The Ultimate Werewolf (31 page)

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Lisa went around back, where the street lights did no good at all. She clicked on her flashlight, but shielded the glow with her hand. There were several doors back here, as well as delivery docks with corrugated metal doors that would slide upward. She tried one of the doors and found it locked. She had to climb up onto one of the docks to try the second door, which was right next to one of the corrugated metal doors. This one was locked, as well. She took a look at the metal door, and saw that the padlock that locked it was in place. She moved to the other end of the building to try another door, all the while listening intently for sounds inside the building. She wished she could use her portable radio to contact Frank, but if he was inside the noise would give him away.

After she checked the third door she'd start checking windows. She took a look at the sky and then tried the handle of the third door.

▼▼▼

This was risky. It was pitch dark inside, and Frank dared not use his flashlight for fear of giving himself away—that is, if there was even anyone inside.

He moved carefully, feeling ahead of himself with his hands and feet. He didn't want to give himself away by knocking over a crate or a set of shelves. What he couldn't have anticipated was the huge grease spot on the floor ahead of him. When his right foot landed on it, it slid right out from under him, dumping him unceremoniously on his ass in a puddle of grease. He managed to hold onto his flashlight with his left hand, but his gun slid from his right hand when he tried to use it to break his fall. He could hear the weapon skitter across the floor into the darkness like a frightened rat.

Of course, he'd made a fearsome racket, and suddenly he was spotlighted by a couple of flashlight beams.

"See?" a voice said, with great satisfaction, "I tole you I heard some- thin'."

"So you did. Pudge," another voice said. "Looks like we got us a cop."

"What we gonna do with 'em, Jerry?" Pudge asked.

"I dunno," Jerry said. "Lemme think."

Frank was holding his greasy right hand up to try to shield his eyes from the flashlights. He couldn't see any faces clearly, but from the sound of their voices the perps were young, probably eighteen to twenty. He wouldn't have been worried if he'd been dealing with older, more experienced burglars. The young ones were just too unpredictable.

"Pauly, get the front door," Jerry said.

"Right."

"Jam something up against it so it stays closed. We don't want his partner surprisin' us."

"Right."

"Stupid," Jerry said, "keep an eye out for his partner."

"Uh . . . okay, Jerry."

Frank managed to identify the holders of the flashlights as Jerry and Pudge. Jerry, apparently the leader of the group, was on his left. Frank tightened his grip on his flashlight, which was behind him and out of the light.

"Get up, cop," Jerry said.

"Jerry, is it?" Frank said. "You're the leader here, right?"

"That's right. What's it to you?"

"Jerry . . ." Frank was trying to dig his heels into the floor for leverage, but they kept sliding on the grease. "Listen, Jerry, you don't want to mess with a cop."

"No," Jerry said, "you're right, I don't want to mess with a cop—I wanna
fuck
with you! Now get up!"

"I'm trying," Frank said, "but it's not easy in this grease."

Frank hadn't yet seen a gun, or any weapon, for that matter. If he could get to his feet he could put the flashlight to good use. He hadn't been lying to Jerry, though. It was very difficult to gain enough purchase on the floor even to get to his feet. He had to do it, though. He was too vulnerable sitting there on his ass.

"I shut the door," Pauly said, returning, "and look what I found."

Jerry shone his flashlight on what Pauly was holding, and when Frank saw it, his blood ran cold.

It was his own gun.

Where the hell was Lisa?

▼▼▼

Outside, in the back, Lisa had determined that all the doors were locked. She was checking windows when she thought she saw a light inside. It was just a flash from the window she was looking through, so she moved to another window, and then another until the light became constant. She saw two flashlights illuminating something on the floor. That something was her partner.

She started to look around for something to pry a door open with when the area was suddenly lit up by light from the full moon.

She looked up and saw that the moon had broken through the clouds.

"Jesus," she said. Her heart began to race, and she began to sweat profusely.

She turned to the door and started kicking it as she grabbed with shaking hands for the radio on her belt.

"Ten thirteen!" she shouted. "This is six-seven Henry! Ten thirteen!"

She wanted to say more, but the radio fell from her palsied hands. . . .

▼▼▼

Inside the building the pounding was very loud. Jerry, Pauly and Pudge all turned to look in the direction of the sound. At the same time the fourth perp, Stupid, started yelling. "There's another cop in the back!"

