"I believe that you need to stop
talking."
"Or what?"
"Or else."
"That's the best you've got? Really? You know
what, I'm embarrassed to be your prisoner. Flat-out humiliated. It
was cool for a while, when I thought that a couple of scary mob
guys had me, but you two buffoons? I might as well be in the hands
of the--"
"Enough!"
"Don't you want to know what non-threatening
group I was going to compare you to?"
"One more word," said
George. "Just one more word, and I
will
come back there and beat the snot
out of you."
"Bet you won't. So what about you, Michele?
We've got two votes in favor and one non-committal. Do you think I
could possibly be a werewolf?"
"I don't know."
"It's not about what you know, it's about
what you think. I'm the only one who knows for certain. So do you
think I'm a werewolf?"
"Sure, whatever."
"Three votes in favor. That's a majority,
even if Lou changes his cowardly cop-out vote to 'no.' Looks like
I'm a fuckin' werewolf with the power of dog control, ladies and
gentlemen. Now what are we going to do about that?"
"Not a thing," said George. "The plan stays
the same."
"The plan to deliver me to Mr. Dewey in Tampa
so I can bite and transform him? Come on, guys, there's no need to
be discrete around our new friend Michele, is there? After all,
you're planning to kill her."
"Nobody is getting killed."
"Nobody except poor Michele."
"Don't listen to him," George told her.
"Right, don't listen to the guy in the cage,"
Ivan said. "Clearly there can be no wrongdoing in a situation that
involves people in cages. Maybe you'll be lucky and their plans
revolve around slavery instead of murder, but either way, I'm not
getting a strong 'drop you off at the hospital and everything will
be all right' vibe from this, are you?"
"Seriously, don't listen to him," said
George. "We're going to let you go."
"Then why haven't you done it already?" Ivan
asked. "She asked to be let go as soon as she saw me. True
gentlemen would have honored the poor doomed victim's request."
"We've got shit to figure out first."
"Then figure it out. It sounds like I'm the
only one trying to figure things out, to be completely honest.
Oooooh, I hope if you decide to rape her, you take it
outside--there are some things I just don't enjoy watching."
"We should just let her out," said Lou. "She
won't tell."
"Of course she won't," said
Ivan. "It's not like she's seen anything
memorable
."
"Get off at the next exit," George told
Lou.
"Why?"
"Because we need some answers."
"No, no, this is an 'ignorance is bliss'
deal. Let's leave this alone."
"I'm not comfortable with not knowing what's
going on when things are this severely screwed up. We left behind a
bunch of dead dogs and a dead gas station guy--that'll be on the
news. We need a full understanding of what we're dealing with."
"We shouldn't have brought the girl."
"Yeah, I know. We weren't thinking
right."
"I never said to bring her in the first
place."
"Okay, fine,
I
wasn't thinking right.
The dog teeth in my skin messed with my thought process. Are you
happy?"
"Just saying."
"They're going to
kiiiiiiiiiilllllllll
you,"
Ivan sang out from the back.
"We should call Ricky, at least," said Lou.
"Let him know what happened."
George sighed. "Yeah, you're right.
Damn it."
He took out his cell phone and pulled up
Ricky The Prick from his "recent contacts" list. Ricky answered on
the first ring. "Hiya, sweetie. How's the werewolf doing?"
"He's fine. But we had a pretty big
problem."
"Fleas? Hairballs?"
"Ricky, don't make me--"
"All right, all right. Jeez, you sound tense.
What's the problem?"
"We stopped to get gas, and about a dozen
dogs attacked us. Like they'd gone crazy. One of them bashed itself
half to death against the van."
"You for real?"
"Yeah. Lou had to shoot two of them.
The guy who worked there, they ripped his goddamn neck
open."
"No kidding? He died?"
"Unless you can live with most of your throat
gone."
"Wow. I've never seen somebody get mauled to
death by dogs before. I mean, I've seen videos, but never in real
life. You guys all right?"
"I'm kind of bit up, but I'll be okay."
"You should put some antiseptic on the
bites."
"Thanks. I'll do that. Any idea why a bunch
of dogs would suddenly attack us like that?"
"Who do you think you're calling, National
Geographic? How would I know?"
"We think the werewolf was responsible."
"Uh, by 'werewolf' you mean
the guy that nutcase Bateman
thinks
is a werewolf, right?"
"Yeah, him."
"This is a joke, isn't it? You're trying to
get back at me for giving you the crappy werewolf assignment.
Y'know, there are a lot of worse places you can be. A guy at a
sewage treatment plant isn't paying his protection money. Can you
believe that? A sewage treatment plant. How do you get protection
money out of them in the first place? The world is crazy. You could
be on your way to the turd processing factory right now, so
don't--"
"Are you done?"
"I don't think I was supposed to say anything
about the sewage place. Don't tell anybody, okay?"
"Enough, Ricky! We need to know if we should
keep going where we're going, or if we should get off the road for
a while until things blow over."
"Oh, you should definitely keep going. They
want the werewolf this evening at the latest. Where did you say the
dogs were?"
"It's a small town called Hachiholata
or something like that."
"Can you spell it for me?"
"H-A-C..." George trailed off. "No, I can't
spell it for you! Just find it!"
"All right, all right, I'll follow
what's going on there. Worst case, we'll try to get you a new van
that nobody will be looking for, though I'm not sure we have any
people in that area who can make that happen. For now, just assume
that everything's cool. I'll call you back."
"Are you going to contact Bateman?"
"Oh, hell no. Just keep going. I'll take care
of everything."
"Thanks," said George. He hung up and tucked
the cell phone back into his pocket.
"I noticed that you didn't mention your new
hostage," said Ivan.
