My heart had risen from its place in my gut after witnessing my car get trashed, and was currently residing somewhere in my neck, pounding as adrenaline surged through my veins and lit my nerves on fire.
Everything slowed—not quite the same way they did when the dino-dude snapped his fingers, but in the head-rushing-to-your-head kinda way—as I vaulted the counter and hit the ground running. I got two steps in before I leapt forward, reaching out with the stump of my left arm and trying my best to reach my friend as I sailed through the air.
My brain felt a twinge in my arm as it remembered the last time it felt me reaching out like this, with that hand, with this much adrenaline in my system.
Rain poured down the windows of our car. I was sitting in the passenger seat, selecting a tune to play for our road trip down south, and she was belting out the lyrics to our second favorite song as she drove on through the sheets of rain.
My cheeks hurt from smiling and my eyes drifted up to her bright face.
God, she was so beautiful.
A flash of light engulfed our windshield.
Fear crossed her face and a jolt of adrenaline stabbed through my heart.
I reached out for her, trying to protect her from what? I could never remember. But I remembered the searing pain in my forearm and waking up in the hospital bed a week later. A pain that never let up, no matter what the doctor’s gave me.
Two seconds later the glass front door of the Hilltop gas station shattered inwards as a red sports car door came sailing through it like a frisbee.
I glanced up from my place on the ground on the far side of the shop. Derek was sprawled across the ground next to me, right where we landed after my sprinting tackle, groaning in pain and looking around bewildered.
My heart was still hammering, and I was still hearing the song and seeing her face, but at least I knew where I was. And at least this time, I managed to save someone. No small consolation, either, but it didn’t stop the pain shooting up my left arm.
“What the—” Derek spluttered, trying to figure out how we ended up on the ground.
The demon dinosaur douchebag interrupted his attempts to riddle out the mysteries of the world, and Derek’s eyes went wide. He screamed something unintelligible about horns, I think, and then passed out.
Great.
I rolled onto my back and started scrambling as best I could, gripping Derek’s shoulder with my good—well, my only remaining—hand and doing an awkward shimmy backwards as I tried to kick us towards the drink-filled fridges lining the back.
Dino-guy kept pace with my valiant effort by taking two very small steps. In my defense he had huge legs so it really wasn't fair. The nostrils lining his snout flared as he took two deep sniffs.
“I can smell your blood from the outskirts, champion. It’s been driving me up the fucking walls for months.” He growled out a low, resonating—and terrifying—note that sounded like a woodchipper starting up. “I haven’t had a decent meal in years! Mama said not to eat my dessert before the main course but, uh…mama ain’t here no more. Ha!”
“I have no idea what any of that means!” I shouted as I pulled Derek around the corner of the aisle and started getting to my feet.
Dino guy shrugged indifferently and kept stomping after me in that same unhurried pace. Considering the cops outside were still frozen in place, I supposed he did have all the time in the world. “Ignorance isn’t nearly as good a seasoning as righteousness, but it’ll do in a pinch. Champion’s blood is delicious either way! Best meal a Carnisaur could ask for.”
My eyes darted back towards the counter. I needed to keep this guy talking long enough to reach the 12-gauge underneath the register. It was on the far side of the store and there was a ‘Carnisaur’ in between it and where I was standing, but it was my best chance at surviving.
Before I could finish my thought process, his massive scaly foot came down on Derek’s knee, crushing it flat and waking the poor guy up from the pain. The screams filled the gas station as the Carnisaur came around the corner and glared down at him.
I stumbled, my mind blanking from the shock of witnessing such a brutal injury delivered in such a casual manner, and fell against the drink fridges. Part of me wanted to charge this monster and avenge my friend’s leg. The rest of me was screaming right along with Derek because what the fuck!
The Carnisaur’s red eyes flashed in surprise as if just noticing the problem. “Oh dear, how unfortunate. You puny wretches are just so fragile. Here, let me help.” He lowered himself onto one knee to get closer to the screaming young man.
Derek’s glasses had fallen off when I tackled him, and his eyes were bloodshot from his last joint, but in spite of that he looked almost hopeful that this dino-guy was really going to help him with his leg and maybe things were going to be okay.
