Wrapup

“They’re all gone?” Maureen said worriedly. “You’re sure?”

“As can be,” Ewan assured her. “Shaggy and Agent Mulder—I guess that’s Barry and Lowenstein—got run out of town days ago. Jumbo Dumbo’s been sent to a place he won’t be coming back from. Cochrane won’t be back if he knows what’s good for him. Your friend Pete, or whatever he is now, was seen headed for the tiger compound. They’ll deal with him, one way or the other. Zhere Ghan likes to keep a low profile. I think that’s everybody.”

Finally. Now maybe he could stow all this save-the-day scat and get down to the important business of courting his lady. Starting with this romantic breakfast at the Bighorn Diner. The place was packed as usual, but somehow a table for two had materialized when they’d come in. The perks of being a hero.

“Not quite,” Maureen said, still worried. “I wish I knew what happened to—”

“You two ready to order?”

“Ted?” Maureen leaped out of her seat and threw her arms as far as she could reach around the massive bulk of Comic Book Guy. “You’re still here? You’re okay?”

“Yep. Still here and better than okay. Atcheson dumped me here in town, so I figured screw it and went to breakfast. Best decision I ever made. The food here is incredible. And they have all you can eat days. I didn’t want to leave. So the owner, Miss Elly, gave me a job. I work here through lunch, then help out at her husband’s place for a couple hours.” He nodded toward the window, and the Grease ‘n’ Grill visible across the square. “Shifters have been better to me than humans ever were. I’ll be damned if I’ll hunt ‘em any more. I’m out of the cryptozoologist biz. You better be okay with that.”

“Hey, me too.” Maureen returned to her seat. She looked at him critically. “Have you lost weight?”

“Ten pounds,” Ted said proudly. “Miss Elly’s got me on a veggie diet. That’s the only downside. Her boys want me to start working out, and they’re relentless. She’s even got her husband in on it. I’m not allowed to eat over there.” He gazed longingly out the window toward the other diner and its enticing greasy odors. “Vern says he wants me to drop at least a hundred pounds because the way I am now, it’d take a pack to pull me down. He’s joking, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Ewan said. “That’s us. Born comedians.” Except for wolves, who had no sense of humor. No reason for Ted to know that. “We’ll have two specials. Blueberry for me, strawberry for the lady.”

“You betcha. Anything to drink?”

# # #

Eons in the past, in what would one day be Lapland, the mutant creature that had once been Wesley Atcheson surveyed his vast domain. He liked this place. It had the abundant food his mutated metabolism required, plenty of land to roam in, and puny little hairy hominids several hundreds of thousands of years away from inventing the gun. Their arrows and spears couldn’t penetrate his hide. He could stomp them with impunity. And gleefully did, as often as opportunity presented itself.

Best of all, this land was home to a herd of woolly mammoths. They also posed no threat to him, as he was clearly the largest, most powerful male in the territory—a fact not lost on the females. Within weeks he acquired an entourage of cows. Life was good indeed.

Roughly a year from the present day a team of Swedish paleontologists will discover the remains of a monster mammoth preserved in the frozen earth. Their findings throw the world of science into chaos. The human elements in the mammoth’s DNA are attributed to contamination in the lab. The wolf genes aren’t so easily explained. At least one scientist’s career ends in disgrace. The remains are locked away in the hopes they’ll be forgotten.

Reading about the debacle in a scientific journal, Morloxian ponders the discovery, then shakes his head. “Naw. Couldn’t be.”

# # #

“Lord Ghan.” The head of the Tiger Yakuza knelt on the floor before Zhere Ghan’s desk. “We have captured a … creature attempting to enter the compound. It appears to be one of the hated Hancock’s mutant werewolves, but it speaks. It says it is your servant.”

“Indeed?” Ghan’s brain sifted information. He could think of only one “servant” with even a tenuous connection to Hancock’s mutant werewolves. “Where is this creature?”

“Outside. Shall we kill it, Lord?”

“No.” Ghan stood. “Show it to me.”

The mutant werewolf had been bound with ropes and whips. It was ringed by Tiger Yakuza, many with guns. Yet when Ghan approached it, it turned its attention to him and him alone. It bowed as well as it was able. “Lorrrrrrd Ghan.” The Yakuza muttered.

