"You have the wrong place," she said flatly.
"Nah, we're definitely at the right place," said Geddy with a giggle. "I didn't say it was you who called in the delivery, did I?"
Jaya rolled her eyes. She was still safe and secure in her garage. She was unsettled, but she wasn't afraid. "What is it you think I'm going to give you?"
On camera, Geddy put his hands together to describe an object about the size of an orange. It was hard to think he was not miming the Sphere. "It's just a little thing. A ball of Brass. Not much use to anyone, but we want it. Got a buyer. Can we have it? Pretty please?" Geddy fluttered his eyes flirtatiously, which on him was a monstrous expression to Jaya, though very amusing to his friends.
"Why would you think I have something like that?"
"Little bird told us," said Geddy. "And the little bird is gonna pay a lot of money for it, and you're all that's standin' in our way, if you know what I mean."
"Regardless of whether I have it or not, I'm going to ask you to get off my property now."
Geddy threw back his head in a laugh and turned toward the man group. "She told us to get off her property!" The other bikers echoed his laugh. Geddy turned back to the camera. "Lady, we're comin' in whether you like it or not!"
Geddy left the doorstep, not waiting for Jaya's response. Rejoining the crew, they gave a cheer, then the rest started getting off their motorcycles. He went over to one biker in his late twenties, tall, without a beard but covered in stubble. Compared to the other hooligans, he stood up just a little straighter than the others, held himself a little taller. His hair was dirty blonde. Under other circumstances, Jaya might have actually considered him attractive.
"You heard her, Rick, she ain't comin' out," said Geddy.
Rick nodded and slapped Geddy on the shoulder. "I heard. You did good, Ged, now you get to join in the fun part."
It was time for Jaya to cover her bases. She put in a call to 911, even though she held no confidence in their help. She quickly rattled off to the dispatcher her address and that she had threatening trespassers, possibly looking to burglarize her home or hurt her. As soon as she confirmed her address, the dispatcher's voice got a little more sad and promised less prompt help. They both knew it was because the garage was in Riverside. The cops didn't care about Riverside more than they had to. They'd eventually send someone, but they probably wouldn't show up until long after this altercation was done.
Even if the police wouldn't be coming any time soon, Jaya was still not afraid. But in spite of herself, she was unsettled. She didn't like this sudden biker attention, particularly as they now intended to try to break in. She may be secure, but the men still had destructive and possibly violent intent. And she had no good reason why they wanted in. Well, other than the obvious reason: the Sphere.
Of course this was Dane's fault. They wanted the Sphere he had brought. She thought about calling Dane directly to tell him about this, but decided that call could wait. If she called, he'd come running - he was at least loyal. But then he'd run right into the giant crowd outside, and that would probably make things worse. She was pretty sure the garage would hold against whatever the bikers could do. It was her fortress. But in the off case she was wrong and it didn't hold, her first concern was grabbing a weapon.
Despite the fact that she built inventions which could be quite dangerous either by design or by accident, she didn't have many weapons. She had her tools, which could very easily become weapons in the right situation with the right application of force, but they were backups, not Plan A in a fight. She did have a crossbow, but that was more a utility device - she had outfitted it for propelling small items rather than firing lethal bolts. It could hurt, but it still wasn't a Plan A weapon. She put it near one of her workbenches and put some rubber balls near it. Nonlethal and painful, but not really the stopping power she wanted.
Then she took out Plan A, her real home defense option: a shotgun. She had only used it a few times, just enough to know it worked. It almost looked like a kid's toy - the stock was a bright neon yellow. It had been modified to only fire one very special non-lethal round: bean bags. The way she figured, in any situation she'd need to defend herself or her home, a bean bag would serve the purpose just as well as real ammunition, except maybe she wouldn't have death on her conscience.
