Lieutenant Barkis had established a station at a village in the jungle. It was necessary now to run the dogs in relays to the beach.
The enemy mortars raised hob with the telephone lines all day. The dogs were surer than radio. They got through without being intercepted. And the artillery went up, and the half-tracks distributed ammunition, food and water to the hungry, battle-worn Marines. A company of tanks was sent to the proper position, where they deployed in a line of steel. The enemy had made it hard for himself. The only argument he knew was being brought to bear.
* * * *
The natives had long since departed from the ruined village. Most of the flimsy huts had been knocked down, some had burned. Others had been cleaned up and made fit for the dogs, and their handlers dug holes for themselves in the open.
Lieutenant Barkis toiled at a packing crate desk inside one of the huts. He had stopped up the chinks in the walls, hung a couple of blankets in the doorway, and dared to light his work with a shaded lantern turned low.
All night long the half-tracks clanked through the village, the tanks and the amphibious ducks. The jungle was full of their rolling and muttering. Dawn was not far off.
Sergeant Stranger, leaner and more saturnine looking than ever in the weird lamplight, slipped through the curtained doorway.
“Sir, Vance just came in from up front. You better talk to him.”
Barkis frowned, glanced at the papers on his crude desk.
“Send him in.”
Vance came in. He was thin—the kind of thinness popular among jungle fighters—and sallow. He took off his helmet and held it under his arm. His dark eyes burned in hollows above jutting cheekbones.
“My dog, Lieutenant. I sent him in over an hour and a half ago. He didn’t come back, so I checked.”
“Yes?”
“Vance’s dog never got here,” interpolated Sergeant Stranger.
Barkis sat back from the packing case.
He was tired. He hadn’t realized how tired he was.
He said, “Maybe he got lost,” and knew by their expressions they thought he was cracking up. “No,” he corrected himself. “They don’t get lost, do they?” He looked up sharply, forcing the weariness from his mind and body. “Let’s have it.”
Vance said, “My dog is dead, sir. Dead—like Alex was.”
Barkis knitted his brow’s. “Killed—by another dog?”
“Yes, sir. I found him a quarter of a mile back along the trail. Bloody. Throat ripped out. Dead as hell, sir.”
“The dog’s message?”
“I delivered that myself, sir. Sorry about the delay—”
Barkis relaxed. “Very good. You’d better get some rest now. You’ll need all you can get for tomorrow. Stranger…”
Vance, dismissed, left the hut. The saturnine sergeant hovered expectantly.
“Can you take one of the dogs forward?”
“Yes, sir. Grim is my dog.”
“Grim, eh? Splendid name. Get Grim and stand by. We’ll shove off in about ten minutes.”
The sergeant looked a question, thought better of it, and went out. Barkis made a few aimless notations on the sheet before him, then turned the lantern even lower and blew out the flame. The wick smoldered acridly in the dark.
Grim was a massive German Shepherd. Stranger held him firmly on leash as they moved along beside the line of muttering vehicles going up to the front. The ground was soggy underfoot, the road itself had been churned to soupy mud. Barkis was silent, holding back his tiredness. Stranger moved at his side with the rhythmic precision of one of the machines that rolled slowly past them.
Stranger touched the lieutenant’s arm.
“We turn off here, sir,” he shouted above the thunder of many exhausts. “It’s tricky, but it’s a short cut. Up this way, Vance’s dog—”
He bit off his words. Barkis knew the man loved his dogs. What had happened to Alex, and now to Vance’s dog, had hurt him deeply.
Barkis risked a flicker of blue from his pocket torch, picked his way along a rotting log. The dog and man were lumpish shadows ahead. Away from the stench of burned gasoline, the smell of the jungle, raw, purulent, assailed his nostrils.
Low-voiced comments on the nature of their way came back from the man ahead. Barkis ducked vines, by-passed trees, clambered over logs, waded through mucky swamp and waist high grass. They broke into a small clearing.
