Night of the Wendigo

by William Meikle

  The hunt was on.

  CHAPTER 6

  From an amateur radio broadcast, 11:30 p.m., Central Park, Manhattan.

  I feel like a character in an H P Lovecraft short story; sitting in my high garret, writing one last letter before the nameless dread reaches for me from beyond the stars.

  Nameless dread and stars. I have plenty of both tonight. At least we have the sky for it this evening. We have never had such wonderful conditions for star-gazing.

  Yet it is to the ground that I look tonight.

  It is just as well I’m high up.

  Those poor bastards down in the park never stood a chance. At first I thought it was a pack of dogs. Indeed, at first, I think that’s all they were. But the coming of the white thing we all saw on Brooklyn Bridge has changed all of that.

  I watched what happened with my binoculars. Although there are no lights showing from anywhere around the park, that awful, wrong, gibbous moon hangs over everything, grinning like a rabid animal.

  They were only children. Five teenagers, hooded and wrapped against the cold, trekking through deep snow. They were probably only looking for what we all need this night; warmth, and some shelter from the deep, biting, cold. They didn’t stand a chance. The wolf-pack…huge grey timber wolves like Tolkien’s wargs, encircled them, rounded them up, and pounced, all done with clockwork precision. Afterwards, all that was left was blood on the snow and a few tattered remnants of clothing.

  Have you ever heard a wolf-pack howl under a full moon? I always wished I could hear that sound. Well now I have, and I pray that I never have to endure it again…for the next time I might be the prey.

  But another sound now reaches me; drums. War drums, beating from somewhere out over the park. Maybe the cold is finally getting to me, but the last time I looked through the binoculars my sight seemed to waver. There, instead of the winter skeletons of the trees, were beech-bark wigwams, a whole city of buildings and campfires; there for an instant, then gone again. But the drums remain. Beating, always beating. I think they are getting louder.

  From CNN News

  A nation is in shock tonight after the latest assault on our great city. The President has put our forces on DEFCON3, but so far no one has claimed responsibility for which is now thought to be a terrorist attack. It is known there is weather manipulation involved; a new weapon our top scientists are currently seeking to nullify with the HAARP array in Alaska, but this is a technology never before used for this purpose, and success is by no means inevitable.

  The scenes broadcast tonight of our citizens waging war with each other within the storm have rocked America to its core. The search is on for the biological agent that has been used to accomplish such violent changes, but once again, we are unable to bring you any hope of a speedy resolution.

  This crisis is not over.

  * * *

  Mina tried to keep Cole Barter behind her as she backtracked towards the door that led out of the delivery bay and back into the forensic labs.

  By now the metal door out to the courtyard was forced completely open. The interior bay was filled with the shambling frozen.

  The temperature suddenly dropped; an icy blast that made Mina’s lungs ache as she breathed. But it gave her an idea.

  Barter seemed fixed to the spot. Mina almost fell over him as she backed away farther.

  “The lighter. Where is it?” she shouted at him.

  He stared blankly out at the shuffling crowd in the loading bay. If he’d heard her, he paid her no notice.

  She clubbed him on the side of the head with the gun butt. Not too lightly, but none too gentle either.

  Finally, agonizingly slowly, he turned towards her.

  “The lighter! Set off the sprinklers,” she just had time to say before she had to fire.

  She blew the knee out of the closest zombie. It fell, almost at her feet, impeding the rest. But only slightly.

  “It’s cold. Set off the sprinklers!” she shouted.

  To his credit, Barter got the message quickly. He stood on tiptoe and flicked the lighter under the sprinkler head.

  It took two seconds, during which Mina had to drop another zombie; a scantily clad, once-black male who reached for her with black, cracked fingernails.

  Suddenly a klaxon sounded.

  Mina grabbed Barter and dragged him into the corridor behind them, slamming the safety door shut just as the sprinklers kicked in.

  Mina made sure the heavy manual lock was engaged on her side of the door.

  She turned and watched through the thick shatterproof glass as the water from the sprinkler heads sprayed around the room. It hit walls, floor…and the frozen bodies.

  Every where it touched, it froze. Like quicksilver a thick layer of ice formed.

  Her view out into the loading bay dimmed as more ice formed on the outside of the glass, but Mina turned away with a smile on her face.

  They were safe, at least for now. The frozen creatures had been thwarted by the very thing that made them. They stood, immobile, encased in an ever thickening layer as the sprinklers kept pumping water into the room.

  “How long will it go on?” Barter asked.

  “It’s on a manual switch,” Mina replied, leading him away from the door. “It’ll keep going until we switch it off, or the fire services turn up.”

  * * *

  “Did Mike make it free?” Jon asked. “I saw him get as far as the road, just before the door came down.”

  Jackie closed down the window showing the view out front.

  The wolves had moved on out of sight, but she couldn’t tell Jon about them. She wasn’t even sure she would tell Mina. Nothing would be served by worrying her now. Mike would either come back, or he wouldn’t. Trouble was, Jackie didn’t think she could lie with a straight face. She answered Jon by nodding.

  “Thank God for that,” the technician said. “I’ve never been so scared. I thought I would wet myself.”

