FULL MOON ISLAND

by Terry Yates

  He had no time to think before the beast was on him, landing on top of him with such force that when they hit the ground, the force of the jump and the weight of the beast smashed his entire ribcage. Pain shot through his entire body as blood began to pour from his mouth. The beast straddled him, its face no more that two inches from his. He could smell the thing’s breath on him. Before he knew what was happening, he saw the beast open its mouth, revealing its razor sharp teeth. Without a pause, it sank its teeth into Cohen’s cheek and tore it away, causing the sergeant to scream in pain. Blood squirted into his eyes as the beast prepared for another bite.

  Potts shot up from the ground and began to run at the beast, firing his revolver. The bullets smashed into the creature’s back, causing it to jump up and away from Potts, leaving Cohen lying on the ground between the two, a large pool of blood surrounding his body. Potts fired two more shots at the beast, one hitting it in the breastbone and the other, in the neck. The beast screamed again and again, clawing at the smoky wounds. Once again Potts had his back to FranAnne and Hawkins so they had to ceasefire and wait for an opportune moment.

  Potts stopped shooting and began to walk backwards, trying to lead the monster away from Cohen.

  “Come on, you cocksucker,” he told the thing.

  Realizing that it was no longer being shot at, the werewolf, weakened now, began to move toward Potts. As it advanced, it stepped on Sgt. Cohen’s femur, smashing the bone to jelly. Cohen grunted, but not much. He had already lost most of his feeling as the life began to slowly leave his body.

  Cohen knew that he was going to die, and surprisingly enough, didn’t fear it. He’d done his time on Earth, he guessed. He tried to gasp for air, but couldn’t get any, because he no longer had functioning lungs. The thing had crushed them flat. He lifted his bloody hand to where his cheek had been. His jaw and his teeth were completely exposed. Damn, that thing sure held a grudge. He didn’t know how the werewolf thing worked. Did you come back to life after it bit you, or did the bite affect only the living? Either way, he didn’t want to come back as one of them.

  He made sure that Potts was far enough away from him, before he reached into his shirt. He felt the cold metal of the grenades against his fingers. He fumbled for the pins, but was having trouble concentrating. He felt the small loops with his fingers. All he would need was one, because when one exploded, so would the other three. He put his finger through the loop, exhaled one last time…then pulled the pin.

  The explosion sent both Potts and the werewolf flying through the air. Potts only went a few feet, but the werewolf, who caught most of the blast, flew thirty feet through the air, and crashed upside down against the steel doors. The force of, first the blast, and then the werewolf, smashed a large hole in the crack between the two doors, causing them to separate a little.

  Potts lay on the ground, his hands over his ears. He had not expected the explosion, so he hadn’t covered them in anticipation. Four grenades going off at once make a loud noise. Potts wasn’t sure if his head was throbbing because of the sound of the grenades exploding or the blast itself. He’d only been about sixty feet away when they detonated. Luckily the werewolf was right in front of him and took most of the force. The werewolf.

  Potts made his way to his feet. His whole body felt like it had been through an electrical shock. He grabbed his torn and bleeding shoulder, and took a few breaths, his lungs burning with smoke produced from both the guns and the bullets. He reached down and picked up his revolver. He staggered to where Sgt. Cohen had been lying. A large crater was all that was left of him. The MP helmet lay across the yard, broken and burned.

  “I guess you did have your grenades, Sergeant,” he said. He hardly heard the sound of his own voice. The ringing in his ears was louder than his voice.

  He turned and began to move quickly toward the front doors. When he reached them, he saw the large gap that the werewolf’s body had made, but the werewolf itself was gone, a patch of bloody hair, and what Potts guessed to be bits of Sgt. Cohen left in its place. Potts turned around, searching for the beast. He had heard no gunfire from the roof. Hawkins and Fulton must be making there way down to the first floor.

