Ravenous

by Ray Garton

  “Look, Jason, I’m not doubting what you saw, okay? But let’s face it—they don’t exist. Even you admitted the idea sounded crazy. You’re upset right now—you’ve been badly hurt and frightened. But you know—if not now, you will realize it later—you know as well as I do that they don’t exist, Jason.”

  ... infestation of werewolves ...

  Hurley gave the boy a big smile. “Well, you get better, Jason. If you need anything, I want you to feel free to call me, okay?”

  “Yeah.” He looked pale, with a little too much white showing in his eyes.

  “You sure you’re okay, Jason?” Hurley said. “You want me to call someone?”

  He did not respond for some time. Then he simply said, “No.”

  Hurley said, “You take care.”

  He left the room, then the hospital. He got into his vehicle and just sat there awhile, hands on the wheel. His breath clouded in the air in front of his face. It was coming too fast. He took a couple of deep breaths.

  Sheriff Hurley, you have an infestation of werewolves, Fargo had said with disarming confidence. An infestation of werewolves.

  Hurley slowly turned his head back and forth, refusing to believe it—but unable to reject the theory, unable to let go of it. After seeing that thing on the Cranes’ lawn ... after hearing what Jason had said ... he wasn’t sure what he knew, or what to believe.

  He still had to go see Emily Crane’s friend Terri March before going home. He decided to drive back to the station first and see if anything else had come in. When he got there, he found that everything was quiet. It was a slow night so far.

  Hurley went to the desk sergeant, Tony Naccarato, and said, “Tony, anything unusual happens tonight, anything at all, I want you to call me, understand?”

  “You got it, Sheriff.”

  Hurley felt a pang of sadness when he thought of Emily Crane’s children.

  “And Tony,” he said, “get Child Protective Services on the line for me. They’ve gotta have someone on call tonight. I’ve got a situation I need to hand off to them.”

  * * * *

  Jason found himself enjoying the painkiller he’d been given as he waited on the bed in the Emergency Room for his parents to come back and take him home. The doctor had come to see him right after the sheriff left and said he wanted to see him again in a couple of days.

  As good as the painkiller made him feel, he could not shake his fear.

  A werewolf, he thought groggily.

  And if that were true, then it also had to be true that the bite he had received would turn him into the very thing that had bitten him on the next full moon. Jason had seen all the old movies, he knew the story.

  As bad as his fear was, it was not enough to make him forget Andrea Norton. He wondered how she was, if Jimmy were beating her up tonight. He wanted to call her, but he would have to wait until tomorrow when Jimmy was at work. Just to see her, to hold her hand—it was like an addiction, the kind of urge that comes from needing an addictive substance, the feeling of being hooked. At least, that was how he’d always imagined it to be—he’d never been hooked on anything before. He wanted to smell her, to feel her lips on his. He wondered if she knew yet that he was in the hospital, that he’d been hurt. She must have known something was going on when she saw all those Sheriff’s cars and the ambulance. But what could she do? With Jimmy around, she couldn’t call Jason, or even go to his house and ask about him. Like him, she had to wait until tomorrow.

  Then he wondered if he should call her at all, if seeing her, if simply being around her might be putting her in danger. In the movies, the werewolf always tried to kill the person he loved the most. If the worst happened, if it did change him, he did not want to hurt Andrea. He would not be able to live with himself if he did anything to hurt Andrea.

  The painkiller gave him a floating sensation. The television on the articulating arm over his bed played cartoons.

  Jason closed his eyes and drifted in and out of sleep, and when he slept, he dreamed shadowy black-and-white nightmares of wolfmen stalking through misty graveyards.

  28

  Making Out at the Jags

  Bobby killed the engine and left the radio playing.

  Suzie sighed, then turned to him and smiled a little.

  It had begun to rain again on their way up the hill, and now the rain made a steady roar on the roof of the car—a Toyota from somewhere back in the eighties. Water poured down the windshield, distorting the bushes that stood in the beams of the headlights, which Bobby had left on. They were alone there, the only car parked in the clearing beside Seaview Avenue.