George ignored him. "Still take the next
exit," he told Lou.
"Why?"
"Because this wolf is going to talk."
CHAPTER SIX
An Unwise Decision
"That seems like it could turn out bad," said
Lou.
"We're not going to let him out of the cage,"
George insisted. "We're not even going to get close to it. I'm just
going to make him talk."
"Why does he need to talk? Why do we need to
know anything? I'm perfectly happy not having a clue in the world
about what's going on."
"Well, I need some answers. We were not
sufficiently briefed before we took this job. There's a big
frickin' difference between transporting an annoying guy in a cage
and transporting a guy who can command dogs to do his bidding...or,
you know, his scent makes them crazy and violent, or whatever it is
that he did. If he can mess with animals like that, who knows what
else he can do? Maybe he's...I don't know, an abomination or
something, and we should destroy him for the good of mankind."
"I liked it better when we didn't care if he
was a werewolf or not."
Truth be told, so did George. He usually
didn't want to know the details. He'd committed plenty of immoral
acts without understanding the true motive behind them.
But this was different. A
lot different. This wasn't about stolen cash or sleeping with the
wrong person's wife or making a poor business decision that needed
to be rectified with knives. This was an unexplained phenomenon.
Or, if it
had
been
explained, then Ivan really was a werewolf, which was completely
absurd but a matter that needed to be further
investigated.
Sure, George had absolutely no intention of
doing anything to put the job or his personal safety at risk, but
Ivan didn't need to know that.
"Are you having trouble adjusting to
your new view of the world?" Ivan asked. "It's always a little
devastating when decades of preconceived notions about the way
things really work are shattered all at once. But just wait until
you meet the aliens."
"Let me explain something to you,"
said George. "Do you understand the concept of 'everybody fucks up
once in a while'?"
"Yeah, I think I do."
"Good. This is how it relates to current
events. When Lou and I do a job, we're expected to complete it
successfully. That's what we get paid for. But no matter how good
you are--and we're good, believe me--there's going to be the
occasional job that goes bad. Somebody's not where they're supposed
to be, somebody who's not supposed to be there shows up, your car
breaks down...there are lots of reasons why a job might not work
out properly. The people in charge understand this."
"Yeah, right. If you don't deliver me to
Tampa, you'll be at the bottom of a lake by midnight."
"Oh, we're going to deliver you, don't get me
wrong. But if we deliver you with your arms and legs broken, we'll
get yelled at, and possibly forfeit our fee, but nobody's going to
kill us. Now, I don't want to get yelled at, and I certainly want
to get paid for all the crap I've gone through today, but I've
reached a level of frustration where busting you up might be worth
it."
"Cool. I'm glad I could bring you to that
level."
"George, are you sure you wanna do this?" Lou
asked. There was a knowing look in his eyes. He was playing
along.
George nodded. "Oh yeah."
"All right. Promise me you won't do
any permanent damage."
"Do you see what they're doing?" Ivan
asked Michele. "They're going to break my legs. I wonder how
they're going to do it? Tire iron to the kneecaps, I guess. That's
what I would do if I were them, to make sure it hurts
enough."
"You don't really believe that he's a
werewolf, do you?" Michele asked George.
"I might."
"But that's crazy."
George pointed to her shoulder. "How do you
explain that?"
"A pack of feral dogs. A chemical in
the air. A ridiculously elaborate assassination attempt on you.
There's a huge number of things I'd need to cross off my list
before I got to 'werewolf.'"
"Well, hopefully he'll help us cross them
off."
"You know, George," said Lou, "we really
should get rid of the girl. The longer we keep her around, the more
she's gonna see, and the worse things are gonna get."
"So you think we should just drop her off
somewhere?"
"Maybe."
"What if she talks?"
"What's driving around with her gonna do to
change that? Are we so charming that an hour in the van with us is
gonna keep her from going to the cops?"
George sighed. "I don't know."
"I don't want you to let me go," said
Michele.
"What?"
"I'm staying with you. I want in."
"
What?
"
"I want ten percent of what you're
getting."
"You don't even know what we're getting,"
said George.
"Did you see the shitty car I was driving?
I'll be happy with ten percent of anything. Look, I already know
what's going on with you guys, so you might as well keep me around
and pay me off."
George and Lou exchanged a look of disbelief.
"And why wouldn't we just kill you?" George asked.
"If you wanted me dead, you could've
just left me back at the gas station. Instead, you brought me with
you, knowing full well that we were leaving behind my car, which
has my purse in it, which means that people will know that I'm
missing, which means that they'll look for other clues, which means
that they'll find some blood on the pavement, which means that
they've got DNA evidence on you. It'll take a while, because
there's so much blood to sort through, but why would a couple of
smart men like you want to link yourselves to a murder when you
could just keep a cooperative girl around for a tiny
payoff?"
George grimaced. He tried to think of
a bigger blunder they'd ever made in their careers in crime than
letting Michele into the van. None immediately came to mind. Still,
bad guys or not, they couldn't have just watched her get ripped
apart by dogs while she was trying to save the attendant from
getting ripped apart by dogs. Obviously, they should've expelled
her from the vehicle as soon as they'd driven away from the gas
station, but Ivan had opened his big mouth right away, and George
wasn't thinking straight, and he had a hot chick on his lap, so how
could he be expected to make an intelligent decision?
That said, they were supposed to be
professionals. He gave Lou a sheepish look. "When did we become
such retards?"
"Don't say retards. That's offensive
to developmentally disabled people. We're just the regular kind of
stupid."
"Fair enough. What do you think?"
Lou shrugged. "Better than disposing of a
body."
"All right," George told Michele. "You've got
yourself a deal. Ten percent."