The dog’s tailed wagged brightly and he snuffed and circled the man. He knew the routine, they’d been through it so many times before. He led the Siberian to the booth and coaxed it inside. “In here. Here.”
The husky sniffed the floor and the corners of the cracked glass, the phone. Its tail slowed, wiping back and forth with waning enthusiasm. Gallagher’s heart sank as the tail stalled and stopped altogether. Nothing.
Strikeout. His daughter was right.
The husky snorted and then the tail sprang up, whacking loud off the glass. Its nose darted about the confined space, huffing it all up. Gallagher bit his lip, afraid to hope but the dog just became more animated until it turned and jumped up on him.
“Good boy,” he cooed and scratched the Siberian’s ears. Wrassling with and praising the dog. “Come on, out here. Out here.”
He led the dog out of the booth to the road and knelt again. “Find her, boy. Find her for me.”
The husky nosed the ground, jerking its head this way and that in a zigzag pattern. Its tail slowed as it focused and then swung madly as its nose stuck as if caught in a hook. It scampered forward, nose to the ground, following some invisible line. He called after it, urging it on and the Siberian trotted out twenty paces, thirty. It ran on without a backward glance.
He ran back to the truck and pulled onto the road. Rumbling slowly, he kept back a good ways from the dog, not wanting the noise or stink of the truck to interfere with the dog’s tracking. After a while he stopped and slid the stick into park and watched the dog trot forward down the road and then he trundled forward to catch up and stop again. They continued this pace, this weird game of catch-up for two miles.
The dog stopped and hewed left then right and then left again. It turned and looked back at the truck then dropped its nose to the cracked asphalt again. Gallagher leaned over the wheel, watching the husky waver as if lost. “Come on, dog” he said. “Don’t lose the trail now.”
The husky circled back until it found the scent and trotted forward, nose skimming the snow.
Another mile. Gallagher kept an eye on the odometer as it clicked over and then the dog veered off the road into the ditch and back up the bank, disappearing into the thick tangle of scrub. He slowed where the dog had vanished and his eyes could barely make out the path leading off the paved road. Little more than a tunnel through the dipping branches. He turned the Cherokee onto the rutted path, following the paw prints in the clean snow. The outstretched branches of the trees scraped and clawed at the roof.
He crawled forward, the wheels dropping into ruts and the old truck dipping and bobbing as it negotiated the bad road. The husky little more than a glimpse ahead, tracking further into the white unknown.
Her feet stung as the warmth from the woodstove crept into them and the dead numbness in her hands receded. She pulled the coat tight over her shoulders and tried to remember. A few broken images blinked in the tape loop of memory. The wolf, its teeth. The gargantuan maw closing over her neck. Beyond that, nothing. A queasy sense of dread that something had happened and she needed to focus. Wake up.
The wolf was outside the door.
A shadow fell over the threshold. The man stepped inside, knocked the snow from his boots and closed the door. He righted one of the upended crates and sat down. Arms propped on his knees, he watched the little fire in the open grate of the stove. He seemed in no particular hurry. The two of them sitting there waiting for the bus.
“You think you know what you’re doing,” he said. “But you don’t.”
She turned her head a degree and looked at him. The firelight flashing against his dark eyes. “I know you,” she said.
“I tried to talk to you before but you scampered.”
At the bar. The man she’d mistaken for an AA do-gooder. Her shivering ceased and with it, the numbness in her head. The man’s stink was filling the little room, jagging her nerve endings. Instinct preceded thought and it took a dozen heartbeats to process what her nose was screaming at her. “You did this.” She nodded at the trashed room. “You’re the one from last night.”
“Yup.”
The fire cracked and popped in the stove.
“Why?”
“I needed to get your attention,” he said.
“By trying to kill me?”
“What’s your name?”
She turned away.
“I know the absolute worst thing about you and you want to keep your name a secret?” He shook his head and let out a chuckle. “Fine. You tell me when you’re good and ready.”
He looked over the shack, as if some clue to her name lay buried there. “So mystery lady, what do you plan to do?”
“Pack up. Move on.”
“Yeah. Where’s to? Some other remote place where the wolf can run free with a minimal chance of killing somebody?” He leaned forward. “You’re kindly running out of country for that.”
Her eyes unlocked from the fire and swung his way. “What do you want?”
“I’m here to help you. Barring that, I need to ensure you don’t make a mess out here and start a panic.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“You don’t have a clue what you need.” He picked up an empty can from the floor and looked at its crusty dregs. “Not exactly thriving, are you?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Clay County, Missouri.”
“No. How did you become a wolf?”
He shrugged. “Same as everybody. Got bit, survived, then the change come and the wolf turned me inside out.” He rose and reached into the woodbin for another log and slid it through the grate into the stove. “Everybody thinks the circumstances are important. That first time. But they aren’t. It’s like losing your cherry. The specific details may vary but the thing itself is always the same. People sure do like to attach significance to it. Don’t know why. Arrogance maybe. Everybody thinks they’re special.”
Lara couldn’t tear her eyes from him. Here was someone like her but he shrugged and scratched his chin like it was nothing important, nothing out of the ordinary. Like he was talking about their zodiac sign and not the fact that both of them could transform into monsters. She straightened her back. “What’s your name?”
