by T. M. Wright
The Changing
( Biergarten - 1 )
T. M. Wright
T. M. Wright
The Changing
Chapter One
Harry Simons called, "Okay, melon-head, come on outta there. This ain't a friggin' zoo! Some of us got work to accomplish." Harry was a large, strong man, his face shot through with the lines of age and work and living, but his voice had a small whisper of fear in it, as if his gut was telling him something that his head was denying. His head was telling him that Halloween was a long way off, but that some people would do anything for a laugh, and his gut was telling him that whoever was idiot enough to go running around dressed like that might also be idiot enough to carry the act a little further.
Harry Simons liked his job in Emulsion Coating at Kodak Park. He liked the constant, comforting hum of the big, shiny, beige-colored machines; he liked the machines themselves-they were, he'd once told his wife, "like, you know, symbols of industry," which he thought was a good and true and simple observation. And he didn't mind the hours of aloneness here-because the big beige coating machines very nearly ran themselves. It had taken a while to get used to, sure. Several years, in fact. But he had grown used to it. He'd grown to prize it. Just him-Harry Simons-and the low, constant hum of the big, beige-colored machines.
"I'm gonna call security you don't come outta there real quick, Bozo!" he shouted into the midst of the machines. He knew it was an empty threat; this was his section, and no way was he going to let those numb-heads from security down here. He'd take care of this clown himself.
"I mean it, Bozo! You don't show yourself, yer gonna get hauled outta here by yer butt!" Again he heard the whisper of fear in his voice, louder now. He supposed it was because the low, hard, growling noise this creep was making was so damned… real. "And you can cut that out, too," Harry called. "Whatta you think this is, a friggin'-" He stopped, thought that if he started repeating himself it would tell this clown he was scared… almost scared…getting scared.
Harry wished, suddenly, that the light were better. For years he'd enjoyed the dull-yellow light that the recessed lighting fixtures in the high ceilings provided; he liked the way it bounced off the rounded, polished corners of the machines, as if highlighting them, while everything else-the gray tile floor, the blue cement walls-seemed to soak it up.
"Stop that!" he shouted, because the growling noise had grown suddenly louder, harsher, closer, and Harry heard something in it that made his stomach turn over and his head spin: he heard need in it; he heard desperation in it; he heard murder in it.
So he turned; he didn't know if he was turning toward or away from the creature he'd seen only briefly, like some particle of dust darting across the surface of his eye. Too quick, he reasoned, too damned quick to really have seen what he thought he'd seen-the long, luxuriant, reddish fur, the wide black nose, the small, malicious brown eyes, the mouth that glittered with a hundred wonderfully pointed canines. Damn, it had looked so… so new, Harry thought.
He turned and started moving quickly toward his small steel desk at the south end of the huge room. He called matter-of-factly, as if deciding on the spur of the moment that this particular game had gone far enough, "Well, by Jesus, I'm gettin' my freakin' gun!" which also was a lie. He had no gun; guns were not allowed in Kodak Park without authorization. And poor Harry Simons had never been authorized.
He got halfway to his desk before much of his stomach was ripped away, and he fell in awe and pain and self-pity to the gray tile floor.
THREE DAYS LATER: APRIL 10
The chunky man with thinning black hair and tiny green eyes thought Douglas Miller was conning him, and he didn't like it. His jowls quivered in anger, his brow pulled itself into a dozen thick white folds, and his beefy hands clutched themselves hard until the knuckles were reddish-gray. Then his heart began to race, and with what looked to Doug Miller like a monumental effort, the man forced himself into a kind of stiff calm that usually scared the hell out of his other workers, though Miller had never let himself be much intimidated by it. The big man said, "Tell me that again, and remember-if I can't have you fired (and I think I can), I sure as hell can make life miserable for you."
