Hank stared at the hypodermic needles in his hands and shook his head at the silver-tinted solution inside. He felt more like an alchemist than a doctor and the lab bore that evidence - a mortar, Erlenmeyer flasks, a Bunsen burner, and titration equipment. It was the lair of a mad scientist now. The instructions Varney gave him were easy enough to follow. It produced four injections worth. His inner cynic laughed. Why not just sprinkle some fairy dust? But he'd seen enough today to doubt, to question everything he knew. Besides, it was this or just sit in the emergency room and wait to die. He headed to the room where they kept Sawed Off. Time for a test.
As he rounded the corner into the West Wing, something felt amiss. The door to the man's room was open. And it was quiet. With all of the cacophony outside, it was easy to forget the weird, little redneck. Hank stopped and held one of the hypos out like a knife. He stepped carefully towards the open door, not yet able to see inside. There was still a lingering smell, like a filthy dog. Hank poked his head around the corner, unsure if he would find a sleeping biker or a werewolf waiting to pounce.
The room was empty. The bed was on its side. The restraints were shredded. Sawed Off was gone.
***
Every bone in Whitey's old body was shaking. He'd been on his feet all day and night and his knees ached that much more. He could barely keep them from knocking together and his teeth from chattering. And he didn't have enough eyes in his head. The pack outside was quiet. Every now and then, he caught a glimpse of them. One of them would pad through the shadows or disappear up a tree and into its branches. But they were there, waiting just beyond the edge of the lights. None of them came forward to sniff at the wolfsbane anymore, but it hadn't driven them off.
The real concern was right next to him. Bullet was drenched in sweat. She was shaking worse than he was, but hers looked more like seizures. Undulating waves moved across her skin. Her eyes changed and the light glanced off of them. Then it was Bullet again. She moaned and her moans weren't those of pain. She liked it. It felt good. It had been a long time since Whitey had been with a lady, but he remembered the sound well. And that's what Bullet sounded like. A bone popped out of place somewhere inside her. Cartilage tore and a thin sheen of hair spread across the backs of her arms and she hissed between her sharp teeth with a wince of pleasure. Then the hair disappeared. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed. Bullet returned, if only for a moment. This would happen in waves. The change would come. Bullet would bear down. The change would subside for a few moments.
Whitey watched her closely. She obsessively checked the strap that bound her, but he still kept his eye on it. The restraint belts were strong, but if she went full-on wolf, he wasn't sure that it would hold her. His finger flirted with the trigger on the shotgun. God damn, he did not want to do that. Not that it would help him much anyway.
"Bullet!" Dr. Hank screamed from down the hallway and Whitey nearly pulled the trigger. "Bullet! Whitey! He's loose!"
Dr. Hank, face ashen, came running around the corner into the ER.
"Doc?" Whitey asked.
"The guy in the room. He's gone. He - "
Whitey heard a low growl and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Above them, Sawed Off hanged from the rafters like a mangy gargoyle. Its claws dug into the beams and the lopsided grin spread, showing yellowed, broken teeth. A long tendril of saliva dripped to the floor and Whitey stared at it. It puddled at his toes. Drops thick and viscous landed on his boots and all he could do was look at it as his mind struggled to put everything together.
Whitey looked up as the thing released its hold on the rafters and dropped. A grin and yellow eyes and an endless mouth full of razors, falling towards him in slow motion. Without thinking, he stumbled aside. Sawed Off landed where he had stood.
Whitey raised his gun at the shambling thing. It wasn't sleek or hulking like the rest. It was hunched over with patchy hair and misshapen limbs, as if it had been born deformed. It smiled anyway, letting Whitey take a long look.
"Whitey . . . " Bullet said in a thick whisper. "Shoot me."
Her head rolled on her shoulders. The very shape of her body did a dance against the column, popping, shifting, and transforming. Flesh split along new bends in the bone. She whimpered. She giggled.
Whitey didn't answer her. He kept his gun trained on the Sawed Off and tried not to think about what was happening to his friend.
"Shit. Shit shit shit." Dr. Hank said as he joined them. The doctor ran out of steam as he saw what was happening – Sawed Off on the floor. A transforming Bullet bound to the pillar. Everything that was keeping Hank going visibly bled out. “Oh no…”
"Doc?" Whitey asked. “What’s the plan?”