“Shhhhh,” The giant dino-man hushed gently, sliding two wickedly sharp claws into Derek’s chest as if he were plugging a cable into a wall socket; silencing the man’s screams. Weirdly, Derek froze up again just like the cops outside and even his blood just sort of paused as it spurted out of his chest.
The dino-man’s gleaming red eyes then swiveled up to rest on me.
Nope!
I gripped the handle of the nearest fridge and hauled myself to my feet; pushing off and booking it down the candy aisle. My destination? The 12 gauge.
But my day was not even close to being done with its surprises.
A brown blur suddenly sped through the shattered glass doorway and slid to a halt between me and the counter. What I at first mistook for a giant wolf instead resolved itself into what can only be described as the most well-armored werewolf I had ever seen. A tactical vest hugged its extra curvy torso—perhaps a lady werewolf?—along with holsters on either thigh and a black collar with a microphone and a wire linking up to an earpiece.
So there I was, stuck between a demonic dinosaur-gorilla thing and a fucking tactical werewolf. If by some miracle I made it out of this situation somehow I would like to state for the record that I am the most badass person I’ve ever met. Since that was probably not going to happen though, I guessed I was just…regular old me.
The werewolf snapped her jaws, her yellow eyes focused over my head.
“If you want him, you’ll have to go through me,” the werewolf said in a firm yet noticeably feminine voice.
“That won’t be a problem,” the Carnisaur promised. He started marching towards the werewolf and she dropped down onto all fours and leapt.
Faced with two options, either being caught between these two actual monsters who seemed hellbent on killing the other so they could eat me first or curling up into a ball so I didn’t get mauled to death, I chose the latter.
I dropped as the werewolf sprang over my head and tackled the demon dino into the refrigerators. Glass shattered and liquid sloshed everywhere as they savaged one another. The she-wolf bit and clawed off scales as the dino-man shredded through flesh and fur alike.
I had no clue which one of them was winning and I didn't care either way. I rolled to my feet and resumed my headlong sprint for the front counter. Leaping high, I used my right hand to leverage myself over the counter and dropped down into a crouch. Snagging the 12-gauge was the easy part. Loading it with one hand? Less so.
Cradling the gun between my left armpit and my side, I started loading the shells in one at a time. The adrenaline coursing through my veins was numbing my fingertips to the point where it felt like I was wearing heavy gloves. On top of that it was also making my hands quiver in time with the beating of my heart. I dropped five shells and loaded two before the sounds of the monster brawl reached a frightening crescendo.
I glanced up just in time to see dino-guy pick the she-wolf up by the leg and slam her into the drink fountain so hard the entire machine buckled and started spraying multicolored sodas out over the slick floor.
Not done, dino-man then took a step towards her and headbutted her horns-first in the unarmored abdomen. His bony frill got in the way of the attack, but two of his three horns came away bloody, and she let out a pained cry as she dropped to the floor.
It was a heartbreaking sound. Untold generations of my ancestors had spent their whole lives viewing dogs as a trusted companion to the point where our instinct when seeing a random dog on the street was, “oh look a cute doggie!” Regardless of whether said cute doggie might try to eat us or not, our ears are conditioned to hear the yelp of a dog in pain and immediately come running.
So when the she-wolf let out that terrible sound my heart dropped out of my throat and settled into its rightful place in the center of my chest. Fear and shock and a dozen other emotions I didn't have time to process all faded away like cotton candy under running water, and I rose from behind the counter with my loaded shotgun balanced in the crook of my left arm and my finger on the trigger.
“Hey jackass! Didn’t ‘mama’ ever tell you not to hit a woman?”
Not the best one-liner, but it was my first time.
Dino-man spun in place, fist raised to deliver the final beatdown, and his eyes leveled on the barrel of my 12 gauge.
I pulled the trigger, blasting this Jurassic freak back into the Cretaceous period.
Or so I thought.
Instead of creating a hole where this dude’s murderous head was supposed to be, the shotgun blast did…pretty much fuck all actually. Whatever damage it dealt was to the surrounding walls and merchandise, not to the giant stupid ugly murderous demon dino bastard who was really ruining my quiet Thursday by killing my only friend and stabbing some random werewolf. In retrospect I am not even sure why I thought the shotgun was going to do anything. I did not know the rules here. All I knew was that I was fucked.
