by S. A. Hunt
The matriarch of the Valenzuela family obliged, filling the cabin with wind, but she didn’t say anything at first. “Keep him busy for a minute,” Robin told her. She sat in the breakfast nook and started putting gun parts together. In her head, Heinrich’s stopwatch chirped. Let’s see how fast you can break this rifle down and put it back together. Tick-tock.
“Pull over!” Santiago bellowed.
Firing pin into bolt, retaining pin and can pin into bolt, tick tick tick—“No!” answered Marina. “I’m not going back!”
“Pull this thing over! We can talk this out!”
Bolt and charging handle into star chamber. Tick tick tick. “Oh, my God,” breathed Carly, “is that a machine gun?” Her face paled. “Are you going to shoot my dad?”
“Marina!” shouted Santiago. “Pull over!”
Marina did the opposite. The Winnebago sped up.
“Long as he’s civil, no,” said Robin. Trigger assembly into upper receiver, upper receiver front pin to stock, tick tick tick. “I’d like to avoid that outcome if possible.”
After the briefest of pauses to assess the danger level of what she was about to do, Carly snatched up the remote control for the cameras and pressed buttons at them.
Two of them turned off. Robin looked up. “Hell are you doing?”
“This isn’t going on your YouTube channel, lady.”
“What?”
“I’m not your YouTube show. My family isn’t.” Carly turned off the other two cameras. “And if my dad gets hurt, it’s not going on the internet like all those body-cam tapes where people get killed by the cops. You’re not turning my daddy into a circus.”
“I just—” Robin began, but Carly stormed away.
Stumbling into the front of the RV, the girl leaned over the steering wheel and shouted out the window. “Daddy!”
“Give me that remote,” said Robin.
“Sweetheart!” said Santiago. “They ain’t hurt you, have they?”
Carly shot Robin a glare, and then yelled out the window, “No! But please go away! Stop chasing—”
“The hell you mean, go away?”
“She’s got a machine gun, and I think she’s going to use it on you if you don’t stop chasing us.”
Tick tick tick. Robin pushed the recoil spring in and closed the AR-15, pinning it together in the back. She banged a magazine against the side of her head to seat the rounds and shoved it into the mag well—Time. Good work, girl. Chambering a round, Robin opened the window over the table and pressed her forehead and the muzzle of the rifle against the screen. The man on the bike noticed her immediately.
“No,” she told Santiago, “I said as long as you stay civil.”
“What do you consider ‘civil,’ ma’am?” he asked her with a sneer.
“Going your ass away. Far away.”
“You have my wife and my daughter.” Santiago’s hair streamered in the wind like a lion’s mane. “What makes you think I’m just going to let that go?”
“This,” Robin said, prodding the screen with the assault rifle.
Santiago frowned. “That really the way you wanna play it, lady?”
“No, but it’s a game I got a hell of a winning streak in.”
His eyes burned with a diabolic anger and he bit down on a frown as he said, “You don’t want to play a home game with me. Believe that.”
“Go fuck yourself, San Diego.”
Kneeling on the bench, Robin angled the rifle, flicked the safety to SEMI, and fired a round through the screen. Past Santiago’s head. The ensuing BOOM! filled the RV with noise and a shell casing tinkled across the table. At the same time, Santiago ducked and the Enfield wobbled, almost laying down.
“No!” screamed Carly.
She began to charge Robin, but the witch-hunter gave her the Crazy Eyes over the carrying handle of the AR. “Sit down,” Robin warned, her voice muffled in her own report-deafened ears. “That was just a warning shot.”
“Fuck,” spat Santi, slowing until he was out of sight.
“Now get in the bathroom.” Robin sat on the table so she could get an angle on Santi behind them. “Lay on the floor.”
The girl hesitated.
“Now!” Robin grabbed the newspaper off the table and threw it at her. Carly flinched and the paper opened in midair, scattering itself all over the RV.
Giving Robin an angry look, she jammed the camera remote into the kitchen-sink drain and flipped the switch behind the counter to turn on the garbage disposal. The light over her head came on as if she’d had an idea.
