by Terry Yates
He looked away for a moment, so that he could get his ‘haul-ass’ bearings straight. He could see that he was next to a row of larger rocks on the right side. In front of the rocks, there was a good fifty feet of ground, and then the side of a mountain. In between the fifty feet and the mountain was a precipice, with what looked like a shitload of nothing down below it. The lightning didn’t allow him to see to see what was down below, and his natural cowardice kept him from walking over to the ledge and looking down. It could be two feet or two hundred for all he knew or cared. He was sticking to the large rock side, some of which were several stories high. He leaned against one of them and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he found himself staring at the bright, orange moon, which was probably as big as he’d ever seen it.
“What is it with you, you son-of-a-bitch?” he muttered to himself. “Every time they think they’ve got you figured out, you kick ‘em the balls, don’t you?”
His trance was broken by the sound of gunfire off to his right. He looked back left to see if the werewolf was still behind him. If it was, then it was hidden, because there was nothing there for the few seconds that he waited, revolver at the ready. He heard more gunshots coming from several different guns, if he wasn’t mistaken. Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire, he thought to himself, looking both directions before taking off for the sounds of the gunfire.
Kyler ran past the large rocks. There was no gunfire for the moment, but that didn’t really seem to mean anything these days, so he kept moving toward them, intermittently checking over his shoulder for any sign of ‘Cuddles’.
Seeing none, he began to sprint along the large rocks. As he rounded a corner, a flash of lightning stopped him cold. He had to wait for another flash, which was soon forthcoming…before he was sure of what he was seeing.
Peter Valkenberg was standing on what appeared to be a natural bridge, no more than five-feet wide, that ran from the ledge, over the precipice, and to a small ledge next to the mountainside. Peter stood in the middle of the precipice, swinging a machete at a werewolf that was trying to get between him and Werner, who was sitting on the ledge against the mountain, his face tucked between his knees in fear. Peter had been trying to get to him when a werewolf tried to sneak up behind him. Peter had shot it once in the abdomen, which made the creature double over, but not for long. With the smoke coming out of its bullet hole, the angry werewolf began moving toward Peter, who shot at the beast again, but had either run out of bullets, or his gun had misfired. Kyler saw the AK-47 and the Uzi lying behind Peter. He must’ve been completely out of ammunition, and was now fighting hand-to-hand, or machete to claws.
Kyler stayed against the rock, but began moving sideways, trying to line himself up with the monster. When he’d lined himself up even with the creature’s back, Kyler began to slowly move forward toward the natural bridge, his gun up and aimed. He pushed the laser, and for the first time since Potts had given it to him, it landed square on the creature’s back. He pulled the hammer back on the pistol and aimed. A thousand thoughts went through his mind as he started to squeeze the trigger. What if the bullet went through the beast and into Peter, or through the beast, through Peter, and into Werner. Kyler wanted to pull the trigger and take his chances, but he just couldn’t do it, so he moved down the ledge to the side of the monster. He raised the gun again, but since he was far away now, he was afraid that he might hit Peter, who was still swinging the sword at the lycanthrope.
“Over there!” Peter screamed, pointing behind Kyler. “Over there!”
Kyler turned around, and for a moment, saw nothing, but then spied what he thought was another natural bridge about forty feet away. While Peter and the Werewolf continued to spar, Kyler ran over to the supposed natural bridge that went from the ledge, over the chasm, and onto the small, mountain ledge. But when he got there, he saw that it wasn’t a natural bridge at all, but a…telephone pole? What the hell was a telephone pole doing in the mountains?
“Go! Go!” Peter screamed, pointing to Werner, who was still curled up on the other ledge.
Did the big German expect him to crawl over the gully on a telephone pole, in the rain? Surely not.
“Go get him!” Peter yelled, still keeping his focus on the werewolf.
Shit!
Kyler stuck the pistol down the front of his pants, and then lifted his right leg over the telephone pole and sat down. He was straddling the pole, which was rounder and wider than he’d expected. Whatever they shellacked these things with made it slick from the rain.
