George England - Beyond the Great Oblivion

“There's another!” he whispered, a strange, choked feeling all around his heart. “And look--three more! They're working in ahead of us. Here, I'll have a shot at 'em, for luck!”

A howl followed the second spurt of flame in the dusk. One of the gray, gaunt portents of death licked, yapping, at his flank.

“Got you, all right!” gibed Stern. “The kind o' game you're after isn't as easy as you think, you devils!”

But now from the other side, and from behind them, the slinking creatures gathered. Their eyes glowed, gleamed, burned softly yellow through the dusk of the great wilderness that once had been the city's heart. The two last humans in the world could even catch the flick of ivory fangs, the lolling wet redness of tongues--could hear the soughing breath through those infernal jaws.

Stern raised the rifle again, then lowered it.

“No use,” said he quite calmly. “God knows how many there are. I might use up all our ammunition and still leave enough of 'em to pick our bones. They'll be all around us in a minute; they'll be worrying at us, dragging us down! Come on--come on, the boat!”

“Light a torch, Allan. They're afraid of fire.”

“Grand idea, little girl!”

Even as he answered he was scrabbling up dry-kye. Came the rasp of his flint.

“Give 'em a few with the automatic, while I get this going!” he commanded.

The gun spat twice, thrice. Then rose a snapping, snarling wrangle. Off there in the gloom a hideous turmoil grew.

It ended in screams of pain and rage, suddenly throttled, choked, and torn to nothing. A worrying, rending, gnashing told the story of the wounded wolf's last moment.

Stern sprang up, a dry flaming branch of resinous fir in his hand. The rifle he thrust back into the bag.

“Ate him, still warm, eh?” he cried. “Fine! And five shots left in the gun. You won't miss, Beta! You can't!”

Forward they struggled once more.

“Gad, we'll hang to this bag now , whatever happens!” panted Stern, jerking it savagely off a jagged stub. “Five minutes more and we'll--arrh! would you?”

The flaring torch he dashed full at a grisly muzzle that snapped and slavered at his legs. To their nostrils the singe of burned hair wafted. Yelping, the beast swerved back.

But others ran in and in at them; and now the torch was failing. Both of them shouted and struck; and the revolver stabbed the night with fire.

Pandemonium rose in the forest. Cries, howls, long wails and snuffing barks blent with the clicking of ivories, the pad-pad-pad of feet, the crackling of the underbrush.

All around, wolves. On either side, behind, in front, the sliding, bristling, sneaking, suddenly bold horrors of the wild.

And the ring was tightening; the attack was coming, now, more and more concertedly. The swinging torch could not now drive them back so fast, so far.

Strange gleams shot against the tree-trunks, wavered through the dusk, lighted the harsh, rage-contracted face of the man, fell on the laboring, skin-clad figure of the woman as they still fought on and on with their precious burden, hoping for a glimpse of water, for the river, and salvation.

“Take--a tree?” gasped Beatrice.

“And maybe stay there a week? And use up--all our ammunition? Not yet--no--no! The boat!”

On, ever on, they struggled.

A strange, unnatural exhilaration filled the girl, banishing thoughts of peril, sending the blood aglow through every vein and fiber of her wonderful young body.

Stern realized the peril more keenly. At any moment now he understood that one of the devils in gray might hurl itself at the full throat of Beatrice or at his own.

And once the taste of blood lay on those crimson tongues--good-by!

“The boat--the boat!” he shouted, striking right and left like mad with the smoky, half-extinguished flare.

“There--the river!” suddenly cried Beatrice.

Through the columns of the forest she had seen at last the welcome gleam of water, starlit, beautiful and calm. Stern saw it, too. A demon now, he charged the snarling ring. Back he drove them; he turned, seized the bag, and again plunged desperately ahead.

Together he and Beatrice crashed out among the willows and the alders on the sedgy shore, with the vague, shifting, bristling horror of the wolf-pack at their heels.

“Here, beat 'em off while I cut the cord--while I get the bag in--and shove off!” panted Stern.

She seized the torch from his hand. Up he snatched the rifle again, and with a pointblank volley flung three of the grays writhing and yelling all in the mud and weeds and trampled cattails on the river verge.

Down he threw the gun. He turned and swept the dark shore, there between the ruins of the wharves, with a keen reconnoitering glance.

What? What was this?

There stood the aged willow to which the banca had been tied. But the boat--where was it?

With a cry Stern leaped to the tree. His clutching hands fumbled at the trunk.

“My God! Here's--here's the cord!” he stammered. “But it's--been cut! The boat-- the boat's gone! ”

An hour later, from the gnarled branches of the willow--up into which Stern had fairly flung her, and where he had himself clambered with the beasts ravening at his legs--the two sole survivors of the human race watched the glowering eyes that dotted the velvet gloom.

“I estimate a couple of hundred, all told,” judged Allan. “Odd we never ran across any of them before to-night. Must be some kind of a migration under way--maybe some big shift of game, of deer, or buffalo, or what-not. But then, in that case, they wouldn't be so starved, so dead-set on white meat as they seem to be.”

Beta shifted her place on a horizontal limb.

“It's awfully hard for a soft wood,” she remarked. “Do you think we'll have to stay here long, dear?”

“That depends. I don't see that the fifteen we've killed since roosting here have served as any terrible examples to the others. And we're about twenty cartridges to the bad. They're not worth it, these devils. We've got to save our ammunition for something edible till I can get my shop to running and begin making my own powder. No; must be there's some other and better way.”

“But what?” asked the girl. “We're safe enough here, but we're not getting any nearer home--and I'm so hungry!”

“Same here,” Stern coincided. “And the lunch was all in the boat; worse luck! Who the deuce could have cut her loose? I thought we'd pretty effectually cleared out those Hinkmatinks, or whatever the Horde consisted of. But evidently something, or somebody, is still left alive with a terrific grudge against us, or an awful longing for navigation.”

“Was the cord broken or cut?”

“I'll see.”

Stern clambered to a lower branch. With the trigger-guard of his rifle he was able to catch the cord. All about the trunk, meanwhile, the wolves leaped snarling. The fetid animal smell of them was strong upon the air--that, and the scent of blood and raw meat, where they had feasted on the slain.

With the severed cord, Allan climbed back to where Beatrice sat.

“Hold the rifle, will you?” asked he. A moment, and by the quick showers of sparks that issued from his flint and steel, he was examining the leather thong.

“ Cut! ”

“Cut? But then, then--”

“No tide or wind to blame. Some intelligence, even though rudimentary, has been at work here--is at work--opposed to us.”

“But what?”

“No telling. There may be more things in this world yet than either of us dream. Perhaps we committed a very grave error to leave the apparently peaceful little nook we've got, up there on the Hudson, and tackle this place again. But who could ever have thought of anything like this after that terrible slaughter?”