“All right, smart ass. You want to go, then go. But hurry up. I want to check out the rest of this place before we make camp.”
She kissed him on the cheek and said in her best Arnold voice, “I’ll be back.”
Despite what she had said to Steve, she looked around before going around the side of the building and lowering her pants. Should have gone to the car for toilet paper first, she thought. Her pockets held nothing except a few dollars and her ATM card, and the knife. Maybe she’d go back to the car, anyway, and grab a couple of sodas. They could sit on the porch and drink them. The thought of cool carbonation was too much to resist. She pulled up her pants and turned.
Someone was at the car.
At first she thought it was a shadow, dark and low to the ground, but then it moved.
Alison remained completely still, watching as it made its way around the back of the vehicle, then she ran as quietly as she could inside to get Steve.
He was upstairs and she hurried, sticking to the sides of the rickety steps in hopes they didn’t collapse. “Steve,” she whispered loudly. “Steve, do you have the keys?”
He walked out of one of the rooms and jangled the pocket of his baggy shorts. “Sure, they’re right here. But, didn’t we leave it open? What’s up?”
“Shh! There’s someone at the car.”
“What do you mean there’s someone at the car?”
“Someone’s at the car. I saw them slinking around the back.”
He stepped past her and went down the stairs, grabbing a table leg from the floor on his way out. She followed.
Alison waited on the porch steps as Steve approached the car, table leg held behind his back. There was a noise behind her and then she was falling off of the porch and onto her right knee. Pain shot up and she rolled to the side clutching her bent knee.
“Alison!” Steve turned to come back to her but a naked man crawled out from under the car. He was at least six inches taller than Steve, who stood a stocky five-eight, and wiry. He seemed composed entirely of thin muscle. He growled deep in his throat, and as Steve looked up he saw that the guy’s eyes were red. They glinted in the reflecting sun.
“Steve?” Alison was worried. She sat up, cradling her knee and tried to rise. She wanted to go over to Steve and put her arms around him, pull him away from the crazy man.
The boy ran excited circles in the street, tongue hanging out, as Alison struggled to her feet.
The man lunged at Steve.
The pair fell in a mass of flailing limbs. Steve struck out against the man’s side with his makeshift club, but it didn’t seem to affect him. The man scratched with surprisingly long nails, tearing trails down Steve’s side. Steve pushed forward in a panic, feeling with surprise that the fight was exciting the man. He pushed up at the man’s chest, dropping the useless table leg, and was surprised when his hand slipped. The man’s chest was now covered in fine, oily black fur.
Alison limped over and plunged the tiny blade of her knife into the sun-browned skin. She pulled it out and struck down again but was knocked backwards by the boy who jumped her from the side.
Steve grabbed the man’s face and pushed, hoping to break or at least damage something enough to make the man back off. Instead he looked at Steve with something like a smile. His smile was distorted, teeth impossibly long, eyes glaring red and angry.
He bit down on the hollow of his neck.
Steve screamed in agony as the man, now a wolf, chomped. Again and again.
Alison screamed, struggling with the boy. She had lost her knife during the fight with the man, the bloody black creature that stood over Steve’s still body licking blood from the open wound.
Darkness.
She opened her eyes to dim light. She was inside now, breathing stale, musty air, the tangy scent of fresh meat. Her head rested on someone’s lap. The person’s fingers smoothed her hair in a soothing motion.
“Steve?” But the legs were too small, skinny and soft, not the firmness she was used to. “Steve, what happened?” She turned her head and looked up.
The girl smiled, breathing foulness onto Alison’s face. “It’s okay.” She spoke slowly. Her face was a mottled pink mass of scar tissue. Long, thin scars that had healed poorly leaving bubbled white masses on the tender flesh. Her left eye was lower than the right and half closed; the other was a bright blue and it stared at Alison. “Kylie’s here.” Her hands kept patting Alison’s hair, moving the blonde strands off of her face. She repeated her name over and over. “I’m Kylie. Kylie, Kylie. That’s me. Kylie. Kylie is here to help.”
Alison pulled herself into a sitting position, Kylie’s hands still stroking her hair. She pushed them off.
“Kylie, where’s Steve?”
Kylie shook her head. “No—Kylie. Kylie here. Kylie, Kylie,” she sang like a child.
Alison made out movement on the opposite end of the room and moved to see better. A pack of men—man-beasts—were gathered around something on the floor. Alison knew it was Steve, knew it but would not believe it, because if that was Steve, what was going to happen to her? She looked around for a window, a door, but she couldn’t leave without Steve. She had to make sure he was alive...and get the car keys from his pocket, presuming they hadn’t fallen out.
All of them were hunched over on hands and feet, covered in slick, black hair. The boy was still smooth and brown; he had not changed. One of the man-beasts let out a howl and padded over to Alison, tongue hanging out. His erect penis swayed with the movement. The leer on his face told Alison everything she needed to know
Oh God, Alison thought. Oh, no. Her gorge rose but she held it, swallowing hard, as the man sniffed at her. She kicked him in the face, ignoring the pain that flared in her knee, smiling at the crunch. Maybe she’d knocked out a few of those sharp teeth. He wasn’t the one who had mangled Steve, but she’d take revenge on this one, oh yes. She kicked again as hard as she could, pummeled his head with her fists.
He came back snarling and raked her face. She grunted and pushed, punched, trying to remember what she had learned at the self-defense course she took three years ago. The boy ran up, yipping, and stopped between them. He stood on his hind legs and looked at the beast. The beast snapped at the boy’s face but walked slowly back to the pack.
The boy dropped back to all fours, nudging his head against Alison’s side, lifting her shirt and placing his cheek on her belly. She found herself petting the boy’s head, much as Kylie had patted hers.
He padded back across the room. Alison stood, shaking, as tears ran down her face. What was she going to do now? There were so many of them. If she dared to make an escape, to run out the window behind her, would she be quick enough? She looked at Kylie, sitting cross-legged and humming. How did she fit in? Would she stop Alison from making a break for it? Alison reached up to her cheek and winced, wondering if someday her skin would look like Kylie’s. The scratches burned. I should be scared, she thought. But this isn’t happening.
The boy scampered in front of the beasts and they moved aside to let him in. Alison got a glimpse of Steve’s gored body. He was naked, arms and legs bloodied, stomach flayed open. The boy bent his head down, took a bite of something, and shook his head as he fought to free it. There was a loud sucking noise and he rolled onto his back eliciting yelps of laughter from the others. He took the prize in his mouth and trotted away with it, pulling when it got stuck. One of the elders leaned forward and snapped the intestine with his teeth.
Alison sank to the floor, blanking the scene out. She should be crying, she knew, but she couldn’t. This wasn’t real. A snippet of song came to her, “I’m not here, this isn’t happening.” She sang it in her head to drown out the chewing sounds as the pack began to eat.