The Monster Novels: Stinger, the Wolf's Hour, and Mine

by Robert R. McCammon

  He strode toward Didi, the speaker dangling from its plug in his throat, and he reached out for her.

  He grabbed a handful of her hair. She said, “Wha—” and then he was twining his other arm around her throat from behind. Instantly, Didi started fighting to get away, her head thrashing before he could tighten his arm.

  Mary Terror stepped out from the opposite end of the building with Drummer’s bassinet held by one arm. She fired twice, a bullet for each of them.

  The first shot shattered Earl Van Diver’s right shoulder in a burst of flesh, bone, and blood. The twisting of Didi’s head saved her from having her brains blown out. She was aware of a zip and a wasp’s sting, but did not yet know that a chunk of her right ear was gone. Didi screamed, Van Diver fell to his knees, and Laura heard the shots and the scream and raced back between the lumber stacks the way she’d come.

  Didi ran for cover. Mary shouted, “TRAITOR!” as she fired a third time. The bullet thunked into a pile of lumber and sent jagged splinters flying, but then Didi flung herself to the ground and scrambled into the maze of corridors between the lumber stacks.

  Mary aimed her gun at the man on his knees. He was clutching his ruined shoulder, his face glistening with pain sweat. His speaker had been pulled out of his throat and lay beside him. He was grinning at Mary, an unearthly grin. She walked toward him, and saw steam rising from the man’s face and bald scalp in the frigid air. Mary stopped. Suffer, she thought. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I remember.” She pulled the hammer back, to blow his grin to pieces.

  “Don’t do it!” Laura said. She stood in the shelter of Mary’s van, her gun trained on the big woman. “Put it down!”

  Mary smiled, her eyes dark with hatred. She turned the Colt’s barrel on the baby’s head. “You put it down,” she said. “At your feet. Right now.”

  And behind the building, the Wentzel brother who’d been shot in the chest was sitting up, his mouth gasping. The pit bulls were going crazy, smelling carnage. He held something in a bloody hand. It was a key ring he’d taken from his pocket, and a small key was ready to be used. “Good boys,” he managed to say. “Somebody did your daddy real good.” He pushed the key into the dogpen’s lock. “Gonna chew up their asses, ain’t you, boys?” The lock clicked open. He pulled against the dogpen’s door. It swung open. “CHEW ’EM UP!” he commanded, and the pit bulls snarled and shivered with excitement as they boiled out of the cage. The brown one raced on, but the mottled dog paused to lick his master’s chest for a few seconds before he, too, went hunting for meat.

  “Down,” Mary repeated. “Do it.”

  Laura didn’t. “You won’t hurt him. What would Jack say?”

  “You won’t shoot me. You might hit the baby.” In five seconds, Mary decided, she would lunge to her knees—a movement that would take Laura by surprise—and fire the remaining bullets. She counted: one…two…three…

  She heard a savage snarling, and she saw Laura’s face contort with horror.

  Something hit Mary’s right side like a miniature freight train, its power knocking Drummer loose from her grip. As Mary fell, so did the baby’s bassinet. It hit the ground alongside her and Drummer spilled out, his face red and his mouth open in a silent, indignant yell.

  Something took hold of Mary’s right forearm. It tightened like an iron vise, and Mary screamed with pain as her fingers spasmed open and the Colt dropped. Then she saw the brown pit bull’s jaws clenched to her arm, its eyes staring into hers with murderous intent, and the beast suddenly shook its head back and forth with a violence that almost snapped her arm at the elbow. Mary clawed at the dog’s eyes, its teeth ripping down through her brown sweater into the flesh and pain streaking up her shoulder.

  Laura got her legs thawed and ran for her baby. Mary screamed in agony as the dog tore at her arm, her other hand trying to reach the Colt. And then Laura saw the gray and white pit bull race out from beside the building. It made a course change that froze Laura’s heart.

  It was going after David.

  She dared not shoot, terrified of hitting the child. The pit bull was almost upon him, its jaws opening to ravage the precious flesh, and Laura heard herself shout “NO!” in a voice so powerful it made the animal’s head tick toward her, its eyes aflame with bloodfever.

