Integration Read online

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Menagerie

  More books

  About the Author

  Books by J.S. Frankel

  The Nightmare Crew

  Beginnings

  Law and Order

  Integration

  Single Titles

  The Menagerie

  Integration

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-770-8

  ©Copyright J.S. Frankel 2016

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright 2016

  Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

  Finch Books

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Finch Books.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Finch Books. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2016 by Finch Books, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN, United Kingdom.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.

  Finch Books is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.

  Book Description

  Facing off against an old enemy isn’t without repercussions.

  Paul and the Nightmare Crew take on not only their most dangerous adversary but also the establishment.

  Paul Wiseman and the rest of the Nightmare Crew attempt to fit into society as best they can. It isn’t easy if you’re a werewolf, a vampire or if you’re a being made of water or sand.

  Along with failed efforts at integration comes the news that Andres Peterson, founder of Rallan, Inc.—the company that created the original Nightmare Crew—is still at large.

  Peterson is now a mutant, irretrievably evil, and he is also quite clever. With his genius, he sets about making a virtually limitless army of scientific horrors, and they begin to unleash terror on the populace.

  It’s up to Paul and the rest of the crew to stop him. Along the way, they are joined by a young girl, who has powers of her own, and a group of Army Rangers.

  Catching Peterson is harder than any of them could ever have imagined, though, and the Nightmare Crew ends up being the prey instead of the predator. It becomes a matter of who is willing to fight hardest. But winning isn’t the only goal Paul has in mind.

  The Nightmare Crew

  Integration

  J.S. FRANKEL

  Dedication

  To my wife, Akiko, and to my sons, Kai and Ray, for making my life memorable. And to my sister, Nancy, for backing me every step of the way.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  The Big Apple: NYC and Company

  CliffsNotes: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  TASERS: Taser International Inc.

  Candy Land: Hasbro Inc.

  Vampira: Edwards, Jon Scott, Individual

  Chia Pet: Joseph Enterprises

  Sluggo: United Feature Syndicate Inc.

  Medicare: Executive Director Department of the Army

  Chicago Weekly Post: Chicago Tribune Media Group

  Bambi: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  The Wizard of Oz: Frank Baum

  Day-Glo: Switzer Brothers Inc.

  Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow: Gerry Goffin and Carole King

  Jeep: FCA US LLC

  Styrofoam: The Dow Chemical Company Corporation

  Prologue

  The Bronx

  Eleven-thirty p.m., late November

  Paul Wiseman ambled into the corner grocery store, looking for trouble and hoping he wouldn’t find it. However, trouble always seemed to find him. This was New York, and trouble was its middle name. He took due note of the security camera overhead, saluted it, then continued on.

  A second later, though, he stopped as he caught sight of his face in the reflection of a glass case. An image of a teenager just a few months past his eighteenth birthday stared back at him. It was doubtful anyone would ever consider him imposing in terms of height, as he stood only five-seven. He wasn’t overly muscular. Instead, he had a lean and hungry look about him.

  Wardrobe-wise, again, he wore nothing special, only jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Coats weren’t for him, and he wouldn’t have felt comfortable in anything save bare feet. Although it was frigid out, the cold had ceased to bother him a long time ago.

  Mentally, he made a list of things that stood out, and the only word that came to mind was unremarkable. Clothes? No. Physique? Not really—I’m average in every way, he wanted to shout to the world—but his mirror image said otherwise. Brown hair fell in waves around his narrow face, and he brushed it aside to reveal a pair of yellow eyes.

  Right away, this marked him as different, and the immediate question anyone would have asked was, Is this real? At times he found it difficult to believe he actually looked this way, and he turned his head slowly to each side, wondering again if this was a dream or reality.

  It turned out to be the latter. Moving past the yellow eyes, he gazed at his high cheekbones, the slightly elongated nose and the fur covering most of his face and his hands. It was everywhere else on his body as well. Shaving was a pain. He hated it, but it came with the territory of being a hybrid.

  “Paul, don’t forget we have to go back on night duty soon,” Angela, his girlfriend, called out as she poked her head in the doorway. “You’re with me, right?”

  He broke off mirror contact then turned around. “It’ll just take a couple of minutes. Hang on.”

  She ducked outside again, and he watched as she lounged against the side of the shop, eyeing the surroundings lazily. A few people walked by, cursing the cold, and when they got a look at her, they quickly moved on. She paid them no attention. “I got it, boyfriend. I’ll be up top if you need me,” she leaned in to say.