"The back doors are locked—" Jerry started to say, but he stopped when he realized that they had all taken their eyes off the cop.

"Shit!" he said, turning back towards Frank, who was in the act of throwing his flashlight.

Jerry jerked the trigger of Frank's gun . . .

The beast heard the sound of the shot. It penetrated through layers and years of bestiality, and when the second shot sounded it threw itself against the door that only moments earlier Lisa Bain had been kick
ing.. .

Frank floundered in the center of the puddle of grease as his flashlight struck Pudge in the center of his forehead. As Pudge's eyes rolled up and he fell to the ground Jerry aimed the gun at Frank, holding it with two hands this time so he wouldn't miss.

"Die, fucker!"

Frank Grey's throat closed, and he held up one hand to fend off the bullet that was surely coming his way to end his life.

Before Jerry could pull the trigger the back door exploded inward, coming completely off its hinges.

"What the fuck—" Jerry said.

Jerry turned and saw a huge, hulking form lift the two-hundred- pound Stupid completely off his feet. He watched as the perp was literally thrown through the air into the darkness, where he landed with a loud crash.

"Jesus," Pauly yelled, "Jesus, Jerry, what the hell is it?"

Jerry didn't know, but he swung his flashlight and shined the light so he could find out. When he saw it, he wished he hadn't done so.

The light illuminated the face of a beast. Covered with brown and silver hair, a long snout, a mouthful of sharp teeth, yellow, feral eyes. It looked like a wolf, but it was standing upright.

"Jesus, Jerry—" Pauly said, but the beast swung a hand—a
paw
—at him, cutting him off in midsentence. Blood flew through the air as sharp claws slashed Pauly across the throat and chest.

A spray of blood landed on Jerry's face and chest, shocking Jerry into action. He'd frozen in his tracks at the sight of the beast, and now he raised the gun he still held in two hands and pulled the trigger as the beast advanced on him. He
knew
he had hit it, but the animal who walked like a man continued to come at him. He pulled the trigger again . . . and again . . . and again . . . until the hammer struck nothing but empty chambers.

The beast swung an arm, and Jerry's life ended with sharp abruptness. The pain was fleeting, and then he crumpled to the floor as if his bones had melted.

That left only the beast, and Frank Grey.

Frank slid and staggered his way to his feet and finally extricated himself from the grease pond he'd been floundering in for what seemed like hours.

He looked at the beast, who was standing still, head cocked, studying him.

He extended his hand to the beast. This part always frightened him the most, because he always feared that one of these days recognition would not dawn in those feral eyes—and at the same time, he always knew it would.

He heard the sirens and knew that Lisa must have called a ten-thirteen, Officer needs assistance.

"Come on," he said to the beast, "out. I'll cover it. Go on!"

As the beast went out the back door he started preparing his story. He always covered for her, always managed to make it believable. He often suspected that the others knew—their fellow cops, the patrol supervisors, even the Captain—because they always accepted his "explanations," without question—questioning looks, yes, but nothing voiced, not after the first couple of incidents almost three years ago.

Although the others may have protected their secret, it was Frank who had first had to accept the truth about Lisa Bain, and then do his best to protect her from discovery.

After all, they
were
partners.

Bill Pronzini

▼▼▼

Listen to me! You'd better listen.

You fools, you think you know so much. Space flight, computer technology, genetic engineering . . . you take them all for granted now. But
once your kind scoffed at them, refused to believe in the possibility of
their existence. You were proven wrong.

You no longer believe in Us. We will prove you wrong.

We exist. We have existed as long as you. We are not superstition, We
are not folklore, We are not an imaginary terror. We are the real terror,
the true terror. We are all your nightmares come true.

Believe it. Believe me. I am the proof.

We look like men, We walk and talk like men, in your presence We act
like men. But We are not men. Believe that too.

We are the ancient evil . .
.

▼▼▼

They might never have found him if Hixon hadn't gone off to take a leak.

For three days they'd been searching the wooded mountain country above the valley where their sheep grazed. Tramping through heavy timber and muggy late-summer heat laden with stinging flies and mosquitoes; following the few man-made and animal trails, cutting new trails of their own. They'd Hushed several deer, come across the rotting carcass of a young elk. spotted a brown bear and followed its spoor until they lost it at one of the network of streams. But that was all. No wolf or mountain lion sign. Hixon and DeVries kept saying it had to be a wolf or a mountain cat that had been killing the sheep, Larrabee wasn't so sure. And yet, what the hell else could it be?

