A Werewolf In Under-Town

“Was it smart to let that kid go?” Rita asked as they walked down the street.

“Maybe. I don’t honestly know. But we needed an in with the neighborhood. Someone who can spread the word. That’s what Mr. Perez will do for us.”

“If he survives the night.”

“He’ll be fine. He had both his guns, and he knows the neighborhood better than we do.”

“Yeah, Rita. You should be more worried about us. We’re the ones walking through the middle of Austin half-naked.” Sybil butted in to the conversation from behind.

Shaggy and Rita both turned around to see the others following them down the sidewalk. Each in whatever clothes they could steal from closed or abandoned stores. After the pack’s transformations ended, they scrounged up an eclectic assortment of pants, shorts, and shirts. However, all of them were shoeless as they walked down the dark streets. Sybil herself was in short-short and a large torn hoodie.

“We’re fine.” Rita said. “At least we have something to cover up and not stain boss’s tender sensibilities.”

Shaggy rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you seem to want to walk around naked, Rita. But how about we avoid suspicion and find another store to loot? Preferably one with shoes.”

Rita snorted and tugged at the dress jacket she was wearing. She had refused to button the thing, so the skin of her stomach and chest peeked out around the beige fabric. Shaggy pointedly looked away as Rita chortled.

“Boss, you’re like a thirteen-year-old kid.”

“Propriety is a thing, Rita. Try to observe it.”

“Bah! Keep your manners to yourself, boss. I look great and people should know it.”

“Yeah, yeah. We may all look great, but I’m fucking exhausted. Are we home yet?” Vick asked from behind Cekrass.

The scaly lizard-man in tight jeans moved aside and the cowboy in a Lycra shirt and sweat pants scowled at them. Stanley nodded as he hugged his long trench coat to his body.

“Yeah, getting forced out of the shift sucked. I feel like I pulled all of my muscles and I am starving.”

Sybil perked up. “Yeah, that should be our actual goal, boss. We need food.”

Shaggy sighed and nodded, but he didn’t know where they would get anything. They were still a few blocks from the deli. He had wanted to finish scouting the area, but the pack had suddenly been pulled from their shifts. A surprising and annoying facet of their transformation, Shaggy had not been aware of. Now they were all naked and hungry.

From his spot on the sidewalk, Shaggy could see multiple diners and tiny grocery stores. But all of them were abandoned and looked empty. He growled as he sniffed the air, trying to find something. The neighborhood still had a post-apocalyptic vibe to it.

Only getting the scents from a few scared people and the lingering hints of gunpowder, Shaggy shook his head.

“There’s nothing around here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that!” Ephemara said as she appeared right next to him.

She preened as her body slowly became visible and Shaggy turned away from her sports-bra and yoga pant covered body. She had chosen the clothes just to fuck with him and they both knew it. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Shaggy waved for the pale woman to keep speaking. Ephemara tossed her black hair over her shoulder imperiously and stated.

“I think I’ve found something.”

“Please be more vague.” Shaggy said, rolling his eyes. “What did you find? More troops, civilians, gangs? Maybe a large stash of food?”

“I don’t know what it is, boss. But when I see a large metal door, I kind of want to know what’s behind it.”

“You didn’t check?” Rita asked.

“Nope. I was a good girl and obeyed the boss’s orders. No going off on my own. See? I can play nice?”

Shaggy ignored her as he glanced around in thought. Soon, he turned to the rest of his pack. They were putting up a good front, but they still looked tired. The shift and the run seemed to have taken a lot out of them. Did he want to risk them by taking a run at the unknown?

As the thought shot through his head, his whole pack turned dirty glares on him. He could both feel and hear their discontent with his own thoughts. It was fairly disconcerting. To have your own thoughts questioned by feelings in your head. He gave them his best ‘You-know-what-I-mean’ stare back. But all he got was a rush of disagreement.

“Fine. We’ll check it out.” Shaggy growled as he turned back to Ephe. “Lead the way.”

Ephemara’s dark eyes seemed to sparkle with mirth as she hurried off. Rita and Sybil were hot on her heels as Shaggy checked on the others. Cekrass and Vick trundled along after the women, Cekrass giving him a toothy grin. Then Stanley and Tom passed by him. The lanky Tom was playing up his exhaustion to the point that Stanley was half-carrying the man. The boy gave Shaggy an ‘it’s fine’ look and Shaggy shrugged.

