Full Wolf Moon

by K. L. Nappier

  Doris almost gagged. Sweat popped out in a fine sheen on her forehead and Pierce was suddenly by her side.

  "For chissake, Mrs. Tebbe, I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

  She couldn't talk to him. She sat there, her fist pressed against her brow. Pierce pushed Doris' food away from her, and pulled his chair next to her.

  "I'm an idiot," he said. "Stupid, grizzly story in the middle of dinner. You look awful. Do you need some air?"

  All Doris could do was nod. When Pierce pressed his hands to her arms, she spasmed. His grip tightened.

  "Easy, now. I'm just going to help you up."

  "Oh, God..."

  "Do you need to get to the bathroom?"

  Doris shook her head.

  "Then let's take you outside."

  The sky was behind the inky blue veil that prefaced pure nightfall. Only a few stars had punched through. The air was sharp, its tang painful at first, but it had a way of slapping her wits back into order. She leaned against the rail of the porch, wishing desperately Pierce would release her.

  "I'm better, Captain," she said, hoping her words would peel away his fingers. "I am. Thank you."

  His shedding off was slow. "Geez, I'm sorry," he said again.

  Her stare riveted to the dry, rocky ground past the porch. She asked in a tremored voice, "So they never found him?"

  It was moment before he replied. "Hell, I don't know, Mrs. Tebbe, I transferred to Lakeside. Aren't you a glutton for punishment. Let's drop the subject before you're the one who drops. Come here, I want you to sit down."

  He started to take her arm again, but she managed to shrug him away.

  "It's okay, Captain, I can get there." She made it to the porch swing. Pierce sat, too, threateningly close.

  "Mrs. Tebbe," he said, "it's ridiculous, what you're doing to yourself. You won't last much longer if you don't ease up."

  "You're right, Captain," she said to him, agreeing to anything. She was afraid.

  "You should call this meeting off tonight."

  "No, I can't." She thought of Arthur. "Look, I'll start tomorrow, but tonight I have to go."

  "That's a crock. Mrs. Tebbe, come on. Too many people are depending on you." The captain fell so quiet, Doris was compelled to look at him. He said, awkwardly, "I'm depending on you."

  She closed her eyes, swung her face away. "I'll be all right. It's just a little fatigue. Your story...it just reminded me of what's going on here, I guess."

  "You're making yourself sick."

  Pierce's calm muddled her. Was he so calculating, so cold-blooded a murderer, that he could remain utterly unaffected by her hints and tests? Or was the innocence in his voice exactly that? His innocence. Doris was falling into self-doubt again. She was a bundle of confusion. Yet the nagging wouldn't go away. Through everything, it came stabbing, insisting something was desperately amiss.

  "Okay," she said, sensing that to agree with Pierce would get him to leave. "I'll post the word."

  "You'll go inside and get some rest. I'll take care of the notice for you on the way out. Come on."

  Pierce helped her up and they went back inside. Doris scribbled a hasty note, postponing the meeting to the following evening while the captain got his jacket. She thought of Arthur again, a pang for missing his company, even through all this. Then she thought of him and Pierce sharing tea, and it made her wonder again if she weren't going berserk.

  "Captain," she said, handing him the makeshift bulletin. They were walking back onto the porch. "You might find this meeting helpful, yourself. You could get a very good feel about how the internee police conduct their business."

  The captain looked suddenly skyward, as if he thought Doris had spoken to him from somewhere up there. But then his attention came back to her, and he took the notice from her hand.

  "Tomorrow night won't be good," he said. "Maybe next time."

  "Sure."

  "You're going straight in to get some sleep, right?"

  His concern seemed so true, she had to smile. "Yes, doctor."

  She watched Pierce go to the car and nudge the dozing corporal. As they motored off, she looked up into the sky, puzzled at what might have caught his attention. All she saw were the stars glittering and the moon, one night shy of becoming full.

  Chapter 22

  David Alma Curar's Shack

  Five Miles South of Tulenar Internment Camp

  Sundown. Full Moon.

  David Alma Curar sat on the sagging step of his little shack, watching the tremor in his hands. He felt the evening's cool descend on his back as the sun sank away from the world and wished again, more angrily this time, that this whole damned mess was over. Two dead. He had arrived weeks before the feeding began and still two were dead.

  Arrogance had gotten the best of him. David was sure that was what Stanislov would have told him. He had read the signals, studied the clues and he was going to route it off, stop it before the feeding began again. But, at Tulenar, two were dead already. The bodies just kept piling up.

  David clasped his hands behind the knot of his bandana and tried to screw up the courage for another First Night. Weary. He was so weary. But there could be no stopping. Not until the beast was gone, not until this lineage was broken.

  He wanted to be back home in Tohatchi, back at his silversmithing. He wondered how the business was doing, but he wasn't really worried. The shops had been running themselves for years now.