Dr. Hank held out a hypo, feebly, as if he were apologizing. "We need to hold him down."
"And how in the hell do you propose we do that?"
Bullet moaned again. "Whitey!"
Her mouth and nose pushed out from her face, reshaping into a muzzle. Whitey could hear the new teeth tearing through the gums. The changes came in fits. Her ears grew to points. She dug her new claws into the plaster of the column. "Please, Whitey. Shoot me."
Sawed Off bellowed at the ceiling and spread its claws wide. Whitey blasted it in the throat. Its howl stopped. A spray of blood and fur. It stumbled backward and fell onto its ass, with its head hanging on by torn hide and meat. The paws jerked up to clutch at its neck and it choked, a wet sucking sound escaping the wound. Blood poured freely from its mouth that now lolled open. Fighting for breath, it sat up, blinked and leveled its gaze at Whitey. “Doc!" Whitey said.
Dr. Hank was transfixed by Bullet. He stared as her body warred with itself. She bucked and thrashed in her restraints. Limbs and skin shifted violently from state to state. Back and forth, neither Bullet nor wolf. And as they stood, paralyzed, Whitey watched Sawed Off’s skin grow back. He could see it. Tendons writhed, trying to find something to grab onto. Shredded muscle reconnected and swelled as fresh blood pumped through it. Meat knitted itself back together and the bone within regenerated with the sound of snapping twigs.
“Doc, do something, man!” Whitey screamed.
Dr. Hank pounced on Sawed Off and straddled the thing's chest, knocking it prone. He drove the needle into the open wound and slammed the plunger down. The werewolf swatted him aside and Dr. Hank went tumbling. It howled. It tore at its flesh with its nails, as if it were burning with new agony. Not the shotgun blast. Something different. The sound the wolf made as it flailed was a thick and pained gurgle. Whitey could make out "Fuck! Fuck you!" as he saw the thing's hair start to fall out in patches. Bones snapped and readjusted. It pissed all over the emergency room floor.
A hot breeze whipped by Whitey's face. Bullet. She swiped at him with her claws. She was gone. Only the wolf remained, tethered to the pillar where Bullet once was. She reached for him and her hands with the impossibly long fingers came within inches of his face. Whitey backed away. "Oh, sweetheart. Come on. Fight this shit."
But she couldn't hear him. She was all animal rage. And the restraint around her waist was starting to give. "What now, Doc?"
In the middle of the room, Dr. Hank was on his hands and knees. He was punch drunk and staring at the floor. Whitey yelled again. "Doc, we got a problem here!"
Dr. Hank shook it off and fumbled around the floor like an old man searching for his glasses. His hands found the shattered remains of the hypodermic needles. "No," he mumbled. A few feet from him, the last hypo was intact. He grabbed it and stood, wobbling on his feet. He hurried over to Whitey, getting as close to Bullet as he dared. "We've got to give this to her."
Whitey took the hypo from the doctor and traded him the shotgun. He took another step closer to the werewolf that was Bullet before looking back at Dr. Henry. "If she gets me - "
"I'll shoot her." Dr. Hank nodded.
"Fuck that. Shoot me."
Just a few feet away, Sawed Off continued its change. It was a hairless thing now, just a naked creatu
re, all scars and lumps. Whitey tried to ignore its mewling and got in closer to Bullet. She wanted him closer. She swiped at him. Her jaws snapped. He tried to get in to give the shot, but it was like dancing with a rattlesnake. "Come on now, Sweetheart. It's me. Just give me a second, okay?"
She snarled and snapped again. Varney emerged from the darkness behind her and Whitey thought he was going to shit his pants. "Jesus!" Whitey screamed.
Varney grabbed Bullet's lanky arms and pinned them to the pillar. She snapped at him with her maw. "Now! Do it now!"
Whitey jumped in and stabbed the needle into her arm. In an instant, Bullet was still. Her head sagged and what sounded like a death rattle gurgled out of her throat.
God Damn, we killed her, Whitey thought.
