The Turning

by Micky Neilson

  He kicked in the door and was delighted to see a floor to ceiling window and sliding glass door directly across. Within seconds he had whipped the sliding glass door open and was looking out from the railing. Directly to his left hung a lifeboat. Down on the dock, a gaggle of stark raving passengers was running amok.

  Brilliant.

  Squinting through the snow, the hunter could see his prey—a dark form stumbling toward the main road. The time was now. Directly below his position and just a few yards out was a parked fire engine. It was still a long drop, but if he had something to cushion his fall…

  Alexander replaced the Nosler in his duffel bag. Back in the cabin he ripped the covers from the twin-sized mattress and yanked the mattress from the bed. He then dragged the mattress to the balcony. First he tossed his duffel bag out into the snow. The next bit was trickier. Pain flared in his left arm but he managed to maneuver the mattress onto the railing. Then with a shove he sent it out and over, where it flipped once and landed on the back of the fire engine like a large, thick pancake.

  Now it was his turn. The law enforcement was still dealing with the terrified mob, but his window for escape would not last much longer. Alexander hoisted himself onto the railing, judged the distance, and jumped.

  Hitting the back of the engine, even though he struck the mattress square, rattled him to the bone. He bounced off of the mattress and down onto the snow. Hard. Shards of pain lanced his left arm, and he mucked up his left knee quite effectively. He was, however, still functional, and he had successfully extricated himself from that damned ship at last.

  Time to finish the task at hand.

  He maneuvered to a standing position, putting most of his weight on his good leg. The duffel bag lay just a few yards ahead. He glanced over to his left where a beehive of activity continued, as Ketchikan’s finest made noble attempts to quell the crazed passengers. He could not have orchestrated a more perfect distraction.

  Though the wolf was no longer in sight, Alexander had a general sense of where the beast had landed. His knee protested with every step and his left arm screamed bloody murder. Nevertheless, after just a moment of searching, he came upon the site where the animal fell, several yards away from the ship. There were drops of blood and tracks leading toward the street.

  At the end of the small access road to the dock, a Ketchikan police cruiser was parked cross-ways just before the intersection. There was no officer seated within it but the lights were still on.

  Water Street, which ran parallel to the docks, was nearly deserted. A single car, a beat-up old Volkswagen, passed by as Alexander hobbled to the intersection. The prints and blood indicated that the beast had crossed behind the cruiser and made its way through the intersection and up the road that led away from dock number four, called Schoenbar.

  Schoenbar cut a path up a gradual slope, past a bar, parking lot, some houses…

  Alexander picked up his pace, removing the duffel bag from his shoulder and drawing out the Nosler.

  As the snowfall let up just a bit Alexander saw the wolf, still on two legs but stumbling. The hunter gained ground, his breath creating great white clouds as he sped up the low grade. A moment later he came to a bend where timber spread out on both sides, hemmed by a metal fence.

  He was closer now to the beast, which was slowly working its way toward a fork in the road. Directly ahead in the crotch of the fork was a rocky shelf topped by tall stands of pine. This seemed to be the wolf’s objective.

  An objective it would never reach. The hunter raised the rifle, steadied it on his left arm, sighted the beast in his scope, held his breath… and pulled the trigger.

  The shot had been aimed just far enough from the heart to avoid a kill shot, but enough to bring down the hound. He worked the bolt, readying another round just in case, but the mutt pitched forward into the snow. Alexander smiled.

  The shot had been loud; he would have to work fast…

  He sloughed off the duffel bag, dropped it at the side of the road and tossed the rifle on top of it. Then he limped on, removing the silver knife from the small of his back. This… this was what he had been waiting for. A moment that had been so nearly his when he had tranq’d the mutt in its own cabin. Now, he would savor the kill just a bit. He just wanted to watch the life fade from its eyes. He just wanted it to know who the master was before it died.

