Monsterland (8 page)

Wyatt craned his neck to see if he could get a glimpse of Jade. His heart started to beat faster; a telltale flush rose to paint his face when he spied her delicate profile. He leaned forward to get a better glimpse of her.

“Forget it, she doesn’t see you,” Howard observed. “They’re like the gestapo,” he added sourly.

“The who?” Josh asked.

“The Nazi’s special police.”

“Who’s like the gestapo?”

“The Monsterland security. Did you hear that guy?”

“What’s up with you, Howard Drucker? I thought you wanted to go.” Wyatt turned, looking at his friend’s pinched face.

“Yeah, that was before, this is now.”

Melvin hooked his arm around the headrest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Howard shrugged indifferently.

“Come on,” Melvin said impatiently.

“In theory it sounded like a great idea. You know, seeing vampires, zombies, and werewolves in their natural habitat.”

“So?”

“The point is, this,” he gestured to the massive gates now in eyesight. “It seems unnatural. It feels—”

“What? Wrong? What else are they going to do with them? Kill them like in an old Boris Karloff movie? This is so right,” Melvin said hotly. “They were dying in those detention camps.”

“Containment camps,” Howard corrected.

“Whatever.” Melvin went on. “The hillbillies practically wiped out the werewolf colony once it was discovered. Vampires lived in fear, almost harried out of existence. Here they are protected. If they did that to the rhinos, maybe they wouldn’t have become extinct.”

“It’s sterile, not real!” Howard was leaning over the front seat.

“What happened to you? You were so excited about it,” Wyatt asked.

“This was all over YouTube this morning.” He typed something on his phone and then showed them the screen. It looked like a dilapidated portion of any American city. The image was filmed in a choppy fashion, bouncing around, going in and out of focus. The Werewolf River Run sign was in the viewfinder. Uniformed men, some with lab coats, entered the ride area. The camera panned out to view an artificial river with alligators rhythmically rising and falling in the choppy water. There was a rustle and then shouts. A
howl turned into a wail, and all four boys watched, their collective breaths held.

“Was that filmed inside?”

“Inside one of them?”

“Shut up and listen. They’re speaking English, so I guess it was right here.”

“Who did it?”

Howard shrugged. “
Candid Camera
. How am I supposed to know? They didn’t give any credits.”

They clustered their heads together, fighting for space to see. Howard shoved the phone into Wyatt’s hands so he could hold it up for them all.

The camera picked up a scuffle and then a muffled curse. A huge dark animal tore from the brush, a gang of men following in hot pursuit. Its body was longer than a wolf; its hair a mix of black with gray highlights. It looked nine feet long. It growled, jumping high, and then, landing on all fours, it crouched low, growling ominously. Its muscled shoulders bunched with raw power. Its mouth opened to reveal dripping yellow fangs that glistened in the light. Narrowing its silvered eyes, it circled the area, and the men backed away warily. The paws were the size of dinner platters, and its wide chest heaved as it panted. Conrad was the tallest man in the group. He wore a white lab coat.

“A werewolf,” Melvin whispered in wonder.

“Watch,” Howard said impatiently.

The beast was overwhelmed by a Taser shot at him. It cried out in agony. Four goons jumped on its back. It was pummeled mercilessly with bats. In the background, the screams of a dozen beasts could be heard, but a row of men brandishing rifles held them in check. The animal was beaten, and, when it lay senseless on the floor, it was given one last kick.

The guard stood, wiping his hands. “Is it still breathing?” he asked, breathless from his exertion.

The doctor bent over to examine the creature. “Barely.”

“Is that Conrad?”

“Shut up and watch!”

“Good. Feed it to the zombies. They like their meat alive.” Conrad stood, wiping his hands on a proffered towel.

“Whoa, that’s sick,” Wyatt whispered.

“I heard the whales took a worse beating at the aquarium,” Melvin quipped.

“That couldn’t have been Conrad—he wouldn’t do that,” Wyatt said with disbelief. He sat back, his stomach feeling unsettled, as if his world suddenly tilted on its axis. Conrad was a man of honor, and that video had to be a mistake, he reasoned.

“Who are you?” Howard demanded. “That was murder, and, the last time I looked, murder was against the law.” He fiddled with the white pocket protector, sliding out a pencil to look at its point.

