The Monster Novels

by Robert R. McCammon

  Wiktor barked at the others to keep moving. Mikhail lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, his other hand locked on Alekza’s. Franco ran on his three legs just behind Wiktor. Beyond the windows, darkness had turned to false, cold white daylight. Something about this was dreamlike to Mikhail, as if he moved through the corridors of a nightmare on sluggish legs. The glaring light cast grotesque, distorted shadows on the walls, merging those of human and wolf into new life-forms.

  Mikhail’s sense of unreality remained even when the soldier—a faceless shape—appeared in the corridor before them, lifted his rifle, and fired.

  Wiktor was already leaping for the man, but Mikhail heard Wiktor grunt and knew the bullet had hit its target. Wiktor drove the soldier down under his weight, and as the man screamed Wiktor tore his throat out with one savage twist.

  “They’re here! Over here!” another soldier shouted. “A dozen of them!” The noise of boots echoed on the stones. A second rifle fired, and sparks leaped off the wall just above Franco’s head. Wiktor turned, slamming into Franco to back him up the way they’d just come. Mikhail saw perhaps eight or nine soldiers in the corridor ahead; escape through that route was impossible. Wiktor was barking, his voice hoarse with pain, some of the soldiers were shouting, and Petyr wailed in Alekza’s arms. Two more shots rang out, both of the bullets ricocheting off the walls. Mikhail turned and ran, pulling Alekza with him. And then he came around the bend of a passage and stopped short, face-to-face with three soldiers.

  They gaped at him, surprised to see a human being. But the first man regained his wits and trained his rifle barrel at Mikhail’s chest.

  Mikhail heard himself growl. He reached out, a blur of motion, grasped the barrel, and uptilted it as the gun fired. He felt the hot streak of the bullet as it kissed his shoulder. His other arm lunged forward, and it was only when his hooked claws sank into the man’s eyes that he realized his hand had changed. It had happened in an instant, a miracle of mind over body, and as he tore the man’s eyes out the soldier screamed and staggered back into his companions. The third man fled, bellowing for help, but the second soldier began firing his rifle wildly, without aiming. Bullets shrieked off the walls and ceiling. A shape jumped past Mikhail; it had three legs, and it plowed headlong into the soldier’s belly. The man fought Franco, but it was Franco’s legs that were crippled, not his fangs. He tattered the soldier’s face and got a grip on the throat. Mikhail was on his knees, his body contorting, and he shook off his deerskin robe and let the change take him.

  There was a flash of metal. The soldier drove his arm down, and the knife he’d drawn sank into the back of Franco’s neck. Franco shuddered, but he didn’t release the man’s throat. The man pulled the knife out, struck again and again. Franco crunched down, crushing the soldier’s windpipe. The knife sank into Franco’s neck up to the hilt, and bloody spray burst from Franco’s nostrils.

  Two more soldiers appeared in the whirl of gunsmoke, fire sparking from their rifle barrels. A hammer blow hit Mikhail in the side, stealing his breath. Another bullet clipped his ear. Franco howled as a bullet struck him, but he propelled himself forward, the knife still in his neck, and sank his fangs into the leg of one of the soldiers. The other man shot Franco at point-blank range, but still Franco clawed and bit in a frenzy. Wiktor suddenly bounded out of the smoke, dark blood streaming from his shoulder, and he slammed into the second man, knocking him to the floor. Mikhail was fully changed now, the smell of blood and violence igniting his rage. He leaped upon the man Franco had attacked, and together he and Franco made quick work of him. Then Mikhail swerved and lunged onto Wiktor’s combatant, his fangs finding the throat and tearing it out.

  “Mikhail.”

  It had been a soft groan.

  He turned, and saw Alekza on her knees. Petyr was squalling, and she held him tightly. Her eyes looked glassy. A thin creeper of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. Her knees were in a puddle of it. “Mikhail,” she whispered again, and offered the child to him.

  He couldn’t take Petyr. He needed hands, not paws.

  “Please,” she begged.

  But Mikhail couldn’t answer, either. The wolf’s tongue could form no words of human love, or need, or sorrow.

  Alekza’s ice-blue eyes rolled back into her head. She fell forward, still holding the child, and Mikhail realized that Petyr’s skull was going to smash on the stones.