“Okay, Kyler Boy, okay,” he said to himself softly, wiping his wet hair out of his eyes. He slid up as close to the edge of the ledge as his nerves would allow. “Okay, on ten…ten…nine…eight…”
When he got to ‘one…zero…blastoff, Kyler had closed his eyes and slid down on the pole, knowing that he was now several feet over the dark chasm.
“Don’t look down, you idiot!” he warned himself…before looking down. As he did, a lighting bolt flashed over the precipice, allowing Kyler to see the true depth of the chasm below him. He saw trees that were just dots on the horizon. They and the werewolves were at least several hundred feet high.
“Oh shit…oh God…oh damn…” Kyler cussed to himself as he started sliding down the pole again, trying not to look down.
As he inched his way down the pole, Kyler could see the lightning through his closed eyes. What was he doing in the mountains of Oklahoma?
“Mountains in Oklafuckinhoma,” he mumbled as he continued to slowly inch forward. “There are no mountains in Oklahoma…it’s Oklahoma, for shit’s sake! It’s Land Rush and Sooners…Steinbeck…Depression…dustfuckinbowl…the Joads, the Black McGonnells…”
Kyler slowly opened his eyes. He was about a third of the way across. By his guesstimation, he was scooching his ass forward about three inches per syllable. “I’m sliding on a telephonefuckinpole in the mountains of Oklahoma with a gun against my dick,” he continued muttering. “Mountains…Oklahoma…” Once again, a lightning bolt flashed, and once again, Kyler looked down. He swooned for a moment before closing his eyes and breathing through his mouth. He was starting to detest Oklahoma with extreme prejudice.
As he reached the middle of the pole, he suddenly felt it shift. It rolled several inches to the left.
“Ohhhh…” he moaned, trying to even up his balance. Suddenly, it rolled back. “Oh…shit…”
Kyler’s whole body shook as he tried to stay in the middle, but it was like trying to stay on a rolling log. He looked up to see Peter and the Werewolf were still at it, and Werner was still hugging himself.
“Come on, you pissant!” he hissed at himself as the telephone pole rolled back and forth once again.
When he finally got himself centered and balanced, he began to inch forward again, this time not opening his eyes until he felt his shins touch the opposite ledge. He opened his eyes to discover that the ledge on the other side was much narrower than he’d first surmised. Where he thought it to be around eight or ten feet, it was actually about half that. Where there had been about five feet of telephone pole on the other side, there was only about a foot-and-a-half of it on this side. No wonder it had started to roll.
Kyler reached out to the end of the pole, pulled himself up until he was well clear of the chasm. He rolled off of the log, then sat with his back up against the mountainside for a few moments before looking up. On the bridge, both Peter and the werewolf were bleeding. They just seemed to be sparring back and forth, each cutting the other with his razor-sharp weapon.
Kyler stood up, keeping his back to the wall. The ledge was plenty wide, but it was what was over the edge that gave Kyler pause. He moved along the mountain, trying to get to Werner. Where was Astrid, he wondered.
Before he knew what was happening, he heard a loud scream from the natural bridge. He looked over in time to see Peter plunging the machete into the creature’s heart. The German wanted to finish him off, but needed to keep his distance in c
ase the werewolf wanted one last swat at him with those huge claws. Peter pulled the sword out of the monster, which immediately fell limp on the bridge. Peter raised his massive arms in triumph and screamed a loud victory scream that carried over the storm and probably down to the highway.
Peter turned to Kyler, smiled, then shrugged his shoulders. That’s when it dawned on him that he had crawled over the precipice for nothing. Now the three of them could skip back across the rock bridge.
Grinning, Peter picked up the two rifles, and then began to walk toward Werner. Kyler was smiling out of pure relief and happy dementia. He stopped smiling when he thought that he saw something move. It was the werewolf…and it was looking up at Peter.
