The Howling III (18 page)

Kruger, his fingers now hooked under the elastic of Holly’s bikini, looked over. His wet, red mouth opened in surprise.

The window high on the wall above them burst inward. A beast, lithe and muscular, dived headfirst through the shattering glass. The beast landed gracefully on all fours, his great shaggy head swivelling to take in the situation. The black lips peeled back in a snarl.

Malcolm froze where he stood. The mesh of the cage before him was ripped wide enough for him to slip through, but he could not move.

Holly moaned again. Her eyelids fluttered. She tried to raise her head.

Kruger let go of her and scrambled to his feet. He stared at the creature now advancing on him.

“Get back! Get back!”

Malcolm, from inside the torn cage, stared at the beast. It rose on hind legs to a full seven feet. The talons, the gleaming teeth, the powerful jaws all were capable of killing a man in seconds. The eyes glowed an unholy green.

But Malcolm felt no fear. There was recognition. A kinship. As the eyes of the creature held his own, the boy sensed the message in his mind: Flee!

When he looked down at his hands they were again smooth, smallish, normal boy’s hands. He touched his face. It was his own unmarked, beardless face.

Flee! The message sounded again in his mind. A command. Malcolm squeezed his slim body through the split he had torn in the steel mesh.

“Hey! Where d’you think you’re going’?” Kruger, remembering his orders, turned his attention for a moment from the towering beast to the boy.

The beast opened its great jaws and roared. Kruger whirled to face the menace. Malcolm, compelled by the telepathic command, slipped past Kruger and the beast to the open door. There he stopped and looked down at Holly.

Conscious now, she raised herself on an elbow. She shuddered at the sight of the beast, but saw that its full attention was given to Kruger. She looked to Malcolm who hesitated in the doorway. Unable to find her voice, she motioned with a hand for him to run. Malcolm opened his mouth as though he would speak, then turned and vanished through the doorway.

The beast roared again and advanced on Kruger.

The big man, his mouth loose and drooling with fear, backed away. He stumbled, and remembered suddenly the cattle prod hanging by the wires from his belt pack. He seized the leather-wrapped grip and switched the current to its highest level. He thrust the rod out before him like a rapier.

“Awright,” he babbled, “You want some of this? Come on, I’ll give you some. I’ll give you all you want.”

He stabbed the metallic tip of the prod at the advancing creature.

The beast swatted at the measly weapon the man brandished and felt the electric shock that coursed all the way up to the hump of shoulder muscle. The shock was no more than a tickle to the beast, but it knew now what had been done to the boy Malcolm. It understood what had driven Malcolm to change as much as he had. The tiny shock was exactly what the beast needed to rekindle the bloodlust that had been so recently satisfied in the cabin outside Pinyon.

Kruger literally did not know what hit him. One moment he was holding the cattle prod, jabbing it at the huge hairy thing that had burst through the window. The next moment his arm, fingers still twitching on the leather grip, was lying on the floor at his feet. He stared dumbly at the empty shoulder socket where arterial blood pumped out in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Sitting now on the floor, Holly sucked in her breath as the beast cleaved Kruger’s arm from his shoulder with one swift blow. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, unable to watch any more. She heard, however, Kruger’s mewling little cries, and the crackle of teeth on bone.

*****

Gavin Ramsay kept the accelerator to the floor all the way from Pinyon to Bear Paw. He did not bother with red lights and siren. There was not enough traffic along the way to make any difference. By the time he hit the brakes at the faint logging trail that led up to Pastory’s clinic, the three-year-old Plymouth Fury bought by the taxpayers of La Reina County was sweating and snorting like a used-up racehorse.

He jounced up the grade, swerving against the brush on both sides, finally jamming to a stop when he came suddenly upon the old high-roofed house among the pines. Louis Zeno’s orange Datsun was parked at an angle out in front, one door hanging open as though the driver had abandoned it hastily. Tucked neatly under a tree was Holly’s little Volkswagen.

A sound came from inside the house that raised the short hairs at the back of Ramsay’s neck. A snarling growl that reminded him of nothing so much as the feeding of big, dangerous animals at the zoo.