Zhere Ghan stood before the beast. “What is your name?”

“Rrrrrranjeet, Lorrrrrd.”

Ghan considered this. “Leave us,” he told his Yakuza.

The mutters grew in intensity, but Zhere Ghan’s word was law. The Yakuza agents withdrew. Ghan himself removed the werewolf’s bindings. “Report.”

“This one was unsuccessful in securing Dr. Morloxian,” the werewolf growled in Urdu. “I attempted to bring you the mutant mammoth, but I was overcome and the beast was destroyed. I have failed in my mission, lord. I failed you. I offer you my life, and this, my mutant body, as compensation.” Ranjeet bent his head, awaiting execution.

Instead Zhere Ghan rested his hand on the werewolf-creature’s shoulder. “You’re a loyal servant, Ranjeet. I’m sure you did your best. You are to be rewarded. You are now a member of my Tiger Yakuza. The grounds and the forest beyond are yours. You will patrol them and keep us all safe from intruders. Any creature you catch, you may kill. But not eat, unless it’s a true beast. Drive off any shifters you come across, without too much violence if you can. We don’t want any unnecessary problems. Not unless I order it.”

Ranjeet quivered all over like an excited dog. He even dared to lick his master’s hand. “I live to serve you, Lord Ghan.”

“Then get to work. You’ve a territory to guard. You’d best get acquainted with it.”

The wolf-creature bounded off happily. Zhere Ghan smiled, watching him go. Such loyalty. You couldn’t even buy devotion so strong these days.

So he didn’t have Morloxian. Neither did Hancock. That counted as a victory in Ghan’s ledger. Those idiots in town never would have let him keep the mammoth anyway. This was better. He had his own mutant werewolf now, loyal only to him. And soon …

He opened his hand and regarded the long, loose wolf hairs resting in his palm. He bankrolled his own set of Indian scientists, well-schooled in both science and respect to the ancient tiger lords. They’d assured him they were making incredible strides in cloning.

The Battle of Schitt Creek

“Here he comes,” Turkle said calmly. “I got this.”

He could afford to be calm, Cochrane thought enviously. Turkle had the grenade launcher. It had been agreed he’d take the first shot at the monster mammoth. If the grenades didn’t bring it down, he and Cochrane would attack with their elephant guns. This, Dante had theorized, would buy time for other, stronger Peakies to arrive, with some of those spacey weapons they were said to possess. He and Turkle were expected to provide no more than a delaying action.

Cochrane sneered. Dante was just a werewolf. He didn’t know squat about what a real hunter could do.

Turkle walked placidly down the road toward the charging Hellephant. He knelt and settled the grenade launcher on his shoulder. “Welcome to the Peak,” Cochrane heard him say, just before he fired.

They all heard the boom and the whistle, then the second boom when the missile hit the monster on its hairy shoulder. Smoke and a bit of fire bloomed in its fur. The mammoth reared back with a screech of obvious surprise that its would-be victims could hurt it.

“And now that we got the range,” Turkle went on, “we finish the job. Sorry you got pulled out of bed for this,” he called back to Dante. “Lunch is on me.” He loaded another grenade and took careful aim at the mammoth’s skull.

The former Atcheson stood firm and waited, glaring at them from his scarily human eyes. Turkle fired his killing round.

Atcheson eyed the approaching grenade like a batter at the plate. An apt analogy, Cochrane realized seconds later when the mammoth-thing raised his trunk and swatted the grenade aside. It exploded harmlessly far out over the open meadow. The mammoth trumpeted what sounded like triumphant laughter.

“Scat,” Turkle said. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

Nor was anyone expecting the beast to lunge forward in a high-speed charge. Turkle dove for the safety of the high weeds at the side of the road, too late. Atcheson caught him up in his trunk. He sniffed at his captive, then thrust Turkle into his mouth.

“No!” Cochrane screamed. The old bird was a shapeshifter, inhuman, the kind of thing Cochrane had come here to kill in the first place, but over the last couple of days they’d found enough common ground to become fast friends. Nobody was going to make a turkey dinner of him while Cochrane had air in his lungs and a gun in his hand.

