by Mark Tufo
There was a lot of grunting and I’m sure gesturing. Viln ultimately yielded to her pack leader and that was all that mattered. They were leaving.
“I know you can hear me, Old One. We will return, and ultimately you will fall to us!” Roamer shouted.
“Big words,” Viln said much more quietly, thinking only her trio would hear them. Even Lycan females needed to get the last word in.
They left silently, so quietly in fact Mathieu and I stayed hidden much longer than we had to, just to be certain this wasn’t a trick on their part. I finally stuck my head out, thankful it wasn’t swiped off.
“They’re gone.” I was already moving out into the hallway.
“They’ll be back.”
He was right. My presence had compromised his home and I felt for him. “Looks like you’re going to have to come with me.”
“How do you think we are going to go about this? I would rather die than risk the lives of more innocents.”
“We’ll take the chains with us.”
“Are you going to hold onto them?” he asked with derision in his voice.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a giant oak.”
“This is all I have known in so long.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to move on. We’ve got a bit of time on our side before they come back.”
“And you know this how?”
“The Lycan aren’t going to expose themselves to any more danger than they have to. They’ll wait until the full moon then flood this place with werewolves.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“How could I be?”
“You sound so sure.”
“It’s a gift. If you’re going to bullshit someone you need to sound as convincing as possible. If you believe it they will believe it.”
“Should you be telling me this?”
“Probably not. Come on; let’s get your face cleaned up a little.”
“What about Quillian?” Mathieu was looking back.
“We’re going to leave him as a message for all those that follow, what their fate could potentially entail.”
At the end of the third day after our encounter with the Lycan patrol, my leg was sufficiently healed enough that I felt we could make our trek out of here. Mathieu’s face looked like he’d been battered. His nose was still about twice its normal size, both of his eyes were blackened, the deep purple had subsided somewhat. It would be another week at least before he didn’t look like he’d lost a bar fight…or won with some damage. We kept watch the entire time we stayed there. The last thing I wanted to be was surprise-awoken by a clown or a Lycan, or as in one of my dreams a Lycan dressed as a clown. That was about as close to wetting my pants as I’d been since I was five and had been stuck on a city bus with my mother after just drinking my favorite slushie drink.
I don’t know which of us was sadder when we left the Titan I missile silo. Mathieu was leaving his adopted home, and I was leaving three partially brewed pony kegs of beer behind. I’d made an old Indian travois so that I could drag the only one that was done brewing; and the chains, of course.
“They will be able to track the grooves that makes in the path,” Mathieu had said sadly.
“Worth it,” I told him. The majority of the day was silent between us. Mathieu needed to come to terms with his new reality, and I was going to give him all the time and quietude that he needed to do so.
Night was rapidly approaching, and my leg was subtly letting me know it was getting time to call it a day by sending shooting pains up through my spine. That was really all the hint I needed. I’m quick like that. We left the game trail by a few hundred yards, and found a small outcropping of rock next to a clearing that would house and hide a small fire. It was a perfect place to make camp.
“Want a drink?” I’d been slogging the keg around all day, it was time to make it all worthwhile.
I didn’t think he was going to respond, and when he did, I didn’t think he was going to say yes. He looked so damn morose. Instead of saying anything he just held his hand out. I filled a mug and handed it to him. The beer was somewhat flat from the rough handling, and it was warm, but still it was like the nectar of the gods.
“Does it hurt?” I had just finished my first mugful and was going for number two.
He was sitting on a small rock, his head more or less hanging down to his chest, his shoulders rolled forward. He looked defeated is the best way to describe it, he did not look up when he spoke.
“You’re not asking about my face, are you. Or leaving home, I gather.” It was a statement. I’d asked him a half dozen times during the day how he was doing, I mostly received half grunts if I got anything at all.
“No.” I’d finished my second cup. I thought I was in for the long haul with quiet. Not that I cared, I was used to it. For most of my life I’d only talked with one person and that was once a year. I was perfectly comfortable shrouded in silence.
