Ravenous

by Ray Garton

  Deke pulled off Seaview and onto the clearing that made up the Jags, and the headlights of his Accura swept over the tree trunks and bushes and—

  “Oh my God,” Brandi said.

  “What happened here?” Deke said as he brought the car to a stop, its headlights still on the other car.

  The passenger’s side door was open, and two pale, bare, female legs hung out, the knees bent, the rest of the body lying on its back in the car.

  “Stay here,” Deke said.

  “Wait!” Brandi said.

  “What?”

  For one thing, Brandi sure as hell did not want her evening at the Jags with Deke Quimby to be ruined, but the chances of that were starting to look really good.

  “Well,” she said, “we could always go someplace else.”

  Deke frowned. “Are you kidding? Maybe she’s sick, or hurt. I’ll be right back.”

  Damn, she thought, mentally kicking herself for saying the wrong thing. Now he probably thought she was some kind of cold, heartless monster.

  She sat in the car, engine idling, heater running. There was soft, easy music on his CD player—she didn’t know what it was, but it was nice, and she liked it. She watched as Deke went over to the other car, an old Toyota. Brandi recognized it because her older sister Cheri used to have one when Brandi was little. Deke wore a very nice shearling-lined jacket with a hood, which he pulled up over his head. At the other car, he braced himself with one hand against the edge of the roof and leaned in through the open door. The car’s headlights were still on, but Brandi didn’t think the engine was running.

  Something caught her eye. Movement beyond the Toyota.

  Something rose up on the other side of the Toyota, something dark and very tall. Something big. It walked along the car to the front, then stepped into the headlight beams.

  Brandi screamed when she saw it. She tried to get to the steering wheel, but her seatbelt was on and held her back. She struggled with it, unfastened it, then leaned over and pounded on the horn. She gave three bursts, then one long, sustained honk.

  The thing came to this side of the Toyota and started toward Deke. Only the open car door stood between Deke and the large creature.

  Deke pulled himself out of the Toyota, then stood and turned to her.

  Brandi stopped screaming, but kept honking, even though it did no good.

  Deke seemed to hear something behind him and spun around. The creature shoved the door closed, knocking Deke backward. The door slammed on the two bare legs, then swung back open again. The enormous creature was on Deke before he had his bearings. Brandi heard his screams as the thing lifted him up off the ground and buried its long, dog-like snout into his throat.

  Deke’s scream did not last long—it collapsed into a harsh gargle, then stopped. He went limp in the creature’s grasp. It threw him onto the muddy ground, then went to his body, got down, and began tearing at Deke.

  “Oh, Jesus, help me, please, Jesus, God, Mary—” Brandi got her cell phone from her purse, turned it on, and punched in nine-one-one.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” the woman on the phone said.

  Brandi babbled as her left hand crawled up the side of her face like a spider, then entangled its fingers in her hair, swept back through the hair until the fingers were free, then started over again.

  The operator said, “Please calm down, miss—what is your emergency?”

  “I-I-I—wait, wait,” Brandi said as she watched the thing tear Deke apart and eat him—it was actually eating him. It took gobs of glistening things from inside him and closed its fangs on them, chewing. Jiggling tissue dangled from its snout as it chewed. But what would it do when it was finished?

  Brandi found the master lock and locked all the doors. Then she put the phone to her ear again and said, “I’m at the Juh-Jags, the Jags up above town, above Big Rock, do you know—”

  “Yes, I know where the Jags are.”

  “My date is being killed by a big monster, and it’s already killed somebody else I think, and I-I’m in the car, alone, I’m alone, and it’s eating him, Jesus help me, it’s eating him!”

  “Who is attacking your date?”

  “No, no, it’s not a person, it’s this huge thing, this huge hairy thing, and it’s—”

  Brandi’s throat closed as she watched the thing stand. It towered over the Toyota. It turned slightly, until it faced her.

  It began to come her way.

  Brandi screamed, then said, “It’s coming, it’s coming this way, it’s coming over here, to the car, it’s, it’s—”

  Brandi dropped the telephone and scrambled over the gearshift and the center console—

  The thing reached the car and Brandi screamed as it slammed both hands down on the windshield and dragged its claws across the glass with a gnawing, sickening squealing sound, leaving behind eight white trails almost all the way across the glass.

  —into the driver’s seat. She could not reach the pedals and had to search for the handle that allowed her to move the seat forward—

  The thing roared and pounded on the top of the car.

  —and when she found it, she pulled it hard. The seat jerked forward, she sat up straight, put the gearshift in reverse, and slammed on the accelerator.

  From the floorboard in front of the passenger’s seat came the insect-like voice of the nine-one-one operator.

  The creature turned then and walked back over to Deke’s limp body. It hunkered down beside him and continued to eat.

  Brandi let the car idle, put it back in park, and decided to wait for the police. She cried and sobbed and prayed as the thing ate pieces of Deke. Then it lifted its head and made a sound that made Brandi scream.

  The thing eating Deke howled.

  29

  A Call From George

  Marge had made lasagna for dinner that night and offered to warm it up for Hurley when he got home.