He raced toward Mammoth Atcheson, heedless of his own safety. When he figured he was in range, he started firing. It took only seconds for Cochrane to realize an elephant gun wasn’t going to do squat on a creature three times the size of an elephant and protected by a thick mat of hair. Not unless he got right up close and personal.

He was hastily reloading when he heard a series of muffled pops. The mammoth stopped and shook his head violently. The pops paused, then picked up again.

Cochrane grinned fiercely. The wily old bird. He must’ve had a pistol on him, and was now shooting directly inside the monster’s mouth. “Chew on that,” Cochrane snarled.

Instead of chewing, the mammoth spit. Turkle tumbled out of his mouth. Before he could hit the ground he shifted. The wild turkey streaked for safety, trailing ripped ribbons of camo. Atcheson snaked his trunk hungrily after him. Cochrane raised his gun.

The roar of Dante’s motorcycle warned him just barely in time to jump out of the way. The alpha wolf sped toward the monster, his pockets stuffed with grenades. Rafe, the golden eagle shifter, also soared mammothward, a grenade clutched in each taloned foot for an aerial assault.

Cochrane nodded. It might just work. They’d proven the grenades could hurt it. If they could knock out its legs, that would give Cochrane his chance. He hung back and let the shifters take their best shot.

For a while it looked like they had him. Dante lobbed his grenades at Atcheson’s legs, aiming for the vulnerable knees. When the mammoth went for Dante, the eagle tore a pin loose with his beak and dropped a pineapple as close to the monster’s skull as he could aim. The explosions probably caused the mutant beast’s wolf-sensitive ears more pain than the actual grenade. He certainly had a lot of roars and headshakes going on, and vigorous trunk-swipes at the circling eagle, but nothing seemed to be doing him any real damage.

Unfortunately, Rafe could only tote two grenades at a time. The eagle swept back toward Turkle’s pickup truck to reload. Free of that distraction, Atcheson turned on Dante. Cochrane had to admit Wolf Boy could work some serious maneuvers on that hog of his, but sooner or later either his skill or his luck was going to run dry, and then—

And then the Hellephant’s trunk dealt a glancing blow to the rear of the bike. Dante went skidding onto the berm and was thrown into the grass. The mammoth lifted one enormous foot and scanned the ground for his victim.

“Hey!” Cochrane shouted. He ran out into the center of the road and waved his gun over his head. “Atcheson! Yeah, I’m talking to you, you psycho shit! You remember me? You want a piece of me? Well, come and get me, motherfucker! You’re no hunter and you never were! You’re just one more friggin’ monster.”

The mammoth turned. His little eyes squinted at Cochrane. It took a full minute for recognition to set in. The monster loosed a roar full of hatred and charged him.

Cochrane got off two shots before the trunk wrapped around him like a huge hairy python and lifted him into the air. The hunter’s arms, along with the gun, were pinned to his sides. No matter. Cochrane was counting on all that insane hatred in the mammoth’s blue eyes and the rumble in his empty mutant tummy. “Go ahead, fuzzball. Do it,” he taunted. After the monster swallowed him, he figured he’d have just enough time to do some serious internal damage with the elephant gun before he suffocated. Maybe he’d even be lucky enough to hit a vital organ or two. It was how all hunters dreamed of cashing it in—in action, guns blazing. Who the hell wanted to die in bed like a pansy boy anyway?

“Come on!” Cochrane shouted as well as he was able with the trunk squeezing all the air out of him. “What are you waiting for?”

Atcheson glared at him, long and hard. Then he swung his trunk and hurled Cochrane up and away, at a high and no doubt fatal terminal velocity. The hunter didn’t even have a chance to get off a shot.

Cochrane had time to reflect that when he landed he was probably going to make the biggest, messiest splat Talbot’s Peak had ever seen.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Solution in a Jif

Ewan and Maureen helped each other out of the mammoth poo and wiped each other off as well as they could. This meant shedding what remained of their clothes. Ewan didn’t mind public nudity, especially in front of a woman. Especially since he could now happily stare at Maureen’s sweet little tits. They made his mouth water, in spite of the stains and the pungent aroma permeating the air. Yep, true love for sure.