“Every one of the bones in my body breaks in those first few minutes. Can you even imagine the pain I feel?”
I’d been in the midst of pouring my third beer. I was honest when I spoke. “I can’t.”
He seemed to accept that. “My muscles tear or stretch to the snapping point. Tendons are ripped free from their moorings before reattaching. Even the fur that protrudes from every single part of me feels like tiny daggers piercing the outermost layers of my skin. There is not one second of the three and a half minute process that is not excruciating to the point of burning out all of my humanity.”
Three and a half minutes when you are engaged in a pleasurable act flies by. Two hundred and ten seconds when you are being torn apart from the inside out would be an eternity—you could lose yourself and find only insanity. That he has done this a hundred and eighty times or so and not cut open his own throat says volumes about the type of man he is. What could I say? I couldn’t offer solace. I couldn’t tell him it would be all right.
“I beat myself bloody those first few years chained to that wall. Ripped my claws clean off, dislocated my shoulders, elbows, wrists. One time I even started gnawing through my own arm. Sometimes it would heal before I changed back; sometimes I incurred the injury too late in the night and would awaken with another wound that needed immediate tending to. Ever try to pull out your own arm from a dislocated elbow?”
I swallowed hard and shook my head. It sounded atrociously brutal.
“I closed my forearm in between a door and the frame, and with my left I held the door shut and then pulled backwards. Took three times before it popped back into place. Passed out on two of those attempts. It didn’t stop hurting until the next cycle. It was at that point that I was going to work on retaining some semblance of being a man when I turned.”
This was interesting and deserved my full, undivided attention. I made sure my mug was full before I sat back down so that I wouldn’t have to interrupt him while I got another. My consideration for others knows no bounds. “How’d that go?”
“Not well at first. Being a werewolf takes over everything completely, it wasn’t until I turned back that I could recall the previous evening. For some reason it would all be there, crystal clear, every action.” He bowed his head even further, a single tear falling to the ground.
Not only had he killed his family, he could relive it in terrifying detail. Again I wanted to tell him “I’m sorry”, but what the hell would that have done?
“I kept asking myself why could I remember everything, but not do anything about it? Made no sense, but it meant there was still some part of me in there. Buried deep, watching. I spent years trying to bring that small, pathetically small, piece of me to the foreground when I turned. It was the beer that finally showed me the way.”
“Beer has always been a life saver,” I told him. “Sorry, felt like it needed to be said.” I was filling up my mug again. “Wish these were bigger.” I shoved my mug in his face. “So what happened?”
“It was about eight years ago
I guess. I was pissed off because I wasn’t having that much success. A little, maybe, but not enough that it was going to make any difference. The full moon was coming out that night, and I just got drunk. I drank more beer than any man has a right to. I didn’t think it then, but I think I was trying to kill myself. Probably would have too if not for the change. The funny thing is that the drunken feeling was pulled from me completely and dropped right on the asshole werewolf’s lap. He was a mess, and could barely do more than acknowledge he had chains on. I sat right behind his eyes and watched, a fair portion of the night was spent looking at closed eyelids. It was exhilarating and terrifying. I could finally be cognizant. That was an incredible rush, but not having any control whatsoever, well, that was a nightmare.”
“Holy shit, Mathieu, that’s incredible.” I had downed my mug in one large gulp.
“It gets better. Much like a puzzle, once shown how to do it, it becomes rote. I got piss stinking drunk three more times before I was confident enough to try it without.”
“Yeah, seems like a waste of perfectly good beer to get a werewolf drunk.”
Mathieu looked at me like everyone I’d ever known had at some point—like I’d lost my fucking mind.
“That fourth time was incredible. I was aware and I had a hint of control. I don’t want to say there are two entities within me fighting for dominance. It’s more the primal side of me that takes over when the werewolf is active, that is the part I needed to learn how to suppress. I didn’t have much luck that first year, it was just enough to know it was there. I studied it as best I could, given the state I was in.”
