by Mia Archer
I grinned as I held up one of my guns. I’d been using my sword to avoid making noise, but if we were going past the fountain then I’d need to resort to something that could kill a lot of werewolves fast.
“You said it yourself,” I said. “I have enough ammo that this shouldn’t be trouble.”
I looked out over the fountain circle again. The werewolves who’d bit those girls were loping off in the opposite direction, with their new werewolf chicks following behind them.
So much for saving those girls. They’d been dead the moment the werewolves started chasing them, though. I couldn’t help all of them, but I could take out the bitch who was causing all of this.
That might be enough to get the rest of the pack to dissipate without any clear leadership. Or it might be enough to instigate a bloodbath. Though there was already a bloodbath going on around campus, so it’s not like it could be much worse than what was already happening.
This was a crisis that’d reached the Godzilla threshold, is what I was getting at, and the cure was going to be as bad as the problem no matter what I did.
“Did you ever stop to wonder if this is even all worth it?” Cara asked, looking at those girls who were in the middle of transforming as they chased after the werewolves that’d just turned them.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well it’s just that we’re out here hunting a bunch of werewolves when you said yourself it’s not like we’re going to be able to turn anyone back. We’re not operating on American Werewolf in Paris rules.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that the bitch who did all this needs to die,” I said. I’d never been more sure of something in my life. “Besides. Werewolves are pack animals. Once the head of their pack is killed they’ll start fighting for supremacy to see who gets to run the pack after the queen bitch is dead.”
I hoped. There was still the chance of that aforementioned indiscriminate slaughter, but I figured that didn’t need to be brought up just yet.
“You’ll forgive me for ever doubting you considering how much you seem to know about these things,” Cara said.
“Then why do I get the feeling that’s exactly what you’re about to do?” I asked, turning and grinning at her.
“Well it’s just that it seems to me having a bunch of werewolves who aren’t being kept in line by a head werewolf might not be the greatest thing for the campus. It seems to me that might mean more indiscriminate death and destruction.”
“What it means is they’re going to be so busy fighting each other that they’re not going to have time to think about the pretty blonde girl sneaking up to pop a cap in their ass until it’s already too fucking late for them,” I said, trying to put the best spin I could on a bunch of werewolves rampaging.
“You say so,” Cara said with a sigh. “So are we doing this?”
“You’re actually going out there with me?” I asked, turning on her in surprise.
“I mean you’re going to go out there whether or not I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “I figure we might as well get it over with while there aren’t any obvious werewolves out there to turn us into chew toys.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.
I stepped out of the trees and looked around to make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for us. It’s not like werewolves were as smart as monsters that retained more ability to think while they were in their monstrous form, but they had human brains in there that they could use to set up traps if they had someone calling the shots.
The fact that there was a pack leader out there somewhere orchestrating an organized attack on the entirety of a college campus was enough to tell me that there was definitely a strong enough leader out there to encourage these werewolf assholes to do someting devious like setting up a trap.
Just like that same bitch had clearly handed down orders to bite the hot people and rip everyone else to shreds. Like they were hoping to set up their own dystopian YA novel setting that was nothing but hot werewolves all the way down.
“Coast seems clear,” I said, moving across the fountain circle.
Everything looked weird, but it was running red. Like someone had met an unfortunate end here at some point and the body had been dragged away.
“Drag marks over here,” Cara whispered.
I followed her pointing and saw the telltale sign of someone being dragged off towards the science building. If they were lucky they were dead before they became someone’s snack.
“Motherfucker,” I growled. “These things really are playing for keeps tonight.”
“You’ve got that right,” Cara said, her eyes following the red streak like she didn’t like what she was seeing.
“Let’s go,” I said, turning back towards the path that would lead past the education building and then off to the campus village where everybody went to have a good time on Thursdays and over the weekend.
There was just one problem with that plan. There was a group of werewolves standing in the shadows at the edge of the fountain circle between us and that path staring at us with glowing yellow eyes.
“Shit,” I growled.
“What’s… motherfucker!” Cara called out when she turned and saw the werewolves. “How the hell did they sneak up on us like that?”
“They were always there,” I said, looking at one of the numerous stands of trees around campus that was supposed to make high school kids want to spend money they hadn’t even earned yet to go to this place.
“Okay,” Cara said. “So we turn in the other direction and… son of a bitch!”
She’d turned around to get a look behind us, and from her tone I had a pretty good idea of what was waiting for us back there.
“More werewolves waiting to rip us to shreds?” I asked.
“You know it,” Cara said, her head tracking around the circle. “Looks like they’re surrounding us on all sides.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” I growled.
35
Cara
“Please tell me you have a plan for this,” I said.
