grUeBERfest 2009 ROUND 4 - Révolution des Loups (581 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.41 on 40 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (View user info) at 2009-10-27 14:54:50 EDT
(1)
The man called Glace was driving south on Boulevard de Magenta, the wolvers on his tail.
He was driving a ten year old Peugeot 406 ambulance. It was painted black. Wolvers had a hard time seeing anything black at night, their eyes being sensitive to color and movement, but the bright lights of the boulevard were helping the wolvers follow their prey. Glace had just turned the siren on, having bought the ambulance because it was fast and roomy and had that loud siren. Wolvers had very sensitive ears. The siren was almost as bad as ramming a chopstick into their ears. A pack of wolvers were running after the ambulance, some of them shaking their heads in such pain that they staggered and fell.
The hatchback was raised. Denis was lying flat on the stretcher, facing the wolvers. Christiane was on one knee beside him.
Christiane fired her shotgun and two wolvers went down. "I can smell their breath!"
"Moi aussi," Denis said. He was holding an automatic pistol in each hand and firing at wolvers snapping at him from a few feet away.
"How many?" Glace asked over one shoulder.
"Treize!" Christiane said. She fired the shotgun again. The fallen wolver screamed like a woman and Christiane winced. "Douze!"
Their accents were heavy. Most of the time they spoke French first and Glace had to ask for a translation when they spoke too fast. Maybe he was the American imbecile Christiane often said he was.
"Can you not fucking go faster?" she asked now.
"Shut up and hang on," Glace shouted, entering Place de la République and taking a hard right onto Rue du Temple. He stepped on the gas and as the Peugeot accelerated he saw that both lanes ahead were littered with abandoned cars. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw another pack of wolvers loping out of the square in pursuit of the ambulance.
Three wolvers leaped at the ambulance from the side of the road. One was crushed under the wheels of the Peugeot, one landed half in and half out of the open passenger window, its long jaws snapping at Glace's right arm and prompting Glace to think he should have rolled the goddamned thing up, and one disappeared altogether. Glace had no idea where it was until he heard long claws skittering and clattering on the roof.
Glace was still driving west on Temple when he saw a sign that said something about detours.
To the left Rue du Temple became an eastbound wall of cars that were jammed as tight as the wrecks in a junkyard. He could see some headlights in that mass of metal and hear an isolated horn honking. If he had turned off the siren he would have heard people screaming. Wolvers were still feeding on people trapped in their cars as if they were snacking on sardines in cans.
To the right was Rue de Turbigo. Turbigo was westbound only and much less congested. Glace saw few cars were driving the wrong way, heading east toward the ambulance.
Glace looked at Christiane and Denis in the rear-view and shouted, "Hold on!"
He cranked the wheel to the right. He saw the wolver tumble off the roof in his side mirror. He didn't see the body weight of the wolver in the passenger window shift just enough that it could clamp its jaws down on his right forearm.
Christiane nearly fell as she reloaded the shotgun. She said, "C'est foutou!" and then smashed in the muzzle of a snarling wolver with the wooden stock of the weapon.
Glace felt the tips of long teeth pierce jacket, shirt, skin and muscle and shouted as he steered around an oncoming Fiat in his path. The Fiat driver's eyes were wide with terror.
In the side mirror he saw a flash of red lights; the Fiat driver was breaking. Mistake, Glace thought, as wolvers converged on the small car. One huge beast pulled a head, shoulder and arm through the Fiat's side window, leaving the rest of the body in the driver's seat. Some of them were that fast, and that strong.
Glace turned sharply left just enough to throw the wolver in the passenger seat off balance again. He could see its broad, flat shoulder blades moving up and down under ropes of muscle and a coat of thick gray-black hair and knew it was struggling to hold onto the door, its rear legs dancing on the surface of the road outside.
In the back of the ambulance Denis cursed when a pursuing wolver leaped between his guns and hooked one canine through the shoulder of his shirt. The wolver tried to climb up into the medical compartment, lost its footing, and fell. Denis was pulled out with it, dropping his pistols, grabbing an equipment strap on one wall and letting out a yell as his knees smacked the street, his blue jeans and flesh being shredded as if held against a belt sander.
Christiane shot at a blur of legs and two more wolvers went down screaming. She set the shotgun aside and reached out as Denis raised his free hand. She started pulling him into the ambulance when a lean wolver ran up between the man's legs and tore away his pants and most of his left buttock with one bite. As she was heaving him into the ambulance he grunted loudly. Another wolver tore away his genitals. His blood was pouring out of the ambulance and driving the pursuing wolvers mad.
