Carnivores

by Richard Poche

  “You see that?” Spinks said. “Chivalry is dead. You open a door for a pretty lady and you get no thank you.”

  Lita plopped down in the back seat, the chip on her shoulder the size of a city block. “Let's get it over with.”

  “Always like to be in charge, right, girl?”

  “That's right,” she said.

  “What do you know about this guy?” Spinks showed her the picture of Pastor K

  “Nothing,” she said, looking out of the window.

  “Take another look,” he demanded.

  Rolling her eyes, she looked at the photo, bugging out her eyes in an exaggerated fashion.

  “Never seen him before,” she said. “Oh wait. Lemme guess. He was murdered?”

  “Oh, so you do know him.”

  “I watch the news,” looked out the window again. She found it easier to talk to the glass.

  “Informed citizen. I like that,” Spinks said. “He was known to frequent these parts for cheap pussy. Seeing that you're the number one provider in this parts in that regard, I figured I'd start with you.”

  Lita glowered in anger. “Fuck you,” she muttered under breath.

  “He had a bunch of your pictures on his computer.”

  “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

  Spinks looked at her through the rear view mirror. She caught his reflection. He tried to read her thoughts by the expression in her eyes. But like most broken souls, her eyes were turned inwards into herself. Lita would give nothing away and she looked out the window again.

  “A lot diseases out there,” Spinks said. “You letting all these scum-sucking losers get all up in your world. For what? Two hundred bucks. Or is it a hundred? The older you get the more of a discount you gotta give.”

  “Are we done?”

  Spinks nodded his head. “Get the fuck outta here.”

  Lita exited the vehicle without shutting the door.

  “I'll be seeing you soon, missy!” he called out to Lita.

  The girl continued to walk faster until she accelerated into a light jog.

  “I know you're lying,” Spinks whispered to himself as he watched Lita disappear into the night.

  “They're eating people!” Ian Tannenbaum shouted above the protesters. Dressed in a black hoodie and carrying a sign that said “They're here!” he blended in with the rest of the crowd. He had a nervous nature about him and had eyes that looked like they had been color-bleached to a pale blue.

  They arrested him earlier in the week but he would not let that deter him. He had a message of his own to bring forth.

  “Black lives matter!” screamed the crowd in unison.

  “It's the wolves!” Tannenbaum shouted back as he followed a crowd of about forty people as they marched their way into downtown Oakland.

  “They don't care about the truth,” Tannenbaum screamed. “They're keeping it from us! People are disappearing!”

  “That's right!” shouted a woman next to him.

  “They're eating people!”

  “Eating people?” the young woman said to her friend next to her. “What's this fool talking about?”

  “They're eating people!” Tannenbaum continued. “People are vanishing. Homeless vets are missing. Why? Because of the wolves!”

  The two women shrugged their shoulders. “Welcome to Oakland,” one of them said and they started laughing.

  “You are all blind!” Tannenbaum said. “They'll eat you all alive! There are shape-shifters among us. They change their bodies at will. When the full moon is out! That is when the murders begin! Read the papers! Connect the dots!”

  “You need to cut with that bullshit, dude!” a young black woman said. “This is serious shit. Don't be coming here with all that bullshit. This is about peaceful protest. Making a change. Not about your crazy ass bullshit.”

  “The police are ignorant!”

  “There you go!”

  “They need silver bullets!”

  “Get the fuck outta here,” the woman said, dismissing Tannenbaum an upraised middle finger with blood red nail polish.

  “You can't change animal nature!” Tannenbaum yelled. “This is a vicious, hostile, frightening manifestation of evil. They have eyes that look like death itself. Claws that can slice through steel! We cannot stop them by ourselves! We have to band together!”

  Frustrated, he threw his placard down.

  “Damn, they some crazy folk out here,” another passerby said as she witnessed Tannenbaum's tantrum.

  “Cops aren't the problem! It's the werewolves! The wolves are the evil!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” another black woman yelled out at him.

  Tannenbaum kicked the dirt. He knew he would encounter skepticism. He wasn't that dumb. But he just wanted to be heard. This was his discovery. He saw what he saw and he wanted to be heard.

  Ian Tannenbaum knew the wolves were real.

  He heard a howl in the distance. At first, he thought it might be a party streamer coming from the demonstrators.

  Then he heard it again.

  Walking down the street, he saw three Hispanic men in front of him, standing still. They eyeballed him down.

  Then he saw the wolf tattoos on their arms. Seeking safety in numbers, he jogged back toward the black women that told him to shut the fuck up, blending in with their step and chant.

  “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” he screamed.

  When he looked back, the men were gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hank made small talk with a few of the demonstrators. Some had come from as far away as Washington. Oakland had become the centerpiece for the protest movement and Hank felt some pride in that. He had organized a few demonstrations online. He had done it for Miranda, however. She had spearheaded some of the protests herself. He liked her passion-filled diatribes against the police because the police had killed his own father years earlier.

  She played on that during their conversations. She wanted him on “their side.”