  He turned around searching for the monster, waiting for it to come at him from any direction. He looked around the dark yard, but saw nothing moving. After a moment, he heard a noise coming from inside the building. He turned to see Locklear, FranAnne, and Hawkins struggling to pull the steel doors apart. Potts ran toward the doors, his legs feeling rubbery. He reached the door just as Hawkins squeezed through the gap between them. Sheer will kept Potts from collapsing into the private’s arms, instead he put his arm on Hawkins’ shoulder, and leaned on him for a moment, trying to gather himself. FranAnne, wider than Hawkins, forced her way between the two doors, and joined them, her revolver in her hand.

  “Who fired the shot that clipped its ear?” Potts asked, his hearing gradually returning.

  “That was Fulton, Sir,” Hawkins answered.

  “Nice shot, Fulton,” he said to FranAnne.

  FranAnne looked at the crater that had once been Sgt. Cohen. Like Potts, neither of them had been expecting the sergeant to pull the pin on his own grenade. They had been too busy trying to line up a shot on the werewolf. They had both fallen down as the front of the building shook on its foundation. When they gathered themselves, FranAnne and Hawkins had run down the three flights of stairs thinking that both Potts and the werewolf were both dead. They met Locklear at the front door. He had been trying to open the doors manually to check on Potts, because the two working cameras had been destroyed by the blast, leaving nothing but snow flickering on the monitors.

  The three stood in front of the door.

  “What do we do, Colonel?” Hawkins asked, searching the grounds with his eyes as he held Potts up.

  “We’re going back inside and barricading that door. That thing’s gone away to lick its wounds, but its gonna come back, and its gonna be pissed.”

  FranAnne held up her revolver and began to walk backwards, covering them as they moved to the door. Locklear stood in the doorway using his body to keep the doors wedged open, allowing Hawkins to push Potts under Locklear’s arm and into the building. Hawkins followed Potts inside.

  “Hurry up,” Locklear said to FranAnne, grimacing. His strength was diminishing and he wanted to get her inside before he couldn’t hold on any longer.

  FranAnne also slipped under his arm and into building. Locklear let the doors go as he stepped back into the building. They began to close together, but stopped about a foot apart from each other. They were bent and twisted, and almost off of their rollers.

  “With that hole in the middle and the crack between all stretched out, that thing’s gonna have absolutely no trouble getting into this building,” Potts told them.

  “I suppose the bullets didn’t work,” Locklear said dejectedly.

  “On the contrary, they’re working fine,” Potts told him. “They’re not killing the thing, but they’re at least causing it some pain.”

  “I diluted the potency by making too many bullets. I should’ve added more quicksilver and saliva to fewer bullets. They would be more potent if I had.”

  “Well, next time we’ll know better, won’t we?” Potts came back half jokingly. “But for right now, we have to barricade that door.”

  Kyler had no idea what was happening twelve floors above him as he ran down the hallway looking for Shelly and Kayla. He retraced their steps from the night before. She had obviously been looking for something at that dead end. He’d seen her himself, moving her hands along the wall, searching for something. Of course, it was Shelly, so for all he knew, she could’ve been hallucinating.

  He was pretty sure that he was on the right path.

  “Let’s see…it was a left turn…a right turn…a left turn…then two right turns…then a long hallway with a short hallway on the right about halfway down,” he told himself aloud, as if repeating it orally would help him.


  He had already made the left turn, the right, and then the left turn. He had two more rights to make, and then he would come to the long hallway. As he sprinted toward the first of the two rights, he began to wonder what he was going to do when he got there. Shelly had been a virtual wild cat last night when they had tried to drag her back to the sleeping quarters. It had actually taken Zora putting her in a sleeper hold to finally subdue her. How was he going to drag her back alone short of cold-cocking her one to the jaw again?