  The wolf had dropped just a couple yards short of the timber. Alexander came upon the wretched creature at last, crawling on all fours, still trying to flee. No escape for you, cur. The hunter took in the beast’s suffering, sipping it like a fine wine, and found the taste much to his liking.

  He felt very much like a God, standing over the defeated abomination. It stopped, screwed its head around to peer at him with its yellow eyes. Was the glow in those eyes dimmer? Yes, yes, it certainly was.

  Alexander smiled, tightened his grip on the commando knife and then… then a shot from the Nosler rang out once more. Something very small tore through the center of him. It felt a bit like being skewered with a needle. The hunter looked down, where a tiny tuft of stuffing from his coat stuck out, from the exit wound of the bullet that had just ripped through his chest.

  There was just enough time for the realization that he had been killed to dawn on Alexander Kroft before his world went dark for good.

  ***

  Ginny had followed when the stranger hopped off of the fire truck. His landing on the mattress and then the snow had looked painful, and when he had picked up his bag and started off after… Brandon, he had been limping.

  With the commotion of the out-of-control crowd, the man hadn’t heard her footsteps in the snow. When they reached the intersection and he continued up the road, she had stayed a fair distance behind; the snow had been thin enough that it didn’t make much sound, and she had timed her footfalls with his. This guy been so intent on killing Brandon that he hadn’t even looked behind him.

  She hadn’t been sure what she would do. She didn’t have any kind of weapon, after all. There hadn’t been much thought or planning involved in her actions. She would have followed Brandon anyway if the stranger hadn’t fallen out of the sky. But he did, and he followed the thing that had once been Brandon, and so she had followed him. She knew that he wanted Brandon dead, and she knew that in spite of everything, she didn’t want that to happen. Unfortunately she didn’t know how to stop him.

  And then he dropped the rifle.

  He had dropped it after chambering a round… and then he had pulled out a knife, its blade gleaming in the moonlight. He had stood over Brandon like some kind of… conqueror. The rest, for her, seemed easy. She picked up the rifle, aimed it at the middle of his back, and squeezed the trigger, just like her Dad had taught her to when they would go hunting.

  When the man dropped to his knees and fell forward, she was quite sure that he was dead. She should have felt some overwhelming remorse, but there was nothing. Not yet, anyway. For now there was only her concern for Brandon, the man-thing dying in the middle of the road.

  He had crawled farther away, out from under the stranger. The snow in his wake was red like a slushy. She approached, and he stopped, reared up from one haunch, one arm down for support, and those eyes found hers. Those beautiful, golden eyes.

  “It’s me, Brandon. It’s me…”

  She took a few more steps forward, searching behind the eyes for the man she had danced with and sang “I’ll Stand By You” to, the man who had, out of nowhere, dominated her life, the man who had delivered her to heights of ecstasy previously unimagined, the man who had seen things in her that no one else had ever seen…

  Brandon rotated so that he was facing her on all fours. She stepped over the body of the stranger and kneeled down, and she continued searching for him, for the real him...

  “Brandon, it’s me, please…”

  He growled and bared his teeth, teeth stained dark red like merlot. Teeth that had shredded… how much flesh?

  “Oh God…”
She tightened her grip on the rifle, positioned it so the barrel was pointing in front of her and down. “Oh God, you’re not in there anymore, are you?”

  Her mind drifted back to her childhood, to the night she had found Ruffian behind the grocery store. She thought of the dog’s eyes, devoid of any empathy. She thought once again of her father’s words…

  Dog’s gone feral, Gin. Best just to let him go.

  “I’m sorry, Brandon. Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  The thing that once was Brandon settled back onto its haunches. Ginny worked the bolt on the rifle, just like her Dad had taught her. Tears had begun flowing down her face, turning to thin streaks of ice. She looked one more time into those eyes and saw only the eyes of a primitive, savage killer.

  “I’m so sorry, Brandon…” She raised the rifle. “I’m so sorry. I love you.”

  The wolf leapt. Ginny fired.

