“You could be right.”
“I bet I am.”
“This goddamn access panel won’t come off.”
“Can I help?”
“How are you going to help? I can barely get in here by myself.”
“I was just offering. Don’t be rude to somebody who might be bleeding to death.”
“I think you’d be talking less if you were really bleeding to death.” The corner of the access panel came loose...and then snapped off. “Damn it!”
“Do you want to switch spots?”
“No, just let me do this.” George wedged the claw end of the hammer in the crack and began to pull.
“Where do you think Michele went?”
“Straight to the cops.”
“You’re probably right. At least we didn’t get her killed.”
“Yeah. I’d be so much more bothered by this situation if we were responsible for eight deaths at the bar instead of seven. At least he didn’t make his prediction.”
“I’m just going to stop talking to you until you’re done with the car.”
The access panel broke in half. “Damn it!”
“We should place a bet on how this night ends. Jail, death, or escape?”
“How much are we betting?”
“How much do you want to bet?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Let’s do twenty-five.”
“Fine,” said George, breaking off the rest of the panel. “You pick first.”
“I’ll pick ‘escape.’ That way I can enjoy my twenty-five bucks.”
“I’ll pick jail.”
“Good choice. I’m glad to hear that you’re not completely cynical.”
George leaned forward and tried to duck his head underneath the steering wheel. Not a chance. There simply wasn’t room.
“If you pop the trunk, I’ll see if I can find a flashlight,” said Lou.
“It’s not the light.” He opened the door. “Keep watch. Let me know if somebody’s coming.
“Will do.”
George got out of the car and crouched down. There were several wires beneath where the panel had been. The shadow of the steering wheel made it hard to see their colors, but he didn’t want to admit to Lou that he really could use a flashlight.
His cell phone rang. “Aw, crap.”
“Is it Ricky?”
George pulled the cell phone out of his pocket. The shell was cracked, but it still seemed to be working. He flipped it open. “Yeah, it’s him.”
“Want me to talk to him?”
“Nah, I’ve got it.” He punched the “talk” button. “Hello?”
“George! Who do you love?”
“Right now I pretty much hate everybody.”
Ricky chuckled. “Aw, don’t talk like that. I’m about to become your very best friend. Even though you’re heterosexual, you’re going to want to make sweet love to me. I’ll turn down your advances, but you’ll be insistent, and finally--”
“Will you get to the point?”
“If you’re going to act that way, maybe I won’t.”
George found the two red wires he needed. If he had a pair of wire strippers, this next part would take a couple of seconds, but he’d have to use the claw hammer, which was going to be a bitch.
“Ricky, just tell me the good news,” George said.
“He has good news?” Lou asked.
“Salvation is near. Werewolf Hunters Incorporated--that’s not their real name, that’s just what I’m calling them--is in the area. I don’t think they have an actual name, or if they do nobody told me, but they are armed to the frickin’ teeth and that werewolf is toast, baby!”
George scraped the claw of the hammer against the first red wire. “They’re going to kill it?”
“No. I guess I didn’t mean ‘toast’ like toast, y’know, dead. I just meant that they’re gonna catch it. Then we’ll throw it back in the cage, get it to Dewey, and everybody can kiss and make up.”
“Ah.”
“You should be a lot happier than you sound. What’s wrong? Did you kill the werewolf? Please tell me you didn’t kill the werewolf.”
“No. But there was a...uh, slaughter.”
“What?”
“He murdered a bunch of people.”
“How many is a bunch? Fifty?”
“No. Nine or ten.”
“Nine or ten? He killed nine or ten people? Aw, shit, the cops are going to be crawling all over this!”
“And he mauled two cops.”
“Mother fuck!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Y’know, I actually had two minutes of happiness where I thought everything was going to be okay. That’s what I was thinking: ‘Wow, this was a bad scene for a while, but help is almost there and everything will be fine. I’m sure my good buddies George and Lou won’t screw things up any worse than they already have, right? Oh, no, they’re professionals, they won’t cause me to have to chug down any more Peptol Bismol! It’s all wonderful! Life is ducky!’“
The claw hammer was sort of working, but not efficiently, and George was scraping carefully to avoid accidentally cutting the wire in half. “I’m really kind of busy right now,” said George.
“Busy? Busy? Are you seriously trying to tell me that you’re too busy to talk to me?”
“Will you please get to the point?”
“I need you to punch this address into your GPS. Are you ready?”
“We don’t have the GPS.”
“Why the fuck don’t you have the GPS?”
George saw no reason to confess everything that had gone wrong. “It broke.”
“Well then somehow you need to find 7151 Pegg Avenue. Two G’s. It’s just a parking lot. The Werewolf Hunters Incorporated are on their way over there, and they need all of the information you’ve got. Everything you can tell them about his powers so that they don’t get screwed like you did.”
“All right.” The hammer slipped and George cursed.
“They’ll move the cage to their own van, and you can ride along while they recapture him.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“We lost the cage.”
“Explain.”
“He stole the van.”
“Please tell me I didn’t hear you right. Because otherwise I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“The werewolf stole the van, okay? What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say any goddamn thing but ‘The werewolf stole the van!’ Are you in league with him? Is that what’s going on? Have you formed some kind of werewolf alliance?”
“No, we just lost control of the situation.”
“You owe me one punch, George. When you come back here, I get to punch you in the stomach, as hard as I can, and you can’t hit back. Same thing with Lou. One punch for each of you.”
“Fine.” George had finally stripped the first wire, and started on the second.
“Somebody’s coming,” Lou whispered.
George immediately dropped the hammer, got in the car, and shut the door, trying to behave in a casual and completely non-suspicious manner.
“I just can’t believe this,” said Ricky. “I thought I was going to deliver good news, and we’d laugh, and there’d be some homoerotic banter, and I’d get to go home. You realize that you’re basically unemployable at this point, right? Who’s going to hire thugs who messed up like this? You’d better get a real social security number, because you’re going to be flipping burgers for the rest of your life.”
“I understand that.” George discretely looked over his shoulder. A well-dressed couple stood by their car, talking.
“And I don’t mean that you’re going to be flipping burgers at a classy place. You’re going to be flipping shit burgers at a rat-infested restaurant where everybody in there is a fat redneck and you have to wear some kind of dumbfuck uniform and a zit-faced teenager barks orders at you all day. That’s your future, George!”