  As he made the right turn, he thought of Zack running blindly through the building looking for his father and waving a pistol around. He probably should’ve tried to talk him into going back and staying with the others, but the boy would’ve probably resisted worse than Shelly had last night. The boy had literally grown up…and aged overnight. To Kyler, he was the oldest sixteen-year old that he’d ever met. All he could do was hope that Zack found his father and that they both made their way back to the others.

  Kyler saw the last right just up ahead. As he rounded the corner, he could hear his sneakers squeak against the tile floor. As he ran, he noticed how bright the white floor was with the overhead lights bouncing off of the tiles. It made him begin to wonder how so many people could be involved in a place so secret. It had to have taken a construction crew several years to build the place. Architects, foremen, builders, electricians, painters, and just plain grunts had moved through this building, all the way down to the classified lower floors. What had they been told? Had they been paid hush money or had they been threatened like he heard that the witnesses to the Roswell incident had? And who cleaned the place? It was immaculate. Did they have a bunch of ladies with nametags that read “housekeeping” on them roaming around the place unchecked? Were they sworn to secrecy? Potts had been right. This place was important. And what happened if they did get out of here? After surviving hurricanes and werewolves, would they simply be put in a truck, taken somewhere, and then summarily shot and buried in a mass grave never to be seen or heard from again? He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since old movies like Three Days of the Condor and Capricorn One, along with TV shows like The X-Files had made everyone believe that the government was untrustworthy and would go to the nth degree to keep their secrets secret. For their part, the government hadn’t done much to squelch those beliefs after Watergate and the Iran Contra affair, plus the fact that not even the President himself was allowed into the nonexistent Area 51. But Kyler had always tried to believe in the best in people. His mother had taught him that. “Not everyone in government is bad,” she had told him. At this moment, he wasn’t so sure though. The second hurricane had passed two days ago. That was plenty of time for Miami to have sent at least one rescue helicopter to get them off of the island, but they hadn’t. They hadn’t sent anyone to aid them.

  Kyler made it to the end of the corridor. Now all he had was the left turn and the dead end hallway should be somewhere down on the right, that is of course, if he had been going the right way in the first place. He rounded the left turn. Yes! Everything looked familiar. The last corridor should be just down on the right about two hundred feet.

  He began to run as fast as he could toward the last corridor. As he neared it, he began to slow down. If Shelly heard him coming, he would lose the element of surprise, which he desperately wanted. He’d already prepared himself for the fact that he might have to take her by force, but he didn’t want her to see him running straight at her. She had the baby with her and he didn’t want her doing anything rash that might put Kayla in jeopardy.

  He slowed down to a walk as he reached the final hallway. He stopped before turning the corner and leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath. He tried not to breathe too loud, but he couldn’t help it. He was in bad shape. Two or three more days on this island though, and he would be back in 800-meter shape.

  He put his hands on his hips and doubled over for a moment trying to take in the cool, fresh oxygen that his lungs had been blocking out. He straightened up and began to breathe through his nose. He could feel almost every muscle in his body wanting to cramp up. If he ever got off this island, he was going to run at least two miles a day for the rest of his life.

  When he’d taken in enough air, he slowly began to peek around the corner of the hallway. He was at the right place, because he could see the darkened part of the dead end. He scanned the darkened area, but saw no sign of Shelly. What was he going to do now? Should he go back and look somewhere else? He knew that she had been down there for a reason and he might as well find out what she had been looking for when she’d been running her hands along the wall. If he didn’t find anything, then so be it, but he was here and might as well give it a go.

  He began to walk down the short hallway. As he neared the dead end, he noticed the empty office door that Gringo had left ajar. Could she be in there for some reason? Even as far away as he was, he could see that there was no light shining through the crack. Maybe she had heard him running and had stepped in there, afraid to close it behind her.

  As he reached the door, he gently put his hand on the doorknob, then stuck his ear to the door for any sound. If the baby was hungry or needed changing, it might be crying. He listened but heard nothing. He started to slowly push the door open when something struck the wall next to the office. Whatever it was had hit the wall with such force that it shook the entire wall. Tiny particles of sheetrock began to rain down on top of him. What the hell was that, he wondered. He cautiously stepped back from the doorway and looked at the wall. He was at exactly the same spot where Shelly had been looking last night.

