Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Order is driving. I don’t know where we are going, but I know I definitely want to hang my head out the window. And I do. And it’s just as amazing as I thought it would be. Wind buffets my face, drawing my jowls back. I can snap at the air and I can feel my ears sort of flapping behind me.
I love this. When Chief Connor first bit me I felt nothing but betrayal. Now I feel like he’s given me a gift. A wonderful, amazing gift. He has freed me from my pain and shown me a whole other way of being.
“Tessie! Get your head back in!”
I do what he says, because he is master, but I do it reluctantly. I take up the entirety of the back seat. This is a small car, and I am a very large animal. I’m a bigger wolf than I ever was a person. It takes me a while to get comfortable. I have to try quite a few positions, getting up and then down, putting my head various places, including Order’s shoulder and the center console between the driver’s seat and passenger seat.
Order has donned his normal human attire again, his oversized jacket hiding his extra arms, and his bright blue eyes hidden by the sunglasses. Now neither he nor I can properly be seen in public, which quickly becomes an issue when we start to run low on gas.
“I’m going to pull over,” he says, spotting a rural gas station. It has an air of near abandonment, which I guess he thinks will help keep us safe from any mutants coming to hunt us. “Stay in the car,” he adds. “I don’t want you running off again.”
I say nothing, because I can’t say anything.
The pump is credit card based, which is handy because the little store attached to the station seems to be empty and looks like it has been for a while. I sniff out the window, which Order has obligingly left open for me, and I smell decay mixed with more than a little despair. I’m realizing suddenly just how worried humans always are. Order isn’t entirely human, and I can smell it on him too. He’s concerned about this, about that, about everything. Meanwhile, I am worried about absolutely nothing.
Until I am.
There’s a rumbling on the road as he starts to fill up. Trouble is coming. I know it before he does, and try to warn him, but I haven’t worked out my vocalization yet. I whine, but he doesn’t pay any attention to the sound. I don’t know if he can hear it properly. He certainly must be able to see the pack of bikers pulling up behind us, because they have come up faster than any road speed rules would allow. These are law breakers. Bad men. These are the kind of people I have always hunted one way or another.
The bikers are hairy and menacing, and their vehicles are obnoxiously loud. They make the entire gas station throb and pulse until they kill their engines and start to wait in the way a good half dozen bikers do, menacingly.
The sound they make arriving wakes up Obigor, who stares around in all directions with a wide eyed expression. He senses danger. So do I.
They could be chill and wait for a moment for Order to finish, but they’re not going to. They see a single guy in the middle of nowhere in a girly kind of car. They see prey.
One of the bikers swaggers over to Order, who in his disguise, looks like an average guy. The biker casts a glance back at his friends and a watch this smirk appears on his rubbery lips.
I feel a growl rising in my throat, my lips drawing back in a snarl. If they try to cause my master any trouble at all, I will destroy them. My emotions are much more simple and much more intense in this form. Plus, I am starting to get hungry again. They don’t just look like big, mean bikers. They also look like protein and fat walking around on big, juicy bones.
I want to eat them.
“Nice dog!”
The biker is admiring me through the open window as I stare out at him. I can smell so many things now. I can smell beer, stale semen, and a trace of meth. I can also smell sausage and the intention to hurt Order. Wait. What? I sniff again and find the scent more clearly and quickly this time. Yes. Definite malevolence. There’s some greed, but there’s even more of a casual incentive to violence, like this man would enjoy hurting someone just for the sake of hurting them. This is a bad, bad man.
Obigor was way ahead of me on that conclusion. He is shrieking his head off, albeit while facing the steering wheel. I wonder if I should bark too, so as not to create doubt in the minds of onlookers that I might not be a real dog.