Varney released her and stepped back. He tilted his head, examining her. Suddenly, he screamed, whipped her arms, and caught them both with wild swings. Whitey fell onto his back and slid across the slick floor. His breath shot out of his chest in a painful burst and he thought This is it. I'm dead. With his eyes watering from pain, he looked up and struggled to breathe. Bullet was gripped with tremors. Her face began to shift again. The hair fell out of her skin by the fistful. She wailed. The sharp teeth dropped from between her lips and scattered on the floor with a dry rattle. The claws came loose. Bones reshaped. Muscles twisted. Whitey smiled and lay his head back.
He finally caught his breath and stood. His chest felt squeezed. His old knees throbbed and the place on his cheek where she'd smacked him ached. But Bullet didn’t scratch him and she was alive. Bullet was Bullet again. She stood there against the pillar and weakly fumbled with the strap. Dr. Hank stood nearby and could only watch. His jaw was slack. "Yeah. I don't believe it either, Doc," Whitey said.
Whitey helped her unfasten the restraint. Bullet nearly collapsed into his arms. She was soaked through with sweat and blood. Her clothes were shredded, but just intact enough to cover the important stuff. "Alright, girl. I gotcha."
"What the fuck? What the fuck?" a raspy voice asked.
They looked over at Sawed Off. Completely naked on the floor, he clutched his legs to his chest and rocked back and forth. He was slick with a sheen of slime. Tufts of his wiry wolf-hair were scattered around him on the floor. He was sobbing. "What the fuck did you do to me, man?"
Bullet broke free of Whitey and stood tall. She took the shotgun from Dr. Hank and walked over to Sawed Off. He whimpered. "What's happening? What did you do to me?"
She blew his head off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
12:34 AM
They sat around the oak desk in the office, sipping the last of the tequila and passing around a single cigar. The silence was a hollow thing that consumed everything else. Just the clinking of glasses and shallow, exhausted breaths. The cigar was one he’d left in here ages ago. He’d gotten on a cruise or maybe at a golf game. It didn’t matter. It stank, but the smell covered up the waves of corpses and wild animals. The tequila-and-cigar combo wrapped them up in a warm blanket, sending that familiar fuzziness through him. On the desk, Hank stared at the matchbook Bullet pulled from her pocket. It was baby blue with a grinning rabbit on the front. The Blue Bunny. He smiled.
"No music?" Varney asked. He sat just out of the light of the candle. Or maybe the candlelight couldn't get close enough to him.
Hank snapped out of his reverie and looked around. "Ummm. I had an MP3 player in here."
"Otero took it to Goodwill," Bullet said.
Whitey chuckled. "What a bitch."
Everyone laughed along with him before letting the stillness gather around them again. Hank remembered his phone and pulled it out. He swiped through a few menus and sat it on the desk. Otis Redding began to sing from the small speaker.
"Aw, yeah," Whitey said and smiled. "Otis is the man."
Bullet gave Hank a curious look. "You've got Otis Redding on your phone?"
"Just a greatest hits album. That's all I've ever downloaded on here. Why? What did you expect?"
She laughed into her glass of tequila. "Top forty. Maybe some hair metal."
"To be fair," Whitey said. "He just uses Otis to get into ladies' undies. Women get wet for Otis."
Bullet looked at them both in mock surprise as everyone laughed. "Whitey!"
"He's not wrong," Hank said.
"That women get wet or that you use it to seduce women?"
Hank thought for a moment, unsure of how to answer. "Yes?"
Everyone laughed again. It came like a dam breaking. It was the laughter reserved for reminiscing after the funeral of a friend. It was wild, inappropriate, and tinged with madness. Hank looked to Varney, who only smiled quietly at the others. "Is this okay? You like Otis?"
"Any music is acceptable, Doctor. It's been so long."
Everyone let that sink in. Hank thought of Varney, laying in the coffin, almost alive. "The wolfsbane," Hank said. "It actually worked. It’s keeping them out."
Varney nodded. "For now."
"What do you mean?" Whitey asked.
"Our foes are animals. Mostly. They've let their human minds be debased by feral instinct, but their minds aren't gone. They're just submerged. Now they prowl around the building, frustrated at the wolfsbane they smell. It tells them that something is wrong, but they can't quite figure out what. So they whimper. They stare at the building, not quite comprehending, like a dog who notices the stars. But the human mind is there. They'll realize that it's just an irritant. And they'll batter their way in. Or they'll burn the building down and kill you as you run from the flames."
