All-American Werewolf

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Lenny Stevens sat on the front porch of his small rural house in the brutal early July heat, slowly swaying on a two-person swing as the odor of fireworks still hung in the moist air. The slight, gentle movement he made as he swung through the humid night was the closest thing he’d get to a breeze; the heat wave that had gripped Maryland for the entire summer continued to hold the region in its grasp.

If the heat this summer weren’t bad enough, the humidity made it even worse. As Lenny lit a cigarette and breathed in the late-night air, he could smell the damp hanging in it. It felt like being wrapped in a wet blanket. The bedroom he shared with his wife was like an oven, and since they couldn’t afford to replace their air conditioner, he’d come to the porch to cool down rather than spend one more sleepless minute lying in a pool of his own sweat.

To cool down, and to think.

Lenny worried about the future. Ever since graduating high school, he’d worked at one of the factories just over the county border in Pocomoke City, the past seven of which he’d been first shift foreman. Although he and his wife, Cindy, had never had much in the way of riches, Lenny’s factory job had afforded them the comfortable little house in which they lived with their two rambunctious boys – both of whom were, thankfully, visiting his parents for the week. His job allowed for the bills to be paid and put food on the table, and enough acres of land so Lenny could pursue his side-business as a small farmer. Overall, things were good.

But that rock-solid foundation on which Lenny thought he’d built his life was starting to crumble. He realized the mistake he’d made by thinking life would be predictable, assuming it would follow his plan when he was promoted to shift foreman. Lenny figured he’d stay in that job for the next decade or so, then move into the shop foreman position. Finally, after many long years of loyal service to the company, he’d retire to Florida with a nice pension to live out his days fishing and growing fat.

It was a good plan until the manufacturing jobs started to disappear. For the past five years Lenny had watched as one factory in Pocomoke City after another grew ever more anemic until, after having moved most of the operations elsewhere, each factory finally closed. Lenny had prayed his own factory could avoid that fate, but in the last two years, he’d seen the same process starting there. He’d watched with growing angst as first one division was closed and everyone working there got laid off, then another division was moved overseas, as everyone there likewise got pink-slipped, and so on. Lenny feared he had a target on his back, and it was only a matter of time before he, too, lost his job.

Lenny felt like he was trapped on a slowly sinking ship, knowing what the inevitable outcome would be but fearing he might drown if he jumped overboard. He took a long drag of his cigarette and looked down at this dog, curled comfortably at his feet.

“What would you do, Max?” he asked, patting the dog’s head as he did. “What would you suggest I do?”

If Max had any wisdom to offer, he kept it to himself.

Lenny let out the smoke in a long, discontented sigh, and as he did, he thought he heard rustling in his cornfield a few yards away from the porch. Max suddenly became interested in that spot as well, but at the same moment he heard Cindy open the screen door. Thoughts of whatever the sound might have been immediately left his mind when he looked at his wife, her skin glistening with sweat, her hair sleep-tousled, wearing a sheer negligée that hid very little of her nude body under it. Max, however, fixed his stare at the same spot in the cornfield.

“Can’t sleep again?” Cindy asked softly in the quiet night, lighting her own cigarette as she joined him on the swing.

“Nope,” Lenny answered, putting his arm around Cindy, and pulling her close to him, though her skin was warm and sweaty. “Too damn hot up there.”

“Not much better out here, though.”

Lenny nodded his head in agreement, taking a long drag off his cigarette. “No, not much better, but at least it don’t feel so damn stuffy out here.”

After a moment of silence, Cindy said, “But I assume it ain’t just the heat that got you up. Worried ‘bout work?”

“Yeah, I am,” Lenny said, flicking the cigarette butt out towards the driveway. “I’m worried, but I’m also stuck, you know? Like, I can see what’s gonna happen. The writing’s on the wall, everyone can see it coming. So, I should leave, get another job.” Lenny paused to light another cigarette, taking a long first drag as he did. “But problem is, factory work is all I ever done, all I know how to do. I’m thirty-five, a little too old to learn a trade, no way I’m going back to school. And honestly, I don’t want to start over in another factory. I worked my ass off to get where I am now, and I really don’t want to go back to working on the line.”

Holding Cindy close to him, Lenny could feel the soft swell of her breast pressing into his chest, and he found her slick, sweaty skin to be wonderfully distracting.

