it happened.
One player bowled over Angie. Luckily Clint was there to save her ass by pulling her up in a move that was reminiscent of some of the tosses we did in practice.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. I put my fingers to my lips and whistled very loudly. That cut through the panic.
Everyone turned to stare. They were staring stupidly, but I had their attention.
“If we’re going to survive this then you all need to listen!” I shouted. “Please move in an orderly fashion away from the windows. None of you are within clawing distance anyway.”
That was a lie, but I figured they were in more danger from each other than they were from werewolves busting through the windows. For the moment, at least.
I turned to Cara and Carrie staring at the still twitching hand. Cara had actually leaned against the door, which was really stupid.
“Um, Cara?” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible.
I wasn’t sure that I was doing a good job, but whatever. I was in the middle of a siege that was like something straight out of a mashup between Animal House and Dog Soldiers.
“What?” Cara asked, staring at me in a daze that told me she wasn’t all there right now.
“Don’t you think it’s a bad idea to be standing right in front of the door that…”
I cut off as a massive shadow blocked the light streaming through the small window on the front door. It was one of those ancient stained glass deals. I’m sure the woman enjoyed it a hundred years ago when this house was shiny and new.
Now, though, it was dirty and grimy and only let in a little light. Light that was being eclipsed by the massive hulking creature on the other side.
“Actually, hold that thought,” I said, pulling out my gun.
“What are you doing?” Cara asked.
“If you could move to the left just a little?”
Cara obliged, so when the attack came I was ready.
The window shattered. A snout shoved through, snapping at anything that might be on the other side. Cara screamed and dove for the floor, but the window was far too small for the werewolf to do more than get its snout stuck.
It didn’t have a chance to do anything more than snap menacingly a few times before I fired a single shot that took the werewolf mid-snarl. The bullet went through its mouth, hopefully doing some severe damage.
A surprised yelp came from the other side of the door as it was thrown back with the force of the shot, followed by a gurgling and the distinctive sound of something massive slamming down to the porch.
“One down,” I said.
“What the hell?” Clint breathed.
“Okay people,” I said, trying to talk loud enough that everyone could hear me. “You’ve no doubt realized by now that Cara here was telling the truth. There are werewolves out there, they’re going to come in here and try and kill us, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure as many of you survive the night as possible.”
“As many of us as possible?” one of the players asked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I locked eyes with him and he flinched away. He might think he was a big man on campus because he was good at tossing a basketball around, but that was nothing compared to a cheerleader who’d just drilled a werewolf right through the snout. Especially when I was still holding the gun I’d used to do that drilling.
“What that means is there’s a pack of werewolves hunting us,” I said. “That never ends well for the people being hunted, but I’m going to try and make it end as well as it possibly can.”
People looked around the room like they were trying to figure out which one of them wasn’t going to make it through the night.
“I called the campus cops already!” a girl I didn’t recognize said from the back. “They’ll be here soon to help!”
I laughed.
“They might be here soon, but have you ever seen a horror movie?”
“What are you talking about?” the girl asked.
“What she’s talking about is the cops are going to be useless,” Cara said. She glanced over her shoulder to the window where that werewolf had tried to sneak its snout through, then turned to glare at me.
“What do you mean the campus cops are going to be useless?” the girl asked.
“I mean exactly what I said,” Cara said, pulling her gaze away from mine with a final glare that said I was going to hear more about that later. “We’re in a horror movie scenario here, and that means if you call the cops they’re going to be useless when they arrive. Come on. Haven’t you ever seen Friday the 13th Part VI?”
“Friday the what?”
I rolled my eyes. “The Jason movies.”
“Oh,” a guy said. “I love the one where he’s in New York!”
I glanced to Cara, and she rolled her eyes. As well she should. Everyone knew Jason takes Manhattan might as well be called Jason Takes A Lame Cruise Ship That’s Inexplicably Connected to the Ocean From Crystal Lake which, as far as I could tell, had been landlocked up to that point in the series. Even when he got to the city they might as well call it Jason Takes Vancouver With A Brief Stop in Times Square.
Whatever. There were far more pressing concerns going on right now.
“The point is the cops aren’t going to be much help,” I said. “They’re not equipped to handle a situation like this.”
I thought of the Chief and all his talk of a single six shooter with silver bullets. That didn’t instill me with any sort of confidence that they were going to be able to do anything. The Chief might be able to show up and run the cover-up when all was said and done, but that didn’t help us now.
I held my hand out to Cara. She frowned. Oh yeah. She was still pissed off.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I dealt with some fucked up stuff growing up because of supernatural bullshit, and I guess I was still listening to my dad’s voice telling me I shouldn’t trust anyone. I was wrong.”
