Snarl

by Lorne Dixon

  The machine chimed and the phone’s battery died.

  Chev lowered his head and dropped the phone. He wondered if Neva and Tawny had already begun the fashion show that always followed the opening of gifts. He was missing out on the twirl of new skirts, the matching of tops and accessories, the squeals of joy as they paraded through the living room. He was missing Christmas. And he knew that there was a very good chance he wouldn’t live to see another.

  In the monitor, he saw Bella and Dev’s reflections standing over a table piled high with weapons. Ross stood a few feet away, arms crossed, still looking like a living corpse. His heart went out to the old man. He tried to place himself in Ross’s shoes, his daughters taken, but couldn’t.

  He joined Dev and Bella at the table. “Do we need silver bullets or anything?”

  “How’d your truck do?” Dev snorted. “Was it silver?”

  Chev put his hand down on a pump-action, sawed-off shotgun. It felt different than Gus’s revolver; less like a showpiece and more like a weapon of war. Lifting it off the table, he realized that Dev had probably used it to end the lives of many beasts. The walnut shock felt heavy in his hands.

  “Doesn’t hold many rounds,” Dev told him, pointing to a box of ammunition, “but it has a ton of stopping power. Take a Brother down in a single shot and that’s saying something.”

  The phrase, “Take a brother down in a single shot” rang through his head like an alarm. Weren’t most of these survivalist types card carrying members of the Klu Klux Klan? He decided it didn’t matter. Even if Dev hated black men like himself, he clearly hated the Brothers who traveled on four legs worse.

  “Just be sure we’re all behind you when you pull that trigger.” Dev smirked. “And keep both hands on it. That barrel’ll jump back fast when it fires. Won’t help us if you knock yourself unconscious with the first shot.”

  Dev pulled a stub-nosed .22 off the table and handed it to Ross. He glared at the weapon, then at Dev, before taking it. “You okay?”

  Ross nodded.

  Bella chose two automatic handguns from the pile and put one in each hand. Dev smiled. “Now, I know what you’ve seen in the movies. But you only fire one at a time. Know why? When a handgun kicks, your hand wants to fold in towards your chest, because that’s the way your wrist works. Firing a gun numbs you out. It can make you careless. I’ve seen men shoot off their own hands trying to use two side arms at the same time.”

  Turning back to Ross, Dev asked, “You sure you’re okay? You look spooked, really spooked. If you go out there and you’re not ready, you’ll get someone killed.”

  He flinched at the word “killed.”

  “So, last time: you okay?”

  Ross took a deep breath. “I’m okay.”

  Dev’s eyes filled with glowering doubt. “Better be.”

  “Where’s my bullets?” Bella asked.

  Dev gave her three magazines. “And they’re already loaded, too. Remember, just because you can get off twenty rounds in a minute doesn’t mean you should. Make them all count.”

  “What are you taking?” Chev asked. “That rifle?”

  “No, that’s just for around the house.” Dev went to the wall and unsheathed a longbow. “I took down my first deer with this bow at twelve years old. My father built it with the help of an old Potawatomi Indian chief.”

  “Is that all your taking?” Bella asked.

  Dev smiled. “Well, this and the homemade grenades.”

  Chapter Ten

  They crammed into Dev’s pickup and drove across town to the old mill. Faces watched from behind windows, some chattering into phones, spreading word that Devil Ayers was driving through town with Bella and the outsiders.

  “They’ll know we’re coming,” Chev said.

  Dev shifted into fourth gear and stepped on the accelerator. “That was never in doubt. Even if their sentinels weren’t spying on the house all night, my place is on the Sheriff’s list for the deputies’ night patrols. Wouldn’t have made a pinch of difference if we tried to hide your car.”

  “So they’ll be waiting for us.” Chev ran his hands over the smooth wooden stock of the shotgun. Somehow, he found he was less frightened riding into danger than running away from it.

  Bella turned her head as they passed a dilapidated two-story house. Chev recognized the sedan parked in the driveway. It was Bella’s father’s house.

  “Do we have a plan?” Chev asked Dev.

