Creature (19 page)

He was having no trouble seeing, even though the moon was no more than a quarter full, and he moved easily, fatigue from the fight he only dimly remembered dissipating as he loped along the trail. At last he’d come to the boulder, and with an almost animal instinct, crouched low against it, his back pressed close to the stone. There he’d waited, and watched.

For a long time nothing happened, and then he’d seen a police car moving through the streets, disappearing toward the county hospital a half mile out of town. After a while the patrol car had come back, stopping briefly in a darkened parking lot. Then it began moving again, and a moment later another car joined it.

He was certain he knew where they were going, and was not surprised when they came to a stop on the now nearly deserted block where the fight had occurred.

They were hunting for him.

He shrank closer to the boulder.

   Wes Jenkins arrived at the scene of the fight only a few minutes after Dick Kennally. With him in the car were Joe Rankin, and in the screened-off back section of the black and white station wagon, Mitzi, the large police dog whose primary function had turned out to be keeping the night sergeant company during his normally boring shift. Tonight, though, Mitzi seemed to sense that something was happening, and as she leaped from the back of the station wagon, she barked eagerly.

Frank Kramer, Roy’s father, was already there, having walked the three blocks from his house after Wes Jenkins had called him.

“Roy says he took off that way,” Kramer said as the men gathered around him. He pointed across the street, and Wes Jenkins squatted down to snap a heavy leather lead to the collar around Mitzi’s neck.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what she can find.”

As Kramer and Jenkins led the dog across the street, the other two men got into the black and white station wagon. Joe Rankin took the wheel and Dick Kennally switched on the radio, tuning it to the frequency of the portable unit Kramer was carrying with him.

“She’s already got a scent,” Kramer’s voice crackled from a speaker a moment later. “She’s heading east.”

Joe Rankin put the car into gear, turned it around, and started slowly down the street, keeping abreast of the unseen men who were following the dog through the backyards.

“Turning north,” Kramer said a few seconds later. “We’re cutting across Pecos Drive.”

The pursuit went on, Kramer keeping the men in the car posted as to his position, Rankin doing his best to anticipate their moves. At last the cruiser was parked on the street a few yards from the footbridge, where Frank Kramer and Wes Jenkins were waiting for them. Mitzi, straining at the end of her leash, was struggling to reach the bridge itself.

Kennally and Rankin left the car and joined the two men already at the bridge.

“I don’t know,” Kramer said doubtfully, gazing up into the darkness on the other side of the bridge. “Why would he go up there? All that could happen to him is that he’d get lost.”

“Maybe Mitzi’s following a ’coon or something,” Jenkins suggested.

But Kennally shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s up there, and I don’t think he’s thinking straight. Come on.”

Taking the leash from Jenkins, Kennally started across the bridge. The dog, her nose close to the ground, whined eagerly. Mitzi didn’t so much as hesitate at the fork in the path on
the other end of the bridge. Instead, she started up the center trail, and Kennally heard a groan from Frank Kramer.

“Told you you were letting yourself go,” he said over his shoulder. “Maybe you’ll get lucky tonight and we can do five miles.”

As the streetlamps of the village faded away behind them, the men switched on flashlights and started up the trail, soon disappearing into the deep darkness of the woods.

   Jeff’s eyes flickered as he watched the flashlights approach. He could barely make out the shapes of the men hunting him, but he had seen the dog clearly when one of the lights briefly flashed across its lithe form.

He stayed by the rock for a moment, trying to decide what to do. But his mind was fuzzy and he couldn’t think clearly. Finally, following his instincts, he started uphill once again. Almost immediately the path grew sharply steeper, and within a few minutes his breath began to come in gasping pants. Still, he forced himself onward.

A few minutes later he missed his step and felt a sharp pain as he twisted his ankle. Stifling the yelp that rose in his throat, he lowered himself to the ground and rubbed at the injured joint. He rested there a moment, then heaved himself back up, resting all his weight on his good leg.

Gingerly, he tried to take a step forward.

He couldn’t walk.