  Most of all he missed the people and the study of the healing arts. And his little farm, the modest plot that gave him so much pleasure. David raised his head and looked at the scraggly landscape around his hide-out, sourly amused that he'd so easily deceived the captain and Mrs. Tebbe with a few truck loads of produce.

  The supplier had overcharged David, but the healer hadn't pressed the point. Money wasn't a problem and if the fellow felt smug, all the better. David needed to seem harmless to as many people as possible. He already had his hands full with the one who knew he wasn't.

  David was still trembling. But it was time to go or he'd miss his opportunity. He had to make the trip by foot, driving anywhere near the camp was too risky (even the most incompetent M.P. would find him out) and -being a man in his late forties- he wasn't used to long hikes any more. He had to allow plenty of time.

  He shrugged on the day pack that held water for the trek and dried sage and animal dung to mask his scent. He had already rubbed the musky concoction on his body before dressing. Like each First Night since he arrived, he would scatter the mix before him as he walked along, and behind him as he returned to the hideout.

  He strapped on the gun belt, tying the holster to his thigh just like a desperado of the old west. But, then again, I am a desperado. I'm very desperate. In spite of having done this for months, the gun felt cumbersome against his leg. The weight reminded him that he was far from being a crack shooter. It reminded him of just how close he would have to be when he would at last take aim.

  David closed his eyes, praying for the accuracy needed. And praying for the strength to carry through if his accuracy failed. Even if that meant turning the gun on himself. Even, if he must, turn it on Doris Tebbe.

  Chapter 23

  Tulenar Internment Camp

  First Night. Full Moon.

  There were many more of the walking ones now, the stalking ones that clutched their long killing tools in hand. They were afraid. Afraid of their own kind, in and outside the tense barbed wire. They seemed unsure of where to look for danger.

  This made them tempting to the beast. They would be easy pickings, their fear so fused, their attention so scattered. If the beast took one in the presence of the others, that fear would stoke to a fine, hot terror, spreading like warm blood across the camp. They may even try to use their killing tools against the beast, these foolish ones. A good nest, a fertile nest for the rebirth.

  But the beast knew the time wasn't right, and it was nothing if not patient, leaving impulse and haste to its host. But it was also aw
are of the One Lost, the one who had broken the connection and so was a menace, the only true danger to the beast. Because of the One, timing was more critical. In vain the beast had taken precious hours from each month's season, searching for the One's lair, abandoning its efforts only for the gnawing impulse to feed.

  For the time being, however, the beast didn't scent the One Lost, so it knew that the One hadn't yet arrived. The One would most certainly be on the hunt again tonight, but the beast's advantage was that the One wouldn't know exactly where to look. The camp was large and sprawling, the beast's selection abundant, like the pickings in the last killing grounds, in the desert, had been. The One wouldn't know which of the prey had been chosen and, so, in this way, was as blind as those so futilely paced the barbed wire.

  The beast rose and left them to it, loping away unnoticed just behind the crests of the smaller hills. It came around the camp proper, intent now on the large building squatting on the hill that overlooked Tulenar. Here the beast could risk drawing near. Security was lax. It settled in the shadows at the dark end of the building and watched the lighted windows of the farthest corner, its ears swiveled toward the drone of human voices inside.

  Time passed, the full moon arced. The beast yawned and settled on its side within the building's broad, black shadow, deceptively lazy. Stretching its massive legs outward, it rested the bulk of its head on the dust like some sleepy farm hound. But its ears were ever pricked, its nose pulsing rhythmically, seeking any clues of the One Lost or the first sounds of the prey preparing to leave the building.

  There. Now. The beast jerked to attention. The door nearest the lighted corner opened and the warm, salty scent of humanity preceded a cluster of prey. The chosen wasn't among them, but this was expected. The beast calmed its panting, lest a sharp-eared human turn in curiosity. The cluster moved down the path toward camp, tendrils of scent lingering after it, the standard, low-tuned anxiety that had thrummed the camp's atmosphere since the beginning.

  The beast settled into waiting again. In time, the lighted windows darkened and the last two emerged, the chosen and the other. The beast dilated its nostrils, pulled their scents from the dry air as the two moved from the building. They walked toward the place where the female sheltered and mounted the steps, to sit on the porch. The beast followed.

  These two were significant. More significant than the wise old male with his full, rich brain. More significant than the young mother, her heart still trembling, even after burst through by fang, forced whole into the gullet. Trembling not as much for her own death, as in anguish for loss. Her soul rent from the sick ones. From her mate. From her young.

  The beast was mindful to stay in the shadows of the buildings, windows so black in the night the structures could have been gutted. The beast drew its thin, red tongue across its fangs, its belly stirring at the sight of the chosen, so very near. Patient as the beast was, there was the sinking moon to consider. If the prey didn't move in due time, a choice would have to be made.

  The beast listened to their low, late night voices, at first staccato and clipped. There was tension between them, but a crackle of excitement, too, like magnet and metal yearning toward one another. So much the better, so much sweeter the kill.

