FULL MOON COUNTRY (FULL MOON SERIES (vol. 2))

by Terry Yates

  “D’Andre flew through the air sideways. His body spun around a complete revolution before hitting three of the gang members, knocking them to the ground. Juicy aimed his pistol at Simon and pulled the trigger. With lightning quickness, Simon ducked, the bullet hitting the brick wall of the building behind them. Tino and another gang member rushed him from the left, Tino hitting him up high and the other one diving into his leg. Simon flexed his thigh muscle causing the young man to bounce off it as if he’d thrown himself against a brick wall. At the same time, Tino was trying to knock Simon down. He cursed in Spanish, his face only inches from Simon’s. Simon opened his mouth and bit down on his nose. Tino screamed in pain as Simon bit through the entire nose and pulled it away from his face.

  “I always did like Mexican food,” he said as he swallowed the nose.

  By this time, the other gangsters had pounced on him and were trying to push him to the ground, but his newfound strength kept them all at bay…until he had a spasm. This one was the worst one yet. He fell to the ground, doubling over into the fetal position, the pain agonizing, but strangely euphoric. He knew that he was about to turn.

  The gang kicked him and beat him with bats and pipes. He writhed on the ground. He could hear them calling him names thinking they had bested him, but he could no longer feel their kicks and blows, because the spasms were greater than the blows. He could feel his teeth growing longer. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might’ve just let out a howl.

  As the beating continued, he felt his blood beginning to boil. The heat was almost unbearable. He managed to open an eye to see a boot stomping on his left wrist. Hair was beginning to grow from the underside of his arm. Here it comes, he thought to himself. Oh, were these tadpoles in for a world of hurt.

  He didn’t have much feeling but he could feel his feet beginning to grow out of his boots, the leather almost groaning as it began to tear apart. He felt a dull ache in the center of his face as if he had another face behind it trying to push its way through. His upper and lower incisors seemed to be tearing their way through his mouth. There was a lot of pain involved in becoming a werewolf, but Simon had never minded pain all that much. Granted, he liked giving pain rather than receiving it, but you can’t have everything.

  Simon’s whole body was now racked with so much pain, that he couldn’t see anything but white light.

  The gang continued to beat and kick the white dude. Tino was rolling around on the ground holding his face, his screams almost deafening them all. D’Andre lay in semi-consciousness, the blood continuing to pour out of his wound. One of the gang members had put his shirt over the wound to try to stop the bleeding, but it had been an exercise in futility. The shirt was completely soaked within seconds.

  As the gang beat him, they began to notice that the man was screaming and howling. Good, they thought. They were going to make the mother fucker suffer for what he did to D’Andre and Tino.

  “Kill him!” Juicy screamed above the din. “Waste the mother fucker! I want him…”

  Juicy stopped in mid-sentence because the gang had suddenly stopped beating the man, and had jumped away from him, dropping their bloody weapons.

  “Why did you stop!” Juicy screamed, but as soon as the last gang member, he realized why they had jumped up. The man was no longer on the ground. He had been replaced by what looked to be a snarling dog, only this dog was bigger than any dog that Juicy had ever seen before.

  Before he had a chance to think or react, the beast had jumped off the ground with such speed and dexterity that the whole group let out one collective gasp. They now saw that the animal was taller by a clear foot than any of them. Its eyes were yellow and gleaming in the darkness. Foam spewed from its mouth as it growled, snorting in out and with every heavy breath that it took.

  Before the gravity of the situation set in, the creature swung its claws at one of the gangsters, a Mexican named Jorge, whose head was immediately separated from his shoulders. The gang began to hastily disperse, but the creature was on them before most of them even had the chance to pull their pants up. It swung its claws and snapped its jaws wildly, knocking heads and limbs left and right, while tearing the flesh from those that weren’t being clawed. One gangster almost made it to the alleyway, but the creature leaped over the rest and landed in front of the boy. The werewolf picked him up by the shoulders and held him within inches of its face. It loved the smell of fear that was emanating from the smaller creature. It could smell its water, its feces, and its hastily beating heart. It knew that it was going to die and the beast was exhilarated. The wolf turned its head sideways, opened its jaws. The boy screamed in terror as the beast clamped its jaws shut around his face and bit down, crushing the bones in his face. It pulled the face away from the head, then slammed the body down hard, the faceless head splattering on a small patch of old asphalt that was poking up through the grass.

