The Wereling 1: Wounded

by Stephen Cole

  Tom ran down the corridor to the next compartment, an empty kitchen area. Another man lay slumped in a corner, blood pooling from a wound in his chest. Grimly, Tom dragged the corpse into plain view in the passageway, muttering apologies under his breath. Maybe the corpse would distract the ’wolves for a while.

  Through the window he saw the world outside blurring by at easily eighty miles an hour. There was no way out here. And no Kate.

  He swore. Where had she been taken? Logic told him that Marcie would want to keep her daughter alive. After all, with Wesley dead, it was down to Kate to carry on the fine pureblood Folan name. But would this Takapa creep feel the same way?

  There was a crashing thump from the restaurant car down the corridor. He didn’t have long.

  A fire extinguisher on the wall was rattling in its housing as the train sped along. He smashed it against the window as hard as he could. By the fourth blow, a crack appeared, and by the seventh he had knocked a hole in it. Wind whistled inside the car harder and faster as he smashed out the rest of the glass.

  Tom stuck his head out of the window, his hair whipping against his forehead. Fear formed a tight block in his stomach. He couldn’t swing himself out of the window and expect to hold on, going at that speed. It was a crazy idea.

  Tom heard the door in the restaurant car sigh gently open.

  This was the only idea – and the only chance – he had.

  He stuck his head out through the window again, squinting into the wind. There were corrugated ridges in the grey metal of the carriage, above and below the window, just enough to give him something to cling on to.

  It was now or never.

  Tom hauled himself out through the window. For a few seconds he balanced on its sill, until he realised the wind whipping past threatened to knock him back inside. The world seemed to be going by at a million miles per hour. He turned, still gripping the sill, and placed his feet in one of the ridges. Then, first with one hand, then with the other, he gripped hold of the ridge above the window.

  Now the challenge was to redistribute his weight and shuffle towards the driver’s compartment while trying to stay as flat to the side of the speeding train as possible. The wind pulled at his clothes, tore at him, threatened to tug him away like a straw doll in a gale. Clinging for his life, he edged along the rocking, jostling carriage. Already, his fingers were losing feeling.

  A metal ladder stretched up to the train roof at the end of the compartment. It was just a few metres away …

  A terrifying, ululating howl rose above the keening of the wind in his ears. Turning his head, he saw the massive, bestial head of a werewolf poking through the window. Another one pushed into view beside it, scenting the air until it turned to face him. Yellow eyes narrowed, fangs bared.

  Raw fear pumped renewed strength through Tom’s body. He clawed his way determinedly along the ridges in the train’s side with greater speed.

  But the first werewolf had decided to follow him.

  Tom glimpsed the monster from the corner of his eye as it twisted in the window-frame and reached out tentatively to test the ribbed surface of the carriage walls. And suddenly he remembered the beast that had clung on to the hood of Patience’s car back in Caldwell.

  Sure enough, like an animal mountaineer using claws instead of crampons, the man-wolf began to scale the side of the carriage. It swung its bulk from paw to paw, stalking Tom, leaving a trail of rent metal in its wake.

  He knew it would reach him before he could reach the ladder.

  Gritting his teeth, he tried to move faster. The ground rushed by below him, an unending blur of movement. He felt sick, his heart pounding with exertion and terror. And in a black, burning part of his mind he knew his desperation was giving strength to the rising urge to let go of his humanity, to give free rein to the ’wolf. To turn fear into fury, and to wash clean the bitter taste of panic from his mouth with blood.

  Then he saw it. The tunnel.

  He glanced back at the werewolf, lurching ever closer with sinister, crablike movements. Its eyes were narrowed against the wind, its dagger-teeth bared and ready to tear at him. It was so much bigger than he was.

  The maw of the tunnel seemed to open wider as the train thundered towards it. Tom pressed himself flat against the chilled metal of the carriage.

  The werewolf roared in triumph and readied itself for a final lunge.

  Tom shut his eyes. There was a sickening, splintering noise as the beast’s bulk was pulverised against the concrete, then the air turned to steam and blackness. Tom was nearly plucked free and dashed against invisible walls as the train rushed heedlessly on.

