Monsters in the Midwest (Book 2): Northwoods Wolfman (17 page)

Chapter 24

“Dallas!
Hey D-Dallas! Holy camoly. What happened?”

Flipping
onto his back, Dallas grabbed impulsively for the covers, but his hand swiped
at air. The realization that there were no covers was the first of many sudden
and embarrassing revelations. The next thing he realized was that he wasn’t
wearing clothes. That was followed by the sensation of cold brick on his
backside and a chill wind on the rest of him.

“Yeeeaaaahhh!”
he yelled, rolling and scrabbling to his feet. Once standing, he quickly
covered himself with his hands. Eyes wide and roving, he tried to take in his
unexpected circumstances.

“Where
the hell are my clothes?” he demanded. “What’d ya do with my clothes, you
pervert?”

“I
d-didn’t do nothing, Dal,” Stanley answered, blushing furiously and averting
his eyes. “I just got here. Saw your truck, knocked, you d-didn’t answer,
figured you was in back, and here you are, naked on the patio.”

Dallas
stepped carefully over broken glass through his busted patio door, followed by
Stanley.

“Don’t
be looking at my ass,” Dallas growled. Once inside, he ran to his bedroom and
dressed quickly. After running his fingers through his hair, he took a few deep
breaths. Obviously, he’d been a little out of sorts last night. For a moment,
something that was almost a memory tickled his brain. Looking for booze in his
kitchen, but not finding any?

That can’t be right,
he reasoned,
because I was obviously very, very drunk.

It
wasn’t the first time he’d busted something and passed out after a bender, and
it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The being naked outside part was a little harder
to figure, but Dallas didn’t have time to untangle that particular mystery.
More pressing matters were at hand, specifically finding out why Stanley was at
his house.

“Why’re
you at my house, Stanley? Phone too complicated?” he asked, rummaging around
for a broom and dustpan.

“I
did call, Dallas,” Stanley said. “Three times. Something big happened last
night, and Colton wants all hands on deck.”

The
broom and dustpan were still M.I.A., but he did find the previous day’s clothes
on the kitchen floor. Well, he found what was left of them. Picking up his
shredded shirt and torn jeans, he shook his head in bemusement.

“One
of my best shirts, too,” he complained, tossing it in the garbage. “All hands
on deck, got it. Thanks for the memo, Stan. Tell Colton I’ll swing by camp in a
bit. I gotta get some plywood and close up this door. Should probably call the
hardware store too, and see if they have any glass panes in stock, or if
they’ll have to order them. Shit, you know what the weather’s supposed to be the
next few days?”

“Dallas,”
Stanley pleaded, “C-colton said it was important.”

“Then
you’d better stop talking and lend a hand. This door ain’t gonna fix itself.”

The
sun had trekked a good way up the morning sky when Dallas’s truck finally
rolled into camp.

“What
part of, ‘It’s really important so get here ASAP,’ didn’t translate? I’m sure I
was speaking English,” Aletia demanded as he and Stanley walked into the
broken-down cabin.

“Nice
to see you, too. I had a few things to take care of. Someone busted up my
sliding door last night.” He shrugged, grinning in his usual devil-may-care
way. “Or it was me. Dunno. I think I was drunk.”

“And
naked. Outside.” Stanley offered, helpfully.

Aletia
raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t say anything else. Instead, she waved to
Colton and Randall.

“All
accounted for, Colton. Want to get the newbies up to speed?”

Colton
waived the three over. “Huddle up. Things just keep getting better. First a
vampire, then a boo hag. Now I’m pretty sure we’ve got a newly turned werewolf.
Midwest is just full of monsters these days.”

“Image
if there was a bruja, too,” Aletia commented dryly. “That would totally suck.”

Dallas
strapped on his best poker face, but his blood pressure jumped. Desperate to
keep the conversation well away from any witch-talk, he raised a hand.

“So,
how do you know there’s a werewolf?”

