“Oh,” she said again, and she sank to the floor, which was now suddenly wet and very slippery.
Her visitor was lowering his grinning face to hers.
It was blurry, like her old TV had become. And it was changing.
And when she stopped looking into his swirling eyes and started to shriek, it was too late.
Chapter Thirteen
Franco
1944
As they ran, dusk slowly overtook the day. The realization came to Franco, who suddenly couldn’t see even a meter before his face. They’d been running blind and hadn’t known it.
They slowed, breathing raggedly, their clothes disheveled and stained with sweat and blood from all the slashes on their skin.
The wolves were still on their trail.
Why didn’t they give up?
It’s as if they’re smarter than we are! Franco thought.
But how could that be?
Thoughts of his grandmother’s stories from the mountain villages near Venice flitted in and out of his memory.
No!
He refused to let himself think of what she had described, the family stories she had told for decades. He refused to let himself dwell on the possibility that she hadn’t exaggerated. He refused to let his imagination fill in the images she had left on his impressionable mind.
The wolves seemed very near.
“We have to keep running!”
“I can’t! I’m too tired. Too sore.” Pietro was bent over, holding his knees. They could barely see each other.
Just like that, it was night.
Franco thought about his parents, how worried they must be. Franco was a growing boy (that was what they always said), and he never missed a meal, no matter what adventure he might have embarked on. He was a good boy that way, made so all the more by the insistent, never-ending hunger that gnawed at the pit of his stomach because the government rationing and the wartime shortages kept so much food from their larder.
His stomach growled after being reminded he was late for dinner.
But hunger was the last thing on his mind.
Those wolves, or whatever they were, had steadily gained on the boys despite their headlong flight through the dark trees.
But now it was night, and both boys knew what that meant.
As if a wish were being granted, both boys heard the distant air raid warning horns. The sirens were too far to be from the city, but perhaps they were hearing those from the German base.
Or whatever it was, locked away behind the barbed wire and mine fields.
Franco had a vision of his father, most likely on his way home right this very minute. And he hoped there was a shelter nearby.
Pietro’s family lived down the street from Franco’s, so he must have had the same frightening thought.
The air raid sirens rarely managed to give ample warning, and the rumble of airplane engines reached them even through the tight canopy of leaves. He visualized the waves of B-17 bombers approaching over the Mediterranean, pulling up like deadly dragonflies to lay their explosive cargo onto the German stronghold.
Franco gasped suddenly. He’d been holding his breath without realizing it.
The leaves rustled not far away.
They were here.
They’ve been playing with us, like cats with a mouse.
He pulled Pietro to the right and they stumbled into a tiny clearing.
And there was a stone shack squarely in the center of it, its walls irregular with roughly mortared field stones. The roof was thatched and oft-repaired. The door was a black hole, the slit windows like eyes on a skull.
“Come on!”
Franco herded Pietro across the clearing just as, a few miles away and down below the sloping hills, the first bombs began to rain down upon the fat, expectant targets.
Franco prayed they were missing the residential center this time. The harbor was just too easy for the bombers to miss, and the high command and factories huddled too near the city’s center. Every raid cost dozens of innocent victims, people who chose not to evacuate into the shelters, or who were just too slow.
They reached the shack and pulled up short in the doorway, panting. The door, a rough wooden affair without a lock, opened like a rickety curtain. Inside was blackness deeper than any he had ever seen before. Suddenly it seemed bright outside the shack.
Across the clearing the branches parted, and Franco spied the first dark silhouette of a monstrously large, four-legged animal.
A wolf.
The largest wolf his imagination could ever have conjured. It was nosing into the edge of the clearing, its head down and nostrils twitching as it tracked their scent. It hadn’t seen them yet, but it wouldn’t be long before it did. Or it had and it was playing them.
In the distance, the bombs sounded like rolling thunder.
Getting closer.
Pietro hesitated in the doorway. “We’ll be trapped!”
“Here we’ll die. Inside we can make a stand.”
The words sounded ridiculous even to him. Make a stand with what? But what else could they do? The wolves would run them down in minutes, if not seconds.
They fell inside the pitch-black interior of the shack, and he smelled mold, rat droppings, and something he couldn’t identify.
It had to be the boys’ fear, distilled as a sharp, glandular acid that oozed silently from their pores. Franco realized it deep in his gut. His muscles trembled with fatigue and confused fear. The day had begun with an adventure, an act of defiance they’d poorly thought out. But he hadn’t expected the result, the chase, the shooting, and now these monsters on their trail.
The darkness began to wash away as their eyes grew accustomed to it. They stood, waiting, but then Franco grabbed his friend’s arm.
“Look!” he said.
There was a rickety loft at one end of the one-room shack. Someone had slept up there. It looked like hay piled up just below the roof crossbeams. The ladder didn’t look very solid, but the boys were light.
Franco pointed up, then grabbed the rungs. He heaved himself upward as quietly as he could, Pietro crowding him from behind.