  But when it emerged the other side, so did he.

  With the last of his energy he reached out for the arms of the ladder. He relished the feel of curling his fingers around the rungs after trying to dig his fingertips into the solid metal.

  He could hold on now, to the ladder, and to himself; numb, desensitised by the stinging wind. The ’wolves knew he was out there, but none seemed willing to pursue him any longer.

  Tom wasn’t sure how long he clung on there, but a terrible baying from inside the compartment roused him with a start.

  The train was starting to slow down, ready to draw into the station. Tom assumed that the ’wolves would turn human again, change into fresh clothes and melt into the crowds.

  He was wrong. One by one they leaped from the broken train window and hit the ground running. Now they seemed almost like actual wolves, as if the transformation had progressed still further; they’d pretty much lost the man-form altogether. Moving as one, the pack veered away from the tracks and sprinted across the outskirts of the station yard for the protection of the outhouses, storage bays and gloomy passageways beyond.

  Tom knew he must hit the ground running too. He had to get away before someone discovered the carnage in the restaurant car, before Kate was taken away to face God-knew-what.

  ‘My punishment’s still waiting for me,’ she’d said.

  Recklessly he scaled the ladder, slid himself awkwardly across the roof and dropped down between the restaurant car and the driver’s compartment. No one standing on the platform seemed to notice him crouching in the narrow space. But he knew ’wolf eyes must be watching the train keenly.

  At last the train slowed smoothly to a complete halt. Tom wriggled between the two compartments and jumped the gap between train and platform. His legs felt like mush as he ran back up the length of the train, looking in at every carriage window, searching for Kate. But there were too many people surging off on to the platform, barging past him, blocking his view.

  ‘Clear the way, clear the way,’ yelled a paramedic fighting his way through the crowds with more success than Tom. He was running for the restaurant car as if trying to escape the rest of his team, who were following close behind, weighed down with medical supplies and emergency equipment.

  Clearly someone had found the bodies. Tom only hoped Kate’s wasn’t among them.

  Fighting back his anxiety, Tom decided to wait around the main station exit instead, where he might get a better view of who came out. But the way was blocked by a couple of swaggering cops, rudely clearing a wide area around the restaurant car, seemingly more to bait the crowds than to aid the paramedics.

  They were bearing out bodies on stretchers. Struggling to push through the crowds of ghoulish onlookers, Tom glimpsed the fake porter, his stolen uniform bathed in blood, as he was lifted clear by two men in green. He doubted that Papa Takapa, or whatever his name was, would be in a hurry to bestow the power of the wolf on that loser. Close behind the impostor, a glossy black body bag was hauled out by two more. What was left of the real porter, maybe?

  No.

  He’d seen movement. The body bag was wriggling.

  ‘Kate,’ Tom breathed.

  He shoved his way through the crowd like a crazy man. ‘Get out of my way!’ he yelled, ‘Let me through!’

  A big man scowled and refused to shift. ‘
Wait your turn like the rest of us, buddy.’

  ‘She’s not dead!’ Tom yelled. ‘The girl in that body bag, she’s still alive, she’s moving!’

  But the paramedics were rushing her away.

  He was going to lose her.

  Heart pounding, Tom looked for a way through the impenetrable crowd. ‘Stop them!’ he yelled, but he knew he sounded like a lunatic. It was the perfect disguise; who would ever stop medics carrying a corpse from a crime scene?

  The ’wolves were reclaiming their own, and there was nothing he could do.

  Not like this.

  He sank his nails into his palms. The pain sent sparks up and down his spine. He almost laughed as the first tingles of the changing went through him.

  People could get hurt, a part of him warned.

  Kate could get hurt if he didn’t. The risk was worth it. And his anguish was already receding as lupine blood pumped hungrily through his twisting veins.

  Kate’s an excuse. You want the change, need it. You’re just a different kind of junkie and this is your fix.

