02.03: Wolf

Danny Adeniran
People running about or being chased was not that unusual around here. Danny ambled along the dirt path towards a sheltered spot for the night as the shouting continued beyond the wall of dumpsters that formed a barrier to this section of ‘Downtown’, as the area was called. This wasn’t normal shouting though, it was the Yahoos again, and they were on the hunt, he became more alert in case they came this way. They didn’t usually pick on people like him and targeted the elderly and vulnerable. But these were people who torched the homeless for fun, so he was taking no chances. As if life down here wasn’t hard enough without being hunted by kids with nothing better to do.
A girl dodged through a gap in the line of gigantic rubbish bins. She darted across the litter strewn path but found her way blocked by panel fencing used to block areas off on construction sites. She glared angrily at Danny as he realised that he was between her and the only line of escape. One of the reasons Danny had chosen here was it was a dead end with little or no foot traffic. She wore the uniform of downtown, thrift shop scuz, just like he did.
‘Oh, great,’ he thought absently as she started to transform, ‘I am going to get eaten by a werewolf instead of being burned alive.’
A bunch of black guys pushed through the gap, gangers by the look of them, out for an evening of bullying and murdering the homeless.
“Forget animal control, smoke that bitch!”
Seven bullets smacked into Danny as he hadn’t realised he was directly in the line of fire, two had been head shots and had knocked his beanie off. He glanced down at the now destroyed piece of headgear before looking at the gangers. “That,” he said with real annoyance, “was my favourite hat.”
Being confronted by someone who had just taken a volley of bullets, and a potential werewolf, the street soldiers legged it.
Danny was not used to being shot at by any means and had turned in a vain attempt to avoid the bullets. Three had blown holes in his backpack. “Oh man those assholes shot my book.” The copy of Fu Manchu had been split in two by the bullet embedded in it.
He looked at the werewolf, remembering he had an appointment as someone’s evening meal. “Are you okay? Can you understand me in doggy form?”