A door banged at the rear of the house. Ramsay galloped around the side of the building in time to see a figure running swiftly away, darting between the trees.

“Halt!” he called, unholstering his revolver.

The running figure never slowed down, vanishing as Ramsay watched. A shot would be fruitless at that range and with all the trees between him and the target. Anyway, Ramsay never fired his piece without knowing what he was shooting at. Another growl came from inside the house, and he abandoned any thought of giving chase.

He started in through the open back door, then came to a stop. He thumbed the catch and rolled out the cylinder of his revolver, ejecting the copper-jacketed.38 cartridges on to the ground. Sweating with concentration, he dived a hand into his jacket pocket and dug out six of the silver bullets. He slipped them into the cylinder, locked it in place, and ran into the house.

Ramsay almost fell down several steps into a semi-sunken room, but caught his balance in time to stumble upright through the door. He took in the scene with a fast, sweeping glance. Against one wall stood a ruined cage. Rising shakily from the floor, clad in a sweater and bikini underpants, was Holly Lang. But dominating the room was a huge wolflike beast that stood upright holding the armless, headless body of a man.

“Holly!’he called.

She looked up at him, dazed and unbelieving for a moment, then scrambled toward him.

The beast, still holding the dismembered body, glared at him with bright green eyes. Ramsay raised the pistol.

At the moment he fired, Holly Lang stumbled into him, throwing off his aim. The soft silver bullet smacked into the far wall. Where an ordinary slug would have bitten out a chunk of concrete, the silver bullet flattened on impact and bounced to the floor.

The beast looked down at the bright blob of metal, then back at Gavin. A flash of understanding passed between them. The beast let the mangled body fall, dropped to all fours, and bounded past Ramsay and out the door before he could bring the revolver back into play.

Ramsay did not try to go after the thing. He stood where he was and wrapped both arms around Holly. He held her close to him until she finally stopped shivering. Then, supporting her with one arm, he picked up her jeans and her boots and led her gently out into the clean air.

*****

Several minutes later they sat together in the front seat of the sheriffs car, still parked before the peaceful-looking house that was Dr Pastory’s clinic. As Holly calmed down she told him all that had happened to her since leaving his office early this morning.

“Then that was Malcolm I saw running into the woods,”

he said.

“Yes. We’ve got to find him, Gavin, and help him.”

“I’m not sure we can.”

“We’ve got to try. If you won’t help me, I’ll go after him alone.”

“No, you won’t,” Ramsay said quietly. “We’re together in this thing now. Wherever it leads.”

“You know what we’re going up against?”

“I know,” he said. “I saw it in there. But I’m not going to try to convince anybody else. I would suggest that you don’t either, unless you want to be locked in a rubber room.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t imagine we could get anybody to believe us. Not anybody who could help.”

“I’m afraid that’s it,” he said gently. “It will have to be you and me, Holly, and that’s it.”

She lay her head against his shoulder for a moment, then looked up at him. “I think I’d like to be kissed now,” she said.

He complied.

He was alone again.

Alone and running.

Malcolm stumbled blindly through the forest, tears blurring his vision. Only an ancient instinct saved him from repeated collisions with the trees. He ran on tirelessly with no thought of direction or destination. He knew only that he had to get away, far away from the terrible house where the men had done hurtful things to him. He blanked all thoughts from his mind except escape.

And he ran.

Alone and crying through the forest.

The daylight waned and night crept in and Malcolm ran on. The sky was tinted grey with the coming dawn when he finally dropped sobbing to the ground. He had used up his youthful body, and in seconds he fell exhausted into a dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, it was night again. He was hungry. And he was cold. He still wore only the oversized pyjamas provided for him by Dr Pastory. Both top and bottom were ripped by thorns. The legs were soaked through by the dew.

His feet were bare, though remarkably uninjured after his wild run through the forest. Malcolm sat hugging his knees, and shivering. He pushed away the panic that nipped at him and willed himself to relax.