  With a quick leap, she sprang into the air. This was what they did, the Nightmare Crew, and while they made their home in Manhattan, tonight they
were on patrol in the Bronx. Crime was always happening somewhere. Tonight was no different.

  Walking just out of the door to glance up at the sky, he observed her form as she flew along. As always, she wore a black leather outfit and a matching cape, tricked out with a liner that glowed in the dark and illuminated her slender form. Black boots completed the ensemble.

  She could get away with wearing a costume. For him, he thought it too comic-bookie to wear something that differed in terms of clothing. Moreover, he didn’t want anything to restrict his movements. Functionality remained a priority for him when it came to clothing.

  “Yeah, we’re the Nightmare Crew,” he said to no one in particular as he walked back inside the store. He was nominally the leader, but he never forgot who the muscle in the group was.

  It was Angela, no last name, a lab-synthesized vampire-girl. Young woman, really… They were roughly the same age. With a slender, sexy figure, porcelain-white skin and pretty features—including fangs—she created a sensation wherever she went. Some of it was good and some bad, but he recalled an old saying, There is no such thing as bad publicity.

  Maybe there wasn’t. He didn’t know for sure. What he did know all too well was how others saw him and what they thought. Werewolf, creature, monster—he’d heard the terms before. It didn’t seem right or fair, but who said life was fair to begin with?

  “Help you, sir?”

  A voice spoke, startling Paul out of his day-night dream, and he turned around. A teenager, maybe sixteen, short and slight, actually jumped back once he saw the fur, and his jaw dropped about a foot. “It’s…you,” he stammered out. “I didn’t know if you were real or not, and—”

  “I’m real,” Paul answered, cutting him off at the gape. “I just came in to buy something.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Opening it, he showed the wad of bills he had in there. “I’m going to pay for my stuff, okay?”

  The kid didn’t seem to be overly concerned with the money angle. Instead, he continued to stare, his eyes growing larger with every passing second. “Do you…eat?” he finally managed to get out.

  If ever there was a time to roll one’s eyes, this was it, but Paul resisted the urge. He’d run the gamut of questions over the past few months, and by now, he’d grown tired of answering them.

  ‘Do you eat?’

  ‘How fast can you run?’

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  Angela always blushed at that last question. They’d been dating for about a year, had grown close, yet personal questions always flustered her. They got to him as well, which was why he didn’t like answering them.

  Bringing his attention back to the guy, Paul answered, “Yeah, I eat. Y’mind?”

  As he began to edge his way down the aisle, the kid said, “Hey, man, I’m filling in for my father, okay? I don’t want trouble.”

  Going shopping is trouble? This time, Paul heaved in a deep breath, fighting down his frustration. Determined to set a good example, he forced a smile and hoped it didn’t look too threatening. “There isn’t going to be any trouble. I’m just here to shop, then I’m going back outside. I’ll be on duty, guarding the neighborhood. Is that okay with you?”

  His face white, the young kid gulped down a bagful of air. “Yeah, man, it’s cool. Just…get what you need, okay?” He turned and scurried around the counter, hanging onto the cash register.

  Paul pivoted around on the ball of his foot, grabbed a basket then went into the food section to begin loading it up with assorted slices of meat, cheese and bread. Sticking to the basics in food groups remained a priority, as did checking the prices. Heroes had to eat, and not everyone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

  Along the way, he mused about how things had come to be as they were. Raised in an orphanage and wanting nothing more than to escape its grim confines, he’d run away, gotten into trouble with a local gang, then Angela had come along at the most dramatic moment and rescued him. From there, she’d flown him to a house in upstate New York where he’d met her friends, also laboratory creations.

  Ooze, a sarcastic and bright sentient water being, served as the brains of the outfit, rigging up high-powered tech devices.

  Sandstorm was quiet and shy—a being made of sand who traveled over the land like a fast-moving snake. He didn’t speak. Instead, he signed his answers, and although he wasn’t much of a team player, when crunch time came, he always pitched in.

  There’d been another member, CF—his name stood for Cannon Fodder—and he was a zombie, but he’d been destroyed, and they’d never been able to resurrect him.

  “Resurrection,” he mumbled, as he checked out some electric shavers. Which was better, manual or electric? He decided on the former and tossed five of them in the basket.

