DISCLAIMER: This story contains subject matter not suitable for a family audience under the age of fourteen. The material contained in this work of fiction is as follows: sexual themes, gore, blood, language, and scenes depicting intense violence. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. TURN BACK IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR EYES. Black Sunshine Chapter 1: 20 Years After Part 2: Running For Fun It was no surprise Nolan had a clear view of his car; the whole werewolf population was afraid to even be in the same mile as Nolan now. The boy followed, as if extremely flattered to even have the opportunity of walking in Nolan's shadow. Around the end of the car they went, Nolan opening up the trunk and started rummaging through some blankets, M.R.E.'s, ammo boxes, empty and half full cigarette boxes, and finally pulled out a first-aid field kit. "This isn't going to feel pretty." Nolan warned. The boy frowned and watched the older human open the passenger side door. "Have a seat." The boy obliged, letting his stick-like legs dangle off the sides. His feet didn't even touch the ground. Nolan slipped the shotgun into the back seat, the skeleton's hollow eyes following the sleek boomstick with awe, and Nolan kneeled in front of the child. "What's your name, kid?" he asked kindly as he started rummaging through the white box for some disinfectant. "Nathan." "Well Nathan, I'm Nolan. How old are you kid, ten?" "Seven." Nolan almost dropped the disinfectant bottle. "Seven?!" he hissed. Nathan nodded. Shaking his head in disbelief, Nolan pulled out some gauze. "Take off your shirt." The sight that covered the child's body made Nolan's face twist in disgust. Scars, bruises, cuts, gashes, bite marks, slashes, scabs of every vairety, size and color were painted onto the canvas that was Nathan's body. "Oi...s'gonna take a lot more than gauze and disinfectant to have all this fixed up." Nathan frowned. "I'm gonna live, right?" "Oh yeah, a-course." Nolan nodded, still trying to digest the grotesque sight of Nathan's body. Then he noticed how Nathan's ribs poked through his skin. "When was the last time you ate?" "Uh..." Nathan thought. "I can't remember actually." Nolan's eyebrows disappeared into his hat again. "What the fuck werewolves...oh, sorry." Nolan apologized for swearing. Nathan shrugged. "I'm used to it by now..." Nolan sighed through his nose, looked at Nathan's cuts and then back to the now meager seeming first aid kid. "Alright, here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna dress up these fresh cuts ‘cause I having nothing nowhere near capable of dealing with the rest of this...do you know where your parents are? Are they still alive?" Nathan nodded. "Then I'm going to give you a message, and I want you to give it to them. Make sure every single human sees it, okay?" Nathan nodded again. With that, Nolan began wrapping up the new cuts on Nathan's stomach. "Are you a god?" Nolan looked up, surprised. "What?" He chuckled. "Are you a god? My dad keeps saying God will come and save us." Nolan chuckled. "Well, I dunno about a god...but I did come for something else." Nathan smiled again. The werewolves around the car seemed a little creeped out at the interaction, but Nolan ignored them, knowing full well that werewolf interactions towards each other was just as strange to him. Plus he had a gun. That evened things out rather smoothly in his mind. Nolan eventually finished bandaging up Nathan and they both stood up. "Wait here." Nolan wandered to the trunk again, opened it up and started rummaging again. Nathan's watery eyes started looking around the car, taking in every single beautiful line and detail. Nathan wondered whose hands could have crafted something this powerful and hard. Certainly Nolan or any other human could have built this....not something this intense. It seemed preposterous. The young boy noticed some words painted above the door handle. Nathan couldn't read very well at the time, but he would learn later on in his life the name of the car: Black Sunshine Then, he caught the eye of a werewolf staring at him from across the hood. What happened next shocked Nathan entirely; the werewolf turned away nervously. This was the closest a werewolf had been to ever fearing Nathan. A back pack bumped against his chest. Nolan had come back. "Take it to your parents." He said. "Remember what I told you - everyone has to see it." Nathan opened the bag curiously as the older human walked away. "What's gonna happen?" Nolan checked his step, hesitated, as if thinking a moment, and then turned around with a smile. "Rescue." Nathan's face lit up, and he dashed away, not one werewolf getting in his way. Warm, fuzzy feelings all around, Nolan drifted back around his car, and was about to open the door when someone got in his way. Nolan looked up. What he saw was the goofiest looking werewolf he'd ever seen. Albeit very large in musculature and height, his pupils that didn't match quite right. His grey and white pelt was matted. One ear and seemingly part of his head was missing. Someone must have shot him in the head and he survived somehow, but had lost an ear and suffered some brain damage in the process. A small line of drool hung from his