Bringing up the rear, Shaggy followed along and kept his eyes on the half-lit streets. The street-lamps in the area were still working, but whatever was giving them juice was only delivering a small amount. An orange glow was being cast upon the streets and rather than make things easier to see, it just made things look creepier.

The sounds of gunfire in the distance made some brave souls peek out of their apartment windows. But when they saw Shaggy’s half-naked crew walking down the street, they quickly ducked back inside. Shaggy spotted a few people in apartments or abandoned buildings, wielding weapons. It was only a few brief glimpses, but he was sure he spotted both laser and gunpowder weaponry.

It looked like the few holdouts in the neighborhood were ready and willing to fight for their land. Shaggy wondered how the HLO and the city government were going to dislodge people like that. Although, maybe he was wrong. Maybe the City would see that some people weren’t leaving and decide to move the HLO project elsewhere. It could happen.

Shaggy snorted at his own thought. “Yeah, and I could learn to fucking fly in real life.”

Ephemara led them up the block and around a corner to the east. They traveled half a block over and then crossed the street. Shaggy blinked as he noticed the crumbling columns and the large lettering on the front of the building. Ephemara was standing proudly on the steps leading up to the main doors of the building as the rest of the pack hurried to follow.

“You have got to be shitting me, Ephemara.” Shaggy scowled as he rushed ahead.

“What?” she asked, sounding legitimately confused.

“This is a fucking bank!”

“Thanks, Shaggy. I can read, y’know.”

“Why are we here?!”

Ephemara walked up the stairs, Shaggy and the others following. “Because why does a closed and abandoned bank have a locked door and still functioning vault door?”

Ephemara tapped the large wooden doors to the bank. Shaggy moved up and tried both the handles, but they were, indeed, locked. Ephemara smiled at him as she vanished and sunk into the wall. Growling, Shaggy turned to Cekrass and found the big lizard already moving. Side-stepping away, Shaggy waited for the crunching of the door. Instead, all he got was a dull thud and scraping metal.

Cekrass looked around, clearly displeased. “Sorry, boss. Tired.”

Shaggy nodded understandingly and moved to help the big lizard-man. But Cekrass rushed to the door again. This time, he put his massive shoulder into it. The two wooden doors burst open and bits of wood and metal exploded from the impact site. Checking the streets, Shaggy saw they were still empty and waved everyone else inside.

Inside the main hall of the bank, Ephemara was standing with her arms crossed.

“What took you so long?”

Shaggy noticed bits of chair, tables, and even a water fountain were spread out from the door. Someone had stacked a load of junk in front of the door. He waved at the detritus and Ephemara shrugged.

“I figured y’all would easily blast through a bunch of junk against a door.”

“Well, we aren’t at a hundred percent, and neither are you.”

Ephemara simply scoffed and turned around. Behind him, Vick and Stanley were closing the large wooden doors. Which was a good idea. No need to signal that they were in here. Other than the seven-foot lizard crashing through a door. Cekrass winced at that thought and brushed debris from his scales.

“Sorry again, boss.”

Shaggy waved the big lizard off. “No problem, C. I gave the order. But I think from here we should go for a gentler touch. Rita, Tom and Stanley to the front. Follow Ephemara to the vault. Sybil, Cekrass, Vick and I will clear this floor.”

“I already checked this floor, boss.” Ephemara grumbled. “Besides, the fun stuff is downstairs.”

“I’m not saying I don’t trust your work, Ephemara. But multiple eyes on a task are always a good thing. Once we find nothing up here, we’ll join you. Okay?”

The short, pale woman scowled, but seemed to agree as she spun on her heel and led the others toward the back of the room. Shaggy had everyone else split up and explore. But it was futile. All the tills were open, all the desks turned over or broken. He doubted that Ephe had done all of it, but someone had looted the entire first floor. He almost wanted to sweep the upper floor as well, but he decided to wait.

With the others in tow, he headed around the back of the teller windows. A small hallway led to other offices and ended at a stairway going down. Following the stairs down, Shaggy heard the other’s voices echoing in the dark. Underneath the bank was a catacomb of hallways and rooms. Cage doors stood open and vault boxes were tossed across the floors. The basement had been just as thoroughly looted as the floor above.

