by Jeff Strand
"I hope you die!" Ally shouted. "I hope both of you die!"
"I need you to calm down, Ally."
"Just take me home!"
"We will, I promise, as soon as we—"
"Take me home now!"
Had her voice deepened? It sounded like it might have deepened. That didn't necessarily signify that anything bad was about to happen, but it was a bit unnerving.
"Take me home! Take me home! Take me home!"
Ally growled.
Then she snarled.
Then she growled again.
Then her face began to change.
And then George suddenly saw the merit in Lou's previous suggestion that they just drive away from this whole mess.
CHAPTER SIX
Those Who Do Not Learn From The Past...
Since he was driving on an icy road in the snow, Lou was not able to devote his full attention to the transformation that was happening behind him. But he caught glimpses of tan fur, claws, and teeth in the rear-view mirror, and George was helpfully providing exposition as he screamed.
"Jesus Christ! She's a werewolf! She's a werewolf!"
There was a lot of traffic on this four-lane street and Lou was in the left lane, so he couldn't just slam the brakes and scramble into the back to help his partner. He started to swerve into the right lane, got honked at by a jeep he almost hit, and returned to the left.
"Do something, Lou!" George shouted. "She's gonna bite my face off!"
Lou held the steering wheel in place with his handless arm while he reached over and popped open the glove compartment with his right hand. He took out the tranquilizer gun, but it wasn't loaded, so he tossed it onto the passenger seat and grabbed one of the darts, while simultaneously trying to keep his eye on the road and monitor the struggle in the back.
"The tranquilizer gun! Get the tranquilizer gun!" George shouted. He could be forgiven for not noticing what Lou was doing up front, given the circumstances.
Lou couldn't load the gun while driving the van. He tried once again to swerve into the right lane and again got honked at. He'd always envisioned Minnesota as this desolate wasteland with a car every twenty miles, but apparently that wasn't the case. He wasn't going to be able to multi-task right now, so he'd just have to focus on being a safe driver.
"Shit!" said George, offering no additional context.
Lou flipped on his turn signal, waited for the lane to clear, and then finally moved into the right lane. Then he slammed on the brakes, since the cars directly in front of him were all stopped at a red light.
The tires screeched and the van slid forward, finally stopping a few inches away from the rear bumper of the car ahead.
The car behind them struck the van. Not hard. Probably just a minor fender bender. Still, this wasn't a particularly convenient time to have somebody walking up to exchange insurance information.
Lou spun around. Ally was a full werewolf.
She wasn't a huge werewolf. George was still bigger than her, as far as Lou could tell with both of them thrashing and rolling around. Like Ivan, she hadn't changed into an actual wolf. She retained her human limbs, though they were now covered with fur and had scary-looking claws. She didn't have the long snout of a wolf, but she certainly had the teeth of one.
George punched Ally in the face.
Her head flew back and a thick rope of spittle hit the side of the van. She snarled and opened her mouth wide. George punched her in the throat before she could sink her teeth into his face.
Lou loaded the dart.
Ally clutched at her throat and made wolfish choking noises. George shoved her off of him. She struck the side of the van, right where the spit had landed, but recovered immediately and grabbed George's foot by the ankle.
Lou took careful aim as Ally dragged George toward her. If he'd wanted to shoot George, well, he'd have an excellent shot, but since he wanted to shoot Ally, his available shot was total crap. He moved the tranquilizer gun to the left just as George was dragged in the same direction.
"Get out of the way!" said Lou.
"I'm trying!"
"I need a clear shot!"
Ally slashed at George with her claws, ripping open the front of his jacket but not, as far as Lou could tell, George's chest.
"Shoot her, for God's sake!" George shouted.
Lou had a decent shot at her arm. Not good enough to risk wasting the dart. He'd always been a knife guy, not a gun guy, so even at a close distance like this he wasn't comfortable with a moving target.
Somebody knocked on the passenger-side window.
It was a tall beefy guy. Probably the guy who'd hit the van. He looked pretty upset. As far as Lou could tell, his vantage point didn't allow him to see that Lou was pointing a tranquilizer gun into the back of the van, although the shaking and snarling and shouting was probably arousing suspicion.
Lou waved him away.
The guy knocked on the window, more insistently.
"Go away," Lou told him, politely.
That seemed to piss the guy off. He pounded on the window a couple more times, and then—wait, was he really going to open the door?
Yep, he threw open the door. "What the hell is the matter with...?"
Lou wasn't sure if the man reacted to the werewolf snarls that were no longer muffled by the van door, or the fact that he now had a tranquilizer dart pointed at him, but his mouth dropped open much wider than necessary to complete his question about what the hell was the matter with Lou. He stood there for a half-second, raised his hands as if being arrested, then hurried away.
Lou pointed the gun back into the rear of the van. He still didn't have a good shot. Ally tore out another piece of George's jacket, and this time Lou thought he might have seen some blood.
George bellowed. Yep, there was blood on his chest, though no intestines.
Lou considered climbing into the back to get a better angle, but rejected that idea as suicidal.
