Tammy

“You want me to do what?” Tammy shrieked, jumping up from her chair.

“Just relax, Tammy,” Harbin said, making a placating gesture with his hand. “It’s an important assignment.”

“Bullshit!” she said, pacing the room, staring daggers at Harbin. That schmuck never liked me, she thought. Aloud, she said, “A babysitter! That’s what you want me to do. Be a babysitter for a spoiled, snot-nosed, rich kid. I thought I was supposed to get real assignments.”

“Sit down, Tammy,” Harbin ordered, pointing to the chair she’d just vacated. “Seeing you throw a temper tantrum doesn’t inspire confidence in your judgment or professionalism. You don’t have all the facts.”

Tammy gave him a mulish look, but stopped pacing. After a brief pause, she took a seat, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “Okay, enlighten me.”

“First of all, she’s eighteen. You’re twenty. There’s not that much difference. I wouldn’t call it babysitting.”

“Then what? Being a nanny?”

Harbin took a deep breath, placed his left hand on his desk, and started tapping with his left forefinger.  “Are you done with the smart-ass remarks?” he asked. “Can we discuss this rationally?”

Tammy nodded, knowing she’d gone a bit too far.

“Karla is a senator’s daughter,” Harbin said, and paused. When Tammy didn’t react, he continued. “She wants to do what a lot of high school grads do. Spend the summer before college  touring Europe. The senator wants her protected.”

“Have the Secret Service do it. Or if they won’t, can’t Daddy hire private security?”

“She doesn’t want to be surrounded by agents,” Harbin said, nearly shouting. He hesitated, gritted his teeth, and in a more normal tone, said. “She claims it would ruin the experience. She reluctantly agreed to have a state department ‘companion’ join her. That’s you.”

“I know my cover is a state department intern,” Tammy said, hoping to get out of the assignment. “But real interns are here. Send one of them.”

“We would except for the fact that we’ve had intel that ISIS is looking to pick up a high value target. Chatter on the internet. Other sources. We can’t disregard it. She’d fit the bill. Her father sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He specifically asked us to watch over her. What he wants, he gets. We don’t have the assets to put a team on her. No other agent has your … capabilities.”

“Shit!” Tammy muttered, as she got up to leave. She’d just been part of a team which took down a high-level target. Ramifications from that operation may have reached into the upper levels of the United States government. Especially for people with ties to Mid-East oil. Instead of being commended, she gets stuck with this.

***

Spending time with Karla was not the hardship Tammy expected. Karla was funny, bright, and fun to be with, if a little wild. She was attractive and tended to dress provocatively. Tonight she had on a miniskirt and a halter top, showing several inches of bare midriff. In order to blend in, Tammy wore a short, backless sundress.

As she and Karla entered the nightclub, Tammy looked around for threats. The biggest menace was probably guys hitting on them. The second biggest was having their hearing impaired by the noise level.

The music was supplied by a high haired band, each member wearing some combination of mesh and leather. A group of five young men monopolized Tammy and Karla, shooing off any other male who wanted to dance with one of them. When the band finally took a break, four of the men led them to a table, while the fifth went to get drinks. They took seats and tried to make conversation, complicated by the fact that the men spoke English with heavy accents.

The beverages arrived. Tammy noticed one of the men pass his hand over a drink and hand the glass to Karla.

“Don’t drink that!” Tammy said, grabbing Karla’s arm before she could take a sip.

“Don’t be a stick-in-mud, Tam,” Karla said, rolling her eyes. “Eighteen is a legal drinking age in this country.”

“It’s not the alcohol,” Tammy said, and pointed toward a man. “This asshole put something in it.”

“No, no, I did not,” the man protested.

“Then you drink it,” Tammy said.

“It is not my drink,” he said, looking a little nervous.

Tammy took the glass, grabbed the hair of the man, tilted his head back, and poured the liquid down his throat. He choked, but swallowed much of it.

Another of the men gripped Tammy’s arm and tried to pull her away. She spun toward him, grasped his belt with her right hand, put her left hand under his armpit, lifted him over her head, and tossed him fifteen feet across the room, where he crashed into a table, shattering glasses and plates.

A third man reached for her. She elbowed him in the abdomen, easing up at the last second to avoid killing him. He fell to the floor, retching. She faced the remaining two men with a feral grin on her face. They backed off and bolted. The first man was on his hands and knees, moving sluggishly, trying, without success, to get to his feet.

“Holy shit!” Karla exclaimed, looking at the first man. “He did put something in the drink!”

***

“Are you wonder-woman or something?” Karla asked, as they walked through the streets, looking for a cab.

“No,” Tammy said, trying to see in all directions at once. “I’m just … very strong.”

“Why do you keep looking around like that?”

“Something’s not kosher. The bouncer wouldn’t let us call for a cab. And why don’t our cell  phones work?”

