Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland Read online

  Another problem was that the Christians, which made up a good portion of the population, believed that animals do not have souls and were put on this planet by their god so that they can be eaten by Christians. Both vegans and Christians were adamant about their beliefs, and there was no way that one group could change the mind of the other’s. That’s the way beliefs work.

  It seemed like the perfect solution for both groups was to create nu-cows. It provided meat, and at the same time ended animal suffering. However, neither group seemed completely satisfied with this solution. That’s usually the way compromise works.

  Veganism was outlawed by The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation a couple of years after the creation of nu-cows.

  The prayer bell rings. It rings five times a day and all citizens are expected to pray to The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation when the bell goes off. It rings before dawn, at noon, at midday, after dusk, and at night. This is the after dusk prayer bell.

  Nobody is here to see me, so I decide not to kneel down and pray on the spot as I’m supposed to. I avoid praying as much as I can.

  The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation created their own religion about 9 decades ago. They thought it would be best to do away with all the old world religions and create a new one that was more relevant to modern society. That is why I don’t pray. I know the McDonald’s religion is completely fabricated and borrowed from other religions that no longer exist. My grandpa told me that The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation just combined all existing world religions into one with a McDonald’s theme, and called it their own religion. The messiah, Ronald McDonald, was based on a character named Jesus, which the Christians believed in, as well as the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Mayor McCheese was based on gods called Yahweh and Allah. The Fry Guys were based on angels. The Hamburglar was based on the Christian devil, Lucifer. I forget who Grimace was based on. I think it was Jesus’s friend Peter, although I don’t think Peter was purple or retarded.

  Even though the folklore of the McDonaldland faith is more closely associated with Christianity, the practice of the faith more closely resembles the old Islamic religion. Praying five times a day is one example of this. Another is the way that women dress. Of course, it is only the women who have had children who must dress in this way.

  I realize that my knees are too clean today. In McDonaldland, it is important to keep your knees dirty. This shows other people that you pray long and hard when the prayer bell rings. Clean knees means you’re a sinner and probably a heretic. You can get into a lot of trouble and quickly outcast if you are always seen with clean knees.

  I do what I always do after I skip a pray time: I rub dirt on my knees. Not too much. Just enough to make it look like I pray with conviction.

  Somebody comes around a corner and sees me rubbing dirt on my knees. I pray that it is not a Fry Guy.

  The man is wearing a furry blue suit.

  Shit, it is a Fry Guy.

  Fry Guys are not only the angels of the McDonaldlandian faith, they are also a term used to describe the authorities of McDonaldland who enforce the laws. Long ago, these people would have been called policemen, security guards, Federales, or maybe even Gestapo. They are called Fry Guys because they are the saving angels of McDonaldland.

  In the official Bible of The Blessed McDonald’s Corporation (which is available in vending machines at every McDonald’s restaurant), the Fry Guys look like fuzzy blue, red, and yellow balls of fur with legs and googley eyes. In McDonaldland, the Fry Guys are ordinary humans, but they wear fuzzy suits like military uniforms. Some wear red, some wear yellow, some wear blue. The color indicates rank. The yellow rank is the lowest, the blue rank is the highest.

  “Rubbing dirt on your knees again, eh Daniel?” says the Fry Guy.

  I recognize his gruff, monotone voice. It’s my damned brother. Of all the Fry Guys, it had to be him.

  “Hey, Guy,” I say to him.

  His name is really Guy. Guy the Fry Guy. How stupid is that?

  “You have to stop doing that,” he says, grunting and rubbing his enormous blond mustache. He always grunts and rubs his enormous blond mustache. “If it were anybody else who saw you you’d be getting ticketed a pretty steep fine right now.”

  I’d rather pay the fine.

  “I know,” I tell him, and try to move on.

  “Hold on, little brother.” He gets into my path. When he puts his large brick wall of a body in front of you, there’s no getting around. “I haven’t seen you in almost a year. Where have you been hiding?”

  “It’s been a year? I didn’t realize.”

  Of course I realized. I was avoiding him on purpose.

  “I’m the only family you have left,” he says. “I’m surprised you wouldn’t want to see me more often, especially during McDonaldmas.”

  McDonaldmas is based on a Christian holiday that hasn’t been celebrated in a hundred years called Christmas.

  “I was sick last McDonaldmas.”

  “Same as the one before that?” Guy says.

  I shrug at him.

  Guy the Fry Guy insists that I come home with him for dinner. He’s stubborn and when he insists there is no way he’ll let you change his mind. He remembered that I had yet to see his new baby who was born four months ago. Not coming to visit his newborn son was an error that I must rectify immediately, so he said. I didn’t like meeting his last kid, or the one before that, so I didn’t care to meet another one.

  I tell him that I am late for work. He tells me that he will give me a note of excuse. Fry Guy Lieutenants have the power to do that.

  As we walk, I notice the wolves are still howling. Sometimes they howl all night. Even though he is a large burly man who rarely expresses any emotion, my brother still gets a chill every time he hears a howl. It was like that ever since he was a kid, but it seems to have gotten worse now that he’s an adult.

