Chapter Two: Amnesiac’s Best Friend

The wallet of the pathologist — Martin Greene, according to his driver’s licence and credit cards — had exactly one hundred and four dollars in it. Three twenties, two tens, two fives, ten ones, eight quarters, and strangely enough, a silver dollar flanked by two of those half dollar coins. The ones with the president. The one that got shot.

‘Like that narrows it down,’ the man thought. He discarded the wallet and stuffed the cash and coins into the pockets of his stolen clothing. He had no idea how well known Dr. Greene was around town, but he wasn’t going to take the chance that the clerk at the store drew the obvious conclusion from a wallet. He had taken a big enough chance with the ill-fitting clothes.

The search for a store was a risky adventure all on its own. Yes, the hospital was single story, but he’d hardly seen much of the facility from within; only by curving back around the building had he realized how large it really was, and how large the town must therefore be.

The white coat was removed, rolled up, and hidden inside a decorative bush. The man still had a cautionary urge to avoid attention, to stay out of the limelight, not to mention the streetlights. In the dark, the white shirt would be conspicuous enough.

That had been about half an hour earlier; now he was sitting at the edge of a parking lot to an all-night megastore, trying to restore feeling to his feet. The shoes had to be first priority, even over clothing that fit correctly.

***

The shopping had gone as smoothly as he could have hoped, with one massive hitch that came totally out of the left field that was his memory. Or lack of it. His new shoes fit fine and were on sale, and his clothes — a jeans and turtleneck sweater combo — were rather stylish. At least, according to his own sense of aesthetics, which might or might not match anyone else’s. On an impulse, he grabbed a six-pack of bottled water and a bag of beef jerky.

The hitch, though… that was something he wanted to run over in his head as he sat on a bench outside the store and snacked on dried, marinated meat. He had made all his other choices and started to head back to the checkout area, but he had passed through the hardware part, and something galvanized him where he stood. Hammers and wrenches and saws. Nailguns. Levels and plumb-lines.

“Why would I need tools?” he had wondered aloud, and the response was something deep inside, a sort of hysterical laughter from the same place his paranoia about people knowing about his memory loss had originated. It was like asking why he’d need air, or a fish would need water. He didn’t know why, but he felt in some fundamental way that he had to have some, even if it was just a pair of needle-nose pliers.

In the end he’d gotten a carpenter’s hammer, pliers, an open-end adjustable wrench, Phillip’s and Flathead screwdrivers, a roll of duct tape, and a flashlight — it was, after all, pretty dark outside. When he stepped outside again, he had only the coins left, but he felt better. A lot.

He had been wondering if maybe he had been a carpenter or automobile mechanic before he had forgotten everything, which would explain his need for tools, when the wolf came running by.

***

It was definitely a wolf, upon the third examination. At first blush, the mind instinctively yelled “WOLF! RUN AWAY! VERY FAST!” while the second glance caused the mind to try to rationalize the appearance of a wild animal in a civilized area and said it was just a german shepard that needed a bath and a haircut. A third evaluation would eventually be made, say if the animal started tearing out throats.

The man without a name didn’t come to the same conclusion the same way. Dog-related knowledge had risen up unbidden from his mind and he noted that dogs always, even when they were happy as tail-wagging clams going after frisbees, had this terribly sad look in their eyes. Similarly, wild animals either looked menacing or scared. From what he saw of the wolf, it did not look very sad.

It skidded past the bench in a grey blur, turned a sharp corner, and stopped in front of the automatic doors. They opened up and the wolf darted inside. From outside, the screams of the few staff and customers still inside could be heard, even when the automatic doors closed.

Maybe six seconds later, a man came sprinting down along the side of the store and skidded to a stop by the bench. He had a few long gashes on his arms and a rip or two on the front of his shirt.

“Scuse me… scuse… me…” the bleeding man gasped.

“If you’re looking for a wolf, it’s just inside-”

The instructions were cut short by a clerk’s shriek as she ran out. Except she was a he. The clerk, while obviously male — it was the beard that gave it away — was screaming like a girl.

While the automatic doors were still open, the bleeding man rushed inside. The amnesiac sat and chewed his beef jerky. After about two minutes, there was a rather loud crash and one man’s bellowing yells were cut short. The screams continued, then slowly abated when the automatic doors opened and the wolf came out.

“Got him! Ha ha! Suck on that you S&M frea — er….”

The amnesiac stared at the animal which had just spoken a coherent sentence, even if you included the “er” part. He felt a little bit like screaming himself, because he had run the animal’s speech through his brain a few times and on none of those examinations had any part of him had a problem with what was supposed to be impossible.

Instead of screaming, though, he opened another bottle of water and held it out to the wolf-thing. “Thirsty?”

***

The man and the talking wolf had gotten up as soon as sirens could be heard. While the front of the building faced a large parking lot and a street, the opposite side led to a smaller service lot, two loading docks, and a road that could be cut across into what seemed to be undeveloped woodland. Now they were making their way along the streambed at the lowest point in the area.

“So… you aren’t surprised an animal can talk?”

The amnesiac shrugged. “I’m more surprised that I’m not surprised.”

“Kind of like expect the unexpected?”

“No… well, actually, yeah. That’s as good an explaination as any.”

“Ah. Cool. Name’s Cody. Cody Zimmerman. What’s yours?”

“Ah…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that’s kind of complicated-”

“Guy on the run from the law, huh? Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m gonna turn you in. I can’t exactly walk up to the nearest police station and report you. Even if animal control didn’t shoot me first, they’d probably end up testing the coffee for mescaline, you know?”

“It’s a bit more complex than that.”