humming maw, but he was massive. Muscles like rock and biceps bigger than Nolan's neck. Still, unintimidated human looked him up and down skeptically, sizing him up. "Who're you supposed to be? Goofy?" There was a light hum coming from the werewolf's maw, but no discernable words did. Some more drool followed. Nolan rolled his eyes. "Get away from my car." The mountain didn't move. Nolan's brow knit angrily. "Get away," he said more firmly. "from my car." A louder humming sound came from the werewolf and he started swaying, staring stupidly into the teenage boy's eyes. Just as Nolan was about to reach for his gun, one of the girl werewolves that tried to seduce him earlier dashed in and quickly took the larger werewolf's hand and started pulling him away like he was a child. "Keep him away from my car." Nolan growled. Nolan watched the female lead the male towards a rather dirty-looking Dodge Ram. And then the werewolf opened the door and got in it. "He's racing too?" Nolan shook his head at the thought. "Lord help me, there is no competition tonight." Then Nolan blinked and looked at the horizon. In the farthest reaches of the land, dawn's fingertips were beginning to touch and warm the sky. The human smiled. "Might be sunrise when I finish here..." The brown werewolf suddenly appeared, head down as he tried to discreetly enter the beat up and hallow station wagon. Nolan smiled wider. "No competition." With the station wagon and pick-up truck hiding the fourth car from view, Nolan wandered around the two cars and he stopped walking, face frozen in surprise. "No way." It was a Corvette Z06. Astonished, Nolan wandered around the car. It was as beat up as the wagon and as dirty as the pick-up, but she was, by a long shot, the most competitive car the werewolves had in their possession. This changed things. "It changes things a lot." Nolan smiled devilishly. Assuming that Todd was the one racing this car, and given that he could handle it, there might be a challenge in the race after all. The human shuffled back to his car, ushering a quick "Get!" to some adolescent werewolves who were sniffing his car, and they scampered fearfully. He sat back in his car, closing himself off from the world, then began writing some notes down on a pad he kept handy. Outside, a groaning sound came from Todd's corpse, and immediately everyone looked over the white werewolf's dead body. But there was one thing - it was moving. Todd was alive! The groaning was shortly replaced with a yelp, a louder yelp, some choking, cursing, and then the rising of loud, furious cries; "MY LEGS! MY FUCKING LEGS!" Nolan smiled. Wakey wakey, big bad wolf. A few more hours passed, and through his side-view mirror, Nolan saw Todd limping towards his car with the help of a few werewolves. He looked extremely begrudged, and glared angrily at Nolan's car. Nolan only replied by starting his engine with a smile, and finished jotting down an attack route for the rescue operation that would take place after the race. Then Nolan paused. It never occurred to him what might happen when he won the race. Then he shrugged. The werewolves were intimidated enough to know not to attack him, and they pretty much knew he was going to win anyway. They'll most likely just let him go. The crowd started gathering around the cars, some spirited werewolves trying to rile the crowd up, and it worked a little. Everyone started clapping, cheering, bouncing, and whooping. The other cars started up, the wagon with a particularly nasty wheeze. The Corvette growled throatily, hungrily. Nolan's Shelby remained idle. The crowd reached its full capacity - everyone was there to see this race happen. Werewolves lined the street leading into the dark and foreboding city. With a degree of trepidation, a shapely werewolf girl wandered in front of the starting line, hesitantly raising a green banner tied to a black pipe - the starting flag. The Shelby finally responded loudly, brakes clenched tightly at the front rotors, and the rears tires struck the ground like thunder as they began to spin rapidly, the engine's revs building in bursts of power, smoke being expelled from the rubber in thick plumes. The sound was deafening to the werewolves, but they were starting to understand that Nolan was not the exactly the epitome of silence. With the sound becoming unbearable, only the Corvette audible amidst all the Shelby's fury, the flag dropped, and the black muscle car's end sank with the weight of the car being shifted so suddenly. It slipped forward at first, the piss yellow Corvette matching, rear tires having been replaced with walls of smoke, and then it shot forward, leaving everyone and everything behind in a cloud of smoke. The Corvette took off after the Shelby; the Ram appeared out of the cloud of smoke, going a lot slower than either the Corvette or the Shelby, and the wagon's motor kicked with a violent BANG and stalled. The race had started. Every creature watched the black car fly down the street at a colossal speed and slide around the corner - a trick no werewolf had ever seen - with the same titanic force. "STOP THAT CAR!" Heads turned in the direction of the voice - an older, grey werewolf landed in the middle of the crowd, out of breath, throwing werewolves