IMAN SLINKED THROUGH the trees, hunching below the worst of the intermingled branches. She held the pistol cocked upward at a forty-five degree angle—probably not the best position, but holding it straight outward took a toll on her wrists and shoulders. Every move she made, no matter how measured or minor, seemed to produce some sort of sound: the rustle of pine needles against her jacket, the crinkle of displaced underbrush, the fireplace crackle of twigs snapping beneath the soles of her running shoes. She felt dumb and clumsy and bovine, a brainless piece of livestock that had wandered away from its farm.
She grew disoriented within minutes of venturing into the stifling undergrowth, though it hardly mattered, since she didn’t know where to look in the first place. It wasn’t as if she had a map to Luka’s hideout. Her best hope was to sweep the forest in search of a telltale footprint or piece of ripped clothing snagged on a jutting tree branch, the sort of thing that inevitably guided a movie protagonist to their MacGuffin. The stupidity of this plan became increasingly evident as the minutes ground on and her surroundings grew more and more anonymous and unfamiliar.
A chorus of howls and gunfire sounded to her left. She jumped at the sudden and sustained crescendo, her back pressed up against the trunk of a pine tree. Spurs of rough bark dug into the tender skin between her shoulder blades. She levelled her pistol at the underbrush, sweeping her arms from side to side. The sound of fighting grew more intense, but came no closer. She used it to place herself a hundred metres or so east of the clearing. Lowering her gun, she resumed her northeastern trajectory.
A beige blur shot through the brush and tangled its clammy tendrils through her hair. Iman whipped her head sideways, but the hand pulled with greater force. Her follicles shrieked, their cries muted by the clong! of her head striking the trunk of a cedar. Black forms dotted with glittering stars galloped across her field of vision. She was dimly aware of a firm grip on her wrists, hands twisting her arms behind her and up the crest of her spine, pinning them at an angle just shy of painful.
“Drop it, sweetmeats. You drop it now.”
For a panicked instant Iman had no idea what the man was saying. The words hit her ears like the blather of a foreign tongue, discrete syllables lacking the connective tissue of grammar or syntax. She assumed “drop it” to be some sort of aggressor’s argot, a term ominous and commanding and opaque. It was only as her fingers tightened on the pistol that she realised the phrase was meant literally. She obeyed. The pistol slipped from her fingers, which were fast going numb from the pressure on her kinked arm. Her captor patted her shoulder.
“Good girl,” he said, and in a smooth motion shoved her forward and dipped down for the gun. He had the barrel pressed to her temple before she’d fully regained her footing. A nip of frigid metal stung her skin. He resumed his grip on her arm, which he folded up behind her back like a broken wing, and marched her through the undergrowth to a small clearing, where several derelicts hunkered around a small fire. The men eyed her with a mixture of amusement and hunger, the woman—there was only one, Iman noticed, apart from herself—with a kind of bored disdain.
The man shoved Iman into the circle. The fire licked its heat against her shins. Light from the flames danced over the faces of her onlookers, laying down shifting topographies of shadow. She turned, trapped, and got her first good look at her captor. He had the leather-skinned, permanently dirty look Iman associated with homeless people, as if his body had adapted a layer of grime into its dermal makeup. His earlobes hung in gruesome tatters from the sides of his face, stringy bits of atrophying flesh wriggling with each twitch and bob of his head.
“I found this one skulkin’ around our camp,” the ragged-eared man said. He spoke in a stentorian tone that was clearly forced, the ersatz militia-speak of children playing war. “She must be one o’ Ballaro’s spies or somethin’.”
The men in the circle rubbed their chins and leered at her above scraggly beards and neck tattoos.
“She ain’t no Ballaro spy,” said a burly man in a leather vest that had, by the look of its tattered armholes, once been a jacket. “She’s a Paki. Ballaro don’t hire no Pakis.”
“She ain’t a Paki,” said a scrawny chicken-faced one in army fatigues, his fingers absently twiddling a pocket-knife. His Adam’s apple, enormous and peninsular, bobbled with each syllable. “Pakis got dots. She’s one o’ them Muslims.”
“Pakis are Muslims, dipshit, you’re thinkin’ Arabs.”
“Then why ain’t she got a scarf on her head?”
“Some of ‘em don’t do the scarf.”
The woman, sitting slightly back from the others, rolled her eyes at this exchange. Behind her, Iman noticed a stirring among a pile of bags and refuse. A figure sat in the gloom, his hands draped limply over his boney knees. It was a posture of exhaustion and defeat, though the voice that issued from its bearer held an incongruent bearing of confidence and control. Disdain dripped like acid from its barbed edges.
