Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2)

by Walker, Robert W.

  After a moment's rustling, Blue joked, "There any popcorn?"

  "'Fraid this movie'll just put you off your popcorn, Mr. Blue," said Stroud.

  They made their way back to the large old structure of Stroud Manse by the light of the half-moon. In a viewing room, they watched the details of Perry Gwinn's death in stark silence and horror. When the lights came on, there wasn't a face in the room that did not bear the mark of terror. The film had caught Kerac in his human form, had shown his lycanthropic nature and his gruesome feeding habits.

  Stroud spoke up. "I thought it only fair that you know what this enemy is capable of, that it is cannibalistic, and that it is a shape-changer. I've studied the film very carefully, and I've come to the conclusion that Kerac--or what Kerac has become--is very cunning, and that while once he could not control his shape-changing, now he does. I believe he changed into the human form in order to lure Gwinn close enough that he could get hold of him. Gwinn would have gone nowhere near the creature if he were in his present form."

  "That seems to be giving this creature more intelligence than may be due him, Abe," said Saylor.

  "My manservant had been trying for hours to get Kerac to come out of the beast form. He'd talked and sat with him to this end. I don't think it was purely coincidental that he should change when he did. I think the creature planned his moves."

  The others murmured among themselves. Blue said shakily, "I can't believe you didn't blow the cocksucker's head off after ... after seeing what he did."

  "We need him, to track," said Stroud, "to lead us to the others."

  Just then the door creaked open and Anna More stood there saying, "Ironic, isn't it? Kerac was a guide. Now you use him to guide you to the others. You were planning on leaving without me, weren't you, Stroud?"

  "Anna, how ... when did you arrive?"

  "Never mind that. I want in."

  Stroud looked from her to Lou Cage, who shrugged and said, "I told you she would know."

  "Anna, I really don't think you ought--"

  "You needn't worry about sparing my feelings, Stroud. I am here to see that Johnny is killed. You would put a mad dog from its misery, but--"

  "I need this mad dog alive. Is there anyone here who understands that?"

  "Yes, I understand ... your greater responsibility."

  "Who is this bitch?" asked Nails.

  "Show her the film," said Priest quietly.

  "Anna, we have to wipe out the disease. Kerac is only an offshoot, a symptom."

  "You want to exterminate his kind! But you don't know that there are more. Meanwhile--"

  "We have to make sure."

  Blue seconded Priest's suggestion. "Roll the film again. I want to see this again myself."

  "Roll it," agreed Tulley. "If she still wants in, let her in."

  After the film was shown a second time, Saylor was the first to speak. "I say we go find this thing's brothers and sisters and make 'em extinct. Now, Stroud."

  "Kick ass," agreed Blue loudly.

  Nails screamed, "Let's do it!"

  With this the soldiers of fortune rushed out toward the helicopters. Cage straggled behind, sensing that Stroud and Anna needed to be alone.

  "Our plan is to release Kerac into the area where he was first bitten. And--"

  She was crying.

  "--and, using the sensor device implanted under his skin, we expect to be led directly to the others."

  "If you're right ... if there are others like Kerac ... it will be dangerous."

  "We haven't kept Kerac alive for nothing. Cage and his scientific team have uncovered some weaknesses."

  "An antivenom?"

  "No, no breakthroughs there, but he's learned that there is something in the component parts of silver nitrate that works its way into the creature's system. A milligram of it has subdued Kerac to his present state. It's even more effective than a narcotic."

  He held up a silver-tipped bullet to her eyes. She stared at it. "Then he is a werewolf," she said, "and there is some truth in the old legends."

  "Cage has found that Kerac's immune system is highly advanced, terrifically efficient. Blood clotting, closing over wounds--even bullet wounds--at an accelerated pace. A bullet wound to it is like a sliver to you or me."

  "These people you're bringing with you," she said. "You can trust them?"

  "I've paid heavily for their services."

  She nodded. "And you want no assistance from the police?"

  "If we flood the woods with hundreds of law-enforcement officials who have no idea what they're hunting, we could lose a lot of lives, but we could also lose the herd."

  "The old Indians who grew up listening to campfire tales, they still speak of the creatures that lived and survived in the wilderness like wolves," she said thoughtfully. "According to them, many unsolved crimes--missing persons--dating back to the eighteenth century ... well, when I grew up, educated in the white man's school, I put aside all such beliefs. Perhaps I was wrong..."

  "No one is blaming you."

  "There is something I must tell you."

  "Yes?"