out of his way before seeing that the car had disappeared. "DAMN that human!" He bristled furiously, all of the younger werewolves backing away nervously. He looked wildly around him, accusingly. "Why didn't you kill him?!" He hissed furiously. No one answered. Outraged, he slashed a brick wall with his claws with a snarl, leaving long gouges in the clay bricks. "You!" He said, stabbing a finger at a specific group of werewolves. "Take me to the closest point where we can intercept them. This human dare trespass on my territory, he will die for it!" He started half-marching, half-limping toward the horizon, head bowed and full of menacing plans. --- Over seven hundred and twenty five horses singing in his ear, anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand throwing him down the street and around the corners, Firestones hanging on and crying for dear life. The decays of mankind flying all around him at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, only fueling his inner rage that burned with his rapid heartbeats. Nolan was excited, but his face showed nothing but unyielding focus. And yet, the collection and self-control he possessed defied the simple brutality with which the Shelby moved. The wheels flying across the tarmac like a dancer's elegant shoes across the ballroom floor, scaring the road with black smears at the first corner it took, engine raging like a thousand suns. This was what Nolan loved to do. And he did it well. Compared to Todd's rather conservative performance - the Corvette was fast, but Todd had no idea how to utilize it properly. Any human driver with half of Nolan's experience as a wheelman could have easily put up a decent race, but Todd had no such experience. He smashed into everything immobile, grazing parked cars, smashing through mailboxes and parking meters, clipping light posts - Todd was the worst driver Nolan had ever seen. Broken legs or not. Quickly pushing the other two cars out of his mind, Nolan focused only on the yellow Corvette behind him and quickly fixed his focus on putting as much distance as humanly possible between him and Todd. He switched his feet from the gas to the clutch with swift grace, shifting from third down to second, and depressed the clutch, snapping the wheel to the left to make the car pitch left, stomped the gas and threw the wheel all the way to the right again. The car's tires snapped back to the right and held the car in a drift, maintaining its momentum through a turn and finishing nicely straightening out and continuing thundering down the road full of dead street lamps, furry bodies, derelict cars and decrepit buildings. Todd's broken legs hindered his ability to operate the pedals gravely. Cursing and swearing, his disfigured legs cracked painfully every time he applied pressure to a pedal, thus making him less willing to go hard on the gas like he normally did. Thing was, the same applied to his braking. He thundered down the road towards the corner with his kin lined about the streets. Gritting his teeth, he applied the brake as hard as he dared, but he still held back. A little too much, it seemed, as the car understeered immensely and couldn't make the turn. Werewolves jumped frantically out of the way while the nose of the Corvette plowed straight into a parked car. Growling and swearing some more, Todd backed out with his foot thrust gingerly against the clutch and he backed up, only to have Goofy tear around the corner and ram the Corvette's rear panel. The muscle car was forced in the opposite direction. Swearing even more, Todd shifted back into first and brought the car about. This race was not going to end well. "Gone already." Nolan thought. Black Sunshine started to behave with the same ferocity it exhibited when charging down the New York waterside. Explosive, intense, final. She hurtled down the straight, skidding around a corner, following the line of werewolves along the street, knowing full well that if they tried to mislead him, consequences would be had. The track itself was clearly outlined because werewolves had pushed some cars out of the way and placed a few here and there in the way to add difficulty to the race. Though having never raced the course himself, Nolan found no difficulty in interpreting and calculating his route as the roads came. One such instance was a rather nasty left-hand, right-angle turn made by various arrangements of apartments and duplexes presented itself to the skillful wheelman. Without skipping a beat, Nolan cut the wheel a half turn to the left, and the Shelby pitched to the left again, allowing her to go completely sideways before cutting the wheel all the way back to the right and slamming the clutch, footbrake and tearing the handbrake. The six piston calipers seized the rotors and the tires stopped instantly, the Firestones screaming in pain as the entire car slid into perfect symmetry with the next segments of road, and came to a brief halt. Nolan shifted down to first in a heartbeat and glanced by his left - Todd's Corvette was barreling towards Nolan's Shelby, and the white werewolf had every intention of tee-boning Black Sunshine. Nolan calmly smiled, flashed the peace sign and was off the clutch as fast as he was on the gas. The