“We need to come up with something,” Cindy said, her head leaning against her husband’s bare chest.

“I know.”

“I heard people talking at the restaurant of maybe there being oil or natural gas or something in the western part of the state, maybe up in Pennsylvania. They say that pays real good money.”

“Yeah, I could do that. I’d probably like that. I think that’d have me out in the field a lot, though,” Lenny said, gently massaging his wife’s hot shoulder with his fingertips as he drank in the image of her body. “We’d be separated for weeks at a time, I think. You okay with that?”

She thought for a moment, her hand resting on his thigh. “Hmm… I don’t think so. I’d miss you too much. Maybe one of them crabbers that work out of Crisfield?”

“Well, babe, then I’d be out for weeks at a time. I’d be gone more than if I were in the oil fields.”

A silent moment as the two thought about their very limited options, coming up with nothing.

“So, what do you suggest?” Cindy asked at last, lifting her head from Lenny’s chest to look into his eyes. “You don’t make enough from farming to cover the bills, even with what I bring in. We’ll need to do something else.”

“I know, I know,” Lenny said, no longer focused on the discussion and dismissing it from his mind. He’d gone over it a million times before and found no obvious answers. He was tired, and the more he looked at his wife’s all but naked body, the hornier he became. “For now, let’s just enjoy having the house to ourselves for once,” he said, as he leaned in to start kissing his wife’s neck.

But just as Lenny was about to move his hand to Cindy’s breast, he again heard the rustling sound in his cornfield. Lenny and Cindy both looked that way, half-expecting to see someone watching them, as Max got on his feet and started barking loudly. As they did, they caught the faint odor of rotten eggs.

“What is that?” Cindy said in a harsh whisper.

“I don’t know,” Lenny said, as he started to walk towards the cornfield, Max joining him. “Stay here,” he said to Cindy.

Lenny walked slowly, carefully, the way he would while out hunting, like he was trying to sneak up on whatever might be in the corn even though he was exposed on his lawn. He scanned the field, hoping to catch sight of what might be lurking in the waist-high corn. The dim lamp over his driveway only illuminated a few rows into the field, so there could be something hiding in the dark beyond the light. Max barked aggressively the whole time as he approached next to Lenny, eyes on the cornfield.

Lenny paused, coiled and ready to move in an instant, if need be, trying to see or hear anything. He couldn’t, though he knew there was something out there in his fields as the rotten egg smell became worse.

“Max!” Lenny yelled as the dog suddenly ran headlong into the field, disappearing into the darkness. Lenny took two quick steps to follow him, then stopped when he heard Max yelp once in pain, followed by an immediate end to his barking. “MAX! MAAAX!!”

Lenny stood in the abrupt silence, trying desperately to hear or see anything. He saw nothing but his darkened cornfield and heard nothing but blood flowing in his ears as his heart pounded in unexpected terror.

“Lenny,” Cindy whimpered from the porch behind him, “what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think Max got hurt. Get the—” Lenny stopped speaking abruptly, as he caught swift movement to his left and the odor of sulfur became overwhelming. He pivoted and whipped his head around to see what it was but only had time to catch a glimpse of his own death approaching.

Lenny shrieked once in abject, overpowering horror. A shaggy creature with a gigantic paw swiped down at him, the long, curved claws slicing easily and deeply into his face, tearing off his cheek and ripping out his lower jaw, then continuing down to pull open his neck. As Lenny’s bloody corpse fell to the ground, the creature sank its fangs into his chest and, clutching his body with its talons, ripped his upper body wide open with a deep growl.

When Lenny was attacked by this huge, hairy beast, Cindy threw herself back against the screen door, frozen in terror, her eyes shocked wide open, unable to breathe let alone scream. But when it ripped open Lenny’s chest cavity, his blood pouring everywhere and pink organs falling out of his body with wet plops, she could no longer contain the shock of watching her husband being killed and mutilated; she screamed loudly, piteously, and until her throat hurt.

The creature stood looking at her, blood and gore dripping off its claws, red irises glowing in the dark night. It roared once in answer to her screams, an unearthly cry, one unlike any animal on Earth. Running with impossible speed on two legs, the beast ended Cindy’s life as savagely as it had Lenny’s, then took the time to destroy her remains.

Then, its fur caked and matted with bits of flesh, clotted blood, and shards of bone, the creature threw back its head and howled triumphantly into the dark night.