“Told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“Edgar Grissom.”
“That’s your real name?”
“Don’t have much use for it these days.” He shrugged. “But yeah, that’s the one I was born with.”
She twisted round, tucking her feet under her and studied the stranger. He seemed calm but her brain felt scrambled by some other sense. A warning signal buzzing inside her ear, a threat she could taste on her tongue. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to be careful. You’re at a critical stage now. Things can go very bad if you’re not careful.”
“They’re already bad.”
“Listen, your--” he frowned, as if failing to find the right word, “your condition is getting worse. The change is coming on stronger, triggered from nothing at all. And it’s coming more frequently.” He took a step closer and knelt down. “Not many of us survive to the point where you are now. But what happens during this next stage is critical.”
“Next stage?”
“I can help you through it.”
“What happens at this stage?”
“Sink or swim. You become the wolf or you don’t. See, most folks, and I mean the few that get this far, can’t take it anymore. They tried everything to stop it, slow it. Hell, some even look for a cure but right about now, the truth sets in and it hurts. There’s no way out. They go crazy. Or they put a bullet in their head.”
“They go crazy,” she repeated.
“They go plumb batshit crazy. And that’s when they get dangerous. Put the rest of us at risk. See, our kind we got to stay hidden. Don’t cause too much fuss. It won’t do to have the general public know we exist.”
She watched him as he spoke, studied hi
s movements, the fall of his eyes. Batshit crazy. “How many of ‘us’ are there?”
“More than you’d think.”
“What happens to the ones that go crazy?”
“Well,” he said. “They have to be put down.”
“And that’s why you’re here. To put me down if I go insane.”
“I told you. I’m here to help you. It don’t have to go the other way.”
He had moved closer during this. He could reach out and touch her if he wanted. She studied his hands. Big and knotted with veins. Grime was worked into the knuckles, dirt encrusted under the fingernails. Or dried blood.
Yet, if he could reach her, then she could reach him. Her arms were folded round herself and her left hand closed over the weapon tucked into a pocket. She swung out, the blade zinging through the air. But her muscles were still cramped, the movement slow.
He leaned out of her arc and stepped back. She rolled to her feet and held the blade high. “You stay the hell away from me.”
His eyes caught the glint of the blade, the unmistakable sheen of silver. “Now look what you done.” He feinted left.
She swung. He became a blur. Something punched a hole in her mid-section and drove her hard into the wall. The tinderbox shed rattled on impact. A jar fell from the sill. She hit the floor in a heap, lights popping in her eyes. Where was the knife?
His boots stepped into her blurred sightline. Hands gripped her by the collar and jerked her clean into the air, her feet dangling. His face looming into view. Teeth gnashed, an unnatural light burning in his irises.
“Wake up, sister. You don’t have time for this.” He let go and she slid down the wall. “Think about what I said. I’ll give you a day, then I’ll be back for an answer. Now, if I were you--“
His head tilted and he crossed to the door, pushed it open. “Damn.”
Lara touched the throbbing pulse in the back of her head. Her fingertips came away bloodied.
“Look alive, sunshine,” he said. “You got company.”
She lifted her gaze from the blood to the open door. Edgar Grissom was gone.
Gripping the wall, she pushed herself up but everything went seasick and she hit the floor.
THIRTEEN
TENDRILS OF PINE thwapped against the windshield as if the forest itself wanted to keep him out. The road winnowed to a thin wedge, forcing Gallagher to snail along in low gear. Of the dog, he’d lost sight completely.
Rounding another crazy turn, the paw prints vanished. A snake of unspoiled snow before him. Not even bird tracks dotted in the white trail.
Gallagher stopped and killed the engine. Stepping out, he walked back the way he’d came, eyes searching the snow for the tracks. He found them fifteen paces back, scooting east off the pathway and straight into a thicket of dead brambles. Jesus. Did the scent move off the path or had the dog spotted a grouse and given chase?
He called out to it and then listened. Wind rustling the pines. Birdsong. Nothing.
“Damn it, dog. You better be right.”
He laced his boots tight and zipped up his coat and unlatched the rear door of the Cherokee. The backpack was slung on and he fastened the waistbelt. He opened the black case and took up the big nickel-plated handgun, hitting the latch to spring the magazine. This he fitted into the case and pulled up the mag with the expensive rounds and slotted it home. The weapon slid into the holster under his coat and he pulled the shotgun from under the floor panel and swung the reardoor shut.
The brush was thick and the dried stalks of branches clawed for his face. He pressed on, following the tracks of the dog through the snow and brambles. Pushing past a stand of wintering hemlock he came into a clearing and stopped to listen. The hush of his breath and nothing else. The birds had gone quiet and even the wind had stopped. He clucked his teeth, softly nickering for the dog.
A rustle and then the pounding of paws on the frozen ground. The husky burst out from the thicket on the far side of the clearing and bounded towards him. Tongue flapping from his open jaws, the dog thudded into his knees and circled him twice. Tail swiping fast.