  Resurrection was the key. In his case, it was more of a transformation. His friends had been created by a scientist in a special chamber, one capable of transforming stem cells into any kind of form possible. Paul knew about the chamber all too well, as the same device had given him life after he’d been shot and almost killed. He’d emerged a hybrid of human and wolf, with all the speed, strength and ferocity of the animal, complete with fangs, but he’d retained his humanity, and—

  A sound at the door disturbed his concentration. Five young men dressed in jeans and jean jackets, with tough-looking faces and hunched shoulders, strode in and made their way over to the counter. Paul instantly tensed and whispered into his intercom, a handy little device Ooze had rigged up, “Angela, we may have some trouble.”

  “On my way,” she said. “Get them outside.”

  She clicked off, and Paul kept out of sight behind a stack of cans, waiting for something to happen. The leader of the group, a tall, rangy youth, walked over to the counter. “My homies need a little cash. Spare any?”

  “I-I can’t, man,” the teen squeaked out. “I’m gonna call the cops.”

  His answer provoked a round of laughter from the leader. “Kid, you’re crazy if you think the cops are gonna help you.” He reached into his pocket to pull out a switchblade. He pressed the trigger, the blade sprang open then he brandished it in front of the kid’s face. “You mess with us and you know what you get?”

  “I’d say a couple of years in jail,” Paul said, as he emerged from behind the stack of cans and put down his basket. He walked over to the punk then stopped three feet away. “You look over eighteen. If you want trouble, let’s take it outside, okay? This kid isn’t much of a threat, and I don’t feel like destroying public property.”

  Immediately, the gang leader got a look in his eye, one that said, Mess with me and you get a one-way trip to the morgue. “Man, I’ll cut you. You hear me?” He swiped the air with the blade.

  “Try it.”

  He did, and in a lightning-fast move, Paul smacked the switchblade out of his hand. It went skittering across the floor and under a crate of tomatoes. “Got anything else?”

  As if on cue, the gang members whipped out their blades but backed out, weapons held in front of them, weaving them in rough figure-eight patterns. Paul followed them onto the street and cautioned, “That’s a really bad move.”

  “There’s five of us and one of you,” challenged the leader.

  “Count again,” called a voice from above.

  A harsh wind began to blow and it buffeted the members around. “Did I tell you that my girlfriend can control the wind?” Paul asked.

  If they heard him, they didn’t answer, as they were too busy trying to fight back against something they couldn’t see—a gale force that slammed them against the wall of the grocery store then pinned them there. Angela had the power of the wind at her disposal but didn’t use it very often.

  She preferred to use hand-to-hand fighting skills, and if he had to choose a word to describe her style, the only one that came to mind was wicked. Angela fough
t with incredible speed, fury and totally without mercy. Paul often trained with her, just to keep in shape. She always won.

  “Hey, let us go!” the gang cried en masse.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered, braving the cold. “Take ’em down,” one of them yelled.

  Angela ceased her attack and landed next to Paul, a smile on her face. She seemed to size them up, one by one. “So, which one of you tough guys is first?”

  The gang leader looked at his friends then at her. “Me,” he said before he threw a punch.

  His shot hit her directly in the jaw. She didn’t even blink, and he recoiled, holding his hand in pain. “What are you?”

  In a move too fast to follow, she grabbed his collar and lifted him off the ground with ease. “I’m your nightmare come true. Stealing is wrong. Assault is worse.”

  With a careless flick of her wrist, she tossed him at his friends, and they tumbled to the ground like bowling pins. Paul strode over and extended his fangs. Angela joined him and did the same. The punks recoiled, shielding their faces. “Get this straight,” Paul said. “You’re done here.”

  Just then, the sound of a siren broke things up. Two police cars pulled over and four cops got out, hands on their holsters. One of them strode over, glanced at the punks on the ground and posed the question, “What’ve we got here?”

  “Attempted robbery and assault,” Paul answered. “They’re all yours.”

  After quickly handcuffing the punks, the police threw them into their cars. “Thanks,” muttered one of the cops. “We could have handled it.”

  “If you’d shown up ten minutes earlier? Yeah, maybe,” Angela quipped, which provoked an outburst of laughter from the crowd.

  Her response didn’t make the cop’s evening as he tossed her a sour look. He got back into his car and roared off with the other police car close behind. Paul turned to face the crowd. Instead of thanking them, the people backed away.