I need to be reminded of why I got out of bed at all this week. It’s been a week that has tried our patience and our budget. On the way into work Tuesday, my battery light, and all open door indicator lights along with the emergency brake light comes on. It stayed on for 10 seconds and then went out. Oh great, I thought. Alternator’s crapping out.
I took it to my mechanic , and the alternator and battery tested fine. Wednesday it comes on again, on the way to work naturally, and stayed on until I got three blocks from the mechanic’s where it promptly went out. I dropped it off, stuck and around and found out the belt tensioner was bad. I shelled out $260 to get it fixed. It was actually $259.80, but who’s quibbling over twenty cents?
Thursday it came on again, while on the way to work naturally, and so I got a battery. The battery I traded in was 3 1/2 years old so yeah, I probably needed a new one. The light stay off all day up until the time I was going through downtown Nashville, during rush hour. We have to go home, I told Chris. I was taking him to his bi-weekly seminar at Belmont University. We made it home, I parked the minivan, and took him in his car. Why didn’t he just drive himself? I’ll get to that in a moment.
The minivan sat in the driveway all day Friday, and I picked up a new alternator. Cost: $246.74. Work cost: 4 hours of personal leave and a lot of scrambling to make up 5 hours so as to not effect my vacation time I’m taking in October. Mental cost: Incalculable. Physical cost: 9 hours because I had to remove the power steering reservoir to get the old alternator out. I still have some air in the system. Needless to say I feel very much like Mr. Joe Curr. Very unpredictable mentally. That’s been my week.
As to why Chris didn’t drive himself to his seminar; he’s 16 and only has a learners permit. He takes his test for the full license on Tuesday, the first of September. Yay! More worry and stress I suppose. I know he’ll do fine, but right now, I’m just very, very tired. And my back hurts.
So, with no further venting, I give you Werewolves of the Dead Chapter Eight.
Chapter Eight
Shannon found the room though she wished she hadn’t. By all indications all the children were dead. What bodies she found, or more aptly what parts were found, were still limp; rigor hadn’t set in. She didn’t waste time concerning herself with the what if’s of having arrived earlier. By indications if she had, she’d be dead too.
The bodies had been ripped apart as thoroughly as the three cops she’d found. Adult parts, some in SWAT black, officer blue and plain clothes, were mixed in with the children’s. Shannon didn’t want to sift through the mess. If anything she wanted to cry.
She’d never seen anything like it. Lycans could be, and were most of the time, vicious but this was worse.
A scrapping noise across the room’s dilapidated doorframe refocused her attention. She turned to see two children shuffle in. To her, they were obviously undead. They stank and were coated in gelled, bloody matter.
It was something out of movie. They shuffled to her; one was minus a jaw and the other a throat and stomach. Both looked no more than ten and their glazed eyes looked at her with an otherworldly greed. “Please,” she pleaded. “Please get back. I don’t want to kill you again.” It sounded stupid but what else could she say. At that moment she longed for the boring routine of taking orders and enduring Greg’s loose hands. “Please,” she said again. “Please don’t.” She’d never killed children, lycan or otherwise and in her heart she knew these weren’t children. But they were. They were children from some eighth, unknown layer of Hell that wanted nothing more than to get to her.
She knew that they had to have been dead. They didn’t recoil or look afraid at her appearance. It was like the fur didn’t matter. What mattered was the meat underneath and she knew it. “Stop. Just leave, okay?” She felt foolish talking to them but her closely guarded humanity forced her to ask over and over.
Still they advanced on her. She raised her pistol and took aim. Closing her eyes, a thing she knew better than to do, she fired at the first, a little girl. The back of the girl’s head disappeared. It would forever match the missing jaw thanks to Shannon.
The boy looked at the fallen girl, confused. He turned uncertain, questioning eyes to Shannon. It felt to her that he was asking her why. It was like that before he snarled at her and shuffled faster to her. Shannon felt compassion for him. It was an emotion that almost got her killed. The boy got three feet away before she fired a shot into his head. She held her eyes open that time. Mentally she cursed herself for thinking how easy it was the second time.
More shuffling came from the hallway. She listened to it, working the number of scratching footfalls and echoes in her head. It sounded like it was more than a couple.
Mentally she checked the ammo in the pistol before rushing to the door. She exited so fast that she knocked an armless SWAT officer to the ground. She paused, stupidly she knew, to gaze at him trying to right himself.
Her position was already compromised so she fired into his head. He grew still instantly. The other six advancing on her showed no hesitation in their approach. She had four rounds left and she made good use of them. The remaining two took the gunshots as a dinner bell and advanced at a quicker shuffle.