Then, on the morning of the fourth day, while they were climbing among deadfall pine along the shoulder of a ridge, Hixon went to take his leak. And came back after a few minutes all red-faced and excited, with his fly still half unzipped.

"I seen something back in there," he said. "Goddamnedest thing, down a ravine."

"What'd you see?" Larrabee asked him. He'd made himself the leader; he had lost the most sheep and he was the angriest.

"Well, I think it was a man."

"You think?"

"He was gone before I could use the glasses."

"Hunter, maybe," DeVries said.

Hixon wagged his head. "Wasn't no hunter. No ordinary man, either."

"The hell you say. What was he then?"

"I don't know," Hixon said. "I never seen the like."

"Dressed how?"

"Wasn't dressed, not in clothes. I swear he was wearing some kind of animal skins. And he had hair all over his head and face, long shaggy hair."

"Bigfoot," DeVries said and laughed.

"Dammit, Hank, I ain't kidding. He was your size, mine."

"Sun and shadows playing tricks."

"No, by God. I know what I saw."

Larabee asked impatiently, "Where'd he go?"

"Down the ravine. There's a creek down there."

"He see or hear you?"

"Don't think so. I was quiet."

DeVries laughed again. "Quiet pisser, that's you."

Larabee adjusted the pack that rode his shoulders; ran one hand back and forth along the stock of his .300 Savage rifle. His mouth was set tight. "All right," he said, "we'll go have a look."

"Hell, Ben," DeVries said, "you don't reckon it's some
man
been killing our sheep?"

"Possible, isn't it? I never did agree with you and Charley. No wolf or cat takes sheep down that way, tears them apart. And don't leave any sign coming or going."

"No man does either."

"No ordinary man. No sane man."

"Jesus, Ben . . ."

"Come on," Larrabee said. "We're wasting time."

▼▼▼

. . . How many of Us are there? Not many. A few
hundred ... We
have never been more than a few hundred. Scattered across continents. In
cities and small towns, in wildernesses. Hot climes and cold. Moving,
always moving, never too long in one place. Hiding among you, the bold
and clever ones. Hiding alone, the ones like me.

This is our legacy:

Hiding.

Hunting.

Hungering.

You think you've been hungry but you haven't. You don't know what
it means to be hungry all the time, to have the blood-taste in your mouth
and the blood-craving in your brain and the blood-heat in your loins.

But some of you will find out. Many of you, someday. Unless you
listen and believe.

Each new generation of Us is bolder than the last.

And hungrier . . .

▼▼▼

The ravine was several hundred yards long, narrow, crowded with trees and brush. The stream was little more than a trickle among sparkly mica rocks. They followed it without cutting any sign of the man Hixon had seen, if a man was what he'd seen; without hearing anything except for the incessant hum of insects, the yammering cries of jays and magpies.

The banks of the ravine shortened, sloped gradually upward into level ground: a small ragged meadow ringed by pine and spruce, strewn with brush and clumps of summer-browned ferns. They stopped there to rest, to wipe sweat-slick off their faces.

"No damn sign," Hixon said. "How could he come through there without leaving any sign?"

DeVries said, "He doesn't exist, that's how."

"I tell you I saw him. I know what I saw."

Larrabee paid no attention to them. He had been scanning with his naked eye; now he lifted the binoculars that hung around his neck and scanned with those. He saw nothing anywhere. Not even a breeze stirred the branches of the trees.

"Which way now?" Hixon asked him.

Larrabee pointed to the west, where the terrain rose to a bare knob. "Up there. High ground."

"You ask me," DeVries said, "we're on a snipe hunt."

"You got any better suggestions?"

"No. But even if there is somebody around here, even if we find him
...
I still don't believe it's a man we're after. All those sheep with their throats ripped out, hunks of the carcasses torn off and carried
away ...
a man wouldn't do that."

"Not even a lunatic?"

". . . What kind of lunatic butchers sheep?"

"Psycho," Hixon said. "Blown out on drugs, maybe."