  The rest of the gang, roughly six of them now, tried to run away, but the werewolf blocked their path to the alley. The creature began to dispatch them quickly. It tore into two of the gang member’s necks, both of them dead before they hit the ground. It decapitated another three of them. Juicy was the last one standing and he looked frightened. The once tough gangster suddenly realized he was on his own. He had nobody to cover his back. The werewolf loomed over him, looking down at him as if it wanted him to put up a fight, but there was no more fight in Juicy. He was staring up into the beast’s huge yellow eyes. Yellow eyes that lit up the darkness. The pupils though were as black as an abyss, giving up nothing. They were the pupils of a killer. A killer that loved nothing more than pure unadulterated destruction.

  Juicy saw that it was futile to try to run from the creature, so he just stood and shivered, waiting for his death. The werewolf soon obliged by ripping Juicy’s throat out with its fangs, then throwing his corpse away.

  The beast turned its nose to the air and let out a loud, victorious howl. When it stopped, it was met by stone silence. It looked at the carcasses that littered the small hide-a-way. The only movement came from the leader of the two-legger pack. The one that it had bitten first. It was laying on the ground, barely conscious, its hand attempting cover the werewolf’s bite, but having little luck. The werewolf had torn a gash bigger than a hand could cover. The color of the two-legger’s face was different, too. It was almost ashy from loss of blood. The two legger looked up into the werewolf’s eyes. It’s eyes tried to focus on the creature, but they kept rolling up into their sockets.

  Next to the leader, was the little two-legger that had its nose bitten off. It lay on its stomach, its face buried in its hands. It whimpered as blood continue to pour through its fingers. The werewolf loved the smell of the spilled blood. Its first instinct was to tear them both apart and gorge on their carcasses, but these two animals had no fight in them, plus its instincts also told it that it needed to leave a survivor. Although it was a lobo, the werewolf needed for the species to survive. It didn’t know yet if there were more like him out in the world, so it would leave these two.

  The creature bent down, its face within inches of D’Andre’s. The gangster’s eyes were still rolling into the back of his sockets. The beast let out several deep snarls. The young man’s eyes slowly fluttered open. The creature that had just minutes ago been a hick white dude was now inches from his face, the yellow eyes burning with rage. The two studied each other’s faces for a moment before the werewolf roared right into D’Andre’s face causing him to piss his pants. The beast could already smell feces coming off of the other two-legger. Seeing that the two-leggers knew who reined in this territory,

  the creature stood straight up, once again raising its nose to the sky. The beast let out one last howl, and then disappeared into the Los Angeles night.

  CHAPTER 27

  Kyler stood on the porch of his quarters. He kept trying to send one cigar smoke-ring through the previous one without much success. He loved cigars, but they didn’t always love him back. He’d never been a smoker
…or much of a drinker for that matter. Two or three drinks and his tongue got thicker than a buffalo’s that was attempting to speak French. He’d been part of a small fraternity at Stanford, not a real fraternity, mind you. Neither he or any of his friends were really fraternity material. They were med students and although med students are highly recruited by fraternities, they aren’t highly recruited by any of the fun ones, so they formed their own, which they referred to as Phi Slamma Booze. They were all nerds, but were considered cool among other nerds. Most of them liked sports, but were also comic books fans, Sci-fi junkies, and members of the Tolkien Society, not to mention Monty Python nuts. The PSB would have poker nights and there were cigars aplenty. Good ones, too. Teddy Thomerson was a rich little shit from Martha’s Vineyard or some place like that. He used to have his father bring him back Cuban cigars from Havana. Teddy had lived in Miami. He wondered if he was still alive. He thought he’d heard that Teddy had moved to Atlanta after graduation. He hoped so.