“A
few neighborhood dogs went missing last night. Not yappy little clumps of fur,
either. Big dogs. A pair of huskies and a Malamute. A Rottweiler. We talked
with a few locals who said they heard howls, and there was a fair amount of
blood at a couple of the sites, too.”

When
Dallas responded with a blank stare, Colton explained.

“A
newly turned werewolf tend to act more on animal instinct than rational thought.
Marking its territory and establishing itself as the local alpha is pretty
common. It’ll usually piss all over the place and then challenge and kill large
dogs, coyotes, even other wolves if there are any nearby. More often than not,
it eats them too. New werewolves tend to have ginormous appetites.”

“Herb
ate a pug,” Dallas remembered. “Could it be another vampire?”

“Nope,”
Colton answered matter-of-factly. “Werewolves wouldn’t bother with a pug,
unless they needed to wipe after a healthy bowel movement.”

Stanley
asked the obvious question. “Maybe it was j-just a regular wolf. They don’t
come into town often, but it’s not unheard of. No sir. So it could’ve j-just
been a wolf, right?”

Before
Colton could respond, Randall snorted and rolled his eyes. “We’re the Society.
You think we can’t tell the difference between a regular wolf and a werewolf?”

“Prints,”
Aletia explained when Stanley started to stammer in his defense. “Werewolves
are people turned into a half-man, half-wolf. They usually walk upright but
have much bigger feet that a regular wolf. We found a couple of tracks at one
of the missing dog sites. Definitely not a normal wolf.”

Randall
piped in again. “Probably made a racket going after those dogs. Where were you
last night, Dallas? You hear anything weird?”

Dallas
shook his head. “Sorry, nope. I went to see a... friend. Catching up, you know.
Had a few beers and slept like a baby.”

“Naked
and outside,” Aletia added.

“Well,
sure,” Dallas conceded, embarrassment showing. “Happens to the best of us.”

“While
someone busted your sliding glass door,” she continued in a flat voice.

Colton’s
face collapsed into a frown as he looked from Dallas to Aletia and back.

Dallas
scuffed the toe of his boot on the worn cabin floorboards. “I dunno, Colton.
Probably me. I think I was drunk.”

Shaking
his head, Colton sighed. “Dallas, everyone needs a bender now and then, but I’m
going to make a formal request that you rein it in a bit. For all we know, that
could’ve been the werewolf. You have to stay sharp, stay frosty.”

“Roger
that. Say, about that monsters in the Midwest part. You don’t think that, well,
you know. I mean, maybe there are monsters that aren’t really... bad. That
could happen, couldn’t it?”

Randall
shook his head and clucked his tongue. The look on Colton’s face could’ve
soured all of the milk in the Get’n’Gooble’s dairy case. Aletia didn’t say
anything for a moment and searched Dallas’s face with concern in her eyes.

“Entiendo,
Dallas,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “Your friend, your best friend, was
taken from you. It’s a horrible thing, something almost everyone in the Society
has gone through.” Placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, she continued, “But
you have to understand. There are no good monsters. Así son las cosas. End of
story. The only thing monsters want to do is kill us, eat us, or make more
monsters, or some combination of those three. The ones that can pass as human
might try to fool us, make us think they’re just regular, everyday people,”

“Like,
when they’re bowling and stuff,” Dallas suggested.

“Sí.
Like when they’re bowling, but when they aren’t bowling, they’re killing
people. That’s why the Society is so important. Why you are so important.”

“Here’s
the rub, Dallas. We have to leave,” Colton said, regret plain in his words.
“There’s been a Sasquatch sighting about halfway between here and Sault Ste.
Marie. This one sounds legitimate, so we’re going to check it out.”

Dallas
looked at Aletia, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. After a quiet moment, he
nodded.

“And
it’ll just be me and Stanley tracking down this werewolf,” Dallas said.

“Nothing
to worry about,” Colton said with a reassuring grin. “You’ve been trained by
the best. Now, about that werewolf.”