  Jackie was surprised to find she could still manage a smile.

  “I think I already did,” she said solemnly.

  The lab technician shuffled from foot to foot, staring at a point over Jackie’s shoulder. She realized he struggled to find something to say, some way to start a conversation.

  “How’s the war wound?” he finally said.

  There was only a dull pain from her leg, but she wasn’t stupid; she’d seen the amount of painkillers that Mina had fed her. Mina hadn’t spared the graphic detail either. There may be a nice bandage there, but in her mind’s eye Jackie was more than capable of imagining the damage.

  “I’ll probably live,” Jackie said. “For the next few hours at least.”

  “At the moment, that’s all any of us can hope for,” Mina said, arriving in the room with Cole Barter in tow.

  Jackie wouldn’t want to meet Mina in a dark alleyway; her face was blackened by grime and smoke, white teeth showing where they gripped an unlit cheroot. Her sealskin jacket was hanging open, revealing the Metallica T-shirt beneath. In her left hand she carried a shotgun; still smoking. She saw Jackie looking and struck a pose, gun held diagonally across her chest.

  “Join the National Rifle Association. You know it makes sense,” she said, in a remarkable impersonation of Charlton Heston.

  Mina put the gun down on her desk and sighed loudly. Suddenly she didn’t look so tough.

  “The Moose? Did he make it?”

  “Clear and gone,” Jackie said.

  Mina nodded and lit up the cheroot.

  “Then all we have to do is sit tight.”

  “Sit tight?” Cole Barter said, his voice high, almost shouting. “Those things are in the building forfuckssake.”

  “Calm down,” Mina replied through a mouth of smoke. “You saw as well as I did. They’re frozen in ice.”

  “Well, duh,” Cole said in an exaggerated voice and slapping his forehead. “I don’t think that’ll stop them for long. What do you think they’re made of?”

  He left the
lab, muttering to himself.

  Mina filled the other two in on the situation in the delivery bay.

  “Maybe he’s right,” Jackie said. “Maybe they will get out. We should prepare for the eventuality at least.”

  “Oh, I’m prepared, honey,” Mina said, putting her hand on the shotgun. “But Mike will be back with the cavalry before anything gets out of the bay.”

  “And what if he doesn’t make it?”

  Mina jerked as if she’d been slapped. She chewed and puffed on the cheroot at the same time.

  “Oh, he’ll make it. He’s a stubborn SOB. Like me.”

  She chewed on the cheroot a bit longer.

  “But you’re right. We need to be ready. If the generator gives out before the Moose gets back we’ll be in serious trouble. We can barricade ourselves in. But we need more firepower.”

  “This is a laboratory isn’t it?” Jackie said. “I always wanted a big chemistry set.”

  * * *

  Mike stopped at the first junction he reached, looking both ways down the road. He ran on trust; trust that Mina was okay, trust that the maintenance depot was where he remembered it to be, trust that there would be a vehicle there he could use.

  But most of all, trust that he could find his way in this landscape that had changed so far from his memory of it.

  He looked both ways down the junction again. Nothing moved.

  Then he heard it. At first he thought it was his own heartbeat, amplified in his ears inside the hood.

  If my heart is beating like that then I’m in serious trouble.

  It was the far off beat of drums.

  As if in answer, a solitary wolf howled, distant, like a violin soloist on a mountain. It too, was answered; closer this time, much closer.

  Mike’s heart and breathing rate suddenly went up. He had to fight for control.

  The sound was like nothing he’d heard before; an unearthly wail that rose in intensity, and rose again. When Mike was very young, Grandpa Kaminski used to play tunes on an old saw, while his collie, Jack, sang along. The wolf’s howl held some of the same quality; but hearing it standing in a desolate, empty city was a bit different from being in Grandma’s front parlor.

  Mike hadn’t believed it could get much colder, but even inside the survival suit he shivered.

  Best get moving, Mikey.

  He had one last look down the arms of the junction. Moonlight glistened off the frosted top layers of snow. About a hundred yards away, two dim, yellow lights showed where a car had been. Mike considered checking it out, but the idea of a snowplough was just too big in his mind; if they were to have any chance of surviving this night they had to be able to move fast.

  He turned away from the junction, and headed for the depot.

  He was close, but the hairs at the nape of his neck rose. His spider-sense woke up at the sound of the wolves. It was now working overtime. He tightened his grip on the shotgun.

  The snow was thicker here. He worked up a sweat pushing his way through it. He could see the depot ahead of him now. He started to congratulate himself.

  Too soon.

  The wolf came out of nowhere and hit him on the left shoulder, knocking him tumbling in a flurry of teeth and snarling jaws.

  He rolled over twice, fighting to keep teeth from his throat.

  The creature’s jaws came down on the barrel of the shotgun and the wolf snapped its head to one side, tugging the weapon out of Mike’s hand.

  He didn’t have time to think as the beast lunged forward. He rolled away just in time, hearing cold teeth clack together on air just in front of his face. He managed to push up onto his feet. He risked a quick look around. Apart from the wolf that had attacked him, two others flanked him, standing alert in the snow less than five yards on either side.