  She took two more running strides and kicked the dog in the ribs as hard as she could, staggering it away from David. The pit bull whirled in a mad circle, snapping at the air, and then it went for the baby again, darting in so fast Laura had no time to aim a second kick. Its teeth snapped shut, snagging the baby’s white blanket which was splotched with Edward Fordyce’s dried blood. And then the pit bull shivered lustily and began to drag David through the sawdust on his back, the blanket tangled around his body.

  Mary dug her fingers into the brown pit bull’s eyes. The beast made a half groan, half howl and shook its head violently, its teeth tearing down through her flesh. It pulled against her arm with a terrible force, the shoulder muscles shrieking. The arm was about to be broken. Mary reached for her Colt, but her fingers lost it as the pit bull jerked her again and fresh agony filled her up. Then she went mad herself, punching at the animal’s skull as it tried to drag her. The pit bull released her, backed off, and sprang again, its white fangs bared. Its jaws clamped on her right thigh, the teeth working through her corduroy jeans into the meat of her leg with crushing pressure.

  Laura threw herself at the dog that was dragging David. She grabbed around its muscular throat and hung on. The pit bull let go of David’s blanket and went for her face, its body quivering with power and its teeth snapping at her cheek with the sound of a bear trap springing. She shielded her face with her left hand. The jaws found it, and clenched shut.

  She heard a sound like sticks cracking. A terrifying bolt of electric agony speared up through her wrist and forearm. Broke my hand! she realized as she kept fighting to pull the dog away from her baby. Bastard broke my hand! The pit bull savagely twisted her hand, more pain ripping through her fingers and wrist. She could feel the teeth grinding on the bones. She thought she screamed, but she wasn’t sure. Her brain felt like a fever blister about to burst. She pressed the automatic’s barrel against the pit bull’s side and squeezed the trigger twice.

  The dog shuddered with the shots, but it did not let go. And now it was trying to drag her, blood streaming from its side and foaming from its mouth. Its claws dug into the sawdust. Laura’s wrist was about to snap. She fired again, into the side of the pit bull’s blocky head, and the dog’s lower jaw exploded in a spray of bone chips and blood.

  Mary was fighting her own battle ten feet away. She slammed her knee into the brown pit bull’s skull with everything she had behind it. Then a second and third time, as the dog’s teeth kept tearing her thigh open. She got a finger hooked into one of the eyes and yanked it out like a white grape, and at last the pit bull grunted and released her thigh. It danced with pain, shaking its one-eyed head back and forth and snapping at the air. Mary crawled for the Colt, tried to latch her fingers around it, but they were spasming out of control, the nerves and muscles of her injured arm rioting. She looked up as the pit bull charged at her again, and she cried out and shielded her face with her arms.

  It hit her shoulder with a bone-bruising blow, knocked Mary aside, and fell with a pain-maddened snarl upon Laura.

  The dying dog was still hanging on to Laura’s left hand. The one-eyed beast fastened its teeth on the overcoat sleeve of her right arm and began to tear at it. She couldn’t get her gun angled to shoot it. She kicked and screamed, the one-eyed dog working on her right arm and the other animal still trying to crunch her hand with its ruined jaws.

  Mary scrambled to the wailing baby, scooped him up with her left arm, and struggled to her feet. Blood streamed from her gnawed thigh, her jeans leg drenched. The two dogs had Laura between them, the woman trying to wrench loose. Mary saw the Colt on the ground. Her right hand was still convulsing, drops of blood falling from her fingertips. Panic fl
ared within her. She was hurt badly, near passing out. If she fell and the dogs turned on her and Drummer…

  She left the gun and hobbled toward the van, ignoring the man she’d shot. As Mary transferred Drummer to her right arm and used her left hand to open the driver’s door, Didi came at her with a two-by-four she’d plucked off a lumber pile. Mary saw the blow coming and dodged it, the wood whacking against the van’s side. And then Mary stepped in and drove a knee up into Didi’s stomach, and Didi cried out and doubled over. Mary brought her left arm down across Didi’s back, the blow whooshing the air from Didi’s lungs and dropping her to her knees.

  Didi groaned, her battle-flag-red hair hanging over her face in defeat. Mary could see how gray it was. Didi looked up at her, eyes watery with pain. It was the face of an old woman, tortured by the things that were.

  “Go on,” Didi said. “Kill me.”

