"Ummm, Jess…before we go I have to tell you something."
"Oh, great, now there's a line every girl loves to hear."
"Yeah, well, this is kind of important, and it's not easy for me to say."
"I bet it isn't. Usually, a fellow says that to his girl, he's been fucking around on her. Is that what this is, Brian?"
"Let me finish Jess. This is important."
"Okay, finish."
"I'm thinking I might be a werewolf."
Jess stood staring me in the eyes, probably trying to decide if I was jerking her chain. You have to admit, it'd be one of the boldest break-up lines in the history of dating.
"What makes you think that?"
"I got scratched the other night. Remember?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know for sure what the rules are here, but in the movies a scratch is a surefire invitation to join the werewolf club," I said.
"Shit, Brian! Should we get you to a doctor?"
I gave her a think about what you just said to me look.
"Yeah, that's probably not the best idea," said Jess. "But what the hell are we going to do?"
"I really don't know."
"Have you noticed any changes yet?"
"I have been feeling a strong urge to hump your leg for the past few minutes, if that's what you mean."
"Be serious, Brian. This is serious."
"Sorry, this is just kind of overwhelming. I've been looking for signs, but so far I seem like the same old guy I've been living with for thirty years."
Jess stood there studying my face, and then she nodded her head as if she'd solved the puzzle we were trying to piece together.
"How about this; let's try not worry about it too much until we see some evidence that you're actually going to turn. I mean, I'm sure this thing doesn't set in without any symptoms at all. And there's not much else we can do anyway."
"Sounds fine to me, though it's going to be hard to get my mind off of this. But what happens if I do turn into a flesh-eating werewolf? What if it happens with no warning? One minute I'm asleep, the next I'm trying to remove your head."
"Then I'll shoot you in both eyes and bury you in the woods behind my house where no one will ever find your corpse."
It seemed like a reasonable solution to me.
An hour later I found myself back at Jess' place. My heart was heavy, and I couldn't be sure that I'd made a wise decision going back. We sat at her kitchen table with overstuffed ham sandwiches going untouched in front of us. Bronson sat on the table between us begging for scraps of ham with his eyes. I think we fed him too much of it, because about ten minutes into our lunch he threw up some grey stuff flecked with partially digested ham on the table between us. The vomiting would officially mark the end of our meal.
The day felt heavy. Heavy with the weight of fear and heavy with unanswered questions. Jess and I were both doing our damnedest to pretend everything was fine. Like I'd never snuck out in the first place and that Jess had never found the "Dear John" letter waiting for her. I couldn't stop wondering if I might turn into a monster, and checked myself over in the bathroom every hour or so for any changes that might point to my being a lycanthrope. I wondered how painful the transformation would be, and if I'd remember anything when I returned to my human form.
Jess and I decided to head into town to rent a film. We ended up watching a cheesy John Hughes movie, which did nothing for my mood. Then we watched a made-for-TV slasher film in which five punk teens were hunted and taken apart one by one with an axe. I felt like I could truly relate to the victims in the movie. It was an awful, awful film. I'd seen the same basic premise fifty times before, and it wasn't any better this time.
We watched in silence, not holding hands for the first time in ages. When the film got down to a few survivors the power in Jess's house went out. And knowing what we knew about what lived in the woods around us, we both stayed very quiet. Jess got up, snuck into her bedroom and brought me my gun while I double-checked that all the doors were locked.
The gun helped my confidence, but would have helped more if I hadn't seen Jeff take two good shots out in the woods and keep on trucking as if he'd only been stung by a bee. At the very least I knew a bullet to the chest would send him running even if it didn't kill him.
"Jess, we need to get the hell out of here right now. I have a bad feeling about being here."
"I'm with you. But where are we going to go?"
"Let's just head to my place for a while. If the power's not on there I say we head into town. How's that sound to you?"
"That sounds damned good. Maybe we can make a late night visit to The Cavalier. Let me grab my purse and a coat."
CHAPTER 23
The sky was beginning to grow dim and rain had started falling as I drove the Volvo down the highway and turned off onto Montrose. Jess had already fallen asleep beside me and was snoring lightly in the orange glow of the dashboard light. She was pretty enough to be a painting. A damned good painting. I'd even say a masterpiece. I was lucky to have her by my side and I knew it. I thought about how I was going to make things work between us, monsters or not.
I wondered what life would be like if I'd met Jess in another place. A town a few miles down the road where there are no monsters, no crazy men trying to steal all the joy from my soul.
I had a bad habit of giving up on girlfriends when things got too tough. I had resolved to stick things out with Alicia no matter what, and to my credit did a good job with that even when things started going sour between us. Jess was a whole different story, though. This girl was all the things I'd ever looked for in a girl and more. Jess was self-confident and had a killer sense of humor. She even had the b-movie scream-queen knockers I'd always dreamed of burying my face in when I was a teenager.
My thoughts of Jess's jugs were interrupted by flashing red and blue lights coming from behind me. A siren sounded briefly letting me know that I needed to pull over to the side of the road. I couldn't imagine what I'd done wrong, but figured daydreaming about Jess's tits and driving probably shouldn't happen at the same time.