Jaya was loading the bean bags into the shotgun when she heard the first strike on the garage door. She couldn't tell if they were using fists or weapons, but the clang that reverberated told her it was something blunt. "Good luck with that," she said out loud. The door was reinforced and the opening mechanism locked it in place when it was not in use. More impacts followed the first, as if just banging on it would somehow break it.
Once Jaya had loaded the shotgun, she patted the stock and took a deep breath. One more piece of security. Then she went over to her computer and sat in the stool in front of it, the shotgun cradled in her lap. On the outside footage, she could see two of the bikers banging on the garage with their fists. Another came up with a crowbar, but she saw him walk back and forth in front of the garage door, looking for a place he could get good leverage. Jaya smiled. Her garage door was recessed, so unless they were planning to break some concrete, he wasn't going to find leverage any place it would do any good. For once she felt good about being paranoid; she had planned well. Since she originally had thought her old employer Professor Honnenheim would want revenge on her, she had made the garage as robot-proof as she could. Of course, not much would have stopped plasma vaporization, Honnenheim's favorite robot armament, but she did what she could to make the garage safe. She was glad that it was at least biker-proof.
After a few minutes of no luck getting through the door, the bikers went back into a huddle. Jaya laughed, misinterpreting their previous attacks on the door as last ditch efforts rather than caution before escalation. She didn't know they had something else up their sleeves. Their next move ironically was to remove their sleeves.
The bikers came out of the huddle and most of them moved back, hanging out at their motorcycles. This left six of them standing in front of the garage door, a few paces from each other. Then they started to take off their clothes. Jaya cocked her head in confusion. Were they going to get nude and attack the door barbarian style? Based on the appearances of most of them, it might get her to avert her eyes, but it would do little to change the nature of the door and allow them to break through it. Luckily for her, it was only the handsome one who got fully nude, the others stripping down to their boxers or briefs. The fully nude biker got some laughs from the other assembled bikers, but he stood proud and shameless, a wicked grin on his face.
Once those six were in their various states of undress, a chant went up among the bikers. Not just those six, all the bikers joined in the chant. But the six got really into it, flexing their bodies and jumping around with the chant. Through the mics outside the building, Jaya didn't hear anything discernible in the chant. It was more like the chant of drunkards at a big party; she imagined that if they were chanting, "Chug! Chug!" it would sound exactly the same.
Jaya though it was odd that the bikers would need to get half naked to psych themselves up to attack the door again, but none of what they had done so far was particularly wise. She wondered if they were drunk or just dumb scumbags that thought they could drive up and intimidate her, and failing that just brute force their way in.
It was the first throaty shout, a guttural wail stretched out over thirty seconds, which got Jaya's attention. The biker making the noise, one of the six, had fallen to the ground, his arm stretched out, as if he was in some sort of writhing agony. A second was also starting the same sort of fits. Then two more joined in with the throaty sound. As she listened, it was almost as if they had started growling. This realization grew as the sound became less screams and instead a deep growl echoed among all six as they writhed.
Jaya first thought this was some sort of a seizure that the men might need medical attention for, but the ot
her bikers not only didn't seem worried about this behavior, but were actually cheering them on. One of the female bikers let out a "Yeehaw!" as the men twisted on the ground.
The next few moments passed quickly, even if they were full of change and madness. The almost nude bikers, already covered in body hair, suddenly became a lot more hairy, the hair thickening and darkening to become fur. Their arms elongated, their hands and muscles expanding as if pumped with air. Their legs lengthened and bulked up, ripping through any remaining underwear, new joints forming around clawed feet. Their heads were the most disturbing part. Their faces, already twisted in pain and exertion, distorted into mad shapes. Ears sharpened and lengthened. Eyes went black and glassy. Their open mouths stretched as their entire jaw and skull pushed forward, their faces now dominated by large canine snouts full of sharp teeth and a slobbering tongue.
They rose again. The coloring of their fur differed, reflecting the hair of the man each once was, but otherwise, their sort-of-man-like-but-not-really wolf forms were fairly similar. One began howling, then another joined him. Then all six wolves were howling together, joined with poor imitations from the rest of the human bikers, who were near the bikes and greatly enjoying all this.