“You are such a nerd,” Melvin said, watching him.

Howard slid the pencil back hastily, making his nervous fingers relax in his lap.

“It’s not murder if they aren’t human,” Melvin continued as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Who decides who is human?” Howard shouted back.

The sign loomed above them. The car inched forward as if it were hooked on a tram ride. The back door was opened, efficient hands pulled out the cooler and bottled drinks. They were ordered out of the car. Two white uniformed men appeared on either side with huge vacuum hoses.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Wyatt asked uneasily. He noticed Nolan, Theo, Jade, and Keisha were also outside their vehicle.
Jade’s worried eyes found Wyatt’s. Jade bit her bottom lip. Keisha waved her entrance ticket.

Wyatt pulled out his phone and started a text to Jade and then caught sight of Nolan and shoved his phone back in his pocket. What was he doing? She had a boyfriend, he reminded himself.

“We’re supposed to be special guests,” Keisha yelled at the lead guard.

“Yeah, join the crowd. Everybody has those today. You’re all special.”

They were allowed back into the cars, and told to follow the signage to the garages that rose out of the desert like a modernistic mountain.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Josh suggested.

“I don’t know about this place,” Howard replied.

“You’re always the skeptic,” Melvin said.

“So explain the video.”

The ride to the garage was utterly silent. Wyatt glanced back in his rearview mirror and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, remembering why the sign unnerved him. It bore a striking resemblance to a picture he had seen in his history book. The words were in German and read
Arbeit Macht Frei
—Work Makes You Free. It was the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp.

C
HAPTER
9

Werewolves

B
illy’s sharp eyes
scanned the soldered joints holding the glass-covered dome together. He was in human form, as were the rest of his pack. The loincloths that had been given out earlier lay in a discarded heap where they had taken turns urinating on them, so they’d be unwearable.

This place was nothing better than a zoo. The collar on his neck chafed his skin. He was rubbed raw by it; the green LED light was always on the edge of his peripheral vision, a constant reminder of his captivity.

Vincent Conrad made a mockery of science. He had no intention of finding a cure or studying the inhabitants, of that Billy was sure. The man was evil; his pitiless, obsidian eyes studied Billy as though he were nothing more than an insect under a microscope. They couldn’t communicate with the other inmates. If only they could reach out to them, they could band together to get out of here. For all he knew, the vamps were happy with their confinement. Maybe they cut a
better deal. Forget about the zombies, they were little better than a meal for his kind.

If only the vamps responded to his calls. He had tried, but they were cliquish, thought they were better than anyone else. Vamps cared nothing except for their own pleasure. They had passed for years living within society, on the fringe—they still managed to carve out a place for themselves, until Vincent saw fit to incorporate them into his obscene operation. They were invited in, not drugged and dragged in like he handled the werewolves. They lived peacefully for years in the swamps, until Vincent stumbled upon them and decided to put them in his freak show.

Billy peered through the glass at the Vampire Village, trying to make contact with someone, anyone. He knew a vamp once; his name was Axel, of all things, infected when he was a roadie for one of the bands he followed. They were a careful group, those vamps, infecting only those that desired to be included. Sure, they made drones, people they fed off of, taking blood. Those drones begged for it and then turned into groupies whose slavish devotion ended when the vamp stopped sucking their blood for a month straight. Nobody seemed too bothered by it except for the Bible-thumpers, but they balked at everything. Their numbers had dwindled as their popularity decreased. Even his buddy Axel disappeared one day.

Then Vincent came along, promising what was left of the vampire population a safe home. They could have the run of the place, unlike the wolves, whom he’d stuck in cages. It’s just that, Billy reasoned—why didn’t they realize they were making a pact with the devil? If he imprisoned one group, another was just as endangered. If he were to succeed, he needed the
help of the vamps, ’cause everybody knew you couldn’t reason with a zombie, poor souls. Once those suckers caught the virus, they declined until there was nothing left but an empty shell.

Billy growled deep in his throat, his sharp eyes scanning the park. To the left, he saw a huge sign announcing show times for the zombie suburbs. Vincent had no intention of creating a cure. Why would he ruin his star attraction? He probably had plans to make more zombies. After all, he had several more of these theme parks premiering all over the world tonight. Billy howled to his pack. He had spread his group to the four corners of their prison, getting familiar with their new territory.

