by Red, Lynn
He set her down, and stared at her, smiling and drooling, just like a really, really happy bulldog.
"Well look at you!" Jamie patted the giant on the shoulder. He ate up every ounce of attention, he loved it to pieces. "Looking good, Atlas, how you like working?"
"Not... work?" he said. "Every day I'm... vacation. I'm on vacation, and making... safe? I make safe. Everything. Safe."
She was used to him not wearing much in the way of clothing, but seeing the bear's giant dork swinging around every time the breeze caught it was something... very Jamesburg.
"I brought you, er, lunch," she said, handing the jug to Atlas, and collecting his massive paw of a hand to drag back to the intersection. By the time they got there, which was roughly a fifteen foot walk, Atlas had somehow guzzled half of the jug.
All around Sara's feet were Cadbury Creme Egg wrappers. "Hey Sara," Jamie said, giving the slightly smaller zombie a high-five, which she enjoyed a whole bunch. "Boo-ba-bar!" Sara shouted, opening, and then eating, another whole treat.
"Jenga told me you were watching your figure," Jamie said. "But more importantly, where the hell do you get those things in the fall? I could seriously use some of them."
Sara shrugged. "Atlas found," she said. "Want one?"
Turns out, she had an entire duffel bag full of them. Jamie peered inside, and felt like a dragon opening a treasure chest full of gold coins. All the types - caramel, peanut butter, chocolate, original - all were there. "Sure," she said, grabbing an original and a caramel. "But this doesn't look much like a diet to me."
Sara made a honking noise. "You smelled?" she pointed at the jug. "Not lunch. Not good. Not for nobody." She ate another chocolate. "Sara don't care about diet, but Sara not stupid."
Atlas gave her a huge, wide, beaming smile, finished his jug and then opened hers. "Anyway, he stupid. He likes."
As soon as he was finished, Atlas conscientiously placed the two jugs in a bin marked "RESICKEL" that he had on the ground near his feet. "You should too," he said, pointing at the trash on the ground near Sara. Before he could pursue that further, a car approached, so he had to very carefully direct it through the empty intersection.
"Dump...ster," Atlas announced when he turned his attention back to the women.
Jamie cocked her head to the side, and took a bite. This was gonna hurt like hell in about three hours, but sometimes, it was worth the pain. She stuck her tongue down into the magical filling and slurped it back. "God, that's good. What about a dumpster?"
"Egg," Atlas said, picking up the sign again, as two cars approached, and he had to judiciously assist both. "Egg from dumpster."
As the creamy fondant slid down her throat, Jamie immediately felt torn between the fact that this Cadbury Creme Egg was in a dumpster somewhere, and the fact that it was a Cadbury Creme Egg. "Shit, it was wrapped," she muttered, taking another bite of chocolate.
She stood there for a few minutes, watching Sara devour chocolates, and watching Atlas and his flopping dork direct traffic. For those few minutes, everything seemed pretty normal, all told.
"I told you!" she heard Atlas boom, breaking her caramel-filled respite. "I tell... you! No yooner, no... no yoonie, no... no!" He was growling and starting to get more than a little hulked out.
"Unicycle," Sara added, helpfully.
"No yooner...cycle!"
"It isn't a unicycle, it's a fairy cart," came a voice, odd and smooth, and thoroughly detached from reality.
Glenn. Great, Jamie thought. Just when things were going right, here comes the king of the not-fairies.
As she feared, Glenn, the werewolf who either pretended to be, or had gone sufficiently crazy to believe he had turned into, an actual, literal fairy, wheeled up on what was most definitely a unicycle.
"And why not?" he twirled, after dismounting. The bells on his bizarre, green tunic jingled. "Why can't fairies go through here without fear of... reproach?" he rolled his r's. Of course he did.
"Not... safe!" Atlas growled. "And... stupid." Atlas shrugged. "Don't like."
"Oh well, that's too bad," Glenn said with an overdramatic pout. "Because I don't care what you like or not! I don't like you!"