   “He’d better be up here,” Frank Kramer groused fifteen minutes later. They had come out into a clearing on a bluff above town, and Mitzi was sniffing eagerly at the base of a large boulder. Kramer wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow and tried to catch his breath, silently promising himself that after tonight he’d get serious about the diet and exercise he’d been putting off for longer than he cared to admit.

The other three men, he noticed, didn’t even seem to be breathing heavily.

“He’s up here,” Kennally replied, maliciously shining the light on Kramer’s face. “Look how Mitzi’s acting. Wouldn’t surprise me if Jeff sat here for a while, watching us hunt for him.”

“How can I look with that damned light in my eyes?” Kramer muttered. Then: “How long do we keep looking? He could be anywhere up here.”

Kennally tilted his head in a gesture of indifference. “Anywhere he could be, Mitzi can find him.”

The dog had abandoned the boulder now and was once again pulling at the lead as she tried to scramble up the steep trail. The four men followed her for another ten minutes, until she stopped abruptly, her whole body rigid as she stared into the darkness ahead.

Kennally played his light over the trail, and then all four men saw what they were looking for.

He was crouched down by another large boulder, and in the glare of the flashlight his eyes seemed to glint unnaturally. As he gazed silently at the boy, a strange thought flitted into Dick Kennally’s mind.

A cornered animal. He looks just like a cornered animal
.

“It’s okay, Jeff,” he said out loud. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to take you back to town.”

Jeff LaConner said nothing, but in the glow of the flashlight, they could see him press closer to the shelter of the boulder.

Kennally hesitated a moment, then spoke again, his voice low. “Okay, you guys. Let’s spread out and move in slowly. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

Joe Rankin glanced at him curiously. “Hurt? Christ, Dick, he’s not Charlie Manson. He’s just a kid.”

But Kennally shook his head, Martin Ames’s words fresh in his mind. “Just do what I tell you, all right?”

Kramer and Rankin moved off to the left and Wes Jenkins
slipped into the woods to the right as Kennally moved slowly up the trail, keeping his flashlight trained on Jeff LaConner. The boy’s eyes never blinked, but his head began to move in a strange weaving pattern that reminded Kennally of a snake preparing to strike. Out of the corner of his eye he kept track of the men’s progress, and when they had fanned out, cutting off any possible avenue of escape for the boy, he signaled them to move forward.

He began talking to Jeff, speaking in the soothing tones he’d use on a frightened animal.

As Frank Kramer drew close, Jeff suddenly struck out with his right fist, clipping Kramer on the shoulder, sending him reeling back. “Shit!” he heard Kramer exclaim. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

But Jeff didn’t hear, his eyes now fixed warily on Wes Jenkins.

Then, as Joe Rankin approached from the opposite side, Kennally saw their opportunity. “Now!” he snapped. Dropping the light in his hand, he leaped forward.

Jeff, ignoring the injury to his ankle, scrambled to his feet and pressed closer to the boulder. His fists began to lash out as the three men closed on him.

It finally took all four of them to subdue the furiously fighting teenager, and in the end they had to carry him back down the hillside, his hands cuffed together behind his back, his ankles manacled with a second set of handcuffs. Even as they carried him across the footbridge and worked him into the back of the station wagon, he was still thrashing in their arms, twisting wildly as he tried to escape their grasp.

From his throat emerged a series of feral howls, like the anguished cries of a coyote whose foot has been clamped in a trap.

12

“What the hell’s wrong with him?” Frank Kramer asked. He glanced nervously over his shoulder. In the rear compartment of the station wagon Jeff LaConner was still struggling against the handcuffs that manacled his hands and feet. His right ankle was swelling rapidly, and though the metal band dug deeply into his flesh, he was apparently oblivious to the pain of his injury. He was curled up tightly in the confining space behind the heavy wire mesh, but as Kramer watched, the boy suddenly wrenched himself around and his feet lashed out at the barrier itself. The mesh bulged slightly, but held firm. In Jeff’s throat a strange, keening wail was building.