"Get her in front of you!" said Lou.
George responded. He'd probably said, "I'm trying! I'm trying!" but his words weren't very coherent.
"Dammit, George! Push her!"
Lou got maybe half of what George said next. Enough to figure out that he was saying, "Just throw it to me, you twit!" The "twit" part was definite, anyway. Not a usual part of George's vocabulary.
He tossed the gun to George, who caught it.
Lou immediately turned back around in his seat. It wouldn't do any good to have a knocked-out werewolf if the cops showed up before he could drive away. Well, it would do some good from the perspective of George possibly not getting torn apart, but still, it would've been a lot of moral anguish for nothing if they ended up in prison.
The light had turned green, probably a few moments ago since there were no longer any cars in front of them, so Lou floored the gas pedal. The tires spun for a second, then the van shot forward. He raced across the intersection. There were plenty of places he could've pulled off if he hadn't just been involved in the fender bender, but now they had to flee the scene.
Hopefully George could get the situation under control by himself.
George screamed. It didn't sound much like the situation was under control.
* * *
"Just throw it to me, you twit!" George shouted. "Twit" was not the word he'd meant to use or even a word he'd ever said before, as far as he could remember, but when a werewolf was raking its claws across your skin and drawing blood, it was hard to vocalize more than the screams of pain.
For somebody whose lycanthropy supposedly hadn't manifested itself yet, Ally had transformed pretty goddamned efficiently. Had she been lying? Did she go out on werewolf romps every weekend?
At the moment, it didn't matter. The slashes across George's chest stung like hell and might require stitches but weren't anything that would cause him to bleed to death. If she got in another good swipe, or got him across the neck, it might be a different story.
Lou was no marksman and it m
ade sense that he'd wait for the perfect opportunity, but still, George felt like his partner should've been able to squeeze off at least one decent shot by now. Didn't matter anymore. Lou tossed the tranquilizer gun to him and George caught it.
Then Ally knocked it out of his hand. George's wrist went numb, but there was no jutting bone or spurting blood. The tranquilizer gun fell to the floor as the van rocketed forward, putting Ally off balance. George took advantage of that moment and punched her in the stomach with his non-numb hand, as hard as he could, doubling her over.
Though he'd assumed that she'd gone totally feral, knocking a gun out of his hand wasn't an animal thing to do. Could he reason with her? Ivan had retained his human personality in his wolf-form, so maybe they could just talk this out.
"Ally!" he shouted. "Ally! Listen to me! We're trying to help you!"
She leapt on him and took a vicious swipe at his face. An inch closer and he'd be missing a nose.
"You can fight this!" George insisted. "Just try!"
Granted, there probably wasn't a lot of motivation for Ally to fight the change at this particular moment. Tearing George to shreds would be in her best interest. But if she was a peace-loving teenaged girl at heart who didn't want to hurt anybody, and there was part of her resisting the murderous urge...
Ally put back her head and let out a howl. It was not the kind of howl that George could translate as, Hi, George, I'm doing everything I can to control my inner beast, so just be patient for a little while longer. It was more like a howl of victory right before devouring her prey.
George punched her again. He wasn't sure if he'd feel guilty about this later. She rolled off of him. Now she was in the perfect position for Lou to shoot her with the tranquilizer dart, if he'd still had it.
Lou took a sharp turn to the left, eliciting a couple of honks. The tranquilizer gun slid back within George's grasp, and he snatched it up. He pointed it at Ally and pulled the trigger.
The van suddenly tilted as it headed down a steep hill, messing up George's aim. The dart flew past Ally's neck, missing by so little that George swore he saw her fur sway.
Then it struck Lou in the shoulder.
Aw, shit.
How fast did these darts work?
Lou plucked the dart out of his shoulder and looked back at them. His eyes rolled to the top of his head and he flopped over in his seat.
Ally pounced upon George. This should have distracted him from the fact that he was now in the back of a driverless van that was rolling down a steep icy hill, but it didn't, not entirely.
There was another dart up front. Other useful items up front included the steering wheel and the brake pedal, none of which were likely to be accessible before the van smashed into another vehicle or struck the curb and flipped onto its side, taking out a few innocent pedestrians. It was probably best for his mental health that George couldn't actually see where the van was headed.
Ally made another close but unsuccessful attempt to bite off his nose. He tried to jab his thumb into her eye. He didn't want to cause her any permanent injury, but he also didn't want to die a gruesome death, and right now his survival instinct trumped his concerns about disfiguring her. It didn't matter, since his thumb missed, and then narrowly missed getting bitten off.
He punched her once more. These blows were undoubtedly hurting his fist more than the were-girl. Still, each one seemed to stun her long enough to keep her from tearing him apart in the next moment.
The van was picking up speed.
Lots of speed.
At any second George expected to hear the crunch of something human underneath the tires.
"Ally! We have to stop the van or we're both going to die!"
Ally gave no indication that she understood him, or at least that she cared about his urgent message.
"Ally, please! I don't want to die like this! Neither do you! We need to work together!"
Ally gnashed her teeth.