“Right here,” Stranger said, “is where Vance’s dog got it.”
They proceeded carefully. Barkis flashed his light at intervals. Stranger halted, and Grim commenced to whine.
“Here,” said the sergeant.
Barkis directed the wan beam of his torch upon the ground. The dog, a once powerful Doberman Pinscher, was horribly mangled, lay in a pool of its own blood.
“Is there a hound running wild on this island?” Stranger wanted to know.
Barkis shrugged. “He’s bigger than ours. Look at those tracks.”
The tracks covered the area of a man’s palm. A giant dog. A dog that roamed ghostlike through the night, and mangled for the sheer joy of mangling.
“A dog like that,” said Stranger, “would attack a man.”
“A dog like that—could,” agreed Barkis. He loosened his pistol in its holster. “Grim knows he’s a murderer, too.”
The dog crouched close against its lean master, trembled and whined. The dim blue of the flash showed Grim’s eyes wild and rolling.
“He’s scared to death,” said the sergeant. “D’you suppose he—no, I guess it’s Death that scares him. His buddy is dead, and he don’t know how nor why.”
Barkis thought there was something else in the dog’s attitude—a deeper fear than the dread of the visible evidence of Death before them. He said nothing of his thoughts.
“Take him on, Stranger. I’m going to look around here. I’ll be up before it gets light.”
Stranger hesitated. “Do you think it’s—safe, Lieutenant?”
Barkis’ irritation was a direct product of his own uneasiness.
He said, “Grim may be needed up front, Sergeant.”
“Very well, sir.”
The saturnine man tugged at the shepherd’s leash, spoke softly to the animal. Barkis stood alone, contemplating the eerie shadows. He regretted having sent the man and dog on their way, but he would not admit that he was more than a little nervous. He got down and inspected the alien tracks in the light of his torch.
The sound of desultory firing drifted down from the hills of Watinau. Occasionally, a star-shell winked into brilliance in the sky, too far away to cast even faint illumination into the clearing. A high rack of clouds concealed the moon. Barkis set off in the direction taken by the giant dog tracks, and somehow he felt cold, as if the night had turned abruptly chill.
A hundred yards from the dead dog, the tracks vanished into the trickle of a stream. Flash his light here and there as he might, Barkis discovered no further trace of them. He nodded in recognition of this evidence.
“Smart,” he told himself. “Smart as a man to lose his tracks like that.”
He pocketed the flash and picked his way back to the murdered dog. Orienting himself, he continued in the trail of Sergeant Stranger and Grim.
Whether it was a slight sound that warned him, or some sixth sense that functioned without his conscious volition, Barkis was not sure. He brought himself to an abrupt halt, stood listening, pistol in hand. The gloom was impenetrable. An army of Japs might lie hidden a dozen steps away.
A shadow reared at his feet, and Barkis’ breath jammed in his throat. He thrust himself backward, fending off with his left arm the massive, shaggy bulk that hurtled upon him. The collision knocked the breath from him, and his perceptions registered nothing but hair, hot breath, a
nd glittering eyes.
Barkis struck the stony ground on his side, felt the crushing penetration of fangs upon the muscles of his arm. Something set up a deafening series of concussions. He realized it was the pistol in his other hand. The weapon was thrust into the beast’s shaggy midriff.
Barkis felt claws rake his body, and the animal vaulted over him, crashed into the jungle. Far away, a thin crackle of rifle fire rippled on the night. Barkis got painfully to his feet, nursing his injured arm.
He felt light-headed and hazy. He thought dreamily of the nearby stream, and desire for running water obsessed him.
“Wash the wound,” he told himself. “Wash first, then bind it.”
His way crossed the stream. Running water tinkled at his feet. He plunged forward.
* * * *
“Take it easy, Lieutenant. Everything’s okay.”
Barkis was soaked. He had passed out and fallen in the water. His wounded arm was bandaged and Sergeant Stranger knelt beside him. The sky was streaked with a gutty grayness. Grim cowered beside a log, whimpering. The dog’s thin flanks heaved desperately.