  But the voice didn’t matter. The crowds didn’t matter. He had to reach Kate, had to bring her back. And if his puny boy-self couldn’t cut it, then the ’wolf would.

  His muscles turned to mulch, then re-formed in harder, more powerful designs. His shirt split open as he hunched forward, and coarse dark hair started sprouting from every follicle. All around him, people were panicking, scattering, screaming. He bounded like a true beast across the station concourse, consciousness dimming, straining to catch the faint, cold plastic scent of the body bag.

  An ambulance was parked up outside the station. Medics were loading up bodies.

  Tom would give them some more to deal with.

  g

  g

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Kate flinched from the sudden light as the medic unzipped the body bag. She gratefully gulped fresh air until a hand clamped down over her mouth.

  ‘You going to be a good girl and stay quiet?’ A medic was standing over her with a syringe. ‘Or do I have to put you to sleep?’

  Kate shook her head, and the man took his hand away. Glancing around, she guessed she was inside an ambulance. Specially hired for the occasion, she had no doubt.

  Whoever these people were, they were well- organised.

  The moment Kate had stepped out of the bathroom on the train she’d had a chloroformed rag held over her face. That was it, lights out. When she’d woken up she thought she’d been buried – it was dark, cramped and airless. But then the lid had lifted on her prison and she’d found herself stuffed inside one of the seats in the restaurant car. She’d caught only a glimpse of the carnage in the carriage, but enough to know it looked like the Texas chainsaw massacre had jumped a state.

  Was Tom among the bodies? No one would answer her as she was bundled into the body bag, zipped up and hauled away with another casualty.

  Now another medic jumped into the back of the ambulance, slammed the doors behind him and banged hard on the driver’s partition. ‘We’ve got company,’ he shouted. ‘Get out of here.’

  Kate craned her neck and saw, through the twin windows of the double doors, a sleek, muscular ’wolf bounding towards them. Its eyes were dark, and the tatters of its blue jeans were held in place by a tough leather belt. ‘Tom!’ she screamed.

  At the same moment, she kicked out at the handle securing the double doors. As the ambulance pulled away, both doors swung open. The medic angrily hauled one back shut, but Tom leaped through the other, his mutated form framed in a rectangle of noise and daylight.

  Kate could hear shrieks from pedestrians outside, and car horns blaring as the ambulance swerved from side to side, trying to accelerate into the traffic.

  The medic with the syringe jabbed it into the ’wolf’s neck and pushed the plunger down. The sinewy flesh convulsed as the drug went in. Tom roared with pain, and the medic went sprawling back as Tom’s powerful claws caught him a glancing blow.

  ‘Watch out, Tom!’ Kate yelled.

  The other medic had grabbed a fire extinguisher. He primed it and let out a blast of white foam right in the werewolf’s face.

  Caught by surprise, Tom recoiled and lost his footing.

  Kate gasped as Tom fell and rolled backwards over and over across the road before crashing into some trash cans.

  ‘Get us the hell out of here!’ yelled the medic, yanking the doors closed again. ‘Before we have the cops on our tail as well as a damned wereling!’

  Kate gasped. So she wasn’t the only one to have formed that opinion.

  ‘Shame we couldn’t have grabbed him too,’ said the other man, fishing around in a red-cross box for a band-aid to cover the cut on his forehead. ‘Guess we should tell Takapa before it’s all over the news channels. He’ll want to hear a first-hand account of this little incident.’

  ‘Takapa?’ Kate asked. ‘Who is Takapa?’

  ‘Keep quiet,’ snarled the medic.

  ‘I’m not scared of you,’ Kate informed him tartly. ‘So how about you just tell me what you injected that ’wolf with?’

  ‘This,’ answered the other man. A needle scraped her skin, and a flood of cold entered her arm.

  Someone switched the world off and Kate sank into blackness.

  Tom scrabbled up from the roadside. He couldn’t think straight. It was as if his thoughts were in a language he couldn’t quite understand.

  Angry. Hunger.

  These were things that couldn’t help Kate, but the memory of her was dimming now.