“What changed?”
Mathieu nodded his head to the beer.
“God, how many of life’s problems are solved with beer. It’s incredible. I’ll drink to that.” I got another refill.
“I got rip roaring drunk again. Then there it was…that primitive animalistic side of me that just wanted to kill and eat everything it encountered. It was so subdued from the alcohol that I just wrested control. One moment I could only look through his drooped eyelids, the next I made those same eyelids open up. I was jumping around like my kids on a warm spring day after a particularly long winter. When I brought my hand up to my face, I think I could have wept tears of joy. It was then I learned werewolves don’t have tear ducts.”
“This is incredible, what happened next?”
“I got less and less drunk each time. Until, a year or so later, I tried it completely sober.”
I think I gasped, or maybe it was a burp.
“I think ‘we’ shook the entire time. I was in a sort of trance as I expended every bit of me to keep him in check. Each subsequent cycle got easier, sometimes by the tiniest of amounts, others by leaps and bounds. I don’t think that it was an accident that I happened upon you when I did.”
“What?” I had been in mid-pour.
“This last full moon was the first time that I have gone through the change unchained, since the beginning. That I found you that very next morning leads me to believe it was destined to happen.”
“How very fortunate for you,” I said sarcastically as I raised my beer in toast. “The tone is not for your feat, which is amazing. It’s just that you have worked and struggled so hard to conquer your demons, and your reward is to meet up with me. Doesn’t seem very fair. It’s almost like you’ve been wrongly convicted for a crime you didn’t commit and after fifteen years in prison you finally get out only to discover you have a terminal illness.”
“You equate yourself to a terminal illness?”
“Think about it, do you see anyone else around me?”
“Valid point.” He handed me his mug to fill.
“Why don’t you fill your own?” I asked, handing him a full cup back.
“Why should I if you’re going to keep doing it for me?”
“You would have been a perfect Democrat.” It was clear he didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t ask me to clarify, probably better off. I would have just started spouting half-truths and vitriol about a political party that had been extinct for a very long time. “Sorry, don’t listen to me, time has not been a friend. What did you do?”
“I mostly sat in a chair. I was too afraid to do anything else. I was thinking if I started walking around and saw a rat or something bigger I would not be able to control myself. At times, I felt like I had my hands wrapped around a bear’s neck and was just holding on for dear life.”
It was an amazing feat that he had done this and I told him as much. Unfortunately, it was not something we could bottle up and pass out to all the other werewolves. It had taken him years to do this, and a will of steel coupled with an unshakable desire to do so. I also did not think it was an accident that Mathieu had been chosen to do this. Perhaps he had no choice in becoming a werewolf—that was just a fateful evening, but then when a higher power noticed something within Mathieu he was led to that missile silo. What his purpose was had not yet been revealed. I hoped it was more than just dying by my side.
For a little more than two weeks we continued like this, we’d walk, make camp and drink a beer. Not sure why we drank more the previous night maybe it was because we realized the cask was nearing its completion and we were going to celebrate its loss. Whatever the reason, I awoke that morning with a headache that had me convinced I had been smashing a rock against my forehead for most of the night. I stumbled getting up, walked a few feet from camp, took care of some personal business and came back. I was reaching for the heavens when I looked down on Mathieu’s prone form. His eyes were closed and he had not stirred. I was not a quiet riser, I liked to herald in the new day with my morning piss. Sue me, I’d been alone for a long time.
“Mathieu?” I stooped down. He didn’t look good. Pale even. His forehead was lined in sweat. “Mathieu?” I asked again, reaching down. It was then I noted a smell wafting off of him. Smelled of fever and rot. I noticed a large, wet spot on his shirt all across his chest. I pulled his shirt to the side to see a makeshift bandage wrapped around his pectoral muscles. A thick, yellow-green pus like fluid had soaked the entire thing all the way through and was now getting on his shirt. The smell got worse as I got closer. I pulled the bandage down slightly and had to back up. I gagged from the stink of rot.
