The Wolves of Third Clan

by Matt Rogers

  Chapter 16

  Vivian and I arrived back at my apartment and went upstairs to see how the two Zombies were getting along. It turned out Zombies get along quite well when left alone because they get to do exactly what Zombies like to do.

  “Holy crap! They’re eating each other!”

  “Okay, okay, let’s just separate them first. Sweetie, can you hold this?” she said while handing me Steve’s right foot.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have left them alone” I said while simultaneously trying to hold onto Steve’s foot while removing Bob’s right hand from Steve’s mouth and pondering how it got there since we hadn’t put Steve’s teeth back in after the previous hand munching incident.

  “Now Bob, you let go! Bob, let go of that toe right this very second!”

  We got them separated and began the process of digital reorientation by placing Steve’s big toe back on his foot and forcing Bob’s hand back on his arm bone. They resembled a pair of deranged mannequin who couldn’t decide whether to pose in suit and tie or adult diapers.

  “Okay, Sweetie, I’ve got this. Why don’t you go shower and change” Vivian said and I readily complied.

  After showering and dressing I re-emerged a new man, walked into my living room and…

  “Johnny, are you okay?” came Trudy’s voice from above my face.

  “Is Vivian still injecting them?” I said from the floor.

  “No, she’s done.”

  “Then I’m okay.”

  Zombies are, apparently, a very hardy species, able to survive even the most grueling of ordeals and keep right on chugging ahead with whatever task is asked of them but they have one minor flaw; unless they receive Vampire blood they will fade away. Furthermore, if they are injured they will also need a new transfusion if one wants them to return to duty in the same manner as when they started so Vivian, the kind hostess she was, decided to give Bob and Steve a little more of her blood in order for them to once again have full access to the appendages God gave them.

  “Hey, Johnny.”

  “Hi, Phillip.”

  “The clown thing didn’t work?”

  “No, my makeup ran and my nose melted.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Hey, what time is it?” I asked.

  “About five.”

  “Five? Wow, I must’ve really fainted there.”

  “Yeah, Vivian said she could’ve woken you up but decided to let you rest for a while.”

  “What took you so long to get back?”

  “We stopped and ate.”

  “George took a wrong turn again, didn’t he?”

  “Yep, ended up in Garland.”

  The good thing about being friends with Werewolves and Vampires is you don’t need to watch what you eat. You know how it is when sometimes you’re hungry but don’t want to eat because the person you’re with is on some strange diet?

  …

  Oh, not going to interrupt this time?

  NOPE.

  Well, with Werewolves and Vampires you don’t need to worry because they eat anything, anytime, anywhere.

  “This is a really good burger” I said.

  A grunt is the response I got from the four Superiors as they kept right on eating. Even the Vampires could’ve cared less about chit-chat at the table which is, I think, the best way to combat hunger; just eat the dang thing away. Okay, it might not be the best example for a population whose obesity rate outnumbers the percentage of brunettes in number but, for a person who likes their burgers without all the fluff and flutter of conversation, eating with a bunch of admitted murdering blood-suckers has its advantages. We finished about fifteen minutes after we started the plate of twenty.

  “What do we do now?” asked Trudy.

  “We can go back after dark when it’s not so hot and try again?” I responded.

  “Nope, it won’t work then. We’re trying to catch them as they go about their everyday duties and during the middle of the day is by far the best time. If we sent you in after dark it’d look a little suspicious with a clown handing out free pizza coupons at night and all” said George.

  Uh-huh, that was our plan, dress me as a clown and enter the lobby with Vivian doing her disappearing act and me wandering around handing out free pizza coupons to whomever I encountered. It may not have been the most devilish of ideas but I think it might’ve worked because it happens every day in a city the size of Dallas. Businesses need to advertise but advertising costs a lot of money so businesses come up with different ways to advertise and one of those ways is to get people who need an income to do things considered hazing if a fraternity did it. Businesses have people dress as silly creatures in order to get potential customers to look their way and, once they do, give them even more reason to enter their stores by enticing them with free stuff. It’s a sort of bait and switch; come on in, get a free pizza, here’s our phone number, call us anytime. It works too! It just sucks to be the poor, out-of-work, acting-school graduate who tends to wind up dressed as an eight-foot chicken standing on the side of the road twirling a sign at passing motorists which subconsciously reads “I really screwed up!”

