Night Howl

by Andrew Neiderman

  There was no one here to help her; she had to help herself. In a few hours her children would be arriving on the school bus. What if she didn’t get out of here? What if that animal was still in the house? The thought of such a possibility gave her the grit to face the pain. She made an attempt at standing but found she could get herself only into a squatting position. Straightening her torso brought more pain than she could bear. She had to make her way across the basement floor in a kind of crawl, inching forward, step by step, careful not to place too much pressure on the side that sang the song of agony.

  It seemed to take half an hour to reach the door. Every few moments along the way, she felt nauseated and battled to keep herself from blacking out. Slowly she reached forward with her right arm and took hold of the door to pull it open further. She emerged from the rear room on all fours and faced the body of Lt. Carlson. The sight of his opened throat and the blood was too much to behold.

  She couldn’t hold back the terror and the scream. The effort constricted her upper body and a rib slipped into her lung, the jagged bone tearing into it like a pin puncturing a balloon. Such a shot of pain was rejected by her brain. It shut down quickly and she fell forward on the basement playroom rug, once again losing consciousness.

  Clara’s scream brought Phantom to the basement door. He growled a warning and then came down the steps quickly to confront the woman’s body. He studied it for a moment, sniffed about, and then concluded there was no danger. He thought about dragging it back into the room and maybe even dragging the man’s body in, too, but the prospect of all that work was not appealing to him now. He had been awakened from a comfortable sleep and he felt like getting back to it. He trotted up the stairs again and looked back only once from the top of the step. The two crumpled human bodies side by side encouraged him. There was a kind of evil, aesthetic pleasure for him in the sight. He continued on back down the hallway, back to Bobby’s room and the bed and the comfort he had so easily earned.

  Qwen knelt over the carcass of the dead fawn. Maggie sat by, looking proud of her find.

  “He’s been through here, all right,” Qwen said. “It’s been days, though.” He looked up at Kevin. “You should have started this search earlier.”

  “Oh, we searched.”

  “He means you should have come to him earlier, Kevin,” Ann said. He didn’t like her tone of voice.

  “You know very well why we didn’t. It wasn’t our intention to involve any layman if we could help it,” Kevin said to Qwen. Qwen nodded and stood up. Then he started to the right.

  “Shouldn’t we take a short rest?” Kevin asked. “We’ve been going steady for more than two hours.”

  Qwen paused and looked back.

  “Think that would bother your man-dog?” he asked. “Think he’d hafta stop and rest after two, three hours of travelin’?”

  “We ain’t dogs,” Gerson said, but there was a growl to his voice.

  “Good predators think like their prey, move like their prey.”

  “Who was it told me this wasn’t going to be a Sunday picnic?” Ann asked sarcastically. “Go on, Mr. Qwen, I’m right behind you.” Qwen smiled and walked on, Maggie surging forward.

  This part of the undeveloped land they traveled was more mountainous. The reason for Kevin and Gerson’s complaining related to the fact that they had been walking uphill for the last hour and a half. Qwen wanted to stay as close to the dog’s trail as he could. Often that meant taking a harder than necessary path. When he moved through the forest, he didn’t think much about the people who were with him, anyway. He got lost in the flow of things—the rhythm of his own steps, the sound of Maggie’s barking, the ever-present indication of wildlife.

  His pace was vigorous. His legs were sinewy and strong and he had the wind endurance of an eighteen-year-old. Much of his time was spent traveling by foot. In high school he had been a cross-country runner, amazed at how hard some of his fellow teammates had to work to do what he could do naturally.

  Before he had spoken to the scientists and learned the nature of their work and what the dog was about, he had seriously considered the possibility that the dog had created a home for itself somewhere in the forest. He really didn’t think they’d have to go as far as they had, and he half-suspected that they might end up circling back somewhat, anyway.

  But now he was convinced that they were easily a few days behind the creature. It had a destination and had made its way there. It wasn’t just wandering aimlessly through the woods. He couldn’t point to any one thing, any sign, and say this or that proved it. If the others wanted an explanation for his theory, he couldn’t even give a satisfactory reply, but he still felt as positive as could be about it.

  The stories the scientists had told him should have caused him to think of some horrible, distorted terror-creature seen in movies and television, yet he didn’t have those images. He was never one to let his imagination run wild. If anything, he had an image of a pitiful creature. He saw it as somehow wounded and suffering. These Frankensteins, no matter what they wanted to call themselves—research scientists, CIA operatives, whatever—had, in his opinion, tortured and tormented the animal. Whatever they had done to it with their so-called genetic engineering had put it in a painful state. Now it was a mad, unnatural part of nature, even though it still performed in a certain, predictable way.

  His problem, as he saw it, was how much of the animal was still in it and how much of the human had taken control. The big man behind him was right—he could trap another human being as easily, if not more easily, than he could trap an animal. He was confident that in the end he would find the animal, no matter what genes they had put into it. What Qwen wasn’t sure of was what he would be able to do when he found him. But, he thought, maybe that will be their problem. Maybe that was when they would have to use their “magical, scientific ways.”