After the Volvo came to a stop a porch light came on to my right. I coughed up a small amount of vomit into my mouth and swallowed hard when I realized that I'd pulled the car over right in front of Myrtle's place. Before killing the engine I considered pulling up another fifty yards or so down the road, but I knew the cop would see that as an attempt to make a getaway. Then I'd be in even worse trouble than I already was. I was happy that at the very least I had a cop there to protect me, but I wasn't so sure that one police officer would be enough to stop that army of a woman.
I was sick to my stomach at the thought of getting a ticket. I was broke as it was, and the last thing I needed to be dealing with was a higher insurance payment landing in the mailbox every month for the next three to five years. But this was reality, and there wasn't shit I could do at this point to change it, so I pulled my license out of my pocket and asked Jess to find the registration for me. I just hoped that whoever had pulled me over wasn't one of those cops that had been picked on too much in high school and now felt the need to take out his revenge on everyone doing better than sixty in a fifty-five.
"What did you do?" asked Jess.
"I don't know. Might have been speeding. I hope this asshole lets me loose with a warning."
The officer turned off his flashing lights, which I thought was a little odd. His spot light came on, blinding Jess and I and shedding more light onto Myrtle's lawn. I watched the cop's silhouette step out of his car and walk our way in my driver's side mirror. I sighed a breath of relief when the officer got close enough for me to see he was Sergeant Matheson. He walked toward the car looking like R. Lee Ermey in any one of his thousand angry cop rolls.
Matheson leaned his jaw through the car window and said, "Howdy, Brian. Sorry to pull you two over like this, but I just wanted to let you know that that old girlfriend of yours had her place torn up somethin' terrible last night
. And the two folks that were living next door to her were murdered. We found parts of the bodies, but some parts of 'em had been taken."
"Murdered?" I asked.
"Taken?" asked Jess.
"Well, murdered would be the nice way of sayin' it. Tell you the truth, looks like they were sent through a goddamned meat grinder. If I had to guess, I'd say someone let a pack of pissed off bears loose on 'em. Claw marks all over the place, blood from floor to ceiling. Hell, parts of the bodies seem to have been eaten. This town's just getting too big for me." The last line came across as if it were much worse news than the murders.
I was stunned and afraid at once, but I swallowed every ounce of fear inside me to keep it from Jess's sight. I asked if there were any leads on who might have done the killing though I knew damned well who, or what, had committed the crime.
"If you ask me it's either Jeff or the northerners that keep moving down this way. I hope to hell they're passing through whoever it was. Let the folks in Richmond deal with this. They're a little more used to it."
I couldn't come up with much of a response to that so I just nodded. As much as I might have been safer having a cop next to me, all I wanted to do was to get home. I was ready to take on werewolves and demons at the same time by that point. Just tired of the whole episode I guess. Sick of being afraid and sick of hearing about people dying.
Suddenly Matheson's eyes got big as bowling balls and he moved a hand toward his gun. I jerked my head to the right to see what had gotten his attention, and there she was; Myrtle, wearing nothing but a filthy yellow shirt that read, "Hand over the chocolate and no one gets hurt." She was kicking one leg behind her like a bull revving up for the charge. It was terrifying, maybe more so than a werewolf. Matheson stood statue still for a moment and then snapped out of it when Myrtle screamed a word that sounded like "fuckletops!"
Matheson muttered a what in the name of God to himself as he stared at the giant, half-naked savage woman before him. This was the first time I'd seen the stain of fear on his grizzled mug.
Myrtle barked at us a few times, and then she was off to the races. She had remarkable speed for a woman her size, and her power couldn't be denied. She was leaving a trail of dust behind her as she lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it to the ground.
When Matheson got an eyeful of her saggy melons he made a face like he'd just tasted the bad end of a plunger. I was used to the droopy bags attached to her chest, and had probably seen them more times than I'd seen Jess's boobs. I had long feared Myrtle getting close enough to me where I might make contact with them. The thought made my stomach do a flip that sent a little bile into my mouth.
I looked at Matheson and said, "I have to be going now," in about as calm a tone as I could muster up under the circumstances.
He ignored me and drew his gun.
"Freeze!" Matheson called out to no avail. Myrtle wasn't slowing for man, nature or God.
"Step back you crazy fucking bitch!"
Myrtle just threw up her middle fingers and kept coming. Her hands looked like oversized biscuits with sausages sticking out of them.
"Step the goddamned hell back! Now!"
I could imagine how tough his predicament must have been. Being a cop, it was his job to see that no one came to any harm in this situation. If he shot Myrtle, chances were he'd lose his job, and Matheson was a man who loved his job. Killing her might even send him to jail. But I just know that the part of Matheson that had nothing to do with law enforcement wanted nothing more than to take down the angry elephant and get the hell out of there.
