Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  “I can’t believe your folks fall that.” Amy opened the fridge and hunted down the open jar of salsa. “First couple times, maybe. But after all this time? How dense can your ‘rents be?”

  “Dude, they’re a Xanax away from being comatose.” Gabby crunched away with her mouth open, spewing chip bits everywhere. “But I knew you’d shoot me down. So! Considerate pal that I am, I came up with the perfect solution. A no-holds win-win. Ready?”

  Amy twisted the lid off the salsa jar and sniffed it. “This is like, two months old. Finish it off, would you.”

  “Hello? Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes but perfect plus plan plus you equals a triple negative.”

  “Don’t math me, bitch. Okay listen... We have a party! Isn’t that brilliant?”

  “It’s the worst idea ever.”

  Gabby tilted her head, as if speaking to the mentally dulled. “No, it’s a practical solution to your exiled status. You stay home, thereby not breaking any of Dad’s rules. We come to you.”

  “And trash the place.”

  “Do I look that mean? No, we throw a small party. See? Just six of us. You, me, Maggie, Walty, Bridgette, Alex and Griffin. Plus one special guest appearance by...” Gabby mimicked a drum roll. “Date-Rape! Yay!”

  Gabby finished her drum roll and waited for Amy to react.

  Amy rolled her eyes. “No.”

  Gabby groaned and then yanked the fridge door open. Helped herself to a beer. “Think about it. Just a small group, negating any trashing or destructive behaviour. Right? No mess either because we don’t serve any beer. Just Bloody Mary’s. They’re veggie-smoothies so you can, like, drink that shit all night and not get drunk.”

  Amy could already picture the tomato-colored puddles of vomit trailing from the hall to the bathroom. “Did you honestly think I’d go for that? You’re losing your touch.”

  “Withhold thy judgment. Think about it. You’ll see the brilliance in my plan.”

  Amy took the beer from her hand and, gripping Gabby’s arm, pulled her friend back to the front hallway. “Put your shoes on.”

  “I just got here.”

  “We’re taking a walk.”

  Gabby leaned back in mock surprise. “The prisoner is leaving the compound?”

  “I want to get a Christmas tree.” Amy slipped on her coat and fetched her keys from the bowl. “You’re gonna help me.”

  “But your dad took the truck.”

  “The grocer’s down the way is selling them. We’ll carry it back.”

  Gabby tilted her again. “Carry it? What, like, in our hands?”

  “It’s like three blocks, you wuss.”

  Amy locked the door behind. Gabby stood on the stoop and pulled her coat closed against the chill. She scowled at the wind cutting the drafts in her clothes and said, “You know, sometimes, it’s work being your friend.”

  FIFTEEN

  JIGSAW AND MCCLUSKY sat shivering in the back of the police unit, not saying a word. Their eyes singed by the sight of all that blood on the snow. What had once been a man named Roy Webb, now no more than tangled meat and gristle dusted with the spore-like stuffing of his coat. What is there to say after bearing witness to such a thing?

  The sheriff, a lanky-boned woman named Cheevers, had told them to sit tight when she answered McClusky’s panicked call. Don’t move, don’t touch anything, she had said. Standing in the cold and looking away from the wet gore, they had done as told, forgoing even the warmth of the truck nearby. Sheriff Cheevers was no stranger to the torment the human body could endure, especially in her county. Boating accidents, hunting mishaps, extreme misadventure with a Husqvarna Special Torque chainsaw. McClusky watched in slow motion as Sheriff Cheevers marched onto the scene with her face a mask of stone only to pale and fumble at the sight of that butchery.

  It was simply that bad.

  She told them to warm up in her Bronco while she paced the scene and waited for the ambulance and deputy and fire crew to arrive. Jigsaw fogged the window as he watched the incoming vehicles and avoided the eyes of his friend. After a while Sheriff Cheever hauled back into the truck and put the stick in gear and pulled away from the horror, bound for the police bunker out in Willowbrook, fifteen miles down the 40. A metropolis compared to the village of Weepers.