  “I figured it was fun last time,” Bobby said, “so why not again?”

  He reached over and stroked her hair—it was brown with recently-added blonde highlights, and Suzie had to admit, it looked pretty damned good and touchable. But ...

  She laughed a little as Bobby’s fingertips ran along the edge of her ear. Typically, she did not like anyone touching her ear—it sent unpleasant chills down her back and gave her the creeps. But even though she winced and laughingly pressed his hand between her shoulder and head to keep the fingers from moving over her ear, she decided to say nothing. She knew what she wanted to say, but was unsure of what she should say.

  Suzie Camber was on her second date with Bobby Stanley. And it was the second time he’d brought her up to the Jags. That was what the locals called the place, anyway. It was a popular make-out spot for young people, a clearing at the edge of a rocky decline so sharp it was almost a cliff that overlooked a rocky section of the coast where waves crashed dramatically against large jagged rocks below. Suzie had not been there since high school. She was pretty sure that the high school students were the only ones who came to the Jags ... besides Bobby.

  They had gone to high school together, Suzie and Bobby, but that seemed so long ago. It had been only seven years, but it felt like a long time ago. Sometimes it felt like something that had happened to someone else. After high school, Suzie had gone to Humboldt with no idea what she wanted to study. She stayed for a semester, long enough to learn that college was not for her. Not then, anyway. She had been tired of school—exhausted, to be honest. Maybe she’d try college again a little later, but she wanted some time to herself for awhile. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they’d had no great, burning desire for her to go. She’d had a few boring jobs over the space of a year and a half, but then she’d gotten a job at the Hot Topic store in the Northgate Mall—it gave her a chance to wear some of her leather clothes, which was encouraged among Hot Topic employees, in keeping with the chain’s bad boy/girl image. Best of all, it was a job she liked. All her friends came by Hot Topic at least once a day, friends she’d made since high school, new friends. She’d been at Hot Topic ever since. She loved the job and had been made assistant manager a couple of years ago.

  It was there that she’d seen Bobby again, after having lost track of him for awhile. He’d gone to live with his father in a suburb of San Francisco and was now back in Big Rock. Bobby looked exactly the same as he had in high school. He was tall and lanky, his dark-blond hair a little shaggy, and that mustache he was still working on was still pretty thin. He even wore the same kind of clothes—they were the same clothes, for all she knew—jeans and T-shirts, and in colder weather, jeans and sweatshirts. At first, she’d found it kind of cute, the fact that he’d been preserved in a perfect state of ... of high school.

  The first date had been a trip down Memory Lane. He’d taken her to Carousel Pizza, were everyone used to hang out when they were in high school, each group to its own table. She hadn’t been there since she’d been graduated. Carousel still had a large game room filled with video games and pinball machines, and while they waited for their pizza, Robert had gotten a fistful of quarters, given her half of them, and they’d gone into the game room and played video games and pinball. Suzie wasn’t much of a video game player, but she’d laughed a lot that evening while trying to play them
with Bobby.

  After eating, he’d driven her up to the Jags, and they’d made out for awhile. He ended up working his hand successfully between her legs, and he’d gotten her off that way—he’d done quite a good job, too. Then, to be fair, she gave him a handjob.

  Then he’d asked her out again a week later. Back in high school, she’d always found Bobby to be kind of cute, a sort of diamond in the rough—cute, but possibly adorable with the right kind of overhaul. They’d traveled in different crowds, though. Suzie had been a rather popular cheerleader, while Bobby had run with a group of pranksters who’d been more interested in the next kegger than in cheerleaders, who might as well have been on another planet. Back then, it would have been socially impossible for them to date—that was one of the elements of high school she’d hated. But that was all behind them now, and they were adults, free to do as they pleased. She was curious to get beyond their past, to get to know him better. She realized they’d spent their first date talking mostly about her—she wanted to know more about him. And besides, he still had that cute-but-possibly-adorable quality about him. So she’d said yes.