“Sorry, no garbage disposal,” Robin said wryly.
Annoyed, the girl stormed into the bathroom and shut the door, and the lock engaged with a thunk.
“Good,” said Robin, “and stay in there.” She went into the bedroom and peered through the back curtains again. Santiago had rejoined the convoy and reassembled into a wedge formation.
“Get on the floor,” she told Kenway and Gendreau.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” The curandero went down like a sack of bricks and squeezed between the bed and the wall, lying on his back. All she could see of him was his Italian shoes. From the front of the RV, she could hear the radio still pounding out classic rock. AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” The thunder of guns tore me apart, screamed Brian Johnson.
“Give me a gun,” grunted Kenway. Blood trickled out of the incision in his back as he slid painfully onto the floor.
“What I need is for Doc G to finish getting that bullet out of you.”
“—Aw, piss,” said the magician from behind the bed. He sat up, wriggling around to the big veteran. “Lie down,” he said, grabbing his forceps.
“Gun!” demanded Kenway.
She fetched the sawed-off shotgun and handed it to him. He loaded a couple of shells and whipped the shotgun shut.
“Just hang—” Robin started to say, but the rear window imploded, showering them all with glass. Bullets battered the wall behind her. She dropped into a crouch and sidled around the bed, peering around the curtain again. All the men riding bitch were pointing pistols.
“No!” Santiago shouted. “My little girl’s in there!”
Then something strange happened.
One of the men behind him screamed, followed by another one. Santiago’s face was animated by a vivid black rage. His eyes flickered with amber light. The wind combed blood out of his eyes and mouth and blew it across his temples. Even from here, his terror and fear were obvious, but underpinning it was an almost-orgasmic look of surrender. Bikers to his left and right distorted; hair spent from their scalps, becoming shaggy, and their mouths lengthened, teeth bristling.
“Gil and the kid were right,” Robin said. “Werewolves.”
“Are you serious?” Gendreau smeared blood across his face again, wiping away sweat. “Well, what are you waiting for, you silly woman? Shoot them, shoot them all you can!”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” became Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Robin rested the AR’s handguard on the windowsill and the scope settled over the forehead of one of the men. Muscles under his skin rippled and changed shape. Halfway between wolf and man, he looked like some kind of horrendous fetal dog, misshapen and livid purple, face bulging, veins throbbing.
Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?
The formation surged forward and she fired.
Blood and shredded scalp misted the air. The snarling homunculus stiffened as if having a seizure and, teetering backward, he fell onto the road, and another biker swerved to avoid hitting him. She sighted down the scope again as the bikers continued to close in on them.
As soon as she fired, the man at the handlebars leaned forward and the bullet whirred through his streaming hair.
Motorcycles flanked them, passing on the left. Engines reverberated through the Winnebago’s floor. Robin turned to shoot at them again, but no window in the bedroom’s starboard wall afforded her a fu
nctional view.
“Shit,” she cursed, heading up front.
Bohemian Rhapsody rang throughout the RV. Mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go.
Something heavy hit the roof.
Robin paused in the kitchen, looking at the ceiling. She raised the rifle and prepared to blow a hole in it, but a great hairy arm shattered the window over the sink and palmed her face. The werewolf’s oil-stinking claw dragged her backward over the sink, banging her skull against the window frame.
With a kicked-puppy squeal, the werewolf let go of Robin and disappeared into the darkness outside.
Someone had pulled the short sword from Robin’s scabbard and jammed the tip in the werewolf’s eye. Eyes wide and mouth agape, Carly held the bloody sword with a trembling hand.
“Thanks,” grunted Robin. She took the sword and slid it back into its scabbard. “Get back in the bathroom.”
“I can help you,” said Carly, frantic. “Give me a gun.”
“No!”
The skylight hauled out of its hatch with a scream of tearing metal and a monstrous, misshapen canine looked in at them. “Have you accepted Wolf Jesus into your heart?” snarled the creature. Strings of saliva drooled into the cabin.
“Accept this bullet into your heart.” Robin popped a round in his chest.