“Some kind of mental breakdown,” Dick Kennally replied tersely. They were through the town itself now, and the road narrowed as they headed east toward Rocky Mountain High, where a few lights glowed dimly in the darkness. He grimaced as he heard Jeff’s feet crash once more into the mesh of the barrier. Then Mitzi, sitting up on the seat between Kramer and Joe Rankin, began barking. “Can’t you shut that dog up?” Kennally asked.

“It’s better than listening to the racket the boy’s making,”
Rankin replied sourly. Then, catching Kennally’s glare in the rearview mirror, he laid a hand on the dog’s bristling hackles. “Easy, Mitzi,” he murmured. “Nothing to worry about.”

Mitzi’s barking subsided to a low growl, but as the station wagon gained speed and they left the town behind, Rankin could still feel the tension in the dog’s muscles.

Kennally slowed the car and made the turn into the narrow driveway that led to the sports center. He sounded the horn, but even as its blare momentarily drowned out Jeff’s anguished wails, the gates were beginning to swing open. Kennally waited impatiently, then gunned the station wagon through the gap even before the gates had opened fully. As he sped through, an attendant signaled him to go around to the back of the building.

He braked to a stop in front of an open door. The harsh brilliance of halogen floodlights cut through the darkness, and Kennally had to shield his eyes as he stepped out of the car. The others were on the driveway now, too, but Mitzi had remained where she was, her watchful eyes on Jeff LaConner.

The white glare of the lights shone brightly through the car’s windows, and the sudden illumination seemed somehow to have affected the boy, for suddenly he was lying still, his eyes clamped shut, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle—as if he were trying to escape the light.

Martin Ames, wearing a white lab coat unbuttoned down the front, only partially covering his flannel shirt, stepped out of the door and peered into the station wagon. His lips tightened into a grim line, then he glanced at Kennally. “How bad was it, Dick?”

Kennally shrugged, as if to belittle the struggle that had taken place on the hillside half an hour earlier. “Well, let’s just say he wasn’t too interested in coming with us,” he finally answered. He gestured to the other three men. “Let’s get him inside.”

Joe Rankin carefully raised the station wagon’s rear door.
Almost instantly Jeff twisted himself around and his legs lashed out. Rankin dodged away from the boy’s flailing kicks, and with Wes Jenkins’s help, pinioned his legs to the floor of the car. A moment later Kennally and Kramer had grasped Jeff’s arms. With the boy still struggling to free himself, they carried him inside the building.

“In there,” Marty Ames instructed, nodding to an open door a few yards down the hall. The four policemen carried Jeff into a small room, its white walls shadowlessly illuminated by overhead fluorescent tubes. In the center of the room stood a large table with heavy mesh straps laid neatly across each of its ends. As two attendants moved the straps aside, the officers placed Jeff LaConner on the table. The attendants, working quickly, bound Jeff’s legs tightly to the table, immobilizing them. Only then did Kennally remove the leg manacles.

The bruise on Jeff’s sprained right ankle, swollen large now, had turned an ugly purple, and there was a deep mark where the metal of the cuff had cut into his damaged flesh.

“Okay,” Ames said. “Let’s get the cuffs off his wrists.”

As soon as his arms were free, Jeff sat bolt upright and began flailing out at the men around him, his eyes glowering angrily in the bright light. Kennally and Jenkins moved in behind him, each of them grasping one of his shoulders, and managed to force him down, holding him still while his arms, like his legs, were secured to the table with the heavy straps.

Only when they were certain Jeff was immobile did the two men step back. Their foreheads were beaded with sweat, and Jenkins’s arms were trembling with the strain of fighting against Jeff’s strength.

“All right,” Ames said. “I think we can take it from here.” He moved to a small cabinet against the wall opposite the door and picked up one of several hypodermic needles laid out on its white enamel surface. One of the orderlies cut the sleeve of Jeff’s shirt away from his arm, and Ames slid the needle expertly into a vein.

The drug seemed to have no effect whatever on the boy, whose eyes, wild and glazed, darted about the room as if still seeking a means of escape.

It wasn’t until Ames had administered the third shot that Jeff’s struggles finally began to abate. As the group around him watched, the strength seemed to drain out of him. Finally, his head dropped back onto the hard metal of the table and his eyes closed.