  Laura kicked the dying pit bull away from her broken hand, and the animal staggered in dazed circles. The other dog still had hold of her ragged coat sleeve, its fangs starting to reach the flesh. She couldn’t get a shot at it, unless…

  She dropped the gun and wrenched her arm out of the overcoat, the dog’s teeth snapping shut in its wake. Then she picked up the automatic, jammed the barrel right up under the pit bull’s throat, and squeezed the trigger.

  Mary Terror flinched at the sound of the shot. Blood was running down her leg in hot rivulets. Before her, Didi kneeled with sawdust in her hair, and Didi saw the raw fear in Mary’s eyes. Mary’s right hand was still spasming, torn muscles twitching in the forearm wound. Drummer was screaming in her ear, the world starting to turn gray. Mary got into the van with Drummer and slammed the door. She backed away from the building’s side, intending to crush Didi beneath the wheels, but Didi had shaken the cobwebs loose and crawled to the safety of the lumber stacks. Mary got the van turned around and sped toward the gates, the tires throwing dust.

  Five seconds later, Didi heard another car door open and close. She emerged from her hiding place as the BMW’s engine started. Earl Van Diver was behind the wheel, his face a grinning, terrible rictus. As Van Diver twisted the wheel with his shattered shoulder, Didi saw his mouth open in a soundless scream. The BMW tore away, in pursuit of Mary Terror. Its right front tire went over the speaker and crushed it to bits.

  Didi stood up. She saw the mottled pit bull lying on the ground. Laura was on her knees, her right arm free of the tattered coat sleeve, and the brown pit bull faced her six feet away. Didi picked up the two-by-four, her ear stinging, and walked toward the animal.

  Before she got there, the pit bull groaned deep in its blasted-open throat and collapsed, its eyes fixed on the woman who’d delivered the bullet.

  Tears of pain glistened on Laura’s cheeks, but her face was shocked clean of all emotion. She looked at the bluish-red lump of her left hand. There were only three fingers and a thumb on it. The little finger was gone, torn off” at the knuckle. Her hand made her think of a fresh steak, tenderized by a butcher’s mallet.

  “Oh my God,” Didi said. Blood was dripping from her right ear like a chain of rubies. “Your… hand…”

  Laura had gone deathly pale. She blinked, staring at Didi, and then she keeled over onto her side.

  Laura’s purse was in the car, Didi realized. Her money, credit cards…everything was gone. It was over, and Mary had won.

  “Help me! Somebody!” The voice was coming from over near the dogpen. “I’m dyin’ over here!”

  Didi left Laura and went back to where the big-bellied man lay against the dogpen. He was a mess, but Didi saw that the blood wasn’t spewing out so no arteries had been hit. He looked at her blearily, trying to focus. “Who’re you?”

  “Nobody,” she said.

  “You gonna kill me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Listen…listen…call an ambulance. Okay? Phone’s in the office. Locked up.” He offered her the bloody key ring. “Call an ambulance. Goddamn Kenny took off early. Oh, I’m hurtin’. Do it, okay?”

  Didi accepted the key ring. One of the keys, she saw, was for a General Motors car. “The Olds is yours?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. The Cutlass. Call an ambulance, I’m bleedin’ to death.”

  She didn’t think so. She knew a dying man when she saw one. This guy had a broken collarbone and maybe a punctured lung, but he was breathing all right. Still, she’d have to call the ambulance. “You just be quiet and don’t move.”

  “What am I gonna do? A fuckin’ polka?”

  Didi hurried back to Laura, who was sitting up again. “Can you walk?”

  “I think…I’m going to pass out.”

  “I’ve found us a car,” Didi said.

  Laura looked up at her friend, her eyes swollen and her broken hand throbbing almost beyond endurance. She wanted to lie on the ground, curl up, and cry in the cold. But she could not, because Mary Terror still had her baby, and Mary Terror was on her way to California. Laura had something left; she pulled it from a deep, unknown place, the same place where people gritted their teeth and fought uphill against the iron-spiked wheels of life. She had to keep going. There was no quitting, no surrender.

  Laura lifted her right hand, and Didi helped her stand. Then Didi picked up the automatic, and she and Laura walked together past the dead dogs.

