by Lynn Red
I nodded. I didn’t much like the idea of being used as a police dog, but at the same time, if there was some way we could find Orion, I’d do anything in the world.
“Smell this,” the old man beckoned me toward his motorcycle and produced a shred of purple sweatpants fabric.
I inhaled deeply and then immediately retched. “Ugh! What is that? It smells like rotten... oh.” Jenga was smiling his wide, yellow-toothed smile. “That’s Sara! Do you think you can do it?”
I wandered back to the forest, sniffing the air. “Yeah,” I said quickly. “I can find her. Give me a second.”
Nothing. I charged through the forest all the way to the biker camp and back, paying special attention for that ripe, awful stink, but found nothing. I came out of the forest shaking my head. “No go.”
Jenga frowned. “You’ve checked all the other rivers, y’said?”
I nodded. “No sign of a bear. Well, signs of plenty bears, but none of them I want to find. One more to check,” I said. “Greater James. Can you meet me there? It’s only a few miles from here. I’ll run, I’ll keep my nose to the air.”
Jenga nodded slowly. “Will do. We’ll find that boyfriend of yours.”
“Cl...ea,” Atlas groaned, climbing out of his sidecar and shuffling toward me. “Love!”
Jenga rolled his eyes. “I sure am sorry about this, but I promise I know how to fix him. Let’s find them two bears, living or sorta-living, and get this all sorted out.”
“Atlas!” Jenga shouted, as the bear tromped toward me. “Where are you going?”
“With my Cl...ea,” he said.
“Can he keep up?” I asked. “I don’t mind if he follows me as long as he won’t get hurt?”
“Ha! Him? Hurt?”
I shrugged, realizing how stupid the question was. “Come on, Atlas!” I called back. “Let’s go!”
I broke into a hard sprint, blasting off into the forest opposite the one I entered before. It felt good to run, it felt good to have the rain sliding down my back as I went.
“CL...EA!” Atlas was grumbling as he bashed through the trees, crashing this way and that as he followed. “LOVE... CLEA!”
I wasn’t really sure why, except that he was a whole lot like a lost puppy, but I kinda loved him too. I hopped across three stones that formed a makeshift bridge across a creek and looked back to see him, with his arms flailing all over the place, charge right into the water and advance until his head disappeared, then reappeared on the near bank.
That was when I caught the smell of zombie. Earthy, musky and... a little lavender-like? I shook my head, convinced that my nose was playing tricks on me. I paused just long enough for Atlas to catch up with me. A soaking hand reached out and stroked me from head to tail.
“Come on, Atlas,” I said. “We’ve both got mates to find.”
He nodded, his slackened jaws flapping a little. “I love... Clea!”
I snorted a laugh. “I love you too, Atlas, but there’s another one for you, and another one for me. We can always be friends though. Deal?”
In a sing-songy cadence, Atlas started saying my name over and over again, then whistling happily, even though the rain made him sputter more than whistle. I couldn’t help but laugh.
We crested a hill, and down below was what we’d been hunting. The camp was buzzing with activity. Just as I began to watch, a tree fell with a great crackling noise, and was immediately chained to a pair of motorcycles and dragged into place. Immediately, the river began to swell behind the blockage.
“Orion,” I whispered, as I stalked toward the camp. “You’re going to be fine. I promise. For once, I’m saving you.”
-22-
“Sometimes the only thing you can do is let go of the steering wheel for a second and kinda let stuff happen.”
-Clea
There were four of them struggling with something that they seemed barely able to contain. Something large, something very strong, and very... green.
“Sara,” I whispered. “Atlas, come here.”
Atlas shuffled up beside me, his massive, enormous torso dwarfing me – and I’m not a tiny lynx. I pointed at the struggle. “See that? Sara,” I said.
“Sa... ra, Sara is mean.”
I shook my head. “She’s not mean, she just loves you. We all act strangely when we fall in love. A lot of us don’t really know how to handle it.” The lecture I was giving Atlas was really meant for me, but he seemed to understand what I was saying.
“She’s not... mean?”