Maureen clearly wasn’t as comfortable with nakedness as a shifter, and tried to distract herself by focusing on the matter at hand. “Atcheson’s still headed for Talbot’s Peak. He’ll stomp it to bits just for the heck of it. He’s not just an a-hole, he’s a psycho a-hole. Getting changed into a giant mutant mammoth didn’t do him any favors.”

Much as Ewan would have enjoyed a romp in the woods with his favorite naked lady, even he had to concede now was not the best time. “We should join up with Dante. He’s set up a defense line at the creek. If Dumbo makes it past them there’ll be no stopping him. Hope Dante’s rustled up some weapons. Like a dragon, maybe.”

“You have dragons?”

“Just the one that I know of. We’re a pretty open town.”

Maureen hugged her arms over her breasts, and Ewan muttered swears. “Pity they don’t have some peanuts. That’d stop him for sure.”

“Peanuts for the elephant? Well, if he stops to eat ‘em—”

“No, not that. He has an allergy. A really bad one. Just the smell of peanuts gives him a rash. If he swallowed some, jeepers, anything could happen.”

“Hold up there. You’re serious. Are you sure about this?”

Maureen made a sour face. “I was the group girl, duh. Guess who had to do all the cooking and grocery shopping? Atcheson was really specific about what he wouldn’t eat. Every time Ted had a candy bar Atcheson would pitch a fit. Especially Reese’s. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

“So if we got him to swallow a Snickers he’d keel over?”

“Probably. He’s still mostly Atcheson genetically. If the allergy carried over—”

“We can stop him in his tracks.” It was a wild, off-the-wall idea, just the kind that appealed to coyotes. “I need to shift for a minute,” he told her. “Try not to scream.”

Maureen massaged her throat and offered up a wry grin. “I’m pretty much screamed out.”

Ewan couldn’t answer. His mouth was now a muzzle. Dante needed this new information, and a howl would travel faster than their feet. He lifted his head and filled his throat and sent his song out into the air, in the hopes wolf ears would pick it up.

# # #

Cochrane pointed. “There he is!”

The point wasn’t really necessary. A four-story-high mutant werewolf/mammoth hybrid was pretty easy to spot. He’d reached the open stretch of road that angled down toward the creek. If he made it past the bridge, it was only two miles to Talbot’s Peak. Even if the town was prepared, there would still be damage and injuries, maybe even casualties.

The monster wouldn’t cross the bridge. Even if Dante had to drive his motorcycle down its throat and choke it.

He turned to Rafe. “Is she still on his back?”

The golden eagle shifter shaded his eyes. “I don’t see anybody up there. Let me check.” He spread his arms, which shifted to wings, and sprang into the air. Cochrane and Turkle, more pragmatic, continued loading their elephant guns.

The long grass at the side of the road shivered and a wolf emerged. He loped up to Dante, where he shifted. Deuce hunched over with his hands on his knees and gulped in breaths. “Ewan,” he gasped when he had enough air. “Back there. Had a plan.”

It must not have worked, because the beast was still coming. Dante peered grimly at the rapidly-approaching Hellephant. “He’s not slowing,” he said, “and we can’t wait any longer. Will those things bring it down?”

“If we hit the right spots,” Turkle said. He and Cochrane nodded to each other. “We’ll hit the right spots.”

Off to the side, Syprelli stared in horrified fascination at the lumbering mammoth. She was not a fighter. Dante had expected her to shift and bolt well before now, but she’d held her ground, determined to do whatever she could to help. His admiration for the Pegasus shifter increased.

Rafe swept back and circled overhead. He shifted while still in the air, and landed hard. “Nobody’s up there,” he reported. “It’s just Jumbo by his lonesome. I didn’t see Ewan, or the werewolf or the girl.”

“Then we’re clear,” Dante said. “Fire at—”

Then he heard the song, the long coyote howl of trills and yips. The mammoth paused in mid-step, snorted through his trunk, and kept coming. “What—” Cochrane started.

Dante chopped his hand through the air for silence. He and Deuce listened intently to the coded message inside the howl, translatable only to canine ears.

When it ended, Deuce blinked at Dante. “Peanuts? He wants us to fight it with peanuts?”

“Food allergy,” Dante deduced. “Cochrane. Did your man have a food allergy?

“Is that what it was?” Cochrane said. “I thought he was just a prissy boy. Damn finicky about his food. Worse’n a goddamn cat.”