  He leaped over a dead soldier and slid underneath the child, cushioning Petyr’s fall with his body.

  He heard more soldiers coming through the smoky corridor. Wiktor barked: a sound that urged him to follow. Mikhail stayed where he was, his mind dazed, his joints and muscles full of frost.

  Wiktor bit Mikhail’s wounded ear, and tugged at him. The soldiers were almost upon them, and Wiktor could hear the squeak of wheels: the machine gun.

  Franco staggered forward, gripping Mikhail’s tail between his teeth and jerking backward, almost ripping the tail off. The pain charged through Mikhail’s nerves. Petyr was still wailing, the soldiers were coming with their machine gun, and Alekza lay motionlessly on the stones. Wiktor and Franco kept pulling at Mikhail, urging him to get up. There was nothing more he could do, for either Alekza or his son. Mikhail raised up and snapped at Wiktor, driving him back, and then he eased carefully out from underneath Petyr so the child slid to the floor. He stood up, the taste of blood bitter in his mouth.

  The shapes of men stood in the smoke. There was the sound of metal scraping metal: a firing bolt being drawn back.

  Franco lifted his head, awkwardly because of the knife in his neck, and howled. The noise echoed along the passageway, and stilled the finger that reached for the machine gun’s trigger. And then Franco hobbled in the direction of the soldiers, his body tensing for a leap. He flung himself into the whirling smoke, his jaws gaping wide to tear whatever flesh his fangs might find. The machine gun chattered, and the bullets cut Franco in half.

  Wiktor turned in the opposite direction and ran along the corridor, jumping over the dead soldiers. The machine gun was still speaking, bullets ricocheting off the walls like hornets. Mikhail saw Alekza’s body shake as another bullet hit her, and a slug whined off the stones beside Petyr. It was Mikhail’s choice; he could either die here or try to get out. He whirled around and followed the white wolf.

  As soon as he sprinted away, he heard the machine gun cease firing. Petyr was still crying. One of the men shouted, “Hold your fire! There’s a child in there!”

  Mikhail didn’t stop. Petyr’s fate, whatever it might be, was beyond his control. But the machine gun didn’t fire again, and the rifles were silent. Maybe there was mercy in the Russian heart, after all. Mikhail didn’t look back; he kept going, right behind Wiktor, his mind already turning away from the present to the future.

  Wiktor found a narrow ascending staircase and went up, leaving drops of blood on the stones. Mikhail added his own blood to them. They got through a glassless window on the upper level, slid down the sloping roof, and crashed into the thicket beneath. Then they were running side by side into the forest, and when they’d gotten a safe distance, they both stood panting in the chill dawn light, the dead leaves beneath them spattered with drops of red. Wiktor burrowed into the leaves and lay there, half hidden, as he rasped with pain. Mikhail wandered in dazed circles until he fell, his strength gone. He began to lick his wounded side, but his tongue found no bullet; the slug had pierced the flesh and gone through at an angle, missing the ribs and internal organs. Still, Mikhail was losing a lot of blood. He crawled beneath the shelter of a pine tree and there he drifted into unconsciousness.

  When he awakened, the wind had picked up, swirling through the treetops. The day had passed; the sun was almost gone. Mikhail saw Wiktor, the white wolf burrowed in the leaves. He got up on all fours, staggered to Wiktor, and nudged him. At first he thought Wiktor was dead, because he was so terribly still, but then Wiktor groaned and rose up, a crust of dried blood around his mouth and hi
s eyes dull and lost.

  Hunger gnawed in Mikhail’s belly, but he felt too drained to hunt. He staggered in one direction and then another, unable to decide what it was he should do. So he just stood in position, his head drooping and his side damp with blood again.

  From the distance there was a hollow booming noise. Mikhail’s ears twitched. The sound repeated itself. He realized it was coming from the southeast, where the white palace was.

  Wiktor walked through the forest and up a small, rocky ridge. He stood motionless, staring at something, and after a while Mikhail gathered his strength and climbed up the ridge to stand beside him.

  Dark smoke was rising, whirling in the wind. A red center of flames burned. As Wiktor and Mikhail watched, there was a third explosion. They could see chunks of stone flying into the sky, and they both knew what was happening: the soldiers were blowing the white palace to pieces.