"So no one is coming," Hank said.
Whitey frowned. "Agent Castle said he called some of his people, but who knows? He was pretty full of shit."
"Someone will see the fires," Bullet said.
"Fires?" Hank asked.
"The trailer park. And part of the town. It's gone. I guess that's the screaming we heard on the radio."
Hank buried his face in his hand. "And we're in the middle of nowhere. I'm never leaving the city again."
Bullet gave a faint laugh. "And I don't even have any shoes to run away in." She held up her bare feet and wiggled her toes. Her shoes had been shredded by her transformation.
Varney leaned in and suddenly his voice, always so alien, was smoky and smooth. "You fought off the transition rather admirably. I didn't expect you to last as long as you did."
Just hearing it made Hank's head swim. He felt sleepy and lazy, like he'd just downed a heroic dose of opiates. He shook it off to see Bullet giving Varney skeptical look with an arched eyebrow. "That usually work, Mr. Varney?" She asked.
Varney tilted his head quizzically. "What do you mean?"
"That voice." She nodded to Hank's phone where Otis still serenaded them. "That was sexier than Otis himself. I've heard it before. Plenty of well dressed, Euro-trash pieces of shit have tried that on me in some dark, over-priced nightclub."
Hank's breath caught at the insult. He and Whitey froze in their seats. Whitey's glass rest on his lips, but he did not drink. Varney just looked at her. Hank couldn't read his face. Finally, Varney laughed and everyone breathed. "Ms. Boulet. It would seem that you still have some of the wolf within you."
Bullet gave him a sly smile. "It wasn't easy. Resisting."
"Looked like it hurt," Whitey said.
"No," Bullet said, and her voice became quiet. "It didn't hurt at all. It felt good. It felt incredible. It was like good liquor, great sex, and the sun on your skin. All at the same time. It was warm. I wanted it."
"Sounds like heroin," Hank said.
"I wouldn't know."
"How you holding up, Doc?" Whitey asked.
Hank bit the inside of his cheek. The pain kept him from crying. His eyes felt heavy and the pressure built behind them. "I could use some Xanax and a lot more of this tequila. But I'm okay."
His hand shook as he raised the glass. He wasn't okay. Now that things had slowed, he had time to think. The day had time to sink its claws in. He
was sure everyone could see, was sure that they saw the pieces falling off of him and shattering on the floor. So he stared into his empty glass and hoped they would look away. Up until now, he'd been able to keep moving. Running and fighting had kept him occupied. He was able to give into his own animal brain. But the man knew the truth. He knew that they wouldn't make it out of here. He knew that all of the decisions, the leadership, and the bold proclamations that he wouldn't leave anyone behind were just part of the mask. Now, as he had time to think about the blood spilled and the bones broken, the hopelessness flooded in. Hank stole a glance and saw that everyone else was staring idly into their glasses, as well. Only Varney held his head up. He looked directly at Hank and Hank could feel it rooting around in his center. He tried to break Varney's stare. "Rudy. Has anyone checked on Rudy?"
Whitey nodded and frowned. "Can't see that far into the ditch. It winds a little out of view. He's either at the end or . . . "
"I don't have any scars. Amazing." Bullet was examining her hands. She ran her fingers across her bare chest above the sports bra where earlier she was slashed open. Hank watched her fingertips glide across her skin and felt something in his stomach flutter. He was both ashamed and relieved. If that got his attention, maybe he wasn't completely falling apart.
Whitey pointed at a long, jagged slash of pink on the inside of her forearm. "What about that one?"
She traced her fingers along it. "That's an old one. I've had that for a few years."
"From when you worked at the Blue Bunny?" Hank asked and felt his face get hot with embarrassment.
Bullet gave him a cross look. "Excuse me?"
"Shit, son. Don't go pokin' the hornet's nest," Whitey said.
"Oh, come on, Bullet," Hank said. "You know that's the rumor. I had a bet going with Nathan. Nothing wrong with a little stripping, bills to pay and all that."
She leaned in and made sure she had his attention. "This is from my time on the Phoenix SWAT team. Five years ago."
"Get the fuck out of here," Whitey said. Now he leaned forward, too, and poured himself some more tequila.
The Black Goat Motorcycle Club Page 16