At the far end of the basement stood a thick metal door. Ephemara was standing in front of it, talking to the others. Shaggy took in the door as they approached. It was a large vault door with multiple wheels and locks on it. Shaggy could barely work out which wheel, knob, or cog opened the thing. But one thought struck him.

“Why haven’t you just walked through it? Protections?”

Ephemara nodded as she tapped a finger against the door. “Yep. It’s got some kind of force field on it that prevents me from phasing through. It covers the room behind as well. So what ever is back there has to be important, right?”

Shaggy looked around at the floor and ceiling near the door. They both were scorched black and the signs of explosions and powers were everywhere. But the door remained pristine, like nothing ever happened to it. Along the wall to the left of the door was a large crack where someone had tried to break through the wall with a hammer or similar.

He blinked as he took in the destruction around the door. It was clearly protecting something amazing. But he doubted his crew was going to get into it anytime soon. Ephemara nearly stomped a foot as she whirled on him.

“Oh, come on, boss! Don’t give up before you even try.”

Shaggy sighed. “Ephemara, we are all tired, hungry, and weak. What do you think I can do to this door that Stanley or Cekrass can’t?”

“You can grow into that beast-man thing and rip through this thing, can’t you?”

“While I appreciate your estimation of my strength, I highly doubt I can do that.”

“Can’t you at least try?” Ephemara pleaded.

Shaggy checked his inner wolf and found the creature sluggish, but awake. He probably had enough for a quick transformation. But he would not come out of it feeling great. The others all crowded around him. Not pressuring him, but clearly all wanting him to try. With another sigh, Shaggy focused his emotions back down into the wolf. The beast perked its head up sleepily, and almost begrudgingly, Shaggy felt the shift take him.

Soon he was standing next to the door, his eyeline right along the top of it. Feeling his transformation already slipping, Shaggy lurched for one of the wheels on the front of the door. He wrapped his lanky fingers around the handle of the wheel and pulled with as much might as he could muster. The metal screeched, but stayed stubbornly still. The vault door didn’t budge at all as he wrestled with the handle, trying to get a proper handle to wrench the thing around.

But his transformation was ending. Shaggy could feel it as he put all of his weight into it and tried to yank the door open. He pulled twice, and the door seemed to groan. Emboldened, Shaggy went for a last pull. As he threw his body backwards and his arms became taut, Shaggy heard a loud screech of metal. He stumbled backward as he lost his footing, the wheel of the door still in his shrinking hands.

Someone caught him as he stumbled backwards, shifting back to his human shape. As he did, the large wheel of the vault door crashed to the floor. He had ripped the thing off the door entirely, but the vault was still stubbornly closed.

“See…” Shaggy panted. “It… was pointless…”

Shaggy wheezed as Vick and Stanley helped steady him. His inner wolf growled warningly at him before it ducked its head under its paws and fell asleep. Shaggy chuckled at his mindscape and focused back on the vault. Ephe and Rita were standing in front of it and he felt a strange sense of success from both of them. They moved apart, and Shaggy spotted something glittering inside the vault door.

There was a space in the door where he ripped the wheel from. A small square that had been behind the wheel. It showered them in a small yellow light and Shaggy blinked as he stumbled forward. Inside the space, hidden within the door, was a golden keyhole that shone with an almost holy light. The plate around the keyhole was a shining golden color with small jewels inset around it. Shaggy swallowed in awe as he almost reached a finger toward the keyhole. But Rita gripped his arm.

“I think that’s enough for one night. Don’t you, boss?”

Shaggy heard Ephemara huff, and that seemed to bring him out of his stupor. Rita was right, they weren’t ready for whatever this door was hiding. But he promised himself they would be. Soon.

With a tired nod, Shaggy led the way back toward the surface. They all remained weirdly silent, each of them deep in thought about the vault. That golden light tugged at Shaggy’s gaming senses and thoughts of epic loot behind the vault door. But his thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sounds of buzzing and amplified voice booming through the bank.

“THIS IS THE POLICE! WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”

Shaggy glanced at his still-tired werewolf crew and shouted angrily. “FUCK!”