“The way you handled those men, I would’ve thought you could deal with the bouncer.”

“I could but then they’d call the police. Your father wouldn’t appreciate that.”

Karla started to reply when a full-sized van pulled up ahead of them and another behind. Four Mid-Eastern appearing men jumped out of each van, spread out, and pointed handguns at the girls. Tammy tensed, but there were too many of them.

“Get in the vans or we shoot,” one of them commanded in heavily accented English.

Karla looked at Tammy, her chin starting to quiver.

“We don’t have much choice,” Tammy said, climbing into one of the vans and pulling Karla in behind her.

Another of the men started shouting at the girls and reached for Karla. Tammy pulled her back and yelled, “We stick together!”

The men began arguing among themselves until one man, obviously the leader, shouted down the others. The girls were ordered to throw out their purses and phones. The door was slammed and locked, and the van began to move. It was pitch black inside, but the girls could hear two men in front chattering and laughing.

“What language is that?” Karla asked. “Can you understand it?”

“It’s Arabic. I can get the gist.”

“What are they saying?”

“They plan to rape and kill me. I got that much. They seem to have more … elaborate plans for you.”

“Oh my God,” Karla wailed. “What are we going to do?”

“I have an ace up my sleeve,” Tammy said. “I have to wait for the right time to play it.”

***

After traveling for a couple of anxious hours, the girls were led into an isolated building and placed in a basement room with an unusually high ceiling. Thin arms of moonlight reached in through a barred window about ten feet above the floor. Running just under the ceiling and near the window was a bloated ventilation duct. Tammy guessed that it probably traversed the entire building. Near the window there appeared to be a grate in the duct.

Tammy walked around the room, assessing their situation. She positioned herself under the window, leaped up, and grasped one of the bars on the window. She tugged on each of the bars, but they were too solidly embedded in concrete to move. Next holding onto a bar with one hand and bracing herself with a foot just below the window, she was able to reach over, grab the grate, and shove it into the duct, leaving a two by two opening.

She jumped down, brushed dust off her dress, and said, “That’s our ticket out. We have to get out of here before morning.”

“You could be a WNBA star,” Karla said, her mouth hanging open. “But I can’t get up there. I can’t jump the way you can.”

“I won’t leave you,” Tammy said, once more looking around the bare room.

Sighing, Tammy took off her dress, leaving her with only panties and stiletto heels. She broke off one of the heels and took out a small pen-knife, putting it inside her panties.

“Is that your ace?” Karla asked.

“This is a deuce,” Tammy said, grinning. “The ace is yet to come.”

Tammy wrapped her dress around Karla just below her armpits and knotted it in front. One end dangled about two feet. She tied her broken shoe to that end. Then she jumped up to the window and grasped a bar with her left hand. She reached between the bars with her right hand, unclasped the window, and opened it. She put her legs through the bars, bent at the knee so that her head was pointing down and both hands were free.

“Throw the end with the shoe up to me,” Tammy said. “I’ll use the dress to pull you up so that you can climb into the duct.”

“Will it hold my weight?” Karla asked, fearfully.

“You have a better idea?”

Karla shrugged and threw the shoe. Tammy caught it and started to pull Karla up. The dress started to rip.

“Raise your arms,” Tammy said, urgently.

The dress ripped in half, but Tammy was able to grab Karla by her outstretched arms. Tammy pulled her up and helped her climb into the duct. Tammy climbed in after her. The two girls moved along, trying to be as silent as possible. The duct passed through a wall and they came to another grate. Down below were two of their captors playing cards.

Tammy inhaled sharply and muttered, “Son-of-a-bitch!”

“What?” Karla whispered.

“I’ll tell you later,” Tammy said, as she knocked the grate down and dropped down after it.

She landed on one of the men and slashed open his throat with her pen knife. His companion lifted up a gun. She threw the dead guard at the other, deflecting his shots, jumped over the table, grasped the head of the man, and twisted violently, snapping his neck.

“Jump down,” Tammy called. “I’ll catch you. Hurry! We have to get out of here. Somebody must’ve heard the shots.”

Karla closed her eyes and let herself drop. Tammy caught her and eased her to the ground.

Tammy took a gun from each man and went to the door. Two men were racing down stairs to her left, brandishing sub-machineguns. She fired several shots at them, hearing one of them scream, while the other ducked. She pulled Karla out of the room and shoved her toward some stairs in the other direction.

A fusillade of shots followed. One hit Tammy in her left arm, causing her to drop the gun in that hand. Another grazed her right side. She pushed Karla to the floor, spun around, and emptied her gun at the man, who was charging after them while firing. He fell over dead.

She started to go back to get another gun, but then heard more men coming. She picked up Karla and, and carrying her, raced up the stairs. There was a door to the outside, but it was locked. Tammy put Karla down and struck the door frame with her right foot. The lock broke and the door flew open. Both girls raced out into the night.