Blood spattered across the ceiling and the wolf-man screamed, slithering out of sight. Robin closed the window and pulled the curtain shut, glancing at a camera. “Shit, I coulda made a joke about dogma.”
“God, that’s so loud,” Carly complained, jamming her fingers in her ears.
“Guns usually are.”
A hairy arm hooked under Robin’s chin, jerking her off her feet. Her head slammed against the ceiling and the werewolf reaching in through the skylight lost his grip, dropping her into the kitchen.
Bouncing off its buttstock, the rifle fired a burst into the ceiling over her shoulder. Blood sprayed out of a hole in the paneling.
I’m just a poor boy, sang Freddie Mercury.
Picking up the rifle, Robin shouted, “Get off my roof,” and just for good measure hip-fired a couple of three-round bursts through the ceiling like Yosemite Sam on New Year’s Eve, punching holes in the aluminum, B-B-BANG!, B-B-BANG!
Terror etched on her face, Carly squared up in the hallway, gripping a tactical tomahawk in both hands like a Templar knight with a broadsword.
The sound of shrieking came from the front seat.
A werewolf clung to the driver door, reaching in through the window, trying to steer them onto the shoulder. Marina threw elbow after elbow into its jaw, fighting with the wheel. “Let go! ¡Hijo de puta! Stop!”
Gravity turned on its side and Robin and Carly stumbled against the table. Kitchen cabinets opened, spilling cans of food; some of them cracked open, leaking juice all over the floor. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, sang Freddie. Robin lifted the rifle, aiming toward the front, hunkering into the shot just the way Heinrich and Kenway taught her, and pulled the trigger. The bullet blew through the beast’s snout, leaving an aerosol splatter of thick blood all over the windshield, and the werewolf fell out the window. Marina tried to wipe the blood off the glass with some fast-food napkins from the console but only succeeded in smearing it around.
Glass shattered in the back. BOOM, the sawed-off shotgun barked.
One of the wolf-men crouched on the bed in a three-point stance, the bloody duvet tangled in one fist. Robin marched toward him firing burst after burst, RAKKA-TAKKA-RAKKA-TAKKA, dozens of bullets punching into the monster. Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta hee-aaah!
With one last snarl, the werewolf collapsed and died on the bed. “Thanks,” said Kenway, loading fresh buckshot shells.
Gendreau pushed his patient back down. “Stop moving!”
A motorcycle blatted past, overtaking the Winnebago, and then another. “They’re trying to cut us off!” shouted Marina.
“Stay alive, please.” Robin left.
From the kitchen, she could see through the windshield. Red taillights glowed ahead of them: two motorcycles, and they were slowing down, trying to force them off the road. “Bohemian Rhapsody” trailed off, becoming Journey’s “Separate Ways,” that familiar synth reverberating through the room.
Looking for the black rifle attachment, Robin scanned the room and spotted it lying in the door well, rattling around on the bottom step.
“There you are,” she muttered, kneeling to reach for it.
As she did, the exterior door flew open and the wind slapped it against the side of the RV, filling the room with a torrent of hot desert air.
Outside: werewolf in a leather vest, clinging to the side of the Winnebago. Robin snatched up the rifle attachment, but the monster tore through the screen door and grabbed her wrist, pulling her halfway through the door frame. Bent double through the screen door, suspended over the highway at breakneck speeds, she screamed, swinging out of the RV. Darkness rocketed past her face in stuttering red images of sagebrush and sand.
“It’s over, puta,” snarled the werewolf, and it raked claws down the small of her back, grabbing the waist of her jeans.
Stinging pain swelled along her spine. He was trying to pull her out of the door and throw her aside, but all he managed to do was almost drag her jeans off, baring her ass to the buffeting wind.
“Leggo!” she shouted, upside down.
Claws fought to keep their grip on her ass, tearing holes in her underwear. She grabbed the doorframe and aimed the rifle between her knees. TAK-TAK-TAK!
Bullets ripped into the werewolf’s crotch and it let go of the Winnebago with a wail, tumbling into the road in a cloud of dust. A motorcycle coming up on their starboard side fishtailed around him, almost sliding into the desert.