“Forget that,” Cara said. “What about using me as bait for that werewolf?”
“Well I needed bait, and you were never in any danger anyway,” I said.
“I wasn’t?” she said.
“Nope. I’m a good shot,” I said.
We stared at each other for a breath. Then a smile cracked her face. Then we were both laughing, though a look around the room told me no one else saw the humor in the situation.
Too bad.
Also? I totally saw a few people moving closer to the windows again. Like the two minutes without a werewolf attack had been enough to convince them there was nothing to worry about.
“Get back from the windows please,” I said through clenched teeth. These idiots. It was like they didn’t want to survive.
“And here I always thought people acted like idiots in horror movies,” Cara said, looking at the scene playing out before us. “I never knew it was based on real life.”
“I know, right?” I said. “Turns out the threat of certain death turns people into imbeciles. Besides, a lot of those horror movies are based on true stories anyway, and whoever wrote them is usually working from experience.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Cara said. “The one thing that kept me going for years was knowing those movies were fake.”
“I wish I was,” I said. “You might even be able to get something out of this if you live.”
We shared a smile. That smile was quickly interrupted by screams outside. I muttered a few curses under my breath.
Screams coming from the street meant more drunks had stumbled into our real world horror movie.
“We need to do work fast,” I said.
One of the screams got louder, and then was abruptly cut off. Followed by the sound of one of those growls that sounded so much
like a laugh.
I clenched my sword and gun a little tighter. If these bastards thought they were going to get away with this…
Well I looked around and sighed. Honestly I didn’t like our chances. Like there was a really good chance they were going to get away with this.
Son of a bitch.
“Sounds like shit’s getting real out there,” Cara said.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Angie asked, stepping into the front of the crowd.
The honest truth was I didn’t have much of an idea of what we were going to do. I was still trying to think of something, anything, to say when I felt a tugging at my arm.
I turned to see Cara looking like she was worried about something. Something other than the werewolves that were about to kill us, that is.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone locked me out of here earlier,” she said through clenched teeth.
“They what?” I asked.
“They locked me out,” she said. “I stepped out the door, and there were a couple of werewolves out there in human form that started transforming. When I tried to get back in the door was locked.”
I bit back a couple of choice curses. Mostly because I didn’t want to say anything that might give away to the bastard werewolf in disguise that I knew there was a bastard werewolf in disguise somewhere in here.
Though that did answer one question. Maybe. If there was a werewolf hiding in here with the sun down and the moon up then presumably these were werewolves that could transform at will.
Which added another fun wrinkle to an already fucked up situation.
“Motherfucker,” I growled.
“Should we board up the windows?” one of the basketball players asked.
I rolled my eyes.
“Do you have any boards or nails you could use to board up the windows?”
The guy looked around the room like he thought a bunch of construction supplies were going to magically appear.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
I turned back to Cara. I looked her up and down. She was trembling just a little, but at least she had her wits about her.
“You seem like you know what you’re doing,” I said.
“I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing,” she said. “I’m just operating on a bunch of stupid rules I made for myself after being forced to watch a bunch of horror movies growing up.”
“That means you’re doing a hell of a lot better than anyone else here tonight. So what I need is for you to get everybody upstairs. There’s an enclosed porch running along the back of the house. You can get out there from one of the bedrooms on the back of the house and jump down to the ground behind the house.”
“There’s no way I’m jumping down from that porch!” one of the players said. “I don’t want to get an injury!”
All eyes in the room were suddenly on that player looking at him like he was an idiot. Which he was.
“You’re welcome to stay here if you want,” I said, hitting him with a sweet smile that should’ve warned him something was up.
“That’s more like it,” he said, flexing some unimpressive muscles. “I know they’re not going to come after this.”
“Oh they’re definitely going to come after you,” I said. “But you’ll make for a good snack. All those lean muscles? They’re going to love chewing on that.”
The guy got a pale and sickly look. He glanced around the room, then looked down.
“I’ll go with the girl,” he muttered.
I turned to the rest of the room. “Okay everyone. You’re going to be going with Cara here. We’re going to try and make an escape through the back entrance on the second floor.”
“What about you?” Cara asked. “And for that matter, what about…”
Unfortunately she was cut off as the whole house started to shake. I looked around. Empty bottles of liquor that’d lined the shelves like were trophies, the kind of trophy you only found in college apartments or the saddest middle aged homes ever, started rattling and falling to the ground. A few people cursed or cried out as bottles hit them.
“Oh no,” Cara said.
“Oh no is right,” I said. “We’ve got a Busey!”
“A Busey?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Everyone away from the walls!” I said. I turned to Cara.
“What would be the most obvious wall for it to come through?” I asked.
