Prowlers: Wild Things

by Christopher Golden

  Chuck, if that was indeed his name, started to laugh again but his voice abruptly choked off and the tears returned. Ghost tears. He was not going to be any help. His murder, the fact of his current state of being, had slipped his mind just slightly off the track and until he returned to his senses, he'd be useless as a source of information. Jack had seen it before. He shifted awkwardly, looked away from Chuck and found Suzanne staring at him.

  "I know you," she said. "You were here last night." Her gaze went past him. "You and that girl, in the Jeep."

  Jack sat down on the pavement right in front of her. There were cracks in the tar and small sprays of grass had pushed up through them as though it were trying to reclaim the lot, determined to take back for nature what man had stolen. The thought flashed across his mind unbidden, but upon its heels came another. Just like the Prowlers.

  "Yes," he said. "That was us."

  "And you do see me," she said. "Us, I mean." Suzanne glanced around with a forlorn expression. "That was the third car in here this morning and I've tried talking to everyone. Nobody knows I'm here. But you can still see me."

  Jack nodded again.

  "Even though I'm dead?"

  There was a desperation in her voice. Everything else had been a statement of fact, but this . . . this was a question. Her plaintive expression was almost more than he could bear and it was suddenly clear to him that though her mind had clung to logic and order unlike Chuck's, unlike so many, she still wanted him to lie to her. But Jack could not do that.

  "Yes," he said. "I'm sorry."

  "Oh, Jesus," the ghost whispered, and she put a hand over her mouth as if to keep from shouting.

  Through her hand, through her face, Jack could see the trees beyond, the deep woods where Chuck and who knew how many others had been murdered by the Prowlers. He thought of their meeting with Suzanne the night before, this maverick of a woman driving a big rig across the country, hanging around with lowlifes like Hank Krause — who was probably a Prowler but might just be mean-spirited — and yet she still had been kind and courteous.

  "How?" Suzanne asked.

  Jack closed his eyes a moment, silently cursing with frustration he did not want her to see. Damn it, he thought. Damn it, damn it, damn it! Whatever had happened to her had been traumatic enough that she was unable, or unwilling, to remember it. At least not yet. He opened his eyes.

  "The authorities are saying you fell asleep at the wheel, crashed your truck," he told her.

  Anger flared in the black abyss of her eyes. "Bullshit!" Suzanne snapped. She shook her head. "That's crap. I've never so much as nodded off at the wheel. I'm always careful. No way would I . . . but then . . ."

  The other specter, Chuck, recoiled at their exchange and stared at them both in horror. He muttered something else about Allie, finding Allie, warning her about the monster inside, and he got up and walked into the woods, where he disappeared.

  Suzanne watched him go, shaking her head. "Poor kid. He's not all there."

  Jack wished he could touch her, comfort her somehow. "Suzanne, you remembered me. My name is Jack." He glanced back at the Jeep. "My girlfriend is Molly. You remember us, right?"

  The ghost nodded.

  "When we met you, there were two other trucks here. Three guys were with you. Hank and Dave Krause, and a guy named John Ford, like the movie director."

  Her expression clouded over and Jack realized he had thrown her off. He loved westerns and a man named John Ford had directed a great many of his favorites, but that didn't mean the average person had any clue who he was.

  "Never mind that," Jack told her. "These three guys, do you remember being here with them last night? Drinking beer? You had a card table set up and —"

  Suzanne nodded quickly. "Yeah, I know those guys. I've known them all for years. You get to know folks that work the same routes you do, though you never see them very often. Any time I ran across the Krause brothers I always made a point of sitting down with them, maybe camping in a rest stop together for six hours of sleep or so. Not for Hank, mind you. He's harmless but a cranky S.O.B. But Dave's a good guy. Really loves the job. Ford's another story. Never got much read on him except to say he used to be in the army, or maybe the Marines."

  "Think hard, Suzanne," Jack said. "Last night, after we left, what happened? Do you remember anything at all strange about the Krause brothers? Was there an argument or anything? Did you see any . . . any animals?"

