A Werewolf in Riverdale

by Caleb Roehrig

  Clouds still formed a ceiling overhead, slender veins of pale illumination only just beginning to show where the moon bled through, and the otherwise lightless terrain was gloomy and threatening. The world ahead dissolved into shades of black and gray, trees climbing high on either side of the road, and sweat filmed Archie’s upper lip as he struggled to see. A truck zoomed by, and the driver shouted obscenities as he swerved around the slow-moving four-door. His heart squeezing painfully, Archie let out a shaky breath, starting to wish he’d never followed Betty out of the Chock’Lit Shoppe that day a month ago.

  Jughead pedaled for several miles, the clouds gradually thinning, the road rising and falling as Archie wondered for the millionth time where they were going. At first he’d been afraid they were headed for Midville—that maybe the “both of them did it” theory was true, and the cousins were planning to meet up for a night of unspeakable bloodshed—but this was definitely not the way to the bowling alley where The Bingoes played their regular gig. This was the way to nowhere. There was nothing in these woods but—

  When it hit him, he almost choked. There was nothing in these woods but the campsite where a group of college kids had been massacred two months ago.

  Up ahead, the bicycle vanished suddenly around a curve in the road, and more sweat rolled from his temples as he fought the urge to step on the gas. If he lost Jughead at this point, what would he do? And why were they out here? Everything about this felt wrong and ominous, and there were no heartwarming explanations Archie could think of for why his best friend had snuck out of the house in order to take a bike ride into the murder woods under a full moon. Strong-arming Betty into letting him be the one to watch Jughead tonight was very quickly turning into his biggest regret.

  When he reached the turn where he’d lost sight of his friend, Archie’s panic redoubled, and his fingers tightened on the wheel. Ahead, the road was now a straight shot, and as the clouds slowly peeled back their layers to let more light through, his mouth went completely dry. As far as the eye could see, the blacktop was totally empty. Jughead had vanished.

  AT THE ROADSIDE, A SIGN flashed under the Beetle’s headlights, promising that it was just three miles to the municipal junkyard—which meant twelve miles to Riverdale, which meant only about fifteen more minutes before Betty could regain peace, quiet, and her mental equilibrium. Thank God.

  It turned out that there was only one subject Ethel Muggs enjoyed talking about even more than her comprehensive knowledge of The Bingoes, and that was her newfound, terrifyingly deep hatred of Bingo himself. The girl had barely gotten her seat belt buckled before she hooked up a depressingly awful playlist of sad music and started in on her list of grievances. Betty couldn’t exactly blame her, but … she also nudged the gas pedal a little closer to the floor, hoping to shave a few more minutes off this ride.

  “He never wanted to kiss me where other people could see us, and I didn’t even have the guts to ask why, because I was afraid that if I questioned it I’d ruin things,” Ethel recounted bitterly, and Betty hated herself all over again for being the one to instigate this downward spiral. “I thought I actually meant something to him, you know? I thought he was this, like, amazing artist, and that we had a connection. Being with him made me feel special, but it turns out I was just his side piece the whole time!”

  “Stop saying things like that.” Betty switched the playlist, trying not to be obvious about it. “In fact, you need to stop letting yourself even think things like that. We have literally just finished establishing that you’re a catch, and Bingo is a lying sleaze! He never deserved you, and you know it.”

  “Well, I know it now.” Ethel sniffed, switching the playlist back. “Before, I thought he was this cool, dreamy musician, which is basically, like, my ideal guy, because—have I ever told you about this?”

  “No.” Betty reached for the settings to change the playlist again, and Ethel deftly grabbed her hand out of the air and held it. Her grip was warm and surprisingly strong.

  “I had this dream—like an actual, for-real dream—when I was in sixth grade, about the guy I was going to marry.” A wistful look overcame her, her gaze not focusing. “He had these big puppy-dog eyes and perfect hair, and he played guitar in a band, and I was just like … I always hoped that maybe it would be real someday, like maybe it was some kind of psychic thing, you know?”

