Gary Brandner - The Howling III

"But tomorrow, bright and early, rain or shine, we head for Pinyon, hear?"

"Whatever you say, Jones." The boy sat on the bed and began happily lacing the blood-caked shoe on to the foot that by all rights should have been a mangled stump.

"Tomorrow," Jones repeated in his deepest no-nonsense voice. "Tomorrow we hike."

It was four days before they started for Pinyon. During that time the boy had not only repaired the stubborn leak over the door that had plagued Jones for a year, he had cleaned out the weeds from what remained of Beverly's flower garden, and helped Jones straighten up his vegetable plot. He had chopped and stacked a month's worth of firewood and brought back pails of wild blackberries and pine-nuts from the nearby woods.

More than all that, he gave Jones somebody to talk to.

The big man had forgotten how good the sound of another human voice was. Even better, another ear to listen, for in fact the boy talked very little, while Jones almost never stopped. Jones talked about how it was living off the land. He talked about his own memories as a boy. He talked about the turbulent time of his young manhood. He talked about Beverly. And he talked about John.

The boy listened. He listened, and whether he fully understood or not, he nodded at the right places, asked the right questions, and agreed when it was important to agree. He still claimed to have no memory of his own past, and Jones did not press him. If it were true, there was nothing Jones could do about it, and if the boy were concealing something, that was none of Jones's business.

On the morning of the fifth day Jones was wearing his heavy boots and buckling up his backpack when the boy awoke. When the boy started to speak the big man held up a massive hand to silence him.

"Before you say a word, forget it. Today's the day."

"Aw, Jones…"

"No. I set out a pair of boots there that might fit you if you put on three or four pairs of socks. Don't worry, I've got plenty. You wash up and I'll get some breakfast going."

They ate hot biscuits with butter and blackberry jam, and washed them down with some of Jones's powerful coffee. The boy made no more protests, but as they left the cabin and were halfway across the clearing he stopped to look back.

"It was a good time, Jones."

The big man waited until the boy was ready, then they turned and walked together into the heavy forest. "Yes," he said. "It was a good time."

Abe Craddock and Curly Vane were mad as hell. They had caught something in their trap almost a week ago and some sonofabitch had let it out. No animal would ever get itself out of one of those traps. It could very well have been one of those things from Drago. There were still a few of them in the woods. They had heard the howling.

What made it even worse, whoever freed the animal had deliberately ruined the trap. Those babies didn't come cheap. You couldn't get them at a regular sporting goods store. So as they tramped through the woods for the fifth straight day of looking for the trap robber, Craddock and Vane were mad as hell.

Moreover, they were drunk. Each of them had put away enough Jim Beam to knock out a normal man. But Craddock and Vane were experienced drinkers. Over the years they had built up a tolerance for the stuff as they tore up their livers.

Abe Craddock was a beefy man with a perpetually red face and an ass that stretched the seat of his jeans. Curly Vane was thinner, less talkative, and if anything, meaner than his companion. The two of them, when they got to drinking, were as welcome around La Reina County as the Mexican fruit fly.

It was Curly who heard the sounds in the woods off to their left. He held up a hand to warn Craddock, and the two of them stood there holding their breath, listening.

Something was definitely moving through the brush. Something big.

"Bear?" Craddock said in a hoarse whisper.

"Maybe." Both men brought their guns up to ready.

Curly Vane carried a heavy old Winchester deer rifle that could put a copper-jacketed slug through a brick wall. Craddock, whose marksmanship was poor, favoured a 12-gauge shotgun that he loaded with 00 buckshot. Anything he came close to with that cannon was as good as dead.

They waited. The sound of their own heavy breathing muffled the noise of whatever was approaching through the brush. They had never encountered anything bigger or more dangerous than a deer in these woods. Whatever was coming toward them now, they convinced themselves, was no deer.

The brush parted twenty yards away with a suddenness that made both men jump. A fierce, hairy head rose above the low chapparal and glared.

"Bear!" shouted Craddock.

Curly Vane squeezed off three shots.

Craddock's shotgun thundered.

The rifle slugs pounded into Jones's chest like three rapid hammer blows. For a second all he felt was the impact, then came the pain as the cold air hit the tunnels the bullets had bored into his lungs. He roared and started for the hunters. His only thought through the pain was to get his hands on the rotten bastards. Then the load of Craddock's buckshot blew away most of his head, and Jones's pain was over.

"Oh, fuck me, it was a man!" Curly moaned.

"What'd you shoot for?" Craddock said. "I wouldn't of shot if you didn't."

"Shut up, you stupid fuck. We got to get out of here."

Craddock seized him by the arm. "Hold it! There's another one."

"Oooh, shit!"

They turned back and saw that there was sure enough a companion with the man they had killed. More of a boy than a man. He knelt over the bloody remains of the big man sobbing. Then he raised his head and looked straight at Craddock and Vane. Curly Vane brought up the Winchester.

"What are you doing?" Craddock said.

"We've got to kill him, you dumb fuck. He seen us."

Vane's rifle cracked. A branch snapped off inches from the boy's face. For one frozen instant the boy stared at the hunters. His lips spread in a snarl unlike anything the men had seen on a human face. Then he was up and running.

Curly fired again, but the boy was already lost in the brush. They could hear his feet pounding the carpet of fir needles. He was fast.

"Come on," Curly urged. "We've got to catch him."

The two hunters crashed through the brush, heedless of the branches that whipped their faces and tore at their clothing. Ahead they caught glimpses of the fleeing boy. Their only thought was to kill.

There was yet another witness to the killing of Jones. After many weeks of searching out the scattered survivors of Drago, Derak, the leader, had finally found Malcolm. He saw him leave the cabin with the big man and start for the town. Derak had paced them silently, awaiting his chance to move in and take the boy. He knew of Jones, and had no wish to harm the big man. But Malcolm had to be brought back to his own kind.

Then the other two had approached. The drunken men with their guns. The scent of them alone, their sweat, the whiskey on their breath, had been enough to start the change in Derak. He felt the bones shift and crack and reshape themselves under his skin. He stripped away the restraining clothes and dropped silently to all fours. His jaw worked silently as the teeth grew to their terrible length, strong, yellow, and sharp as knives.

Without warning the men had fired and Jones fell. Malcolm dropped beside him, and for a moment Derak thought the boy was going to go through the full change for the first time in his life. If it happened before he was prepared, it could be devastating. But the boy's body was not quite ready. He rose and fled.

The men fired at him and gave chase.

The ancient rage of his kind welled up in Derak. He flexed the powerful muscles under the thick coat of coarse fur and bounded after them.