In the distance, he saw a line of rust-and-dun-colored mountains. They were far from the humid swamps of the south, but he had a rather sketchy idea of geography. He barely remembered school, or even his family. He had a new one now, and he had to protect his clan. Just over a ridge, he made out a snaking line of people waiting patiently to enter this strange land where he was brought to live.

His fingers gripped the metal tightly, his jaw going slack. They were coming to see him, to point and study—and laugh. He jumped down, his heart racing. It was dusk outside, but soon the artificial sky inside the dome would simulate the onset of evening and the bright full moon that attacked both his and his friends’ nervous systems. Soon their skin would stretch, their limbs would lengthen, and they would howl in pained agony. Hunger so great would turn them into eating machines, and they would attack anything in their paths.

He walked down a grassy trail, throwing himself into a bed of moss. He was trapped in a controlled home where he would be the show. He understood now. This is why they had
been taken from their homes. It was not to study them, but to entertain bored school children looking for thrills.

Petey and Little John sniffed at the air, letting out a yelp of warning. They were coming back. He had the rest of his group studying the routines of their keepers, checking for weakness in the security of the place. They had an army of guards, the same military types that had captured them late last year. They spent a long time underground in a medical facility, being probed, and, in Kenny’s case, dissected to find out the reason they were half man, half beast. They had lost a few, allowed three new guys in whose leader had been killed and skinned in the name of science.

The alarms rang, and Billy reluctantly rose, walking to his cell. He pulled at the collar on his neck, feeling the band pulse with the current that zapped him when he didn’t obey. It wouldn’t come off, these indestructible collars; there wasn’t even a weak seam for him to wiggle. They had tried biting them off each other, only to be rewarded with a teeth-jarring zap that went straight to the middle of their heads. Oh, the pain of that shock, Billy remembered.

The door opened, and he crouched low to enter, holding on to the bars as they locked back in place. He exchanged a questioning glance with Petey who nodded abruptly, letting him know he had some success. The doors slammed shut, and he wondered why they were being locked up at this hour. Usually they were allowed to run free all day. Perhaps Vincent was coming.

Vincent Conrad was a frequent visitor. Of course, Billy remained mum, they all had. He didn’t think any of them talked, especially when they were in human form. Alone, they used nods, grunts, whines, and barks to communicate. It was enough. He didn’t like Vincent at all. He would come by and stand outside his pen for hours, watching silently, intently
waiting for Billy to reveal something, anything to give a clue as to why his body did the things it did. He knew Vincent learned nothing new. His pack was safe.

He was still in human form, scrabbling around in the dirt of his small cell, the domed ceiling muting all daylight. He knew it was nearing night; his internal clock told him so. He rolled on the floor of his pen, feces, chicken bones, and a mess of feathers on the filthy floor.

“What’s the matter, Billy? Didn’t your mother teach you manners? Look at this mess.” The jailor taunted. “I guess she was too busy rutting with a wolf.”

“You leave my mother alone!” Billy forced the words from his throat, feeling them scrape his rusty vocal cords like a file. The sentence came out garbled, barely intelligible, but he dragged the words from the recesses of his past to spit them out. He screamed from the pain of his atrophied throat muscles and rammed against the gate. In truth, Billy barely remembered his mother. He had fled his home when he realized that he was not like his brothers. He was different, his strangeness causing them to keep a distance. He tried to fit in but knew instinctively he didn’t belong. It happened once a month, when night descended, and the full moon gazed balefully down at him. His body would betray him, changing, shredding his clothes, forcing him to flee his home to search for food. The ravenous hunger would send him running, hunting, looking for a living thing to rip apart with his bare hands. He would eat, bloodlust in his eyes, searching for and stealing chickens and dogs, until one day he found it was not enough. When the moon evaporated, he felt himself return to his boyhood body to find the dismembered corpse of his neighbor spread about the greasy grass. He ran then, hiding during the day,
foraging at night, howling at the betraying moon, never resting until an answering howl told him he had found a home. There were ten of them, all male, all the same. They lived in the Everglades, away from humankind, living off the dense population of alligators—until Vincent Conrad had destroyed their peace.