Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  “You are wayward lambs,” the man said.

  The rest of Glenn’s lethargy burned away in a white-hot blast of fear. The man’s voice had been resonant, erudite. Yet there had been a croaking, disused quality to it, as if the man’s lungs were a pair of ancient bellows, the vocal chords leeched of moisture. Had he been alone, Glenn would have taken off running.

  But Mike was chuckling. “‘Wayward lambs’? What the hell is he talking about?”

  Both Marvin brothers were laughing too. In fact, it seemed that most of the partygoers found this newcomer an innocuous novelty someone had hired to enliven the proceedings.

  But there were also those who weren’t laughing.

  Savannah and her friend, the librarian whose name Glenn couldn’t recall…they were watching the newcomer with real trepidation. As was Short Pump, who was standing by himself about fifteen feet behind Glenn and Mike. Short Pump had a beer clutched in one hand, but his other hand was resting on his thigh, the fingers there tap-tapping against his jeans.

  “You gonna have a beer or not?” Brian Marvin said. “I can’t prevent my brother from kicking your ass much longer.”

  Jessica Clinton said, “What the hell’s up your ass, man?”

  Without moving, the man looked at Dan Clinton and said, “Tell your woman to be still.”

  A few partygoers chuckled, but no one else saw much humor in the comment, least of all Jessica Clinton. She was sassy, Glenn knew. A woman pretty much had to be sassy to manage six kids.

  Jessica flipped her long, auburn hair aside and strode toward the figure. “You better start apologizing right now.”

  The man laughed softly. “Helpless, wayward lambs.”

  Glenn’s chill deepened.

  But Jessica’s husband had evidently had enough. So had Hunter Marvin. Together, they stalked toward the figure, who Glenn realized was bigger and stronger than he’d initially estimated. The black clothes remained a bit roomy, but the figure inside them was far from emaciated. To the contrary, the arms and legs seemed muscular now. Even if he was older, the man looked stout enough to put up a fight.

  “This is your only warning,” the man said, his voice deepening.

  Hunter Marvin spread his arms. “You’re warning us?”

  “If you run now,” the man continued, “you might escape retribution.”

  Now the laughter was more pronounced.

  “You believe this shit?” Billy Kramer said to Colton Crane. “This douchebag thinks he’s gonna take us all on.”

  One person who apparently took the man’s threats seriously was Josh Roller. A couple years older than Glenn, Roller was a known gun enthusiast. Brushing past Glenn and Mike, Roller said, “Fellas, I’m gonna put a stop to this bullshit, pronto.”

  Which meant, Glenn knew, that Roller was trudging to his beat-up Ford pickup in order to retrieve whatever weaponry he stored there. Roller had driven through one of the fields and was parked only about fifty yards away.

  Time to go, a voice whispered.

  But that was impossible, Glenn knew. Not only were the odds in their favor—hell, there were how many people here tonight? Fifty?—but he would appear gutless if he turned tail now. Not to mention Savannah. What would she think of him?

  Don’t you want to protect Savannah?

  Sure, he thought uneasily. Of course I do.

  “Last warning, asshole,” Hunter Marvin said. “Either leave or tell us who the hell you are.”

  “And apologize to my wife,” Dan Clinton added. Dan was ordinarily a pretty reasonable guy, but he looked pissed off enough to make the interloper pay for his rudeness.

  “You want to know who I am?” the interloper asked.

  Hunter Marvin grinned, glanced back at the other partygoers in exasperation. “That’s what I said, didn’t I? You hard of hearing or something?”

  “Hard of hearing is one thing I am not,” the interloper said. “I hear everything. I hear the wind and what it conceals. I hear the language of the night, the music of the ancient world. I hear the leaves. I hear the worms, eager to writhe in your carcass.”

  Hunter hesitated. “You’re a real freak, aren’t you?”

  The figure turned his face this way and that, sampling the air.

  “I smell your fear,” the interloper said. “It is the scent of impending death.”