“Did…did you just try to shoot me?” he asked.
A mental image of what I would look like holding a shotgun and shaking my head in answer to that question popped into my head and I realized that was not how I wanted to go out. Even if all I achieved was dying with a shred of dignity, with no one but a fully kitted out–and potentially mortally injured–werewolf as my witness, I was going to own up to what I was about.
I straightened myself a little bit and fired the shotgun again.
Dino-man slowblinked. “Wow. Just wow. You really just shot me again even knowing that it wouldn’t do a damn thing.” His red eyes narrowed incredulously. “Are…are you serious? You might just be the dumbest Champion I think I’ve ever heard of. No offense pal, but your world is doomed if it’s come to this. Like, wow. Do you maybe want to try something other than the shotgun? We’ve got time, man. Seriously, I’m embarrassed for you right now.”
So much for dying with a shred of dignity.
I dropped the empty shotgun so I could free up my hand and flip him off.
Dino-man nodded, his hands rising up from his sides maybe halfway as he acknowledged my gesture. “Okay now, see, that I can respect! You know you’re dead but at least you’re going to go out flipping me the bird. That’s more like it. That’s some real Champion shit, pal. You should’ve maybe led with that attitude you know what I’m saying?” He shook his oversized head in disbelief. “Look, I almost feel bad about this, really. You seem like a decent kid but you know, a Carnisaur’s gotta eat! I can’t just go around snacking on stray dogs and rats and orphans and shit for the rest of my life, I’m 152 y’know? Man’s gotta have some respect for himself.”
“You ate orphans?” I’m not really sure what expression crossed my face at that moment but dino-guy sure didn’t like it.
“Hey don’t gimme that. You eat chickens, don’t you? And cows and stuff, right? You know what kind of conditions those animals are kept in? Shut your mouth about the orphans, okay, I don’t wanna hear nothing out of your chicken-eating mouth, kid!”
I took a step back and raised my arms up defensively. “Whoa man, easy. You’re talking about eating orphans and shit. Now that’s fucked up! Get outta here with your ‘cows ’n stuff’ like that’s the same thing. I eat a burger and suddenly I’m as bad as some fucked up-looking dino-gorilla motherfucker who snacks on orphans? Get out of here!”
Dino-guy took a half step towards me, puffing up his chest so much that his ‘I Love Eastport’ t-shirt actually ripped at the shoulders—which was pretty intimidating but like, he already told time who the boss was, stabbed Derek through the chest, and gored some werewolf SWAT lady like it was nothing so that was just overkill honestly.
“Man, you don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know how hard it is for us monsters here in Eastport, alright. We got kicked out of our homes. Everything we knew? Gone! And now we’re forced to live in a big loud city filled with food you can’t eat and the food talks back to you and they got these cops who come looking into any disappearances so you can’t order take out and just gobble up the delivery guy cause that’s like ‘suspicious’ or whatever! You can’t just go out hunting like the good old days y’know every meal is like uh…it’s a battle, alright? And ever since mama died it’s just y’know every damn day I gotta figure out what I’m gonna eat and it’s every morning and it’s every night and I go to bed hungry for weeks let me tell you, man. It’s not like when I was a kid, man. It’s…it’s rough out here for us monsters, okay? It’s rough.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize,” I said with mock sympathy. “You’re right. That totally makes it okay to gobble up orphans.”
“Really?”
“No!”
“Oh,” he said, taken aback and looking slightly ashamed.
“You know what makes you a monster?” I spoke up, still not totally sure how I ended up scolding a dude who was about to eat me but knowing damn well I was not going to stop now. “It’s not the horns, jackass, it’s the murder!”
With a huff of indignation, the Carnisaur drew himself up to his full height and glared at me as he considered my words and came to a decision. “I’m going to eat you now,” he announced, clearly having had enough of my shit.
Figures.
I resolved not to waste my last few breaths running in fear, and instead stood my ground as the monster took three reverberating stomps towards me. My bravery was rewarded with pain as he raised his clawed hand up and slashed at me.
