Decoy and Retrofit: Chapter 3

The sun was high in the sky when Noel slid into the driver’s seat.

“Nelson,” he said, buckling his seatbelt and looking straight through the cracked windshield. Griffin glanced up, watching Noel’s arms move, his chest shift under his shirt. “We’re going to Nelson.”

“Why?” Griffin said distantly.

“We need help.”

“Help?” Griffin frowned, pulling himself up the seat. “What help? Wait, we’re not taking the dog, are we?”

As if to answer his question, a drop of something slimy and cold dripped onto his hand.

Griffin jerked back, whipping his head around to see a jaw like the cross between a crocodile and a t-rex hanging directly over his head.

“JESUS CHRIST.”

“Griff–”

Griffin leapt back as far as his seatbelt allowed. Yep, that was the wardog behind the seat, jaws millimetres from his face. Griffin scrambled blindly for his gun. It wasn’t in arm’s reach. “FUCKING HELL, WHAT THE FUCK,” he screamed at Noel. “WHAT THE FUCK?”

Noel, still staring at the road, grimaced. The wardog pointed its snout in Griffin’s direction and sniffed.

“STOP THE TRUCK. NOEL–”

Noel didn’t stop the truck. Instead, he took a hand off the wheel to shove his palm into the wardog’s snout, shoving it into the backseat. The dog snorted, its jaws red and swinging tendrils of saliva and blood, smearing it into the seat covers as Noel shoved it down and out of sight.

“Dude, Tiny, knock it off,” Noel grunted, keeping his eyes on the road. “Backseat.”

“NOEL.”

“Sorry,” Noel bit out, wrestling the dog down. “We’re taking the dog.”

“FUCK YOU, WE’RE TAKING THE DOG. STOP THE TRUCK.”

“Griff.”

“That thing almost KILLED ME–”

“Griff, SHUT UP.”

Griffin shut up.

It was out of shock more than anything else. Noel had raised his voice. Old Noel didn’t raise his voice, he got mad at Griffin in different ways, ways that made him feel insignificant, pathetic, useless. Old Noel wouldn’t dedicate enough effort to yelling at him like this. He would just make Grifin feel like he wasn’t worth it.

New Noel, though, he was mad. His cheeks were bright, his eyes dark and sharp. Noel gripped the wheel tight, his voice grating and low and angry.

Griffin bit his lip.

“Griff…”

“What?” asked Griffin, momentarily distracted by the way Noel’s biceps flexed as he gripped the steering wheel. But then he looked back at Noel’s eyes and saw something unrecognizable there.

Noel stared at Griffin with a new expression, something distinctly cold and alien.

“Griff,” Noel hissed. “What did you do to make the wardog want to kill you?”

Griffin froze in the spot.

He breathed slowly, looking at the road over Noel’s shoulder, before letting out a little laugh.

“Uh, isn’t that an oxymoron?” Griffin tittered nervously, glancing back as the dog rested its chin against the seat. “Doesn’t it want to kill anyone who isn’t a Tourist?”

Noel just stared at Griffin, cold and hard and deliberate.

“Think hard, Griff,” Noel said, his voice chipped from ice. “And answer the question.”

Griffin shifted in his seat.

“The wardog.” Noel said slowly. “Before we took the truck. Did you meet it before?”

“Of course not,” Griffin scoffed. “It’s been in cryostasis. How could I have made it mad if it’s been a frozen block?”

Noel’s cheek twitched, but he didn’t have an answer. Noel turned back to the windshield, frustration knitting his brow. Still as distractingly handsome as ever, and the scolding was quite possibly making it worse.

Griffin considered, for what could’ve been the millionth time in his life, that he had issues.

“So we’re going to Nelson,” Noel said finally.

“Yeah, you said that.”

“We’re taking the dog to Nelson, and we’re going to find someone who knows more about Tourist shit to take care of it.”

Griffin didn’t sit back down, one hand braced against the roof, knees braced against the seat cushions. The dog rested its chin on the seat, a slimy, purple tongue sliding out from between its teeth to hang out of its jaw. Griffin glared at it. “You said this thing was designed to take out cities,” Griffin growled. “Why are we driving it to Nelson?”

Noel let out a noise. “I don’t think it’s going to attack anyone.”

“And why is that?” asked Griffin.

“Because I’m its master now.”

Griffin stared at Noel.

“You connected with it?”

