Rounders

I awake to the buzzing sound of the alarm on my phone. I have about an hour to get back across town to the headquarters. The smell of sausage floats through the air and I smile. Sheila remembered my schedule. Weighted down by only two hours of sleep I drag my body from the blue sheets. Adrenaline is the only thing that motivates me to get dressed and head toward the kitchen. I know that when I get to work, I can take a shower and change into my spare set of clothes.

"See you soon?" Sheila says handing me an egg and bacon sandwich to go.

“I’ll be around," I say sliding a hand over her tight bottom. With a squeeze and a squeal, I head for the door.

I hate leaving her like this. I hate not knowing if she still has feelings for me. Pulling onto the street I can see her out of my rear view mirror. I convince myself that she isn’t thinking about me and continue driving. Last night happened because it was late and because we both have needs. Last night did not happen because of false promises or false expectations.

 Sifting through my mind, I finally arrive at the office. The smell of sex settles into the air. I rush to the showers and hour before anyone is suppose to be at the office. The water hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s ice cold and peels my skin as I stand there rinsing off the sweat and liquids from the night before. Turning off the water my fingers tremble with exhaustion. I get out of the shower, and I change into a pair of black jeans and another plain black t-shirt. I clean up my thick curly hair and proceed to shave.

 After the shave, I grab a cup of coffee from the cafeteria and head back to my office. I’m barely on my second sip of the coffee when some mail runner flings a confidential file into my hand.

"What’s this?" I say but the guy has already scrambled down the hallway. I take the file under one arm and head back to my office.

 I wasn’t expecting a file so early today with all the drama from last night still swirling. It read’s Gordon Campbell, 5'9 two hundred pounds. He’s not really a flabby or muscled, but he has an aggressive look to his photo. He’s a medium-built black male with rape, assault, manslaughter, and evasion under his belt. Rape is probably what put his name into our records. The other stuff is baby stuff compared to what we’re usually up against.

I place the file aside and take another sip of my coffee. Now I have a morning kill. Death has become something quickly ordered and easily carried out. First, you get a picture, then a description. Hours you go find the guy and kill him for the crimes he’s committed.

The truth is with every file there could be a person of innocence wrapped up in a world of scandal. The sad thing is you can’t ask them that. We aren’t supposed to ask them anything, just pull the trigger.

"Hey partner," Caleb says sneaking up behind me. I look up from the manila folder. He’s already dressed in uniform.

My office feels cramped with him standing over my shoulder. The office isn’t big in general but now I’m suffocating. I stand and walk toward my coal-covered couch on the far wall. Stopping in front of the coffee table I pick up an all black mug. Coffee swirls. Moving toward the refrigerator that I ordered last Christmas, I smell the stale coffee. As I heat it, Caleb plants himself on the couch. Women with a Parasol, one of my Monet paintings hangs behind him against the deep gray walls. Caleb looks almost like one of my clients trying to appear calm. Sometimes we’re loaned out as private detectives when the seasons get slow.  Many times my clients seem jittery to be in a trained killer’s office.

"You look ready," I say placing my now nuked coffee onto my desk and handing Caleb the phone."I think you should slow down though and make a few phone calls first. It would help us catch him if we knew where to look."

"He hangs out in Rounders," Caleb says crossing his arms across his thin chest an obvious refusal to take the phone, “with a friend of mine named Jack."

"You know our hit? That’s like a conflict of interest or something," I say sliding on my Kevlar vest.

"No, I don’t know our hit, I know Jack," He declares laughing and handing me a helmet.

I look back at him questioning.

"It’d be quicker if we take the bikes. One look at our car in Rounders and we’re done for," he says responding to the look.

I shake my head in agreement, even though I don’t want to take the bike. Anything can go wrong in Rounders, Virginia. It’s worse than any other city because there is no government. It’s like the place was just formed overnight by the worse people alive. There are just no rules in Rounders. What makes it worse is it just seems to continue spreading.