“No, she’s scared of her own feelings. She’s scared that she’s fallen in love with someone who doesn’t love her as much as she loves him. But you do, don’t you? I can see in your eyes that you do.”
To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t see a whole lot in his eyes, but I did recognize the way his voice got all wavy when she came up.
Sara took a swing at one of the bikers and absolutely clobbered the shit out of him. The big biker’s head jerked around from the impact of her fist. His body followed, spinning around halfway before collapsing in a heap.
Two Devils replaced their fallen comrade, managing to wrestle Sara into something resembling a controlled state. They managed to get her arms twisted behind her. Just when it seemed like they were going to conquer her, Sara twisted around and drove her knee up into a biker’s sternum. He howled, fell backwards, and rolled from side to side in the mud.
“They... hurting Sara,” Atlas growled.
I looked back at him, not particularly surprised to see him clenching and relaxing one of his huge, oversized fists. “They... hurting... Sara!”
The gigantic, frat house-smelling bear’s rage was pretty obvious. Also obvious was that he was about to charge straight into a very dangerous camp. He might not get hurt, but they could certainly tear or shoot him apart, which would be very, very bad. I reached out and grabbed ahold of a tattered suspender, which somehow signaled him to chill for a second. “Not yet, they aren’t. I think she’s winning so far,” I growled. “Atlas. Stay put.”
He turned back and looked at me with the saddest, droopiest eyes I’ve ever seen. “But hurting... Sara?”
“Ba-be-be-ba-la-la-lo!” Sara bellowed from across the camp as she lunged at another unsuspecting biker and just about took his head off with a shoulder tackle.
I swallowed, hard. Still hadn’t seen any trace of Orion, but like Jenga said – if we found Sara, we’d find Orion. He’s here, I told myself. Just believe. Just believe in him, like all the other things you’ve learned to believe in the last few weeks. Stop questioning, follow your heart.
Thunder rolled overhead, and somewhere in the near distance a bolt of lightning crashed to the forest floor. I felt the heat, but it wasn’t near enough to worry me; just my lynx senses picking up the tension from the electricity in the air. I lifted my nose and inhaled deeply.
The first thing that hit my nose was the powerful scent of... well, of whatever unnatural things go into Atlas’s college-boy cologne. But behind that cloying scent of fake musk and faux-manliness I smelled something much more familiar. Leather, sweat, and just a little grime from the road.
“Orion?” I asked no one in particular, squinting through the undergrowth at the camp and holding on to Atlas’s suspender at the same time. “Is that you?”
“Where... Or...ion?” Atlas groaned. His voice was taking on something of an irritated, angry tone; the words were tighter in his throat, and he spoke faster and more tersely than I’d heard him do before.
I shook my head as though he was looking at me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to see him, trying to—”
The next thunder that met my ears wasn’t thunder at all, thought it was familiar. The rumbling, throbbing, blasting made me long for Orion. What crested the hill opposite where Atlas and I sat though was pretty much the worst thing I could imagine. “More of them?”
Another handful of outlaw bikers descended to the camp, and one of them – the biggest, most scarred up
and tattooed bear I’d ever seen in my thirty-one years of life, stepped off his bike and just shoved it to the ground.
“Get out here, Celia!” he roared. “Get out here right the hell now!”
Sara unwittingly approached him as she fought at the others. She took two more to the ground with a swipe of her massive, slightly green head. She swung a leg, trying to take out the new guy, but he just stepped to the side and swiped the other one out from under her.
“What is this goddamn mess?” he demanded. “You!” the big bear grabbed one of what I guessed were his lackeys. “Take this thing to a cage or the river or something. It smells awful. I’ve got shit to take care of. Where is my son?”
The man grabbed Sara as ordered, dragging her away – albeit slowly – and shook his head at the question.
That must be Mitch, I thought. He’s every bit as ugly as Orion promised, although quite a bit bigger.
My claws slid out of my fingertips, presenting themselves on instinct. God I wanted to drive them into the bastard who hurt my Orion. I wanted to claw him, tear him, rip at him until there was nothing left. Realistically though he was probably four times my size and just about that much stronger.