  “And you don’t think me wearing a mask would work? It definitely wouldn’t melt.”

  “No, Johnny, too dangerous. They’ll be watching for someone who looks like you just in case we didn’t…”

  “Kill me?”

  “… yes, kill you. If anyone enters their business with a mask they’re going to want to see who’s underneath and if they find out it’s you…?”

  “They’ll kill me?”

  “Well, maybe not kill you, maybe they’d think you were acting alone and just capture you. But if it were me and I had a Cloak in my lobby…?”

  “You’d kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a lot of scenarios where I get killed here, George.”

  “Yes, Johnny, I know. We’re trying to come up with one which doesn’t.”

  So we sat there discussing varying ways to get me inside the lobby of the building housing Commercial Property Management Incorporated so Vivian could go super-commando and discover which of the greedy little underling families had taken the ripe opportunity to splatter the brains of the adulterous, Bloody-Mary loving Werewolf previously named Peter North who now went by the descriptive moniker of Worm-food.

  “… no, that won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “If he’s stuffed inside a soda machine his cloaking powers will be muffled and Vivian won’t be able to…”

  It was the first time I’d actually really conspired to do something. It’s always struck me as odd large portions of the population don’t believe in conspiracies and people who do get labeled ‘conspiracy nuts’. Well, count me in as one of those nuts. It seems absurd to believe someone born with the innate desire for power or money would balk at conspiring with others of their ilk to acquire it. We all conspire. When we go to buy a vehicle we conspire with each other to get the salesman to lower his price by planning beforehand how we’ll act and what we’ll say to achieve the goal. And you know what? He’s conspiring with his boss against us to sell his vehicle for the highest price so he can keep his job and buy a trip to Aruba or something. It’s natural to conspire. We were born to conspire. It’s just some are better at it than others.

  “Seriously, Phillip, a tree?”

  “Yeah. Johnny could hide inside the foliage while Vivian checked out the lobby.”

  “How are we going to get a tree inside the lobby?”

  “We could get it delivered.”

  “By who?”

  “The tree-delivering people.”

  I believe the term ‘conspiracy nut’ was coined by a wise conspirator who knew something all of us know but are reluctant to admit; we love being smarter than the other guy. When someone believes they’ve been wronged but can’t prove it because they don’t have the resources to get the proof and they air their grievances to the world we all, naturally,
become the arbiter of fact in our own minds. We look at those facts as they’re presented to us, ponder the possibilities, and come to the most self-satisfying conclusion possible; the guy’s a nut. Why? Because the wronged party is always an individual and the thing he’s accusing is invariably a large organization. We as a society have allowed large organizations to become commonplace so we have a vested interest in them being good, outstanding, law-abiding groups who’d better not violate our trust in them. If they do we get mad. Why do we get mad?

  I DON’T KNOW? … SORRY, I’LL BE QUIET.

  Because we feel we’ve been duped. We don’t like to get duped because getting duped means someone outsmarted us. We don’t like to get outsmarted because we like the idea of outsmarting the other guy, not the reverse. So when some lone individual comes up to us and says something we’ve allowed to exist is doing wrong we become defensive and do the only thing which will allow us to maintain our belief we are too smart to be duped; we call the guy a ‘nut’.

  “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, Johnny, it’s not. It’s got just the right amount of incredulity to make it believable and they can’t ask you to reveal yourself without making a scene.”

  “It’s a horrible idea.”

  “Think about it. Even if, for some reason, they ask you to take it off you can always deny them and walk right out. There’s no way they’d take the chance of detaining you because if you turned out to be real and went to the media the Clan Elders would expel them for bringing unwanted attention to themselves.”

  “I’m not doing it, George.”

  “Please, Johnny” said one.

  “No chance, Phillip.”

  “Please, Sweetie” said another.