Glace was trying to drive with his left hand while the wolver with its legs hanging out the passenger window ground its teeth between the bones of his forearm. He saw a BMW coming at him. Arrondissements south of the Seine were off limits now. That had been wolver territory for months. Areas north of the river were supposed to have been evacuated by UN troops last week.
There was a wolver on the hood of the approaching BMW. It looked over its shoulder. Seeing the action on the ambulance it must have decided there were some tasty treats in the Peugeot. It jumped from the BMW onto the windshield in front of Glace as the vehicles passed each other.
"Fucking Right Bank assholes," Glace said. The wolver chewing into his arm was still holding on. There was a clear lane ahead, delineated by the sputtering remains of some long-burning pink-white flares. Glace struggled to hold the wheel with his injured arm and began punching the wolver's snuffling black nose with his left hand.
Christiane lost her grip and Denis was pulled onto the road. He called out and Glace could see him in the rearview, reaching for the ambulance as his fall to the road was cushioned by lupine bodies, his mouth still moving as wolves tore bloody chunks of hot meat from his legs and belly.
Glace poured on the speed, and as he steered around a burning truck most of the wolvers and Denis were lost from sight.
The wolver on his right arm was still hanging on and the beast on the hood was slamming its body into the windshield, trying to break through. Glace hit the brakes hard. The wolver on the hood bounced onto the road and rolled ahead of them. Glace let go of the wheel and reached into a side pocket on his door with his left hand. He found a pencil. He looked at the wolver working on his arm like a dog with a rawhide chew and rammed the pencil into one of the wolver's nostrils. It howled and let go of him. He hit the accelerator and watched the wolver slide out the passenger window as the vehicle thumped over the wolver on the road.
Christiane pulled the hatchback closed and climbed into the passenger seat.
"To do this is crazy. Don't you know that? You should stop now."
Glace turned left onto Rue Beaubourg, heading south, steering around empty cars. There were no police here, no U.N. soldiers. They were alone and heading for the heart of wolver territory, across the Pont d'Arcole, on the other side of the Seine.
Christiane touched his arm. She was calmer now, her accent softer. "You're bleeding. You need to rest. You can't go to Île de la Cité like this." She stroked the graying hair at his temple. "C'est tout mort. No one could be alive—"
"They made it to the Préfecture de Police," he said stubbornly. "That's the last call I got. If there's any place where people could hold out, it's there. My daughter is there. I have to do this."
"And Notre Dame is there too." She said. "It is the den of these things. It is their temple."
They drove in silence for a few minutes. When he'd had enough of her watching him he said, "If you want, you can get out here. This is a paid job like any other, right? And since Denis isn't collecting his share, you can have all the cash in the bag at your feet."
She slapped him then. It hurt more than when the wolver had bitten into his arm.
"You think I do this for Euros like a killer whore?"
The road ahead was blocked by military vehicles. He stopped the car. He could see the bridge beyond the smoldering remains of a hospital to their right. He could smell the sweet greasy scent of burned human flesh.
Glace could see Notre Dame overlooking Île de la Cité. He turned to her. "I'm going in there to save someone I love. Why are you doing this?"
She looked at him in silence, and he returned the look. She was ten years younger than him, thirty if a day. Her hair was long and brown and sparked with bronze highlights in the sunshine. She had full lips, high cheekbones, arched brows; she looked so goddamned French that she was almost a caricature.
She had a deep scar that was four inches long. It began above her right eye and ravaged the lovely cheekbone below. She wore an eye patch over that eye now, and when Glace had asked her what had happened she had said she had been raised in the forest by her father and had learned enough by the age of thirteen to fight off the bear that had attacked her. Glace still wasn't sure if that was bullshit, but she certainly was capable with a gun and a knife.
Her left eye was a gentle golden-brown, and lovely. She often said she was watching him with her sinister eye.
Glace had found her on the street, about to be gang-raped by looters in a city overrun with wolvers and abandoned by Europe and the rest of the world. Glace had gunned down her attackers, a pistol in each hand. Men who couldn't get their priorities straight annoyed him.
Her first words had been, "Vous êtes américain?" When he had nodded she had said, "Merci, cowboy."
She was the one who had nicknamed him Glace. She said looked like a bureaucrat on holiday with his faded jeans and button-down shirt, but his blue-gray eyes became hard chips of ice when he was killing people or wolvers.
For a moment her eye held the glow of the streetlights and burned like an ember. She looked away and whispered, "Moi aussi."
She had accepted Glace's offer of a job so she could get the money to buy her way past the countrywide quarantine that had made France off limits to the rest of the world. Denis had later accepted the same offer.
They got out of the ambulance. Beyond the line of abandoned military vehicles was Pont d'Arcole. They would walk from here, cross the bridge, and go to the Préfecture de Police, which was not far from the cathedral of Notre Dame.
