by Glenn Rolfe
Dwayne Clarke sped up Hilton Street, followed closely behind by the sheriff and his Range Rover. They had both shut their sirens off as they closed in on the sheriff’s street. Dwayne started to slow to a stop three houses down from the Fischers’ when he caught sight of the darkened cruiser at the other end of the street. It was Shelly’s.
He pulled up to the curb, Joe following behind him. Dwayne grabbed his radio.
“Shelly? Shelly, do you copy?”
“Dwayne? Is that you? Where’s my dad?”
“Sonya? Where’s Shelly?”
“I don’t know. Where am I? Where’s my dad?”
“He’s right behind me, sweetheart. We’re down at the other end of the street. Can you see us?”
“Yeah, yeah, I can see your car. Why am I way over here? Where’s Shelly?”
“Sonya. Stay right there. I think Shelly’s at your house. She thought she saw…something.”
Joe came up to side of the car.
Dwayne rolled down the window. Rain whipped in with the wind. “Sonya’s in Shelly’s cruiser down at the end of the street. I told her to stay put. Shelly’s not with her.”
Joe looked down toward the car containing his daughter. “Let me see the radio.”
“Dwayne? What’s going—?”
“Hey, baby, it’s Daddy.”
“Daddy? What’s going on? Where’s Shelly? What the hell did she see?”
Joe had held back long enough. Besides, she’d already seen one of the monsters. She deserved the truth. “We’re not sure, but we think there’s another werewolf.”
“What?”
“Shelly said she saw it go behind our house as she was pulling in, bringing you home. I want you to stay put, do you hear me?”
“Dad, what do you mean there’s another one?”
“We don’t have time, honey. We need to make sure Shelly’s okay. I need you to wait right where you are. Shelly should have another gun in the glove box. Take it out and sit tight. Wait for us to come to you. Do you understand me? Wait for me or Dwayne.”
“I just want this to all be over. I just want this to be a bad dream…”
He could hear her crying. His heart lurched. “I know you do, baby. Just stay right there. This will all be over soon.” He gave the radio back to Deputy Clarke and disappeared back to his truck.
Dwayne placed the radio back on the receiver and stepped out into the wet and wild night.
“Dad? Daddy? Dwayne?”
Dwayne heard Sonya’s sobbing as he closed the door. He felt bad for her, but there simply was no time to console the wounded girl. He needed to find Shelly.
Joe met him a few seconds later. He was carrying a large green military duffle bag. “What do you have in there?”
Joe moved past him. “Let’s hope you don’t have to find out.”
They made their way over to the freshly trimmed shrubs of Joe’s neighbor Marv Thompson. Joe didn’t despise many members of his community, but there were always the exceptional assholes. Marv Thompson was the biggest exception, and Joe had the great pleasure of living right next door to him. The man was an old army vet who thought his time served protecting his country entitled him to do whatever it was he wanted to do. Whether it was pruning his stupid shrubs at five fifteen in the morning with a gas-powered trimmer and waking up the whole neighborhood, or his penchant for throwing cans of Fresca at the misguided teens of Gilson Creek who often loaded his lawn with piles of dog shit. The man was the epitome of the term asshole.
Joe scanned Mr. Thompson’s windows to make sure the crotchety old man wasn’t peeking out at them. The only light in the house was coming from the kitchen. It was the light that he left on every night. He was most likely in bed for the evening. That was good.
Joe whispered to Dwayne, “Stay with me.”
He led them down the length of the shrubs, right to where they ended next to Thompson’s house. They stayed ducked down, glancing just over the top of the shrubbery. From here, they had a clear view of both Joe’s front and backyards.
The rain persisted. The neighborhood seemed to be waiting for something to happen. His house sat before them in complete darkness, in sharp contrast to the surrounding houses that had lights in various windows.
That’s when they heard the loud smash come from the other side of the house, and the bloodcurdling scream of Melanie Murdock.