  Kyler blew back to back smoke rings. His throat burned and he suddenly went into a coughing fit. He tried to cover his mouth, but it was no use. He just had to cough it out. He coughed until he gagged so hard he thought his face would explode. His face turned red as he leaned over the wooden railing, waiting to barf, but recovering at the last minute. Kyler stayed limp for a few seconds, his head still lolling over the railing. Fresh air was now rushing into his lungs.

  When he felt well enough to stand up straight, he did. He walked to the door and turned the knob. He hadn’t needed to. The door swung open with the slightest touch. Why did none of the doors ever fit on these put together buildings?

  Kyler leaned inside the doorway and peered into the room. As he let his eyes adjust, he saw the outlines of what seemed like a multitude of sleeping children. The place was littered with them. Lauren was sleeping on his cot, her auburn hair almost shining in the dark as it covered her face. She looked dead to the world. Good, he thought. Kyler had to fight his brain in order to not to allow his imagination to run wild. He still didn’t want to think of what those children had been through.

  Willette and Hebman were doing night duty again, so their cots were free. The older girl, Heather, occupied Hebman’s, and Ben Rollins, the little boy with the bruised face, slept on Willette’s. Kyler had wanted little Meredith Bayfield to sleep on one of them, but neither she nor Anthony was going to be happy unless they could be close together, so they slept in sleeping bags that they had placed next to each other. The twin boy and girl…Kyler had found out…were German refugees, who had no idea what was going on. They told an interpreter that they had just been bundled up, put on a truck in Miami, then carted away to this place, away from their parents. whom they had not heard from. The interpreter told him that they lived in Bonn, Germany, and that they had only been here a day when the Whartler family took them away.

  Kyler had found the interpreter, a man named Peter Valkenberg, earlier in the day when he was giving the children their checkups. The twins babbled incessantly at him as he attempted to give them a good going over. He knew enough to know that they were speaking German or perhaps one of the other Dutch countries, but he didn’t know enough to understand them, and they were starting to become panicky.

  He had stood up and walked outside. There were thousands of people milling about the camp. Someone had to speak German. He walked around saying “Sprekandzeedoytch! Sprekunzaydoitch!” to anyone who would listen. Most of the refugees or volunteers looked at him as if he were one of those crazy people you saw on the street that yelled things like “Who’s ass is blackest now, huh!”, followed by a shaken fist or stick.

  “Sprakkensehdutch!” he yelled at a group of young teens who all had some sort of initials on their red t-shirts.

  “Would you like a tissue?” one of the teens, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen, asked. There were four of them standing there in their matching white shorts, orange shirts, and black Nike’s. There were two boys and two girls, all in their last few years of high school. They stood there, all white-toothed smiles. For some reason, and Kyler didn’t know why, they annoyed him. They looked like those children from Village of the Damned. All those little tow-headed kids that were born on the same day and looked alike.

  “No, I wouldn’t like a tissue, thank you,” Kyler replied somewhat tersely, “but if you’ve got a German in your back pockets, I’ll take one. See, that’s that the thing about Germans. There’s never one around when you need one.” Kyler felt as if he had no tangible reason for treating these nice, young people like vermin, but he’d had an a-1 bona-fidee bad day. He continued. “I know personally of three people around here who can speak German, because they are all on the German World Cup team! But are they here now? No! Of course not! That would be too easy…too sensible! And we can’t have that, can we?”

  Kyler was in a world of his own now. He’d had weeks of hurricanes, werewolves, people with caps and sunglasses trying to kill him, and a school of whales dressed up like a white trash family of four, tossing him around like he was a horseshoe. At that moment, he didn’t care what he said or who heard it.

  “And another thing!” he continued. “It couldn’t be a Californian or a Michigander, could it? It couldn’t be a language everyone here could understand, no it had to be German…and now…and now…I’ve got a set of eleven or twelve year old German twins who are beside themselves with fear right now and I can’t find one, single, solitary person who can speak to them, so they can at least calm down! You know something? I’d give my right…”

  Kyler stopped short, remembering at the last second that a group of disgustingly sappy Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, B’Nai Brith, who knew, teenagers were standing in front of him.