It only occurred to him as he climbed onto the loft that now they were truly trapped.
They huddled in the hay pile, their eyes fixed on the door down below hidden by the inky darkness.
And they waited.
Suddenly the snarling, stuttering roar of a misfiring aircraft engine filled the air above and shook the roof over their hiding place.
They ducked instinctively at the sound.
An airplane’s diving screech followed the low roaring.
Franco imagined either an Allied bomber hit by German flak coming in like a fireball, or perhaps it was a German fighter scrambled from the outskirts of Genova to harass the Allied formations. He’d heard the sound before over the city skies. But never this close!
Before he’d had time to formulate the thought, the screech-snarl-roar simply cut off, and the air was sucked out of the loft, making his ears hurt as if they’d been lanced with an ice pick. He clapped his hands over them and expected to see blood on his fingers. But there was none, and then the silence was gone in an incredible explosion that rattled the roof’s timbers and knocked a curtain of dust and sharp wood bits onto the boys’ hiding place. The floor shifted, and jagged beams crashed to the floor, lifting a cloud of dust and debris.
The plane had crashed so near he thought the shack would collapse. It shook like a child’s toy, and they were nearly knocked out of the loft.
Franco jabbed Pietro in the near darkness.
“Let’s go!”
“What? What about the wolf?” Pietro’s eyes were wide and very white in the gloom. “And all the other wolves?”
“Don’t you think the plane crash scared it? I bet they’re all busy. Come on! Andiamo!”
He didn’t wait, clutching the rough wood of the ladder and swinging out into the void, trusting his feet would find the right rung. He half s
lid down, slivers jabbing the soft skin of his fingers.
Down below, he grasped Pietro’s arm as he came off the ladder and dragged him toward the door. They checked outside and the wolf seemed to be gone.
They stumbled out into the early evening gloom. In the distance, Allied planes still dropped their bomb loads over the harbor and military installations. Behind them, there was a brilliant red glow between and above the trees and a column of thick black smoke billowing into the night sky. The site of the plane’s crash into the woods wasn’t far away.
The wolves howled again in the near distance.
“I told you,” Franco whispered. “We go the other way!”
They ran to the clearing’s edge and faded into the woods. Their muscles were stiff now that they’d crouched in the loft for a while, and Franco wondered if he’d made a good decision. Running was out of the question for a while.
He held out a sudden hand. “Aspetta!” Wait!
The undergrowth not far from where they hid parted under assault by a running, stumbling figure.
In the dark, they could barely make out who and what he was—but they could see easily that he wasn’t a wolf, or a German soldier, whose ammunition belts and pouches tended to rattle when they ran.
They crouched lower behind the shelter of an oak trunk, hoping to fade into the shadows.
The runner was a pilot. Franco saw his leather flying jacket and helmet, his dark woolen trousers and tall boots. A harness belted to his torso dragged thin rope strands behind him as he half-ran, half-stumbled toward the shack the boys had just vacated. In his right hand he gripped a large pistol. As he reached the shack’s doorway, he turned to look behind, cocking his head as if trying to listen.
The wolves are after him now!
Franco was a quick study. The fugitive was an Allied pilot or airman from the plane that had crashed nearby. The rope strands and harness were the remains of his parachute.
Franco inhaled harshly, about to call out to the pilot, when Pietro’s hand clapped his mouth shut.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling him here. He’ll be trapped there.”
“Not our affair! We have to get out of here. We’re trapped between the wolves and the soldiers at the base. We’ll never get home if we don’t move. Now!”
“We can’t leave him, he’s on our side.”
“His side is bombing us and killing people.”
“Because of the Germans!”
“I don’t care!”
In the meantime, the pilot made his decision and entered the dark shack just as they had only minutes ago.
It seems like ages.
“See, he’s already inside,” Pietro said, his voice a low hiss. “We have to get going.” He shuffled away, looking around to orient himself.
Franco stood to follow, shaking his head. He hoped the pilot would make it, but he had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The undergrowth across from them crackled again as a large black wolf erupted from the dark woods.
Franco dropped to the ground and motioned his friend to do the same. The boys melted into the ground shadows, but Franco couldn’t keep from watching what was about to happen. The wolf approached the shack, its nostrils twitching and its long jaws full of fangs visible despite the darkness.
And then another wolf padded out from between the trees.
And another.
And another.
The three loped quickly behind the first wolf as it approached the shack’s doorway.
Franco couldn’t move. His joints and limbs felt locked, as if he’d been pinned to a board like a dried butterfly. He stared at the four wolves, who congregated at the shack’s doorway as if deciding what to do. Then they split up, surrounded the building and, a minute later, the largest wolf took a running start and lunged at the flimsy door. It splintered under his weight, and he was through the dark hole into the dark shack.
Franco winced when the first shot rang out.
He heard growling and snarling, crazed screaming, and more gunfire.
Another shot, then another.
Bang!
Bang!
Then bang-bang!