As it was in the rest of Paris, the lights were still on here, the quiet streets and old buildings bathed in a golden glow that masked faint streaks of dried blood. That blood had once been in pools and spatters, but les buveurs would lap up every drop they could. They ate everything else. Meat. Skin. Bones. Heads and feet and everything in between. Across Paris one could see crumpled, blood-stained clothes on the streets. Even now Glace could see a shredded woman's blouse, a man's suit coat missing one arm, and a child's tiny sneaker that was as long as a five Euro note. There had been a massacre here, but if you tried, you could see things as they had been before the wolvers had come.
Some said the wolvers were true werewolves, but Glace had been bitten more than once and his greatest fear had been rabies against which he had been inoculated on the ship that smuggled him across the Atlantic and through the blockade of NATO ships off the French coast.
Some said the wolvers were mutated by a virus. Some said they had come out of the forests of Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau, where they had been hiding and breeding. Some said they had come up from the endless networks of catacombs and sewers under Paris. Some said they were a punishment from God.
Somewhere behind them a wolver let out a long and mournful howl.
For a moment Glace wished he and Christiane were facing the werewolves of mythology, creatures that would become frail and human and would be easy to kill in the light of day.
There was a thin streak of red low on the horizon. Day was coming, and this was no myth, no late night movie. Paris was overrun with wolvers. Day or night, the creatures were the same. Fearsome. Strong. Innumerable. And very hungry.
(2)
They crossed the bridge in silence, each of them carrying a heavy load of weapons and ammunition into the silent dark that still loomed over the island.
"Regarder," Christiane said.
Wait a minute.
What the fuck am I doing? I lost the last round of Gruebermadness. To hell with this. Caulaincourt will just come out of hibernation and shit all over it anyway, screaming, I own French you translucent ginger! Leave it alone! STFU and GTFO! so to hell with it.
User Reviews
Submitted by paxilliona (user info) at 2009-10-30 21:17:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2009-10-30 14:35:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LoooseSprocket (user info) at 2009-10-29 13:36:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by messmind (user info) at 2009-10-28 18:12:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/123564#2940244
</lol>
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-28 16:50:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Laughing now that I've read that Icarus comment.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-28 16:49:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-28 11:28:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
m'kay now I've read it.
You have a strange obsession with men loosing their genitals, you know that right?
--
I write what I fear most. That is horror.
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2009-10-28 12:03:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Seriously, why the genital mutilation? Somehow horror manages to evolve for hundreds of years without anyone getting their genitals bitten off, or sliced off, or put through a meat grinder or paper shredder. Stoker? No genitals being bitten off. Shelley? Lovecraft? Nothing. Suddenly BAM, it's in every fucking Grueberfest post in existence.
Why? Because gore is cheap and castration is one of the easiest fears to provoke. Beyond that, this reads like 90% of your other work. Just set in France.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-28 11:28:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
m'kay now I've read it.
You have a strange obsession with men loosing their genitals, you know that right?
Good stuff Jack.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2009-10-28 11:11:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I totally didn't read this yet, but have a +2 for
And when they reach the crescendo of passion they scream, "OH GOD, EH?!?!?!"
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-28 10:08:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"Per the Caulaincourt Edict of 2006 I am no longer allowed to write anything."
fixed it for you.
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-10-28 06:57:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
See I knew you should have won.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2009-10-28 06:27:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome.
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2009-10-28 04:57:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hello Jack.
Submitted by willartstorg (user info) at 2009-10-28 02:14:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
All the words:
I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein
Werewolves of London
If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again
Werewolves of London
He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor
Werewolves of London
Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Werewolves of London
Draw blood
Submitted by willartstorg (user info) at 2009-10-28 01:47:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"His hair was perfect."
"You better stay away from him. He'll rip your lungs out, Jim."
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2009-10-28 01:04:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaWOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dig it.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 23:26:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Truth. But this is just fucking around. I'm not in the contest any more. However, I was bored at work today.
v
v
v
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2009-10-27 22:52:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
your title sucks hard
and here you were doing so good by staying neutral in the discussions about this fatally flawed, if not biased, "contest"
what the hell...i know...sometimes it just takes...
baby-steps
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-10-27 19:10:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Kicker of ALL ass. Mutated wolvers...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 18:51:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Per the Caulaincourt Edict of 2006 I am no longer allowed to write about brown people as I apparently hate all of them and was just kidding when I posted a dozen or more stories in which brown people are the protagonists and the 'heroes' (for lack of a better term). The same edict applies to yellow people, red people, mishmashy mixed race people, and women, all of whom have been featured in my stories as 'good guys' (for lack of a better term) but weren't really because I was using reverse-psychology in my sick, misogynistic supremacist fiction.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2009-10-27 18:38:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:33:49 PDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm running out of monsters.