  The male moved toward the female. She prevented him at first, but her scent betrayed her next action. Her arms buckled against his chest. There was fatigue in her and anger and anxiety, ah, the sharp tang of anxiety. And desire. The male's dull, human nose wouldn't sense it, but the beast's did.

  The male's own anxiety was low but, in time, that would change. High in the male's scent was his yearning for the female. Greater still was a warm, throbbing depth that may have deterred the beast, had this male been encountered elsewhere. But in this place, the male's source, his calm depths, were precisely what was stirring the beast's hunger.

  Oh so predictably, the female gained herself and pulled away. The beast knew they wouldn't disappear together into the house. Yearning and tired though she was, the female's anxiety was a constant, tense cord in the air. It had been so since the beast was first drawn to her.

  Not much longer now.

  A moment more, and the female withdrew into her shelter of wood and tar paper. The male began trudging down the path, the stiff, white collar around his throat gleaming in the moonlight like a beacon for the beast.

  Chapter 24

  One-quarter Mile East of Tulenar

  First Night. Full Moon.

  This was Arthur's death staring him in the face. A massive, wolven creature, fur gleaming like brushed silver, dazzling under the full moon. A constant, poised growl rumbled in its chest, its black lips curled back to boast the enormous fangs, still wet with his blood. And those eyes.

  "Abba," Arthur breathed, using Jesus' own diminutive for Father. "They could be mine."

  By God's grace, Arthur had remained conscious through it all. At least he hoped it was God's grace. He hoped there would be a point to enduring this. First had been the sense of surprise, really, not panic, when he was knocked to the ground. But panic was upon him in an instant as the wet heat closed over his head, when sharp tongs of pain bent his breathing to a minimum.

  When the horror came, Arthur's being suddenly and violently split into two entities. He felt more purely the convulsive torment of his body as he was dragged across the ground. Yet he also observed the agony with detachment, as if his mind were intent on recording it all. The soul as scientist observing the experiment of death. This witnessing self both forced him deeper into the ordeal and allowed him to endure it.

  Now, on some level, Arthur was mourning his blood as it snaked down his scalp and pulsed from his throat, soaking his white collar to burgundy. As he sat squatting on the ground, facing his death squarely, he felt the cold night air jabbing at his back and buttocks, torn and ragged. He felt scraps of shirt and trousers, wet and warm as bath water, sticking to him. He felt the razor burn of three sharp stones imbedded in the exposed muscles of his upper back.

  The cold was in his hands and feet as well. Fatigue was softening the edges of horror. Shock was seeping in. Arthur smiled. This hound of Hell had better act quickly, or he was going to die on his own.

  Strange how it stood before him, its gaze so steady Arthur almost expected it to speak. What was it waiting for? Dear Lord, those eyes. They were human. They were human!

  "It was you," Arthur said, his voice hardly more than a croak in his burning throat. "You've been doing all this, haven't you?"

  The creature lunged, just enough, rupturing Arthur's right ear as he pitched away from the attack. Arthur laughed with irony and realization, his shock making him giddy. All the forces of the United States Government were beating the bushes for one puny human or a cluster of puny humans. What was standing before Arthur, silver fur gleaming, black lips glistening with drool, red-tinged with his blood, was more than them all and born of them all. How he knew this, he couldn't say. But know it, he did.

  It is ours, it is our own devise.

  Just as Arthur was graced with the understanding, he was graced with another. Too weak to stand, he pulled himself back into a squat and leaned forward unsteadily, accepting the inward shrieking of his splayed back and buttocks as he did.

  "You think I'm mourning Doris, don't you?" he said. "But, once I'm dead, I'll be with her more completely than before." He sighed. "I'm dying fast. You better take me now. The only terror you're going to get this time is from the body. "

  He was struck hard and quick. Crushed anew against the rocky earth, his skinned muscles poured their overload of pain into arms, chest and legs. His body convulsed as the beast pinned him under one heavy paw that nearly spanned his chest. Interesting, to smell his own blood on the creature's breath as its jaws clamped over his face.

  It's the eyes it wants this time, Arthur thought within that peculiar detachment.

  And with one final, searing agony, detachment was complete.

  Chapter 25

  Lakeside Assembly Center<
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  Pre-Dawn. Second Night. Full Moon.

  Max woke sobbing and horrified. Horrified of something, but what was it? Not something he'd witnessed, not something he'd seen. Something he'd done.

  God, God, what had he done?

  Yet when he pushed his glasses over his eyes, he could see that he was safely in bed. Once his eyes adjusted, he could make out the familiar confines in the inky pre-dawn morning between moonset and sunrise.

  Okay. Nightmare. He'd had a nightmare, that was all. That had to be it, he'd had a whopper of a nightmare. It was time again for them, anyway. This one was just particularly intense, almost like a memory, almost like the real thing...