“What the fuck?” Heath brought the Jetta to a complete stop. There was a cop car in the road and a second vehicle on the shoulder.
“No…” Kim recognized Alex’s Camaro, beat to hell and off the side of the road. “Sonya!” She burst out of the Jetta.
“Kim, Kim!” Heath tried to grab her. He followed her.
“Oh my God, Heath. That’s Alex. That’s Alex. He’s, he’s…”
There was a second body. Heath dropped down to his knees in front of Alex.
Kim had to find Sonya. She checked the second body. It wasn’t her. It was Deputy Hines, and his arm was missing, among other things. She gave the cruiser a quick glance. There were no signs of the vehicle having been involved in any kind of collision.
She trotted to Alex’s broken car. The Camaro was empty. The windshield was missing. There was blood inside on the front seat. The whole roof was caved in as if something huge had crashed down from out of the sky and landed upon it.
What the fuck is going on here? And where the hell is Sonya?
She made her way back over to Heath and placed her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”
Heath shook his head as he rose to his feet. “Is Sonya in the car?”
“No. We need to get into town and find out what the fuck is going on. The sheriff should be out here by now.”
She pulled her cell and tried the station. “I can’t get a damn signal on this stupid road.”
“Come on,” Heath said. “We have to go find the sheriff.”
“Can we please try Sonya’s first?”
Heath put the car in gear and eased the vehicle around the scattered debris of the Camaro.
Kim looked at his moist eyes. She hoped somehow that Sonya had made it out of this mess okay. Maybe her dad had already been here and picked her up. But, then, why wasn’t there anybody on the scene now?
Melanie Murdock could do nothing but scream as the beast came smashing through the window. Shards of glass and wood rained down across the bathroom floor. The beast landed on all fours, locking eyes with her. Mel couldn’t quite make out the face of the gigantic animal before her. She had never seen an animal of its size before, at least not outside of the York Zoo. It looked more like one of the monsters from her Friday-night movies.
It just sat there, facing her, staring at her. The soundtrack of the storm outside was the only audible noise registering outside of her head. Inside, her heartbeat was hammering within her chest like an incensed monkey in a cage.
The werewolf normally known as Stan Springs broke into another smile and let out a snort followed by a sound that resembled a laugh. It watched Mel Murdock’s shocked reaction to its vocal giddiness. If it could talk in this form, it would. Instead, it derided her whining by making its own whiney, whimpering noises.
The large mass of fur and muscle crouched before her, and it had just laughed at her. It was mocking her. The beast began inching itself closer. Backed against the wall, she trembled from head to toe.
The cold nose at the end of its snout made contact with her forehead. She could smell its ghastly warm breath as the putrid scent buried itself in her nostrils. She fought the urge to throw up. The beast pulled back its dark lips, revealing an intimidating arsenal of teeth, opened its mouth, produced its pink, sandpaper tongue and lapped her face from chin to nose, leaving a trail of snot-textured saliva on her face. There was something strangely sexual in the way it performed the act, slow and drawn out, as though it was enjoying
tasting her.
She couldn’t hold back the vomit any longer—she spewed right into the mouth of the beast.
The werewolf grabbed her by the throat and flung her effortlessly across the open bathroom. The back of her head smashed into a mirror placed above the bathroom sink. She came down hard, her tailbone connecting with the cold, white porcelain sink. A hot flash of pain shot up her spine as she fell forward off the sink’s edge and landed face-first on the hard blue tile below.
I’m going to die. Oh my God, I’m going to die. I don’t want to die. God, please…
The beast grabbed her by the ankles, its sharp claws digging into her flesh through her cotton socks. It pulled her body beneath its mass. Its breathing quickened as its primal urges took full control of its actions.
Mel Murdock craned her head back. Her threshold for pain and horror, which she figured was about maxed out, intensified as she registered the creature’s intent. She kicked her legs, she clawed at the tile and she caught bits of shattered glass from the broken window beneath her fingernails. She screamed.