  Hank and Miranda were surrounded by their fellow demonstrators as they marched down Broadway.

  Up ahead, they saw the cops standing in full force. A whole row of them was spread across the street, standing side by side in their riot gear.

  “Don't be scared,” an overweight black woman shouted. “We're here to be heard! We're here to be heard!”

  She repeated the mantra over and over again. The protesters repeated the words and the chant began.

  A blow horn startled Hank.

  “Fuck da police!” he heard someone yell.

  He looked over at Miranda and she smiled. She loved this.

  “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!”

  Hank and Miranda joined the chant, raising their fists in the air.

  To his right, Hank caught the eye of Javier. The young man smirked as he looked down at Hank from an elevated perch near the plaza. Hank watched as the young man lit what looked to be a small explosive.

  Javier looked at Hank with a malevolent glare. He made as if he were about to throw it in Hank's direction.

  “Duck!” Hank yelled as he pulled Miranda down.

  Javier changed his arm trajectory, however, and threw his firework right toward the riot police.

  The explosion hurt Hank's ears. A cacophony of screams and tear gas firings filled the air.

  Hank pulled Miranda off the ground they made a run toward the opposite street.

  But the stampede had begun. People bounced off him from every direction. A tear gas can exploded near him and he could not see through the smoke.

  He let go of Miranda's hand and lost her in the chaos.

  “Hank!” he heard her yell.

  “Miranda!”

  His eyes began to water. Then he felt someone's hand grab his and then let go.

  “Miranda!”

  In the distance, Hank could have sworn he heard a wolf's howl above the sirens and screams.

  Caught in the throng of people, he hear
d police instructions come over a bullhorn. He could not make out what was being said, but he caught something along the lines of “stay back do not” and then the rest garbled in with the screams and firing of tear gas.

  Hank dipped and dodged through the human stampede.

  “Miranda!” he cried out to no avail.

  He wanted to make it to the other side of the street and just establish some distance between himself and the melee.

  He heard the howl again. Distinct over the bullhorns, screaming and firing off of beanbags.

  “Miranda!”

  The fog of tear gas began to dissipate, but he saw no sign of his girlfriend.

  Hank began running down Seventh Street. With no people milling about, he climbed on top of a car and looked through the crowd.

  “Help me!” he heard a heavily accented voice call out.

  Hank turned around and heard the voice again.

  “Help!”

  He ran toward the scream. Then he turned the corner and saw an elderly Hispanic man crawling on his knees. He reached up for Hank.

  Hank moved toward the man and took out his cell phone. A heart attack in progress, he thought.

  Until he saw the werewolf behind the man.

  Hank stopped in place.

  The werewolf growled at Hank as it slowly crept toward the old man. Then it bit into the man's pants and pulled him back, dragging him to an alley

  “Run!” the man said. “Save yourself!”

  Hank dropped his cell to the ground as the wolf growled in his direction. Then it sprang at the Hispanic man and bit into his stomach.

  The man screamed as the wolf ripped out his innards and shook the blood-slicked flesh from side to side.

  Hank stumbled backwards. Then he got up and ran as fast as he could back to the crowd, the werewolf’s snarls and grunts ringing in his ears.

  He turned the corner and increased his speed.

  Looking over his shoulder, he did not see the wolf chasing him, but he ran smack dab into Miranda, who grabbed his hand and pulled him into another direction.

  “This way!” she yelled.

  Officer Arturo Frias had graduated from the police academy three months ago. His lifelong dream fulfilled, he had become a police officer. Not just any police officer, but an Oakland cop. He was one of the men he looked up to as a kid.

  Like father, like son.

  And he hated the protesters. They represented everything his father despised. He despised their lack of respect for authority, petulant anger, and sloth. He couldn't be certain he could keep his cool like his comrades. How dare these do-nothings call him names and spit at him?

  Frias had been assigned guard duty on the corner of Telegraph and 20th Street, a block away from the main protest avenue on Broadway.

  He accepted the fact that he would be facing a lot of shit assignments like this, being a rookie and all. He stood as a lone solitary figure on one end, guarding the Paramount Theater. The mayor did not want one of the city's primary landmarks touched by the demonstrators who vandalized nearly everything in sight.

  Harris Robertson, one of his police academy buddies, stood on the other side of the street on Broadway.

  The silence around him was eerie, but he liked it. He figured he had to enjoy the peace and quiet while he still could.

  Hearing the bloodcurdling scream coming from the adjacent block over, Arturo knew that quiet would not last long on the job.

  He could not tell if the scream came from a man or a woman. He looked back over at Harris at the opposite end.

  No one there.

  “Harris?” he asked through his earpiece. “Harris, do you copy?”

  Static.

  Arturo sprinted over to the direction in which he heard the scream. There was a beauty salon stood across the street, but he ruled that out. Then heard some glass breaking at what looked to be shuttered-down bar.

  He came to the door and listened. He heard what sounded like a piece of wood being knocked over.

  Arturo drew his gun.

  “Dispatch?” he said. “I have a possible burglary in progress.”

  He reached for the door, but it would not open.