Chapter 25

Dallas
flipped through the channels, restless and malcontent as program after program
flipped by. Public access, news,
Andy
Griffith Show
rerun, talk show, home shopping, weather, another news show,
high school football, more news. Flip, flip, flip, half-sentences formed a
garbled commentary for the collage of images, but none of it registered.
Despite staring straight at the tube and pressing the remote’s buttons,
Dallas’s mind was far away.

Earlier
in the day, before the Society had packed up and pressed on, Colton had told
them what he knew about werewolves.

“First,
it’s not just a once-a-full-moon thing,” he cautioned. “Werewolves turn the
nights before and after the full moon, so you’ve got three nights to worry
about. Next, do not kill it until after you’ve seen it turn. No matter how much
evidence there is that someone’s a werewolf, you won’t know for sure until they
turn. The last thing you want to do is make a mistake and kill an innocent
human.”

Colton
held Dallas with serious eyes until Dallas nodded his understanding. Satisfied that
his new recruit understood that important rule, he continued.

“They’re
fast, mean, and damn hard to kill when they’ve turned. Silver bullets work, but
you can also cut off their head or burn them, provided you can keep them in the
fire. If they got free, the burns would heal, and you’d be back to square one,
with the addition of an exceptionally pissed off werewolf that you just tried
to burn to death.”

Next,
he told them where the dogs had been snatched from, figuring that could help
them suss out the werewolf’s whereabouts. Once they had an idea of its
territory, they could start to check up on the various folks inside of it.

“Don’t
just look for weirdos though. It’s never that simple. Instead, try to find a
person who has some dog-like quirks.”

Dallas
felt an itch behind his ear and took to scratching furiously.

“Aaahhh,”
he groaned with pleasure. “Much better. Now, what were you saying?”

Colton
shared a few remaining tidbits. Unfortunately, werewolves weren’t as easy to
track as other monsters. Unlike vampires, they had no trouble walking around
during the day, and they weren’t stumbling, groaning, smelly corpses like
zombies. Until they turned, they were pretty much just human.

“There’s
always a tell though, even when they’re in human form. Many don’t like touching
silver. They could be stronger than normal, have better reflexes, even better
senses. They’ll hear things no one else can hear, smell things no one else can
smell. It’s the wolf simmering just beneath the surface, waiting for that next full
moon. But again, don’t strike until you’re one-hundred percent sure.”

“Got
it,” Dallas had said while Stanley nodded along. “We look for an X-man that
acts like a dog and doesn’t like silver, wait until it wolfs out and then kill
it. Piece of cake. Anything else?”

Colton
had tapped his finger thoughtfully on his lips and looked at Randall and Aletia
for suggestions.

“That
should be enough to get them pointed in the right direction,” Randall offered.
“Hell, he’s the Hero of Bumblefuck, Wisconsin. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Or die.
Whatev’s.”

“Damn
right,” Dallas agreed. “About the being fine part, not the dying part.” Turning
to look at Aletia, he asked, “So how do we stay in touch? Like, to let you know
we got the job done?”

Aletia
opened her mouth, but words didn’t follow. After a moment, she looked away with
a shrug.

“We’ll
try to circle back this way in a few weeks,” Colton said when Aletia didn’t
speak. “If there’s still a problem, we’ll lend a hand. If not, we’ll drink.
Now,” he said, looking pointedly at Randall and Stanley. “I think I need some
help loading up the truck.”

While
the three men gathered up weapons, books, and camping gear, Aletia pulled
Dallas to the back corner of the cabin.

“I’m
sorry, Dallas. It’s been fun, but this is how it is. Lo entiendes, right?”

Dallas
stuffed his hands in his jean pockets. “What? Me? Oh, sure. I understand. We
had a good time. So.”

Aletia
searched his eyes for a moment. “You weren’t getting attached, now were you? I
thought you weren’t the ‘settle down’ type.”

“Hell
no! Not Big D. Life is a highway, babe, and old Dal, he rides. I gotta admit
though. You were one helluva road side attraction.”