  In the trailer, Didi called 911 and told the operator there’d been a shooting, that an ambulance was needed at the Wentzel Brothers Lumberyard near Geneseo. The operator said an ambulance would be there in eight to ten minutes, and for her to stay on the line. Didi hung up. A small metal box atop the office’s desk caught her attention, and she spent forty seconds finding the right key to unlock it. Inside were a few checks clipped to copies of receipts, and a bank deposit envelope that held seventy-one dollars and thirty-five cents. She took the money.

  Didi got behind the wheel of the Cutlass, with Laura lying semiconscious amid burger wrappers and crumpled beer cans in the backseat. A pair of large red plastic dice hung from the rearview mirror, and there was a Playboy bunny decal stuck prominently on the rear windshield. The Olds chugged, refusing to start as she turned the key. Didi thought she could hear a siren, getting closer. The Olds chugged again as Didi pumped the accelerator. And then the car shuddered, and with a cannon’s boom black smoke blew from the tailpipe. Didi checked the gas gauge, seeing that its needle stood at a quarter of a tank.

  The Cutlass creaked and groaned like a frigate in a tempest as Didi backed up, wrestled the grimy wheel, and drove toward the gates. She could feel the tires wanting to slew off to the right, and she decided it was best she hadn’t looked to see how much tread they still wore. Then they were through the gates and heading back to the interstate, the Cutlass slowly but steadily gaining speed and making a racket like bricks in a cement mixer. An ambulance appeared ahead of them, approaching across the flat fields. It passed them, its siren yowling, on the way to save a Wentzel. The two women went on, and only when they were five or six miles farther west along I-80 did Didi give one gasping, terrible sob and wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve.

  4

  White Tide

  ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, where I-80 shot straight and true toward Iowa City, Earl Van Diver was gaining on the woman who had savaged his life.

  The van was going almost eighty, the BMW pushing past eighty-five. Van Diver gripped the wheel with his one good hand, the other hand cold and dead at the end of his torn-open shoulder. Blood was streaked over the seats, spattered across the instrument panel, soaked into the carpet beneath him. He was filling up with winter, his vision turning gray. It was getting more difficult to hold the wheel steady, the wind and his own weakness conspiring against him. Cars veered out of the paths of the two vehicles, a wake of horns echoing behind Van Diver. He glanced at the speedometer, saw the needle vibrating at eighty-seven. Mary had kept the van’s speed up over eighty since they’d left the Geneseo exit, swinging back and forth from lane to lane to keep cars between them. Now, though,
it was clear from the blue coughs of burning oil coming from the tailpipe that the van’s engine was worn out, and she couldn’t maintain that speed. Good, he thought as he felt the cold creeping through his cheeks. Good. He wasn’t going to let her get away. Oh, no; not this time.

  He felt no remorse for leaving Laura and Bedelia. The opportunity to take the car was there. Mary could not be allowed to roam free. She was an animal, and must be put to death like a rabid dog drooling foam. Put to death and death and death.

  About the baby he had no emotion. The baby was there. Babies had died before; there were always babies. What was the death of a single baby if an animal like Mary Terror could be ground under? He knew he could never have made Laura Clayborne understand his life’s purpose. How could she understand that every time he looked into a mirror he saw the face of Mary Terror? How could she understand the nightmare rages that had driven his wife and daughter away from him? How could she understand that the name Mary drove him crazy with hatred, and that his daughter’s name had made him look at her with hatred, too. Laura Clayborne had lost a baby; he had lost himself, down into a dark hole of torment so horrible that it began to—dear God—make him dream of fucking Mary with the barrel of his gun, ah yes ah yes sweet sweet Mary you bitch you soul-sucking bitch, and in the mornings he would wake up wet and sated for a time.

  But not for very long.

  You’re mine, Van Diver thought, his black eyes glazed and shiny.

  Two more feet, and the BMW’s front fender smashed into the van’s rear with a jolt that cracked the stubs of his teeth together. He pushed the van toward the right, trying to force it off the highway, and tires shrieked in a burn of rubber as Mary fought the van back to the left again. A station wagon was in front of her, a Garfield stuck with suction cups to the rear windshield. Mary grazed the station wagon as it careened aside, scraping off a sheet of sparks. Then she was past it, veering around a tractor-trailer truck and back into the left lane. She looked up into the rearview mirror at the BMW’s battered snout, and she saw the man’s grinning, terrible face above the wheel. Little pig wants to play, she thought, and she stomped on the brake.