"Uh, Glenn?" Jamie walked over, and put her hand on the strange werewolf's shoulder. "Do you think maybe antagonizing the giant monster isn't the smartest thing in the world?"
"How can you see me?" he asked, very suspiciously. "I'm invisible."
Jamie rolled her eyes. "No you're not. And you weren't invisible when you got arrested for taking a whiz out back of The Tavern."
"Shhh!" the green-clad wolf hissed. "Quiet! They can hear you. They'll know I'm here."
"Who can? Atlas? He already knows. You yelled at him and he started growling. Do I need to call the hyenas again?" She sighed, and lifted her eyebrows into arches. "Seriously, cut this shit out."
He twirled again. "You can't see me," he said. "I'm not here."
"Okay, fine," she said. "Then disappear, and no one will call any hyenas. Deal?"
Before she could react, Glenn did what he always did, and pulled a huge handful of glitter out of his tights, threw it directly at Atlas and Jamie, and pedaled off as quickly as possible on a unicycle, which is not very fast. Atlas immediately began watching his hand sparkle as he turned it back and forth. Jamie pulled her wings back, tucking them away, glad for the shield, but slightly worried she might distract some drivers with reflections off her wings next time she flew.
Sara was just shaking her head, eating another egg. "Stupid," she said, plainly unimpressed. But then she snorted a laugh that came with more than a small helping of drool. "Look!" she yelled. "Look at Atlas! Jamie! Look!"
"At what?" she asked, as her eyes ran down the giant. "What am I... oh, God."
First Jamie sighed, then she laughed. "That, right there, gives a whole new meaning to 'disco stick' doesn't it?"
Belly laughing, even though he had no idea why, Atlas's disco-dork swung around in wild, sparkly, shimmery circles. Around and around it whirled. The whole time, the giant bear howled with laughter.
"And that," Jamie said as she waved to Atlas and Sara, who were both thoroughly impressed with the helicopter show, "is absolutely the last thing I expected to see... ever."
-14-
“Really, really not a morning person.”
-Jamie
Jamie sat up, stiff and straight, like she'd just been roused from the dead.
Come to think of it, this was worse. She remembered being literally roused from the dead, and it was a much gentler, winding process than what just happened. A siren outside was blaring, and since she lived in the middle of town, that meant something was going on.
She dashed to the window, threw it open, and squinted. Cold, midnight air brushed against her body, making her skin prickle with goose bumps wherever it kissed. She leaned out as far as she could without showing off her nudie sleeping habits to anyone within a block or so, and then remembered the reason she couldn't see anything is because she didn't have her contacts.
Grumbling, she shuffled back to her nightstand, got the old wire-rimmed glasses she'd kept for way too long, and returned to the window. There was a fire truck, and a pair of police cars, both with their lights and sirens going.
This is not normal.
Even with her glasses, she couldn't make out much more than a general bustle of activity across the street from her house, which happened to be one of the several places in town that free water was given away to people without any - maybe they lived outside city water, maybe theirs was dirty, or they couldn't afford it - it was one of the very few things given freely in Jamesburg, but hey, at least it was something.
It was a blue, tiki-style building modeled after the most horrific tackiness that Dean Martin could ever manage in one of his Christmas specials. But oddly, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, even though that's where all the cars had gathered. Instead, there was a small group of people beside the building, all in handcuffs, all sitt
ing on the ground and refusing to go anywhere.
"Oh, shit," Jamie muttered. Cora, Marmite, Ryan, and his uncle and who she assumed was his aunt, were all sitting there, blank looks on their faces. "Why did I have to fall in love with this guy?"
In a flash, she threw on one of her pencil skirts that wasn't too dirty, and slipped out the window. Cold rain pattered against the thin skin between her wings as she sailed down to the street below.
"What the hell did you do?" she demanded, as soon as Ryan caught her striding up to him with a very sour look on her face. He gave her one of his smiles, but this time, it didn't work. "What did you do, Ryan?" she asked again.