  I try to keep my extra limbs as still as possible. They were just baby arms when they started growing a couple years ago. I didn’t have problems hiding them when I visited my brother back then, but now they are fully grown and much more difficult to hide. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I avoid my brother. Out of fear of embarrassment among his coworkers, it’s not likely that Guy would turn me in for having this deformity, but there’s a good chance that he would find a doctor friend to cut them off. For some reason, I don’t want to get them cut off. Even though they’re not supposed to be there, I hate the thought of losing limbs. Plus, this deformity makes me unique and I try to treasure everything that’s unique about me. That’s what my grandpa always said: “whatever makes you strange is what makes you special.”

  My brother does not believe that whatever makes you strange is what makes you special. He believes that whatever makes you strange is what is wrong with you. As a Fry Guy, he works hard to maintain conformity amongst the McDonaldland citizens.

  The only thing unique about my brother that I can think of is his big blond mustache. He is the only person in all of McDonaldland with such a large manly mustache. Because most McDonaldlandians work around food, they are not allowed to grow large mustaches. Most people have tiny wimpy mustaches.

  Guy is very proud of his mustache. He grooms it obsessively and stares at it for hours in the mirror while flexing his bulky muscles. His mustache is where he gets his confidence and strength, which he uses to be a good authority figure. I always wanted to shave off his mustache just to see what would happen. He treats the thing as if it contains all of his manly power, and he would become weak and helpless if he were ever to lose it.

  Although Guy always acts like he is against individuality, I know that the reason he treasures his mustache so highly is because it is the one thing that makes him unique. It makes him stand out as someone special, someone privileged. He would never admit it—he probably doesn’t even realize it—but Guy treasures his individuality more than anybody else in McDonaldland.

  We pick up some burgers when we get to Guy’s neighborhood. He
gets extra hot apple pies, because he thinks I like hot apple pies. I did when I was a kid, but Guy is the type of person who doesn’t take into consideration that someone’s taste might change.

  “You must get lonely in that tiny apartment of yours,” Guy says through his puffy mustache. “Do you ever socialize with anyone?”

  “I hang out with people from time to time.”

  To sell them my homebrew.

  “Whatever happened to your friends, Frank and Robby? Are you still playing cards with them?”

  I shake my head. “I lost contact with Frank last year. He just stopped calling. Robby disappeared some months ago. I guess he moved to another part of town. I went to see him at work a while ago but he must have changed jobs.”

  Guy looks down at the red sidewalk and switches the subject.

  “You’re going to love my new boy,” he says, not in an excited parent’s voice but in a mechanical matter-of-fact voice. “He’s the cutest thing you’ll ever see.”

  When we get to his luxurious apartment on the good side of town—that is so far from the McDonaldland walls that the howls coming from the wasteland cannot be heard—he immediately shows me his new baby boy to prove just how cute he really is.

  I do not hold it. I just say, “Yeah, he sure is the cutest.” Really, the baby looks just like every other baby. Small, chubby, and bald.

  Guy grunts and nods in approval, then puts the baby down on the floor. He seems to treat it more like a trophy than a newborn human being.

  “Molly, we have company,” Guy shouts to the other room.

  When Molly turns the corner, she has a wide happy smile on her face. But when she sees me, she doesn’t seem to recognize me. Her smile fades and she exposes her fangs. A slight growl comes out of her throat.

  Then she recognizes who she is growling at and composes herself.

  “Oh, hi Daniel,” she says.

  Molly is looking bigger and hairier than ever. Beneath her red house dress, her entire body is covered in thick brown fur. Last time I saw her she still had some skin showing, but now it is completely coated.

  She wags her tail as she approaches me and shakes my hand. I try not to stare into her yellow beastly eyes as her claws dig into my wrist.

  “Sorry,” she says, when she sees the white scratches on my hand. “I’m still getting used to them.”

  The claws are also a new addition. As is her long muzzle.

  Molly is turning into a wolf. This happens to all women, once they begin to have children. Some women become less wolf-like than others. I haven’t seen a woman as wolf-like as Molly since my mother was pregnant with her third kid a long time ago.

  It is a disease that came about in the early days of McDonaldland. They call the disease lycanthropy, which was named after a fictional disease of the same name that turned people into werewolves. But there is a big difference between this version of lycanthropy and the fictional one. For starters, only women are affected by this disease. It doesn’t affect men. Secondly, the disease isn’t spread from a werewolf bite. All McDonaldlandian women are born with this disease. Thirdly, the changes are not caused by a full moon. The changes occur only during the act of having sex. Fourthly, once the transformation occurs, the women do not return to human form as werewolves would the next morning. The mutation is permanent. Fifthly, the transformation doesn’t happen all at once. The changes happen a little at a time, each time the female engages in sexual activity, including masturbation.

  It is believed that these changes occur during sex because the mutation is a result of the virus reacting to endorphins released in the brain during sexual stimulation and especially orgasm. This is a shaky theory, however, because endorphins are released in the brain for more reasons than just sex.