“What else was I fucking supposed to do?” Noel growled, twisting the wheel as they turned a corner. “Let it kill you?”

Griffin let himself slowly down. He rested his legs against the cab bench, feeling the weight of the situation falling over him.

That was what Griffin had witnessed from the truck window. Noel’s hand on the dog’s snout, his broken conversation, his glazed eyes, his alien arm glowing eerie and cold.

Noel had formed a connection with the wardog, melding their minds together. A murder machine and Noel, mentally united through their alien minds in a space that no human could reach. In complete synchrony and understanding on a plane that Griffin could never even comprehend.

Griffin stared at the dog through the thin gap in the truck bench, his chest constricting at the thought that this creature had formed a relationship with Noel that no human would ever be able to replicate.

***

Griffin Wells had been jealous of his brother Apollo for as long as he could remember.

It wasn’t an unhealthy jealousy, spawning resentment and hatred. Griffin loved Apollo, he worshipped his brother, wanted to be around him at all times, wanted to experience life like Apollo did.

The desire for Noel came with that.

Noel had been Apollo’s friend since kindergarten, a steady relationship that Griffin had always enviously watched from afar. Noel and his brother had gotten together like gas and fire, charismatic and combustible and full of the energy that made them legends on school playgrounds. Whenever someone had done something amazing, from landing impossible bike jumps to completing levels in video games that nobody else could beat, it had been Apollo or Noel. And they had been together.

All the kids had fantasized about being a third to their inseparable duo, a member of the legendary team that had sparked all the daring imagination that their parents had carefully tried to suppress. Griffin was closer to this than anyone else, a moon in their orbit, always present but never close enough.

Griffin had always wanted to be pulled in. He wanted to join their midnight scary-movie marathons, get burned by firecrackers and steal their parents’ cars. And Noel’s friendship, Noel’s respect, was just another piece of his brother’s life that he wanted.

Noel Phan was a fixture at the family dining table, a third head in the TV room, a second lump in Apollo’s bed during sleepovers. He was all sly side-eyes and smirks and condescending little-bro jokes. He announced his presence with his beat-down Converse sneakers left at the front door while he laughed loudly from behind Apollo’s bedroom door.

When Griffin was thirteen, he stumbled across Noel alone in the garage, sitting on a dusty amp and tuning a beat-up guitar. Before Griffin could ask, Noel turned to him and asked Griffin if he knew how to play bass.

Griffin learned how to play bass. He learned how to play bass like his life depended on it.

After that, the orbit changed.

Noel taught Griffin how to do lighter tricks with his fingers. He showed Griffin how to land an impossible jump on his bike. He downloaded a torrent client on Griffin’s computer so he could actually watch shows that he missed when he did his math homework. And then Noel was showing Griffin porn, since he was fourteen and he should like this stuff by now, right? And he totally knew what he liked, anyways, since Griffin did a poor job of hiding those Men’s Health magazines under his bed.

And Griffin, his mind swollen with all of this, his tongue thick and clumsy with the realization that he wasn’t entirely alone after all, felt the same hand that had once ruffled through his hair press hard against the back of his head, running fingers over his lips and teeth and pressing down against his tongue.

He was understanding the cold fire in Noel’s eyes, the way he swallowed hard when Griffin looked in his direction. He was beginning to smell something in the air that had always been there, lingering and soft and unquestioned. Smoke from a fire that blazed somewhere out of sight.

And once Griffin felt that fire, that’s when things really changed.

He could remember that toxic rush whenever Noel touched him or looked at him, the way Noel leaned down and spoke into his ear and pressed his arms against the plaster wall of the garage, pinning Griffin under the weight of his chest. The way that Noel teased him for his hesitation as he slipped his tongue through the gap between Griffin’s teeth.

Griffin could remember the way his chest had flared as Noel praised his bass line, the way that Noel bit Griffin’s throat when Apollo left the garage to go to the bathroom. He could remember Noel drunk and kissing him in a Denny’s parking lot, his hands twisting through his hair, fingers fisting in his shirt, until he was knocked off by his brother’s fist connecting with Noel’s face.

Griffin could remember his mother at the door, Noel in the car, his brother with a black eye, his teeth stained with blood, telling him that she was going out for an hour so the boys could cool down.

That had been the last time Griffin had seen his mother, his brother, and Noel, before the apocalypse had rained hell down on Kelowna, British Columbia.

Proceed to Chapter 3, page 4–>