  "The old man ... Kerac's father-in-law, who came and spoke with you when you were in Chicago."

  "Yes."

  "He died."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "His daughter sent me some papers he had. He apparently believed in the Wendigo all of his life. He kept a record of strange events, missing people, mutilated cattle."

  "You brought these with you?"

  "No, but I studied them closely, Abe, and if they can be believed, your ... your werewolf colony is much larger than the fifty he originally told you about. The incidence of crimes the old man attributed to these creatures--including those Johnny Kerac took blame for--has risen to much greater numbers. Also the alleged sightings of what you whites call bigfoot and what we call Sasquatch have risen. The old man's estimation of the growth in numbers, based on the number of sightings and kills, places them between two hundred and two hundred fifty, Abe."

  "My God ... that's a great deal more than I'd counted on."

  "You need more help, Abe. You need more time to prepare."

  Stroud thought about her words, took her hands in his and said, "No, no ... no more time can be lost. We're ready, Kerac is prepped ... it's a go."

  "All right. Then I'm with you."

  -15-

  Everyone aboard the three choppers was equipped with earphones, and as they rose up over the Illinois plains and thundered toward Grand Rapids, Michigan, Abraham Stroud from chopper one informed them all of the possibility they may be facing as many as 250 of the enemy. The soldiers took the increase in stride with such comments as Blue's "The more the bloodier."

  Stroud gave instructions for all the ammo loaded on number two helicopter to be "sugar-coated" while en route. Aboard number one chopper, Kerac's groaning and pitiful wail could not be heard over the rotors.

  "Those metal-cased vials brought on board each chopper are filled with a gaseous form of silver nitrate," he told the others. "One of these can cover a city block in a gas cloud. The creatures inhale this stuff, it won't be like one of your bullets. It will take time to work through their systems, slowing them down and eventually killing them, we think."

  "We think," repeated Tulley. "Sounds like the friggin' high command in Nam, doesn't it, Earl?"

  "At any rate, not even your silver-nitrate-bathed bullets will bring one of them down if it doesn't strike a vital organ, such as the heart, lungs, brain. The silver nitrate to the other parts of the body will take time to be absorbed and carried by the blood."

  "So, we nuke the herd from the air," said Saylor, "and then we go in for the kill?"

  "That's dangerous, Earl, because the nitrate can kill us, too. We have masks and air tanks to wear, but that won't help visibility in a gas cloud. So, we'll have to go cautiously there."

  "Might be more prudent," said Cage, "to nuke them and give it time to weaken them before rushing in."

  "
Prudent ain't a word I can use with my people, Dr. Cage," said Earl. "They don't know from prudent."

  "We'll want to fire as much from the air, bring down as many from overhead, as possible," said Stroud. "Once we're on the ground with them, we're in their element, and they are most deadly in their element. Problem is, it's very difficult, even with the best high-powered rifle and sight, to bring down a moving target if you have to hit it exactly right."

  "My men are up for it, Doc."

  "Not a man living, Earl, is a match for one of these things on the ground."

  "If you must ground-search," said Dr. Cage, "then you'll wear the remote cameras we've stowed in the choppers."

  "What's that, Abe?" asked Earl, confused.

  "Every man going it afoot will wear a remote camera, fitted over his shoulder so we have a complete picture of what's occurring from chopper one. Each remote is hooked into your vital signs, and there's a man on board who will help you into the apparatus."

  "No one said anything about--"

  "Earl, it's vital we have a command post, and that command post sees what you see. We must assure every man's safety, not to mention our need to document this show."

  "I got my insurance!" said Nails. Stroud watched the woman hefting her 9mm Parabellum 92S for the men to admire.

  "Get that ammo dipped," said Stroud.

  Saylor gave his men the order. Rocking in the cargo bay, the soldiers went about the business of dipping and retrieving the ammunition with the help of one of Cage's people who wore metal gloves that were soon shining with the silver that clung to them.

  "Soooooo,"

  said Nails in her thick accent, hefting one of the bulky shoulder cameras, staring at it. "Even in war now, your American big brother is watching?"

  "Trust me," said Saylor. "Stroud is nobody's puppet, and he's nobody's big brother."

  "Shit," agreed Blue, "whata we need this for, and all this silver concentrated shit, Earl? We got high-powered weapons, we got grenades and bazookas. We can just blow the freakin' things into little pieces."

  "We try it Stroud's way, people. Then--and only then--we fall back on our own methods. The man's calling the shots right now."

  "But not for long," said Tulley.