  And now, for the first time since they’d met back in junior high, Glenn saw Hunter Marvin take a backward step. Hunter had always seemed eager for a confrontation, but several factors were conspiring to undo his courage now.

  The interloper’s body no longer looked bony at all, but instead packed the voluminous clothes with brawn and sinew. Though there was still something in the voice and bearing that bespoke experience, Glenn now wondered just how agile this man might be. His whole frame seemed to thrum with caged energy. And something else. If hatred was a tangible thing, this man was broadcasting it. The contempt in his voice was real, the desire to inflict pain.

  “Hey, guys?” a voice behind them said.

  Glenn turned and saw Short Pump, whose apologetic expression only partially masked his terror.

  “What?” Mike asked.

  “Think we should maybe, I don’t know, get the hell out of here?” Short Pump asked.

  Glenn was about to agree with him, his reputation as a badass be damned, when the figure said, “You were wrong to return.”

  Next to him, he sensed Mike stiffen.

  Glenn swallowed. “Hey, I think Duane’s got a point. Maybe we should get Savannah and—”

  “See what your deeds have wrought,” the figure interrupted.

  Glenn tried to swallow but couldn’t. The voice seemed to fill the clearing, to absorb the flames of the bonfire and swirl about them until the air was no longer breathable, was a superheated cauldron in which they would all boil.

  Dan Clinton stepped closer to the figure. “Look, I’ve asked you to apologize to my wife, and if you’re not going to—”

  “Come,” the figure said.

  Dan faltered, a stricken look on his face. He glanced about uncertainly, then said, “You mean me?”

  “I mean anyone with a modicum of courage. Even one who has failed an entire town.”

  And this time there was absolutely no doubt to whom the figure was speaking.

  Chapter Six

  Mike thought, I didn’t mean to let anyone down.

  The figure was gazing stonily at him. At first Mike assumed it was a joke. Like those people who dressed up like zombies and shambled around big cities, trying to scare people. But this was no zombie. This was—he tried but could not escape the word—a werewolf.

  Only not the kind he’d seen in films. Mike wasn’t big on horror movies. Could take them or leave them actually, and most of the time he preferred to leave them. Yet that’s what this figure reminded him of, at least in its appearance. The eyes were the most prominent, of course. Blue, at first, but now a glowing yellow. Lit by some inner hellfire, their insidious gleam bereft of pity, without remorse. But the face wasn’t right either. The cheekbones, for one thing, protruded too far, and the brow reminded him of a battering ram. The face was hairy in a way that struck Mike as unnatural. It wasn’t just the wild, untended nature of the man’s facial hair that so unnerved him, it was the fact that it seemed to be spreading.

  Werewolf, his mind insisted. Werewolf.

  But werewolves were kid stuff, right? The conjurations of overactive imaginations, the kinds of creatures dreamed up by superstitious peasants and frightened villagers? A lamb got eaten? Blame it on a werewolf. A child went missing? It must be some supernatural beast roaming the forest.

  Wayward lambs. The figure’s words echoed in his mind like a death knell. Wayward lambs.

  And the beast had targeted Mike.

  (Run)

  But there must be some
explanation, he reasoned, some cause for the man’s—

  (creature’s)

  Man’s! Man’s! It’s only a man!

  (Run!)

  Mike couldn’t flee, no way, not now. Not after fleeing for the past ten years, not after casting off Savannah like a used condom and treating his parents like they had the plague. Holy crap, he thought, maybe that was why they’d gotten divorced. Maybe that was why his mother had cheated. Searching for male attention, her son gone MIA and her husband obsessed with a dead dream. God, what a mess he’d made of things, what a hideous, unholy, fucking mess. He was a runner, a fleer, a jilter of good-hearted girls and a betrayer of caring parents.

  So stop running, he told himself. Now. Right here.

  (Mistake)

  Fuck you! he screamed at the hectoring voice. I know about mistakes, all right? I know about screwing up and losing your chances, but goddammit, I’m only twenty-eight. I can still take control of my life. Still show Savannah I’m not a runner. If this guy is challenging me

  (It’s not a guy)

  I can face him and show everyone I’m better than I ever was. I’m more than my failures, more than a baseball player. I’m—

  The man darted toward him.