  “Now look here, Vivian, just because you’ve got those big blue eyes doesn’t mean…”

  “Please” said the last.

  I’ve come to the conclusion women don’t rule the planet because they don’t want the aggravation. If they wanted to rule all they’d need to do is bat their eyes and say ‘please’ a couple of times and, if I am any representative of my gender, we will comply happily.

  “How long before they get back?” I asked.

  “I don’t know? It’s probably not a common item around here” Trudy answered.

  “What’s Phillip doing?”

  “Putting Bob and Steve to work.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Cleaning your bathroom.”

  I was sitting on the floor with Trudy because we both decided Zombie fluids were probably beyond even modern-day dry-cleaning techniques. George and Vivian were on their little shopping spree and Phillip was supervising the diapered Zombies with the removal of hard-water stains.

  “Trudy?”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “Tell me more about Yin and Yang.”

  “Sure, where was I?”

  “Yin couldn’t find a mate because of gossiping rivals and Yang was like Rudolf who couldn’t play any Werewolf games.”

  “Good one.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay, Yin went off to find a mate while Yang remained behind. It’s believed Yang had a secret benefactor who understood his unique relationship with his brother because he survived.”

  “Huh?”

  “The other Werewolves didn’t kill him.”

  “Oh.”

  “So anyway, Yin left and began his search of a mate which led him to the east where the second of the three clans resided.”

  “Oh, hold on, could you back up a little bit.”

  “Sure, where to?”

  “Um, okay, I don’t know where but could you explain the whole three clan thing?”

  “Sure, there are three clans and they govern their territories with absolute authority. The first governs Europe and Africa, the second governs Asia and Australia, and the third governs the Americas.”

  “What are their names?”

  “We don’t designate them by name because it would entail picking one family to represent all which would result in a bloodbath.”

  “Oh, then how do you designate them?”

  “Numerically.”

  “Numerically?”

  “Yes; First Clan, Second Clan and Third Clan.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Well, I was thinking it would be a little more exotic.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So, to continue, Yin went east in search of a mate and met up with Second Clan almost immediately.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “Well, he was pretty much killing everyone he came in contact with so word got around.”

  “Oh.”

  “Uh-huh, he was probably still a little upset at being snubbed and all so he met up with Second Clan and was immediately challenged by the largest Wolf in the pack. After ripping that Wolf’s head off he went about challenging and beheading the lesser Wolves and probably would’ve put an end to the Werewolf population in Asia if the Vampires hadn’t come to their senses and promote one of their most gifted as a mate to Yin.”

  “They promoted someone?”

  “Uh-huh. The Vamp in question was still in training but she showed great potential and they were starting to run out of Werewolves so she got promoted early and offered as mate to Yin.”

  “Kind of like an arranged marriage?”

  “Well, if by arranged you mean some sort of agreement was reached then, yes, it was arranged.”

  “You don’t think arranged is the right word?”

  “Well, arranged implies there was a meeting of the minds and in this particular case the only minds who met were of headless Werewolves which happened to bump into each other when Yin tossed them aside.”

  “Why didn’t they just gang up on Yin?”

  “Because they were fighting for a mate and their hierarchal order in whichever family they joined.”

  “So if two of them ganged up on Yin…?”

  “It would be viewed with displeasure by whichever Vampire they were fighting over and deemed unsorted by any other mated pair when considering whom to join with to make a family.”

  “How do you make families?”

  “Three pair of mated make up a family.”

  “Why only three?”

  “Because any more and we start pairing up and killing each other.”

  “Why don’t two mates get together and kill the third.”

  “Because then a family of three mated would see a weakness and kill the family of two.”

  “What about single Wolves and Vampires, can they join the family?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the other Vampires and Wolves who were mated would constantly think the single ones were trying to take their mate.”

  “What would happen then?”

  “They’d be killed.”

  “There sure is a lot of killing involved.”

  “Yes, we were born to kill.”

  “I’m starting to see that. So, what was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The Vampire Yin was to be mated with.”

  “Her name was Merry Li.”