“What now?” a wild-eyed Karla asked.

“Head there,” Tammy said pointing to a copse of trees.

The girls made it to the trees just before five men burst out of the building. The men, each holding a sub-machinegun, spread out and began advancing toward the trees.

“You’re bleeding,” Karla said.

“It’ll stop soon,” Tammy said softly, shrugging. “They didn’t hit bone. They know this is the only place we could be hiding. It’s time to play the ace.” She took off her panties.

“That’s your ace?” Karla said, looking at Tammy’s naked body. “You’re going to seduce them?”

“Not that,” Tammy said, grinning. “Put your hands over your mouth.”

“Are you nuts?”

“You’re about to see something you won’t believe. You’ll be tempted to scream. That’d be bad. Very bad. Just remember. I won’t hurt you, but they will.”

Karla put her hands over her mouth. Then she jumped back, suppressing a scream. Tammy’s body was changing. Where she’d been was a large black leopard. The leopard snarled and took off.

A black leopard at night is nearly invisible. She was on a man before he could utter a sound. She grasped him by the throat and ripped. A second man, hearing a noise, turned and saw what he must’ve thought was an apparition. He fired his gun at the leopard as she jumped toward him. The shots missed. He was able to scream before he was dispatched.

The three remaining men, hearing the shots and the scream, turned and saw the leopard. They each emptied a magazine at her, but she was difficult to see and was dodging back and forth. Almost all the shots missed. One grazed her flank and she felt a severe burning sensation.

She reached a third man, raked his abdomen deeply with her razor sharp claws, and severed his aortic artery. He bled out in seconds. A fourth man flung his now empty weapon away and started to flee. The leopard was on him in no time, jumped on his back, grasped the back of his neck with her powerful jaws, and crushed his spinal column.

The fifth man had time to put a fresh magazine in his gun. Screaming in Arabic, he ran toward the leopard while firing. Once again she was able to avoid most of the shots, but one caught her in her left front paw. When the magazine emptied, she reached him and soon he was no more.

“Are you a demon?” A terrified Karla asked, backing away, as Tammy, naked and bleeding, limped toward her.

“I’m a were-leopard,” Tammy said, as she put her panties back on. “A natural creature. And before you ask, yes there are such things as vampires, werewolves, witches, whatever. But we’re rare. Very rare. 99.9% of the general population doesn’t believe we exist.”

“You’re unbelievably fast,” Karla said in admiration. “That’s probably why most of the shots missed.”

“In leopard form bullets won’t penetrate my hide unless they’re silver,” Tammy said, as she moved among the bodies, taking any money they had. “But these did.” She took a magazine from a man, ejected a cartridge, and noted it was silver plated.

Tammy came to the man whose spinal column had been crushed. She stripped off his shirt, the only one not covered in blood, and put it on. It came to just above her knees. She used his pants to create makeshift bandages for her injuries. She found he was still breathing and snapped his neck.

Karla shuddered and said, “You’re pretty cold-blooded.”

“I don’t want anybody around who could explain what happened.”

“It’s scary to think of a leopard with human intelligence,” Karla said. “But without it, I’d be … God knows where.”

“When I’m in leopard form, I’m a leopard,” Tammy said, taking the keys to a van from one of the bodies. “I can’t reason the way a human can. I had to wait to play my ace until I could give the leopard explicit directions. Let’s get going. They were expecting people to arrive. We need to be gone.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“No,” Tammy said, as she climbed into the driver’s seat of a van. Karla got into the passenger seat. “But we’ll eventually come to a town. We have a score to settle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember when I jumped out of the duct on those guys?” Tammy asked, as the van started to move.

“Yeah.”

“Just before I jumped, one of them mentioned a name,” Tammy said, taking a quick glance at Karla. “A name we both know.”

“Who?”

“Harbin,” Tammy snarled, her lips peeled back. “Only they used his first name. Like a friend. The bullets clinched what I suspected.”

“What?”

“How would they know to have silver bullets? Only Harbin knew what I am and where we’d be. He sold us out.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll hold up somewhere for a few days while I heal. Then he’s going to find out what it means to piss off a leopard.”

 

Author Bio

I am an emeritus professor of Mathematics at Wilkes University, where I taught for forty-two years.  Wilkes is a small, private college located in Northeastern Pennsylvania.  I hold a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Brown University.  I am an avid reader of mysteries and science fiction.  Short stories I have written include, “The Tunnels”, published in the January, 2015 issue of Mysterical-E, “Payback” in September, 2016, in Twisted Sister Lit Mag, “Cold-Blooded”, accepted for publication by Vinculinc, Inc., “Reversal” published in January, 2017 in Twisted Sister Lit Mag, and “Resolve”, accepted for publication in Yellow Mama.