  The last word seemed to freeze her in place. Though the substance that comprised her form now was almost constantly shimmering like the haze of heat off the road on a sweltering summer day, just then it grew very still and calm.

  "Animals," she repeated, as though in a trance.

  Then her eyes widened with memory and terror, her lips pulled back in a rictus grin and she ducked and lifted her hands as though defending herself.

  "Suzanne," he said softly. "What happened after we left last night?"

  She shuddered as she raised her eyes again, but the ghost was no long looking at Jack. Instead she stared across the cracked pavement of the rest stop as though witnessing from afar the events that had unfolded there the night before.

  "You two were asking about that missing boy, your cousin, and it got us talking. Brought up a bunch of other deaths we'd heard of, and some drivers we knew who were always careful. Safe behind the wheel. Started me thinking maybe there's more to all this than meets the eye, sort of what you were saying. Hank and Dave, they thought we oughta bring it up to the Staties around here. I figured the cops'd just think we were trying to do a whitewash on the reputation truckers have, trying to fight some of the bad publicity accidents bring. But then I started thinking about the boy again and about the drivers who'd died and I figured it couldn't hurt to at least talk to the police."

  "And then the animals came?" Jack prodded her.

  Her expression was confused, searching, and she shook her head. "No, no. Dave and Hank had been sleeping when I got here, and then Ford pulled in not long after. So we were gonna nap a little but the brothers were on their way. Took off maybe an hour after you left."

  Jack stared at her. "They left?"

  The ghost nodded. "I climbed up into my truck, got ready for sleep, and then Ford knocked on the door. He wanted to say good night." A tiny laugh escaped her. "I'm not young . . . not pretty either . . . he's practically a kid and in good shape too. I thought maybe he wanted to do more than say good night. I was gonna tell him good night, that's all."

  "So you let him in?"

  The lost soul of this kind, sweet woman bit her lip and nodded and suddenly there seemed somehow less of her, as though the essence that coalesced to form her ghostly shape, her self, was drifting a little. Her presence was less defined somehow.

  "I let him in. To say good night. But it wasn't Ford that came into the truck."

  "Yeah," Jack corrected. "Yeah, it was."

  Hours later, after a long and fruitless afternoon that took them up and down nearly forty miles of Route 87, they drove back to their little hotel in Fairbrook even as evening spread across the land once more. It was mostly silent in the Jeep, the atmosphere between them heavy with a mutual disappointment that Molly hated. She was angry and frustrated by a feeling of helplessness that she knew Jack must also feel. They had spent the day in bars and diners, convenience stores and gas stations that sold diesel, asking after a trucker by the name of John Ford who looked like he'd just stepped out of boot camp. John Ford, the Prowler who had killed Suzanne Robinson the night before.

  They had discovered quickly that Ford was a popular guy with the waitresses at some of these places. It turned Molly's stomach to see the way their faces brightened at the mention of his name. Some of these woman were more than a little enamored of Ford. Apparently he had a few regular runs through the northeast corridor and so he was quite a familiar face. But none of them had seen him the night before, or today for that matter. And nobody, not even the women who seemed fascinated by him, had an
address or phone number for Ford.

  As the sky turned dark, Molly sat in the passenger seat and gazed out at the trees flashing by on the side of the highway. Jack was preoccupied as well, for though it was past dusk and nearly full-on night by now, he still had not turned on the headlights. Both of them had been exhausted by the disappointments of the day. Ford had given them the impression he was heading north to deliver his load. If that part were true, he was long gone by now and they had no way to know when he would be through again. No way to know if he was the only one.

  The radio in the Jeep was on very low so that Molly could barely hear the music, could not even tell what song it was. Her stomach rumbled and she realized how hungry she was. Lunch had consisted of a tuna sandwich and potato chips at one of the diners they had stopped in, and they had not yet eaten dinner. Her stomach growled.