“Probably the one over there where everyone’s gathered,” Cara said.
“Right,” I said, wheeling around and leveling my gun at the wall just behind us as it exploded open, revealing a massive werewolf. Which was a pretty pants-shittingly terrifying sight.
Or it would’ve been if I wasn’t waiting with my gun lined up. I fired off a shot that hit it right in the chest. The thing flew back and slammed against the house next door where it slid down leaving a trail of blood behind it and started transforming back into a human.
“Holy shit,” Cara breathed.
“Sorry about that,” I replied, turning to Cara. “But you really need to…”
Her eyes went wide as something slamming into me. Because I’d made the stupid rookie mistake of not keeping an eye on the hole the werewolf had opened in the house. Which meant another one was able to get through.
I went rolling, my gun and sword clattering uselessly to the floor and sliding in opposite directions.
Son of a bitch! I lost my fucking gun. This really was turning into a first rate Busey!
18
Cara
I caught a flash of movement as Kirsten turned towards me, and turned just in time to see a werewolf sailing through the air. I cried out, but it was already too late. It slammed into Kirsten, and they both went tumbling to the ground.
More importantly, the gun and sword she’d been carrying also went flying.
“It’s a fucking Busey,” I muttered.
I wasn’t sure why I was calling it that. It should’ve been called a Haim. After all, he was the one who shot the wolf after the gun went flying, but I guess Gary Busey’s performance was so iconic that I thought of him when I thought of Stephen King’s only foray into the werewolf genre.
Pennywise dressing up as Michael Landon in IT didn’t count in my book.
Besides, what other werewolf movie had the classic line “I don’t have time to play the Hardy boys meet Reverend Werewolf!”
No other werewolf movies, that’s what. And that’s what made that one so special, despite the fact that the werewolf looked like a deformed bear rather than a terrifying wolf creature.
I dove for the gun, but there was a growl from the hole. I turned to see another werewolf sniffing at the air and cautiously making its way into the room.
No doubt the fucker had seen their pack mates biting the big one, and now they were playing it safe.
It looked around the room, then looked at Kirsten rolling on the ground with its packmate, and it let out a low pulsing growl that sounded for all the world like a laugh.
Looking at these werewolves stepping into the room as though they owned the place filled me with rage.
It was a feeling that came from knowing I was in the middle of a horror movie situation, and I was acting no better than those people who deserved to die because of the stupid decisions they made once they were faced with a psychotic killer or a monster.
I wasn’t going to be like them. I wasn’t going to die that easily, and that realization filled me with purpose.
“Get down!” I yelled.
It wasn’t enough to save a pretty girl standing by the front windows like an idiot staring into the room rather than out onto the street where the real danger was lurking, but it was enough to get everybody else to back away as clawed hands shot through those windows.
The girl was dragged out. She screamed, but there was nothing I could do for her. Kirsten had already yelled at those dumbfucks to get back twice anyway.
I couldn’t help that girl, but it wa
s time to save what I could in here.
“Everybody get into the middle of the room. Stay away from the walls, the windows, and the fucking werewolf at the entrance!”
There was a yelp from one of those werewolves. I turned to see Kirsten on top of the one that’d tackled her. She was punching it repeatedly on the snout and drawing blood that I was pretty sure wasn’t hers.
Kirsten looked up at me and grinned a manic grin. I guess she was okay, for all that she was straddling a werewolf beating the shit out of it.
I looked over to the other werewolf still standing sniffing at the air and glancing nervously at Kirsten and its friend.
I couldn’t be sure exactly what was keeping it from coming in and starting some shit, but I knew it wouldn’t be too long before it got over its reluctance.
Kirsten might be beating the shit out of one of the things, but there was only one of her. It’s not like she could hold off two of them at once. At least I didn’t think she could.
This was a Busey, or a Haim, and I had to get the gun and shoot the second furry fucker before it killed someone.
I pointed to one of the basketball players. He flinched back like I was one of the werewolves. Asshole.
“Gun,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“There’s a gun on the ground right next to you,” I said, talking quickly because I didn’t have the fucking time to explain things. “Toss it to me.”
He continued staring stupidly at me. I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“Fucking now!” I yelled.
The guy jumped, but that finally got his ass into gear. He grabbed the massive pistol and tossed it. As it sailed through the air it occurred to me what a bad idea it was to toss around a loaded firearm like that.
I ran to catch the thing before it could land and misfire. Though I shouldn’t have worried. It turns out somebody who was used to precisely throwing a ball into a hoop was also pretty good at landing a gun right on target. It plopped into my hands, and I had no doubt that had more to do with the player’s skill in throwing it than in my skill catching it.
I’d never been good at any sort of sport where throwing or catching was required.