Super Snake took off with little wheel spin just as the Corvette entered the turn. Too fast it seemed. Todd got on the brakes too late, and too hard. The brakes locked up and the end swung out to the left instead of the right like the Shelby, Todd's leg broke and his car crashed driver-sideways into the slew of apartments. Any werekin had cleared the streets long before Nolan had arrived at the turn. Goofy's Ram rolled around the corner, and the ill-stricken station wagon sputtered after him soon after. Todd swore some more. Nolan himself was having a blast. --- The old werewolf, henceforth referred to as Daddy, dashed out of the alley with a small pack following him and into the adjacent parking lot. He searched around wildly. "WHERE ARE THEY?!" He roared. "They're not here yet, but they will be." One lycan said. "I can hear them now." Daddy's intense expression shifted into one of delight as his lips curled into a toothy grin. "Then we shall set a trap for him." He looked around. They had ended up near a small factory, it's smoke stack still standing. Not far from that, in a parking lot down the street, was an old and rusted eighteen wheeler with it's fuel tanker trailer still hitched up. Daddy glanced from the trailer to the smoke stack and back again, a simple plan forming in his head. He smiled wickedly. "We're going to set a trap for him!" Daddy announced. He wandered over to the truck, managing to slip his immense bulk in between the cab and the trailer. He bent at the knees, his leg having completely healed from Nolan's earlier shotgun wound, and placed his hands under the trailer. Then, he tried to stand, and began to lift. --- Nolan was starting to get bored with his competitors, and even allowed the beat up station wagon and hazardous RAM to come within forty or so feet from his tail. He glided around another corner with ease, and came down a long straight with a sharp right turn almost a thousand feet down the way. It was practically a drag strip. Nolan's grip on the wheel and his shifter tightened, and his teeth grit in excitement as he prepared to unleash everything Black Sunshine had onto this lonely stretch of New York road. That's when Nolan's keen eyes caught something just before the turn. A gang of werewolves had gathered into a bulk of bodies, massing around what looked like a fuel tanker's load. Nolan didn't like it. At the fuel tanker itself, Daddy had succeeded in tearing the hitch column from the back end of the cab by sheer brute strength alone. The lycans Daddy brought with him got behind the entire thing or went to help the old grizzly werewolf carry the load down the road towards the factory's smoke stack. Getting past them could be potentially tricky, if they intended to drop the tanker on top of Nolan, but Nolan surmised that they had a slightly more elaborate plan. It seemed he was right, because as soon as Nolan got a certain distance, a majority of the pack got under the tank's tires and lifted the great mass over their head. An impressive feat, no doubt, but one Nolan was used to seeing in werewolves. It was a widely known fact that it only took four healthy adult lycans to lift a full size car. And while Nolan's Shelby was a slightly heavier sports/muscle car and the majority of the population at the party was teenage, they all still posed a very powerful threat. Nolan was extremely suspicious of the werewolves tinkering with the tanker, but he did have a race to finish, and a dominating lead to maintain. He was being pulled between slowing down and increasing his chances of being able to react to whatever the lycans had planned, or speed up and hoping to get by faster than they could spring their trap. One one-thousand. Nolan came as close as Daddy wanted him. "NOW!" Every werewolf on the hitch side heaved powerfully, thrusting their bodies upward and throwing the end of the large mossy cylinder up. The werewolves at the other end with the tires all bent their knees in response to this, bearing the brunt of the weight of the fuel and the trailer itself, coiling their entire bodies like a spring. Two one-thousand. Nolan saw this, and the smoke stack belonging to the nearby factory and it suddenly dawned on him what the werewolves were trying to do. A split decision later and he practically stood on the gas pedal, only letting up occasionally for the rapid climb in gears, assisted by Nolan's barbaric hollering of "GO! GO YOU FUCKING CUNTBAG! FASTER!" Were Nolan in his right mind, he would never dream of calling his beauty any sort of degrading name (such was the respect for this car), but, despite his foul names, Black Sunshine thundered down the road with colossal authority, willingly following Nolan's urges for more speed. It seemed she wanted to survive this turn just as much as he did. The werewolves, like a spring, then recoiled as the entire tanker pivot over them, hurling the explosive object into the air. Three one-thousand. Goofy and the brown werewolf also noticed this, and despite inferior performance levels, punched the gas pedal in a similar fashion to Nolan. The three cars thundered down the road, Sunshine, the RAM and the wagon all lined up get on the chopping block. The tanker smashed into the base of the factory's stack and exploded