  "You want to try that Italian place we passed in Fairbrook this morning?" she asked Jack. "It looked nice."

  "All right. Whatever you want is fine." Jack did not so much as glance at her as he spoke, and Molly wondered if he had even paid attention to what he had agreed to.

  "It's on Artie now, isn't it?" she asked.

  Now Jack's eyes widened a bit and he glanced at her, hands tight on the wheel. After a long moment, he nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

  "What if he doesn't find anything?"

  This time the pause before he replied was much longer. He gripped the steering wheel and stared into the gathering darkness past the windshield. After a moment he frowned and reached down with his left hand to turn on the headlights.

  "I don't know," Jack confessed. The bitter look on his face was unsettling. "Is Ford a solo guy? Where does he live? If all his hunting is done on this stretch of road, that doesn't necessarily mean he lives around here. We might never run into him again. But I can't . . ."

  There was an angry set to Jack's jaw as he gritted his teeth and looked away. He took the exit for Fairbrook.

  Molly lowered her window a few inches to let the fresh evening air in. "I know. The idea of going home, of not being able to do anything about it . . . it makes me feel awful. Useless. This is what we came up here for, right? This is our, what? Our crusade now. And there's nothing more we can do."

  The quaint hotel loomed ahead, its sign glowing against the deep purple evening sky.

  "I guess we just wait," Jack replied, resignation in his voice. "We can wash up, find someplace to get a decent meal for dinner, and wait for Artie to come back. I want to call Courtney, too, see if Bill ever checked in. If not, that's a whole other thing to deal with."

  Molly had no interest in following up on that line of thinking, mainly because Jack was right. If anything happened to Bill while he was looking for his niece down in the city, she doubted there was a thing they could do to find him. In a city the size of Manhattan, without any leads or contacts, they would be lost. It was so absurd it made her want to laugh, for it would be yet another fruitless search, like the one they were on now. Just another shot in the dark.

  "He's probably fine," she told him, with a confidence she did not feel. "I have a hard time believing Bill couldn't take care of himself. Still, let's find out if he called in. If not, Courtney's probably going out of her mind right now."

  Jack had fallen silent and as he pulled into the hotel parking lot, Molly glanced over at him. Despite his conversation with the ghosts this morning, their day had been wasted. The weight of that knowledge showed on his face, the burden of it turning his expression grim, his eyes dark.

  "We can only do what we can do," Molly told him.

  Jack actually smiled. "I know that. But don't try to pretend you don't feel exactly the same way I do. This prick, Ford? He told her he wanted to say good night. Let me into the cab so we can say good night. She thought he wanted more. Maybe she was going to turn him down, but it flattered her, I could tell by the tone of her voice. He said he wanted to say good night and it made her feel good.

  "I want to find him and burn him down. Bury him."

  Molly reached up to touch the back of Jack's neck, to push her fingers through his hair and stroke his skin there. He pulled the Jeep into a parking spot not far from the side door of the hotel.

  "I feel the same way," she told him. "It kills me to say it, but unless Artie comes through, we've got nothing. We were a few feet away from him last night and he was probably laughing at us the whole time. When there's a pack, maybe we can do something about it. But if there's just one or two, and they don't want to be found, I'm not sure what more we can do."

  Jack killed the engine and slipped his keys out. They jangled in his hand as he turned to Molly, bent toward her and kissed her forehead. "We'll figure something out. Maybe after we have something to eat and a little down time, we can figure out another approach."

  Molly said nothing. She doubted there was going to be another approach and she figured Jack did too, but he was trying to give them both a chance to talk and think about something else for a few minutes, and so she said nothing.

  They climbed out of the Jeep. As Molly slammed her door, she saw a dark-skinned guy with a blond girl who was maybe seventeen get out of a Toyota a few spots down. The two of them were parallel to Molly and Jack as they moved toward the motel, and yet they did not so much as look up. There was something about the man that drew her attention, a sense that he did not want to be noticed, as though he were doing something wrong. It occurred to her that he might be sneaking off for some rendezvous with this young girl, and the thought repulsed Molly.