Then there was nothing but growling and a long, keening scream of fear, which turned into one of pain, abruptly cut off.
His breath caught in his throat.
Pietro was yanking on his arm, pulling him along into the woods.
Franco wanted to shut out the sounds of frenzied feeding from inside the building, but he could not. It sounded as though the wolves growled and fought each other for prime parts, tearing tearing tearing…
Tearing.
Franco thought he would never be able to get the sound of tearing flesh out of his ears and from his memory.
Then one wolf howled, and the others joined in.
A few moments later, the shack’s door opened and a man’s naked arm poked out first, then his leg, then the rest of him. He was joined by three others, their faces and mouths streaked with dried blood. They stood in a small huddle, naked, their muscular bodies and their penises on display without shame.
Their penises were erect like those of dogs, and very large. He didn’t know much about male erections, but he did know they were not usually so…obvious.
Gesu’ e Maria, he thought.
It was what his grandmother would have said, crossing herself and perhaps making the sign of the evil eye to protect herself.
Franco remembered to breathe when Pietro’s hand snatched shirt fabric and loose skin and pulled insistently.
Pietro was pointing at the four men through the trees as they glided like ghosts into the woods, then pointed at his own nose.
Franco understood and felt sick at the pit of his stomach. Can they smell us?
He thought for a moment and shook his head. He was willing to bet they couldn’t because their human noses were just that, human.
But if they changed into wolves again…
Dio mio! They could change into wolves!
There was nothing human about that.
Franco made the evil eye like his grandmother had taught him, but he doubted it provided any real protection.
The boys tiptoed through the woods as far as they could without letting their fear drive them to running. They had to avoid being heard. When they were far enough away, they started at a jog and soon were sprinting toward the road.
The sounds of explosions from the direction of the city had faded and died. The air raid was over. The sound of sirens had taken over, screaming from many directions as the pompieri braved the streets to use their outdated equipment and attempt to vanquish the many infernos the Allied bombs had caused.
The German air raid sirens sounded the all clear about the time the boys reached the road. They kept to the shadows just off the asphalt, ducking behind bushes whenever they heard a car or military vehicle approaching and rumbling past. In the dark, they had little trouble staying out of sight.
Pietro was dazed, walking with an automatic motion and depending on Franco for cues to crouch down or stand up.
As for Franco… In his mind, he fought with himself. He knew what he’d seen and heard.
His grandmother had been right.
There were mysteries in the world, and they could kill you.
Eat you, he amended. Some mysteries could eat you.
Giovanni
He opened his eyes and immediately closed them. His vision was a blur of indistinct shapes and darkness broken only by flickering blobs of light. He thought he was in church. He smelled candles. He tried to move his head and stopped when it seemed his jaw would break.
Somebody had hit him. There had been an air raid. There were guns and a shooting.
Santa Maria, he thought, I was doing the shooting.
Bit by bit the memory came nosing back, and he started to put the pieces together. He realized he was shivering. And through the pain in his head, he felt his eyes swell up.
Where was he?
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His moan brought one of the blobs suddenly closer. A cool touch on his forehead triggered memories and thoughts, but blinking brought forth only tears and pain.
“Sono io, Giovanni,” a calm but shaky voice spoke in his ear. “Sono io. Stai tranquillo.”
Maria! Thank God!
His fingers moved and then gripped her hand and brought it to his chest. He still couldn’t see very well, but the simple gesture slowed his heart from its onrushing pace and brought the tranquility she’d wished upon him. He started to rise up, but she pushed him back down firmly.
“No, you might be hurt. And we have to stay silent.”
“What?”
“Shhhhhh.” Her hand caressed his face. “Trust me.”
He noticed movement behind her, more blurs making jagged little gestures. He smelled sweat and bodies, and frankly his own scent wasn’t altogether better. “What— Where are we? Where is—?”
Suddenly he was seized by the thought of what he hadn’t heard or felt yet. His son’s hand or face nearby, or his voice.
“Where is Franco?” he groaned, his voice rough.
“I don’t know,” she said, crying. “He was—”
Somebody stepped closer and whispered, in a clipped voice, “Be silent or you’ll get us all killed!”
Giovanni felt Maria’s hand caress his face and softly cover his lips. He kissed her cool skin, but his mind reeled. His son wasn’t there, wherever there was. Maria was there, and these others. Men. He thought he heard a female whisper. Maybe some women and children. But not Franco.
His memory slotted into place, and he remembered the firefight in the street. How he had ended up with a machine gun, and turned it on the hated German.
The bombing raid. The partisans.
Corrado.
Corrado had hit him.
Unsteadily, Giovanni tried to stand and slid halfway off the cot. He was hurt!
But no, he felt each of his limbs, and even though his bones ached and where he’d been slugged throbbed and his head pounded, he was really all right. He reached out for Maria, who tried to steady him.
Sounds from above and nearby reached them, and he felt his heart start to race again.
Then Corrado materialized beside him, a blob with his intellectual’s glasses pinching his nose.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 16