"Werewolves?' said Jaya. "You've got to be kidding me. Dane, you owe me big on this one."
As if on cue, her phone began ringing on the workbench across the room. She knew it was Dane by the ringtone.
Jaya stared at the phone, deliberating about whether talking to Dane was the best move at that moment. She felt like with half a dozen gigantic wolf men in front of her garage that she had higher priorities than the wayward manchild who had probably caused this. She decided against answering, looking through her supplies. She was wracking her brain to remember if she had anything made of silver. She had never encountered werewolves before, but she was pretty sure that she was supposed to use silver. Nobody made silver bullets unless they need them, so she knew she didn't have any of those but she wondered if she had a silver component. Silver was a great conductor of electricity so it was possible she could have some electronics with it, but it was so expensive compared to anything else so she doubted she had some. She suddenly regretted not being an old fuddyduddy and not ever buying some real fancy silverware for guests. She bet Linda had real silver silverware. That would be more of Linda's personality than Jaya's garage and smudged jumpsuit. Of course, Jaya wasn't sure what good even a silver fork or knife was going to be on short notice.
A gigantic crash against metal alerted her to the fact that growling wolves were now attacking the garage door. Her confidence in the door holding was now shattered. Werewolves were a great unknown for her, but she figured that half a dozen super strong (probably) mythological beasts were going to find a way to break down that door, particularly if they were so confident they could before they changed forms. What she didn't realize was that it wasn't just their strength that was a danger to the door; their claws were sharp enough to pierce the garage door. It wasn't like a hot knife through butter or any of a multitude of hokey similes, but as she watched, a werewolf's claws stuck through the door and with painstakingly slow speed, the wolf man's claws were cutting forward, making long gashes in the door.
As fear flared through her and she paled, she took a deep breath. The stench of the werewolves' fur wafted through the tears in the door. It was like a dog that hadn't had a bath in years. She wished that an old, unwashed dog was the extent of her problems.
Digging through her bins of components and mentally cataloguing the devices she currently had built, she couldn't think of anything that contained silver. Even if the devices had something, it would be silver wiring, and unless she was going to electrocute them through tiny wires, that wasn't going to work. Failing in her search for silver, Jaya grabbed the shotgun again. She heard a panting growl of success, like a dog when it got a treat. Looking back at the door, she saw that the rip in the door was big enough that one of the werewolves had stuck his snout through the door. His tongue lolled out, trying to perversely lick the edges of the door. Jaya decided that after this, she might not ever be able to own a dog.
She looked back down at the shotgun. Would beanbags even work with those things? She somehow doubted it. The beanbags might just piss them off. Then again, if she was going to get ripped or robbed by manwolves, she was going down making them as pissed as she could damn well make them. She had a backup plan, but she didn't know if she could rely on it.
Jaya looked back behind her at the Sphere on her worktable. Based on Geddy's words, that's all they wanted. If he was telling the truth, she might be able to give it to them and then they'd just leave. She was sorely tempted, but she knew it was a key item in Dane's case. And if it was part of his case, it would probably be in the category of Very Bad Things if it was lost. For all her criticisms of the man and her own unexpressed feelings, she knew that Dane had saved the city a few times, since she had personally witnessed it. In some cosmically weird way, his work was important and she knew it. So then, was this it for her? Going to her end fighting werewolves and trying to save Dane's butt? She chuckled. Not a bad way to go out, but she had always expected if she had a violent death, it would have been robots. That just seemed the most likely occupational hazard.
Meanwhile, the phone continued to ring, echoing Dane's ringtone. Jaya finally grabbed the phone and answered it. "This is your fault, you know," she said petulantly. She didn't even wait to hear what Dane might say before continuing. "My garage is being attacked. If you can send help, now would be a good time!" Then she tossed the phone on the workbench and brandished the shotgun.