  Then he heard another anguished scream. This came from behind the door.

  He tried the knob again. Stuck.

  Arturo ran around the side of the bar, skipping over various pieces of debris like an old television set and bar stools.

  Taking out his flashlight, he reached the back patio. His flashlight moved around the night air, the circle of rays jittery, revealing only weeds and a rusted fence.

  “Police!” he said. “Show yourself. Now!”

  A low and guttural growl could be heard coming from the far right corner. He veered his flashlight over and saw the light glint over the eyes of a beast.

  A werewolf.

  The growl turned into a snarl. The wolf leapt at Arturo.

  The officer dropped the flashlight and didn't have time to run before the snapping jaws clamped down on his throat.

  CHAPTER 13

  “You folks are just full of action, aren't you?” Spinks said as he entered Hank's apartment with Lopez.

  Lopez noted that their apartment was small but scrupulously neat. There were framed pictures of wolf paintings on the wall and a cactus in a tasteful white planter with Native American designs on it.

  “What exactly did you see, sir?” Lopez asked.

  “There was this-” Hank paused. Not for dramatic effect but because he really didn't know how to describe it without sounding crazy. “This huge dog. He bit into this old Mexican guy. Ripped out his intestines.”

  “A large dog?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Great Dane? Saint Bernard?”

  Hank shook his head.

  “Did it look like Cujo?” Spinks asked with a straight face.

  “I think it was a werewolf.”

  Lopez stopped writing the report. He looked at Hank with a raised eyebrow.

  “Sir, are you on any type medication?”

  Hank shook his head. “I know what you're thinking.”

  “No,” Spinks said. “You don't.”

  He reached around and put the handcuffs on Hank.

  “Hey!”

  “Get your hands off him,” Miranda said. Lopez moved to hold her back. “You can't do this!”

  “And you can't keep wasting our time. We can only play along for only so long. Most people that say crazy ass shit like you are at least entertaining. But you're boring. And it has been a busy night. A long night.”

  “He got beat up yesterday,” Miranda said.

  “And?” Spinks asked.

  “And he hit his head!”

  “And I know what I saw,” Hank said. “Look if you go downtown check out near 14th and Harrison. Now get these cuffs off me.”

  Spinks took a deep breath. He uncuffed Hank. “Next time I have to come down and listen to this crazy shit, I'm leaving them on.”

  Spinks tapped Lopez on the shoulder and motioned for them to leave.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” Hank said.

  Miranda watched the officers leave the apartment with her arms crossed. “Are you sure you are okay?”

  “Yes! Fuck!”

  Hank got up and pushed Miranda away.

  “You haven't been acting right since yesterday. Maybe that cop is right. After all, you did hit your head.”

  “That doesn't matter,” Hank replied.

  “Maybe. But I think that maybe with your head wound that maybe-”

  “Maybe what?”

  “That you're hallucinating. Like maybe it damaged your brain somehow.”

  “I saw what I saw,” Hank said.

  Miranda stepped over to the sitting Hank. She cradled his head in her arms then brought her bosom to his face. She gently kissed the top of his head.

  “You heard wolves howling?” she asked in a maternal tone as if comforting a chi
ld from a nightmare.

  Hank couldn't answer the question. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think of something he could say to change the subject. “You think I'm crazy.”

  “Yep,” she said. “I do. But that is why I love you. You're a nut. But sometimes, nuts get tired. And they need some tender loving care.” She kissed him gently on his cheek.

  He responded and they kissed some more. She bit down on his bottom lip.

  “Owww,” he said.

  “Werewolves,” she whispered. “You could use some wolf in you.”

  Hank looked at her straight in the eye. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “If you gave into your animal instincts more often you would be reaming me over that kitchen counter.”

  “Oh, it's like that, huh?”

  “And wolves don't ask questions. They just take what they want.”

  Miranda stood up and stared down at Hank. Her lips were slightly parted and she gave him a thoughtful, erotic look that he had not seen since their second date.

  “I want you to be the kind of man that gives into his savage nature, not someone who fights it.”

  She walked to the center of the living room and turned off the lamp. Her body became outlined by only the moonlight as she untied the string atop her blouse then pulled it over her head.

  Her breasts bounced slightly as her blouse hit the floor. Hank gulped hard as he saw them cradled in soft pink lace.

  Miranda started to pull down her skirt, but the zipper got stuck.

  “Do you want to give me a hand?” she asked playfully.

  Hank dropped to his knees and pulled the zipper down. She had struggled with it on purpose, he realized. Then he pulled her skirt all the way down and let her feet step out.

  He looked up and saw that Miranda wore no panties. The light from the moon silhouetted her wayward curls of pubic hair.

  Hank stood back up and unhooked her bra. He took a half-step back to watch as they were freed with a delicious bounce.

  Losing it, he began sucking on her right nipple.

  “Don't be gentle,” she whispered. “If you have any animal instincts left in you, show me.”

  “You need to stop with the manipulative encouragement,” Hank said as he ripped off his shirt. Miranda helped him take off his pants and shorts.