Carly grabbed her ankle and pulled her back inside. Robin slammed the M-203 attachment onto the rifle’s Picatinny rail and screwed the clamp down, then cracked open the attachment and fumbled in the kitchen sink for the giant cartoon bullets she’d put there earlier. “What is that?” Carly asked, as Robin slid one of them into the back of the attachment tube and racked the breech shut.
“Cure for assholes.”
In the open door, purple Mohawk whipping in the wind, Robin eyed the biker coming up on their flank.
“Hello!” she shouted into the gale, smiling.
Both men glared at her with glowing eyes. The one riding on the back was a werewolf and his mouth hung open, his long tongue flagging. A silky spider-string of drool trailed on the air.
Someday, love will find you, sang Steve Perry through a curtain of howling guitars and pulsing synths. Robin fired the AR with a noise like pulling a cork out of a giant bottle of wine. FOONK! The high-explosive grenade round erupted with a flash directly in front of the motorcycle, followed by an almost-instant report.
Dissolving between the werewolves’ legs in a ball of light and chaos, the Harley became a dazzling bottle-rocket, a cloud of flaming parts across the night. Robin squinted against the heat.
“Holy shit!” screamed Carly behind her.
The motorcycle crashed to the ground and somersaulted over the werewolves’ bodies, throwing up plumes of sand and fire. Robin ducked back into the RV and grabbed another grenade round from the box in the sink, loading it. “Now to take care of the boys trying to cut us off.” She stepped back into the door well and leaned outside into the night, straight-arming the rifle one-handed toward the front of the RV. The barrel swung up.
Could only hold it up pistol-fashion for a couple of seconds, but that’s all she needed. Robin pulled the trigger and the rifle coughed, almost kicking out of her hand.
FOONK! The grenade spiraled out and gouged the air with one immense hammerblow. The cop bike exploded into a galaxy of hellfire, but the other wobbled maniacally and fell over, spilling both men underneath the Winnebago.
THUD-THUD. Marina steamrolled a body.
The black-and-white patrol bike cartwheeled over a pool of flame and Mari
na peeled back the other way, juking right.
Orange light flashed in the RV’s port-side windows as the motorcycle slammed against the ground. Robin loaded another grenade and headed for the bedroom where the curtains whipped like Superman’s cape, giving her ragged glimpses of the men chasing them. She marched over and ripped them down from their rails so she could see. Taking a knee to steady herself, she fired a grenade out the back window. FOONK!
Instead of sailing neatly through, the grenade hit the windowsill and bounced straight up.
For one heart-stopping moment, she thought it was going to explode in her face, and Robin threw herself on top of Kenway, knocking the forceps out of Gendreau’s hand. Bouncing once more like a basketball on the edge of a hoop rim, the silver grenade disappeared into the night. One second later, it exploded directly behind the Winnebago and the rear wall crunched under the blast’s onslaught, a single hard thunder-strike BOOM of sound and light.
Shrapnel peppered the bedroom wall.
Blood streamed down Gendreau’s face. Robin sat up. He was saying something, but the only sound coming out of his mouth was the electric whistle of tinnitus.
“Whut,” Robin asked, dazed.
“I said, stop with the damn explosives!” Gendreau said, palming some of the blood away and looking at it. Red fireflies of energy flitted around his head as he pressed his fingertips against his skull. Robin pulled herself over the edge of the bed to look through the rear window. The biker gang’s headlights were dwindling into the distance.
“They’re giving up.” She staggered out of the room, the AR on her shoulder like a baseball bat. “No balls,” she said, and tripped over a can of Spaghetti-Os.
Bark at the moon, sang Ozzy Osbourne from the RV’s speakers.
Track 16
They drove and drove and then drove some more. Night pressed against the windows like the silk fur of some immense black cat. Reaching under the werewolf’s corpse, Robin levered the heavy bastard out into the night. A piece of the trim went with it.
“That’s littering,” said Gendreau, sitting on the floor as he packed his tools back into his doctor’s bag.