The opening that the wolves had torn into the garage was now big enough for the hulking beasts to pull themselves through one at a time. One of the wolves, a sandy tan one, was now wriggling through the gap into her garage. They smelled even worse up close.
This was it. Last ditch effort time. Otherwise, she might not have another chance and would be drowned in a mass of fur and claws.
"Garage," Jaya called out. "Defense mode Cherry Zeta Seven. Lethal force authorized."
Jaya was an engineer and planning was in her nature. Even if she liked tinkering and trying things out, she was hardly a planning-by-the-seat-of-her-pants person as Dane was. Long ago she had explored contingencies in case things got bad or there was an otherwise unforeseen situation. This was one of them.
As soon as she uttered the command words, the garage came alive. There was a chorus of whirring and clicking, furniture and devices moving and sliding. Table legs and machinery that hadn't been moved from their positions in many months now started to move of their own accord. She hoped the Cherry Zeta system would work properly, but she had no idea if it would help with werewolves. It was set up a long time ago but she had never tested it on anything other than cardboard targets before putting it into hibernation. There was a great likelihood that it was going to fail utterly and miserably. It was this thought that made her chuckle. The system made heavy use of Avalon Brass components. That almost guaranteed that the system would fail in the most spectacular fashion just when it was needed most.
Then everything went still and she nodded. They were as ready as they were going to be. Jaya braced the shotgun on her shoulder and stared down the werewolf that just pulled himself through the now torn apart garage door. By the sandy blonde fur coloring, she believed that this was the fully-nude biker who she had thought was somewhat handsome. She nodded and knew that made sense.
"It's always the cute ones that are the most dangerous," she said to herself.
The werewolf's jaw opened and a growling voice erupted, the words odd-sounding due to the wolf man's lack of useable lips. "Give us the object!" Even across the room, Jaya could smell the werewolf's bad breath - a combination that smelled like harsh whisky, cheap beer, and regurgitated dog food. However, the sharp teeth arrayed in that mouth that were dripping with drool kept her from concentrating too much on the bad breath.
"Come and take it!" said Jay
a, then she fired.
The crack of the shotgun filled the room. With great force, the beanbag slammed against the wolf's chest, throwing him back against the garage door. The wolf's body barely missed another werewolf that was enlarging the hole in the door so more could get through. The garage door bowed out when the wolf hit it, but the door held and the wolf tumbled forward and hit the floor. His resting place was blocked from Jaya by one of her workbenches. She hoped that the beanbag had hurt and the werewolf was unconscious, but she thought that would be too lucky. She racked a new round and aimed at the workbench the wolf had disappeared behind. She held the shotgun there for a long moment, expecting to fire as the sandy-colored werewolf got back up. But there was nothing - no movement, no sound. Had she downed him so easily? Were these manwolves actually paper tigers? She was curious, but she was not about to step closer and take a look.
"Was it that easy?" said Jaya, feeling a mixture of relief and unease. But then she hated herself for saying it as soon as the words left her mouth. She had just jinxed herself.
With a new snarling roar, the blonde werewolf got back up off the ground. His breathing was a little heavier, seeming to wince in pain as he flexed his arms, but he otherwise seemed unharmed. Behind him, two more werewolves climbed into the garage through the newly enlarged opening.
Jaya backed up to the wall. "Cherry Zeta, attack! Attack!"
Unlike Professor Honnenheim, Jaya did not have a standing army of robots. She didn't even have an android bodyguard with a sexy butler accent - though she had often thought about making one. Lacking the funds and reserves of Avalon Brass that the Professor had, she often had to cannibalize old projects when she started new ones. Because of this, she just couldn't afford to have an inactive killbot hanging around in case of emergencies. Instead she worked with what she had available. So she had built a defense system her way. Rather than have a dedicated attack system, she simply built offensive functions into everything else she built. In this case, every machine and piece of furniture in her garage.
Burning Monday: (Dane Monday 2) Page 7