  There was a disturbance coming from the bathroom with a lot of splashing and grunting so we quickly regained our feet, raced through my bedroom and peered in the bathroom door to find Steve hunched over the toilet bowl with his right arm plunged as deep inside the nasty porcelain depository his arm would allow while Phillip stood over him screaming…

  “Just open your hand, man!”.

  Bob, for his part, was standing in my shower with a brush making small circles on my previously unwashed tile interior. He, unfortunately, must’ve not recovered enough brain activity to actually grasp the task at hand because instead of cleaning one area and enlarging it he was making numerous little circles and my shower wall appeared as though a depressed polka-dot fairy with a thing fo
r moldy grey had decided to decorate.

  “Phillip, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Steve, here…” Phillip began.

  “Steve…” said the toilet-bowl cleaning Zombie.

  “…stuck his whole hand down the drain hole and can’t seem to grasp the concept of letting go” Phillip finished.

  “Well, did you tell him to let go of whatever he’s holding?”

  “Of course I did but he doesn’t seem to get it.”

  “Okay, let me try.”

  “He’s all yours” Phillip said and moved to let me near my previous work-mate.

  “Steve, it’s Johnny…”

  “Steve…”

  “Unclench your hand, Steve.”

  “Steve…”

  “Unclench your hand, Steve.”

  “Steve…”

  “Okay, this guy’s a moron.”

  “Johnny?”

  “Yes, Trudy?”

  “Do you mind if I try?”

  “Go for it. I think I need to use it soon and I’m not sure I can if Steve…”

  “Steve…” moron Zombie repeated.

  “…has his hand stuck in there.”

  “Phillip?” Trudy asked as she moved up next to me so both of us stood over Steve.

  “Yes, Mistress?”

  “How did you tell him to perform this chore?”

  “I don’t understand the question, Mistress?”

  “Did you tell him in a long-winded way or with only one word?”

  “Oh, well, let’s see… I handed him the scrubbing pad and just told him to scrub.”

  “Okay” she said while reaching down and grasping hold of Steve’s free left arm.

  “Steve” she said.

  “Steve…” he answered back.

  “Attack!”

  And that dang Zombie lunged at me with everything he had which wasn’t much, thankfully, because Trudy had his only free upper appendage grasped firmly in her hand. It didn’t stop him from trying though; he tried to bite me, he tried to kick me and the whole time it was going on I was backpedaling faster than a guy who answers honestly the question of “Do I look fat in this?”. At about the time I stepped fully outside the bathroom interior Steve figured out how to open his hand and let go of the scrubbing pad which allowed him to follow through with his orders of insanity by snarling and lunging at me with all he was worth.

  “Crap! He’s got my foot!” I screamed.

  “Look at him go!” Phillip screamed.

  “Stop!” Trudy screamed.

  And he stopped. I was lying on my back and could feel my heart racing at the speed of sound. I was breathing like an asthmatic and had a former fellow employee leering at me from his prone position on the bathroom floor where he’d ended up after trying to catch me and do whatever it was Zombies do when they catch you.

  “Trudy?”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “What the heck was that?”

  “I had to use a simple command.”

  “A simple command?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t come up with something better than ‘attack’.”

  “Um, no, I’m sorry but I couldn’t think of anything better off the top of my head.”

  “Really? You couldn’t think of ‘itch’ or ‘scratch’ or, I don’t know, ‘wave’?”

  “No, all I could think of was ‘attack’”.

  And the insane little brain-eater went after me again, clawing his way up my leg one nasty little toilet-water drenched hand at a time.

  “Holy…!” I screamed.

  “There he goes again!” Phillip screamed.

  “Stop!” Trudy screamed.

  And he stopped again but this time he was halfway up my torso, eyeing me with those beady eyes of his, just waiting for the word to attack and get some sort of Zombie payback on the only guy left standing from the sales team of old Bob Simpson at Industrial Products.

  “Trudy?”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “Could you very quietly and calmly get Steve…”

  “Steve…”

  “…off of me!”

  Apparently the code word to get Zombies with brain damage off people is ‘stand’ and further apparently the way to avoid using your toilet bowl for what it was made for is to have same brain-damaged Zombie attack you thus relieving you, literally, of the need to use said toilet.