  The three chopper pilots were also hired by Stroud, each man being combat-prepared.

  In the cargo bay of chopper one, Stroud, Anna More and Cage were now standing around the metal cell that held the weakened, confused animal that Kerac had become. The smell of blood and animal musk filled the bay. Cage said quietly, "I've never shot anything except skeets, Stroud."

  At the same moment in time that Stroud's army is making its way toward Michigan a campfire in the forests fifty miles northwest of Grand Rapids is warm and it creates a circle of light around which the campers huddle, laugh and talk. The darkness of the Michigan forests has come in around them like a blanket encircling an Indian. Trees which were clearly visible fifteen minutes before have now become an amalgam of dense gray-blackness, as if a child has spilled her paint over the landscape. The earth beneath the campers where they sit has taken on a cold quality. The birds and forest animals of daylight have given way to the far-away howl of a bobcat that sounds for all the world like a woman in distress, or a banshee tolling death.

  Here, too, the irritating hoot of a persistent owl wishing for attention, and something vaguely like the baying of a wolf, infiltrate the night.

  The temperature has dropped, and the campers, two couples on holiday, huddle together, sweatshirts and jackets around their shoulders. The fire both attracts and repels passing animals. The sound of human voices does the same.

  The eerie half-moon and the clouds moving past it at what seems an accelerated rate cause one of the campers to talk about ghost stories. The second man in the group begins telling a "true to life" local horror story about a party of hunters who'd come to these very woods with what seemed like a friendly Indian guide at the time...

  "I read about that," says one of the women. "It was in USA Today."

  "But the guy's in jail now," the other woman assures her.

  "Was," corrects one of the men.

  "Ex-scaped," says the other, "about a month ago."

  "Jesus, Tom! Did you know this? And still, you brought us out here?"

  "Sugar, Frank's full of shit. Take it easy. He's just trying to scare you."

  "Why do guys think that by scaring a girl it'll get her in the mood?"

  They laugh nervously after this. One says, "Frank's doing a good job ... Scaring me, I mean."

  Frank, feeling encouraged, goes on. "I mean these guys were armed with high-powered rifles, but they were literally torn apart by this guy--their guide. Wiped out by a fiendish madman. From what I hear--"

  "Enough, Frank!"

  "Tom, make him stop."

  "The cops caught the guy someplace in Chicago," says Tom.

  "Yeah, caught him chewing on some guy's--"

  "Frank!"

  "Stupid fucks over at Merimac let him ex-scape."

  Tom takes his girl and goes for their tent. "Come on, we'll let Frank and Bridgette be alone."

  "Don't leave me alone with this creep!" Bridgette's protest goes unanswered, except by Frank.

  "Hey, hon! I was just funnin', that's all."

  "Call that fun?"

  "Keepin' you safe and warm in my lovin' arms, babe? Sure."

  "Not if I'm scared shitless, it won't be, Frank. I don't make out when I'm scared. I'm too busy shaking."

  Frank nuzzles her ear. "Just do all the shakin' you want, babe ... just so long as it's under me."

  From Tom's tent some laughter wafts out to them. They look into one another's eyes and kiss. "Time to turn in?"

  "Yeah, let's."

  Aboard chopper one, Abraham Stroud had fallen asleep where he had for a moment lain down on a stretcher. He had gone without sleep for a long time, catching rest here and there. The incident with Gwinn had made him feel guilty that while he slept another man was being viciously killed. But fatigue now had overcome him and it had forced him down. More and Cage intermittently looked back over their shoulders at the prone, sleeping figure, More averting her eyes from Kerac.

  It was difficult to tell which sleeping figure was the more restless.

  Stroud was locked on a dream that seemed idyllic, lovers on a camp outing in the woods; his mind drifted to Anna More, and the faceless people of his dream took on her features and his. They were locked in embrace, their lust unquenchable. Somewhere nearby there were others in the dream, lots of others ... seemingly watching, prowling, coming ever closer. These dark figures crawled like crabs over the lovely dream.

  Stroud's dream was turning into a nightmare...

  Watching from just outside the circle of fire, standing all around the camp, are the dark forms and red eyes of a pack of some thirty werewolves. Inside the two tents, the young lovers are warming themselves with the magical touch of their bodies. Scuttling noises outside are ignored at first, but the women, alarmed by Frank's earlier story, are already on edge. Something snaps--a twig. Footfalls, distinct and animal-like, very near. The sound of many footfalls and the sensation that something awful is breathing along the spine.