  Dev nodded. “Save the boy, kill a lot of werewolves.”

  “Anything else?”

  Another nod. “And not get killed.”

  The paved road ended and the truck’s wheels rolled onto dirt. Chev thought he saw movement in the woods, a quick flash of black fur darting behind a line a trees, but couldn’t be certain. He squinted.

  “Oh, they’re out here,” Dev said.

  “The beasts are nocturnal, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be out in daylight. The Elders sleep in, usually, to conserve their energy for their nightly hunts. The younger ones can sometimes go several days without sleeping.”

  “Are they weaker in the day?”

  “No, but they’re easier to spot.”

  The forest opened up to reveal the old mill. No longer a complete structure, the mill was a series of rock and mortar walls and weathered red lumber. Chev asked, “Wasn’t Frankenstein’s laboratory a mill?”

  Dev grinned. “It was.”

  Killing the engine, Dev stepped out, went to the truck’s bed and scooped up a backpack, his bow, and a satchel of arrows. As the others got out, he raised a shovel above his head. “I buried my father with this. If I don’t make it and by some miracle one of you does, I want you to do the same for me.”

  Ross turned his head to the sky. “Looks like snow.”

  “A white Christmas,” Bella said.

  Dev dropped the shovel, pointed to a trail snaking away from the mill, and started walking. Chev saw a difference in his posture and his stride. He was a different man, a much more dangerous one than he had first met. “Let’s put some red in the holiday.”

  The trail followed the trickling path of a wandering creek that had once been a river. The forest grew thicker with each step. Resilient in late December, the prairie milkweed invaded the walkway, crunching underfoot. Bella followed close behind Dev, both hands on her sidearm, its partner buried in her waistband. Ross kept his head low as he struggled to keep up. Chev brought up the rear, eyes shifting from the trail to the woods as well as behind them.

  Dozens of cars, most dented and missing windows, were parked in an open field alongside the path. Dev kept them moving, pausing only long enough to mutter, “I call it the used car lot from Hell …”

  In the rear of the lot, standing over the other vehicles like a sheepdog over its flock, was Chev’s truck.

  They came to a small glen formed by a turn in the brook. Dev froze and dropped to his knees. Bella, Ross, and Chev did the same, mimicking his actions. He pointed to his eyes and then to the woods.

  The bodies hung upside down, crucified to the trees by spikes through the feet of outstretched legs. Chev gagged when he recognized their torn uniforms. Above name badges that read william and roger, each coat had been embroidered with the logo of Campagnoli Trucking. He stared down at his own coat. His call to Mr. Tom had sent these men to his truck—and their deaths.

  “It’s their way of telling us they know we’re coming.” Dev got to his feet and continued down the path, passing the bodies without hesitating.

  Bella and Chev stared for an additional moment, unable to pry their eyes away. Ross scrambled to follow Dev.

  “You know them?” she asked.

  He didn’t.

  They caught up with Dev and Ross. The path broke away from the brook and circled a towering outgrowth of limestone. Chev kept his eyes and his shotgun aimed at the rock shelf.

  A low growl rumbled from overhead. And then another from behind a flank of yellow birch trees and pear hawthorn. More vo
ices joined the chorus and Chev realized they were surrounded. He swung the shotgun and tried to find a target. He saw nothing. “Dev—”

  “Backs to the wall,” Dev said. His face betrayed no more worry than when he had driven through town. If anything, he was in his element. He grunted in approval as they complied.

  The growling stopped.

  Dev drew an arrow across his bow’s string and pointed it at the edge of the rock ledge. He curled his bottom lip under the top row of his teeth. He whispered, “Don’t fire ’til I do, then go ahead and make some big noise.”

  Their eyes strained to find any movement among the trees. A light breeze teased the frilly ends of a line of tall cottengrass. The sensation of being watched overwhelmed Chev’s senses. He wanted to fire wildly into the foliage to force motion, to draw the beasts out, to end the waiting.

  Light snow began to fall.

  Dev remained motionless, a stone statue, as snowflakes fell onto his face. He didn’t blink. He held steady and waited.