If it wasn’t Rounders I would have refused the bikes. Caleb is the best motorcyclist on our staff; I on the other hand just got my bike license within the year. It’s funny as everything else changes around us; DMV workers stay the same, slow and impatient. Well DMV workers and politicians stay the same. With this new Bush in office I’m beginning to think the worlds about to end.

Speeding down the highway is easy because most of the work traffic has disintegrated. As I move past a small red Porsche, Caleb draws my attention to the turn-off to Rounders. I used to live down here when it used to be Virginia Beach. It is a wasteland. Clear fields and empty warehouses line a highway. Silence chills. Something musky hangs in the air mixing with the salty smell of the motorcycle engines. Something just doesn’t seem right. I think about telling Caleb we should turn back. Someone is watching us.

A shot comes from nowhere skimming my shoulder. A second bullet lodges in the back of my Kevlar vest. Pain pummels me from the impact, and I almost lose control of the wheel. I grab tighter and use all my weight to hold steady. Pulling over would be a mistake.

"No!"I yell as Caleb turns his bike toward the shoulder, but he can’t hear me over the engines. Grass bends to his front wheel as he squeals to a stop.

As he stops, I can hear my own heart like drums in my ears. I can only hope that this is a spontaneous hit.

“What do we got here?" A voice calls as I get off my bike. Checking my body for damage I catch a glimpse of something slinking up from the side of one of the empty warehouses. It’s a female with heavy breasts. She’s covered in thick auburn fur and she’s followed by pack. Her scent is a heavy cinnamon musk and I can tell by how sharp it is that she’s the alpha.

"Looks like meat," says a tall male in wolf form standing behind her on hind legs. He is massive. A voice completely human pours out of a mouth laced with crooked pointy teeth and thick saliva. A fat tongue slides out of his mouth spewing hot spit onto the floor. His eyes stay focused on me as he hugs the wolfed female slightly above her waist.

Her breasts are huge mounds under thick fur. Something tingles and grows hard in my pants. She is naked and from the crunch of her backbone down, she exudes sex.

"He smells of pack," A silver-haired wolf whispers pushing up from the side of the building, "he smells like us."

She points to me. Caleb’s small eyes follow her thin wrinkled finger. I don’t want to lose my job because I’m half wolf. Every bone in my body tenses. I remember when I found out I was half werewolf, I nearly passed out. Then my mom told me how neither community would accept me. She said in a real pack I would have been killed at birth.

"He’s not pack!" The first woman, the alpha speaks in a dominant tone. The silvered female backs down.

"We need to get out of here," Caleb says as the wolves begin to argue amongst themselves. Two more fully formed werewolves slink from the shadows now.

Caleb starts to move slowly towards his bike. I know that even if we manage to get to the bikes, they’d run us down. In wolf form, these werewolves would be much faster than any vehicle. We have no room to antagonize them.

My wolf inside me stretches as the pack begins to grow. I look at Caleb with his face paling and his eyes widening. I look over at the black cycles. My gun is still there. Caleb doesn’t have his gun either. Staring at the guns, something inside me clicks, werewolves don’t use bullets. Someone set us up and that someone is still around watching our every move.

"Back off Dana!" A buff black male appears from a building to the right. I don’t know the voice before I recognize the face.

“Fuck”, I say under my breath, “Brandon".

He is one of the few kills in my career that I couldn’t accomplish. He stares at me with deep brown eyes fixed inside deep sockets. His skin is almost the complexion of coal. 6'9 and all shoulders, he towers over all of us. Muscles from a naturally active lifestyle ripple under his taunt skin. He watches me out the corner of his eye and I can tell he wants to kill me. If he gets the chance, he’ll just shoot me.

"I hate creatures like you Brandon," Dana growls focusing on the black skyscraper in front of her, “you’re always killing for the pleasure of it, when some of us have to eat. It’s probably one of you that brought the squad out here in the first place."