“The woman in question is an Arab and a Muslim,” said Professor Motes. “Albeit a non-practicing one, from my understanding. As enlightening as your little exchange of geopolitical commentary was, it’s also wholly irrelevant. She has nothing to do with Frank Ballaro or Luka Volchyin or any of this sorry business. I’d thank you to let her be.”
The man with ragged ears stomped over to Motes, who somehow managed to glower down at Iman’s captor despite being seated. A damp glottal gurgling issued from deep in the ragged-eared man’s throat. He gathered a payload of mucus, reared back, and spat a sticky yellow wad onto Motes’ shoulder. The professor wiped it away, flicking his fingers in an attempt to shake off the residue. “Charming.”
“You ain’t in charge here, you stuck-up limp-dick motherfucker!” The man waggled the gun in Motes’ face.
“I’m merely pointing out the girl’s status as a non-combatant.”
“Would you shut that faggot up already, Nails?” said the scrawny kid. He thrust his tongue out the side of his mouth and worked the blade of his pocketknife under a yellowing thumbnail. “He’s givin’ me a headache.”
“By all means, Nails,” Motes said, speaking the man’s name as if it were a dirty term in a foreign language. “Put a bullet in my head. It would spare me your further company, and in that sense could be considered merciful. Luka gave you orders to the contrary, of course, but who is he to stand in your way?”
“Hey, I respect my pack chief, buddy. But ol’ Luka didn’t’ say nothin’ about keeping hands off your butt buddy here.”
Nails reached forward and lifted the trussed, wriggling figure beside Motes to his knees. A young face, bruised and gagged, looked out with eyes dulled by an overdose of fear. They zeroed in on Iman and the clouds before them evaporated. He let out a garbled sound rendered unintelligible by his gag.
“Brian!” Iman cried, and rushed forward. Nails drove an elbow into her gut and caught her as she tumbled forward. She landed on her knees in front of him. He grabbed hold of a hank of her hair and held it as if it were a leash.
“Well, hey, this is interesting,” said Nails. “You and chinky know each other, huh?”
“Shit,” said the scrawny kid, a laugh stretching the word into multiple hunched syllables. “That’s like, some of that ‘misogynation’ goin’ on. Ain’t natural.”
“Get with the times, R.B.,” said Nails. “Kid your age should be fuckin’ whoever he can find’ll take his money.”
“Hey, fuck you!”
Nails ignored this. He tightened his grip on Iman’s hair. “You wouldn’t want your little Asian fuck buddy gettin’ hurt, would you, girly? Problem is, I’m feelin’ pretty, whattayacall, pent up. I need to relax. Normally, I start feelin’ like that, I get my jollies stompin’ heads. But lucky for you, I ain’t all that hard to distract.”
He unzipped his fly and pulled out a stumpy, semi-flaccid penis, its head purplish and fringed with red, painful-looking foreskin. A sweetly rancid odour emanated from its tip. The men around the fire hooted and shouted lewd commentary that hit Iman’s ears like the hushed roar of waves crashing on a distant beach, hoarse and senseless. She yanked her head back, but Nails’ grip on her hair was firm. A sense of whimpering, helpless rage welled up within her. She knew if she opened her mouth she’d vomit, and feared what Nails might do in retaliation. Maybe he’d be into it, chirped a voice in her head. She bit her lip to strangle a deranged laugh.
Motes stood next to Nails, nose to nose. He didn’t so much as glance at Iman; his eyes remained locked on the furrowed brow and sneering, upturned lip opposite him.
“I believe I’ve made the girl’s status as non-combatant abundantly clear. She has no quarrel with you, one way or the other.”
“Don’t overplay your hand here, teach. Luka said I ain’t s’posed to ice you, but that don’t mean you got the final say-so. I got half a dozen witnesses’d say you were makin’ a run for it. Ain’t that right, boys?”
The men around the fire murmured agreement in dismal chorus.
“Looks like a runner to me.”
“You better get him back here, Nails.”
Motes showed no sign of intimidation. He kept his gaze level with Nails. After a brief stalemate, Nails let go of Iman’s hair and walked into Motes, his chest thrust outward and arms extended in the numbskull posture of beta males seeking alpha status. Motes didn’t push back, but nor did he relent. Iman scurried over to Brian, her hands working their way beneath the bindings. Flecks of dried blood sloughed away where the rope had cut into him.
“So what’s your plan, teach? You think you can take the lot of us?”
Motes ran his tongue along his top teeth and drew a slow, even breath through his nostrils. He held his shoulders in the squared, rigid mold of a man contemplating a leap from a great height.
“As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I can. Maybe not a minute ago, but now?” Motes shook his head. “You should’ve acted when you had the chance.” He turned to Iman, his face soft and strangely tender. “Run, Iman. Run as far and fast as you can.”