We were surrounded on all sides. Which was a ridiculous turn of phrase. If we were surrounded then naturally they were going to be on all sides.
Whatever. It’s not like I was thinking straight. I was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought, to quote a learned scientist who investigated the paranormal.
“Not much of a plan,” Kirsten said.
I turned and stared at her in disbelief.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I wish I was fucking with you,” she said with a frown. “That would be way more fun than what’s happening here.”
“This is really it?” I asked, getting a sinking feeling deep in my gut.
It was weird. I’d thought about my own death plenty of times growing up. It was something I’d had a lot of time to think about considering all the horror movies I was forced to watch, but I never thought it’d actually come.
It was the kind of thing that was always an academic thought in the back of my mind. Not something that was real.
And now that it was happening I didn’t believe it. It was like my brain was refusing to accept that this could be it. That this was the end of my life.
I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it, and yet here we were.
“I never thought it’d end this way,” I said.
“A lot of people who end up getting offed by something supernatural never think it’s going to end this way,” Kirsten said. “Honestly I never thought it’d end this way either.”
She took a couple of steps forward and stood on the fountain. I went to stand next to her, checking the guns at my side.
Hey, we might be about to get die, but that didn’t mean I was going to go quietly into that good night.
I had a couple of guns at my side and a good supply of silver bullets, and I fully intended to make that good night plenty loud with the sound of tho
se guns going off before the claws got me!
One of the werewolves stepped forward. It sniffed at the air like it wasn’t sure whether or not it wanted to approach Kirsten.
Kirsten, for her part, merely grinned and stood there like she didn’t hav a care in the world. It was the kind of thing that would’ve been really hot if I weren’t so terrified that I was about to bite the big one.
“So which one of you fuckers wants to go first?” she asked, holding her hands out like Maximus in the coliseum. It was an old reference, but it still checked out.
The werewolves didn’t make a move. Which didn’t seem at all like the werewolves I’d come to know and hate over the course of this misadventure. No, they all held back except for that one that was sniffing the air cautiously.
“You come us,” it finally growled.
I blinked. I hadn’t realized they could talk while they were in their wolf form.
Sure it was talking in a halting voice. Like it was having trouble getting the words out. Still, the fact that it was talking at all around those decidedly canine teeth was impressive.
Kirsten cocked her head to the side and looked like she was considering what the werewolf had just said.
“Very well, I accept your surrender,” she said.
The wolf’s ears twitched, and it let out a low rumbling growl. It was a growl that was repeated by all the other werewolves around us, with the practical upshot being that suddenly the whole area sounded like we were surrounded by a bunch of those massive trucks assholes drove through campus with lots of smoke coming out the back to “own the libs” being revved all at once.
“You come us!” the werewolf growled again.
“I don’t know if you’re trying to hit on me or if you’re trying to get me to go quietly, but I have no intention of doing either one,” Kirsten said.
“Kirsten,” I hissed, and she looked down at me.
“What?” she growled.
“If they’re offering to take us along to their leader then maybe you should take them up on the offer?”
“Have you ever seen a news story or a movie where negotiating with the terrorists worked out for the people doing the negotiating?” she asked.
I blinked. She had a point. You thought you were negotiating with Hans, bubby, and the next thing you know you’re getting a bullet to the brain.
“Good point,” I said, pulling out both guns and holding them up. “I want you to know that this sucks we’re dying and all, but I’ve had a great time getting to know you.”
“Same to you,” Kirsten said, then she turned back to the werewolf who seemed to be acting as the representative of all the wolf motherfuckers.
“Last chance to surrender!” she shouted.
The werewolf let out a bellowing roar. It was an unholy thing that made my stomach twist in terror. Then it got down on all fours, it was creepy how they could switch between Howling and American Werewolf like that, and charged at Kirsten.
Still, she held her composure. Like a werewolf charging her wasn’t a huge deal.
She held her gun up and lined it up on the werewolf. Maybe all the other wolves were about to kill us, but that didn’t mean this one wasn’t going to have a bad day for being the first one in line trying to kill us.
All the other werewolves threw their heads to the skies and let out angry howls as the werewolf charged us. It was another sound that made me want to curl up in a ball and cry, but I managed to hold it together as I brought my own gun up.
I was going to take as many of these fuckers with me, damn it, and I wasn’t going to let on just how much they were intimidating me!
A single shot rang out and echoed across the fountain circle. The howling cut off with the shot. The werewolf that’d been charging Kirsten fell forward and went sliding on the ground under the momentum it’d built up, then came to a stop at the base of the fountain with a massive hole in its head.