"You know him?" Ash Morgan - the most senior of the Jamesburg PD's bear detectives, was on the scene and trying very hard to use a normal-sized notepad. He was the sergeant in charge of anything that could be too big or dangerous for a regular hyena beat to handle. The hyenas were tenacious and brave, if a little itchy, but controlling a bunch of bears and a couple pissed off koalas was probably a little much to ask of them.
Jamie nodded. "Yeah, Ash," she said. "He's... well, he's a friend of mine. What happened?" She chose to ignore the knowing look on the big bear’s face.
Ash shrugged. "Nothing, really. We got a call from the owner of this video store," he tilted his head backwards and to the left, indicating the single video rental store left in Jamesburg, and possibly the entire world. "Said they were sitting around the drink stand, making a scene."
She grabbed Ash's arm, pulling him away from everyone else. "What kind of scene? Did he hurt anyone?"
"Who? Prince Twinkle-eyes?" Ash asked. "Hell no, he didn't. The second I showed up, they all just stuck their hands out, waiting to be cuffed. I've seen some crazy shit in my time, but people who were that willing to be arrested? And for something this stupid? I dunno, Jamie, something doesn't seem right."
She snorted a laugh. "Yeah," she said. "Get to know him a little and you'll be saying the same thing. So, nothing happened? They were just sitting around? Seems a little strange for Todd to call you guys about that, especially considering the whack-jobs that hang around his place all the time."
"They're movie aficionados," Todd, the lion-shifter owner of the video store said. "They come in and enjoy films. That's all, there's no reason to try and degrade them."
Ash put a hand on Todd's shoulder. "Okay, fine. So, since you're here, I can just ask you. What were they doing that got you all upset?" He was really starting to struggle with the tiny-to-him notepad.
Todd was an old lion, gray around the temples, salt-and-pepper on his tail when shifted. He was crotchety, territorial, and given to dramatics. Especially when it came to people he didn't know.
"Upsetting my customers," he said, looking back and forth from Ash to Jamie. "Making a scene."
"Ah," Ash patted the old lion on the shoulder. "You sure they weren't just getting water? That's what it's there for, you know? For people who need water to get?"
"The young one," Todd jabbed a finger in Ryan's direction. "He was talkin' to my customers, telling them all kinds of things about how there's hungry old shifters and what-not, and—"
"That doesn't sound illegal to me," Jamie cut in. "Pretty sure you can still talk to people who happen to be outside at the same time you are."
Ash nodded his head. "This is a pretty big operation you called out for a handful of folks who weren't doing anything wrong. There something you're not telling us?"
Todd narrowed his eyes, frowning deeply. "They been here all week. Talkin'."
"To who?" Jamie asked. Her poor grammar struck her brain right after she said it, but she chose not to correct herself.
"Anybody that'll listen! That young 'un there, he just talks and talks. My customers say they don't want him to keep on hassling them."
"Oh, okay, disturbing the peace," Ash said with a note of disbelief in his voice. "You know you're supposed to call the regular station line for that, right, Todd? That you only call 911 in the case of an actual emergency, such as someone with a gun, someone having a heart attack – I trust you’re aware of necessitates a 911 call. Generally, someone irritating your customers by talking to them isn't really an emergency."
The crotchety lion was obviously trying to figure out something to say when Ryan finally pushed himself off his ass and strolled over beside them. "If there's a problem, we can go somewhere else," he said. "I didn't bother anyone who told me to go away."
"Maybe not the best time?" Jamie pushed him backwards, out of earshot. "What did you do?"
Ryan shrugged. "Really," he said. "I don’t know. I don't have much problem taking the blame for things I actually do, you know me well enough to know that, right?"
Jamie nodded. "So what did you do to piss off old Todd so badly that he called the cops on you? If it's legitimacy you're going for, getting arrested isn't really the way to do it."
"Worked for quite a few folks throughout history," he said. "But listen - Jamie - I'm being serious. We've been coming here every night for the last month or so, less three days when I was knocked unconscious by someone," he gave her a grin that made her feel both a little tingly and a little angry. "We have thirty families and twelve individuals, living on the compound. You saw some of them, right? The panda, the turtle, all of them?"
She clenched her jaws. “I know. I met some of them.”