  Two more blasts shot banners of fire into the falling dark. Mikhail saw the turreted tower—where his kite had been caught, long ago—crumple and go down. A larger explosion bloomed, and out of that blast flew what appeared to be fiery bats. They were caught in the wind, whirling around and around in fierce maelstroms, and in another moment Mikhail and Wiktor could smell the scorch and char of mindless destruction. Fiery bats spun over the forest, and began to fall.

  Some of them drifted down around the two wolves. Neither one had to look to see what they were. The burning pages were written in Latin, German, and Russian. Many of them held the remnants of colored illustrations, rendered by a master’s hand. For a moment it snowed black flakes of civilization’s dreams, and then the wind swept them up and away, and there was nothing left.

  Night claimed the world. The fires grew wild in the wind, and began to feed on trees. The two wolves stood atop their ridge of rocks. The flames gleamed redly in two sets of eyes: one that had seen the true nature of the beast, and hated that sight; and another that stared in dull submission, glazed with final tragedy. The flames leaped and danced, a mockery of happiness, and green pines shriveled to brown before their touch. Mikhail nudged Wiktor: it was time to go, to wherever they were going, but Wiktor didn’t move. Only much later, when they could both feel the advancing heat, did Wiktor make a noise: a deep, terrible groaning sound, the sound of defeat. Mikhail climbed down the ridge and barked for Wiktor to follow. Finally Wiktor turned away from the flames and came down, too, his body shivering and his head slung low.

  It was as true for wolves as it was for humans, Mikhail thought as they wound their way through the forest. Life was for the living. Alekza, Franco, Nikita … all the others, gone. And what of Petyr? Did his bones lie in the ruins of the white palace, or had the soldiers taken him? What would happen to Petyr, out in the wilderness? Mikhail realized he would probably never know, and maybe that was for the best. It struck him, quite suddenly, that he was a murderer. He had killed human beings, broken their necks and ripped out their throats and … God help him … it had been easy.

  And the worst thing was that there had been pleasure in the killing.

  Though the books were in ashes, their voices remained in Mikhail’s mind. He heard one of those voices now, from Shakespeare’s Richard II:

  With Cain go wander through the shade of night,

  And never show thy head by day nor light.

  Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe,

  That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.

  He went on into the forest, with Wiktor following, as the wind continued to whirl and the trees burned at their backs.

  6

  WHEN THE SNOW CAME, Mikhail and Wiktor had been living for more than ten days in one of the caves where Wiktor had hunted the berserker. There was room for two wolves, but not two humans. The wind grew bitter, raging from the north, and returning to human form would be suicide. Wiktor was lethargic, and slept day and night. Mikhail hunted for them both, grasping whatever he could from the forest’s plate.

  True winter sank its icy roots. Mikhail traveled to the soldiers’ camp and found it empty. There was no trace of Petyr. The snow had filled in the wagon ruts and stolen all scent of men. Mikhail bypassed the large area of burned trees and the scorched ruin of stones where the white palace had been, and returned to the cave.

  On clear nights, when the blue-rimmed moon shone down and the sky was ablaze with stars, Mikhail sang. His song was all pain and longing now; the joy had been seared out of him. Wiktor remained in the cave, a ball of white fur, and his ears twitched occasionally at the black wolf’s song, but Mikhail sang alone. His voice echoed over the forest, carried by the roaming wind. There was no answer.

  Over the weeks and months that followed, Mikhail felt himself drifting further and further away from humanity. He had no need of that frail white body; four legs, claws, and fangs suited him now. Shakespeare, Socrates, higher mathematics, the languages of German, English, and Latin, history, and the theories of religion: they belonged to another world. In the realm to which Mikhail now belonged, the subject was survival. To fail those lessons meant death.

  The winter broke. Blizzards turned to rainstorms, and fresh green appeared across the forest. Mikhail returned from hunting one morning to find a naked old man with a white beard, sitting on his haunches on a pile of rocks at the highest point above the chasm. Wiktor squinted in the hard sunshine, his face wrinkled and pale, but he took his portion of the dead muskrat and ate it raw. He watched the sun climbing into the sky, his amber eyes devoid of light. His head tilted to one side, as if he’d heard a familiar sound. “Renati?” he called, his voice fragile. “Renati?”

