The Wild

by Whitley Strieber

  "Bob? Is that the wolf's name, ma'am?"

  "Yes, of course it's his name. Bob Duke."

  "He responds to the name Bob Duke?" The vet's face was now impassive, very carefully so. He definitely scented craziness, perhaps even amusing craziness, but this lady was so mad he couldn't risk the smallest sign of mirth. She was going to be complaining loud and clear, and the voodoo ritual was going to be very difficult to explain to the board of directors.

  For the first time Cindy saw the reporters, who had flowed out into the courtyard and were now trying to scale the wall. Realizing it was hopeless, one astute camera team came thundering back through the pound itself, camcorders swinging. "Fan out," shrieked a tiny man in a Hawaiian shirt, his face purple, the veins in his temples pulsing like fire hoses.

  "Who are these people?" Cindy asked.

  The vet brightened. He was looking forward to being on TV. WCBS and Channel 5 had already interviewed him. "The media—"

  "You're kidding!"

  "No, this is big news. I'm sure I can get them interested in talking to you, too. They don't just want expert opinion. Human interest has a place, too."

  Monica grabbed Cindy's arm. "Let's get out."

  As they left the building police cars started roaring up, their sirens wailing, their lights jumping red against the dun girders supporting the elevated part of FDR Drive. Radios spattered codes, uniformed men jumped from the cars and sprinted off down the street. A van disgorged a SWAT team decked in full body armor and carrying 12-gauge riot guns. "They'll kill him," Cindy moaned.

  "Come on, Cyn, let's find a cab. We've got to get out of here. We need the media like a hole in the head."

  Outside of the vicinity of the pound, the streets were gray and lonely. "What will he eat?"

  "He'll find what he can. Bob's a resourceful man."

  "Oh, he is not! He's about as resourceful as— as—" She stopped, considered. "A three-year-old would be more resourceful!" Her poor husband, he couldn't camp out, couldn't even hike without getting hopelessly lost. Even around the house he was a disaster. "Last week he glued himself to the dishwasher with Krazy Glue trying to fix a knob. When I found him, he'd been there for two hours. The phone was within easy reach the whole time. He knew where I was, but it never occurred to him to call me. Do you think the man who did that can survive alone on the streets with no money, with no clothes, with no hands, with no way even to talk to people?"

  "He'll hunt, he has the capacities of a wolf."

  "Bob Duke will hunt. I've been hunting with him, so have you. He'll starve and he'll get wet and cold and confused and make mistakes. Meanwhile every man, woman, and child with so much as an air rifle is going to be hunting him!" She stared up and down the street. "Bob," she called, "Bob!" A camera crew began running toward them.

  "Uh-oh, we're recognized," Monica said. "Let's get a move on."

  Just then the vet burst out of the pound, his white coat flying. "Live at Five, Live at Five, they want us all on Live at Five!"

  A cab rolled around the corner. Monica waved at it even though it was occupied. "I am doctor," she hollered, "matter of life or death." The driver gunned the motor, a New Yorker's seasoned instinct to get away, but he lost the light and a line of cars coming off the FDR Drive prevented him from running it. As Monica and Cindy crowded in with the surprised passenger the driver hit his steering wheel with the heel of his hand.

  "Sorry," Monica said to the passenger, "gotta take a little detour. This woman is having a heart attack." The driver turned around. "Listen, bitch, I gotta fare."

  "This woman is dying. Now step on it."

  "I don't give a damn who's dying." He produced a baseball bat. "You get out of here."

  "The hell we will. You don't do exactly as I say, I'll haul you up on charges."

  "Taxi commission, taxi commission, I've heard that shit a thousand times. Lady, you get out of this cab or I'll beat your goddamn brains from here to Scarsdale, now move!"

  It was obvious to Cindy that Monica couldn't handle this. She took over. "We're not talking commission, gorp-face, we're talking five years in jail for uncooperative manslaughter. Five years, and you will serve that time! We will not stop, Mr. Czlywczi, until you are in jail and the key is thrown the hell away. You see those cops over there? If you don't help us, I am going to scream, and when I scream, those cops are coming over here, and they will see your baseball bat—"

  He threw it out the window. It clanged on the street and rolled into the gutter. "Step on it," Cindy said.