  “I’m so sorry, Johnny.”

  “Trudy, would you please take Steve…”

  “Steve…”

  “…and Phillip and go into the other room so I can change.”

  “Sure, come on you two.”

  She closed the door and I sat on my bed for a second trying to catch my breath and come to grips with the fact I was almost eaten by a man wearing a navy blue jacket and diapers. I kicked off my soiled garments and went into the bathroom to clean myself. The place was a wreck with toilet water on the floor and my bathroom rug tossed willy-nilly in the corner but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to wash away my worries so I grabbed the shower curtains and…

  “Phillip!”

  “Sorry, sorry” Phillip said as he rushed back through my bedroom to enter my bathroom and…

  “Come on Bob.”

  …take the remaining Zombie by the hand and lead him out.

  By the time George and Vivian arrived back at my apartment we were all settled in my living room with Phillip, Trudy and me sitting on the floor while the two Zombies took their rightful places on my soiled and unusable futon.

  “Hey guys, we brought food” exclaimed Vivian in her adorable way.

  “Ooh! What did you get?” replied Trudy in her just as adorable way.

  “Pizza.”

  “Thank God!” exclaimed Phillip and I in our imitation of what cute girls would adorably say if they weren’t cute and not girls.

  Pizza may be the second best food group after Tex-Mex and I think the reason is as obvious as the nose on your face. They contain, at their core, the exact same ingredients of cheese, sauce, bread and, if you so desire, meat. By the way, the nose on my face is not obvious to me, it’s very hard for me to see without crossing my eyes and giving myself a headache. Who thought of that saying?

  UM…ER…?

  Probably some amazingly rude individual who had a friend with a large honker who was then so overcome with humiliation he punched his rude friend back in his nose so the stupid saying would make sense.

  I love pizza because of its simplicity; just slap some dough down, spread a little tomato sauce around, add cheese and whatever else you’ve got laying around and… Bang!… ready-to-eat meal with utensils not only optional but generally frowned upon.

  “Did you guys find it?” Trudy asked between bites.

  “Uh-huh” replied Vivian.

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “Just up the street and it was on sale!”

  “Really? How lucky can you get?”

  “Tell me about it. First, we went to that big mall, you know the one…”

  Probably the third thing Dallas is known for, after its restaurants and heat, is its shopping. There are thousands and thousands of stores dedicated to the one overarching theme the great city was founded on; spending. They spend on everything from apples to zip ties. If it’s made they have it, if not, they’ll make it. It probably stems from the fact Dallas doesn’t really have a background to rely upon when coming up with ways to describe their great city. New York has the fast and frenzied feel of a city on the go, Las Vegas has gambling while Los Angeles has beaches and Hollywood. Dallas has an airport. And it’s not actually wholly owned by Dallas. Fort Worth has half the bragging rights to the name but I don’t think it’s really all too fair. Why?

  I DON’T KNOW? ALL RIGHT. I’VE GIVEN UP, AND I’M JUST GOING TO ANSWER!

  Because Fort Worth already has a claim to fame; they’re ‘Cow Town, USA’. Now, it’s not exactly a name I would’ve picked to sum up my town’s overall ambiance but, the
n again, it’s unique. If someone asks you where you’re from and you answer “Cow Town, USA!” well, quite a few people are going to know exactly where you’re from and have a general feel as to what culture you were brought up in. If someone asks a person from Dallas where they’re from and they answer “Dallas” the only reference the other person’s going to have is the place a president was shot, a football team or some awful television show from the last century which painted the people from Dallas in the most negative light imaginable. The show was called ‘Dallas’ and it represented a group of people who, if they actually existed, would’ve either been run out of town or shot dead by an angry mob of Dallasites tired of being lampooned as a bunch of spoiled, selfish, money-hoarding parasites with the ethics of Scrooge and the kindness of Hitler.

  “Johnny?”

  “Yes, George?”

  “Why is Steve staring at you?”

  “Steve…” came the voice from the couch.

  “Because he’s a really lousy houseguest, George.”