Guy grunts at her.
I look at him and he just stares forward, petting his mustache.
“I think she wants you to play with her,” Krall says.
Guy grunts at him.
“Can you help me?” she asks.
Guy thinks about it.
“No,” he says.
She is confused by his answer.
“Why don’t you just play with her?” I ask.
He looks at me. “I know nothing of rock mazes.”
“You stack rocks up and then let squirrels run through,” she says. “Sarah used to help me make them all the time when she was alive.”
My brother glares at her. “Do you have a squirrel?”
The girl shakes her head.
“Then how do you expect them to run through a maze?”
The girl looks down at her feet, rocking her weight against the side of the truck.
“Guy,” I say to him. “Just play with her.”
He grunts.
The girl doesn’t have an argument for him. He just stares her down until she gets uncomfortable standing there and wanders away.
The women pack up the camp and get ready to move on. Slayer removes Krall and I from the back of the truck, but she leaves Guy.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“We’re on the hunt,” she says.
She takes us to the motorcycles, where Pippi and the other biker girls are suiting up.
“You get to ride into battle with us,” Pippi says to me. “You have the honor of being my human shield.”
That is all they say to us. We stand there in their group as they prep themselves. While they speak to each other, I study their personalities and listen for their names.
It seems these eight women are the biker warriors. They are the only ones with motorcycles, so they act as if they are an elite squad of their army. They are the knights of the Warriors of the Wild.
Talon is their leader. She rides on the back of a two-person bike. The driver of her bike is called Mars, a dirty brown wolf girl with gray patches, who wears goggles and a spiked helmet.
Besides Slayer and Pippi, Talon has four other soldiers under her command.
There is Casper, the wolf with many piercings that we met last night. She wears blue jeans and is topless except for a small metal plate strapped to her chest. Her long saw-toothed blade is draped over her neck.
There is Athena, who is only slightly more wolf-like than Pippi, who has blonde hair that has been dyed several different colors. Green, pink, blue, and dark purple splotches cover the hair on her head and back. Dreaded purple spikes of hair run down the spine of her back. She also has tattoos all over her body. Her clothes are made of black ripped-up fishnets that do little to hide her sun-burnt breasts.
Then there is Venus, a girl who is almost as hairy as Slayer, but she doesn’t have any hair in her face. She doesn’t even have a dog nose or whiskers yet. Because she is covered in so much fur, she doesn’t have a need for clothes. However, she has dyed her fur a swamp green color and has a pistol holster strapped around her waist.
Then there is Hyena. She is the weirdest of the wolf girls. She isn’t completely covered in hair, but where she does have fur it is frizzled and splotchy. Her tan fur is spotted with dark brown patches. She doesn’t look like she is turning into a wolf at all. It looks like she is turning into a hyena. Although she is standing around in the nude when I first see her, she straps jagged rusty armor onto her breasts, crotch, and shoulders before going into battle.
Talon, Mars, Slayer, Pippi, Casper, Athena, Venus, and Hyena; these are the elite fighters in their army.
Nova is not a member of this team. She is with the armored vehicles, sitting on the roof of a car with a crossbow on her back, sharpening a sickle-shaped blade. When she sees me standing with the biker girls, she jumps off the car and approaches us.
Pippi puts me on her motorcycle and straps me to her back. When Nova arrives, Pippi just ignores her.
“Why are you taking him with you?” Nova asks.
Pippi straps black sun-blocking goggles to her face.
Nova looks at Slayer as she straps Krall to her back. “They are going to just slow you down.”
“The Fry Guys are less likely to shoot at us if we have hostages on our backs,” Slayer says.
“They don’t care about hostages,” Nova says, loading her crossbow. “They’ll just think they’re putting them out of their misery.”
“Well,” Slayer says, “if that’s the case, at least they’ll shield our backs from the gunfire.”
Nova rests her crossbow over her shoulder, trying to come off as concerned for the women rather than us. “They’re going to restrict your movements. They could get you killed.”
