“You want me to what?” Sally asked.
“Jump in,” Grulg repeated.
“Why?”
“Cover scent. Grulg’s tribe not smell you.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said, pushing my way past her. “Stop being such a fucking princess.” I wasn’t too big on this plan either, but I could tolerate getting a little dirty if it would help us gain some leverage over Turd.
I jumped into the pungent smelling pit and began rolling around to coat myself.
When I was done, I got out and walked over to her.
“See? Was that so bad? A little mud won’t kill you.”
Sally simultaneously gave me both a look of pity and an eye-roll. “That’s not mud, moron.”
“It’s not?”
“No, stupid.”
“Tlunta smell good now,” Grulg commented. “Now she-Tlunta turn.”
“No fucking...” however, Sally didn’t get a chance to finish. I shoved her in mid-complaint. I take enough of her shit as it is. Now it was her turn.
* * *
After managing to convince Sally to not kill me (which we shall not recount here as it was both long and painful), Grulg led us back in the direction of his tribe. Soon, we could see more crude huts through the trees; however, I didn’t see any Sasquatches wandering amongst them.
“Others sleep, now. This way,” Grulg whispered, leading us toward one end of the makeshift village.
At the far end was a hut several times larger than the others. Skulls lined a crude walkway leading up to it. Grulg didn’t need to tell me this was Turd’s place. No matter the people or the culture, there were always those who had to flaunt their swag. Grulg took us on a roundabout way toward the rear of the hut, keeping us out of sight from the rest of the village.
Once at the back, Grulg lowered his voice so that we could barely hear it. “Turd inside recovering from battle. Stay quiet.”
Typically, when someone tells me there’s a turd waiting for me somewhere, I’m not too enthusiastic about going, but since the fate of the world was potentially resting on this...
Grulg reached over to the wall and pulled up a loose section of leaves. It made an opening just big enough for Sally and me to fit through. I gave her a shrug, then made my way inside, hoping against hope that I would make it back out again in one piece.
* * *
Ugh! And I thought we smelled bad. Forget a few air fresheners; this place would require a tanker truck full of Lysol before it smelled anywhere close to habitable. We emerged in a pantry of sorts. Crude shelves filled with wooden bowls lined the walls. I didn’t bother to look in any of them. I was pretty sure whatever they were filled with was still moving. I motioned for Sally to follow, and, staying low, I crept forward in the dark.
Though larger than the other huts, the construction was still primitive. We passed one foul smelling room; a large hole dug into the earth beneath it...no doubt Turd’s personal latrine. Hell, for all I know it could’ve been his bathtub too. A partition of sticks and leaves stood in front of us. Peering around it, I saw the main living area before me. Even in the gloom of the hut, I could see well and what I saw caused me to grit my teeth in anger.
Peeking around to look, Sally whispered, “Damn, Turd got game.”
Turd slept on a thick bed of moss off in one corner. Surrounding him, also sleeping, were several Sasquatch females. I highly doubted they were his sisters.
I turned back to Sally. “For someone whose mate just offed herself he looks...”
“Shhh!”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Just listen,” she whispered back to me.
I did for a moment. “I don’t hear...” but then I did. What the?
I tried to focus in on the sound. It was...music. Even odder, it was music that definitely did not belong here.
“Is that...Limp Bizkit?” I asked.
“Sounds like it to me,” Sally confirmed. She again peeked round the divider. After a second, she pulled back and said, “Look closely at Turd.”
I did as told. He still looked pretty battered from our battle the previous day. It definitely hadn’t done anything to make him look any less ugly; however, his breathing was strong, indicating he was just asleep. A few moments later, he let loose with a rippling fart, momentarily drowning out the music. Oh, yeah, the music. I looked closer. At first, I didn’t see anything, but then something caught my eye. It was a white...wire, it seemed. It crossed his chest, then separated into two, each one leading toward opposite sides of Turd’s head. The other end led to something that was stuck in one of the skulls strapped across his chest. I strained my eyes and that’s when I saw it, a little corner of white plastic in the mouth of the skull.
I pulled back and faced Sally. “Is it me, or does that fucker have an iPod?”
“And shitty taste in music,” she commented.
Ignoring her, I continued. “Aren’t these the same assholes who are trying to start a war with us because they hate technology?”
“Yep.”
“OK, thanks. Just trying to make sure I’m not the stupid one here.”
“Well...”
“Not helping, Sally,” I snarled, a wee bit louder than I should have.
Make that a lot louder than I should have. Suddenly there was a screech from the main room. I looked around the corner to see one of the females sitting upright and looking in our direction. She screamed again, rousing all of the tent’s occupants.
