The Wolfen (24 page)

Then the grip faded.

She slumped back to a sitting position on the bedframe and pointed her pistol at the broken door, at the apparitions that were gathering there. There were four of them, obviously very unsure about her weapon. She had two shots left. Wilson, now huddled moaning on the floor beside the body of the werewolf, was beyond helping her. She was alone and in agony, fighting unconsciousness.

Downstairs the doorman was staring at a patrol car that had pulled up in front of the building. Two cops, the collars of their heavy winter coats turned up against the wind, got out and entered the lobby. “Help you?”

“Yeah. We gotta check out a disturbance. You ”got a disturbance?“

“Nah. It’s quiet.”

“Sixteenth floor. People been callin’ the precinct. Screams, furniture breakin’. You got any complaints?”

“This is a quiet building. You sure you got the right place?”

They nodded, heading for the elevator. This looked like a standard family disturbance situation— no arrests, just a lot of argument and maybe a little fight to break up. You spent half your time on family disturbances, the other half on paperwork. Real crime, forget it.

“Lessee, sixteen.” One of the patrolmen punched the button, and the elevator began to ascend. After a few moments the door slid open revealing a long, dimly lit hallway. The two cops looked up and down. Nobody was visible. Aside from the sound of a couple of TVs it was quiet. They proceeded into the hall. Apartment 16-G had been the source of the disturbance. They would ring the bell.

The creatures were watching Becky by lifting their heads briefly above the edge of the dresser that stood in the doorway. Though she kept the gun aimed she wasn’t fast enough to get a shot off at one of those darting heads.

Then they became quiet. They could jump right over the dresser and get at her throat, she was sure of that. She hobbled to the window, wishing that she could somehow protect Wilson, who had lapsed into unconsciousness. But she couldn’t. If the creatures came at her she planned to jump. Death by falling was to be preferred a thousand times to disembowelment by those monstrosities.

A head appeared above the dresser, paused for a long moment, then was gone. That pause had been longer than the rest. Becky braced herself. Still nothing happened. They were being very careful. They knew what a gun could do. The doorbell rang.

One of the creatures sailed across the dresser, its teeth bared, its claws extended toward her throat.

It took Becky’s last two slugs in the muzzle and dropped at her feet. The claws went to the face and the body hunched, its muscles standing out like twisted ropes. Then it collapsed into a widening pool of blood Becky watched it with a mixture of horror and sadness. Her ankle was almost useless; she could barely support herself on the windowsill with her hands. The wind was whipping her hair around her face, biting into her back. She looked across the carnage in the room. There were three hideous faces staring at her over the dresser that still blocked the doorway. With trembling hands she lifted her .38 in their direction. Without her hands on the windowsill, balance was precarious. The wind buffeted her, threatening at any moment to make her fall. But the creatures hesitated before the gun. Then one of them made a low, strange sound… almost of grief. It closed its eyes, tensed its muscles—and suddenly turned away from the bedroom. Now all three of them disappeared below the edge of the dresser.

Then there came a knock on the door. “Police,” said a young voice.

“No! Don’t open that door!”

The knock came again, louder. “Police! Open up!”

“Stay out! Stay—”

With a crash the door flew open. The two cops who were standing there didn’t even have a chance to scream. All Becky heard was a series of thuds.

Then there was a silence.

Becky was crying now. Still with the gun held in both hands she moved forward. But she could not go on. She sank to the bed. Her pistol fell to the floor. Any moment now the werewolves would be back to kill her.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on in here?”

She looked up through a haze of tears. Two patrolmen were standing on the other side of the dresser with guns drawn. She sat stunned, hardly believing what she saw. “I—I’ve got a wounded man in here,” she heard herself whisper.

The patrolmen pushed the dresser aside. Ignoring the two werewolves, one of them went to Wilson. “Breathin’,” he said even as the other was calling for assistance on his radio.

“What’s the story, lady?”

“I’m Neff, Detective Sergeant Neff. That’s Detective Wilson.”

“Yeah, good. But what the hell are those?”

“Werewolves.” Becky heard herself say the word from far, far away. Strong arms eased around her, laid her back on the bed. But still she fought unconsciousness. There was more to do, no time to sleep.

In the distance there were sirens, then a few minutes later voices in the hall. Then light, flashbulbs popping as police photographers recorded the scene. She raised her head far enough to see Wilson being carried out on a stretcher. “O-positive blood,” she called weakly.

Then somebody was beside her, looking at her, a half smile on his tired face. “Hello, Mrs. Neff.” He moved aside as medical orderlies slid her onto a stretcher. “Mrs. Neff, do you want to make a statement to the press?”

“You’re the man from the Post, aren’t you?”

“I’m Garner, ma’am.”

She smiled, closed her eyes. They were moving her now, the lights of the hallway passing above her face. Sam Garner hurried along beside her, trying to hold a tape recorder microphone in her face.

“It’s a big story, isn’t it?” he said breathlessly.

“A big story,” she said. Sam Garner smiled again, elbowed his way into the elevator already crowded with medical orderlies and her stretcher. Her leg throbbed with agony, she felt exhausted, she wanted to close her eyes, to forget. But she gave Garner his story.

Their mother jumped as soon as the gun had been emptied into their father. She would make the kill, then the four of them would destroy their father’s body.

Then the incredible happened. The gun crashed again and their mother was also killed.

They stood staring at her lifeless form, too stunned to move. All three of them felt aware of grief—and almost overwhelming anger at the monster who had killed their parents.

It sat waving its gun, and the gun smelled hot and deadly.

They watched, not quite sure what to do. Then there was a sound outside the door—more humans approaching, their breath rising and falling, their feet crunching against the carpet in the hallway. And the sharp, nasty scent of guns was upon them also. The three young Wolfen turned to face this new threat. The door burst open amid shouting human voices, and they prepared to kill whatever appeared there.

But it was two young males, dressed as those in the Dump had been dressed. All of this agony had begun when two such had been killed; they would not repeat the mistake. They ran past the two policemen into the hallway. Now the bodies of their parents would be left behind for men to see—but this could not be helped. They bolted down the hall, pushed through the heavy door there, and began to run down the stairs.

They raced across the lobby of the building, smashing the glass front door with their bodies, and running on, indifferent to the shouts and crashing glass behind them and to the cuts they had received.

They ran through the empty predawn city, moving north past the rows of luxury buildings, through the ruined streets even farther north, past crowds of homeless men huddled around open fires, not stopping until they reached the dark and rat-infested banks of the Harlem river.

The eastern sky was glowing fitfully, the light casting into black relief the girders of the bridges above the river. The three of them stopped. They had come to a well-hidden place, marked safe by the scent of the pack that roamed this area. All felt a terrible sense of loss. Their parents were dead, the pack they knew was ended. Worse was the fact that Wolfen bodies had been left behind in the hands of man.

They felt loss but not defeat. What burned in their hearts was not fear but defiance; hard, determined, unquenchable.

They howled. The sound echoed up and down the banks of the river, crossed the icy muttering waters, echoed again off the distant buildings.

High above them on the Third Avenue Bridge a repair crew was deploying its equipment. When they heard the sound the men stared wordlessly at one another. One of them went to the railing but could see nothing in the darkness below.

Then the howl was answered, keening on the wind as pack after pack looked up from their haunts in the City’s depths and responded to the powerful sense of destiny that the sound awakened in them all.