Pippi turns on her bike and revs her engine to drown out Nova’s voice. Pretending she’s not even there, Pippi rolls her bike back and points it in Nova’s direction. As the biker girls take off, Pippi shoves Nova out of the way as she passes her, knocking the crossbow out of her hands. Slayer spits at her feet and laughs as we ride on to the head of the motorcade.
On top of a hill, overlooking a road about two miles outside of McDonaldland. My arms have been pressed against Pippi’s furry flea-ridden back for over an hour, and the itchiness is driving me insane. Our sweat dripping together in the hot morning sun is only making it more irritating. I count the freckles on her upper arms to keep my mind off of the itching, but there are just too many freckles to count. The back of her head smells like french fry oil.
Slayer and Pippi have been separated. They seem to be trouble when they are together, so during battles it makes sense for them to be apart. Pippi is with Talon, probably so that she can be kept in line. Talon and Mars are on their bike next to us. And on our other side is Venus, the green-haired wolf girl.
The rest of the biker knights are on the other side of the road, hiding behind a pile of old rusted out vehicles. The rest of the motorcade is down the road, hidden in the trees.
Mars and Venus toss a rubber blue ball back and forth to each other. They try to catch it in their mouths and then throw it back. Mars, whose dog-faced mouth is more developed than Venus’s, catches it every time. Venus, on the other hand, misses every time, but her reflexes are sharp enough to catch the ball with her hand after it bounces off of her face.
“I’m going to get the most kills,” Pippi tells them.
Venus laughs at her. “You never get the most kills. Talon does.”
“I bet Slayer I would get more than her,” she says. “I bet I get more than you, too.”
As the ball bounces off of Venus’s lips, she asks, “How much?”
“Half of my share of the catch,” she says.
“You’re on,” Venus says.
The more I look at Venus, the more she stops resembling a wolf girl and closer resembles a girl in a fuzzy green teddy bear suit. The kind of outfit a mother would put on her baby during McHalloween.
We hear the electric engines of McDonaldland vehicles coming up the road. The women turn on their motorcycles. All of them but Pippi, whose motorcycle can’t seem to start.
“Ready girls?” Talon asks, then she goes down the hill.
Pippi slams her heel down on the kickstarter. It rumbles for a second and then dies. She kick starts it again, and it dies.
Venus sticks her tongue out at her and then laughs as she rides down the hill after Talon.
“Damn it!” Pippi cries in a pissy tone.
She kick starts it again. This time it slowly gurgles, but doesn’t die. She revs it up, the high-pitched motor roaring in my ears. Then we ride down the hill, far behind the others.
This caravan of Fry Guy vehicles is a bit larger than the one I was transported in. There are three armored vehicles and two McVans. They must have arrested a lot more mutant men this time.
Slayer and the other knights reach the caravan first. The two with machine guns open fire on the armored vehicle in the middle, between the two vans. When Pippi reaches the ro
ad, the caravan has already passed and Slayer has already taken out the gunner on the middle armored car.
“Shit!” Pippi says, as she sees the man’s body roll off of the roof of the vehicle. “No fair!”
The wind blows hard against my face as Pippi speeds up to catch the rear of the caravan. In front of us, Mars and Venus fire at the rear armored vehicle. Behind us, a pack of Warrior cars join in the attack.
Talon stands up on the back of Mars’ motorcycle. She pulls the two axes off of her back, holding one in each hand. They are like wood-chopping axes that have been sharpened to a razor’s edge. Mars fires at the gunner in the red Fry Guy uniform, using her machinegun fixed to the front of her bike. The gunner is protected behind a bulletproof shield, but her bullets make it impossible for him to fire his own gun.
Once Mars gets up to the side of the vehicle, Talon leaps off of the bike and runs up the trunk of the car. The gunner fires sloppily at Talon, mostly hitting his own vehicle, as she charges him. Talon swings one axe into the gun, splitting the barrel down the middle, and slashes the other into the side of his head.