Sally and I were covered from head to toe in Bigfoot excrement, but that didn’t even begin to describe just how deep in shit we were.
The Great White North
I turned to tell Sally to run, but low and behold, she was already making her way back toward where we had come in. I took a split second to think bad thoughts in her direction before following her lead.
I emerged from the back of Turd’s abode to find Sally standing with Grulg.
“Go!” he whispered.
“What about yo...” I started to ask, but apparently Grulg was way ahead of me there.
“TLUNTA SPIES!” he screeched and then swung a meaty fist. It purposely went over my head and smashed into the closest tree, sending splinters flying.
I turned to run, but Sally hesitated for a moment. “Thanks, and sorry about this,” she quietly said to Grulg. Without further warning, she swung an uppercut, connecting squarely with Grulg’s groin. Eight feet of solid muscle or not, you get your nuts turned into mashed potatoes and you’re going down. Grulg was no exception. A high pitched keen came out of his mouth as he dropped to his knees, his hands cradling his pulverized privates. Once down, Sally grabbed his head and brought her knee up into it like a pint-sized pile driver. Grulg flew backwards and landed on his back, stunned.
“Now we go,” Sally said, then took off running.
“What the hell was that for!?” I yelled as I caught up to her.
“Keep your fucking voice down,” she hissed, running as quickly as the dense foliage would allow. “Just because they can’t smell us, doesn’t mean they’re deaf.”
“Fine,” I replied, lowering my tone. “Why’d you take down Grulg?”
“Don’t be an idiot your entire life. Grulg’s one of their warriors. There’s no way they’d let him get away with just pointing and saying they went that-a-way. I saved his life by kicking his ass and I’m sure he knows it.
“Did you really have to nail him in the balls? I mean...ouch.”
“I do whatever works, and that was the fastest, most believable way to knock him down. Now shut up and keep running.”
* * *
Some days I really don’t mind being a vampire. Don’t get me wrong, if I wasn’t an undead freak, I wouldn’t be drenched in shit, running for my life in a frozen foreign wasteland from a pack of giant monkeys. Since I am, though, at least there are some perks to the job. Superhuman speed, strength, and especially endurance are really awesome things to have when being pursued by angry monsters.
Sall
y and I ran aimlessly for what felt like miles. Hell, for all I know it was miles. It’s hard to tell when the only things you can see in any direction are trees and more trees. All I know is that eventually Sally slowed down. She motioned for me to zip it, then stood there listening for a few moments. Since her senses are more acute than mine, I was happy to let her do the honors. Besides which, if she made a mistake and we got caught, then at least I’d get to blame her before we were torn limb from limb. Sometimes it’s the little victories that make life worth living.
“I don’t hear anything,” she finally said.
“Awesome. Think we lost them?”
“Hard to say. These guys can be pretty quiet when they want to be. This is their backyard after all. The thing is I’m not entirely sure they were ever actually following us.”
“Grulg?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Makes sense. It doesn’t help him if we’re caught.”
“Not to mention we might rat him out if that happened, just to save our own asses.”
“No we wouldn’t.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said matter of factly. Say what you will about Sally, but she’s a survivor. At the very least, if she’s going down she’s taking everyone else with her.
I took a moment to look around. Endless forest stretched in all directions. Suddenly I found myself wishing I had joined the boy scouts that one summer like my parents had wanted, rather than just sitting in my bedroom playing Nintendo for two months straight.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“The woods,” Sally blithely answered. Yep, ask a stupid question...
“I meant do you have any idea where we are compared to, say, our camp?”
“Do I look like a fucking GPS to you?”
“Only if it stands for ‘gives people syphilis,’” I barked back. “Seriously, can’t you smell where the other vampires are or something?”
“All I can smell is shit, and since we’re covered with it that doesn’t exactly help us.”
“Speaking of which...” I pulled off my ski mask again. Gah! It was getting kind of hard to breath in that thing. Thank God for short Canadian days. The sky was already starting to darken, so we were probably OK. “Ah! That’s a bit better.”
“For you maybe, now I have to look at your face.”
“Hey, at least they didn’t see ours. Good thing we were covered up back there. Although you might want to ditch the hoodie. There’s still enough pink showing where it’d probably be easy to ID you.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s not like dry cleaning is really going to help it at this point.” She stripped it off (sadly revealing herself to be wearing a shirt underneath. Oh, well, one can dream), and tossed it into the bushes. “At least I can’t freeze to death.”