George was surprised that they hadn't crashed into something yet. It was going to really, really hurt when they did.
* * *
Lou opened his eyes.
Where was he?
Oh, yeah, in the van.
What was happening in the van?
Oh, yeah, George was fighting a werewolf in the back.
Lou sat up. His vision was blurry. As far as he could tell, nobody was driving the van. Was that his job? He was pretty sure it was.
Why was the van still moving if nobody was driving?
It was going too fast for safety.
Lou was sleepy.
So sleepy.
He knew that he should be doing something important, something related to the van, especially since there was a very large truck up ahead that George might not know about, but the darkness overtook him again and he toppled back over and went to sleep.
* * *
George doubted he had time to overpower Ally and then climb into the front of the van so that he could steer them away from what he assumed was certain death, so he continued his attempts to reason with her.
"Ally! Ally! Can you hear me?"
She tried to chomp off his ear.
"Ally, I need you to—!"
George was not entirely certain what happened next, although it definitely involved the van colliding with something very large. It wasn't a head-on collision, because the van began to spin—until it struck something else. All of the windows shattered, filling the back of the van with light as George and Ally tumbled backwards and slammed into the rear door. Ally struck her head; George struck the door with the entire left side of his body.
With a groan, George sat up. At least the van wasn't...no, actually, it was still rolling down the hill.
Through the broken rear window, he could see that their second collision had been with a grey sedan that now had a crumpled front hood. As they rolled further, he saw that the van had originally hit a U-Haul truck. If they'd hit it straight on, he, Lou, and Ally would probably all be dead now, instead of dead a few moments from now.
George prayed that Lou was still alive. He couldn't see any blood up front, but nor could he hear Lou snoring.
Though Ally seemed stunned she remained conscious. George kicked her in the head to try to change that. She tried to bite his foot. He kicked her again.
He glanced up front to make sure the van wasn't seconds away from crashing into another vehicle. They'd rolled into the opposite lane, and the snowplow coming toward them did not give him a warm happy feeling.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Crash
Ally's eyes were still open but she wasn't actively trying to kill George anymore, so he decided that his best move was to focus on stopping the van.
He started to crawl toward the front seats, which is when he discovered just how much his body hurt. Though no bones were broken, as far as he could tell, he knew he'd be covered with grotesque bruises, and the agony from merely crawling the length of a van was almost unbearable. In the morning he'd barely be able to move, if there was a morning for him.
He was also pretty sure he was leaving a trail of blood along the floor, though he didn't look back to verify. He hadn't felt this bad since the last time he dealt with a werewolf.
George made it to the front seats and reached over Lou for the steering wheel. Nope. His arms weren't long enough. He climbed between the seats, noting that the snowplow was trying to change lanes to avoid the van but was not doing so quickly because, after all, it was a snowplow.
Sure, it was pushing a large pile of snow in front of it, but that wouldn't make this a well-cushioned, fluffy impact.
George grabbed the steering wheel and spun it to the right. The tires screeched and the van went off the road and into a driveway, narrowly missing a tree, two snowmen, and a parked car.
The van did hit the other parked car, though.
George felt as if his body were ripped in two at the waist. Fortunately, the seats kept him from hurtling straight into the dashboard and s
plattering the contents of his skull. Lou rolled off the front seat.
At least the van had stopped now.
George put his hand on Lou's neck. There was still a pulse. Thank God.
And now Ally's snarling had resumed. She was crawling toward him, teeth bared, claws extended.
Tranquilizer gun. He needed the tranquilizer gun.
No, wait, he'd dropped that in the back. He couldn't remember if it was while he was fighting Ally or during one of the crashes, but either way, the gun was inaccessible.
The snowplow continued on its merry way past the house. Really? The guy wasn't going to stop to see if everything was okay? What a dick.
George looked around for something he could throw at Ally. Nothing was available except maybe a handful of safety glass.
Screw it. George scooped up a handful of glass and threw it into Ally's face. It was a damned good throw. He wasn't sure if he actually got her in the eyes, but she turned her head and stopped moving toward him.
That wouldn't keep her away for long.
Should he continue trying to reason with her, or did that just make him look stupid? Could he look any stupider at this point?
Ally suddenly seemed to realize that the windows were broken. She scurried over to one and poked her head outside.
Crap. If she tried to squeeze through, she could probably make it. Then he'd have a crazed werewolf on the loose, possibly one that might go on a killing spree. Again.
"Hey!" he shouted. She ignored him and continued to push through the window, apparently not bothered by the glass on the edges of the frame. George's first instinct was to lunge forward and try to grab her leg...but was that the best idea, looking at the big picture? How many innocent lives would he save by getting mauled to death before she escaped?
Better plan: get the dart, get the gun, shoot the wolf.
In his current state of agony, George would have preferred moving at a leisurely pace, like that of a ninety-seven-year-old invalid, but the situation didn't permit that, so he climbed halfway into the passenger seat and grabbed the dart out of the glove compartment as fast as he could. Oh, yeah, he'd definitely be paying for that in the morning.