  “I already ate, sweety,” he said. “But thanks.”

  “Are you home for the night?” Marge asked.

  “There’s no telling,” Hurley said. “That’s the plan, but with everything that’s been happening lately, there’s not much that would surprise me.”

  He took a cup of coffee from the kitchen into the living room and turned on CNN—the local news was already over. Hurley wondered how long it would be before the national press got interested in Big Rock and its ... what? Killer wolfman?

  Hurley dozed in his recliner and passed in and out of a dream that was red with blood. In the dream, a constant trilling echoed from some other place, on and on. When it finally stopped, he was shaken. He opened his eyes and sat up, startled.

  Marge was bent toward him with the phone in one hand. “A call for you. The deputy coroner.”

  “George?” Hurley said into the phone.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” George said.

  Hurley yawned. “No. I was dozing in front of the TV. What’s up?”

  George Purdy sighed. “Could you come up to the hospital, Sheriff?”

  “Sure. But why?”

  “I need to talk to you about this, uh ... this thing you sent me. ASAP.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Hurley turned the phone off and handed it back to Marge, who stood beside his chair.

  “Don’t you have deputies to do things for you?” Marge said, with a bit of a whine in her voice. But it was a pleasant whine, because he knew it was for him.

  “I have deputies to do the things that deputies do,” he said as he stood. “But I’m the only one who can do the things sheriffs do.” He gave her a hug and a kiss, then went upstairs to dress warmly.

  It was raining hard outside and Hurley drove the SUV through the downpour. Lightning flashed over the mountains in the distance.

  He drove by the Laramie house. The chill he felt as he passed it annoyed him, but he couldn’t help it. It hunkered there in the dark like some great troll, waiting for something tasty
to happen by. As he drove, Hurley refused to look at the house. But he could not shake the feeling that it was watching him.

  The hospital was a great lake of light atop Hospital Hill overlooking the town. Spears of light glowed down between the trees, illuminating the mist that hovered around the hill. Hurley parked in the Emergency Room lot. He went in through the ER entrance. In the basement, he rounded a few corners in the deserted corridor and came to the morgue. He pushed through one of the double, porthole doors.

  “That you, Sheriff?” George called.

  “None other.”

  Hurley turned to the right as George, bending down, closed one of the drawers in the wall. He stood up and turned to Hurley smiling.

  “What can I do for you, George?” Hurley said.

  “You can tell me what the hell’s on that table over there,” George said, pointing.

  Hurley looked in the direction of George’s finger and his eyes fell on the stainless-steel table on which lay the twisted, hairy, pink-fleshed thing he’d found on the lawn in front of the Crane house.

  The two men went to the table.

  “I’d hoped you could do that,” Hurley said, frowning down at the thing.

  No, it was not really a thing. There was clearly a naked, heavyset woman in there. Her breasts were visible, although her shoulders and upper arms were covered with a coat of dark-brown hair, and were quite muscular, her back hunched. The white hillock of her body was hairless. The brown fur covered what was left of her face, and her mouth and nose appeared somewhat simian—they appeared to be stretched outward from the face, but rounded—and yet, with all that, he could make out some of Emily Crane’s features: Her cheeks, her ears. Her wide-open mouth revealed teeth that came to sharp points.

  Hurley had seen her on the lawn in the glow of the porch light. Seeing her now under the harsh lights of the morgue, in sickening detail, made Hurley’s bowels feel loose.

  Sheriff Hurley, you have an infestation of werewolves.

  “Dear Jesus,” Hurley breathed.

  “You recognize her?”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “Who is—what is she?”

  “Just like I thought. It’s the receptionist down at the station—Emily Crane. She was found in front of her house.”

  George stood on the opposite side of the table from Hurley. He put both hands on the guttered edge of the table and clutched it with white knuckles, as he leaned forward. “You’re telling me this ... this thing is a woman you know?” George said.

  She died mid-transformation.

  Hurley nodded awhile, looking at the mess on the table, then said, “Yes.”

  Her forearms were hairless. Her fingernails had been replaced by long, curved, black claws that grew out of her fingertips. Her fat, white, cottage-cheese thighs were bare, but her lower legs were heavily furred and ended not in feet but in long hairy paws with black claws.

  Raising his voice a little, George said, “Then would you mind telling me what the hell happened to her? I mean, God, Farrell, look at her! She’s half ... something else. Her knees, Farrell—they bend the—are you looking at them? They bend the wrong fucking way! And those aren’t human feet—those are the feet of an animal! A dog, or a, a wolf, or something. And her teeth—look at her teeth, for God’s sake! I don’t like cutting something open unless I know what it is, so that’s why I called you up here, Sheriff, because I want to know what the hell this is!”

  Hurley looked across the table at George. The man’s face was pale and intense. Unspilled tears glistened in his eyes and his lips trembled ever so slightly.

  “This thing isn’t human,” George whispered. “It’s not ... right. What does it look like to you, Sheriff? Huh? Because it looks a hell of a lot to me like this woman was in the process of ... “ He merely breathed the rest of his words: “ ... of becoming something ... else when she died.”

  ... werewolves.

