Calvin had never encountered zombies before. In fact, he had never seen any kind of supernatural creature other than the werewolves living out in the Olympic National Forest.
Not knowing the first thing about how zombies worked in the real world, Calvin decided to go with what horror movies had taught him and swipe one of his massive paws at the nearest zombie. Its partially decomposed head came clean off and sailed away into the bushes, but unfortunately the now headless corpse kept shuffling towards the crying girl in the middle of the clearing.
Grumbling to himself about how nothing in the movies had been right so far, Calvin reached out with his jaws and hamstrung the zombie so it collapsed to the pine needle covered ground. Calvin then ripped its arms off and lunged at the next shambling horror.
There were six zombies left and the blonde haired girl had started screaming as they drew nearer to her. Calvin thanked his lucky stars that these were slow zombies and not fast ones, otherwise this girl would have been dead already.
After Calvin attacked the second zombie and left it a limbless lump in the dirt, the other five turned their attention to him instead of the girl. They all lurched clumsily at Calvin and he was able to dodge them easily, the trick was ripping their arms and legs off without one of the others reaching him. There was not a lot of room to maneuver in this little clearing.
Calvin had done very little fighting in his transformed state. He had gotten beat to a bloody pulp by the Olympics werewolves, but that was about it. He hunted deer and enjoyed having the woods all to himself as he roamed around all three nights of each full moon. As such, he felt a bit awkward de-limbing these undead even though they were only slowly shuffling towards him. It felt wrong to be using his werewolf strength for violence. But eventually the job was done and all the zombies were harmlessly writhing on the ground.
Calvin cleared his throat, it was not easy to talk with a snouted maw full of razor sharp teeth. “You are safe now,” he told the girl in his heavily accented werewolf voice.
She rocked back and forth, hugging her knees to her chest. “She always brings them. Every time. I can’t escape. She always finds me,” the girl muttered to herself. She glanced furtively over her shoulder at Calvin. If seeing a seven and a half foot tall half-man half-wolf frightened her at all, she did not show it. “Will you help me?”
“Yes, of course,” Calvin answered at once. “What were those things?”
The girl rolled her eyes. She had one brown eye and one blue. “Zombies, obviously. “She calls them up out of their graves and then they come after me.”
“Who is she?” Calvin looked around warily, but he neither heard nor saw nor smelled anyone.
“Marla,” she whispered and then her eyes darted around wildly as though she expected Marla to appear at the mention of her name.
“And what do I call you?” Calvin asked.
“Nel. I like that name.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Nel. My name is Calvin. Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
Nel shook her head. “I’ve been running. I can’t even remember for how long. She always finds me. She’s chasing me.” She turned around and started rocking back and forth again.
Calvin slowly moved around to the other side of the clearing so he could see Nel’s face.“Why is Marla chasing you?”
“Don’t say her name!” Nel hissed. “She can sense it. She always knows. Always.”
“Will do,” Calvin assured her. He was growing increasingly worried that Nel’s agitated state was not entirely due to the zombie attack. “But still, why is she after you?”
Nel shook her head. “Don’t know. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. She finds me. The zombies come. Then I run. If I just keep running maybe I’ll get far enough away that she won’t be able to find me. Yes. That’s it. Just have to get far enough.” She shuddered.
“Well you are in no shape to run anywhere tonight. I know an abandoned house that you can sleep in. Why don’t you come with me?” Calvin did his best to seem non-threatening, but that’s a difficult task when you’re a monster straight out of a horror movie.
Whether it was because she was used to being stalked by zombies, because he had saved her, or because she was flat out bat-shit crazy, Nel nodded her head. “I’d like that very much. Will you be near by?”
If he had been in his human form, Calvin would have been frowning unhappily in addition to being terribly perplexed. Why did girls like Sara and Nel seem to think they were safer when the monstrous werewolf was close by? “I’ll prowl around the woods outside the house until morning,” Calvin told her.
Nel smiled. “Good. Lead the way.”
Calvin plodded slowly towards the foreclosed house that was near the neighborhood where he lived. One of the odd perks that came with spending three nights each month roaming was that Calvin knew a great number of excellent hiding spots.
