SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Pafff! went the rifle, and at the same time a needle jabbed into Horst’s left haunch. He kept running. When in wolf form, his instincts weren’t exactly human. Then his muscles started slowing down by themselves. The snowdrifts seem to slip up to the right, and the sky down to the left. The human part of Horst knew he couldn’t outrun this. He twisted around and saw the trank dart dangling from his fur. Fuck . He tried to get his incisors onto it, but missed. Tried again, snap , missed again. He could barely concentrate, but he hunkered down, tried to change. With fingers he might have a chance. He shifted.

One: now he was fucking cold .

Two: the trank dart fell out.

Now I should be good, right? But he couldn’t get up, his legs wouldn’t move, and the moon seemed to be almost below him now, with the northern lights rippling underneath. The crunchy, broken drift seemed to eat him up like a Slurpee. It was so cold he couldn’t feel his skin. What’s that they say about falling asleep in the snow? Oh yeah: don’t.

A fog of being dragged, then the high-pitched whine-growl of a snowmobile. Other stuff, a woozy darkness, then…

Snap!

A searing pain in Horst’s paw bit the world into focus. He howled with all his throat, but no more than a moan came out. The world felt fuzzy and kept spinning, as if he’d just stepped off one of those rides at the Red River Ex. The air was warm and smelled of vinyl and drywall and the dry dust of furnace air.

He felt the long, thin hardness of a metal cage against his face. Damn it, I’ve been locked up . Wait, against his bare skin? Shit, I’ve been shaved . His stomach lurched and his heart rate kicked up to a “Run to the Hills” pace. Fuck, I’m inside .

He was human, naked, in a huge dog cage.

The index finger of his left hand was missing.

Blood spewed all over his skin, the floor of his cage, and the linoleum-covered concrete beneath it.

“Damn it, I thought that might do it,” said a man with a high, nasal voice.

Horst clamped his good hand over his missing finger and felt more than heard a huge roaring in his ears. He scrambled to the farthest corner of the cage away from the voice and the metal rattled like the clang of broken high hats.

Blood seeped between his knuckles and he tried not to hyperventilate. Always keep your head , Mitch said. He usually meant that when trying to take down a moose without getting clocked by its antlers.

A tall, thin man in his late twenties with a wispy red beard and wearing black, dirty ski pants stared at him from the other side of the bars. In one gloved hand he had a huge wire-cutter, smeared red on the snippers. In the other he had Horst’s index finger. “Go ahead,” he said. “Change.”

The fact he wanted him to got Horst’s back up. “Fuck off. Let me go, you psycho.”

The other grinned, as if listening to a horsefly arguing with a windshield. “It’ll stop the bleeding, won’t it? Don’t you guys heal fast?” He looked at Horst’s severed digit then dropped it into a small cooler full of ice on the floor. “Ah well, your choice.”

Horst stared at his finger before the man flipped the lid closed. “What the hell do you want?” Horst said.

The man stood, took a rag out of his back pocket and wiped off the wire cutters. He removed his gloves and tossed them into the corner of the room, along with the rag; the cutters he put on a fold-up plastic table. The walls were drywalled, but apart from that and the veneer of flooring over the cement foundation, the basement was unfinished. Furnace ducts, wiring and joists ran overhead. If he’s trying to soundproof the place he’s doing a shitty job . When he’d taken up drumming, his parents wouldn’t let him bring his set in from the garage until he’d scrounged a bunch of trash-heap mattresses, Cloroxed them all to death, and covered the walls with them (and insulated the basement ceiling—which had been a huge, itchy pain in the ass). The price you pay for being the next Peter Criss . (Who ranked about number three in his top five. As far as Horst was concerned, you hadn’t heard a drum solo until you’d heard the live version of “God of Thunder.”)

Horst’s throat burned to scream for help but he didn’t want to give this asshole the satisfaction.

Then the man said, as if they were having coffee together, “How does it work? There’s no way you should have enough energy to do it, no matter how much you eat.”

Horst blinked. The roaring in his ears still made it hard to hear, much less think. His heart had settled to thumping out big bass beats in time with Ozzy’s “The Ultimate Sin”—though he would have preferred something even slower, like the intro to “Iron Man.” Relax .

“What?” he said.

The man walked over to a table where his .22 lay. “Never mind. There’ll be time, where you’re going, to figure all that out.” He picked up the rifle and fitted it with another tranquilizer dart.

Horst’s mouth went dry at the thought of what he might mean by figure things out . “Hey, uh, wait, I don’t know you, I don’t even know where you live. Just let me out of here. I won’t tell anyone.” Except Mitch, of course, who would come back with his entire pack and nail the bastard. But, at the moment, Horst even believed himself.

He took aim down the sight of the rifle at Horst. “Right.”

“Can I at least have my gitch and my shirt back?”

He chuckled. “You’d be warmer with fur on, wouldn’t you?”

“Fuck off.”

The man put the gun down, but didn’t take his hand off it. “Doesn’t sound like you really want to get out of here.”

“Sorry. Fuck.” Horst’s toes curled around the bars on the bottom of the cage. There wasn’t even a blanket in it. He shivered, more from discomfort than cold.

“You can be knocked out for the trip—or be a wolf. And, for all I know, maybe you’ll even grow that finger back. Or claw. Would you? Like a gecko?”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Horst’s hand throbbed. One thing was sure, he’d never twirl a drumstick with it again. Like that even matters! So far, his life wasn’t flashing in front of his eyes, but he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

The man kept silent, so Horst said, “It’s only the reptiles that do that.”

The man’s mouth twitched one side of his beard up. “Really?”

As far as Horst knew there weren’t any cold-blooded things that could do what he did. But before tonight he hadn’t known there wasn’t anyone collecting pieces of werewolves, either. “Yeah, there’s some caiman assholes in, like, Cancun. Mayan or something.”

The man scratched his armpit. At least he’s not touching the rifle anymore . “What about mass? I saw you out there on all fours. Easily three hundred pounds—maybe more. But look at you now. One ninety, soaking wet.”

Horst grimaced and held up his scabbing-up hand. “Missing a few grams now.” He didn’t feel inclined to tell this shithead about the energy to change coming up from the earth itself, that it was just the trigger he carried around inside since Mitch had first bitten him.

“And?”

His gone finger knuckle was starting to itch like crazy. The scab was slowly shrinking and covering with skin so pink it was neon. He kept his other hand over it. “This your secret lab?”

The man coughed and then folded his arms. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Don’t you mean my ass, where you shot me?”

He shrugged then turned to a row of big plastic tubs along the wall. Horst felt his right shoulder. There was a part that ached a little inside, but no mark on the skin—not anymore. He’d stuck a needle in there. “What do you need my blood for?” he said.