“Hey, I’m all ears. I mean, I have legs too, and a tail and muzzle, but there are ears too and-”

“Please stop talking for a second.”

“Oh, fine. Be that way.”

They walked along in silence for a few minutes.

“I don’t remember who I am. Name, personal experiences, all of it gone.”

“The old whack to the noggin, huh? I thought I smelled blood on you.”

“The pathologists said it was a gunshot right before I knocked them unconscious. Something about skipping under the scalp and getting imbedded in my head, I dunno. It was all very disorienting and confused.”

“I know the feeling. I wasn’t always like this, you know.”

In spite of himself, the man grinned. “Balderdash. A talking wolf that couldn’t always talk? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Ha ha ha. I mean I wasn’t always a wolf. I used to have hands and thumbs and all that cool human stuff. That was about a month ago.”

“What happened?”

“Did you see a guy running by with scars all over him? He happened. He’s got… or rather had… something. Some powers. Freaky powers. I was coming out of the library one day and he bumped into me, and I threw a bunch of pointy sounding words at him. About three weeks later I’m going out for a midnight snack run and I run into him again. Except like last time he was the one who hit me. HARD.”

Cody stopped, sat down, and started scratching his ears with his hind leg. His voice shook a little in time to the kicking of the leg.

“When I woke up I was in a cage, which was in a house, which was a total mess, and I was not the same as when I headed out to the library. And that guy was sitting in a chair just waiting for me to come around.”

“And you finally managed to get the drop on him?”

Cody got back up and shook himself. “It’s a lot less satisfying than I imagined, but at least I’m not in the damned cage anymore.”

***

Cody and the amnesiac both sat at the bus stop across from the hospital, both in fact on the bench. They were completely alone, which made conversation much easier. The man might have been able to convince other people he was just practicing a ventriloquism routine, but that was a damned big might and he knew it.

“So why can you still speak if the guy changed everything else? Wouldn’t the shape of the muzzle and the teeth and stuff make it hard? Or at least make you sound like Scooby-Doo?” The amnesiac knew that Scooby-Doo was a mystery solving cartoon dog with a speech slur, but he couldn’t ever recall seeing any cartoons or reading anything about the character.

“He actually told me something about that. He wanted to make me apologize or beg or something, I was too pissed off and freaked out to listen, so he deliberately changed the throat and larynx and parts of the muzzle so I could still speak recognizable english, but that was about it. My voice used to be a much higher pitch, for example. My friends would not even recognize a phone call from me now. Not that I had many.”

“Hmmm. How’d you get out?”

“The guy may have had weird powers, but he wasn’t all up in there mentally. He was a few donuts short of a police force, you know?”

“Sort of.”

“Eventually he probably forgot that I still had human intelligence, and, see, there was this dish he gave me with food in it. On a related note, is there any more of that beef jerky left?”

“Nope.”

“Bummer. Anyway, he opened the door, put the dish in, and as he was closing it, I pushed the dish with my paws so it jammed the door open. While he’s trying to keep the door closed and move the dish back in — the harder he tried to do one, the harder it was to do the other — I just muscled my way past him.”

“And then you mauled him and ran like hell to the store?”

“No, he did that to himself. I told you he was missing some donuts. Anyway, I jumped out a window and ran. I wasn’t exactly sure where to go, but by then I was getting seriously claustrophobic. Any port in a storm.”

“Which leads us up to a little before now.”

“Yeah… hey, can I call you Clint?”

“What?”

“You know. Clint Eastwood. The Man with no name.”

“No.”

“Okay Ace. So what do you want to do?”

“You know, you talk a lot for… someone turned into a wolf. God, that sounded so STUPID coming out of my mouth.”

“Of course I talk a lot! I’ve been locked up with a crazy man for the last thirty days who would try to poke me with sticks to get me to say something to appease his ego, which might have been the only reason he kept me alive. I got the fucking cabin fever, Ace. I got it bad.”

“Again with the Ace. What’s this Ace thing?”

“Hey, I can’t exactly call you ‘guy’ or ‘dude’ or ‘man with amnesia’ whenever I want to get your attention, can I? You need a nickname. Ace is what I got. You come up with a better one, I’ll be happy to use it.”

The man scratched his chin. Ace… typically one of the most important cards in a suit. A term for highly skilled pilots. All around term for a guy who knows what he’s doing. Well, he didn’t know what he was doing, but pessimism wasn’t going to help.

“Sure. Ace is fine.”

“Alright then, Ace. We’re two guys with nowhere to go. I can’t go back to my life in this body, and you don’t remember yours. We pretty much got nothing but each other. So you wanna get drunk? Pick up chicks?”

Ace pointed at the hospital. “What I want is to get back in there and see if I had any ID on me when they thought I was a corpse.”

“Oh. Okay. That makes sense. Wish I could help you.”

“What do you mean, you wish? Aren’t we going to stick together?”

Cody stood up, hopped off the bench, and circled around in front of Ace. “Look, I got nothing better to do than help you out, that’s for sure, but I don’t think they’ll let me in there. Hospitals like things clean. Dogs are dirty and slobbery enough on their own. Wolves are out of the question.”

Ace grinned and scratched Cody behind the ears. “Cody, I don’t know how I know this, but I know that if you act enough like a dog, and I act like you’re a dog too, they will not let themselves think you’re anything but a really big dog. People seem to have blinders that keep them from entertaining certain ideas that are two extravagant.”

“…and that helps us how?”

“It means we need to find a store you didn’t wreck. Just what was that big crash just before you ran out, anyway?”

“Let’s just say it was my momma’s homemade recipe for asshole pancakes.”

“Your mom made pancakes with assholes?”

“It doesn’t make her a bad person!”