“Have you met any other werewolves?” Nel asked as they walked.
“Yes,” Calvin answered. “A bunch of them live in the Olympic National Park and Forest.”
“Are they friends of yours?”
Calvin considered how to answer for a moment. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that question. “We came to an understanding, but I do not think we are friends. They made it very clear that I was to remain in my own territory unless I had official business with them.”
“What exactly constitutes ‘official business’ for a werewolf?” Nel asked the question Calvin had asked himself dozens of times in the last six months.
Calvin let out a sharp bark of laughter. It sounded odd coming out of his werewolf mouth. “I wish I knew.”
Nel chewed on that tidbit of information for a moment. “How did you become a werewolf?”
“I was attacked by another werewolf. He or she bit me and then left me to transform the next night. Evidently, that is not standard procedure for making new werewolves, but I have never got the chance to ask questions. I mostly make things up as I go.” Calvin knew there were about a million vitally important things about the supernatural world that he did not know, but he had no access to more knowledgeable werewolves to give him that information.
Nel nodded appreciatively. “Me too. I’ve been running so long that I sometimes have to make up how I remember things used to be. I think the zombies got my family, but I don’t like to remember it that way. I like to remember them getting out of town before the zombies killed everyone.”
Calvin had no idea what to say. Nel was clearly insane and he wasn’t sure that he blamed her. It sounded like these zombies had destroyed whatever little town she had come from and everyone she knew was dead. He did wonder how something like that had avoided ending up on the news, but some of what the Olympic werewolves had said hinted at a much larger organization or werewolves and Calvin now assumed that organization also included other supernatural beings. Hell, there could be vampires and mummies running around. Maybe whoever was in charge of all the spooky things that go bump in the night had a special team that went into towns like Nel’s and made everything look like swamp gas or some other lame, mundane excuse.
They walked in silence for a time. Then another question occurred to Nel. “What about other things? Have you met anyone who wasn’t a werewolf? Or a human, obviously.”
Calvin shook his head. “Those zombies were the first non-humans I had seen besides those other werewolves. Silly me, I had thought the only monsters that were real were werewolves. Shows what I know.”
Nel’s face screwed up in concentration. “I can’t remember if the other monsters I’ve seen are real. It gets hard to figure out which memories are real and which ones I made up.”
“Well what else do you think you have seen?” Calvin asked.
Nel closed her eyes and started shaking like a leaf in the wind. She bit her lip and hugged herself.
“Or not,” Calvin said hurriedly. It was hard to speak quickly as a werewolf. He always felt like he was gargling marbles. “You don’t have to think about the other monsters.”
Nel nodded. “Thank you. I...I just don’t know which ones were real. You’re real, aren’t you?”
“Very,” Calvin assured her. “We’re almost to the house. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe tonight. I’ve stashed some blankets inside just in case I need to sleep here some nights.”
“You’re a very kind werewolf,” Nel observed.
“Thank you, I try my best. Here we are. Remember, I will be out here in the woods if you need anything. I wish I had some food, but I will have to wait until morning to get that for you,” Calvin said.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m used to not eating everyday. Good night.” Nel went inside the empty house and presumably got settled in. The blankets were in the living room right inside the front door and that was about it. Calvin had cleaned out the garbage that a previous squatter had left. He waited for a while to make sure Nel didn’t need him for anything and then he began patrolling the woods around the house. Curiously, there were still no animals to be found. Calvin had assumed they would return once they left the area with the zombies, but that was clearly not the case. He was going to be very hungry come morning. He almost always ate an entire deer after transforming into a werewolf. Once he transformed he was ravenous.
The rest of the night passed without incident. As the moon began to set, Calvin returned to his home less than a mile away from the house he had shown Nel. He curled up in the grassy area where he had left his clothes and went to sleep. For whatever reason, the change from human to werewolf took place while he was wide awake, but he would only change back if he fell asleep. Luckily, after being up all night it was no trouble to curl up for a quick nap.
When Calvin awoke, naked as always, there was a man standing over him in a sharp looking business suit. He held a business card out to Calvin. “Tim Kane, business werewolf. We have a lot to discuss, young man.”
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