Snarl

by Lorne Dixon

  Marek and Josef’s bikes sounded like a pack of barking dogs as they grew closer, their headlights blinding.

  Chev closed his eyes and shifted his weight, jackknifing the bike. It curled, wheels leaving the asphalt, landing on its side, his leg pinned and peeling against the roadway. He screamed as a greater pain than the horror in his chest electrified his body.

  Marek turned hard, skidded, but managed to navigate around the fallen bike. Josef, too close, did not. His front tire hit Chev’s bike head-on and it jerked, bucking him off. Josef and the motorcycle tumbled over the roadway, his body flailing, until his neck struck the road and snapped to the side, broken.

  Chev pushed the bike away and crawled out from underneath. His leg was broken, probably fractured, and skinned down to exposed muscle.

  Up ahead, Marek piloted a wide turn and headed back towards him.

  Reaching into the fallen bike, Chev yanked out the drive chain and coiled it around his hand. Using the handlebar as a crutch, he pulled himself into a half-stand and swung the chain over his head.

  Marek must have caught sight of the weapon and began to turn. Chev let go, sending the chain flying. It hit its mark, wrapped around Marek’s head and whipped him off the bike. His bike spun out, coughed, but continued to run.

  Chev threw himself to the ground and rappelled himself across the road, arms and elbows pulling him along, dragging his useless leg.

  Marek screamed as he unwound the chain from his head. Streaks of bright crimson blood poured down his face from hundreds of tiny wounds.

  Marek changed—man escaped and beast came through in barely a second—and pushed himself off the roadway. He bared his black teeth and roared.

  Chev reached Marek’s bike and clamored over its seat.

  Marek leaped, landing on the rear tire, his front paws on the handlebar. Chev pulled back but his reflexes were too slow. Marek reached out, sunk his claws into Chev’s chest like fishhooks, and reeled him in. The beast lifted him over his head.

  Chev’s consciousness began to flit away.

  Marek pulled him in close, opened his maw, and bit down on his shoulder. The new pain was unbearable. A more potent sensation than he had ever known, it stretched into every particle of his being, as if every molecule of his body was screaming at the same time.

  Chev arms dangled down and convulsed.

  Marek tore out a mouthful of flesh and gulped it down.

  Chev’s right hands gripped the handlebars and triggered the throttle.

  The rear wheel spun to life beneath Marek, cutting into his body lengthways, highway treads cutting through skin and flesh. The beast screamed—a human scream—as the wheel tore through its abdomen. A geyser of blood and hair exploded upward, showering them both.

  Marek dropped Chev onto the saddle as his strength faded. His intestines slithered out onto the roadway. He pushed himself off the bike and collapsed onto the asphalt.

  Chev released the throttle and dropped down onto the bike, panting and bleeding.

  Blood leaked from Marek’s mouth. “You’ll … never … be … safe …”

  Chev turned towards him. His body fluctuated between man and beast. Even the organs exposed through the pulsating hole in his gut changed shape.

  “There’ll … always … be … Brothers.”

  Just before he passed out, Chev watched Marek die.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chev awoke and opened his eyes. A cloudless powder blue sky stared back at him. It was dawn. He waited for the pain to return and overwhelm his senses, but it did not.

  Sitting up, he ran a hand down his leg. Patchwork scar tissue had already formed, closing his wounds. He stood up. His knees did not crack. His muscles did not protest. He felt strong. Stable.

  The bodies were gone off the roadway. He turned and watched a group of men toss the last bits of Marek’s body into a garbage truck at the curb of the road.

  One of the men turned, smiled, and said, “Good morning.”

  He walked, navigating around motorcycle debris, and approached the men. As each passed his view, they smiled.

  One, his work uniform splattered with blood and fur, clapped him on the back. “Wanted to say thank you.”

  Chev kept moving and when the road crew started to applaud he broke into a run, the kind of running he hadn’t known since childhood, an unlabored, joyful run.

  They met him at the edge of town, a group of men, women, and children in their Sunday best. They cheered, too, as he approached. Flinn stepped out from the pack and extended his hand. “This town owes you a great debt. Last night ended a long, uneasy pact that was always destined to fail. Today we start a new day with a new agreement, one built not out of fear and appeasement but out of mutual respect. The beasts that live in our forests will be our neighbors, our friends.”

  Chev snorted. “Don’t count on it.”

  “What do you mean,” Flinn asked.

  Chev scanned their faces and wondered which of them would be the first to bow to temptation and break the pact. Would it be a man or a beast? He muttered, “Nevermind.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  After stepping up onto the porch, Chev knocked on his own front door. A few days earlier the walk from the bus station would have left him out of breath and exhausted, but not now. Not anymore.

  The door cracked open and a pockmarked face glared out. He had a Saint Bernard’s bored expression. “You the guy? ’Course you’re him. You look just like your picture on the mantle.”

  The thug slid the door open, grabbed a handful of Chev’s shirt, and pulled him inside. Chev didn’t struggle, just kept the briefcase snug under his arm. The thug pushed him into the living room, then slammed and locked the front door.

  Two more mobsters sat in his living room, one spread out on the sofa, the other on the loveseat. The massive man on the sofa turned, adjusted his reading glasses, and gestured to the first thug. “You gonna pat him down, Sal, or are you volunteering to eat the first slug when he pulls out a zip gun?”