  Mikhail lay down on his belly nearby, the chasm below them, chewing his food and trying to shut out the quavering voice. After a while, Wiktor put his hands to his face and wept, and Mikhail felt his heart shatter.

  Wiktor looked up, and seemed to see the black wolf for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked. “What are you?”

  Mikhail kept eating. He knew what he was.

  “Renati?” Wiktor called again. “Ah, there you are.” Mikhail saw Wiktor smile faintly, addressing thin air. “Renati, he thinks he’s a wolf. He thinks he’s going to stay here forever, and run on four legs. He’s forgotten what the miracle really is, Renati: that he’s human, inside that skin. And after I’m dust and gone where you are he thinks he’ll still be here, catching muskrats for his dinner.” He laughed a little bit, sharing a joke with a ghost. “To think what I put in his head, hour after hour!” His feeble fingers picked at the dark scar on his shoulder and pressed against the hard outline of the bullet that was still lodged there. Then he turned his attention to the black wolf. “Change back,” he said.

  Mikhail licked muskrat bones and paid him no mind.

  “Change back,” Wiktor repeated. “You’re not a wolf. Change back.”

  Mikhail grasped the small skull, burst it open between his jaws, and ate the brains.

  “Renati wants you to change back, too,” Wiktor told him. “Hear her? She’s speaking to you.”

  Mikhail heard the wind, and the voice of an insane man. He finished his meal and licked his paws.

  “My God,” Wiktor said softly. “I’m going crazy as hell.” He stood up, peering down into the chasm. “But I’m not crazy enough to think I’m really a wolf. I’m a man. You are, too, Mikhail. Change back. Please.”

  Mikhail didn’t. He lay on his belly, watching crows circle overhead, and he wished he could have a bite of one. He didn’t care for Wiktor’s odor; it reminded him too much of shadowy shapes with rifles.

  Wiktor sighed, his head bowed. He slowly and carefully began to climb down the rocks, his body creaking at the joints. Mikhail got up, and followed him to keep him from falling. “I don’t need your help!” Wiktor shouted. “I’m a man, I don’t need your help!” He continued down the rocks to the cave, crawled into it, and lay curled up, staring at nothing. Mikhail crouched on the ledge in front of the cave, the breeze ruffling his fur. He watched the crows circling around like black kit
es, and his mouth watered.

  The springtime sun made the forest bloom. Wiktor did not return to his wolf form, and Mikhail did not return to human flesh. Wiktor grew more feeble. On chilly nights, Mikhail entered the cave and lay next to him, warming the old man with his body heat, but Wiktor’s sleep was fragile. He was constantly tormented by nightmares, and he sat up shouting for Renati, or Nikita, or another of the lost ones. On warm days he perched up on the rocks above the chasm and stared toward the hazy western horizon.

  “You should go to England,” Wiktor told the black wolf. “That’s right. England.” He nodded. “They’re civilized in England. They don’t kill their children.” He shivered; even on the warmest day, his flesh was as cold as parchment. “Do you hear me, Mikhail?” he asked, and the wolf lifted his head and stared at him but did not answer.

  “Renati?” Wiktor spoke to the air. “I was wrong. We lived as wolves, but we’re not wolves. We were human beings, and we belonged to that world. I was wrong to keep us here. Wrong. And every time I look at him”—he motioned toward the black wolf—“I know I was wrong. It’s too late for me. But it isn’t for him. He could go, if he wanted to. He should go.” He worked his skinny fingers together, as if tying and then untangling a problem. “I was afraid of the human world. I was afraid of pain. You were, too, weren’t you, Renati? I think we all were. We could have gone, if we’d chosen. We could have learned to survive in that wilderness.” He lifted his hand toward the west, toward the unseen villages and towns and cities beyond the horizon. “Oh, that’s a terrible place,” he said softly. “But it’s where Mikhail belongs. Not here. Not anymore.” He looked at the black wolf. “Renati says you have to go.”

  Mikhail didn’t budge; he dozed in the heat, but he could hear what Wiktor was saying. His tail twitched a fly away, an involuntary reaction.