The werewolf easily overpowered her. She felt its heavy hand rake down across her back, its sharp nails slashing her open. It did this repeatedly, all the while making its crude attempts at laughter.
She screamed out against the whole maddening scene and at the world for harboring such a vile creature in its realm. The sudden panic that struck her accompanied a surge of adrenaline. She had to fight.
With every bit of her strength, she swung her arms wildly, she flailed her feet, she tried to buck beneath the weight of the monster, but to no avail. The beast was too large, too powerful. As a last-ditch effort, she reached for its leg. She caught hold of a fistful of fur and yanked as hard as she could.
The beast let out a howl of pain as her hand pulled free with a patch of black fur. Her small victory only enraged the creature. She clenched her eyes shut and prepared for its retaliation.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Joe and Dwayne rushed around the back of the house, hearing the screams and thrashing coming from just ahead of them. As they rounded the corner of the home, they noticed two things—the body of Deputy Shelly Glescoe lying facedown in the puddle of mud next to the fence that divided the Fischers’ property from the Nelsons’ and the large hole in the side of Sheriff Fischer’s home, from whence the screams came.
Joe spun around in time to see the werewolf slam its fist into the back of Melanie Murdock’s skull. Her screams fell silent. Joe hesitated long enough for the monster to take notice of him and propel itself in his direction.
Dwayne could no longer hear or see anything around him. He saw nothing but Shelly lying facedown in the muck. He felt weak, he felt useless. He stepped toward her with his hand out; the rain began to fall harder, heavier. That’s when he heard the gunshot just before something crashed into him, sending him sprawling to the fence and into the mud.
Joe’s shot had missed. The werewolf was on top of him. His gun fell from his hand, disappearing into the mire. The beast clawed through his jacket. It slashed him across the nose and then across the left side of his head, scraping half of his left ear off. Explosion upon explosion of searing pain burst to life in the wake of each strike. The creature was toying with him, like a cat with a moth. He was no match without his weapon, and it knew it.
The werewolf grabbed him by the shoulders of his jacket, lifted him into the air and stared into his face. Joe reached behind his back with his left hand, searching for his backup pistol. It was gone.
The monster held him there, his feet up off the ground by a good foot, and stared at him.
What the hell is it waiting for? Joe thought.
He watched the beast looking at him as the rain mixed with the blood from his facial wounds and flowed down his face. There was something about the thing that felt familiar. He was certain that this was the werewolf he had shot, burned and buried all those years ago. The thing he witnessed kill young Brett Curry. The monster responsible for the deaths of Michele Stahl and the rest of those poor kids. This beast killed Jack and Kelly McKinney.
But there was something else—Joe could swear he recognized something else in its yellowy eyes. Something far more revealing than this beast being the beast from seven years ago. He couldn’t quite grasp it.
Before he could ponder on the thought any longer, or try anything else to get free from its grip, he was sent backward, his body hurling through the air and through the red wooden fence that he himself had built. He tried to get to his feet before the beast could get to him, but it was too fast. As it slashed out at his chest again with its wicked claws, he grabbed a broken piece of the fence lying next to him, sat up and jammed it into the monster’s side.
Dwayne picked himself up out of the mud. His head was fuzzy. He had no idea what had hit him. He just remembered rounding the corner of the house, and the werewolf—then he saw Shelly lying in front of him. Tears filled his eyes as he crawled through the rain-drenched ground, over to her body. As he rolled her over and looked into her battered face, he heard the howl of the werewolf. It shook him back to the here and now. Joe.
Sonya’s thoughts were all over the proverbial map. She thought of Alex. She thought of the creature that took his life, of its yellow eyes, of her father and of Deputies Clarke and Glescoe. What had her father said?
Shelly had seen another werewolf?
He had also told her to stay put, to stay here…alone. Her thoughts returned to Alex. She would never get to see him, kiss him, talk to him… Her chest started heaving again at the realization of the true loneliness that was now upon her. A howl pierced the rage of the storm.