  “Wow,” Betty remarked politely. Up above, the clouds were thinning, the moon peeking around their lacy edges. “That’s intense.”

  “It was just a stupid dream,” Ethel snorted, wincing slightly as she reached down to hold her stomach. “But I’d spent so long wishing for this perfect guy to be real, that when Bingo came along with his stupid hair and his stupid guitar, I really wanted to believe that it was him. I wanted it so bad I didn’t even try to think about all the reasons why he was literally too good to be true.”

  “Stop saying he’s ‘too good,’ ” Betty commanded. “He’s a dirtbag. He lied to you, and he lied to that Amber girl—who I sincerely hope is kicking his butt right now—and he has definitely not earned the right to this much space in your thoughts.”

  Ethel nodded distractedly, but she grabbed her stomach with both hands now, and Betty took advantage of the moment to switch the playlist again.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s just cramps—because of course it is.” The girl rolled her eyes, massaging her abdomen and taking slow, deliberate breaths. “I’m not even supposed to get my period for another week, but what the hell, right? Why not this on top of everything else? At least it’s not ruining a good night.”

  Betty was silent for a moment, the clouds moving faster, the lace shredding to show the first twinkling stars she’d seen all night. Carefully, she asked, “So how long were you and Bingo dating?”

  “Apparently we were never dating at all.” Ethel gave a self-deprecating snort and then winced again, hunching over slightly. “Ow. But I guess if you want to be technical, we started talking, like, six weeks ago? We didn’t actually hook up until Reggie’s party last month, though—the one by the Wesley Road bridge.” She sighed, her breathing a little shaky. “I thought he was, like, the perfect guy, and he just thought I was some kind of pathetic groupie, or something! I can’t believe I trusted him.”

  “Ethel …” Betty began, but she didn’t know how to finish what she had to say. Alarm bells were ringing in her ears so loudly she could barely hear herself think.

  “You wanna know the punch line? He wasn’t even a good kisser.” Ethel forced a laugh that ended in a hiss as she doubled over in her seat, clutching her abdomen. Overhead, the clouds flew faster, kite tails streaming through brilliant moonlight. “All that swagger, all that cocky ‘I’m with the band’ crap, and it was like putting my face in a blender. He kisses with his freaking teeth.”

  They were just gliding past the municipal junkyard, a mountain range of refuse behind a tall, wooden fence, and Betty’s foot slipped off the accelerator. “He … are you saying that Bingo … did he bite you?”

  “I had to wear a turtleneck for a week,” Ethel complained through locked jaws, and then she hunched over further, a rattling groan escaping from the depths of her throat. The clouds had scattered at last, chased away by the wind, revealing the full moon outside.

  “Ethel?” Sweat tickled Betty’s underarms when the girl didn’t answer right away. “Talk to me, okay? What’s happening, what’s wrong?”

  There was a crackling sound, multiple joints popping at once—and then Ethel’s head snapped back in a sudden jerk, her neck bent at a freakish angle. Her nose twisted up and jutted forward, her back arched painfully, and a dull yellow light sparkled to life in her rolling eyes. Grinning at Betty with a mouth full of jagged, rapidly growing teeth, she snarled, “I’m … HUNGRYYY.”

  SWEATY HANDS SLIPPING ON the wheel, Archie blinked into the darkness, fighting the urge to panic. He couldn’t afford to lose Jughead now—if he had any hope of proving that h
is best friend wasn’t the monster stalking Riverdale, he needed to catch up to him again.

  And if Jughead was the monster stalking Riverdale … well, he still needed to catch up to him again.

  Recklessly, he pressed down on the gas pedal, urging the sedan forward, examining the shadowy roadside for signs of a break in the trees that might indicate a cross street. Jughead couldn’t have just dematerialized, or something, and his freaking bicycle definitely wasn’t fast enough to outrun a car. Unless there was a hidden turnoff, he had to be somewhere ahead.