  People were shouting and staring. The world was too bright. Tom scurried away down a side-alley, searching for darkness, but his limbs were heavy and cold despite the mild day. It was the needle, the thing they’d pushed into his skin. He was slowing down.

  Then he smelled meat. Hot steam was pouring from a vent housed in the wall, reeking of roasting flesh. He trailed thick saliva as he pushed a heavy plastic shield door open and snuffled into a noisy kitchen. Men in stained uniforms were throwing chunks of the meat into sizzling oil, or attending to carcasses with sharp knives.

  Tom’s eyes narrowed.

  Butcher. Hunger.

  He could ‘attend’ to them.

  Kill. Tear.

  No. The word changed in his head.

  Tears.

  He backed away, knocking down a stack of tin trays. They clanged and clattered like a dinner gong, but Tom knew he must stay hungry. If he gave into the ’wolf’s instincts now he knew he might lose his own forever.

  He hobbled away through a maze of side streets, wrestling with his emotions until time lost all meaning.

  When he came to, he was shaking and sobbing, half-naked in the remnants of the day’s sunlight. His skin was pale and hairless, human again. His stomach ached for food, but his heart was sick for something else.

  If he hadn’t been drugged before he’d entered that kitchen … what might he have done?

  Tom looked around fearfully, and found he had crawled into the middle of a cemetery; a city of the dead populated with stones and crosses and mouldering angels. Here he was, one more set of human remains. He wiped his tears with the back of his hand, his thoughts and deeds as ’wolf only half-remembered, like the dead all about him.

  As he lay gathering his strength, the shadow of a crumbling brick mausoleum began to creep over him, egged on by the setting sun. Tom shrank away from it and stood up. He had no shoes or socks, his torn jeans were now barely cut-off shorts, and his shirt had torn clear away – but he began to walk anyway. Right now he needed to be in the light.

  It was a mild evening, a little close. He threaded between the overgrown graves and shadowy stones and out into the street beyond.

  It was a run-down, drab area. Some mournful notes faltered nervously out of a saxophone from somewhere high up in a derelict building. Kids from the housing projects, dressed in rags little better than his, watched him with big eyes as he walked past. Somehow, he had to find Kate; but first he had
to find his own bearings …

  The architecture, the whole feel of the place, was like he’d stepped into another time, maybe a century ago. Joggers and dog-walkers stared at him in his rags, some amused, some afraid. Creoles chatted in groups on the steps of the tall buildings. Giving thanks that it had been a sunny day, he hunted about the stuccoed side streets and soon found a washing line in someone’s backyard. Tom plucked a shirt, some khakis and underwear from the sagging nylon cord, like strange fruit from a branch. He had no money, so he pegged his borrowed watch to the line instead, and hoped the payment would be appreciated.

  Ducking back out of the yard, Tom scuttled off with his damp prizes. In the next street he found the back entrance to a ramshackle old movie-house. A faded sign proclaimed it to be the Cinema Medin. The fire door, a mess of torn and faded posters, was ajar. Needing a place to change out of sight, Tom ducked inside.

  He found himself in a corridor that gave on to a cramped and dusty auditorium. Cobwebs shrouded the crimson drapes of moth-eaten velvet, and rats squeaked and scuffled as they played among the slashed seats.

  Tom had just slipped on the khakis when he heard a man’s voice, dried and reedy with age.

  ‘Do you need assistance, my friend?’

  Tom looked up in alarm, and discerned a dark figure watching him from a seat in the back row.

  ‘Where y’at, son?’ the old man tried again.

  ‘Is this your place?’ Tom glanced around nervously, wondering who else might be watching. ‘I didn’t break in or anything.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ The old timer rose stiffly from his seat. ‘It’s the rats’ place as much as mine, but they’re not the best company. You want to talk? Maybe I could help you.’

  ‘I’m sixteen years old,’ Tom told him, roughing up his voice a little in case Pops thought he could try something. ‘I can dress myself, thanks.’

  The man stepped forward, and in the chink of light let in by the open fire door, Tom saw he was a Native American and dressed all in black. ‘Not that kind of help,’ the man said mysteriously.