Continuing on from his last epic, over-the-top adventure, Bret Snow is now faced with a new challenge: his first official contract with the government to wipe out monsters, and this time… it’s werewolves. But along the way he runs into some problems, because nothing is ever easy: first, it’s a cult that worships the previous story’s zombies, and hope they return and usher in a new, different world.
Then there’s the secret, underground labs controlled by a mad scientist with a connection to someone very close to Bret.
And, of course, there’s the ladies.
Chapter 1 — Vulnerable
Getting tackled by a werewolf sucks under the best of circumstances.
When you’re attempting to escape a whole host of the hairy bastards and one of them tackles you off a moving motorcycle you start to wonder about your life choices. At least, I did as I skidded along the parking lot on my back, listening to my body armor scrape against the ground and watching a werewolf run along side me with a gleam in his eye. My bike kept going for a distance before it toppled over as well, and the tire of a parked PT Cruiser stopped my movement by hitting me in the head.
As the werewolf punched his paws against my body I silently thanked Mel for the body-armor I wore. In her time on an alien world she learned how to copy their designs for personal protective equipment, and once we got our business going she was able to mostly replicate the gear. It resembled standard motorcycle protective wear, but the outer layer was damned near tear proof. The werewolf could hit me but he couldn’t claw my insides out unless he got the clothes off of me.
His next move was to attempt to bite through my helmet. His teeth gave before the stiff armor did, and then I jammed my palm under his right foreleg and a pulse of electricity strong enough to kill a herd of cows exited through the armor into his frame with a loud pop. His body went into a seizure as the hair around my palm ignited into flame from the heat, and I stumbled away from the twitching bastard. It’d be several minutes before the suit recharged enough to do that again and I’d already learned on that fateful full moon night that a blast of that kept them down for less than half that.
His companion wolves had caught up to us. I wasn’t sure which of them was the alpha or if they even had an alpha, but a semi-circle of snarling, multi-colored, giant wolves began to fan out to completely circle me. In this form their human behavior was completely off-set by their wolf instincts and I understood the plan: get me surrounded and try to take my legs out. I’d seen enough Animal Planet to know that was coming and I kept my back to the PT while trying to remain aware of the twitching mass beside me. The field of view on my helmet was poor at best for combat.
“Any time now,” I said, hoping the microphone still worked. The built-in headphones did not, and worse, as they filtered all sound coming into my head I was now effectively deaf.
It turns out in practice that silver makes for a really awful weapon especially against something with a hide as thick as these bozos. The strength just isn’t there and about the only way to kill one with a silver bullet would be to lodge the barrel of a gun down its throat and hope you hit the heart before the bullet turns into a useless lump. Our old pal Gurklovich was at the moment working on something of an assault spray utilizing micro silver and aerosols but he’d already gotten three visits from the EPA that slowed his progress. My next idea was to see what happened if I blew them up but I didn’t bring explosives with me.
Without my ineffective headphones on I would have heard the blond-looking wolf hit the hood of the PT, but even technologically deafened I could feel the impact of the beast on the shocks. Instinctively, I bent forward just in time to allow the werewolf to pass over me harmlessly, and it skidded to a stop several yards past me, snarling and facing me with a look that betrayed it’s annoyance that I dared move. Before I could taunt him a second time his friend recovered from the blast and dug into my hip with his broken teeth. The armor protected me from being pierced but he shook me violently and tossed me into the air.
I landed on the hood of the PT face down.
“Any time now,” I groaned. The wolves surrounded the car and sat on their haunches. It had to be close to three in the morning by now, and the sun wouldn’t rise for another three hours at the earliest. The wolves had time on their side. They might not be able to rip me out of the armor but they could squish me and lap up my goo as it leaked out of the suit. The thought made me laugh despite the situation and my ribs on the left side screamed in agony. No — it wasn’t my ribs, I was the one screaming. It just sounded weird inside the helmet.
I felt intense, burning pressure on the back of my right leg as a wolf attempted to bite through the tendons there. Without much of a thought I kicked him in the snout as hard as I could with my other foot and felt him pawing at my foot angrily as he attempted to stop me from kicking his face in. Maybe that was the answer: bash their brains out with my boots. He certainly gave up before I did, and that allowed me to slither forward on my belly on the car, further from the wolf with an appetite for feat.
For the first time in some time, I missed purple-faced zombies with the brains and coordination of a confused flock of seagulls. Even the big boss purple zombie cop had been an easier time than a pack of super strong, gigantic, unrelenting wolves who healed faster than anything had a right to. But then, the zombies eventually came with wings and stingers and alien pals, so this couldn’t be that bad. If we could figure out how to get silver into them.
“Bret?” Callie’s voice echoed through the previous silence.
“Yes,” I said. “Can you hear me? My helmet is malfunctioning.”
“Bret?” Callie repeated. “All I’m getting is static. Your locator isn’t pinging. If you can hear me — Andi is out looking for you. Hold tight and don’t do anything stupid.”
Full novel at Amazon: Secret Labs, Werewolves, and Cultists