Miller glanced quickly around the big man's office. His gaze lingered briefly on the nameplate at the front of the man's desk-"J. Youngman/Manager" -then on the backs of several small framed snapshots on the right side of the desk, then on the large square window that overlooked one of Kodak Park's many picnicking areas; several workers were there already, having an early lunch, enjoying the unexpected mid-spring warmth.
He took a breath. "Jack," he said, -there's a werewolf loose in The Park. The chances are good that it's just someone who thinks he's a werewolf, someone who likes to dress up like a werewolf, you know, someone who makes noises like a werewolf-"
Jack Youngman cut in, "You all think I'm pretty stupid, don't you? Admit it, you think I've got the brains of a doorknob."
Miller thought, No, you're smarter than a doorknob; I'll admit that! But he said, "Jack, I'm just telling you what I've seen, and what I've heard. I think precautions should be taken."
Youngman closed his eyes lightly in an effort, Miller realized, to keep himself calm. When he opened them, Miller knew that he'd at last gone too far. Youngman rose very slowly from his big green Naugahyde desk chair, came just as slowly, but with great deliberation, around the side of the desk, reached up-because Miller was nearly a foot taller than Youngman-took him by the collar, hard, stood on his tiptoes and hissed, "Get the hell out of here, dammit, and if you try to make me look like a fool again, I'll tear your throat out! I don't give a damn how big your fucking pec torals are"-Miller had been into body building for a few years and he looked awfully overdeveloped-" then I'll have you fired. And that's a promise."
Miller valued his job, his yearly bonus, his friends at the plant, the security, so he nodded once, said, "Sure, Jack. You can let me go now," which Jack did, though with a small, sharp shove for emphasis, and Miller turned at once and quickly left the office.
~* ~
"He didn't believe a word of it, Greta."
Greta Lynch, who was in her early thirties, short, brunette, her long hair done up attractively around a face that was appealing in a quiet, sensual, and therefore overwhelming way, sighed, grinned, and shrugged. "Maybe we should have said 'vampire,' Doug. Maybe he would have believed that. Vampires are easier to believe in."
Miller wasn't sure if she was kidding him. He was never sure how to react to her because she was smart, and liked a good joke, and sometimes, he thought, it seemed as if she were playing a joke on whoever was within earshot. He said, "Sure. I guess," and smiled in a flat, noncommittal way.
"I mean," she explained, "vampires are wispier, somehow." She fluttered her graceful hands in the air as if mimicking a bird. "They're more fantastic, so they're easier to be afraid of, and easier to believe in. And what's a werewolf? A werewolf's your basic supernatural grunt, he's a dogface, a slob. He's mundane, he's concrete, Doug, he's noisy and messy, and real. So naturally, if he existed, there'd be plenty of evidence. That's why I think we should have said ‘vampire.' Maybe Jack would have thought twice about whether or not there's a vampire loose in The Park."
"You think he really would have believed that a vampire got Harry Simons?"
"He believes in flying saucers, doesn't he?”
“Lots of people believe in flying saucers, Greta.”
“I don't."
"Well, I do. Kind of."
Greta smiled. Miller usually liked her smile, because he could always see more than the hint of sexuality in it; now he thought it was condescending. She said, "Which kind do you believe in, Doug, the cigar-shaped kind, or the tea cup kind-"
&nb
sp; "Give me a break, Greta."
She chuckled. "I'm only kidding." A short pause. "Harry himself thinks it was a werewolf that got him. Did you know that?"
"Greta, please-"
She held her hand up, shook her head briskly. "No, really. He says it was a werewolf. He says he heard this deep kind of growling sound down there where he works, and when he went to find out what the hell was going on-"
"Greta… "
"Don't interrupt me, Doug, I'm on a roll." She smiled again, playfully this time. "And anyway, he went to find out what the hell was going on and"-she growled suddenly, very deep in her chest, and grabbed Miller by the throat-"it got him." She let go of Miller.
"Christ, Greta!"
"Pretty good, huh?"
"You're going to scare me out of my damned shorts, Greta."