I stared in astonishment, but not at the werewolf in front of us. No, I was staring in astonishment at all the other werewolves around the fountain circle. They all wavered for a moment, then fell forward to the ground dead.
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked.
Kirsten, for her part, was looking around like she was just as surprised by this development as I was. All the werewolves in the circle, there had to be at least a hundred of the things surrounding us, started transforming back to their human forms.
They were dead. Not only were they dead, but someone had just hit them with silver bullets if the matching holes in the back of their heads were anything to go by.
Something moved in the shadows beyond the fountain circle. I braced myself, worried that there were more werewolves out there, but men dressed in camo and body armor stormed into the the circle. There were at least as many of them as there were werewolves, and they all had massive guns they were using to scan the circle for any more werewolves.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
One of the soldiers held a hand up and the others created a perimeter around us. The one who’d raised his hand kept moving forward until they stood right in front of me and Kirsten, then pulled off a helmet revealing an older guy.
He had a dusting of silver in his hair, and he looked to be in pretty good shape for all that he was an old dude. There was also something about the guy that looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where I’d seen him before.
The guy looked Kirsten up and down with an appraising look, but it wasn’t the look of an older man checking out a pretty college girl that I would’ve expected. No, this was more the look of someone who was proud of her for some reason.
“I figured I’d find you out here somewhere causing trouble,” he said, grinning as he held a hand out.
Kirsten regarded that hand for a long moment. Finally she rolled her eyes and took it, pulling the guy into a hug that seemed to surprise him, but he also didn’t seem to mind and went with it.
Meanwhile I stared between the two of them completely at a loss. What the hell was going on here? Who was this guy, and what the hell had happened to Kirsten that she was acting like he was her long lost BFF or something?
Finally the hug came to an end and Kirsten stepped down from the fountain.
“That was unexpected,” the guy said.
“Yeah, well the only reason you’re getting that is because it turns out you were right and that might’ve saved my life over the past couple of days,” Kirsten said.
“I’m not going to say I told you so, but…”
“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt whatever the hell this moment is,” I said. “But could you please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Kirsten and the dude both turned to look at me. They both blinked at the same time, and there was something about that look that was so eerily similar that it was almost like…
“Sorry Cara,” Kirsten said. “I’d like you to meet my father. Dad, this is Cara. My girlfriend.”
There was a lot to process in that statement. I liked the way she introduced me. A girl could get used to being introduced as Kirsten’s girlfriend.
But her father? What the hell?
“Someone has a lot of explaining to do,” I said.
36
Kirsten
I sighed. I probably should’ve been more upset that my old life was finally catching up with me, but honestly given the circumstances I was more relieved than anything.
At least this way the thing I’d been dreading was over. Sure it hadn’t played out the way I’d wanted it to, but the waiting and constant dread was over.
“My dad is the head of a secret government project that’s tasked with taking on supernatural threats before they get out of hand,” I said.
Cara stared at me, but she didn’t give any indication of what she thought of that.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Seriously,” I said.
“I mean all this time I thought your dad was some redneck in the woods fightin
g supernatural things on his own time and that’s what pushed you away, but you’re telling me he works for the government and he’s got like funding and a bunch of toys and fucking soldiers and you never called him to maybe help with the whole werewolf situation?”
I blushed. On the one hand I didn’t think Cara had any right to talk to me like that. She had no idea what’d gone down between me and dear old dad over the years.
Only there was also a part of me that agreed with her. It was useful having a bunch of soldier types appearing out of nowhere to take out a bunch of werewolves all at once.
“I didn’t think it was necessary with the wolves hitting a theater and a house party,” I said. “Not to mention I didn’t think he’d want to hear from me.”
“Wouldn’t want to hear from you?” he grunted, then he surprised me by putting a hand out. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ll always be there for you, even if we disagree on what being there for you means.”
I eyed that hand. On the one hand I wanted to think that he was offering that hand because he was my father and he was happy to see me after we’d been estranged for so long.
Only I knew the truth behind that hand that was being offered to me. No, the only reason he was offering me that hand now was because he was happy that I’d been pulled back into the family business. He’d said it himself. We disagreed on what being there for me actually meant.
He was ecstatic to come to this quiet little college campus to find it overrun by werewolves and here I was with the sword and gun he’d given me once upon a time telling me I might need them someday, and he was giving me one hell of an “I told you so” that made me want to wheel back and punch him in that gruff soldier’s face.
The only thing that stopped me was I knew hitting him in the face wasn’t going to do much. He was in the family business, after all. He was a human with the strength and resilience beyond the capacity of mere mortals that had allowed our line to take on supernatural creatures, and I’d inherited the family lineage from him.