  Questioned separately, each gave a written statement about the events but neither man had any idea what it was that had attacked their friend. Sheriff Cheevers had a deputy drive the men back to town.

  On his way out the door, Jigsaw stopped and turned back towards the Sheriff. “What are you gonna do about that thing,” he muttered. “Whatever it is.”

  Cheevers looked up from her paperwork. “Hunt it down. We’ll get someone from Fishing and Game up here to tell us what we’re dealing with. Maybe some Park Rangers too. Then we’ll take care of it. You two, go home and stay out of the way.”

  McClusky watched Jigsaw sneer at the officer’s words as he brushed past him towards the police unit waiting to take them home. He had barely spoken a word since the incident and, dumb with shock, he wanted nothing more than to get home. But the sneer on his friend’s face was a bad sign and he knew Jigsaw wasn’t about to leave the matter to the authorities.

  The snow was falling again and Gallagher retraced his tracks through the dark until his footprints filled in and he lost his way. Blundering on, he kept going straight with the husky running ahead and bulldozing its nose through the white stuff. He found the logging trail but his truck was nowhere in sight and guessed that he came out somewhere north of where he’d left it. Trampling snow south, the Cherokee’s headlights twinkled as they bounced the throw of the flashlight.

  Opening the back, he rifled through the food he had packed. Dry goods and canned stuff, a box of power bars and bags of trail mix. He gathered it into a bag and shifted around some of the gear to pull out the sleeping bag. Something shiny rolled out from the compartment and dropped into the snow. He retrieved it and held it up to the flashlight. A red ornament for a Christmas tree, a stray from the box of decorations in the garage for a tree he had neglected to get. A ritual he had always savored with Amy, corny as it was. A ritual that he had completely forgotten in his obsessive drive to track down Lara Mendes.

  A week from Christmas and his daughter was alone in a house with absolutely no holiday cheer. How pathetic was that? The guilt of it burned off the lining of his stomach and he dug his cell from his pocket to check in with her. The phone roamed but found no signal.

  “She’s fine,” he grumbled to himself. “Just make it up to her when you get home, dumbass.”

  The Siberian twitched its ears at the sound of his voice and bounded over to swipe his knees. He thrummed its ribs with his hand and shooed it on. He slid the red plastic ornament into a pocket and threw the rear door home. Trudging back through the snowdrift, he tore a branch from a pine sapling and pressed on towards the tarpaper shack.

  Lara Mendes sat on the floor and considered her options. The one overriding urge was to run but the pain in her ribs was too much. Every breath made her wince and she wondered if any were broken from the thrashing that Grissom had given her. Broken ribs were the worst, nothing you could do but try to be still.

  The initial shock of seeing John Gallagher had started to burn off. Her guts had roiled from joy to terror and then relief when she had looked up to see his face. Too much and too fast, she couldn’t put anything in order but left alone, her gut settled and the cool temperament that had served her so well as a police detective returned. The obvious course of action was to run and to do it now while he was gone. Even more clear was the means to do that. To let go, to unclench the muscle in her heart that she kept constricted and allow the change to come. Become the wolf and run. It was so easy it was almost stupid.

  Yet that held its own perils. What if the wolf doubled back and went after Gallagher? What if she opened her eyes in the morning, after reconstituting back into herself only to find the torn remains of her old pa
rtner splattered through the snow?

  How far could she get on her own power, stitching up in agony under every intake of breath? Not far enough. So what now?

  The door banged open and Gallagher marched in, kicking the snow from his boots on the sill. His dog ambled in and shook its coat, spraying snowdust across the room. Its nose twitched in her direction and then turned away, tail down like a scolded puppy.

  He dropped a bag into the wedge of light cast from the woodstove, shrugged off his coat and hung it on a nail. His eyes studied her as he unpacked the supplies onto the uneven floor. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ear.

  “You keep wincing. What hurts?”

  “My ribs. Just banged up, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.” His tone was one she’d heard before, in the interrogation room when a suspect was lying his ass off, but he let it go. He slid something across the floor to her and said, “I don’t feel like cooking. You okay with cold camp food?”