Before Kyler could even warn Peter, the thing grabbed him around the ankle. A confused expression came over Peter’s face. Kyler watched as the beast sank its teeth into Peter’s calf. The German screamed in agony as he looked down at the dying werewolf. Still screaming, he took the machete and began to hack at the thing’s neck. As the body dislodged from the head, it flopped over the side of the bridge and into the chasm below. The head though, remained attached to Peter’s leg like a bear trap. Kyler watched as he bent down, a look of pain still on his face, and began to pull the jaws apart, so that he could dislodge the teeth from his leg. Peter grunted loudly as he tore, first the upper teeth, and then, the lower from his calf, tearing large chunks of skin from both sides. Once he’d dislodged the head, he tossed it over the side. The big German stiffened his back leg, lifted the part of his trouser leg that wasn’t shredded, and looked down at his wounds, which were fairly extensive. Blood was pouring from each puncture. Peter straightened up and looked at Kyler through the rain. He smiled, then snapped his fingers as if to say “I almost made it”. Then, before Kyler knew that it was really happening, Peter Valkenberg lowered his arms to his sides, smiled again, then let himself fall forward over the bridge and down into the expanse below. A lighting bolt flashed, allowing Kyler to see the man’s body flipping over and over for a split second before the chasm went dark again. Kyler couldn’t scream, he couldn’t yell…he couldn’t do anything but stare at the dark abyss. The man had been bit and took his own way out.
Kyler gathered himself, and then began to move along the ledge toward Werner, who looked as if he were sobbing now. When Kyler reached him, he slid down next the boy.
“Astrid!” the boy cried, looking down. “Astrid!”
The boy said a few other things that Kyler couldn’t understand, but it didn’t take a linguistics professor to figure out that one of those things got his twin. Boy, did that sound familiar. Kyler couldn’t help but think of the Dixon twins at that moment. Losing a sibling would be bad enough, but a twin?
“Come on,” he told the boy, helping him to his feet.
The two began to walk across the rock bridge. They got no further than a few feet when they looked up to see the werewolf that had been chasing him, standing on the bridge. Its shoulders were stooped, making its claws touch the rock. The eyes were nice and yellow, with just a tinge of ‘pissed’ thrown in for good measure. The thing snarled loudly, allowing Kyler to hear it over the storm.
Kyler suddenly felt like he was in a children’s story. Here they were, trying to cross a bridge, but there was a big, bad, wolf standing between them. Hell, the whole last couple of months had been spent inside a fable.
Kyler looked over at the telephone pole to see if they could use it as an escape route. It was just too far away. There was no way that they could get there before the beast caught them. Even if they did make it to the pole, he would probably have to talk Werner into actually getting on the pole, not to mention convincing himself that he could do it again. He also figured that the thing was smart enough to let them get halfway across the precipice and then knock the pole off of the ledge, sending them into the chasm below.
The werewolf snarled again. Kyler gently pushed Werner behind him and raised his gun. As he pulled the trigger, the thing suddenly moved into a half-spin, half-pivot, turning its head away from him, causing Kyler to miss yet again.
The beast turned its back to Kyler and howled. What the hell, he thought, looking back for Werner, who trembled behind him. When he turned back to the werewolf, he saw why the werewolf had turned on him. The werewolf was not alone. Joe had snuck up behind him and began to nip at the creature’s legs. Kyler’s heart soared! Good ol’ Joe and his Magic Saliva! The werewolf swung its massive claws back and forth at the canine, but Joe was too quick for it. After missing Joe with a left cross, Joe tore a chunk of the monster’s arm/foreleg as it went sweeping by. The werewolf yanked its limb away, slinging Joe off of him, and causing the dog to slide on the rock bridge. Kyler gasped as Joe’s back leg slid off of the edge, but he quickly pulled it back as the beast converged on him, still swinging its good limb, in hopes that at least one of its claws would get the little blighter.
Joe was allowing them time to escape, but Kyler wasn’t sure what they could do. There wasn’t enough room to get past them, and he doubted that they could climb the mountain…in the rain, no less.
Understanding this, Joe began to nip at the werewolf, and then back away. He did this until the werewolf began to follow him. Joe began to bark at the thing as if he were taunting the creature. Whatever he was doing was working, because suddenly, the werewolf looked back over its shoulder at Kyler, and gave him a look that said “I’ll be back!” Then the beast turned back to Joe and began to chase after him, the dog turning on its heels, if it had heels, and running away to let his two friends escape.
Joe and the werewolf disappeared out of sight. It looked to Kyler as if they were going back the way he came up. When he reached back for Werner, he couldn’t feel him.