  Mike’s bladder let go.

  Duane would replay the scene many times in his head:

  The gigantic figure whose hairy muscles writhed and jumped like severed power lines.

  The shocked faces of the crowd as the beast stormed past.

  Glenn stepping in front of Mike, Glenn moving toward the hurtling figure rather than away from it, Glenn jerking up an arm to shield himself as the figure crashed into him and over him, despite the fact that Glenn had done nothing but badmouth Mike for as long as Duane could remember.

  But there Glenn was, getting tackled by the marauding figure, being slammed to the sparse grass of the clearing, and then flopping onto his back, knocked senseless by the collision, his forearm striped with glistening slash marks.

  The figure, creature, beast, whatever the hell it was, tumbled end over end, swept past them with the incredible momentum it had built up. Then it was splaying out its limbs, reminding him of a dog regaining its balance.

  No, Duane thought, not a dog.

  A wolf.

  But the figure was still more man than any other species. When it peered up at Mike, there was a sinister intelligence glinting in its eyes.

  Then it turned its gaze on Duane.

  He didn’t cry out or piss his pants or abandon himself to paroxysms of panic. The only physiological reactions that took place when the beast looked at him were a painful puckering of the sphincter and a sudden retraction of his balls.

  The beast grinned at Duane. As though marking him.

  Then it sprang for Mike.

  Chapter Seven

  Savannah was sure Mike wouldn’t do anything at all, would just acquiesce to his fate. She had been locked in place by fear ever since the creature’s first appearance. Next to her she’d sensed Joyce’s interest in the creature, watched in disbelief as Joyce had even taken a couple of steps toward the beast. Then things had taken that ghastly, surreal turn, the man changing in front of their eyes, and before Savannah could do anything, the beast had loped across the clearing toward Mike.

  And then Glenn had jumped in front of the creature.

  She was sure the beast would kill Glenn, but then Mike’s trance broke and he was stepping over to the fire, bending, grasping a stout branch, and facing down the creature. In the sparking heat shimmer, Savannah could see what was happening.

  Mike was settling into his batting stance.

  She didn’t feel the thrill she once had when watching Mike play baseball—those feelings were dead. But despite this fact, watching Mike turn away from her, the firelight dancing on his back, was like stepping into her eighteen-year-old self at the high school baseball field. The tree branch he’d selected was longer than a normal bat and maybe twice as thick. She assumed the thing weighed a ton, but Mike handled it like it was any other piece of lumber. A full half of the branch was blackened from the fire, and perhaps six inches of its tip glowed a cheerful red.

  Mike crouched, twisted that front foot of his, and dug into the batter’s box. He cocked the long bough, bringing his hands way back, and wiggled his butt the way he did when preparing for the pitcher’s delivery.

  Reliving his former glory. Realizing his promise.

  Becoming the hero everyone had assumed he’d become.

  The beast charged at him.

  Mike rocked onto his back foot—the part of the swing called the load, she remembered—and began to unleash his fury.

  In that moment, in those glorious milliseconds when the broad, bludgeoning branch began to knife through the strike zone, Savannah was certain the beast would have its neck broken by the blow. The scorched cylinder of the makeshift bat and the fiery orange brand at its tip came howling toward the beast, Mike’s body a powder keg of coiled power.

  But Mike missed. The bough scraped over the ducking body of the beast, and Mike lost control of his weapon. The branch went skittering through the air like a dying dervish and landed somewhere in the underbrush. The beast, having cleared the swinging cudgel, slammed into Mike, snarling and scratching. The beast lifted Savannah’s long-ago boyfriend like a weightless mannequin and braced him above its head with one massive hand. The skin of the beast, Savannah saw with little surprise, was an unwholesome tawny hue, though most of it was furred with wiry black hair. The creature’s back was broad and muscled, the arms attenuating the fabric of its shirt.