"Yeah, well,” Ryan said, “they need water. A lot of it. The wells we have work, but they can't produce enough. So we come every night, get what we can, and go on our way. If anyone talks to me, I talk back. I didn't know I was supposed to pretend none of this was happening."
"You're not," Jamie said, looking back over her shoulder. Ash had managed to calm the lion down somewhat, as a three hundred pound bear who used to be a cage fighter will frequently do, and the two of them seemed to be engaged in something resembling calm conversation.
She turned her head to the truck that was sitting with the doors ajar, which she surmised must be Ryan's. In the back bed of it were no less than ten fifty-gallon drums.
"Uh, Ryan?" she asked. "Is that yours?"
"Yeah, of course. We take the drums back and empty them into a reservoir on the grounds. What's wrong with that?"
"Did you ever read the signs? The ones all over the drink stand? That say how much you can take?"
Jamie’s soul sank. She was going to have to sit here and watch the man who her heart had decided was her mate, along with four of the shifters under his care, get carted off to jail.
"Well, no," he admitted.
"A gallon. One. One single, solitary, reasonable gallon, Ryan." Jamie's voice was tired, strung out, and worn. "You're allowed to take one single gallon from the pump. That's it. Not five hundred. And not every day. Shit," she swore. "This was really, really stupid."
"Well then what's the point? What good is a gallon gonna do anyone?"
"Really? You're really asking me that? It's so everyone can get one. You being all clannish and thinking your little crew is more important than anyone else, that's going to ruin your whole little idea here. You, and no one else, is going to get what could have been an opportunity for progress and growth turned into a fucking nightmare. All because you didn't read a sign."
Ash walked over and clapped Jamie on the shoulder. "As the town council's representative, I'm gonna need to, uh, run a few things by you."
Jamie nodded. "Go sit down, Ryan," she said. "I doubt there's anything I can do, but..." she closed her eyes, tight. Imagining the way his hands felt on her skin, the way his lips tasted, she hated to say what she was about to say, but she did it anyway. "I doubt there's anything. Just go sit, okay?"
It was like he was struck by the gravity of the entire situation all at once. His eyes sagged, his shoulders slumped. His whole body took on the inglorious appearance of an uneasy pudding. "I'll figure something out," he said. "I always do."
Jamie watched him return to Cora, his aunt, and Marmite, his uncle, and sit back down. He said something to th
em, and Cora shot a smile in Jamie's direction. Jamie felt her eyes getting all misty, and had to turn away before mist turned into red streaks.
"Okay," Ash said. "So this is pretty bad. But you already knew that."
"Act like I don't," she said. "How bad is bad?"
The big bear cop lifted his notebook near enough he could see and tallied something. Partway through, he scratched out whatever he was scribbling, and started over. "This can't be right," he said. "No way."
"No way, what?" Jamie asked. "Come on, Ash, I know you’ve heard about us, there's no reason to take it easy on me, or on him."
Two huge shoulders lifted and then fell with a sigh. "This is bad," he said, repeating the earlier sentiment in slightly different words.
"What, damn it! Stop telling me it's bad and tell me how bad it is!"
"I'm not so good at math. Hold on."
Frustrated, and more than a little flustered, Jamie snatched his slightly-crumpled notepad, and his pen. The numbers he had been noodling with had a few zeroes after them, and then there was a dollar sign in front.
"What is this?" she asked. "Ash! What am I looking at?"
He took another deep breath. "Theft from a public resource. That's, er, well, that's the fine. Hundred dollars a gallon. Says so right on the sign. And they've apparently taken, well, at least a month's worth of this much. It's," he trailed off. "I'm sorry, Jamie, but it's on the sign."
"Right," she said. "The one time signs matter in Jamesburg. Sorry, I'm not mad at you, it's just..."
Ash patted her again, and left her to her thoughts.
"What if I paid it?" Ryan must've heard the conversation with those ridiculous bear ears of his. "It's just a fine, right? What can the fine for stealing water possibly be?"
Boston, his uncle, shot Ryan a really nasty glance. Ryan winked at him. "What's the damage?"