Instinctively I lifted my left arm to shield myself. Perhaps it was an old instinct from back when I had my dominant left hand, and some part of me thought I could catch the incoming claw or something. Or maybe it was a much colder part of my brain who figured since the hand was already pretty useless I might as well sacrifice it in exchange for a few more seconds of life.
Whatever my thought process was, all I managed to achieve was intensifying my already significant phantom pains tenfold as the Carnisaur’s claws bit through the flesh and muscle of my stump and chipped the bone underneath.
The sheer force of the blow spun me around and slammed me into the front counter, knocking candy and batteries all across the floor as I fell across the waist-high displays and dropped to the ground.
My attacker loomed over me and I, out of options, did my best to face death stoically.
Before he could strike, two things robbed me of that dignified death.
The first was a new pain that shot up my left arm. A searing, boiling sensation that shot up my veins and flooded into my heart. It felt like the dino-guy just kicked me in the chest; forcing the air from my lungs all at once, but he hadn't even touched me yet. Nothing I had ever felt had prepared me for this. Something told me this pain was only just beginning, and a part of me wished the Carnisaur would just hurry up and finish it already. So intense was this agony that I would have even taken the shotgun as a merciful exit if it was still loaded.
The second thing that happened must have started several seconds prior. The werewolf had risen to her feet and, with one hand on the wall for support, shambled over to the Carnisaur unseen. Her hands gripped the man around the bony frill and suddenly jerked his neck around at far too sharp an angle. A snap like thunder crackling across the sky reverberated throughout the gas station, and the Carnisaur fell to the ground beside me.
His red eyes faded to a dull brown and lost their focus, and all of his monstrous features melted away, leaving the corpse of some regular-looking guy laying on the ground beside me. Beyond him, lying down under the shattered drink fridges, was Derek; still frozen mid-death. The entire store bore the evidence of his rampage, yet in death this completely normal-looking man appeared unharmed and almost serenely calm. When I refocused on his face I spotted some irregularities in his bone structure that almost resembled a triceratops, but if I looked anywhere else—even the floor an inch to the left—he appeared entirely mundane.
Weird.
As the red fire in his eyes faded, something inside me awoke.
Pain, the likes of which I had never felt in my whole life, wracked my body and threatened to steal from me my very sanity. Every nerve I had was lighting itself on fire in the same instant. My eyes burned and my vision started taking on a red tint. My skull felt two sizes too small for my brain as all the white-hot blood pumping up into it made me feel like I was about to explode—and not in a fun way.
Panting from the exertion of just keeping myself sane, I glanced up at the she-wolf and did my best to rise into a sitting position so I could get a better look at her.
Fresh monster blood was dripping from her claws and teeth, decorating the gas station floor as she stared down at her fallen opponent in cold satisfaction. She turned to me and her snout twitched as she sniffed the air.
My blood was boiling, my vision running red, and it felt like my skin was frozen over. Halfway out of my mind, I asked the werewolf the most pressing question in my head.
“Are you going to eat me?”
Tilting her head curiously, the werewolf chuckled lightly and started to change. Her monstrous features faded away just as dino-man’s had and with each passing second I found myself increasingly grateful that she had not been killed during that fight. With a shake of her head, she appeared almost completely human before me.
She was gorgeous.
Still wearing the tactical vest and the thigh holsters, little miss werewolf wasn’t wearing much else. A pair of spanx that absolutely had to be magic to contain an ass like hers, her armored vest, and that was it. No shirt, no shoes, but I would have been more than happy to service her anyway. Her hair was the same brown as her werewolf fur, and every bare piece of her looked absolutely shredded. She was covered in small scars, and had striking blue eyes.
In the same way that the dino-man’s monstrous features disappeared when I was not looking directly at him, she too had features which were only apparent when I was focused on her. Namely a pair of wolf-like ears sticking out of her hair and a long fluffy tail swishing back and forth behind her legs.
She flashed a smile that could have weakened my knees if they weren’t already in full reactor shutdown and said, “No, Champion, I’m not going to eat you.”
I breathed a sharp sigh of relief and managed to give a thumbs-up before the pain overtook my willpower and the world faded to black.