“Bad?” Mathieu had one eye open and was looking at me.
“It’s not good. What the hell happened?”
“The Lycan sliced my chest when he broke my nose. Didn’t think too much about it until two days ago when it started oozing pus. It went from a clear liquid to yellow, though, in a few hours.”
“Yeah, well it’s got green overtones and hints of brown coming in now, and how the hell are you handling this smell? It’s not good.”
“The reek just started.” He smiled a bit and sat up. He was in some obvious discomfort, and if the way he wobbled was any indication, he was suffering from some vertigo and most likely had a high fever as well to go with the infection.
The only thing I could think to do was pump him with antibiotics and get him to a doctor, both of which were in short supply if they existed at all anymore.
“What can I do to help?”
“You need to help me make it for the next three nights. I haven’t come this far to die by a scratch of the fucking animal that put me in this predicament.”
“Going to need a shelter and plenty of water. Can you eat?”
I spent that whole day building a shelter, using the small rock outcropping as a wall. It was just cozy enough that when he invariably got the chills he would find warmth and just roomy enough that when he began to get hot he had space to breathe. I found a stream and a clutch of rabbits. I’d never been much of a fire starter without a good old-fashioned match. Took me over half an hour to get a friction fire going. Luckily, Mathieu had fallen asleep and could not watch my pathetic attempts at flame. By the time he awoke I had two mugs worth of sterilized water, which he drank down quickly and greedily.
I looked over to the ke
g. He was going to need more water and much faster than I could sterilize two little mugs at a time. I walked as slowly as I could to the stream, the entire time keeping the keg suspended over my head, letting the beer flow freely into my mouth. In contrast to how slow my locomotion was, I was swallowing as fast as humanly possible. By the time I got to the stream, I realized I’d stalled as long as I could. I was saddened as I watched those two pitchers worth of beer flow down the river.
“I’ll miss you.” I waved, and then plunged the keg into the water to fill it back up.
“Is it cold?” Mathieu was sitting up. “I’m so thirsty.”
“I haven’t had a chance to boil it.”
“Giardia is the least of my problems, Mike. The full moon will have come long before dysentery takes me out. Dehydration, though, that’ll kill me tonight.”
I poured him seven cups of water before he had his fill. He’d also eaten two rabbits while I had gotten the water.
“If this is how much you eat when you’re sick, I’m glad you weren’t one of my kids. I would have had to get a second job to feed you.” He smiled at the words, though I could see it pained him to do so.
I could do little except get him water when he needed it and remove or replace layers of clothes I had placed on him as blankets as he froze or baked depending on what minute it was. That first night wasn’t too bad. I would walk around into the night and check on him periodically. He slept somewhat fitfully, but it was sleep nonetheless. The next day was when he turned a corner and not in the right direction. The wound had begun to turn black. Tiny fingers of red were radiating out from the slash in all directions. At first, they were no thicker than one might expect on a bloodshot eye, nor longer than a normal earthworm. By that evening the fattest of them was as thick as my pinkie finger and it was close to a foot long.
I’m not sure the stench coming off his chest could even be classified as an odor anymore. It had a specter to it, like the physical embodiment of putrefaction itself was sitting on his chest just waiting while his minions finished the job off. His teeth were chattering, at the same time droplets of sweat the size of marbles rolled off his head. This night I hovered over him, although I could have not done much more than say a prayer to his passing. I could not for the life of me imagine how he was going to make it through the next thirty-six hours. As the night turned into day, I would awaken him every so often to keep him as hydrated as possible. He coughed up more than he drank, necessitating that I awaken him more often. I had wet a shirt to wipe the sweat from his head as best I could, most times I would just keep a moist piece of material on him in an effort to cool him down. He was getting hot to the touch. I was concerned that his clothes were going to catch on fire.