  She took up the power bar and tore the foil wrapper away. After living on rice and beans for so long, she devoured it in two bites. She looked up to see the dog watching her. It hovered around Gallagher and twitched its nose at her warily. She didn’t sense any aggression from it, just an alertness. It was scared of her. She studied the husky, trying to place its familiarity. “When did you get a dog?”

  He twisted the cap from a bottle of water. “You don’t recognize it?”

  She shook her head.

  “It was one of Prall’s dogs.” He thumped the dog’s ribs then shooed it away. “He helped me find you.”

  Lara bristled at the name and regarded the dog again. Ivan Prall, the suspect who had infected her, kept a number of feral dogs. A ragtag wolf pack with himself as the alpha. She remembered the Siberian now. It was Prall’s beta. Intelligent and aggressive while it was under Prall’s control, the husky seemed docile and almost domesticated with Gallagher. Still, she remembered what the dog was capable of. “So he’s a pet now?”

  Gallagher shrugged. The dog nestled into a corner but kept its eyes on her.

  “Can you trust it?” she asked. “It was practically feral. And it’s tasted human flesh, remember?”

  His face darkened. “He’s all right. He’s a hard-headed sonovabitch but he hasn’t eaten anybody.”

  Lara guffawed. A sharp sting laced her ribs at the movement. She tried to hide it.

  “That looks bad. Better let me see.”

  “It’s fine.” She waved off his concern but he was already kneeling before her.

  “Lift your sweater, tough guy. Let me see.”

  “John, It’s nothing--“

  “Quiet,” he grunted. He reached under her arms and gingerly peeled up the hem of her sweater. He was gentle but even that light touch stole her breath in a sharp intake of pain.

  He shifted to get the light from the stove and she watched his brow knit as he studied her ribs. She couldn’t bend to see herself. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “It’s bruised pretty bad. How the hell did you do this?”

  “Just an accident,” she lied. She was still wary of her old partner and clung to some hope that he would give up and go home. Telling him the truth would just complicate matters.

  “Hold still,” he said. “This might hurt.”

  She felt his hand fold over her ribs. It stung at first and she felt him ease off, his hand hovering gently over her skin. The pain cooled, replaced by the warmth of his palms. More than warmth, it was confusing until Lara realized what it was; simple human contact. Skin on skin. She hadn’t touched another person in over three months. Deprived of that simplest of needs, she was overwhelmed by the feel of his hand. Like a crumb of food after starving for so long.

  He looked up at her. “I think they’re just cracked.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Just a guess,” he said. “You’d be in a lot more pain if they were broken.”

  His palm flattened against her skin and slid round to the small of her back. She tried not to shudder. His face inches from hers and all she could smell was him. She wondered how she smelled, having not bathed in days. But then his nose wasn’t sharpened the way hers was. She touched his arm and nudged him back. “Okay,” she whispered.

  He leaned back. “I could wrap it but--“

  “It’s fine.” She tugged her sweater back into place.

  “Sleep on it. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.” He reached for the sleeping bag he’d brought in and undid the clasps.

  “You’re staying?”

  “Yup.” He unfurled the sleeping bag across the floor and then straightened up and looked at her. “Let me ask you something. How many times have you changed?”

  “Changed?”

  “You know, gone all wolfman?”

  She stalled. “Couple of times.” Another lie. “Why?”

  “Assessing the risk.”

  She watched him stretch out on top of the sleeping bag. “Are you worried I’m going to change in the night?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then you shouldn’t stay, John. It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll be all right. The dog will wake me up if you go all twitchy.” He sat up, reached over for the shotgun and laid it on the floor next to him. “Fair warning? If you do wolf out on me, I’ll blow your head off.”

  Lara blinked. “Okay.”

  Gallagher got up and crossed to his gear. “I almost forgot.” He pulled up the pine branch he’d brought in and looked around the shack for somewhere to place it. Fitting it into a slot in the top of the woodstove, he reached into his pocket and produced the red bulb. Hooking it onto the branch, the ornament swayed and shone in the firelight.