Larrabee nodded. He'd been thinking about it as they tracked. "Or an ex-Vietnam vet, or one of those back-to-nature dropouts. They come into wild country like this, alone, and it gets to this one or that one and they go off their heads."

DeVries didn't want to believe it. "I still say it's an animal, a wolf or a cat."

"Man goes crazy in the wilderness," Larrabee said, "that's just what he turns into—an animal, a damned wolf on the prowl."

He wiped his hands on his trousers, took a drier grip on the Savage, and led the way toward higher ground.

▼▼▼

. .
.
We are
not all the same. Your stupid folklore says We are but We're
not. Over the
centuries We have undergone genetic changes, just as you
have; We have
evolved. You are children of your time. So are We.

My hunger
is for animal flesh, animal blood. Sheep. Cattle. Dogs.
Smaller
creatures with fur and pulsing heart. They are my prey. One
here,
two there, ten in this county, fifty or hundred in that state. You think
it is one
animal killing another—natural selection, survival of the fittest.
You are right
but you are also wrong.

Believe it.

We are not all
the same. Others of Us have different hungers. Human
flesh, human
blood—yes. But that isn't all. We have evolved; our tastes
have altered,
grown discriminating. Male flesh and male blood. Female.

Child.

And not always do We desire the soft flesh of the throat, the bright I
sweet blood from the jugular. And not always do We use our teeth to
open our victims. And not always do We feed in a frenzy.

I am one of the old breed—not the most fearsome of Us. And sickened
by the things I'm compelled to do; that is why I'm warning you. The new
breed ...
it is with the new breed that the ultimate terror lies.

We are not all the same . . .

Larrabee stood on the bare knob, staring through his binoculars, trying to sharpen the focus. Below, across a hollow choked with brush and deadfall, a grassy, rock-littered slope lifted toward timber. The sun was full on the slope and the hot noon-glare struck fiery glints from some of the rocks, created thick shadows around some of the others, making it hard for him to pick out details. Nothing moved over there except the sun-dazzle. It was just a barren slope—and yet there was something about it . . .

Up near the top, where the timber started: rocks thickly bunched in tall grass, the way the brush was drawn in around that one massive outcrop. Natural or not? He just couldn't tell for sure from this distance.

Beside him Hixon asked, "What is it, Ben? You see something over there?"

"Maybe." Larrabee gave him the glasses, told him where to look. Pretty soon he said, "Seem to you somebody might've pulled that brush in around the base of the outcrop?"

"Could be, yeah. That damn sun . . ."

"Let me see," DeVries said, but he couldn't tell either.

They went down into the hollow, Larrabee moving ahead of the other two. The deadfall tangle was like a bonepile, close-packed, full of j jutting points and splintered edges; it took him ten minutes to find a way across to the slope. He'd been carrying his rifle at port-arms, but as ; he started upslope he extended the muzzle in front of him, slid his finger inside the trigger guard.

The climb was easy enough. They went up three abreast, not fast, not slow. A magpie came swooping down at them, screaming; DeVries i cursed and slashed at it with his rifle. Larrabee didn't turn his head. His eyes, unblinking, were in a lock-stare on the rocks and brush near the timber above.

They were within fifty yards of the outcrop when a little breeze
kicked Lip, blew downhill.
As
soon as it touched them they stopped, all
three at once.

"Jesus," Hixon said, "you smell that?"

"Wolf smell," DeVries said.

"Worse than that. Something dead up there . . ."

Larrabee said, "Shut up, both of you." His finger was on the Savage's trigger now. He drew a breath and began to climb again, more warily than before.

The breeze had died, but after another thirty yards the smell was in his nostrils without it. Hixon had been right: death smell. It seemed to mingle with the heat, to form a miasma that made his eyes burn. Behind him he heard DeVries gag, mutter something, spit.

Somewhere nearby the magpie was still screeching at them. But no longer flying around where they were—as if it were afraid to get too close to that outcrop.

Larrabee climbed to within twenty feet of it. That was close enough for him to see that the brush had been dragged in around its base, all right. Some of the smaller rocks looked to have been carried here, too, and set down as part of the camouflage arrangement.

Hixon and DeVries had stopped a few paces below him. In a half- whisper DeVries asked, "You see anything, Ben?"

Larrabee didn't answer. He was working saliva through a dry mouth, staring hard at the dark foul-smelling opening of a cave.