As Pippi catches up, we ride along the side of the armored car. Talon leaps onto the roof of the vehicle and chops one of her axes into the windshield. The car swerves. As the passenger of the vehicle leans out of the window and points a gun at Talon, Venus pulls out a .50 Magnum from the holster on her waist and blows his face off.
“You bitch!” Pippi cries.
Venus looks at Pippi, lifts two fingers, and sticks out her tongue.
With only the driver left, Talon swings her axe into the driver’s side window hitting him in the shoulder. She swings again and it cuts all the way through his wrist. Blood sprays from his arm out of the window, raining on Pippi and me as we close in.
As Pippi rides us past, I look at the driver. He looks back at me. His severed hand is still attached to the steering wheel, trying to drive the car. Then Talon jumps into the vehicle with him. She snaps his neck and takes over the controls.
Pippi tries to catch up to Slayer. She rides past the first van, and fires a burst of rounds right into the cab. Pippi howls as the van spins out.
“That’s at least one for me,” she says.
But the van straightens itself out and continues after her.
“I don’t think you got him,” I say.
She lets out a frustrated growl and hits the gas.
The van drives up behind us. I can feel Pippi’s muscles tense, and the hair stands up on her back, as the passenger riding shotgun releases a spray of gunfire. Pippi yelps and crouches down, so that my body will shield her from the fire. The bullets miss, but scatter ahead of us. Two of them enter the back of the wolf girl riding ahead of us. It is Mars. I see the blood pop from her dirty fur and she slumps forward. Still alive, just barely hanging on. Her spiked metal helmet rolling from side to side as if she’s trying her hardest to stay conscious.
Pippi rides up alongside Mars, to put her between us and the shooter. Mars just looks at us with a pissed off face as the gunner opens fire again, tearing through her back and the side of her face. Her bike topples over and her body is crushed under the wheels of the van.
Pippi doesn’t show an ounce of guilt. Besides being a good shield, Mars’ body also acts as a good speed bump. After running her over, the van is slowed down too much to be a threat to Pippi.
The second armed vehicle is still standing. Slayer and her crew killed the gunner and moved on to the vehicle in the front of the line. The passenger of this vehicle has taken over the gunner station on the roof and is now firing at Venus as she comes alongside.
“No you don’t, bitch,” Pippi says, as she speeds up to make the kill before her rival does.
Pippi fires sloppily at the back of the car, taking out the trunk and the bumper, but missing the gunman. She fires until her gun clicks. Out of bullets. She slides the gun between my arms and her waist, as if I’m some kind of human holster. Stretching her leg out to the side, she reaches for three throwing knives that are sheathed to her thigh. With four fingernails, she is able to draw all three knives.
She rides in closer and tosses a knife into the gunner’s ribs. He cries out and releases the gun. As he pulls the knife from his side, a bullet blows a hole through his chest just a few inches above his knife wound. He folds over and dies.
Pippi looks at Venus and yells, “I got him first, bitch! That was my kill!”
Venus laughs and flips her off.
“He was still breathing when I finished him off,” Venus says.
Before Pippi can argue back, Venus speeds up to the other girls ahead of them.
Pippi rides up to the driver of the armed car and tosses a knife at him. The knife hits the car door, piercing all the way through the metal shielding. The driver looks at the knife with a “Holy shit” face. Pippi’s wolf blood must have turned her into one strong bitch to be able to throw a knife through metal like that. No wonder she’s able to toss me around like a rag doll, even though she’s half my size.
Her last knife goes through the open window, misses the driver, and flies out the other side.
“Fucking asshole,” Pippi says, flipping him off.
She doesn’t have anything else to kill him with so she just spits at him. The driver swerves to hit her with his car, but she dodges by riding the bike into the dirt on the side of the road.
From behind, one of the Warrior’s armed vehicles closes in. An arrow pierces the back tire of the Fry Guy car and he spins out of control. He crashes into a tree and goes through the windshield.