  Hurley looked down at the Emily-thing again and slowly shook his head. “I can’t explain it, George,” he whispered. “But I’m very interested in knowing as much as I can about it. So why don’t you do your best with it?”

  George looked down at the remains with a look of consternation on his face. “Do my best?”

  “Just approach it like any other autopsy, but take twice the usual number of photographs and make very careful notes because I want to know every single detail of what you find.”

  She was shot with shells loaded with silver buckshot.

  Looking down at the Emily-thing again, George said, “I just have one question, and I’m going to ask you not to laugh. I mean, I don’t know what the hell this is, what I’m dealing with, it could be ... anything. And because of that, I have to ask you, Farrell ... are you ... sure ... it’s dead?”

  Werewolves have an allergic reaction to silver that is always fatal, even if it takes a little time to kill them.

  Hurley could not get Daniel Fargo’s voice out of his head. It spoke there again and again, echoing to the point of irritation, its words drilling themselves into his mind with the niggling whine of a mosquito flying around his ear.

  “Yes,” Hurley said, “I’m thinking he killed it.”

  “Who killed it?”

  “I’m not positive, but I now suspect it was a man named Daniel Fargo. A man I need to see again. Right away.”

  Hurley turned away from the thing on the table and headed back for the door.

  “Where are you going?” George said.

  “To see if I can find him.” He stopped and turned back to George. “Do me a favor. Don’t let anyone see that thing, and don’t talk to anyone about it, okay? Especially the press.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Hurley turned to leave, but George stopped him.

  “Sheriff, tell me. What the hell’s going on in this town?”

  Hurley frowned. “You want to know the truth? I’m not exactly sure. But I think ... I think we’ve got an infestation of werewolves.”

  George’s mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out.

  Hurley was pushing through the door when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He stood in the open doorway as he took out his phone, and flipped it open.

  “Hurley.”

  “I thought you might like to know, Sheriff,” Sergeant Tony Naccarato said.

  “Know what, Tony?”

  “There’s been a murder and a rape. Two murders, to be exact. Up on the Jags. Deputies are there now, but seeing it’s another one, I thought I’d call you, like you said.”

  Hurley winced and cursed under his breath. “The Jags, you say? The make-out spot?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Thanks for calling, Tony. I’m on my way.”

  As Hurley closed his phone, he said, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Bad news?” George said.

  “Two more killings. And another rape. In the same place.”

  “The same place? How’d that happen?”

  Hurley shook his head. “I’m almost afraid to find out.”

  “I guess I’ll see you there,” George said as Hurley left.

  30

  Death at the Jags

  The rain, which had been starting and stopping all day, had stopped once again as Hurley drove the winding, narrow road that led up the hill to the Jags. Through the pines, he caught glimpses of the pulsing glow of red and blue emergency lights up ahead. He made the final turn at the top of the hill and found two cruisers, two ambulances, and a couple of television news vans that had set up their lights. Two reporters stood in front of cameras talking into their microphones several yards to the side of the scene. He recognized both of them—Shana Myers from Channel 4 and Mike Wills from Channel 7.

  “Oh, shit,” Hurley said as he parked.

  As Hurley got out, he could hear a woman crying somewhere and looked around until he saw the girl sitting in the back of one of the cruisers with the door open wide. He looked over at the other cruiser and saw the same thing—a you
ng woman sitting in the back seat with the door open, but she was not crying, just sitting and staring, while a female deputy hunkered down, talking to her. He walked over to Deputy Kopechne.

  “What’s the story, Kopechne?”

  “Two bodies, both found over there—” Kopechne pointed. “—one on each side of that car. We found a girl in each car.”

  “How bad are they?” Hurley asked.

  “The one who’s crying wasn’t hurt at all, she’s just really upset. But the other one says she was raped, and she’s pretty beaten up.”

  “Who made the call?” Hurley said.

  “The girl who’s crying.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to her first. What about the bodies?”

  “Oh, jeez, they’re a mess. Just like the guy over on Magnolia, only worse, if that’s possible.”

  “And the reporters?”

  “I personally told them to back the hell off till you got here. They’re all yours.”

  Hurley sighed as he turned and saw both of them coming his way, the man from Channel 4 and the woman from Channel 2.

  “Hold ‘em off,” Hurley said.

  He turned away and walked over to the car that held the crying young woman, whose sobs were strong enough to shake the cruiser’s frame just a little. The sheriff hunkered down in the V formed by the open car door, and smiled at the girl, a teenager.

  “Excuse me, Miss, but I’m Sheriff Hurley,” he said quietly. “What’s your name?”

  “Brandi. Brandi Powell.”

  “I know this is a bad time, Brandi, but I need you to answer some questions. Would that be all right?”

  She took in a deep, shaky breath and fought to hold back her sobs. After a moment, she took a small package of tissues from her purse, removed one, and blew her nose. Then she turned to him, her eyes puffy, her pretty face red and glistening with tears.

  “Why did you call the police, Brandi?” Hurley said.

  She told him, and as he listened, he felt a sick kind of sensation in his gut—the way the old elevator in the courthouse used to make him feel when it dropped a little too suddenly.