  "I get out," blurted the passenger, a stunned Japanese businessman. He leaped from the cab just as the light changed.

  "Kill the meter," Cindy commanded. "We'll make it worth your while. Monica, give the man ten bucks. Take us to Mercer and West Fourth."

  The driver became happy now that he had the ten. "God knows what'll happen to that Jap." He laughed. "From here he'll have to swim down to the UN Plaza if he doesn't want to walk."

  For a time they rode in silence. The driver was studying Cindy through the rearview mirror, his eyes twinkling. "Look, no offense, but I want to know something. Do you ladies always pull this routine? I mean, every time you want a cab? Or what?"

  "Every time we want a cab," Cindy growled.

  "Jesus, I been hackin' twenty years and I never seen shit like that. I mean, you gotta admire shit like that!"

  "Step on it."

  As the cab pulled up to her building Cindy saw a crowd lurking around the entrance, their silhouettes dark against the glow from within.

  As they exited the cab a klieg burst on, and Cindy found herself confronting a bright impenetrable wall. A familiar TV face came into view. A microphone was thrust at her. "Dr. Wilcox at the ASPCA says Bob is one of the largest wolves on record, and the largest ever held in captivity. Can you tell us where you got this wolf?"

  Cindy heard him, but she was totally unprepared to answer. Her mouth was so dry it tasted like a cedar closet. She learned, in that moment, the true meaning of the term "tongue-tied." What could she say? The camera eye gleamed, moths fluttered in the hissing lights. Sweat beaded up through the reporter's makeup.

  "Cut a minute, Jake. Look, Mrs. Duke, we're going to find out one way or another. We're going to find out everything."

  "My God, help me," a male voice screamed off in the dark. Instinctively, Cindy whirled. Flashbulbs popped, somebody scuttled off.

  "Don't worry about that," the reporter said, "it's just the Post going for a reaction shot. You and Bob are their front page tomorrow."

  Cindy rocked back on her heels. Front page! All it meant to her was Bob's body, full of bullet holes, being held up by a proud SWAT team. "How long have you had the wolf?"

  "A day," she finally managed to answer. "We found him on the street. He was hungry and alone and he needed help. He's such a gentle creature—

  "You found him on the street? Where?" What had she said before? Was it Fifth Avenue? She couldn't remember. She'd be vague. "Uptown. On a comer. He's so gentle and sweet, so tame. I'm just terrified that—" Her chest ached, her throat all but closed. She looked at the camera, and for an instant she was looking into a million faces. They were not hard faces, they were faces of ordinary people, watching her blankly. Right now they were impassive, but at a word from the reporter they were all going to turn into cavemen. "Please don't hurt him. Don't hurt my Bob." She could not go on. Before that savage crowd she felt so weak, so helpless, all of her bravado collapsed and she buried her face in her hands and gave way to tears.

  "This is Cynthia Duke, ladies and gentlemen, the distraught owner of the giant savage wolf that is now roaming the streets of New York. Again, police have urged that people stay indoors, that any and all suspicious-looking stray dogs be reported at once. Remember, this animal is fast moving, intelligent, and savage. It has already seriously injured one of the Dukes' neighbors. You could be next. John Lye, Newswatch Five."

  Monica dragged Cindy through the hectoring crowd. Cameras were flashing, micropho
nes were being jammed into their faces, questions were being shouted. The sheer energy of it all dulled Cindy, so when Lupe silently handed her an envelope in the elevator, she took it without even much curiosity.

  She was still holding it when she put her key in the front door. No sooner had she done that than the door flew open and Kevin leaped into her arms. "It was on the newsbreak, Mama. They're saying we had a dangerous wolf and it's on the loose."

  She groaned, hugging him to her. There might have been things she could say to her son that would comfort him, but she could not think of them. It helped her to hold him, and she trusted that it helped him to be held.

  They went arm in arm into the living room, Monica following behind. The television glared at Cindy, a sheer gray eye. "Turn it on," she said.

  "Don't you think perhaps you'd better not?"