  “What’s that for?” she said, watching the bulb sparkle.

  “It’s almost Christmas,” he said, stretching out on the floor again. “Get some sleep.”

  She eased down onto her bedroll and listened to the fire pop in the grate. She glanced over to the dog. Its chin rested on the floor but its eyes sparkled in the light, watching her.

  She heard Gallagher stir, getting comfortable on the hard floor and then heard him speak. “I’m glad I found you,” he said.

  She turned away from the fire and tried not to cry. There was no need to, her tear ducts no longer worked as they once did because wolves don’t cry.

  SIXTEEN

  MCCLUSKY SAT NEAR the window in the Sagebrush Diner, looking out over the faces at the other tables. Every booth occupied, every patron jawing and speculating over the death of Roy Webb. They had peppered him with questions but he waved them off, saying he didn’t want to talk and they let him be.

  After the questioning at the Sheriff’s office, he’d gone home but was too geared up to sleep and stared at the television for an hour. He didn’t want to be at home so he drove around for awhile and landed at the diner. He didn’t want to be here either but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  The bell over the door rang and he saw Jigsaw enter. He too was beset with questions, to which he grunted away and plunked down across the table from him. “You all right?”

  “Nope,” McClusky said. “And I never will be.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  The waitress clinked a cup of coffee before Jigsaw. A man named Rowling leaned forward and removed his hat. “Fellas,” he muttered softly, “I’m sorry for your loss and I know you’ve been to hell and back but we gotta know what happened to Roy.”

  Jigsaw didn’t even look at him. “Not now.”

  Rowling straightened up. “We ain’t being nosy, Jig. If there’s something nasty out there, nasty enough to kill a big man like Roy, we need to know. We all got kids, families. What the hell are we dealing with?”

  A low rumble of agreement and nodding of heads rippled through the rest of the diner. Jigsaw looked up at his friend and McClusky nodded, conceding the point. “We don’t know what it was. We didn’t see it.”

  “You must
have some idea,” badgered Rowling. “A mountain lion or somesuch thing?”

  McClusky shook his head. “Wasn’t that and it wasn’t no bear. We heard it, circling around us in the dark and I will tell you this; I have never heard anything like the sound that thing made.”

  “A bear maybe?” Rowling offered, trying to be helpful. “Kodiak?”

  “It was huge, whatever the hell it was.”

  “Fast too,” Jigsaw said. “Roy was out of our sight for maybe two minutes. This thing tore him apart in less than that.”

  “Jesus Christ,” someone in the back said. A cough.

  Rowling checked Jigsaw and turned to the people behind him. “Sheriff said she’s bringing in people from Fish and Game. Rangers too. They’ll get it, whatever it is.”

  A momentary reassurance went through the diner before Jigsaw cut it short. “You kidding me? You honestly think Cheevers can find this thing? And don’t even talk me about the state people. Even if they could find it, what’re they gonna do? Tag its ear and relocate it? Jesus H.”

  “Can’t trust the government to protect you,” said a voice in the back. “They don’t care.”

  “That’s right,” Jigsaw bellowed. “We want to protect our own then we got to do it. The way it’s always been. This time’s no different.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Rowling. The million dollar question.

  “Organize. Set up a patrol here in town, to keep everybody safe. The rest of us mobilize into hunting parties and we stalk this thing and blow it to Kingdom Come.”

  “Sheriff ain’t gonna like that.”

  “She’ll just have to mind her business until we’re done.” McClusky peered out over the gawking faces. “Who’s in?”

  Every seat emptied as the patrons huddled around Jigsaw and McClusky’s table, waiting to hear the plan.

  Gallagher stared up at the bare joists of the ceiling. His back was stiff from sleeping on the floor but he felt good. Rested. For the first time in three months, his sleep was not broken by the nightmares. He had found Lara and she was, if not exactly safe, alive at least. And he was going to bring her home.