Daddy.
She opened the glove box, reached in and pulled out the gun. It was heavy in her hand. If she got the chance, she wouldn’t hesitate to fire. Not after witnessing the horror… She wiped the tear rolling down her cheek, pulled the hood of her light-blue sweatshirt up over her head, and stepped out into the once-again blustery wind and pouring rain. She ran, gun in hand, down the sidewalk and toward the sound of the beast. For the second time tonight, she was disobeying her father’s wishes.
Joe felt the werewolf’s howl of pain and violent anger hit him like a shock wave. He felt its energy reverberating down through its hind legs as it stood over him. He needed something else—his gun, his bag. He needed silver. He had none of those things. He scurried out from beneath the beast as he watched it pull the piece of fence from its side. He scrambled to his feet. The Nelsons’ backyard was suddenly flooded with brightness.
The werewolf turned its attention to the source of the new light. Joe used the diversion to make his play. He ran, diving past the monster, back into his own yard. His green army duffle bag was on the ground before him.
As he reached down for the zipper, the beast crashed into him. They both slammed into the side of his house. Joe felt his right arm and shoulder shatter as they were pinned between his body and his home. The impact, knocking the air from his lungs, caused Joe Fischer to see black dots.
The werewolf grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up over its head. Joe couldn’t breathe. He felt the crushing strength of the beast depleting him of his own.
“Hey!” Dwayne’s voice broke through the nightmare.
The beast turned its head and felt the blast of two shots slam into its left leg. It spun around, flinging the sheriff at the deputy who had fired the shots.
Joe crashed into Dwayne, sending both men tumbling to the ground. Dwayne recovered almost instantly as the sheriff rolled off to the side.
Dwayne raised the revolver again, but the beast swiped at the weapon as soon as he did. The gun, along with his trigger finger, went sailing into the night. The werewolf pulled its arms back, bent down inches from his face and let loose a ferocious roar.
Blood and spit sprayed Dwayne’s face, temporarily replacing the cold rain. His life flashed before his eyes.
“Daddy!”
The beast spun at the sound of Sonya Fischer’s cry for her father. It could already feel the poison from the wounds in its leg spreading and creeping up through its veins. The werewolf made its way down the fence toward the distraught girl, the two men on the ground behind it already forgotten.
Dwayne pulled his damaged hand to his chest and moved as quickly and quietly as he could over to Joe’s green duffle bag. He struggled to unzip it with his left hand. He had to bring his damaged right hand down to the bag to get it open. Reaching in and fumbling around, he found what he was looking for—Joe’s .44 Magnum.
He looked up as Sonya let out a scream, followed by number of gunshots. The monster continued, undaunted. Either she had missed hitting it completely or the bullets weren’t silver. It was totally possible that Shelly hadn’t thought to load it with tonight’s ammo.
The beast was almost to her. Sonya was backing away.
“Run!” Dwayne strode forward, pointing Joe’s massive gun at the beast.
“Daddy!”
Joe’s eyes opened, his mind registering both the pain and the voice of his daughter. He lifted his foggy head and saw Dwayne running at the werewolf. Sonya was just beyond the beast, stumbling back toward the road, screaming for him.
Dwayne couldn’t take the shot. The monster was almost upon Sonya, but he didn’t feel confident pulling the trigger of the small cannon in his left hand. Not with Sonya so close. If he didn’t do something now, Sonya would be next. He lowered the gun and ran at the beast.
The werewolf limped its way toward the sheriff’s daughter. It relished the fear and pain in the girl’s desperate and useless cries for her beaten father.
As it reached out for the broken angel standing before it, the beast heard the footfalls of the approaching deputy coming up from behind.
As the officer jumped through the air, the creature spun and backhanded him. The deputy’s eyes rolled up in the back of his head—he was sent to the ground and knocked unconscious.