  He was about to put his ear to the wall when something hit the wall again, this time with twice the force, the impact knocking him to the other side of the hallway. This time, it seemed like the whole corridor shook. Two large pieces of sheetrock fell from the ceiling, one landing on his head and breaking in two, and the other landing across his legs.

  Kyler scrambled to his feet, pieces of the ceiling falling out of his hair. Something was on the other side of the wall and it was trying to break through. He stood frozen staring at the wall. Another blow hit the wall…then another…and then another…causing the whole end of the corridor to shake as if an earthquake was occurring. Each blow got harder and harder and louder and louder, until he was sure that the wall would give way at any moment. Yes, something was definitely on the other side of that wall. He didn’t know what it was doing there or even how it had gotten there, but there wasn’t too much else it could be.

  As the pounding continued, Kyler began to move slowly backwards. He watched as the brick began to give way. Two or three good blows and it was going to break through. He thought of running, but where could he run? Even if he took off right now, Klefka or Samantha, whichever one it had to be would catch him before he got very far.

  He looked straight up at the ceiling. It was too high for him to reach. As the walls began to shake more violently, he heard a sound. Grunting. He had been right. A werewolf was breaking through the wall and he had to do something.

  “Think, you idiot!” he said aloud, then immediately put his hand to his lips. He hoped the thing hadn’t heard him.

  The hallway shook and shook until Kyler thought that the whole building would give way. The thing was pounding and pounding like there was no tomorrow, which Kyler figured that if he didn’t run, there might not be one…for him anyway.

  Suddenly, the hallway became silent for a moment…but only for a moment, because no sooner had Kyler thought that maybe the thing had given up, than he felt another blow and watched as the wall exploded out, a half dozen cinder blocks shattering against the far wall. He heard growling as he saw something reach through the small hole. He needn’t feign ignorance…even to himself, because he saw exactly what he had expected to see…a hairy arm with seven-inch claws attached to the end, shoot through the hole.

  It was time for the doctor to shit or get off the pot. He looked to his right and saw
the open office door. He jumped through the doorway and landed in the dark room. He kicked the door closed with his foot just as he heard the entire wall give way. He scrambled to the wall next to the door, flattened himself against it and closed his eyes. He listened as the beast stepped out into the hallway. It was growling…no, it was snarling, which sounded even more menacing.

  Along with the snarling, he heard something else. His own heartbeat. It was pounding. He would be amazed and shocked if the thing couldn’t hear it, too. He flattened himself even tighter against the wall as he heard another noise. It couldn’t be. Something else was joining the werewolf in the hallway. His brain told him that it couldn’t be possible. No way.

  As he listened, he heard a growl, followed quickly by another growl. He was right…there were two of them! Had Klefka somehow gotten into the building and joined Samantha and now the two of them were on a dinner date? If that was so, it meant that Potts and the others were probably dead.

  The two creatures were growling at each other as if they were having some sort of werewolf disagreement. He heard grunts and growls echoing from the hallway. As he listened, a new problem struck him. He was hearing an extra, unexpected growl. There were three of them! How could that be? Let’s see…Klefka had gotten into the building, Samantha had gotten out of the cooler, and Opal Munn had come back to life. That was the only sane explanation he could think of. He would’ve laughed at the absurdity of it all, if he hadn’t been so scared shitless. He couldn’t believe that only a three-inch door was the difference between him being hidden or becoming the first course of a werewolf buffet.

  Silently, he inched up to the door and tried to look under the crack. Shit, what if they could smell him? He started to move back against the wall, but a small exposed part of his stomach squeaked against the floor as he began to move backwards. The growling in the hallway immediately stopped. They’d heard him!