Dante had already tuned him out. “Your place is closest,” he said to Turkle. “Do you have any peanut products?”

“Hell yeah,” Turkle said. “Peanut butter. Buckets of it. The missus makes her own. She baked a batch of cookies this morning. There might be some left.”

“If we can get him to ingest some, it might slow him down, maybe even stop him completely. Rafe—”

“I’ll go,” Syprelli said. “I’m no good in a fight.”

“You’ll need someone to carry it. Will you take a rider? Deuce.”

Deuce saluted and darted toward Syprelli. Where the girl had been now stood a red horse with crimson-feathered wings. Deuce asked permission before he got on. He clung tight to her mane.

“Password’s ‘giblets,’” Turkle said. “Better yell it as you come in. The missus don’t know you two, and she’s got dead aim.”

“Got it,” Deuce said. His words were whipped away as the horse leaped skyward. She and her rider shot over the trees.

Far closer than he’d been only moments before, the mammoth lifted his trunk and trumpeted. He’d spotted the enemy. Tiny eyes narrowed in hate, he charged the bridge.

# # #

No, I didn’t pull the allergy bit out of my butt. I set up that plot point weeks ago, in this entry here. Even pantsers can plot now and then. (smug grin)

All Hellephant Breaks Loose

Ewan and Deuce made it out of Morloxian’s lab without trouble. By now the place was practically deserted. Even the Tiger Yakuza had vacated the premises.Everybody, it seemed, had heard that weird roar from behind the metal doors. Nobody wanted to stick around to find out what had made it.

Ewan charged outside, back onto the mini golf course, and stared around. “Which way’s the—”

Oh.

The sod covering the old swimming pool had scrunched back to reveal a metal hatch, now almost completely open. Loading dock, Ewan thought. So that’s how they got all the big stuff in there.

Suddenly a huge furry trunk and a pair of curved ivory tusks thrust up through the opening. That horrible trumpet/roar sounded again, this time with no doors to blunt it. This was accompanied by the shriek of metal as the rest of the impatient beast shouldered its way out of its underground holding pen and into the light.

Behind him, Deuce swallowed a howl of alarm. Ewan, who saw stuff like this at the movies every weekend, just stared.

The thing that thrust itself to freedom wasn’t quite a mammoth, in spite of the trunk and the tusks and a giant bulk that made the statue of Godzilla look like the Geico gecko. Its huge ears came to points and sat too far up on its skull. Its feet, the size of manhole covers, had claws. A wolf’s tail sprouted out of its backside. Its shaggy pelt was brownish blond. It looked like something out of Ice Age, if Manny and Diego had a kid.

It had blue eyes. Human eyes

Ewan’s gut dropped into his undies. All of a sudden he knew what had happened to Freddy.

Even that wasn’t the worst of it. Freddy had passengers. A mutant werewolf crouched on his neck. The fella with the mismatched limbs and bad body haircut had to be the Doctor.

Between them, clutching at the mammoth’s pelt to keep from falling off, was Maureen. Her scream was lost beneath another roar from the mammoth.

The beast paid no attention to them, or to the humans currently fleeing Uncle Fuddy’s Funland. It swung about and lumbered toward the highway, picking up speed as it moved.

“Lupa help us,” Deuce moaned. “What do we do?”

Ewan’s hard stare never left Maureen. “We bring him down.”

“With what? I doubt if Dante left a bazooka in his car.”

“Then we improvise. Is there a gun store around here?”

Deuce shrugged. “It wouldn’t be Montana if there wasn’t.”

“Let’s go, then. I’ll drive. You call Dante, tell him we got us a big problem.” Screams and the squeal of brakes told them the Freddyphant had reached the highway. “I don’t think we’re going to lose him.”

They ran for the car. Behind them, a shaking human teenager was recording it all on his cell phone. “Dude,” he said, “you won’t believe this. This course has some serious hazards.”

# # #

Maureen dug her fingers into the mammoth’s pelt all the way up to the knuckles and still didn’t hit skin. She lay flat across the monster’s back and tried not to think about what kind of loud, wet noise she’d make if she tumbled off. It had started off at a gut-shaking lurch, but its gait seemed to be smoothing out with practice. This was a positive thing. The beast sounded really pissed off. She didn’t want to annoy it further by ralphing into its hair.