  Where had he taken her? Carousel Pizza. But this time, Suzie had noticed something she’d missed before—the man behind the counter had said, “Hey, Bobby, how’s it going?” The man knew him. A group of guys seated around a table in the back had called out his name, almost in unison, and Bobby had gone back there to talk to them for a few minutes. Bobby was a regular. Did he still hang out at Carousel all the time, as he had back in high school?

  Then he’d brought her back up here to the Jags.

  And here we are, she thought, a bit sardonically, as she pulled his hand away from her ear and held it in both of hers. She thought a moment before speaking, licked her lips, and was about to say what she wanted to say, when he pressed his mouth over hers and pulled her to him in a kind of lopsided embrace.

  Suzie had to admit, he was a good kisser. But after two dates in a row to Carousel, she’d begun to wonder if he still lived with his parents. Did he have a job? Had he changed at all since high school?

  When was the last time he was up here with a girl? she wondered as she returned his kiss. It was difficult not to—he really was a good kisser. She thought, Maybe that’s why he only talked about me last time we went out.

  So they kissed for awhile, shifting this way and that, until they were more comfortable, but never pulling their lips apart.

  Anyone who kisses this well, she thought distractedly, has got to have some experience—surely Bobby’s been with plenty of women since high school.

  Suzie did not want to hurt Bobby’s feelings. Back in high school, Suzie somehow had gotten a reputation for being mean. But she was not, as she’d insisted back then and maintained today, and not being a mean person, she had no intention of saying anything that would insult or offend Bobby. But good kissing aside, she saw no future in this relationship.

  She finally pulled away gently.

  Bobby backed off then, too, breathing heavily. He sat back in his seat a moment, then chuckled and said, “Kinda hot in here, huh?”

  All the windows had fogged up. Bobby rolled his window down halfway.

  Suzie smiled and took in a breath to speak, when a rapid movement caught her eye just beyond Bobby, through the opening in the window.

  The movement stopped.

  Suzie held that breath. Her smile melted away as she realized she was looking at a single silver eye, with only an empty socket on the left. It peered into the car through the narrow opening.

  She screamed a fraction of an instant before the window beside Bobby shattered into tiny safety-glass pieces and an enormous, hairy hand reached in. Black claws dragged through the flesh of Bobby’s face. Bobby screamed.

  Two hairy, clawed hands reached in then and closed on Bobby’s head. They tore Bobby out of the car through the empty window and dropped him to the ground.

  And all the while, Suzie screamed, her voice tearing at her throat. She pressed her back to the door, trying to get as far away from the thing as possible.

  The thing dragged Bobby, struggling and screaming, away from the car by the head.

  Rain pounded on the roof of the car, nearly drowning Bobby’s screams outside.

  Suzie’s screams finally stopped and crumbled in a fit of sobs.

  The creature’s arms flailed and its claws slashed. That was all she could see in the dark—the violent movements. She could hear two things besides the rain on the roof: Bobby’s screams, and something else ... a growling, wet and animalistic.

  Bobby’s screams became a hoarse gurgle, and then he fell silent.

  Suzie stared wide-eyed out the window, frozen in place, paralyzed. It was when she saw the creature ripping at Bobby viciously and heard the sound of wet tissue being torn away from bone that she snapped out of it and took a good look at her situation.

  Suzie leaned forward in the seat and reached down between her feet for her purse. Hands shaking, she brought the purse to her lap. She plunged her right hand in and groped around for her cell phone. She removed it from her purse and it slipped from her hand. The phone bounced back and forth between her shaking hands for a moment, like a slippery bar of soap in the shower, then disappeared in the darkness beneath the steering wheel.

  “Shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she chanted as she dove under the wheel for the phone. Her right hand groped back and forth over the floorboard for the cell phone, but found nothing but leaves and mud. Instead of swearing, she released a long, high moan that went on and on as she searched for the cell phone. She tried to reach beneath the seat, but stopped when the car moved.