  The woman was beside him again, going stride for stride. He paused to look at some tracks and then continued on, bearing to his left. The afternoon sun had dipped considerably to the west. Because the trees were so tall and full here, they had to move through long corridors of shadow. Qwen thought the cool air was invigorating; his pace kept him snug. But the two men behind him began to look more and more grumpy and uncomfortable. The woman was different, though—she seemed unaffected by anything.

  Qwen had a funny idea about her. It brought a smile to his lips and eyes, but she didn’t see it. He thought about The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and envisioned her to be nothing more than a large portion of brain matter housed in a human body. This was why she was so indifferent to her body, why she didn’t care if it was attractive or if she abused it in any way. Whenever he did talk to her and look at her eyes, he had the eerie feeling he was talking to a mask. Someone else was inside that frame.

  “Tell me more about this genetic material you implanted into this dog,” he said without breaking stride.

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “How much do you know about it?”

  “You mean what can it do for him? That’s what we were learning about ourselves.”

  “From where did you get it?” He spit some tobacco juice to his left. “My mother usta have this saying, ‘The apple don’t fall far from the tree,’ if you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. In her crude way she was expressing the theory of genetics.”

  “Crude?”

  “Well, I mean unsubstantiated. In her time it was just a feeling people had.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to trust your feelings.”

  “Maybe. But you see, I believe, we believe, I should say, that even your feelings are preconditioned by your genetic makeup. It’s not something that happens spontaneously. You know people who have habitually sour, cynical personalities and people who are habitually optimistic, even annoyingly optimistic, maybe. Why, two people like that could be from the same family, could be brother and sister. What makes them different? They had the same h
ome environment, the same basic conditioning. It’s got to be in their given, in their genes.”

  “Hmm.” He had to admit she made sense.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Got a younger brother.”

  “Are you very alike?”

  “Night and day,” he said and laughed. “He teaches high school English in a little town in Pennsylvania. Went to college there, met a girl, and settled down there.”

  “See what I mean? Would you mind if I tried to guess more about the two of you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “My guess is your brother never liked to hunt and be outdoors as much as you do. When you said he was an English teacher, you indicated he was a good reader. How many years difference between you?”

  “Three.”

  “Was your father disappointed in him?”

  “Hell, no. My father never stopped braggin’ about him.”

  “Really?”

  Qwen paused.

  “Maybe you ain’t as perfect about this stuff as you think. Sure, I spent my life outdoors and I love the land, but that don’t mean I’m stupid or that I think people who spend most of their time indoors are stupid.”

  She blinked as though a feeling had finally registered.

  “I didn’t mean it to be . . . you’re far from stupid, Mr. Qwen. In your world, you’re the expert. That’s why we came to you.”

  He looked back at the two men, who looked up hopefully.

  “I hope so,” he said. “Anyway, gettin’ back to my original question. Where did you get the gene from? I mean did you know whose it was?”

  “Not exactly.” He sensed her hesitation, but he waited her out. “We have arrangements with certain federal correctional facilities for human organs, tissue, et cetera.

  “Prisoners? You mean that genetic stuff came out of some convict?”

  He thought for a moment. Their pace had slowed. Maggie was pulling farther away and Kevin and Gerson were only ten feet behind.

  “Didn’t it occur to you that maybe . . . maybe he would inherit evil, too?”

  “I don’t believe evil can be inherited, Mr. Qwen. There are certain limits, even in our theories.”

  “Is that right? Well, there’s where you and my mother part company. She was right on the money when it came to the kids who would be hell-raisers and criminals.”

  “To a large extent that was a result of their home environment. I’m not saying the tendencies weren’t inborn, but they could have directed their energies, their ruthlessness, if you will, toward more socially acceptable goals. If they had been conditioned correctly, that is.”

  “All right,” Qwen said, “considering the tendencies you put into this dog and the conditioning you gave it, what would you say it’s directed toward?”

  “You have to understand, Mr. Qwen,” she said, her voice quivering with insecurity for the first time since they had begun the chase, “we’re on the frontier of this research. We don’t know all the answers yet.”

  “You mean you might have created some kind of intelligent, criminal animal and not even know that?” She didn’t respond. He looked back at the two who had fallen behind a few more feet. “You do know, don’t you?” he asked. “That’s why you wanted to come along. That’s why you think it’s so important we recapture him as soon as possible.” Still she didn’t respond. “Do they know this, too?” he asked, gesturing back with his head.

  “No,” she said, but it was very low, almost inaudible.

  He stopped when the ledge came into sight. Maggie was waiting there dutifully. Qwen broke into a jog and Ann followed right along. Gerson cursed and Kevin picked up his pace. At the ledge they could look down at the lake and the line of houses to the east. It was a picture postcard scene, especially with the rich green maples and tall pine that rimmed large portions of the lake shore. There were half a dozen small sailboats moving so slowly they looked painted on the water. But to Qwen, the peaceful and serene vista looked deceptive. He had the feeling that something terrible could emerge at any moment and turn the water into blood.