  His fingers hovering over the switch for the headlights, Archie began to perspire freely, afraid to turn them on and risk giving himself away, and just as afraid to keep them off and risk letting Jughead escape all together. Thanks to a month of training with Elena, he knew how to tuck and roll, how to aim for a moving target, and how to reload a gun while running for his life, but he had no idea how to make this call. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed hold of the switch and licked his lips, hoping he wasn’t on the verge of making a huge mistake.

  Just when he was about to go for it, something at the side of the road caught his eye, and Archie slammed his foot on the brake. Tires chirped against pavement, his little pine tree air freshener swinging wildly from the rearview mirror, and his seat belt locked tight across his chest as he skidded to a quick stop. Slamming the vehicle into reverse, he backed up until he was side by side with what he’d almost blown right past: a bicycle, tucked among the trees, only just visible in the growing light of the moon.

  For a moment he just sat there, the four-door chugging away, waiting for … he wasn’t even sure what. Jughead was nowhere to be seen, the bike propped against the trunk of a birch, abandoned, the wooded slope beyond climbing and vanishing into layers of black on gray. When Archie lowered the passenger window, a stiff wind whistled past, hurling a cluster of brittle, autumn leaves into the car; but it wasn’t loud enough to disguise the sound of feet crashing through dried underbrush farther up the hillside.

  Reversing a bit more, Archie parked his car on the shoulder of the road, killing the engine. Hands tight on the wheel, rocking back and forth in his seat, he pursed his lips into a knot and tried to give himself a silent pep talk. He needed to do this. He’d promised to do this. If Jughead was killing people, if he was truly responsible for the horrific fates that had befallen Dilton, Miss Grundy, and Pop Tate—not to mention an entire group of strangers at a campsite not a mile away from here—then he needed to be stopped. The Riverdale Ripper could not be permitted to kill anyone else.

  Climbing out of the car, his fingers trembling, Archie double-checked the safety on his handgun. Then, he set off into the woods, following the sound of Jughead’s footsteps.

  The sky was cloudless now, moonlight raining down from a field of black velvet, as the Beetle swerved wildly off the road. Gravel scattering beneath its directionless wheels, its chassis bouncing against fragmented pavement, the vehicle left the roadway and hurtled over the berm. Its headlights dipped down, shot up again, and then the front end plowed head-on into the trunk of a massive oak tree.

  Metal screamed and crumpled, glass shattered, and the front axle snapped in half—while, inside the car, a werewolf tore through its half-shredded seat belt and slammed into the windshield so hard its neck snapped in three places. Even though she’d braced for the impact, the sudden eruption of the driver’s side air bag caught Betty Cooper by surprise, hitting her with the force of a right hook.

  Dazed and disoriented, her ears ringing and her vision full of bright, pulsing spots, Betty struggled through the confusion as the bag deflated. Beside her, Ethel was more wolf than girl, her limbs twitching, the remnants of her clothes hanging in shreds from her still-shifting body. Deadly claws tipped mutating hands that scrabbled against the dashboard, hair sprouted along the girl’s neck and ears—and the bright yellow light in her eyes, which had dimmed when the crash broke her neck, was already starting to regain its strength.

  Even while in the midst of yanking the wheel to the side, steering for the tree, and stomping down on the gas, Betty had known that the impact would be more likely to kill her than Ethel. The only guaranteed ways to stop a werewolf are a silver bullet or a blade to the neck. It had been little more than a desperate ploy to buy time—which was already running out. Before Betty’s very eyes, her passenger’s superhuman ability to heal was fixing the extensive damage caused by the crash. With a hideous pop and crunch, Ethel’s vertebrae realigned, and her expanding shoulders tore the remnants of her jacket into scraps.

  Fumbling with her seat belt, it took Betty three tries to make the release work, the metal tongue finally slipping free from the buckle just as Ethel shoved herself back from the shattered windshield and worked the rest of her joints into place. Her face was completely misshapen now, her jaws stretched forward as her nose morphed into a snout, and her tongue slashed the air between them. Her blazing yellow eyes turned on Betty—and she lunged.