She did have a point. A human lost in the wilderness would be toast. A vampire, well the worst we’d probably have to deal with would be an extended walk...assuming of course we didn’t meet up with another angry moose.
* * *
And walk we did. Hours passed, or I assumed they did. I had left my cell phone back at the hut (not much good out here in zero bars land) and my watch, while supposedly waterproof, was apparently not shitproof. It had stopped working not too long after we took a nosedive into the Bigfoot latrine.
We tried mostly to go in a straight line. Doubling back wouldn’t help us, especially if we ran into any of Turd’s group. We wound up changing direction only once or twice after Sally caught a few promising scents (it was like hiking with the world’s cutest bloodhound). Unfortunately, they were all false alarms. The stench coming off of us was wrecking havoc with both of our noses. Fortunately, though, smell isn’t the only enhanced vampire sense.
As we walked in full darkness, Sally suddenly cocked her head to the side.
“Hear that?”
I listened. For a moment, there was only silence, but then my ears picked up a sound. It was distant, but definitely there.
“What is it?” I asked.
Of course, I got an eye-roll in return. “Did you spend your entire life indoors?”
“Oh, like you didn’t,” I countered.
“No, actually.”
“Dressing up like Sheena: Queen up the Jungle for clients doesn’t count.”
“Hey, at least I’ve been camping before.”
“Oh, yeah, when?” I demanded.
She opened her mouth to answer, but then hesitated. “Never mind,” she snapped.
“Hold on. Spill! When were you camping?”
“It’s not important...”
“Then I’ll just assume you’re full of shit.”
“Fine!” She rounded on me, causing me to back up a step. “I was a...Girl Scout, OK?”
That being answered, we continued on our way in respectful silence.
Oh, who am I kidding? I immediately started laughing my ass off.
“Sally the Girl Scout. That’s great.”
“It’s not that funny, asshole.”
“So did you go door to door selling your cookies?”
“Ignoring you now,” she replied and trudged ahead.
“Tell me, do they give out merit badges for lap dancing?” I was just about to let loose with a tirade of Girl Scout jokes when the sound became noticeably louder. Suddenly I realized what it was.
I caught up to Sally just as she stopped at the edge of a drop off. About twenty feet below us, a river roared past. It wasn’t particularly wide, but it was moving quickly.
“This’ll do,” Sally said.
“For what?” I asked.
“Bath time,” was all the answer I heard before being shoved forward into empty space.
* * *
FUCK ME! The water was cold as in just a few degrees above freezing. I surfaced, and immediately began screaming every obscenity in my arsenal (a not insignificant amount). There came was a loud splash. I turned back and saw Sally surface about thirty feet behind me. I opened my mouth to voice my opinion on things, when I suddenly slammed into a rock. It felt about as good as it sounds. Unfortunately, before I could do much more than ponder my newly smashed skull, the current carried me into another rock, then another.
This went on for about five minutes or so, the river playing human pinball with my body. Fortunately, it’s very hard for vampires to drown, that whole being dead thing coming into play. Sadly, there’s nothing wrong with my nerve endings. The only good part was that I was soon too numb from the cold to feel myself being pummeled.
At last, the river became both wider and deeper. The pace of the current slackened and within a few more minutes, I found myself treading water. The sound of the roaring water started to fade, and silence settled in. I looked around to get my bearings and saw the shore about ten yards away. Teeth chattering, I began to paddle for it when something touched my leg.
I stopped and looked around. Nothing but quiet...well that and a whole lot of freezing water. Must have been a...it did it again. What the hell? Was there some hungry fish debating whether I’d make a good meal? Do they have alligators in Canada? I decided that it was best not to stick around to find out. I began to swim for the shore...and that was when something grabbed my leg and pulled me under.
Frozen Wasteland
“Gee, Bill, I had no idea you could sound so much like a little girl,” Sally said, standing at the edge of the water wringing out her hair.
“That wasn’t funny,” I replied, teeth still chattering.
“And yet here I am laughing. Who did you think it was?”
“I don’t know. But when you’ve seen Jaws as many times as I have, you get a little nervous about things in the water.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Fine, so you got your little payback from earlier. Happy now?”
“You think I shoved you into that river just for some petty revenge?”
“You didn’t?”
“Well OK, I kind of did,” she replied, smiling. Thank God she looked
really cute wet; otherwise I might’ve had to slug her. “But, it was also necessary.”
“Define necessary.”
“Take a breath, genius. Notice how we don’t smell like a pig pen any more? Now I might have a chance in hell of catching a scent and getting us back.”
“Hopefully you can do it before I freeze solid. Aren’t you cold?”
The Mourning Woods - 03 Page 22