“Whooo-HOOOOO!” Morloxian pumped a fist in the air. “Look at my baby go! Can I cook, or can’t I? By the way,” he added, much less enthused, “where are we going? You’d better not be taking me to Hancock. I’m guessing my unannounced defection left him a little perturbed.”

The mutant werewolf grinned at him over his shoulder. Maureen tried not to look at his fanged and furry face, tried not to remember he was Pete. “Not Hancock,” he rasped in his rough, bestial voice. “I am to deliverrr you to my lorrrrd.”

“Oh shit. There’s another one? I was afraid of that. I guess that accounts for all those tigers. Well, you tell your lord he can bite me.” Morloxian scrambled up. Before Pete could stop him he leaped for the mammoth’s lupine tail, swung himself down to the tip, and let go.

Maureen didn’t bother to scream. As far as she was concerned, he was now one less problem to deal with. She couldn’t hope for Ewan to rescue her. What could he do against this monster? For that matter, what could she?

Her stomach did a somersault. She clamped her jaw shut and hung on and told herself not to think about Pete’s hideous transformation, or how far below her the ground was, or how much worse things were liable to get once Dumbozilla here finally stopped. It really, really sucked to be the group girl in these circumstances.

# # #

Morloxian timed his fall perfectly. He landed in the moat surrounding Dracula’s castle. The scummy water was just deep enough to save him from serious injury. Almost. He tried to stand and his ankle buckled. He went down butt-first in the water.

“Son of a bitch,” he said philosophically. Now he’d have to find another sponsor, build another lab. Great-Uncle Franz’s hidden catacombs had served the family well for generations. No chance of salvaging anything now, thanks to that idiot mutant mutt running off with a giant hairy, walking billboard. If Hancock didn’t come after him, some other shifter was bound to.

Maybe he’d head for New York, for the Catskills. He still had family out there.

“Well, well, ladies. Look what we’ve got here.”

He jerked his head up. His captive harem had apparently made it out of the lab intact. They’d also armed themselves with the iron putters ditched by the mini golfers. They moved into a ring around him, smiling.

He didn’t like the look of those smiles. No sir.

“Hi, Morry.” Candi bounced the shaft of her putter in her palm. “Mind if we play through?”

He looked at their implacable faces and swallowed. “Oh, bugger,” he said.

The ladies lifted their putters and closed in.

# # #

Ranjeet grumbled to himself, but only briefly. True, he had lost the scientist, Lord Ghan’s primary target. The Yakuza would be following at a discrete distance. They would have seen the Doctor drop off. No doubt they had collected him already. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was returning to Lord Ghan empty-handed.

The Atcheson wolf-mammoth paused to challenge a tour bus. Ranjeet tugged on his ear until he turned. “Not here,” he crooned in Urdu. “There will be bloodshed and destruction aplenty for you. But not here.” Atcheson trumpeted his frustration, then turned in the direction Ranjeet guided him.

The Ghan family had trained him well. He had learned how to control elephants in his native India, and knew how to manipulate Atcheson from his undercover stint in the group. This hybrid creature was easily steered.

Lord Ghan would be ecstatic. The tiger lord had his own crew of scientists. They would surely glean something from this mammoth offering, and from Ranjeet’s own mutated body, and that of the woman who smelled like a she-wolf, the unexpected prize.

He glanced back at Maureen, her hands knotted desperately in Atcheson’s pelt. She smelled different to him now that he had a wolf’s nose. Enticing. Exciting. He’d never viewed her in that way when he was human, but this new body had other ideas. Feral, primal ideas. Perhaps Lord Ghan would see fit to reward him for the gifts he brought.

The quickest way to his lord’s stronghold was up Route 15, directly through Talbot’s Peak. The beast beneath his feet hungered for destruction. Perhaps it might be wisest to let him run rampant through the shifter town. Drain off some of that massive energy, slake the bloodthirst a bit. Then he’d be more tractable by the time they arrived at the Ghan compound.

He tugged on Atcheson’s ear, and dug his foot-claws into the mammoth’s skull. Atcheson barked and bolted forward, leaving the exit behind, aimed for Talbot’s Peak.