  "Turn it on, Monica, it's nearly eleven. We don't want to miss the news."

  "Cyn, I'll tape it and you can look at it in the morning."

  Cindy went over and turned it on. She sat down and crossed her legs, staring blindly at the last few minutes of Thirtysomething. The envelope lay on her lap. She looked down. The return address was Weisel and Dobson. The landlords. She opened it. Legal papers. She read with quickening interest. "We regret to inform you that under paragraphs 14 and 23 of your lease we are compelled to initiate summary eviction proceedings against you. We were willing to negotiate with you about the matter of nonpayment of rent, but this harboring of a dangerous animal in total disregard of the safety of your neighbors has led us to respond to the dozens of complaints we have received, and ask you to leave."

  "God, they're prompt. Monica, I'm being thrown out."

  "Give me that." She snatched it away from Kevin, who had grabbed it from his mother. He was white, his eyes following the paper as if it was a cobra ready to spit. Kevin had never known a home other than this. The room where he had grown up was filled with his things, his books, his art, his stamp collection, his coin collection, his computer, his very secret collection of girlie magazines. "I wish Dad would come home."

  "This is outrageous. They can't do this. Why haven't you paid your rent?"

  "We're dead broke, Monica."

  "You're kidding. I thought Bob was doing so well."

  "He hasn't made a dime in months. I thought you knew that. I assumed you did."

  "He never mentioned financial problems."

  "Well, he sure as hell had them."

  Monica regarded Cindy and Kevin with tenderness. "I don't have any big answers, Cyn, but at least I can help you with money."

  "I don't like to ask."

  "No, that isn't your way. Bob married you because he was attracted to your strength."

  "I'm too damn strong! I drive people away. I scare men to death." She did not add what she thought, that she only scared the strong ones. The weak came to stay.

  "Don't worry about that now. I'm going to write you a check, Cindy. How much money do you actually have?"

  "What's in my wallet. Eight dollars, plus three Bob gave me yesterday. That's somewhere in the bedroom."

  "I have twelve dollars in my box," Kevin said.

  "But what assets? What can you draw on?"

  "Nothing, unless you consider the furniture."

  "You're kidding."

  Don't get defensive, Cindy cautioned herself. She's your good friend. "We don't have a thing."

  "I can lend you five thousand dollars, Cyn. I wish it could be more."

  "I haven't seen that much money in months." Just then the news started. Cindy turned up the sound, and they all watched the story of the wolf unfold. It was the lead item, preceding the president's operation and the crash of a commuter plane on Long Island. There were terrible, lurid pictures of Bob glaring into the camera, his face lighted to look menacing. To see him made Cindy groan aloud. What was it like to be that? What was the poor man thinking, what hell was he going through?

  They talked about the "enormous, very dangerous animal." An "expert" named Dr. Bert Choate from the Fish and Game Commission appeared and warned the public that while wolves were normally not particularly dangerous to man, in an unusual situation like this, "anything can happen." He leaned into the camera. "This animal is frightened and alone. It feels cornered. The first chance it gets, it will lash out. And believe me, I've seen what a wild animal can do. Its teeth are a razor-sharp weapon. And it's so skilled at using them, it can catch a floating hair out of the air and split it."

  Then came Cindy. The camera made her coarse and heavy of face, her skin glue white, her eyes dark, sunken holes. She looked like an inmate in a fluorescent nightmare. "How did they do that? John Lye looks great."

  "It's the lighting. They're trying to portray you as evil and callous."

  She was seen in her initial anger. When she said Bob was gentle, Lye smiled ironically. Rather than show her weeping, they cut to a shot of Bob standing on the examining table, glaring at the camera with what Cindy knew was almost total confusion.

  "The wolf lady says she found the animal on a street comer right here in Manhattan. Who knows where she actually got it? Given its tremendous size, experts at the Zoological Society theorize that it may be a wild wolf from the Soviet Union."

  Then they went on to other stories. Cindy was amazed. She had come across looking like an ogre, vicious, hateful, uncaring. She wanted to throw something through the TV. If she'd been able to get her hands on Rivera, she would have turned him inside out.