“Wow,”
she said with a wry grin. “I’m going to decide that what you just said was
intended to be sweet.”

Her
smile reached in and grabbed something deep inside his chest a moment before
she pulled him into an embrace and pressed her lips against his. When she
finally pulled back, Dallas thought her eyes looked just a tad moist. Of
course, he might’ve been confusing them with his own.

Colton
stuck his head back into the cabin.

“Time
to roll out, Tia.”

She
waved him off and turned back to Dallas.

“Ten
cuidado, Dallas. Be careful. Remember your training and go get that werewolf.
If we head back this way, I’d really like it if you were still here.”

Dallas
placed a calloused palm on her cheek.

“Damn
right, I’ll be here.”

Long
after the sound of Colton’s pickup and Randall’s moped had faded, Dallas was
still looking out the door of the cabin. Finally, Stanley’s excited yips and
questions had pulled him out of his reverie. They only had two more days around
the full moon, and there was a werewolf to find.

Stanley
had offered to follow-up on the missing dogs and do some research on the
townsfolk. His thinking was that he’d put together a list of likely perps, and
then he and Dallas could go interview the suspects. Since planning wasn’t one
of Dallas’s strengths, he’d agreed, headed home, and flipped on the television.
That had been over two hours ago, and restless didn’t even start to capture
what he was feeling.

Some
sudden impulse drove him to his feet. Flipping the remote onto the couch, he
started to pace. Front door, kitchen, fridge. Through the living room, stare out
the sliding door at his back yard. Around the couch and back to the front door
to look out the small pane of safety glass on his front drive. Back to the
kitchen. Fridge, still empty.

After
his fifth lap, or fifteenth, or fiftieth, he started to scratch. His left
shoulder blade itched something fierce. No sooner had he finished satisfying
that itch than his right shoulder cried out for his nails’ ministrations.
Switching hands, he scratched furiously, pressing deep into his flannel and
scoring the skin beneath. Like a game of whack-a-mole, the itch moved to his
scalp. Bringing both hands to the task, he scrubbed at his unruly hair, chasing
the itch across the top of his head and down his cheeks to his chest.

Time
must’ve passed, but Dallas wasn’t getting the memos. His steps and hands
settled into a strange cadence as his mind drifted. Pace, scratch. Pace,
scratch.

Herb’s back. But it’s not really
Herb. Can’t be. He’s in a can. Person can’t be a person in a can.

Pace.
Scratch. Rummage through the fridge.

Lois brought him back. How’s that
even possible? Witches ain’t hot. Lois is hot, so Lois can’t be a witch. Not
frickin’ possible.

Pace.
Scratch. Stare at the backyard.

But she is a witch. She’s got
spooky books and candles and other crap, and there was that weird pattern on
her table, and she said she’s a witch.

Past
the couch. Stare out at the front drive. Scratch.

She can’t be a witch, and Herb
can’t be in a can. I drank too much, and Lois was messing with me. Forget it,
Dal. Focus on the werewolf. Stan should be back soon. Dammit, I’m hungry!

The
last thought yanked his feet to a stop, one hand reaching around his shoulder,
the other mid-scratch on his thigh. His mind rolled the thought around as he
considered the sudden urge to eat. While he didn’t really have a list of things
he wanted or needed to do, he knew with certainty that if he did put a list
together, getting some food was definitely going to be on top. Underlined.
Twice. With an exclamation point. His newly discovered hunger dragged him back
from wherever his mind had been for the past...

“Two-thirty?
Where the hell did the day go? No wonder I’m frickin’ starving.”

Saying
the word flipped some kind of switch, turning his hunger into a physical thing.
His stomach gave a long and gurgley gurgle, and his mouth started to water.
Flipping through his mental Rolodex of grub spots around town, he considered
his options, evaluated their menus, and discarded each one in turn. Ronnie’s
was definitely out. Weasel’s, no. Stein’s, no. Bay City? No. Cecil’s? Been
there, done that. Pizza? Nope. His hunger had a specific shape, a definite
texture. He knew what he wanted, and no one was going to make it for him. This
was a craving he had to satisfy himself.