Myrtle was closing in on us fast. She was within fifteen yards of us when a werewolf shot from the tree line like a rocket toward her. Matheson's jaw nearly hit the ground as the beast got closer and closer to its prey. Matheson screamed for Myrtle to hit the ground, and fired a couple of rounds in the direction of the charging beast, but the werewolf was moving too quickly and both shots missed their mark. Then the monster was on her. It leapt onto Myrtle's back, wrapped its arms around her and sunk its claws deep into the fat of her stomach. Myrtle was screaming like mad as the thing went through her like a tornado in a trailer park. As it mutilated her, pieces of bloody fat went flying out in a semicircle and one large chunk of meat landed on the hood of the car splashing blood onto the windshield. I could see that other parts of her had made it all the way to her front porch.
Matheson was waiting for a clean shot at the monster, and when the blood covered creature stood up from the corpse and looked our way he started firing again. He missed a couple of times before dropping the creature with a blow to its chest. It went down like a Motley Crue groupie and didn't move.
"You two get the hell out of here. Now!" Matheson yelled in our direction. His face was a mask of shock.
"We'll hang tight until you're in your car," I replied.
"I need to get some back-up out here in a hurry. I don't know what the hell I think I just killed, but I'm still waiting to wake up."
"Matheson, it might not be dead. I've dealt with these things before. Jeff's one of them, and trust me, they don't die easily," I said.
One thing I was sure of, this wasn't the same werewolf Jess and I had clobbered on the road the night we met. It wasn't nearly as large, and its fur was a lighter shade of brown. I thought it might be the one that had ravaged my house, but I couldn't be sure. Under different circumstances I might've been happy to stumble on a much smaller monster, but my fears doubled after watching that thing rip Myrtle to bite sized pieces. I hated knowing there was more than one of those mean bastards out in the woods. I knew there were at least two. And who's to say I wouldn't cross paths with a third and fourth down the line somewhere. The world would certainly be a different place if those fuckers were as common as alley cats.
"Trust me, you want to be in your car ready to step on the gas if that thing wakes up," I said to Matheson.
He nodded slowly with a grave look on his face and turned toward his vehicle. He didn't make it more than ten steps before the werewolf shot up from the ground like a blind man sitting down on a toilet with a plunger still in it. Jess and I both called out at the top of our lungs but the damned thing was too fast. Matheson didn't even have enough time to get his gun aimed at it before it was on him, ripping and shredding his flesh. He got off three shots while the werewolf sat on top of him devouring his body, but none of them hit the target. Jess and I both flinched hard when two of the shots hit the back of the car. I heard our right rear tire explode and stomped on the gas regardless. Matheson's screaming echoed behind us.
It took everything I had to keep the car on the road. It kept trying to drag itself onto the right shoulder. But we made it past Nate's place and then Hank's. I noticed that Hank's old Ford Galaxy wasn't in his driveway and that his house was dark inside. I hoped the old fellow was alright, and figured if anyone could take care of himself it was Hank. We finally pulled up in front of my house, and I thanked fate the Volvo had hobbled along that far. Every inch of distance between Jess and I and the werewolf was worth a thousand pounds of gold.
We got out of the car and ran for the house. The right rear wheel on the Volvo was twisted and gashed and there was no way anyone was going to get it moving again without some hefty repair shop bills. On top of that, the Mustang was still just about out of gas. I wasn't happy at all about being trapped at the house. Sergeant Matheson had shot the beast in the chest and it had still managed to spring up fast as crabgrass and take him down before he could whistle Dixie. I hoped that the werewolf was still bleeding from the wounds and that it would drop dead beside the road before I ever had to look at it again. But my dad always said that if you shit in one hand and hope in the other, the shit mounts up a good bit faster.
"We should check to see if the phone is working," said Jess once we were inside with the door locked behind us.
"Hell yeah, good idea," I responded. I hadn't even considered the phone for one second. Fear and adrenaline were clouding my senses.
Jess and I ran back to my bedroom where I grabbed some bullets for my gun and checked to see that it was loaded. She had tears streaming down her face, but was holding up well under the circumstances. She seemed focused, and that made me feel a little better about our predicament. The last thing someone needs when a werewolf is trying to tear their limbs off is a buddy who needs a good calming down. Werewolves never leave you enough time for that crap. They're certainly not very sympathetic creatures.
I sat down on the corner of the bed and Jess plopped down beside me and leaned her head on my shoulder. She seemed exhausted, and I was getting there fast, too.
"Should we stay here and hope the thing doesn't come after us?" asked Jess, her voice trembling.
"I don't see we have much choice. I'm certainly not up for going outside to try and fix the tire on the Volvo," I answered.
"Do you think it's dead?"
"No, I just think it's in serious need of a new wheel and some work on the frame."
"No, not the car, the werewolf."
"Oh. It didn't look too dead back there separating the sergeant like a bowl of shredded wheat, but maybe we're lucky and that shot to the chest has caught up to it by now. I still can't believe how fast that fucker moved after getting shot. Damn, I really liked Matheson. I'll kill that goddamned wolf if it's the last thing I do."
Andy Deane Page 15