  Monica handed her the check. "Thanks," she said. She knew it would be gone tomorrow noon. Four thousand rent, five hundred to her loudest creditors, five hundred for food to keep her and Kevin for the next few weeks. Rent or no rent, she'd probably get evicted anyway.

  After the news Monica went home, pleading exhaustion. Soon Kevin nodded off on the couch. She tried to smooth his fists, to somehow make the terror leave his exhausted body. She kissed him. Now came the time she had really been dreading. The apartment was empty and there was no one to help her.

  Her mind went to thoughts of Bob, out there alone, disfigured, confused, chased. "God make him come home." Her voice filled the room with brief, helpless sound. Seeing herself in the mirror, a slumped shadow, she felt very small. She had been yelling at people, making demands, cursing, for hours and hours—in fact, ever since Bob had his problem. What good had it done?

  She went into her bedroom and threw herself down on their bed. Her mind kept running images of him hurrying along streets, him hit by a car, him shot. She saw that big, furry head, those eyes, and she thought she was going to be sick to her stomach. "Where is he? Bob, where are you!"

  She turned over on her back, stared at the ceiling. Obviously she had been too hard on him, making demands that he couldn't possibly meet. Bob was a poet. His business ability was nil; he couldn't even remember to put bus fare in his pocket when he went out. Anybody could sell him anything. When he was a broker he was always getting stuck with the customers the other brokers didn't want to bother with, the idiots, the dead-beats, the complainers. He would be ceaselessly patient with them, and was always ready to overlook their faults. Naturally he didn't make a penny brokering. But he spent anyway. Bob didn't understand the concept of credit. He looked upon loans as presents from banks grateful for his custom. Checks were simply a means to an end, usually a means to getting rid of creditors for a few more days—until the checks bounced and it was time to write new ones.

  She turned on the light. There was a copy of Travel and Leisure at her bedside, and a library book she had been enjoying enormously, Doris Grumbach's The Ladies.

  She stretched. "Oh, Bob." She did not miss him physically, although they were often intimate.

  Love was more central to their relationship than sex. She seduced Bob whenever the mood struck her. It was always easy. She wanted to do it now.

  What a good talker he was. His wit was dry, sardonic, and he had brought a wonderful deadpan humor from Texas. His lies could be completely convincing, and if you
believed them, you were in peril of the surreal. Once he had made a brilliant case for eggs separating back out of brownies if they were cooked too fast, and had gone so far as to slip an egg into a pan of brownies she was baking. She had found it, perfectly poached, in the middle of the pan and had told the story in all seriousness for years. People were polite. They generally didn't comment, thinking that she was perhaps a little odd.

  She laughed aloud, remembering how many times she'd told that story. Monica had finally stopped her and made her think. "It's scientifically impossible, Cyn. The physics just aren't there. It can't happen."

  "But it did happen. I saw the egg—oh, my God, Bob, you creep!"

  Her heart raced when she heard gentle tapping at the bedroom window. "Bob!" But no, it was not him, miraculously having climbed the six stories of sheer wall. A thin rain had started, and she watched it blowing in clouds around the streetlight. It was very late, and no cars passed. A man hurried along, the collar of his raincoat pulled up, a hat down over his eyes. The night sky glowed pink, flaring from the city lights. When she opened the window she felt a cold clamminess in the air. Autum was definitely here, with its long, gray rains.

  If he had any sense at all, he would come home.

  Suddenly she thought again of being evicted. Even if she paid, they might get her on the animal angle. Then where would Bob go? He would have no way of finding her and Kevin. They might never see each other again. "Bob," she whispered, her word making a faint haze on the window glass.

  Then she saw him. He was trotting right up the sidewalk, his tail between his legs. He stopped, stared at the building, then hurried on. The fool! Didn't he recognize the place? She threw open the window. "Bob! Bob!" There was no time to waste. With what seemed the slowness of nightmare she dragged on a pair of jeans, tore her nightshirt from her body, and pulled on a sweater. Still in her slippers, she ran across the apartment and out the door. There was no time to wait for the elevator. Lupe was off duty and she couldn't run it well. She'd spend five minutes just getting it to stop close enough to the lobby floor to enable the doors to open.