  Suzie stopped moaning and struggled back up to a sitting position in her seat just in time to glimpse a naked man—

  A naked man a naked man oh Jesus something else what’s next a naked man what do I do what do I do—

  —rounding the front corner of the car on her side. The fog on the windows was gone and she saw him coming straight for her door, his erection bobbing with each step.

  The creature that had attacked Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

  She had not locked the door.

  Suzie let out a sharp cry as she twisted around to her right, reached over and—

  —the naked man pulled the door open.

  “Nooo!” Suzie screamed.

  There was something wrong with the man—heavy patches of hair grew over parts of his body, his thighs, his chest and sides, his upper arms. He was smeared with something dark and wet. He was bearded, but there was something besides his beard, something about his face—in the center, it jutted outward into the snout of an animal. And his left eye was missing.

  Her screams grew worse, until he punched her in the face.

  Suzie was immediately silenced and knocked backward into the car. She lost consciousness for a few seconds. When she half-opened her eyes, the world tilted and spun and she felt blood trickle down into her throat, tasted its salty, coppery taste, and had a coughing fit. She could feel her nose and left eye swelling.

  She was not sure where she was, but she was very cold. And someone was pawing at her. Her nostrils filled with the harsh, musky scent of an animal. She heard her clothes rip, felt someone roughly spread her legs.

  Suzie opened her eyes the rest of the way and looked at the round, white object glowing in the center of the ceiling over her head. A light. Then she recognized it as a dome light in a car, and everything came back.

  She lifted her head as he shoved into her. Suzie arched her body and screamed louder than she had so far that night.

  He grunted and growled and slobbered on her.

  Suzie stopped screaming. Her body went limp and jolted again and again as he pounded into her.

  For Suzie, everything went away—what was being done to her, the cold, the horrible thing that had just happened to Bobby—it all dissolved in her mind, along with the rest of her awareness. Her eyes remained open, but she saw nothing.

  * * * *

  Bra
ndi Powell was beside herself with excitement. She was on her first date with Deke Quimby, and even though it was the middle of winter, cold and raining furiously, Deke was driving her up the hill to the Jags!

  The rain fell hard and Deke had turned the windshield wipers all the way up. They swept furiously back and forth, but were still unable to keep the windshield clear.

  Brandi knew this date was because of the Christmas party over at Charlotte Parver’s house the night before Christmas Eve. Everybody had been drinking, and the smell of some strong marijuana had been skunk-like in the air—Brandi had had a little of both. Deke had been there, too, loudly enjoying himself with his friends.

  Deke Quimby was probably the best looking guy at Big Rock’s Dwight D. Eisenhower High School. He was athletic, but he wasn’t a jock. He was very intelligent—amazingly so to Brandi, who had to struggle in school—but not weird, like so many really smart students. Everyone liked him so much that he was President of the Senior Class.

  At the Christmas party, Deke had ended up slumped next to her on the couch, so drunk he was semi-conscious. His head lolled against her shoulder, and she left it there for the longest time, just sat perfectly still so he wouldn’t wake up. When he did open his eyes, he sat up straight, yawned, lifted his arms high over his head and stretched them. Then he turned to Brandi, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

  It was the biggest shock of her life. It was also the nicest. They’d sat there and kissed for a long time. Then, he’d stood, smiled down at her, and he’d said, “Merry Christmas.” He’d left the party after that, leaving Brandi weak on the couch.

  It had been all she’d thought about ever since. Until one evening, her cell phone rang, and it was Deke, asking her out to a movie. She thought he hadn’t even known her name, but there he was on the phone, asking her out.

  Brandi never had trouble getting dates. She was a curvaceous, pouty-lipped blonde with large, brown bedroom eyes. But she did not get guys in the same stratosphere as Deke Quimby. Few girls did. For one thing, he’d been dating Amber Mitchell for the longest time. But that had ended at the beginning of his senior year.