Pippi catches up to Slayer, riding up alongside her.
“Give me a clip,” Pippi says.
“Screw you,” Slayer says.
“I’m out of ammo,” she says.
Slayer shakes her head and digs into the pack on the side of her bike. While she digs, I look at Krall sitting on the back of her bike. He’s looking at me with a smile on his face. It’s like he is trying to tell me something. He moves his hands a little, showing me that his wrists are no longer bound. He’s managed to untie himself.
I nod my head. I’m not sure what he’s planning, but he probably wants to use this attack as a chance to escape.
Slayer tosses the clip at Pippi. “That’s why you should rent out your Meat. You’d get plenty of extra ammo.”
“Fuck no,” Pippi says.
Slayer laughs at her.
Then a bullet hits Slayer in the stomach and she falls from her bike. No longer attached to her, Krall doesn’t fall with her. He catches the handles with his extra hands and balances himself. Like a spider, he inches his way up the bike with his eight limbs.
Pippi’s face is in shock as she sees Krall riding next to her. She quickly tries to reload her gun, but Krall stops and turns around. He speeds off in the opposite direction.
I look back. Instead of fleeing into the woods, Krall is racing toward Slayer. She is in the middle of the road, still alive, holding her stomach and trying to stand up.
The Fry Guy van barrels toward Slayer, aiming to run her over. The car Talon is driving is on the van’s side, slamming into it. Talon doesn’t see Slayer in the road up ahead. If the van doesn’t hit her, then Talon surely will.
As Slayer gets to her feet, Krall rides at her. He snatches her off the road with his two left arms and cuts to the right, dodging the oncoming vehicles by mere inches. He rides off with her into the woods.
Up ahead, howling fills the road. The giant wolves come out of the trees and attack the lead Fry Guy vehicle. The four biker girls up there turn around and head back in our direction. Talon and the other Warrior vehicles slow down and then stop, allowing the Fry Guy van to continue on its way. It won’t make it past the wolves.
Pippi pulls off the side of the road, looking back. She turns around and rides us into the woods, to go after Slayer and Krall. I see Talon flag down Casper, the knight with the piercings. She gets on the back of her bike and points in our direction, ordering her to follow. Talon must
have seen Krall escaping into the woods with one of her soldiers. She probably doesn’t know that he just saved that soldier’s life.
When we track them down, the bike is tossed into a thicket of weeds. Slayer is unconscious on the ground, her spiked leather jacket unzipped to reveal small black furry breasts with red nipples poking out of the fur. Krall is tending to her, pushing hard on the wound with two of his hands, as he heats a knife with a McCigarette lighter.
“Get away from her,” Pippi says, pointing the gun at him, with me still strapped to her back. “Drop the knife.”
Krall doesn’t obey.
“If I don’t stop the bleeding she is going to die,” he says.
Pippi keeps quiet after he says that. She uncuffs me from her torso and goes to Slayer’s side. At least there is someone in this world that Pippi cares about.
We watch as Krall cauterizes the wound. The smell of burnt hair and flesh fills the trees. By the time Talon and Casper arrive, Krall is already finishing up.
Talon immediately recognizes what is going on.
“How is she?” Talon asks.
“She’ll be fine,” Krall says. “The bullet missed her major organs.”
“Were you able to get it out?” she asks.
“Didn’t need to,” Krall says. “It passed through her.”
Krall lifts his shirt to show a dark red hole in his own belly. Talon glances at his wound and then moves away from him to see to her fallen soldier. Slayer is beginning to regain consciousness. Krall comes to me and squeezes on his wound like a zit.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He nods. “It’s not very deep.”
He squeezes until the bullet pops out into his hand. It barely went in an inch. A line of blood leaks down his abdomen. As he lights the knife to cauterize his own wound, Slayer gets to her feet. She staggers over to him and rips the knife out of his hand and puts it back into its sheath on her leg.
“Pick up my bike, Meat,” she says to him.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland Page 9