  Epilogue

  Three months after the incident, Ginny was a mixed bag of emotions.

  The ongoing investigation was a quagmire of staggering proportions. It began with a scrimmage between Alaskan state troopers, the Department of Transportation, the FBI and Homeland Security. Fancy phrases like “supremacy clause” and “issue of national security” were used, and very quickly the Department of Homeland Security had taken over the whole show.

  The story fed to the public was that one or two terrorists had let loose some kind of deadly animal.

  Speculation of a cover up and various other conspiracy theories had run rampant.

  There were only two living witnesses who admitted to seeing the animal. One was a Coast Guard boarding team member who had been admitted to an asylum; the other was the team’s commander, who had issued a statement saying that what he witnessed was “something that resembled a kind of human-dog hybrid.” He also stated that the animal was impervious to gunfire. Lieutenant Tony Blackwell was summarily relieved of service and widely discredited. Despite this, several home videos he made on the subject went viral, and Blackwell had become a celebrity among the conspiracy theory community.

  The only other answers delivered to the public regarding the events on the Rapture were that no solid answers existed. And there was little expectation as to when those answers might materialize. Insurance companies had now become involved, and it was painfully obvious that lawsuits and appeals surrounding the case could stretch on for years.

  Ginny carried a cup of tea over to her small sofa, sat down with both hands on the mug and tucked her legs up on the cushion. She blew on the tea, set the mug down on the end table and picked up the TV remote. After clicking the MENU button, she lackadaisically scrolled through the channels. Her cell phone buzzed on the cushion next to her. She switched the remote to her left hand and looked at her cell screen. Another text from Kat, asking if she was okay.

  Her stomach twisted. She tossed the phone back on the cushion, put her feet on the floor and leaned over her lap, hugging her arms close. No, she wanted to tell her friend. No, I’m most definitely not okay.

  She would strive to remember Brandon as she had known him during their brief time together: strong and confident and kind and good. The thing she shot that night on the road was not Brandon. She understood that now in a way she never had before. It was not him, though in the very end, that thing had… reverted to him right before her eyes. Bones had popped, cracked and shifted, fur had withdrawn beneath the skin, and what had been left was Brandon, lying naked and lifeless. She had held him, washing his face with her tears, for several long moments, sobbing with grief and desolation until a buzzing sound attracted her attention. It had been coming from the stranger.

  She had crawled to the other man, identified the origin of the noise, and withdrew a phone from his pocket. What was the stranger’s role in all of this, she had wondered. How did he know of Brandon? Who was he?

  Ginny had hit the green button and lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Is the target neutralized?” a voice had asked. It was… slick, like oil on water. A second later it repeated: “Is the target neutralized?”

  Removing the phone from her ear, she had hit the red button. As she replaced the phone in the man’s pocket she had felt something else. Something hard and cylindrical. She had pulled out a bottle of pills with a plain white label. Brandon’s pills. What use would the stranger have for those?

  Without knowing exactly why, other than the vague notion that she planned on someday getting answers, she had put the pills in her own pocket. There had been headlights then, approaching from down the road, just on the other side of the bend. Ginny had crawled back to Brandon, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and then ran ahead and into the trees.

  By the time Ginny had returned to the dock, passengers were being let off in twos and threes and then gathered in small groups with emergency personnel who conducted them to various sleeping quarters for the night. Ginny had joined one of these groups and ended up spending the night in the Ketchikan High School gymnasium. It had been uncomfortable and she had only eventually slept out of pure exhaustion, but at least it had been shelter from the cold.

  The next day she had been flown back to Seattle.

  There had been “interviews” with all of the passengers following the incident. What those sessions had really turned into, for her at least, were interrogations. Authorities had determined that both of the bodies found on Schoenbar Road had booked passage under false identities. The most prominent theory was that the two deceased were terrorists, that upon arrival at Ketchikan there had been a falling out and that one, “Hamilton,” shot the other, “Erik.” The search for a third accomplice, who had shot Hamilton in the back, was ongoing. Why “Erik” had been found naked was only brought up once, and never again addressed.