  “Arm…” he squeaked, finally looking down at the kids. Their smiles were no longer genuine, but now frozen in place, their top lips stuck to their canine teeth. The four of them looked like a large poster standing in front of him. He knew by their expressions and the fact that their eyes were looking just past him, that there was someone standing behind him, and he was guessing that that someone was probably German. Upon further inspection of their expressions, he noticed that the kids were looking just over his 6’1” melon, which meant that whoever was standing behind him was probably extremely tall.

  Kyler turned around to see that he’d been correct in his assumption. There was indeed someone standing behind him. Kyler was standing eyes to mouth with the largest, most Teutonic, blond haired, blue-eyed, square jawed man he’d ever seen. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He was at least 6’4” and 220 pounds. The tight, white t-shirt that the man wore made his biceps stick up like basketballs. He had a chest so large and muscular that if one were to flip a quarter at it, one better duck quickly unless they wanted said quarter to bounce off of their eyeball. The man was huge.

  “Eh…” was all that the embarrassed doctor could utter.

  “I understand that you’re looking for someone who speaks German,” the man said softly, his blue eyes peering down at Kyler. His voice was soft, but deep. Once again, Kyler had been right. He could tell that the man had, what he believed to be was a German accent, although again, for all Kyler knew, the man could be from any of the Dutch countries.

  “Yes,” Kyler answered after a long pause, his voice cracking. “Are you German?”

  “What gave it away?” the man answered, his mouth almost forming into a smile.

  CHAPTER 28

  HARMONVILLE, OKLAHOMA

  “Ma’am? Mrs. Weaver?”

  Rhonda Weaver’s eyes slowly fluttered, then opened. A ladybug was crawling across a blade of grass just inches from her face. Rhonda could feel sweat dripping from her forehead, down the side of her face, then into her eye socket, burning her eye. She involuntarily shut her eye before her index finger immediately shot up and began to rub the tear duct furiously, causing her eye to water.

  “Mrs. Weaver?”

  Rhonda stopped rubbing her ey
e. She knew that she was lying on her side in the wet, dewy, early morning grass, drenched in dew and sweat. The Oklahoma humidity had already kicked in.

  “Mrs. Weaver? Are you okay?”

  Rhonda thought she recognized the voice, but she was so addled at the moment, that she couldn’t think of much of anything.

  “Mrs. Weaver! Please!”

  Hearing the urgency of the voice, Rhonda tried to roll over onto her side, but a searing pain in her other side stopped her cold. She hardly noticed the pain in her chin and wrist. She grunted loudly as she placed her hand on that side. She was blinded by the morning sunlight as she felt for the spot where the pain was coming from. She hissed as her hand touched torn flesh, and then immediately pulling itself back when her finger touched the wound. Still lying on her side, the sweat began to pour off of her. The humidity was atrocious. Once again, she moved her hand toward the wound. The closer her fingers got to the wound, the slower she moved her hand. She didn’t want to know what had been done to her. When Rhonda finally got up the nerve to touch the wound, she felt along the pieces of torn flesh. God, the son-of-a-bitch was huge. She was afraid to feel or even look inside the wound after having felt the amount of flesh that surrounded it.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mrs. Weaver,” the voice warned.

  Rhonda had almost forgotten about the voice. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked up. She almost screamed aloud until she realized it was Denny Lusk, Rickie Glen and Mona Lusk’s youngest son. Denny was sixteen and a Goth. The other three Lusk children, two girls and a boy, seemed normal, but not Denny. He was the baby of the family, and as such, spoiled rotten, so much so that he was allowed to drop out of school and take up the Goth lifestyle. He’d always been in some sort of trouble…nothing terribly bad, mind you. There just wasn’t that much trouble you could get into in Harmonville. He and his handful of Goth buddies would spray paint the water tower, or cars, or old buildings. They’d break a window or two, but on the whole, they were just little shits with too much time on their hands. Now, one of them was on his knees looking down at her, greasy, stringy, jet-black dyed hair, hanging down over his pale, gaunt, face, which his black t-shirt made appear even more pallid.