“Oh, she’s not—” Nails began, his words cut off as Motes ensnared him in a bear hug. His nose wrinkled in distaste. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck—”
“Much too late for him to help you, boy,” Motes said. His body trembled in the throes of some cataclysmic seismic event, the tectonic plates of his muscles grinding and shifting. Hair erupted along his cheeks, his hands, his forearms. Nails’ eyes grew impossibly wide, whites spreading outwards like two eggs cracked on a hot skillet. He struggled fruitlessly to free himself from the shifting column of hair and muscle.
Claws burst through the crescents of flesh beneath Motes’ fingernails. No sooner had they emerged than they disappeared again, vanishing into the meat of Nails’ chest. Nails screamed as his bones cracked inside Motes’ iron embrace. With a howl Motes dug his claws in deeper and pulled them sharply downward. Iman heard the distinct wishbone snap of each rib breaking. Nails’ penis waggled as raking claws plucked it from his pelvis. It landed with a cartoonish plop near the scrawny kid’s foot. The kid puked in his lap. Still retching, he jumped upright, tripped over his own tangled feet, and fell face-first into the fire. His cohorts exhibited more grace in fleeing—despite some light trampling that kept the scrawny kid pinned against the flames—but Motes possessed a speed far exceeding human. He leapt nimbly over the campfire and onto the chest of the man with neck tattoos. The man fell backwards as Motes’ wide jaws closed on his head, swallowing up every scrap of flesh and sinew from forehead to jaw with a greedy smacking of his tongue. The man, his skull grinning nakedly beneath his scalp, let out a shrill cry that couldn’t quite be called a scream—his lack of cheeks gave the sound some interesting tonal properties.
Motes leapt and clawed and killed and ate. The few shots the fleeing packmates bothered to fire struck him with all the force and impact of pebbles flung by schoolchildren. Nails, cockless and carved open from stem to sternum, gasped and flopped on the dirt like a dying fish. Iman felt neither hatred nor pity. She barely even felt revulsion. Her brain was a cloth rinsed clean of all emotion, sopping and inert. She fumbled with the rope binding Brian’s wrists, her fingers shaking and slippery with sweat. The knots refused to loosen. She dug a nail into the seam. It bent backwards and snapped off at the cuticle. She thrust her thumb in her mouth and sucked until the pain receded. Brian wriggled, speaking garbled noise through his gag.
“I’m trying, hun,” Iman said.
Brian wriggled harder, motioning with exaggerated nods.
The thing that had been Motes loomed opposite the fire pit. Blood and froth slickened the hair around his muzzle. His stance was simian and semi-erect, wiry arms grazing the dirt. A tweed jacket hung in tatters from his shoulders, while his pants and shoes had come free altogether, slipping from his sleek and foreshortened lower half.
A glint of metal shone in the grass at Iman’s feet. With meticulous slowness, she bent her knees, bringing her hand inch by endless inch closer to the object. Motes’ breath came loud and lustful, the sound of a man whose appetites had been coiled to irrepressible tightness and would, at the slightest nudge, spring into violent motion. Her fingers grazed the object. She seized it, slid a rapid shuffle-step backwards, and raised the Beretta to chest height. Motes stared down the barrel.
“There’s silver in here,” Iman said, unsure whether Motes could even understand her. “If I shoot you, you won’t just shrug it off. You’ll die. I don’t want to do that, though. Shoot you, I mean.”
She licked her lips, made minute adjustments to her grip on the gun.
“Please, professor. You went after those guys and not me, even though I was closer. You’ve got to still be in there somewhere. Just go. Leave us alone. Please.”
Motes tilted his head. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth like a bright pink worm. His back rose and fell in time with his humid breathing. Black smoke plumed from the fire pit, humid with the aromatic stick of the scrawny kid’s upper body, which had already rendered into a crust of craggled black char. The sound of crackling flames filled the clearing, punctuated with the greasy pops of human fat sloughing into the coals. Iman tightened her grip on the trigger.
“Please, professor.”
Motes bent his knees and leapt over the fire. Iman closed her eyes in the same instant she squeezed the trigger. A single shot rattled the air. White light flashed across her eyelids. Something hard and heavy landed in front of her. She kept her eyes firmly shut, awaiting the sudden pressure of fangs closing around her throat. It didn’t come.
Motes lay at her feet. Not a wolf thing or a chimeric abomination, but Motes—a man who drank coffee from fussy espresso cups and insisted on printing everything he edited. Who left sardonic comments in naked margins with a nimble, spidery hand. Who guarded his sense of humor closely, revealing it in small smiles and flickers of wit. A man she had respected, reviled, and ultimately pitied. He looked up at her, naked save the tattered remnants of his jacket, lying in a nest of blood and shed fur, a singed hole about where his heart should be.
“Th . . . tha . . . ” he said, and died.
Iman managed to cut Brian loose before she broke down weeping. But it was a close thing.