  On the ridge above Bella, a snout appeared just over the edge, barely more than a pair of nostrils and a tuft of fur. Dev let the arrow fly. The Brother howled as the arrowhead sliced through flesh and cartilage.

  The forest came alive in a flurry of black fur and gnashing teeth. They sprung from the tree line at every angle, springing out of burrows dug in tangles of unearthed roots. Some leaped down from tree limbs. The beasts roared, filling the air with a thunderous, disharmonious war cry.

  Chev pulled the shotgun’s trigger. Pain rattled out from his arm and shoulder. The buckshot canvassed the tree line, cutting through red meat under dark pelts, catching two attackers mid-air and forcing them to the ground. Bella fired, her first few shots wild, then more precisely as she watched the beasts fall away, yelping and twisting.

  Ross stood erect, aiming, each shot methodical, each finding its mark. The fear seemed to have vanished from his face.

  Dev climbed the rock wall and sprang up onto its high ledge.

  Chev reloaded and fired. Dev had been right; his arm was already numb. He let out a battle cry of his own as a Brother caught the full impact of his shot directly in its snarling maw. Its body spun to a rest on the trail’s edge. Its head kept traveling.

  Two dead Brothers dropped from the rock ledge, both with arrows through their skulls. Dev swung down, aiming his bow, and killed the last Brother advancing. The rest scampered into the woods, yelping and growling.

  Dev waited for a second wave, but when none came he turned to the others and said, “They were young, just pups, probably no older than Bella. Marek sent them out here to test them, not us. It’s uphill from here.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ross reloaded with steady hands. The fear was gone. It wasn’t his military training, half a century dormant, soothing his nerves. It wasn’t even the gun in his hands. It was the killing itself. He knew Dev was mistaken about the reason Marek had sent the young Brothers out to be slaughtered. Marek wanted him to kill, to feel the surge of power, the liberation. It felt like freedom, like life itself, easy and natural.

  “Let’s get moving,” he told Dev.

  Again, Dev led the way. A dusting of snow began to cling to the forest floor. Dev instructed them to walk single file and in each other’s footsteps as much as possible. “On the way out,” he said, “we want to know if we’ve been followed.”

  Ross caught glimpses of the remaining young Brothers in the woods, most in human form now, cowering at a safe distance behind a partition of spruce and pine trees. He could tell from their frantic movements that they were afraid. Catching one Brother’s eyes through pine needles and snow, Ross saw something else there, a parasite living inside the fear: respect.

  The path twisted down an incline. At the base, it intersected with the brook. This time, rather than run alongside the water, a small footbridge took the path over it. Ross checked the gun. It was ready.

  Dev glanced over his shoulder. “Everything okay?”

  A horrible thought spun through Ross’s head. Were the surveillance cameras at Dev’s compound attached to video recorders? Had Dev seen his meeting with the sentinel? How well could the hunter feign sleep?

  Dev gave him a steely-eyed glance. “I asked if you’re okay?”

  “Fine. It’s fine,” Ross said.

  Bella and Chev both agreed.

  Dev stepped onto the bridge. Ross squeezed up behind him. Weathered planks creaked beneath their feet. A few of the boards rocked in place. Dev placed the heel of his boot on the most rotten plank of the bunch and stomped down. It held. He took another step.

  A crow cawed.

  Dev stopped and lifted a hand for the others to stop.

  “What is it?” Chev asked.

  Dev whispered, “I dunno, but that wasn’t a bird.”

  A second caw.

  Dev leaned back on his heels and surveyed the path beyond the bridge. He set up an arrow and pulled the string back to full tension. “There’s someone behind that blue spruce up ahead.”

  Ross could see the sentinel there, hand to his face, blowing out the third bird call. Dev released the arrow and the sentinel screamed. He stumbled out of the forest into the path, two claws wrapped around the arrow that had passed through his arm just below the shoulder. Dev set up a second shot, a kill shot.

  But before he could fire, before Chev could yell out a warning—

  Ross put his pistol against the back of Dev’s head.

  And pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sentinel laughed as the arrow dropped to the soil at his feet.