Barkis touched his throbbing head. “Lucky for me you came back,” he said.
Stranger said, “I heard the shooting and guessed what was up. You were lying half in and half out of the water.”
Barkis lifted his head, remembering.
“The dog,” he said breathlessly, “jumped at me out of the dark. Fastened on my arm. I shot it four, five times, the muzzle pressed into its belly.”
“I’d like to see that dog,” Stranger offered, “I sure would. Must be a monster.”
Barkis got shakily to his feet and led the way.
“It was about here. See where the ground is dug up? I landed there.” He stooped and picked up a brass cartridge. “You’ll find a couple more of these around here. He jumped over me and—”
Barkis looked around for a sprawled shape. The dawn light was clear and gray, but it showed no sign of the alien dog. Nor, due to the stony nature of the ground, were there tracks. A haunted expression came into Barkis’ eyes. He cast about in widening circles.
“I’m sure I got him,” he muttered. “Point blank, four, five shots.”
Abruptly, he came back to the scene of the skirmish.
“No blood. My sleeve soaked up mine, but that beast should have showered blood like a lawn sprinkler.”
He grew aware of a poignant throbbing in his arm. Sickness and dizziness assailed him.
“Let’s get on back to the sick bay. Lieutenant,” Stranger put in anxiously. “That arm is in a bad way.”
A mellow thundering commenced on their left. The noise crescendoed, swept around to the right.
“It’s started,” Barkis said bleakly.
“That will pound ’em out of their holes,” agreed Stranger.
Barkis swayed. The sergeant supported him. Grim suddenly howled, broke away, and bolted down the path. Stranger slitted his eyes.
“Now I wonder—”
The roar of the barrage struck a pitch of angry thunder and continued without remitting.
* * * *
“Plasma, this guy says,” Barkis told Stranger after a brief session with medical corpsmen. “They got plasma on the brain. I told them to save it for the guys who will really need it.”
Stranger’s saturnine features tightened.
“It might not have been a bad idea, Lieutenant. There’s shock with a wound like that. How y’feel?”
“I’m all right,” gruffly. Barkis pondered. “Burns, though. Like fire. Maybe infection. But the sulfa will take care of that. The M.O. said I’ll have to go when they take out the wounded. Right now, I’m supposed to sleep.”
He held the bandaged arm in his good hand. His eyes were red-rimmed and a flush suffused the stubbled flesh of his cheeks.
The wounded arm burned, and he couldn’t sleep. He stumbled out of his quarters in mid-afternoon and went to the dog compound. The guns still rumbled among the hills of Watinau. Trucks grumbled in a ceaseless line from the front, bringing in wounded, returning with ammunition for the hungry, tireless guns.
The dogs sounded an uproar as he approached. He frowned. The chorus of yelps and howls was distinctly contrary to their training. Handlers scurried. Barkis sought out Sergeant Stranger. The sergeant was consulting with Hanocek about the care of a wounded dog.
“I can’t figure what’s got into the dogs,” Stranger told Barkis. “They’ve been skittish and uneasy all day. Now this.” He waved his hand.
Barkis frowned toward the dog hut.
“Maybe I’d better look in—”
Stranger’s hand on his good arm restrained him.
“No, sir. Don’t do that!” The sergeant’s tone was imperative. A curious commingling of expression struggled across his lean features. “The boys will square ’em away. The lieutenant better go back and rest that arm some more.”
Barkis looked down at the bandage. A little red had seeped through, staining the white gauze. The wound burned with an excruciating fire that swirled the length of his arm, ignited his brain, made him faint and dizzy.
“Maybe I better. But don’t hesitate to call on me if I’m needed.”
He lurched in the direction of his quarters. The yelping and howling of the dogs subsided, whimpered into silence.
Barkis halted outside the blanket-hung doorway of his hut. Corporeal fear shook his body as with an ague. He sweated. The very hut was a hulk of leering menace, and he was afraid to enter.