Miller thought she paused just long enough on that remark, and it pleased him. Then she said, "The part about hearing a growling noise down in Section Twelve is true, Doug." Miller realized that her tone had changed to one of deadly seriousness. "You're aware of that, aren't you?"
He nodded. "Yes. I am. But it could have been anything. It could have been one of the emulsifiers."
Greta shook her head. "No. The emulsifiers were off."
Miller shrugged. "Then it had to have been a werewolf, I guess."
"Or a were-chicken," Greta said.
"Or at the very least, a were-chihuahua," Miller said.
They both laughed at that, though not very hard or very long. And when they stopped laughing, Miller said, "Is Harry going to make it?"
Greta shook her head. "God knows, Doug."
~* ~
Kodak Park, the manufacturing arm of Eastman Kodak Company, was so large that it had its own fire department and its own police department. It also had an army of support people-cooks, sanitation workers, engineers, architects, glaziers, construction people, maintenance workers, air quality analyzers, electrical workers-who were employed so the other army, the army of people whose job was to produce the products of the Eastman Kodak company, could come and do their work. They made photographic film, primarily-print film, slide film, black-and-white film, color film, film for amateurs and film for professionals, film for doctors and dentists, nature lovers, brides and grooms, film for new parents and new grandparents, film for anyone who had pictures to take. It was likely, in fact, that one out of three people in the country had at one time or another used Kodak film.
And the ten thousand people employed at Kodak Park were fairly representative of the population mix of Rochester, New York, Kodak's home city. There were blacks and whites and Orientals, a few American Indians, some Pakistanis, some Vietnamese. There were Catholics and Protestants, Unitarians, a few Buddhists, some atheists, and a lot who never thought much about just what they were. There were fishermen and baseball players, hunters, bird-watchers and Amway representatives, musicians, writers, amateur historians, and budding young poets. And most of these people had one thing in common-the need for security, because a secure job with good pay and wonderful benefits went a long way toward insuring a secure life. Vacations, new cars, new homes, being able to indulge in the hundreds of nice little things that made life just that much sweeter, and at last a peaceful and happy retirement were what employment at Kodak had come to mean for most of its people.
Except one.
And for that one it had come to mean darkness, and agony, and a transient satisfaction in ripping away at the flesh of whoever might be close at hand.
Chapter Two
"He died, didn't he?" asked the man from Quality Control, Building Eight.
"Who?" the man from Research asked. "Who died? Harry Simons?"
The man from Quality Control nodded at the eight-by-ten-foot transparency just inside Kodak Park's Ridge Road entrance, in an archway above three green-carpeted stairs that led down to The Park's personnel offices (almost always crowded with hopeful applicants for employment). Corridors branching to the left and right at the bottom of the stairs also led into the interior of The Park, into Emulsion Coating, where Harry Simons had had such a bad time, into Research and Development, into Films Technology, into Long-Term Storage, and a host of other departments that filled a total of twelve one-acre buildings. "No," the man from Quality Control continued. "Him-the guy who took that picture."
The man from Research looked at the transparency with smiling appreciation for several seconds. Then he said, "Yeah. A couple of years ago, I guess."
"Alfred Eisenstadt, wasn't it?"
"No," answered the man from Research. "Ansel Adams."
"Oh, yeah. Ansel Adams." A short pause; then, "Great shot, isn't it?!"
"None better. I shoot in black and white quite a bit, myself. There's lots more room for creativity in black and white."
The man from Quality Control nodded sagely. "That's true. I mean, look at that, you can almost reach right out and touch it."
"Uh-huh. Though I think it's a shame that it's been so de-romanticized."
" `De-romanticized'?"
"Sure. By the astronauts."
"Oh. Yes. I see."
"I mean, it's like we've dumped on it or something."
The man from Quality Control wasn't convinced. "Maybe, maybe not. It's still got a kind of aura about it, it's still got some power."