  In a single, fluid motion, Betty hurled herself out of the car, landing on her back in the dirt and kicking the driver’s side door closed again as hard as she could, bracing it with her legs. She was almost too late—Ethel moved so fast she already had one massive paw in the way when it slammed shut on her, and she was forced to retreat with a pained yelp. A half second later, though, the beast girl rammed against the door from the inside, with so much force that Betty felt the impact all the way up to her hips.

  Sweat broke out at the blond girl’s temples as she clutched at the earth, shoving her feet against the door with every ounce of strength she had. Ethel backed up and charged again, the vehicle rocking, the already cracked glass of the driver’s side window exploding from its frame in a shower of fragments. Betty gasped, covering her eyes, her thighs trembling as pain rocketed up her legs. She wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.

  In a way, though, she was lucky. Ethel was so disoriented by the rapid changes overtaking her body—her altered center of gravity, her heightened senses, her reshaped limbs and stiff fingers—that her movements lacked the strength and coordination of a more experienced lycanthrope. In a matter of minutes, she’d regain enough of her agility to climb right through the shattered window. And with just another shift or two under her belt, the wolf-girl inside the car would have been thinking clearly enough to turn around and try the unblocked passenger-side door instead.

  Ethel drew back and then launched forward one last time, and Betty took her feet off the door the instant before it crashed open wide, revealing the girl’s fully changed form. Eyes burning, drool spilling between teeth like stalactites, Ethel gripped the doorframe with massive paws and prepared to pounce—but Betty was already yanking her revolver free from her purse, its remaining contents scattering everywhere, her finger closing on the trigger.

  One, two, the shots were deafening, the scent of cordite and hot metal filling the air, the first silver bullet tearing through the roof of the Beetle and the second catching Ethel Muggs high in the left shoulder. Letting out an animalistic shriek, the wolf-girl hurtled back across the front seats, the vehicle rocking again as she smashed against the passenger window.

  Her heart racing, her mouth dry, Betty kicked the driver’s side door shut again and rolled to her feet, sprinting into the darkness—running for her life.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL HE HAD lost sight of the road behind him, shadows gathering like an army among the trees, that it finally occurred to Archie that he might be making a crucial mistake. The air was cold, the moon only visible in tiny shards through the dense network of naked branches overhead, and the distant rustle of Jughead’s footsteps—the sound he’d been following—had stopped. He was alone now, in the middle of the woods on the track of a werewolf, having not thought to tell a single person where he was going. Oops?

  Briefly, he considered sending Betty a text—lost in the woods lol—but decided not to bother. No matter what kind of trouble he was in, it was too late for anyone to come to his rescue, and it was hig
h time he learned how to face it. Swallowing around a dry lump in his throat, he tested the weight of his handgun for the umpteenth time, trying to find its power of life and death reassuring. It wasn’t. The time had long since passed that he could pretend his best friend wasn’t the monster they were hunting—or that there could be any kind of reasonable, innocent explanation for this nighttime excursion to the woods.

  And somewhere up ahead, Jughead might already be shedding his human skin, turning into the beast that left such gruesome crime scenes behind that three of the sheriff’s deputies had quit their jobs in the last month. Taking several deep breaths to center himself, to steady his shaking hands, Archie pushed forward through the dried and tangled underbrush with the gun held out in front of him.

  At the top of a short rise, the ground leveled off, the wooded slope giving way to a cleared trail that curved sinuously through the trees. In both directions, the path was eaten by darkness, and silence hung like a glass dome over the night. No footsteps disturbed the fallen leaves, no crickets chirruped from their hidden safety … if there was anything alive out there, other than Archie—and Jughead, wherever he was—it was scared.

  The moon was still too obscured by the trees for him to see the ground, so Archie risked pulling out his cell phone, using the flashlight function to examine the earth at his feet. He saw where leaves had been swept out of the woods and onto the trail by careless feet, and the direction in which they’d been tracked, so he started walking. Trying to be stealthy, he shivered all over from more than just the deepening chill. Was Jughead coming out here to hunt the same grounds where he’d slaughtered those campers? Or was he planning to meet up with someone?