-----
you can always go back to ragheads...isn't it time for Allahtown part 2?
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 18:33:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm running out of monsters.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2009-10-27 18:32:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
zombies = 2009
werewolves = 2010
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:50:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 21:43:02 GMT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:29:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:24:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHOULDNT CANADIANS LOVE EACH OTHER!
---------
Oh but they do. I've got this movie, where these two Mounties take a block of butter, and they, like, totally....
y'know.
Make pancakes and stuff......cattle prods in their butts.
--
And when they reach the crescendo of passion they scream, "OH GOD, EH?!?!?!"
------
YES! YES THEY DID! Along with some reference to maple syrup that I didn't fully understand.....
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:43:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:29:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:24:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHOULDNT CANADIANS LOVE EACH OTHER!
---------
Oh but they do. I've got this movie, where these two Mounties take a block of butter, and they, like, totally....
y'know.
Make pancakes and stuff......cattle prods in their butts.
--
And when they reach the crescendo of passion they scream, "OH GOD, EH?!?!?!"
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:33:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
And despite what anyone says, decent writing, even semi-decent writing will always be > http://www.ubersite.com/m/123549
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:29:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:24:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHOULDNT CANADIANS LOVE EACH OTHER!
---------
Oh but they do. I've got this movie, where these two Mounties take a block of butter, and they, like, totally....
y'know.
Make pancakes and stuff......cattle prods in their butts.
Ok, I made that last bit up.
There's no pancake making.
Submitted by willartstorg (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:17:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2009-10-27 16:47:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
were we supposed to beg you to finish the story? was that the point?
====
Scrounge, either you are the best at portraying an image on the net or you are really a true-life asshole. Are you ever nice in person, even to those you don't like? My god, why be such a jerk all the time?
Glad I'm not like that...
:)
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2009-10-27 17:07:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 McFiction.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2009-10-27 16:47:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
were we supposed to beg you to finish the story? was that the point?
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2009-10-27 16:18:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Post 945 for Jack means I get to shamelessly LINKWHORE without any relevance: http://www.ubersite.com/m/81857
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:54:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i'm not being a tough guy...i post stuff too: http://www.ubersite.com/m/123378
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:38:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:24:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHOULDNT CANADIANS LOVE EACH OTHER!
--
Canadian Primer
English + English = :)
French + French = :)
English + French = :(
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:37:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:23:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
(1) whatever, this was ridiculously cliche. ex: Her first words had been, "Vous êtes américain?" When he had nodded she had said, "Merci, cowboy."
ZzzZzzzz
(2) your stories are not entertaining. the only entertaining part is shooting them down. i assume you adhere to the kaos_king flawed argument that "writing" = worthy contribution. the only thing that would be a proper contribution in your case would be to retire yourself from the gene pool with a gunshot to the head.
--
(1) That's a take on all the 'cowboy diplomacy' business thrown at the US in the last decade.
(2) I'm not trying for a Pulitzer. I'm just trying to entertain a few cube rats like myself. I enjoy firing off quick stories, and some here enjoy reading them. It is far easier to tear down than create, Caul, and many on uber are becoming far more bored with your tough-guy act than they are with my stories. Your bullshit and bluster has it's entertaining moments, but as a 24/7 "online persona," you could do better.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:24:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHOULDNT CANADIANS LOVE EACH OTHER!
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:23:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
(1) whatever, this was ridiculously cliche. ex: Her first words had been, "Vous êtes américain?" When he had nodded she had said, "Merci, cowboy."
ZzzZzzzz
(2) your stories are not entertaining. the only entertaining part is shooting them down. i assume you adhere to the kaos_king flawed argument that "writing" = worthy contribution. the only thing that would be a proper contribution in your case would be to retire yourself from the gene pool with a gunshot to the head.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:14:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:07:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
needs more american hero & vulnerable euro chick cliches.
"C'est tout mort"...lol, wut?
--
(1) Vulnerable? She's blowing away monstrosities with a shotgun.
(2) It is suppoed to mean, "It's all dead." Not just the people, but the city itself. At least I'm trying to give people a bit of entertainment. Instead of being the cynical wannabe cool guy who shoots everything down you could help out by correcting my babelfish-mangled French, but no, you're too awesome for that. And that makes you the loser.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:09:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
just read the footnote...
STFU and GTFO!
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:07:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
needs more american hero & vulnerable euro chick cliches.
"C'est tout mort"...lol, wut?
Submitted by no1hasdis (user info) at 2009-10-27 15:04:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
First