The man from Research thought about that, then conceded, "Yes, it does. I think it's in the kind of light, I think it's in the wavelength-"
"No," the other man cut in, "I don't think it's that so much as the quality -I mean, I don't want to start sounding mystical or anything, but-"
"Oh heck, there's nothing mystical here."
"I was only going to point out what's already been proved, and that is that the quality of the light is the determining factor in the kind of influence it has."
The man from Research was up for a discussion. He nodded briskly. "Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but let me ask you this: Would that," and he pointed stiffly, "just as we see it, that, literally, have the same effect as the real thing?"
The man from Quality Control shook his head. "Not in a million years," he said. "Because it's not the real thing at all. It's chemicals and dyes and a remote light source. It's fake, it's an illusion."
The man from Research said, ending the discussion abruptly, "Sure it's fake, sure it's an illusion, but my God, it's such a true illusion," and they turned and walked out of the plant to Ridge Road, at the south side of The Park, and then to Jack Ryan's Grill nearby.
~* ~
Young, slim, vivacious Tammy Levine was on her way to see Smokey and the Bandit, Part Two. She'd seen it twice, but she'd decided that she could never tire of seeing it, because she could never tire of seeing Burt Reynolds. She'd seen Smokey and the Bandit (part one) twelve times, The Longest Yard ten times, and Smokey and the Bandit, Part Three four times. She kept such good track of the number of times she'd seen each movie because keeping track of things was her job, and she liked it. For the past five years she'd been keeping track of film in cold storage. She knew, at any given moment, just how much film-and its type (ASA, number of exposures, print or slide, black-and-white or color)-there was in each of the five cold-storage rooms in Building Nine. It was a job that, in most of the other buildings, took several people to do, but Tammy had always had an uncanny facility with numbers, facts, and lists. She considered it a kind of wild talent, and the Personnel Department considered her worth her weight in gold. Without her, two or three people would have to be hired (at a total of over $100,000 a year in wages and benefits) just to do her job.
The movie that Tammy Levine was going to see was being shown at one of The Park's five theaters. Getting to it from the building where she worked required a long and dreary walk through Building Nine's subbasement corridors. It was, Tammy had once told a friend, like walking through the inside of a weird kind of cereal box. The walls were close enough to touch with both hands at once, the ceiling so low that it sparked claustrophobia, and the lighting disma
l at best. She'd made the walk at least a hundred times since coming to Kodak Park, and each time she'd told herself that yes, at last she was getting used to it. And each time she knew it was a lie. That she'd never get used to it.
Which, thanks to the thing walking the corridor with her that afternoon, was tragically correct.
~* ~
She had long ago begun talking to herself on her walks through Building Nine's subbasement corridors. She had a high-pitched but pleasant voice, and today, with thoughts of Burt Reynolds in her head, she said to herself, "Burt, baby, what I wouldn't do to you if I got you alone." She was going to say more, because she usually did-she usually lost herself in a string of amazing sexual daydreams-but the thing that was walking the corridor with her, several yards behind, let forth with a small half growl, half grunt that echoed loudly on the smooth walls. Tammy Levine stopped walking. She said, at a whisper, "Get away from me, okay?!" She had no idea what she was talking to, or even if it understood what she was saying; she had a vague idea that one of The Park's nighttime patrol dogs had gotten loose, although that was unlikely. The dogs were used only in Building Twelve, a high-security area, and were allowed out only for emergency trips to a veterinarian, or when Death paid them a visit.
Death was paying Tammy Levine a visit that afternoon. She had a vague idea that it was true; something in the half grunt-half growl, something desperate and unreasoning, had told her it was true.
"Get away from me," she said again, "and I mean it!" She thought she sounded pretty pathetic. She didn't want to sound pathetic, she wanted to sound like she was in control, even in charge. But the thing behind her in the cereal-box corridor let go with another half growl and grunt, but louder, and longer. And Tammy ran.
She got ten feet before the thing caught up with her and tore most of her throat away. The last image that flashed across her consciousness was Burt Reynolds's face, which made her smile a little. She would keep that image forever.