“Let’s go,” he said, turning around to find himself alone on the natural bridge. “Werner? Werner!”
Kyler scanned the area, but the twelve-year old was gone
“Wren…!” was all he got out, because he was interrupted by a scream from off to his right. He turned to see Werner trying to cross the chasm on the telephone pole. That dispelled the myth that he might have to talk the kid into it.
“Werner!” he screamed at the boy, who was already ten feet out into the precipice. “Stop! Halt! Achtung!” Kyler shouted every thing that he could thing of at Werner, which in retrospect wasn’t too wise trying to distract the boy.
Kyler ran off of the bridge and onto the mountain ledge. He kept one hand on the mountain and one eye on the boy as moved as quickly as he could toward the pole. When he was ten yards away, he saw that boy had stopped…frozen to the spot.
“I’m on the way!” he yelled as he ran toward the pole.
Kyler was no more than five-feet away, when he saw the pole roll a few inches like it had when he’d crawled across the gully. He heard the boy scream as he reached the pole, which was now rolling back in the other direction. Since it was rolling toward him, he dropped to his knees and shoved against it, trying to stop its movement, but it was too late. He looked up to see Werner sliding off the side of the pole.
“Werner!” Kyler screamed.
For a split second, the boy seemed to be hanging on, but Kyler could see his grip slipping. Kyler tried to crawl onto the pole, but there had been no reason. Werner lost his grip, then screamed…then fell into the precipice, still screaming for several seconds, until a clap of thunder finally drowned him out.
Kyler tried to let out a scream of his own, but it wouldn’t come. His larynx was frozen in shock. His legs began to feel rubbery as he dropped his shoulders and stumbled blindly to the mountainside, where he slid down and dropped his head between his knees. Tears wouldn’t come to Richard Kyler…he was just too worn out. He just kept his head down and let the rain pour over him. There could’ve been a werewolf standing over him. Hell, there could’ve been ten werewolves standing over him and he wouldn’t have known it, or cared. He’d had enough of werewolves and full moons and crazy weather anomalies. What had been the point of rescuing th
e children from the Wartler sty just to bring them here to die in the most gruesome and horrendous ways?
Kyler wanted to sleep. That was it. He just wanted to lean his head back and fall asleep right there against the mountainside with the rain falling down on him, his head between his knees, and his eyes closed. Oh yes…that was it. As the dark, purple dots began to form in front of his closed eyelids, he almost stopped feeling the rain. He almost stopped thinking about anything.
As the gun dropped from his hand, he began to dream. He found himself standing to the side of a white picket fence. Suddenly, people began to jump the fence. First Dustin, then Werner, then Ben Rollins, jumped the picket fence. It was as if he were counting sheep, but instead, he was counting…children? Lauren went over the fence, only this time, she wasn’t smiling at him, and her face was as yellow as the sun. Then came Sgt. Cohen who actually sneered at him as he jumped the fence. He guessed the children’s matinee was over and the adult feature was beginning, because it was Potts’ turn to leap over the fence, and leap he did, for Potts did what could only be described as a ballet jump he’d seen somewhere. The left leg was extended in front and the right one in back, his upper body was turned to Kyler. His arms were extended as if to do a ‘ta-da!’. It was his face that caught Kyler’s attention. It was half gone as expected, but it was infested with maggots. Finally, Nicholas Klefka himself jumped the fence. He looked normal except that he had large fangs protruding from his lips. After Klefka’s dismount, there was nothing until a thunderclap that shook the mountain, startled him awake.
He picked his gun up off of the ledge, and slid up the mountainside until he was standing. Where to now, he thought. The sudden sound of howling, baying, and gunfire, gave him his answer. Wearily, he walked back over to the rock bridge, let out a few deep sighs, and then began to walk over the bridge, still feeling like he was in some horrible children’s story. That’s one thing he always wondered about. In every child’s story, two out of three pigs, goats, or children don’t make it across the bridge. Only one does, and afterwards, they dance around in glee after they outsmart the Big Bad Wolf, never seemingly mindful of the fact that their two brothers were eaten alive by said BBW. This must be what they really felt like, he thought to himself…rubbery legged and exhausted, with a feeling that the grass WON’T be greener on the other side.