immediately, obliterating the factory, and knocking the stack loose, causing it to start falling. Four one-thousand. Nolan only had one thought as he kicked the tail out to the left and began to power-slide. I'm gonna die... He looked up and saw the colossal column falling, casting a shadow that stretched the very definition of perception. Nolan floored the gas, and just barely cleared the rounded edge of the column as it fell...right on top of Goofy's RAM. It was crushed out of existence in an instant with a Earth-shattering BOOM coming down on everyone's ears. It dwarfed Nolan's savage and victorious roar, the kind of cry you hear when one suddenly gets a feeling of tremendous relief. Like one just cheated death by a second. Reinvigorated, adrenaline flowing in his veins more than blood, Nolan powered Black Sunshine down the road towards the highway, feeling like he was floating on air with the ultimate smug arrogance - for him, victory was assured. Daddy wasn't happy. He slammed his great fists repeatedly into the bonnet of the tanker's cab, greater still when the beaten wagon crashed into the fallen stack due to brake failure. Ignoring the heat of the fire on his back, he slammed the cab again and again and again in rage, so hard that the front axle snapped. "TAKE US BACK!! We're going to try this...one more time." No one said a word. They were too afraid to find out what would happen if they failed again. --- The sun was just about up. But it was being covered up by grey storm clouds, threatening the nature-beaten city with rain and a filtered, grey sunlight. It would rain soon. Noting this, Nolan made it a point to wrap this race up quickly, as rain reduced his visibility, and visibility is key when dealing with all manner of werewolves. He swiftly rounded another street, and the sound of a Todd's V8 reached his ear. A brief glance into Nolan's mirrors told him Todd had slipped around a corner behind Nolan, joining the Shelby on the thin, cramped street. Nolan resolved that Todd must have found a way around the smoke stack, and had caught up as a result. "A shortcut, huh?" Nolan spoke to the Corvette in his mirror. "Smarter than I thought, Todd." Nolan promptly threw the car into fifth and flew up the on ramp to the highway that would lead the race back to the start line, and thus the finish line. Both muscle cars started charging hard down the road, it was all down to power now. While the Super Snake was designed with tremendous amounts of power, the Corvette was just a little bit quicker getting up to top speed. They crept past one twenty. Given enough time, Nolan would be able to pull away, but in the current torque range he was in, the Corvette had a slight advantage, and Todd was using it. He rammed an otherwise perfectly clean Super Snake, defacing the rear bumper and crushing one of the rear taillights. Nolan felt the rock in the car, and immediately got pissed off. "Now now, that just won't do..." Todd rammed him again. It seemed he'd regained some of his courage since coming back to life. "That won't do-OI!- at all!" Another smashed tail light. "Alright, fine. Let's see how much of getting shot you remember!" Before Todd had a chance to hit him again, Nolan wrenched the handbrake and tossed the wheel to the left. At a hundred and fifty miles an hour, the entire car pulled a complete one eighty, bearing its arbitrary headlights down on the Corvette. Nolan threw the car into reverse, and kept her in that position - going a hundred and fifty miles in reverse, on one of Manhattans few standing highways, facing the Corvette. Todd instantly froze with fear, his once cocky attitude leaving him again for a second time. The Shelby bearing down on him was like staring into the eyes of the beast known as oblivion, and Nolan was holding the leash. Then Todd actually noticed Nolan himself. He was holding a gun! Panic gripped the white werewolf, and he was about to stomp the brakes to avoid getting shot when he realized it was really just Nolan's hand. He wasn't holding a gun; he was giving him the finger. At that point, it dawned on Todd. He could never beat Nolan. He never will beat Nolan. His spirit crushed, Todd backed off. In recognition of Todd's submission, Nolan floored the gas, turned his wheel back to the right, shifting back to fifth mid-turn, and floored the gas again, snapping the wheel back to the right to drift perfectly into a crumbling off-ramp leading back to the heart of the city, leaving Todd to straggle down the off ramp. Thundering down the spiral bend, leaving cloud after cloud of smoke behind him, Black Sunshine was once again in its berserk power rush, tearing down out of the off ramp like it was a start gate. She roared furiously down the road, dodging wrecked cars like they were nothing, and thundered around the last turn with exponential authority. Nolan wanted everyone to know who was going to dominate this race right now. He threw the car into sixth and stood on the gas pedal again, tearing down the straight - he could see the finish line! Faster and faster, and just like that, he tore across the finish line, slamming on the all the brakes, and careened sideways into the flimsy make-shift stage, causing it to collapse down onto the car in a pile of refuse.