  Ginny had seen enough scary movies to know that supposedly the only thing that could kill a werewolf was a silver bullet. If “Hamilton” had used silver bullets, that information was never made public. In fact, nothing else about the stranger had been publicized. No mention was made of any autopsies. The conspiracy theory websites claimed that “Erik’s” body had been taken to a government lab on some military installation here in Washington State.

  No witnesses had put Ginny at the scene of the Schoenbar Road shooting. However, both the waiter who served Ginny’s table during the cruise and Vera, God bless her old and still beating heart (thanks to Ginny), had pegged Ginny and Erik as an item. Thus, the interrogations. These went on for weeks.

  Ginny had a family friend who was a lawyer, and Vera had stressed that Ginny was most definitely an upstanding young woman who was smitten with Erik and surely not involved in any wrongdoing. There was no evidence at any time that Ginny knew Erik before the cruise. And Ginny had denied repeatedly any knowledge of a terrorist plot.

  One piece of information that surfaced as a result of it all was the final message Brandon had left to Ginny, written down by a Rapture crew member at the purser’s desk before Brandon turned: “Tell her that I’m sorry. And tell her that she showed me how to love again.”

  They had asked her what it meant, and she had lied, telling them that she didn’t really know. But she clung to that message, especially now, and she had refrained then from providing Erik’s real name of Brandon. It felt… wrong to do so. To tell them, anyway. There had been many times, talking to men in suits, when it had been very difficult to trust that the folks she was talking to were the good guys.

  There had been a few television interviews, reporters up the wazoo, and hours of uncomfortable interrogation. Ultimately, not only was there not enough evidence to pursue any kind of charges, but Hospital Corpsman First Class Anthony Taormina had provided written testimony that during a good portion of the ordeal, Ginny was with him in the infirmary. On top of that, he had spoken glowingly of her actions to help save the life of Vera.

  After the first couple months, the press moved on. The constant presence of a black SUV near her apartment, however, had made Ginny wonder if Homela
nd Security still considered her a person of interest. Then, one day, the SUV just wasn’t there anymore.

  Though Ginny was unsure of whom to trust, the one person she trusted implicitly was her brother, J.D. She had remained in contact with him throughout the ordeal, but up until one month ago, she hadn’t shared much more of the truth with him than she had with the press or Homeland Security.

  Then, thirty days ago, she had sat him down and told him that what she was about to say was going to sound crazy, but she wanted J.D. to bear with her. Even then she hadn’t shared everything, for fear that it was just too much for him to hear. What she had communicated was that the man known as Erik had believed that he was in fact a werewolf, and that he took pills to suppress his lycanthropy. Ginny had then produced those pills, handed them over and asked for J.D. to look into where they might have come from. J.D. had buddies in the military’s Criminal Investigation Division, and though he had been skeptical, to his credit J.D. hadn’t accused Ginny of being insane. In fact, he had agreed to look into the pills’ origin.

  To Ginny, the real person responsible for the tragedy on board the Rapture was not Brandon. If the pills were truly supposed to prevent him from becoming what he had become, and they hadn’t, then the man who supplied those pills, the man Brandon had called “Ghost,” was the man who should be blamed. The deaths on board the Rapture should be laid at his feet. And in the aftermath of the incident, Ginny had made it her mission to see him held accountable.

  She picked up her mug and took a sip. The tea settled her stomach. Even three months in, she was still getting sick almost daily.

  Yes, Ginny’s emotions were a mixed bag: there was anger, despair, regret, fright (especially now that she had begun having recurring night terrors, of a hellish landscape where men and women ran naked on all fours beneath the stars, gorging on the blood of soft, pale creatures), and there was an anxious anticipation for the gift Brandon had given her, the gift he had believed himself incapable of giving.