  The others gathered behind him. He studied the ground by the ledge carefully and followed some signs to the right where he saw the steepness diminished by outshoots of rock and earth, making for a natural pathway down the side of the mountain.

  “What’s this, a dead end?” Gerson asked.

  “Hardly,” Qwen said. He looked out over the lake again. They all stood beside him, silently looking in the same direction. After another moment he looked at Ann. He saw immediately that she understood. “That’s the outskirts of the hamlet of South Fallsburg down there,” he said.

  “So?” Gerson said.

  “We’ll follow this route down the side of the mountain carefully and go around the lake.”

  “How can you tell he went that way? Whaddya got, telescopic vision or something?” Gerson asked.

  Qwen didn’t reply. Instead he went to the edge of the ledge and began his descent carefully.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Gerson said.

  “Why don’t you shut up?” Ann said and followed Qwen.

  “Wait a minute,” Gerson said, seizing Kevin’s right shoulder before he started after them. “I don’t like the idea of headin’ directly into population.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Kevin said, “but what’s our choice? If that’s where he went, that’s where we must go.”

  “I don’t trust that guy.”

  “We don’t have much choice.”

  “For now,” Gerson muttered and reluctantly followed behind.

  The Fallsburg Central Elementary School bus made the turn onto Lake Street. There were only two children on it. Lisa and Bobby Kaufman were the last children on the run. As soon as the bus made the turn, they moved up to the front seats as they always did. Normally, Ed Tooey yelled if any of his children got up out of their seats while the bus was still in motion, but he permitted the Kaufman kids this little divergence from the rule. The bus moved very slowly at this point and he knew how anxious the children were to get home. He smiled and shifted up gear as he finished the turn and went into the straightaway.

  Ed Tooey had been driving a school bus for nearly thirty years now, and he never ceased to be fascinated by the faces of children, especially grade school children. There was an innocence and excitement in their faces that made every day bright for him. Other bus drivers, the newer ones mostly, constantly complained about the noise and the roughhousing on their buses. They acted as though the runs were hell for them. He concluded that most of them didn’t like children and even if the children sat like zombies, these drivers would still complain.

  Tooey took pride in the fact that he developed a good rapport with many of his wards. He made it a point to talk with the children every chance he got, to learn something personal about them. Many times elementary schoolchildren’s parents were waiting outside their homes when the school bus pulled up. He always spoke a few words with those who did. Consequently, his runs ran the longest. School administrators had grown used to him over the years, but recently, a new business administrator, with a coldly efficient manner, had been critical of him and the time it took him to complete his route. The business manager had clocked every mile himself and determined with computer accuracy just how long it should take.

  “I’m not a piece of machinery,” Tooey told him when he was called in for a conference about it. He wasn’t exactly insubordinate, but the new business manager was beginning to pressure him into thinking about retirement. He had already threatened to put him on a different run, a high school run that was shorter.

  “So how’d you do in school today?” he asked Bobby after the little boy took his new seat.

  “Okay.”

  “He’s not havin’ any more of those nightmares, is he?” he asked Lisa.

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Nightmares ain’t nothin’ anyway. I usta have ‘em all the time because I ate all sorts of stuff right bef
ore I went to sleep. Now I just have hot milk,” he said and laughed. “I’m a regular senior citizen.”

  “I don’t like hot milk,” Bobby said.

  “I’m not crazy about it either, but it sure helps me fall asleep,” Tooey said. “Your daddy gettin’ you another dog someday?” he asked.

  “No,” Lisa said quickly.

  “My dog’s still here,” Bobby said.

  “Still here? What’s he mean, still here?”

  “It’s a dream he thinks was real,” Lisa said.

  “Oh.”

  “It was real,” Bobby said. “It was.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” Tooey said. He slowed down as the Kaufman house came into view. There was no traffic on the street in either direction, but he turned his warning lights on anyway. By the book, he thought. He always did things by the book. “Looks like you got a visitor,” he announced, seeing Carlson’s car in the driveway. The two children sat up and strained their necks to look out over the front of the school bus. Tooey brought it to a stop and opened the doors. “Last stop!” he announced. “All off who’s going off!”

  The children stood up hesitantly. Tooey noticed that the sight of the strange car put a heaviness in their steps.

  “Maybe it’s a traveling salesman or an uncle. Watch your step, kids.”

  “So long, Mr. Tooey,” Lisa said, remembering to look back. Bobby couldn’t take his eyes off the car. When the school bus door closed behind them, they started up their driveway slowly. Ed Tooey did not pull away immediately. He watched them for a few moments and then shook his head. He had heard about the terrible incident with their dog, and he thought it had put such fear into the children that it made everything look ominous, even a strange car parked in the driveway.

  He shifted into first and accelerated. It was only when he was half a mile or so down the street that he realized Mrs. Kaufman hadn’t come out to greet her children. She didn’t even appear in the doorway to wave at him. It was something she always did; she was one of those kinds of parents who showed concern. He called them old-fashioned parents.