She ran to the stairs, making it half way down before three others, all police, turned the corner. “Mother fucker, mother fucker, mother fucker!” she screamed. Panic was setting in as she made a retreat back to the third floor.
Four new zombies greeted her at the top. “Mother fucking mother fucker! What the fuck is this? International House of Zombies or something!” She yelled, kicking the closest in the chest and rushing past the last three. “Our special today is werewolf on the run!” She had no idea why she said it but it felt right.
She turned left instead of going back to the right. She knew what was there so she decided on using blind luck for once. Blind luck didn’t serve her well.
She turned a corner to an exit but ran into four children feeding on a still moving lycan. The downed werewolf held out its hand to her. There was nothing she could do except end the poor beasts misery. It was a kind gesture except for the fact she was out of ammo and hadn’t reloaded.
It wasn’t like the movies; there was no click to signal an empty magazine. It was just the stiff resistance of a trigger refusing to be moved and a slide that taunted her with its empty chamber.
“Mother fucking fuck me!” She dropped the magazine and reloaded. One clattered to the floor after the other. “Fucky fuck fuckity fuck!” The f-bomb was a word she didn’t normally use but the situation merited it. She scrambled to get the magazine, cursing herself as she kicked the unloaded one across the floor. She grabbed the loaded one and took aim at the lycan. He wasn’t moving and the children were no longer paying attention to her.
She fired into its head, and then looked over her shoulder. What she saw pissed her off and made her heart leap to her throat. In the stairway and hall the zombies were closing in on her. Looking back she saw the children were paying attention to her. It was obvious that they preferred their meals to still have a pulse. “Fuck this!” she yelled, running into a room.
Shannon ran to a window then turned to the door. She would’ve given her left ovary to have a door. “Why the fuck did they remove the doors on this abandoned piece of shit?” she thought aloud. The doorway was crammed with zombies shuffling in. In a movie it would’ve been comical to see them wrestling against each other for entry. Now it was frightening. She considered fighting her way through but settled instead on a risky, if not stupid, move.
Taking a deep breath she jumped through the window. Shards of glass bit into her muzzle and hands as she jumped. She’d never attempted a jump from so high up but she was confident she could make it…mostly confident.
She rolled on the tall grass, astonished that she was uninjured aside from the glass in her face and hands. She looked around; no zombies approached. Her pursuers gazed blankly at her and two followed her out. They landed with dull, mushy thuds. One appeared to have tried landing on its feet but broke its legs instead. The second tried a roll but sounded like it had broken its hips or something equally important.
Against her fight or get the hell out better judgment she ran to them, shooting both in the head. If she were English she would have considered the night a giant cock up, but facts were it was just a plain old cluster fuck in her mind.
Shannon ran into the night, scared out of her mind at what she’d just been through. Once she’d made it back to her car she considered a career change. Maybe hunting lycans wasn’t for her any more than hunting zombies. At that moment she was finished with both.
That idea disappeared once she drove up to the police roadblock with the abandoned SWAT armored car. The inescapable conclusion that this wasn’t isolated occurred to her. She needed weapons and where better to get them than a military base. Since a military base was unavailable she settled on the police vehicles.
The sun was showing faint light, a warning that her time was coming to an end. She gave thought to what she was about to do and went ahead anyway. All she could think of was how stupid she was as she rifled through the squad cars trunks for anything useful. She got lucky and discovered two 12-gauge riot guns and plenty of ammo.
The armored car bore more fruit. Inside she found two M4’s and a HK MP5. She grabbed the weapons and hurriedly stored them in her trunk. Plenty of ammo for the M4’s was available but no 9mm for the MP5. The ammo was cheap so she kept it anyway.
She snatched radios from the armored car for some unknown reason but she knew better than to question her intuition.
She paused as she finished up her looting. Humans would’ve never heard it but she did, sirens and a lot of them. “Shit fucky fuck!” she yelled to no one, slamming the trunk closed.
Shannon was three blocks away and driving seventy in a thirty-five zone by the time the police cruisers arrived. She was thankful that she hadn’t changed back to human. Lycans didn’t leave fingerprints and she was okay with that. Even with new weapons the night was a bust and an eye opener. She wanted to cry in frustration. It was an emotion that stemmed from the dead children and that she’d never be able to tell anyone what had happened or warn anyone. What a pain in the ass the night had been.
This shit is copyrighted 2015, so ask first before printing it off to fuck with someone’s life.
Zombie nightmares and werewolf dreams 
Hang in there Jason…