"I have a personal quarrel with him Dana; I will not have a bitch like you stand in my way. I had him in my sight and I’m the one who took the shot." He moves closer to her pulling a gun from under a black leather jacket.

"You came down here alone Brandon?" She asks snarling with a mouth full of jagged teeth.

"I’m not afraid of you Dana," He says slapping a clip in his gun, “I always pack a clip of silver."

The smell of silver is so strong that I almost heave. The werewolves to my left seem affected by it as well, but they don’t gag in the open like I’m doing. Caleb stares at me. I look away.

It doesn’t take Dana long to process the odds. I can tell by her eyes that if it was just her and Brandon she wouldn’t back down. Being the alpha means taking care of your pack and not taking unnecessary risk. So, she backs down.

"Another day for you then Brandon," Dana says slowly,” next time I’ll make sure to kill you before you can get to that gun of yours."

"If you can kill me," Brandon says grinning.

As Dana turns to leave most of the pack follows. The young male wolf however stays reluctantly behind. Growling at Brandon who still has his gun out and pointed at nothing in particular he is staking his false authority.

"I can’t wait to see what you taste like," He says between wolf jaws. Anger makes the letters come out as growls.

Brandon ignores him and focuses on me. His beady brown eyes seem so small in his head. Points his gun at me, he has two fingers placed firmly on the trigger. I’m thinking through a plan but Caleb has to keep it together long enough so that we don’t get shot.

"Talon!" A wolf yells from the darkness between the only two buildings standing just below the Rounder’s exit.

 "Get your scrawny ass over here," the voice calls.

The young wolf turns and runs toward his pack. The wolf deep inside me relaxes, even though the human side of me has tensed. Every event since we’ve hit Rounders has been going in slow motion.

"So we meet again," Brandon sneers keeping his gun pointed at me." I’m a dangerous criminal, still wanted at large, but you’re not down here looking for me, are you?"

"No," I say honestly because it can’t hurt the situation.

This 6’9 man begins to pace the gravel. His black boots seem to crunch through the concrete. Like a maniac, he moves back and forth. At any moment he could snap. I think about his file. One of the first I ever read. Something in it could be a clue of how to defeat him.

He grew up in Virginia. He used to work for the cops and then he just disappeared.   Spotted from time to time, no one knew if he was alive or dead. One day, out of the blue, he resurfaced as an unstoppable killer. He’s an unstoppable killer that was still speculated as dead. I doubt the vampire theories. My personal belief is the A.S.S. just got jealous of him. He refuses to work for them.

"It’s odd dancing like this, facing one another, wondering who’s going to fall first. They say I’ve gone crazy but I always recognize the dance," he says as he surprisingly brings his gun to his hip.

 "They have no honor, but Brandon does,” he says slowly, “I’ve never in my life killed and unarmed man."

"So what are you saying? Can we go?" I say taking a small step in the direction of my bike.

"No!" He yells and my feet stop. He is very intimidating. The only things covering him are weapons and straps of black leather. He looks just like a prostitute who you could pick up on Main Street.

"What do you want from him? Just spit it out, because I’m getting tired of being jerked around. I’m part of the A.S.S. and that alone deserves respect," Caleb asks as his patience has apparently run out. He moves up closer to me. Before he opened his mouth, Brandon hadn’t even taken him into consideration. Now his eyes stare at the skinny A.S.S. worker beside me.

"Who are you?" Brandon points his gun at Caleb."You have no standing in Rounders. I can kill you and feed you to the wolves down here. No one would even blink an eye."

"You wouldn’t dare," Caleb says coming forward from behind me.

"Your squadron is nothing in Rounders." Brandon’s thick lips strangle the words. His black skin stretches around each syllable.

"Just let us go, Brandon," I plead knowing in a few seconds Caleb won’t be able to drive.

"Go then!" Brandon’s voice booms, "but realize that this isn’t the end of the dance between us."