  Dev fell, blood gushing, a halo of hot red steam in the falling snow, his hands twitching. His head hit the planks of the footbridge, breaking one in half, as his body sprawled out and convulsed. His mouth opened and his tongue dropped out, severed from behind by the bullet.

  Inhuman applause filled the forest. They stepped out from their hiding spots in the trees and brush. A hundred men and women, some naked, others dressed in leather and denim, came out with hands and claws clapping. Marek stepped onto the footbridge and kicked Dev’s lifeless head to the side as he stepped over the body. He lowered Ross’s gun hand as he passed.

  Chev trained the shotgun on the leader.

  “Drop it,” Marek said.

  Chev held his ground for a moment. Beasts moved in behind them, blocking the path. There was no escape, no way to fight his way out. He wouldn’t have time to reload the shotgun before the Brothers tore him apart. Grinding his teeth, he set the weapon down at his feet. He looked back at Bella, still holding her pistol. “Put it down. It’s over.”

  Her eyes shifted from Marek to him. A ghoulish smile crept up the sides of her face. “I don’t think he was talking to me, Chev.”

  She swung the sidearm and placed her aim directly between Chev’s eyes. Marek went to her, brushed aside her hair and kissed her neck. “You did great, babe.”

  Chev reeled back a few steps, cursing himself for not acting on his intuition, wishing he had cut her free and gotten out of Easter Glen when he had the chance. “Why—”

  She turned her head and kissed Marek. “Isn’t that simple enough?”

  “You told us—”

  She shrugged as his hands ran up her body. “And I didn’t lie. It happened exactly as I told you, even our first date. I might have left out that I enjoyed every moment of it. I grew up with a monster in my house. It just so happens I prefer the touch of claws against my skin to my father’s hands.”

  Marek’s two lieutenants, the bikers from the Food Cabinet, seized Chev’s arms from behind. Bella stepped forward and put the handgun’s barrel against his forehead. She whispered, “Old Ross still hasn’t figured out that we trapped him right from the beginning. Everything went as planned even when you showed up unexpectedly. Devil Ayers would never have trusted me alone. He hated townies. But outsiders, especially an old man who might remind him of his father …”

  Jiri growled in his ear, “I owe you for my
foot.”

  “Ayers was the only thing stopping us from taking Easter Glen,” Marek said. “We tried to kill him hundreds of times, but he was always ready for us. We had to get someone inside. It cost us a handful of younger Brothers but it was the only way he would trust the three of you.”

  Bella licked her top lip.

  “We worried that the townspeople would someday join with him if we attacked. Truces are fragile things. So we endured his hunts, waiting for a candidate like Ross to come along. He was perfect.”

  Chev whispered, “I’m going to kill you both.”

  “No, you won’t,” Marek said.

  A clawed hand ripped through Chev’s pants pocket. The lieutenant tossed Marek his wallet. Marek opened it and thumbed through its contents. “Beautiful kids. Pretty wife. I think it may be time to fire up the bikes for a road trip to Jackson Heights.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Take me to David,” Ross demanded, his grip on his handgun not loosening. He stepped over Dev and hurried off the foot bridge. He saw the Brothers surround Bella and Chev on the other side, but paid no attention. He approached the sentinel and repeated, “Take me to David.”

  The sentinel growled as he snapped off the arrow’s tip and pulled the shaft out of his arm. Clearly still hurting, he said, “We have him in the den.”

  Leading him up a rocky incline, Ross scrambled to keep up with the Brother. As they reached the crest, the old grange came into view. In better days it must have been a marvelous stone church with tall, narrow stained glass windows. The glass was gone now, leaving only the metalwork behind. Two Brothers stood guard at the door. The sentinel waved them aside.

  The sentinel opened the door and ushered him inside. Dozens of Brothers slept in rows of rotten pews. As they passed, Ross’s eyes crossed over the congregation. They were beast and man, and every variation between the two. He saw lovers coiled together, heads resting on chests, paws folded around shoulders. In one row he saw an old woman breastfeeding a half dozen pups from her sagging teats.