  Because sex is the cause of these lycanthropic changes, sex has become illegal in McDonaldland. You can only partake in sexual activity if you obtain a permit from the board of directors. And you can only get a permit if you are married and only have sex to procreate. The permit is good for only five days and you are only allowed to have sex once per day. It doesn’t matter if the pregnancy is a success or not after the five days are up. If the new wolf-like features are not too serious, then you can apply for another permit to have a second kid in the future. The upper class, of which Guy is a part, is usually allowed to get a third permit. This is why Molly is now almost more wolf than human. Most women are not allowed to mutate this much.

  The burkas that McDonaldlandian mothers wear in public, that cover their skin from head to toe, are designed to hide their wolf-like features. But some women, the younger more liberal-minded ones, don’t wear these outfits. They usually aren’t able to get away with this unless their wolf-features are very subtle. Every once in a while you will run into a girl with fangs, whiskers, and glowing yellow eyes, but this is rare. It is considered low class.

  Molly is ferocious when Guy gives her the burgers. She rips open the wrappers on three Double Cheeseburgers at once and tears into them with her slobbery black jaws. After the first bite, she realizes what she is doing and composes herself. She sits her two daughters at the table into their chairs and gives them their meals. Then she sits herself down and continues eating in a more civilized manner.

  Women who are as wolf-like as Molly often have problems controlling their instinctual urges. They become more wild and unruly. Molly has probably transformed so much that Guy isn’t allowed to let her out of the house. That is the law with some women who have been granted three sex permits.

  If she becomes any more beast-like, the Fry Guys will have to capture her and release her into the wasteland outside of the walls. The only reason she hasn’t been taken out of town already is probably because of Guy’s status.

  Even if they are not yet unruly, any woman who has sex without a permit is sent into the wasteland. It is not just against the law, it is considered heresy. It is McDonaldland’s strictest law. There is no leniency toward any woman. Even the Chief of the Fry Guys had to send his own daughter into the wasteland, because she had sex a single time without a permit. I know that story all too well.

  This is why there are so many wolves in the wasteland outside of McDonaldland. They are not real wolves. Real wolves have been extinct for a very long time. The wolves in the wasteland are the women who have been outcast from McDonaldland. They were once human, but now they are animals, howling outside the walls as if begging to be let back in.

  I take a burger and a hot apple pie from the pile of burgers and apple pies. There is also a large bowl full of fries centering the table that the entire family is supposed to share. It’s a dinner tradition that Guy took from our parents. This tradition always bothered me, because I don’t like eating fries from the same bowl as everyone else. I especially don’t like to eat them when there’s a wolf woman like Molly digging her paws into the bowl every few minutes, leaving dozens of brown hairs on top of the food.

  “How’s work?” Guy asks me.

  “Shitty,” I say.

  Molly growls at me. I assume it is for using foul language around her kids.

  I ignore her and say, “I have to work two shifts seven days a week and my rent keeps going up. Even with two shifts, I have no money for recreation and for food I can only eat items from the value menu.”

  “You know,” Guy says, I already know what he’s going to say, “You should really come join the Fry Guy Force.”

  “So you always tell me.”

  “We could really use a guy like you. You’re in better shape than half the guys on the force. You’d have better hours, better pay, more respect. You could move out of the slums into a good neighborhood. Get a wife. Have kids.”

  I want to tell him off, tell him I’d never become a Fry Guy, tell him I hate everything they stand for. But my extra arms begin to twitch. Whenever I’m overexcited, they always twitch. So I have to calm myself and be more civil with him.

  “I really don’t think I’m cut out to be a Fry Guy,” I tell him.
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br />   “Physically, you’re perfectly cut out for it,” he says. “That’s usually the hard part for new applicants. You just need an attitude adjustment. You just need to grow up.”

  I just smile and nod at him.

  “They have great programs now to fix that,” he says. “They’re working on psychological reconstruction. There are even drugs that are being developed that can help you think more like a Fry Guy. Like me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I say.

  He waves his Big Mac at me. “I’m telling you, this is what you should do. You would be much happier.”

  Judging by Guy’s monotone voice, being a Fry Guy hasn’t made him much happier.

  “Maybe some day,” I tell him, to shut him up.

  Molly glares at me with her bloodthirsty yellow eyes. She can see right through me. She knows I have no intention of ever considering joining the Fry Guy Force. She can tell that I despise everything that her husband stands for.

  “Maybe some day you will stop being such a loser,” she says, baring her fangs at me.

  “Molly,” Guy gently squeezes the scruff of her neck, which is what he does to anyone who embarrasses him. “Please.”

  “No,” she says, tossing her husband’s arm away. “You have just offered him an opportunity that could improve his life and he just throws it back into your face.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, lowering my head in submission. You have to do this with wolf women or else they might rip your throat out.

  I stand up to leave before things get out of control, but Guy puts me back into my seat.

  “She’s just a bit snappy these days,” Guy says.

  Women are snappy most of the time, due to sexual frustration. The more wolf-like a woman becomes the more her sexual drive increases, and the more sexually frustrated she’ll get.