  At some point the beast had either scratched or bitten Mike, Savannah now saw, for in the firelight Mike’s whole front, from the stomach of his shirt all the way down to his thighs, was slathered in blood. Mike was gaping down at the creature, perhaps still dumbfounded at his inability to hit yet another moving target, but Mike didn’t gape for long. The creature reached up with its free hand and slowly, almost sensuously, buried its claws in Mike’s stomach. Blood poured from Mike’s belly in soupy rills, more blood coughing out of his twitching lips. Mike was still alive at that point, though he’d already begun to pale, so when the creature brought Mike’s face lower, Savannah was pretty sure Mike knew what was happening.

  The beast’s face looked vaguely human. But in the firelight painting it, she could clearly make out the differences. The elongated ears. The oversize jaws. The wrinkled forehead. The extra hair.

  The leering golden eyes.

  As though he were toiling to speak, Mike opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, the lips working like a dying trout.

  The creature opened its mouth as if to kiss Mike’s lips. Then its teeth vised down on Mike’s chin. A gurgling, high-pitched yowl sounded from the pit of Mike’s throat. The creature’s teeth hinged together, the bones of Mike’s jaw splintering like balsa wood. Blood gushed around the beast’s writhing lips, Mike’s eyes starey and horrorstruck.

  The creature began to shake Mike’s head in its mouth, a stomach-churning growl issuing from its lethal maw.

  “Somebody do something!” a shrill voice screamed.

  Savannah turned, saw Jessica Clinton waving her arms at the rest of the partygoers, as if they all hadn’t just witnessed the same thing she had.

  Then Savannah realized that Jessica had a point. No one was doing anything. Despite the fact that they had the beast outnumbered, despite the fact that some of these men had guns in their vehicles. Despite all this, a man was being devoured before their very eyes.

  No. Not just a man.

  Mike Freehafer. The boy she’d been certain she would one day marry. They were going to live in a big city. Boston, or maybe even New York. She’d travel with the team, shop at the fancy stores. Then, when he’d struck it big in free agency, they’d settle down, raise a family.

  That dream had been brain-dead
and on life support for a long time, but now it was officially over. The beast had reduced Mike to a gore-streaked rag doll.

  Jessica Clinton’s words were still ringing in Savannah’s ears when the creature hurled Mike’s lifeless body into the woods and raised its arms to the group. “Will you watch while I use you for food? Won’t you flee so I can experience the pleasure of running you down?”

  Savannah scanned the faces of her fellow partygoers. Most were still staring at Mike’s twisted body with sick expressions. A few were glancing around, maybe seeking for the one brave soul who would challenge this monster.

  Then two figures broke loose from the crowd. One was Dan Clinton.

  The other was Joyce.

  “What are you doing?” Savannah asked, but Joyce barely heard her.

  Joyce had been watching the beast with a growing sense of déjà vu, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, Jessica Clinton’s plea had given her the jolt she needed.

  Joyce had no plan, had no idea at all what she would do when she reached the beast; she certainly had no delusions of vanquishing it. Yet something told her this was the moment she’d been waiting for her entire life, the destiny she’d suspected would one day materialize if only she had the courage to embrace it.

  She wasn’t a muscular woman, nor was she especially physically fit. She walked a lot, and she ate healthily, but if Mike Freehafer—a former stud athlete in the prime of his life—had been ripped to pieces by the beast, what chance had she?

  Little, if she was being objective about this, but objectivity had been her ruler for far too long. In the books she read—and lately, the stories she’d tried to write—anything was possible. They were all about characters stepping outside themselves, confronting deep-seated fears and then living or dying on the basis of their own wiles and fortitude.

  At the very least, Joyce had to try.

  Why? she heard her mother’s shrill voice demand. Because it’s dangerous? Because it makes you feel rebellious?

  Yes, she decided, striding closer. That was precisely why she was doing this. Her mother would have run shrieking in the other direction by now, or perhaps taken refuge in a hollow log.