He struggled with the unknown sensation, reflecting feverishly on the curious reaction of sulfa drugs. Only the drug could have hurled him to this nadir of terror. It was like a claustrophobia, forcing him to stay in the open. He resolved he would not be bested by the physical reaction of the drug, pushed reluctant limbs forward, into the hut.
A man sat in Barkis’ folding chair at the crude desk. His dungarees were torn and muddy. He had laid aside his steel helmet, and his sparse, blond hair stood up atop a narrow, ascetically moulded skull.
“Father Murphy!” The name caught like a dried crust in Barkis’ throat.
The chaplain smiled tiredly.
“Hello, Barkis. I just got back this morning from the front. Your sergeant told me you had been hurt. Is there anything I can do?”
Barkis found it impossible to control his impulses. The hot throbbing in his arm sent waves of delectable giddiness dashing over his brain. He was angry, resentful, and afraid.
“There’s nothing you can do for me. I’m not dead yet.”
The older man did not alter his serene expression.
“That wasn’t quite what I meant, lad. You will be leaving Watinau as soon as a ship comes to evacuate the wounded. I might—”
Barkis cut him oft bitterly. “There is something you can do. You can get out of here and let me sleep.”
Father Murphy’s eyelids drooped. Stern pity possessed his gaunt, gentle features. He got up, fingering his helmet, and moved toward the door.
Barkis did not realize that he was glaring. He backed across the room, avoiding physical contact with the chaplain. After the man had gone, Barkis stared morosely at the curtained doorway, fighting an inward battle of revulsion and shame.
* * * *
The guns still thundered on the following day, and a trickle of wounded came down from the hills of Watinau.
“Like blasting rattlesnakes out of their dens,” Stranger remarked to Barkis. “It takes time and energy.”
He stared bleakly into the officer’s swollen, feverish face.
Barkis croaked, “How are the dogs standing up?”
“Lost two more last night,” Stranger said laconically. His glance sharpened with a predatory lock. “The big…dog got ’em. Got a man too. At least tha
t’s what I heard.”
Barkis wrenched his head around. His brain felt puffed within his skull. The sergeant’s saturnine features were void of expression. His eyes looked like peeled onions.
“A man?” Barkis parroted.
“We had a good moon last night,” Stranger went on flatly. “I saw the beast, sneaking along the edge of the dog compound. It was after I found my two murdered dogs. The animals were kicking up a fuss, y’see. The thing looked more like a timber wolf than a dog. It was monstrous, had heavy, black fur.”
Barkis could not look at him. “Are you sure? This isn’t the place for wolves.”
“You can never be sure of what you see by moonlight,” Stranger told him. “I just had a glimpse. He skulked off into the shadows.”
Barkis’ breath seemed on the verge of exploding in his lungs.
“Black, you say? Maybe twice the size of—of Grim?”
“Or bigger,” the sergeant agreed without emphasis. “Only—I’m not sure. I think I saw him after that. I looked around, y’see.”
Barkis’ eyes swiveled toward the sergeant, slipped restlessly aside.
“Not again?”
“I said I just think I saw him. Or maybe it was a different one. I’ve seen wolves in my time, and I can recognize the breed. This one was smaller, lighter colored—sort of gray—and he limped.”
“I think I’d better lie down,” Barkis faltered. “My arm’s giving me the devil.”
“He limped,” Stranger persisted, “and I’m sure he was lighter colored. I saw him plain in the moonlight, maybe for five or ten seconds. He wasn’t so wary as the other one.” The sergeant’s eyes were chips of bright steel. “The second one sniffed around where the other had been. Then he took off, like he was following tracks, nose to the ground.”
He went away then, and Barkis cowered in his blankets, sweating with the fever in his blood.
* * * *
Sergeant Stranger had a long talk with Father Murphy. The chaplain looked worried and puzzled. Stranger’s thin jaws worked. The tone of his voice, husky, whispered, carried urgency and conviction.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 10