“Good boy,” he cooed, rubbing its ribs. “Show me. Find her.”
The Siberian snorted and bounded off. East, southeast. He jogged after it, bootheels crunching and forearms shielding his face from the tangles of branches ahead. The ground was bad and he stumbled and slipped in the slick snow. He cursed the dog for a halfbreed mix of a hellhound and crashed onwards. The dog appeared around the bend of a tree stump, its back to him, nose pointing straight ahead and down.
The earth fell away down a steep grade and there, through the trunks of juniper and ponderosa pine, he spotted it. A ghost of woodsmoke twisting from the pipe chimney of some throwup shelter. No bigger than a single car garage. One small window in the north flank, glazed with weathered plastic sheeting instead of glass.
Gallagher felt his heart bang in his chest. He squatted down to one knee and studied the little shack for a long time. No movement in the plastic-sheathed window, no one came in or out. Everything around him was still and hushed. He dabbed his brow, surprised at how badly he was sweating in this chill air. He snapped his fingers and the dog came and he hissed at it to be still.
“If she’s in there, then she already knows we’re here. No way to sneak up on it.”
The husky whined, eager to run. Its tail sweeping the snow.
He rose and marched forward. The dog bolted ahead, cutting this way and that with its nose to the ground. He hissed at it, snapping his fingers for it to heel but the animal was lost in the hunt. The hut remained silent as he approached and he studied the slat door and the table out front. Footprints in the snow going in and out the stoop.
He stopped before the door and called out. Nothing. No response or stirring from within. Gripping the shotgun in his right hand, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Called her name.
Dark but warm. A flicker of light from the open grate of the woodstove. No one inside.
A bedroll on the floor near the stove. Cans of food stacked against a wall and a mesh bag of dry goods hanging from a nail in the unfinished ceiling. The husky scampered through the hobo shack, nosing every corner.
The fire in the stove. Little puddles of water on the floor where snow knocked from boots had melted. The occupant was just here. She couldn’t have gone far. He went back outside and studied the footprints in the snow. Two sets of tracks; one heading due west towards where he thought the road should be, the second veering southeast. These tracks were staggered, as if the strider was drunk, and led straight into the trees.
He followed the second tracks, matching the steps and noting where the person had fallen and gotten up again. Dots of blood appeared in the snow, turning pink against the frozen white. He pushed on, through a stand of spruce and he could hear the sound of running water. A creek or river nearby. The ground dropped, dipping into a valley knotted with oak and scrub and further out, a dark lump collapsed against a tree trunk.
He ran, boots pounding the snow, but the dog outpaced him. It beelined to the dark mass and then skidded and sideswiped away. The figure moved, struggling to get up. The husky circled round the figure, sniffing and springing back.
The figure stood shakily, hidden beneath a tattered parka. Gallagher slowed to a stop.
“Lara?”
The dog trotted sideways and growled and he hissed at it to shut up. He looked back to the figure in the heavy coat, reeling as if drunk. “Mendes? It’s me. John.”
“Go away.” The voice a cracked whisper. “Just go away.”
“Look at me.” He stepped closer, moving around to see her face. “Don’t run.”
It was her. God, she was so thin. Lara Mendes. Her face drained of color, raccooned with dark hollows under her eyes. Droplets of blood spackled over her lips. Some pale shadow of the woman he knew.
“Easy.” His hand went up in a gesture of caution. “Are you hurt?”
She turned away, hiding her face. “Go away
, John. Please.”
“You called me.”
“That was a mistake.”
“For Chrissakes, Lara. I’ve looked for you everywhere.”
Her eyes dropped to the shotgun in his hand. “Why? To put me down?”
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
The Siberian whined and sidestepped around him. He barked at it to sit. When he looked up he clocked her staring at the dog, squinting in concentration as if trying to pry loose a memory. She shook it off, refocusing on him. “Go home. There’s nothing here, so just go.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Her hand shot to her busted lip, came away red. She smeared it on the coat. “It’s nothing.”
“Enough.” He marched on her, exasperated. “Come inside, let’s clean you up.” He hooked her arm around his shoulders and all but carried her towards the shack. Good God. She weighed nothing.
“Stop.” She tried to shirk out of his hands but he tightened his grip all the more.
“Just march,” he barked. “Before I change my mind and shoot you.”
The dog snorted and fell in line behind them.
The bag of meat scraps turned slowly in the breeze, slung from a branch overhead. The iron bear trap was set below it. McKlusky had used a sledgehammer to stake the chain into the frozen earth and Jigsaw torqued the springload and covered the thing with snow and leaves.
The meatscraps from the butcher’s had been dumped into a mesh bag and Roy watched it twirl on the rope, dripping all over the ground. “Jesus, that’s ripe,” he said.
“No shit,” McKlusky said. “That thing is gonna attract all kinds of animals.”
“We’ll end up with a skunk or raccoon in this trap, you wait and see.”
Jigsaw brushed the dirt from his hands. “No. They’ll stay clear of it.”
“The hell you talking about?”
“Anything smaller than a bear knows there’s something big out here,” Jigsaw said. “They’ll stay the hell out of its way.”
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 34