Never
one to sit idly by when things needed doing, Dallas grabbed up his jacket,
swiped his keys off the table, and headed for Deloris, giving her a passing
kick in the chrome testicles hanging from the trailer hitch. Thoughts of
Stanley, werewolves, and all the rest fell conveniently aside, eclipsed by his
new mission.

The
Get’n’Gobble wasn’t busy, which was good because Dallas was in no mood to
queue. Bee-lining for the meat counter, he practically ran over the few
unfortunate shoppers that had the rotten luck of being in his path. Upon
reaching the case, he place both palms against the glass and inhaled. When the
smell of raw meat flooded his nose, his eyes rolled back, and a deep sigh
escaped his lips.

“Hankerin’,
huh?” the woman behind the case observed. “I get ‘em, too. What are ya feeling?
Steak? Brats? Bacon? We got some nice pork cutlets wrapped up with cream cheese
and asparagus, if that’s your thing.”

“Yes.”
Dallas’s throaty reply might’ve surprised him if he were capable of any
self-awareness. As it was, all he could think was
meat, meat, meat.

“So
which will it be, then?”

“Yes,”
he replied again and clarified, “All of it.”

The
woman pushed at her hair net with a gloved hand. “Okey doke. One steak, one
brat, one pork cutlet. How much bacon?”

“No,
I mean all of it. Everything here. Unless you’ve got more in the back? That,
too.”

An
eyebrow raised up as the woman considered his request. “A party, huh? How many
people are you inviting? Heck, that much meat, I should grab the hubby and kids
and make an appearance.”

Dallas’s
wondered at the strange suggestion. He wasn’t having a party, he was just
hungry. Really, really hungry.

“I’m
really hungry,” he explained, eyes still glued to the platters of dead flesh.

“Well,
I can’t sell you everything here. We’re open until ten. What if other people
want some?”

“Don’t
care,” he growled, each syllable packed with malice and dipped in danger. “Pack
it up. Shovel it into a bag, don’t worry about wrapping it. Could you step on
it though? Man’s gotta eat.”

The
woman’s eyes went wide before her face broke into a slow smile.

“Okay
den, ha ha. I swear, you boys are always full of the pranks, aren’t ya? Now
seriously, what do you need?”

Dallas
finally looked up from the meat. Rising up to his full height, he leaned
forward, eyes boring into the woman’s. Every muscle tensed, from his toes to
his clenched jaw, as words ground out of his mouth like bloody sausage links.

“I
want all of it. Now. I don’t care how much it costs. I don’t care if someone
else whines. I don’t care if you think I’m kidding around. I want all of the meat,
and I want it now. If that’s going to be a problem for you, I’ll smash the case
and get it myself.”

Huffing
with indignation, the woman turned on her heel and walked through the swinging
door to the back. She returned a moment later with a large, waxed box.

“I
have to wrap it so I can weigh it,” she said in a brittle voice. “Is that
alright with you, or do you want to smash my scale, too?”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

For
the next few minutes, she grabbed handfuls of meat, slapped them on butcher’s
paper, wrapped, taped, and weighed them. Too slowly, she packed the box with
meat and Midwestern passive-aggression. Dallas vibrated with barely suppressed
anticipation and had to repeatedly wipe the drool from the corners of his mouth
with his sleeve. Finally, the meat case platters were empty, and the box was
full. The woman struggled mightily to lift it, but could only get it a few
inches off the counter.

“Let
me get another box,” she complained.

Impatience
driving his legs, Dallas rounded the meat case and shoved the woman aside.

“This’ll
do,” he managed, lifting the box easily and heading back around, oblivious to
the muttered curses the woman was throwing at his back.

When
he reached the checkout, he upended the box onto the belt. The sound of a wet
avalanche drew the pimply-faced teen by the register out of his horror magazine
and into the real world.