  “I don’t suppose ‘Nice doggie’ is going to cut any ice?” he said.

  The first wolf stepped forward towards him as Mike scrambled inside his suit for a weapon.

  * * *

  Jackie noticed there was a Molotov cocktail sitting on one of the workbenches.

  “These worked before,” she said. “We can make more.”

  “No,” Jon said. “The only fuel we’ve got is in the generator already; I checked just before you all got here.”

  “But as I said before; this is a lab? And you’ve got a morgue. I’m guessing you’ve got a supply of formaldehyde?”

  Jon’s face lit up in a grin.

  “I should have thought of that. We’ve got gallons of it. And plenty of bottles and vials. They’re all down in the storeroom.”

  “Well, let’s have at it,” Jackie said. She stood, put her weight on her leg. She had to grit her teeth against the pain.

  “More drugs?” Mina asked.

  “Yes, please,” Jackie replied, managing a tight grin before waving Mina away. “No. I’ll be fine for a bit longer. Can I borrow Jon as a helper?”

  The technician looked to Mina. Mina nodded

  “Just don’t eat him all at once,” she said.

  Mina hefted the shotgun into the crook of her arm.

  “I’ll round up Barter and meet you in the morgue,” she said. “We shouldn’t split up after this.”

  She gave Jackie a mock salute and left, trailing a small cloud of smoke from the cheroot.

  “Lead me to it,” Jackie said to the lab technician.

  The first step was agony; a lancing pain ran the length of her body and forced her to lock the leg at the knee to save herself from falling to the floor.

  The young lab technician looked like he might burst into tears.

  “I can fetch the jars,” he said. “You should rest.”

  Jackie shook her head.

  “That would take too long. Lend me your shoulder for a second.”

  She leaned on the youth and they shuffled out of the lab like a pair of geriatrics in a three-legged-race.

  At one point Jackie stumbled, almost fell, but Jon caught her. She was swung round by the momentum. She turned till she faced him face-to-face, his right arm round her waist.

  “Do you come here often?” she asked.

  The youth blushed as Jackie turned back to lean on his shoulder.

  “How far is it?” she asked as they entered a long corridor with rows of doors down both sides.

  “Down the far end I’m afraid,” Jon said. “Past the morgue.”

  Jackie gritted her teeth again.

  “The next time you offer to go and fetch something, remind me to say ‘Yes’,” she said.

  “We could turn back?”

  “No. This is important. We’ll keep moving. And if I wake up to find you loosening my clothes I’ll assume I passed out again.”

  Jon blushed, all the way from forehead to neck. Despite the pain from her leg, Jackie managed to laugh.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning against the youth. “I could get used to this. How much do you charge an hour?”

  This time she got a laugh in return.

  “I can see why you and Mina get on so well,” he said.

  “Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you the story.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “I think you’re holding me quite enough already.”

  The light flirting had served its purpose. The technician brought them both to a halt outside the last door in the corridor.

  “If this is the morgue, just drop me off here,” Jackie said. “I feel ready for it.”

  “You’ve cheated the Reaper then,” Jon said. “We just walked past it. This is the storeroom.”

  Jackie almost fell into the room, collapsing into a small plastic chair, its legs squealing on the floor under her weight.

  “We need to make a homemade bomb?” Jon said.

  “Oh yes. And we need plenty of bang for our buck.”

  She showed Jon what would be needed. Just doing that tired her out.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If you’re happy, I’ll leave you to get on with it for a while.”


  She closed her eyes while Jon worked. She could hear the clunk of glass against glass, the gurgle of liquids, but was unable to pay attention. Pain had caught her in its grip; a throbbing hurt like a knife being thrust into her calf in time with her heartbeat.

  “More drugs please, vicar,” she murmured.

  Behind her eyelids the red haze eased to black. The drumbeat of pain lessened a notch now that the weight was off the leg.

  I might just live…for a bit longer at least.

  The heat the pain had brought dissipated. She realized she felt cold. She pulled the sealskin suit around her until it was snug.

  Finally she could open her eyes.

  She looked up into the corner of the room. Fine tendrils of frost crept, from the corner, across the ceiling. The last time she’d seen anything like it had been when she turned on the washers on the car after a cold dry night—the ice forming a lacy sheet faster than you could blink.

  “How are we doing Jon?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

  The technician already had a small trolley filled with makeshift formaldehyde bombs.

  “Nearly there,” he said. “I wasn’t too sure of the quantities to mix though. I may have used too much soap. We’re either going to kill them, or give them a good wash.”

  “It’ll have to do,” Jackie replied, motioning with her head towards the corner of the room. “I think it’s time we were leaving.”

  Jon followed her gaze, and nodded grimly.

  “This is an exterior wall. Best if we get back to the centre of the building. Are you okay to walk?”

  Jackie sighed.

  “A woman’s work is never done.”

  She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on Jon as the beat of pain started back up.

  “Lean on the trolley,” he said. “It’ll take your weight.”

  “When I woke up this morning I didn’t anticipate spending the night pushing a load of bombs through a morgue.”