The smell of woodsmoke was in the air. Not the greasy smoke of the raging fire he remembered from the night of terror in Drago. This was small. Almost friendly. A campfire. There was the aroma of boiling coffee. Malcolm rose and tested the air. Where there was a campfire there were people. People meant food and clothing.

Malcolm followed the smell of the campfire, moving without sound through the trees. He heard the lapping of small waves as he approached a mountain lake. At a safe distance he stopped and hid himself among a cluster of fallen fir boughs. From there he silently watched the camp at the lake’s edge.

There was a tent and two men. The men sat across the fire from each other and talked with the familiarity of old friends. Their backpacks were leaned neatly against the trunk of a fir. The play of the flickering flames across their faces stirred in Malcolm memories of the drunken hunters who had killed his friend Jones. As the remembered rage returned, a growl built in his throat.

But watching these men, Malcolm sensed that they were not like those others. These were fishermen, not killers. They laughed easily together and talked with rough affection of the wives they had left behind for this weekend excursion. Malcolm’s anger subsided; the growl never left his throat.

It grew late and the fire crumbled into glowing coals. The men banked the dying fire carefully and laid out their sleeping bags.

“Funny, isn’t it,” said one. “Here we can stay up as late as we want, and I’m dead tired at nine o’clock.”

“It’s the mountain air,” said the other. “Anyway, we can get an early start in the morning. Get at the fish before they’ve had their coffee.”

“You going to sleep in the tent?”

“Nah, it’s too pretty out here. Nothing in these woods to worry about.”

“Except the Drago werewolves.”

Both men laughed. They crawled into their sleeping bags and soon fell silent.

Malcolm waited patiently until the snoring of the men assured him they were asleep. Then he stole down to their camp, placing his feet with care so there should not be the smallest sound.

His vision at night had always been nearly as sharp as in full daylight, and he quickly found the men’s supplies. Their backpacks still leaned against the fir. Malcolm opened the packs carefully and took only the clothing he needed -underwear, a woollen shirt, tough denim pants and warm jacket, heavy socks, and a pair of boots. Then selecting food he could carry easily, he slipped away.

He moved softly until he was far enough from the camp so the men would not be awakened, then he broke into a loping run. After a mile he stopped and rested and examined the things he had taken.

He ate a portion of the food and dressed himself in the men’s clothes, carefully burying the torn pyjamas. The clothes were too large for him, but he hitched up the trousers, and rolled up the cuffs of the shirt and jacket. He put on both pairs of thick socks under the boots. Then he moved on again. More slowly this time; he had to think, to plan.

The days passed. Malcolm knew he would have to leave the area. The town of Pinyon, the county of La Reina would never be safe for him again. Yet he had to return one more time. There was something he had to know.

He waited for a cloudy night when the moon and stars were hidden, then crept down from the hill behind the hospital. There were still searchers in the hills, but they were amateur woodsmen and easy to elude. There were no helicopters or organized parties as there had been when the doctor was killed. Several times Malcolm passed within yards of the searchers without being seen.

He found a vantage point from where he could see everyone who entered and left the building. There he waited. In the afternoon of the following day he saw the one he waited for. His friend. Holly Lang.

She walked up to the entrance of the building with the tall sheriff. They stopped to speak, then kissed briefly and Holly went inside. Malcolm watched with a mixture of unfamiliar emotions as the door closed behind Holly and the tall sheriff walked away. There was the joy of seeing Holly and knowing she was safe. But there was also the pain of knowing he could never go to her again. Because of what he was. Holly’s place was with people who were normal. People like the tall sheriff. Malcolm’s place was… Where?

*****

When night came again Malcolm left La Reina County for the last time and made his way to the coast above Ventura. There he left the forest and took to the highway. Hitching rides, he headed north.

In San Francisco he stopped for a time. In that city he found acceptance among the street people. Many of them were outcasts like himself. They asked no questions of him, and he offered no explanations.

There were times when powerful emotions and strange hungers took over his body, and he felt the changes coming upon him. At those times Malcolm would find a hidden spot in some alley or a field and there struggle against the strange transformation that he was just beginning to understand.