Still, I’m scrappy. And what’s more? No one messes with my family.
It hit me square in the stomach. Family, I thought. I said it. I admitted it to myself. Family. That’s what he makes me feel – like he’s the one I never had, but the one I always cried for. Every night when Liam called me fat or stupid or a goddamn-waste-of-space, Orion’s the guy I wished to find.
And there he was.
Led out of what seemed to be the largest tent in the camping area by a squat little woman holding a leash, was Orion.
He was stooped, his hands bound in iron, his ankles shackled in the same. He could barely take an eighth of his normal stride with the restraints in place. Around his neck was some sort of collar that made him wince every so often.
He raised his head, saw his father and lunged.
The little beaver cackled, dramatically mashed a button on a hand-held device she had on a lanyard around her neck, and sent Orion crashing to the ground. “Zap!” she cried out, before she started to cackle. “God I love this thing!”
Atlas tightened his suspender. “Hurting... Orion!” he said. He yelled the first word but when I yanked on his leash, he lowered his roar to a tight whisper. “They... hurting Sara! And they... hur...ting Orion!”
He tugged on the leashing suspender again. I wasn’t going to be able to hold him much longer, and if they did anything else that hurt either Orion or Sara, there was going to be a rampaging hulk loose on this camp. I’m not sure what would happen. And I’m not sure if even they could handle it, no matter how many there were.
Atlas threw his head from side to side, shaggy hair and Axe body spray flinging every which way. “Need to save... friends!” he growled.
I held on for dear life. He was straining, and even with my claws dug into the forest floor, I wasn’t going to hold him much longer. It felt like I was trying to keep a pissed off moose from getting at his moose girlfriend in the middle of November.
Mitch grabbed Orion by the hair, dragging him to his feet. “You stupid son of a bitch!” he shouted in his son’s face. “You don’t got nothing without the Devils! You ain’t shit!”
He drew back and let a crushing backhand fly. The older bear’s hand crashed into Orion’s face, spinning his head. A trail of blood flew from Orion’s busted lip, and he slumped back down, head drooping, blood dripping to the forest floor.
“What?” Mitch taunted him, lifting his son’s head. “What is it? Stupid titty baby can’t take a punch? Is that it? You a dentist yet, college boy?”
Anger flared in Orion’s dull eyes. He opened them wide, his pale brown irises blazing. “Don’t call me that,” he said in a taut whisper. “You don’t own me anymore.”
Mitch let out a loud, bellowing, overdramatic laugh and struck again. Orion’s head flailed in the other direction, but this time his head didn’t drop afterwards. He stared straight into his father’s face, grinning grimly through broken lips.
Beside the bear show, Sara pushed herself to her feet and, as a tendril of drool ran down her chin, onto the forest floor. Another of the nameless mass of outlaws took a swing at her, but she opened her massive jaws, and bit.
He howled in pain, flailing around with his free hand, delivering useless rabbit punches that bounced off Sara’s half-shifted forehead. She thrashed back and forth, wrenching the hapless biker in one direction, then another. He was howling, she was... grinning? And Orion was death-staring straight into Mitch’s face.
A flash of lightning and then an explosive blast hit my ears, but there was no thunder. Instead, Sara stiffened up, and fell straight over. That little beaver, Celia, climbed up her legs and stood, triumphant, slapping what looked like a cattle prod against her palm.
My confidence in holding Atlas back was waning, and fast.
Snap!
The suspender broke in my hand, rainbow-colored elastic popping and recoiling to slap my upper arm. Atlas, brown Dickies drooping low on his hips, charged.
His one-man stampede was a mixture of loping, running, bear-crawling, and good old fashioned bum-rushing, along with a roar that probably ranks somewhere near the top of the loudest things in the world scale, that turned every single head in the camp.
I followed close behind.
“Uh-oh,” Celia said. Her mouth fell open as the big, green bear ran full-on straight at her head.
She froze, her posture reminding me of a terrified armadillo. I knew the look on her face, because I’d had it more than once. Abject, hopeless, terror. She didn’t bother ducking, didn’t bother raising her oversized cattle prod. She just watched, eyes wide open, mouth hanging slack.