  Sal slammed his fat fingers against Chev’s shoulders and slid down the length of his body. “He’s got nothing.”

  “At least he remembered to bring the briefcase,” the massive man said. “Pretty big balls to steal from me. Don’t even know how you knew what was in your truck. Maybe it was just stupid luck, huh? Right?”

  Chev nodded. “Stupid luck.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t feel bad. No one’s luck holds out forever, you know.” With a labored huff, he lifted himself off the sofa. The cushion slowly regained its shape. “Me, I don’t mind bad luck so much. So long as it’s someone else’s bad luck.”

  The two thugs laughed.

  “I want to see my family,” Chev said. “Then you can have the briefcase.”

  All three laughed, harder this time.

  “Sure, go ahead, Sal, show the man his family.”

  Sal shoved him towards the kitchen door and pushed it open. His wife and daughters were tied to the dinette chairs with plastic ties, their mouths gagged with balled-up hand towels. In the fourth chair—his chair—sat Mr. Tom. He was bound, too, but his mouth was free. They turned their heads, eyes pleading.

  Mr. Tom sputtered, “I’m sorry, Chev, I didn’t mean for—”

  Sal closed the door and motioned for the case.

  Chev handed it over.

  Sal brought it over to his boss and dropped it on the coffee table. Then he pulled out a .22.

  “You know what’s in here? What’s so important to me?” the boss asked. “I’ll tell you what. I think you should know what you stole. What you and your family are about to die for. It’s a list of names and addresses. That’s it. Just like a Christmas card list. But these scumbags on the list? They all turned state’s evidence against my father and got him put away. I ain’t ever gonna see my dad outside a prison ever again. These men—these Judas Iscariots—they all got new names now, new identities. They were one person, now they’re another. Doesn’t matter anymore, not now that
we have the list, ’cause I don’t care what name they put on their tombstones.”

  Sal extended his arm, aiming his gun.

  “This time I’ll bring the names out west myself. Got a little lazy, a little careless. Used to be you could trust a shipper to deliver your goods without some punk driver stealing your goods.”

  “Used to be,” Chev mumbled. “But things change.”

  Chev felt warmth sprout on his shoulder where Marek had bitten him. It spread out, coating his body, flexing his muscles, changing him. He could feel Marek inside him, and Jiri and Josef and Lew Daudelin and all of the other Brothers throughout history, right back to Mother Lupe. Just before his mind sunk down into animal instinct, he felt the beast inside him ask to be released.

  Chev did not refuse.

  About the Author

  Lorne Dixon lives and writes off an exit of I-78 in residential New Jersey. He grew up on a diet of yellow-spined paperbacks, black-and-white monster movies, and the thunder lizard backbeat of rock-and-roll.

  Also by Lorne Dixon

  Snarl

  The Lifeless

  Hound: The Curse of the Baskervilles (with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

  The Coscom Entertainment Zombie, Monster, Mash Up and Superhero Books

  Please go to www.coscomentertainment.com for a plot synopsis and more information on the books. All are available in eBook and paperback at your favorite online retailer. Thanks.

  Zombie Books:

  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain and W. Bill Czolgosz

  Alice in Zombieland by Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook

  Axiom-man: The Dead Land by A.P. Fuchs

  Bits of the Dead edited by Keith Gouveia and illustrated by Sean Simmans

  Blood of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs

  Dead Science edited by A.P. Fuchs

  Don of the Dead by Nick Cato

  Revolt of the Dead by Keith Gouveia

  R.I.P. by Harrison Howe

  Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers by Paul A. Freeman

  The Lifeless by Lorne Dixon

  The Undead World of Oz by L. Frank Baum and Ryan C. Thomas

  The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H.G. Wells and Eric S. Brown

  World War of the Dead by Eric S. Brown

  Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head edited by A.P. Fuchs

  Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs

  Zombifrieze by W. Bill Czolgosz and Sean Simmans

  Other Monster and Horror Books:

  Animal Behavior and Other Tales of Lycanthropy by Keith Gouveia

  Anna Karnivora: A Vampire Novel by W. Bill Czolgosz

  Bigfoot War by Eric S. Brown

  Dracula by Bram Stoker, Illustrated by Sean Simmans with an Introduction by Nancy Kilpatrick

  Emma and the Werewolves by Jane Austen and Adam Rann

  Hound: The Curse of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lorne Dixon

  Snarl by Lorne Dixon

  The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas

  Superhero Books:

  Axiom-man (The Axiom-man Saga, Book 1) by A.P. Fuchs

  First Night Out (The Axiom-man Saga, Episode No. 0) by A.P. Fuchs

  Doorway of Darkness (The Axiom-man Saga, Book 2) by A.P. Fuchs

  The Dead Land (The Axiom-man Saga, Episode No. 1) by A.P. Fuchs

  The Wraith by Frank Dirscherl

  Valley of Evil (The Wraith Series, Book 2) by Frank Dirscherl

  Cult of the Damned (The Wraith Series, Book 3) by Frank Dirscherl

  Bookazines:

  Dry Ice Dreams (Bumper Sticker Shine No. 1) by A.P. Fuchs

  The Macro Mechanic’s Manifesto (Bumper Sticker Shine No. 2) by A.P. Fuchs