  The girl cast a quick, furtive glance in her direction, then looked away immediately. Molly might have continued to think they were involved in some sort of tryst if not for the grin that spread across the girl's features just then, a mischievous, even sinister smile that stopped her in her tracks.

  Molly turned to look at Jack as he was coming around the front of the Jeep and as she did, she caught sight of the two men coming out the side door of the motel. They stared at Jack intently, a dark recognition in their gaze that made it clear he was their objective. An aura of danger emanated from them that was palpable.

  "Jack," Molly muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  He glanced up, eyes darting from the two at the door to the man and girl coming around the front of the Toyota a few cars down, and then his gaze locked on Molly's. She shivered as a chill went through her, spiders scuttling up her spine, for in his eyes she saw confirmation of her suspicion. Molly cursed silently. She had hoped she was just being paranoid.

  "Hang on," Jack said, face expressionless. "I forgot something."

  His keys jangled as he went back to the Jeep, quickly opened the door and climbed in. Molly drifted back toward her door, but even as she did so, she heard them begin to snarl. Her head snapped around and she saw the dark-skinned man and the girl changing, fur tearing through skin, even as they leaped up on top of a Saturn sedan. The hood buckled with a metallic pop and the female leaped to the next car's roof, gnashing her teeth, her gleaming jagged row of teeth lengthening.

  "Shit," Molly whispered. She grabbed at the Jeep's passenger door, but it was locked. "Jack!"

  The two at the side door of the hotel had transformed as well, but they were going for Jack. One of them raced around to the driver's door as the other leaped on the hood of the Jeep. It ignored her, staring through the windshield at Jack. But the other two . . . the female was in the lead, her fur a bright golden yellow, and she landed on the roof of the car in the next parking space and issued an almost sensual growl as she tensed to attack.

  Molly heard the click of the door unlocking behind her.

  The golden-furred Prowler lunged at her, the other close behind. Molly reached back and grabbed the handle, then swung the door open with all her strength, ducking behind it like a shield. The female hit it with enough impact that the window splintered into a web of thousands of cracks. Molly cried out in pain as her legs were slammed between the door and the Jeep, but even as she shouted, she ram
med the door open again, threw herself inside and slammed it shut.

  The automatic locks clicked all around even before the door was completely closed and the engine roared to life. The beast on the hood kicked at the windshield once, twice, trying to break it, but could not get the right angle or enough strength behind the blows. Out her splintered window, Molly saw the blond female's mate leaping toward her, the image fractured into a thousand different facets in the cracked glass.

  "Go!" she screamed.

  "Going!" Jack replied, even as the Jeep shot out of the parking space, tires squealing.

  The one on the hood went tumbling off backward onto the pavement. The blond's mate crashed into the right front quarter, went down hard and the Jeep jerked as a tire went over his arm or leg. Jack cut the wheel, the Jeep slewed sideways and the read end crunched into a rusty blue Cadillac. The impact snapped Molly's head back and she wanted badly to put her seatbelt on, but could not seem to pry her own fingers off the sides of her seat, where she held on for dear life as she stared out the windshield. The one that had been pounding on Jack's door was running toward the grill of the Jeep. The female stood up as well, shaking off the blow Molly had given her with the door, but she wasn't fast enough.

  The other, though, he raced at the front of the Jeep without a trace of hesitation.

  Jack popped the shift into drive and floored it. For a moment Molly thought they were going to run him down. She squinted her eyes and tensed in preparation for the bone-crunching impact, but if she had ever needed an illustration of the superior speed of Prowlers compared to humans, this was it. The beast leaped aside at the last possible second, and then the Jeep was thundering out of the parking lot into the street, cutting off a VW Beetle headed the other direction. Molly glanced back and saw the monsters scrambling for the shadows again, their silhouettes there in the darkened parking lot already shifting back to human. They moved toward the Toyota and Molly swore.