Atlas never even broke his stride. He didn’t have to bother. He just kept running, sort of hopped over Sara and Celia, and slammed right the hell into Mitch’s side. I knocked the shock-stick away, and planted a paw right in Celia’s chest, sending her sprawling to the ground. I followed her down, pinning her squirming shoulders to the forest floor with my forepaws and trying to figure out exactly what the hell to do.
“Atlas? Clea? Sara?” My lynx ears caught Jenga’s far-off voice, and jangling beard.
“Don’t come!” I shouted. “Stay back!”
Mitch tried to swing what looked like either a tree root or a garden implement at Atlas, but the big bear just stiffened his jaw, took the blow, and split whatever it was in half. Grinning, and drooling mightily, Atlas stuck out his fist in a straight punch that didn’t seem very fast, but sent Mitch flying backwards into a tree trunk. He wheezed, he coughed, and then he fell to the ground.
“Mitch!” Celia screamed. “Billie! Someone! Anyone! Answer me!”
“Over here!” a tiny, strangely chipper voice answered. “Do you need anything?”
Considering the circumstances, I couldn’t help but snort a laugh. Celia scowled up at me, evidently not finding it particularly funny. “Call the Dust Devils, or whatever they call themselves and tell them to break the dams! I worked too damn hard for this to all end now.”
“Yes sir!” the squirrel chirped. “Ma’am! I mean. You’re not a—”
“Do it!” Celia squawked. “NOW!”
The tiny creature waddled off into the tent and I picked up the sound of a transistor radio zoning in on a band.
“Who’s there?” Jenga called, his voice getting closer.
“Stay back, Jenga!” I shouted again. “It’s dangerous! There’s too much going on!”
Mitch climbed to his feet, and Atlas toppled him again with a double axe-handle style punch, right into the forehead.
Rain pounded harder, coming down in soaking sheets that matted my fur, and deadened my hearing. My sense of smell, too, was weaker, drowned out by the hushed scent of freshly watered forest.
The jingling beard was still coming though. “Whassat?” he shouted. “Can’t hear you, Cl
ea! Too much rain!”
“Atlas?” he called as soon as he got close enough to the camp to see what was going on. “Atlas! You put that... er, that giant, dangerous looking biker down. Or don’t?”
I shook my head at him, as soon as I caught his attention by flicking a stick with one of my back feet.
“Clea?” he asked, and then turned to Atlas. “No! Never mind, keep it up!”
Mitch took another swing at the zombie. His huge paw slammed into Atlas’s ribcage, but big green just smiled as Mitch screamed in agony, apparently having hurt himself.
“I knew reinforcin’ them ribs with fence posts was a good idea,” Jenga said. “At first it was just to keep him upright with all that weight, but, hell, looks like it’s good for other things, too. Oh,” he looked down. “Who’s this, then? Oh, you’re that tiny thing what keeps trying to flood the town, hum? Guess you got what was coming to you. Say, Clea, you seen Sara? She’s—”
Big, shaky legs drove into the ground. Massive, twitching arms grabbed Atlas’s calves and pulled up.
Thunder throbbed and then crashed overhead, but it was hard to tell if it was the sky protesting the storm, or the two massive zombie bears grunting. Sara grasped the overgenerous waistband of Atlas’s work pants, pulling them down and herself up at the same time. She stuffed her hand into the ass part of Atlas’s khakis, ripping them down the middle.
Atlas took another massive swipe at Mitch, except this time, his arm wasn’t the only thing flailing. It was almost hypnotic to watch his, well, zombie-hood, flopping around all over the place.
“Really?” I asked, looking in Jenga’s direction.
He shrugged innocently. “It’d look funny if it was smaller.”
Sara managed to get herself to her feet, apparently not even noticing the amazing sight inches away from her face, and tromped over to Orion.
“I help! Be-bo-bo-bo-la-la!” she cheered, grabbing the irons between his ankles. She strained, her muscles bulging, and gritting her teeth.
“Is she ripping that apart with her bare hands?”