Ravenous

by Ray Garton

  Something punched through the crack—a long, muscular arm covered with light brown hair, and a hand with long, slender, black-clawed fingers curled into a fist.

  With one more slam, the door exploded inward in a storm of wooden chunks, shards, and chips.

  Jason burst into the living room with a menacing growl, head tilted forward, narrowed eyes glaring at Jimmy from below a head of wild, white-streaked hair. He stood there for just a moment, hardly long enough to get his bearings. Then, arms outstretched, he launched himself at Jimmy with high, hateful roar.

  At the same time, Andrea attacked Jimmy as well.

  Although he struggled and slashed and snapped his fangs, Jimmy went down beneath their weight. Jason and Andrea were without mercy—their claws and fangs sliced through Jimmy’s flesh repeatedly, cutting deeper, opening him wider. Jimmy’s movements became stiff and slow, and his growls dissolved into throaty gurgles, but he continued to fight.

  Somewhere in the distance outside, a siren wailed.

  * * * *

  Hurley hit the brake, and his SUV squealed to a stop in front of Doris Whitacker’s house. Cruisers pulled in fast behind him and clogged the street as they came to a stop, their red and blue lights throbbing.

  “A familiar neighborhood,” Fargo said, the shotgun between his knees, its barrel pointing at the floorboard.

  Hurley looked at the computer screen attached to his console and rechecked the address, then his eyes fell on the appropriate house across the street. The front door was open and he could see erratic movement inside. He got out of the SUV and slammed his door, which was quickly followed by Fargo’s on the other side. Then the doors of the cruisers slammed one after another, like muffled gunshots that echoed up and down the street, and footsteps clattered across the pavement as the deputies followed Hurley to the house.

  Hurley heard the growling as soon as he was outside the SUV, and it grew louder as he drew closer to the house. The house sounded like a zoo gone wild inside. He stopped on the lawn and turned to the deputies, their weapons drawn.

  “Surround the house,” he said. “Be alert, and be prepared to open fire.”

  As the deputies began to fan out, something shot out of the open door. No, Hurley realized—it was two somethings. They were very big, and quite hairy.

  Fargo did not hesitate. He fired his shotgun.

  The creatures moved fast.

  The deputies stopped in their tracks and spun around at the sound of gunfire. Some of them spotted the fleeing creatures. Guns were raised and fired, including Hurley’s.

  The creatures became two blurred shadows racing through the darkness.

  “After them!” Hurley shouted, sweeping his hand at four nearby deputies, who fell into pursuit.

  A moment later, the creatures were gone.

  “Shit,” Hurley said.

  “Look,” Fargo said, pointing as they moved closer to the house. “Another one.”

  Hurley realized that the door he’d thought was open was actually gone—it lay scattered in pieces around the floor inside. And there was something else on the floor, something large that writhed and bucked as it made sounds that were a cross between long groans and growls.

  “Quickly,” Fargo said as he picked up his pace, leaning on the cane as he limped over the wet grass.

  The two men rushed up to the empty doorway. The creature on the floor was wounded, but not dead.

  “It’s recovering,” Fargo said, lifting his shotgun as he stepped through the doorway, with Hurley behind him. Fargo stood over the creature and nearly touched the barrel to its head.

  The shotgun exploded. So did the creature’s head. Fargo lowered the gun to the creature’s torn and bloody abdomen and fired again.

  Hurley watched the creature as it jerked and convulsed on the floor. Then he looked at Fargo and said, “I’m gonna get some deputies in here and search the house.”

  “Don’t worry, there are no more of them here,” Fargo said. “If there were, we’d know about.”

  “Just the same.”

  Hurley turned and left the house as Fargo stared down at the blistering, dying thing on the floor.

  40

  Jason and Andrea

  As Jason and Andrea put the gunfire behind them, ran past the houses and into the misty, dripping woods beyond, the human beings they’d been earlier had only the vaguest, most remote sense of their surroundings. Their intellects had been overcome and deeply suppressed by something more primitive, an animal instinct that was led by an acute, powerful sense of smell and sharp, crystal-clear hearing.

  Jason was very aware of one thing, though—it was an image in his mind, vivid and hot: An old, dark, dilapidated house ...

  He heard everything around him, even those things at some distance. As they’d run away from the gunfire, he’d heard the bullets flying like tiny hummingbirds past his ears. There had been pursuing footsteps behind them, but they’d quickly faded as Jason and Andrea sprinted ahead. Now, he could smell the wet earth and wood all around him, the leaves, the weeds. Even more, he could smell Andrea next to him, her flesh, her fur, her—

  Blood?

  Suddenly, he realized she was falling behind him as he ran. He stopped and turned, a low, almost inaudible growl in his chest.

  She’d fallen to the ground. Jason went to her side and hunkered down.

  She was bleeding from her neck from a small hole. She began to shiver, then quake. As she released a sound that was in part a growl, and in part a high, frightened cry, she rolled over onto her back and arched her back, as if in the midst of a seizure.

  Jason knelt beside her and whined. His suppressed human consciousness stirred deep in his mind and words and feelings—

  silver

  pain

  death

  —began to float to the surface of his more primitive consciousness.

  Andrea roared as her body began to jerk and quake, releasing thick popping sounds, and her flesh began to bubble in places like boiling water. Her fangs receded as her long muzzle seemed to melt away beneath bulging, pained eyes. Fingers shortened—

  silver

  bullets

  silver bullets

  —and sharp, black claws disappeared. Her gold-streaked blonde fur began to thin out. The process went back and forth as blisters opened up on her flesh and blood and fluids dribbled from them. Her breathing became ragged and strained.

  Andrea’s eyes, now back to their normal soft brown, turned to Jason’s and pleaded for help, for relief from pain, for protection from fear.

  Jason felt himself begin to change as the words and feelings became clearer in his mind.

  silver

  bullet

  kill

  reaction

  allergic reaction

  silver bullet

  God oh God oh God—

  —silver bullets, that man said silver bullets would kill the werewolves and—

  —what’s happened to me how did I become this thing how how how this thing—

  —they fired at us and a bullet hit her and now she’s—

  “Andrea!” he cried, his voice thick, heavy, and cracked, not quite his own yet as he continued to return to his former self.

  Her cries grew louder, more desperate, more pained.

  Jason saw his hand—a small patch of brown fur still on the back of it—reach down and clutch hers—an undulating, blistering, constantly changing thing—and hold tight.

  It’s killing her, he thought. She’s dying.

  He held her hand tightly between both of his, as if he could prevent it, keep her there with him, stop her death. His eyes stung with tears.

  Andrea arched her back again as the fanged muzzle jutted from her face once more, then began to retreat again. Her head tilted back, mouth opened, and she released a long, miserable howl.

  * * * *

  “You hear that?” Hurley said to no one in particular as he stood on the front porch. Several deputies standing around the bottom of t
he front steps turned toward him, then some of them cocked their heads and listened.

  The streetlights were dully reflected in glowing pools on the wet pavement, sparking here and there on the shiny surface of puddles. Up and down the street, dogs barked. Somewhere, a cat shrieked.

  Then the sound came again—high and sustained and quavering.

  Gooseflesh passed over Hurley’s shoulders and back in a sheet. The sound was separate from the barking dogs—separate and different. It had a richer quality than the sounds of the dogs ... a bigger quality.

  “A howl,” one of the deputies said.

  “Over that way,” another said, pointing across the street.

  “Deputy Kopechne, get the coroner out here.”

  “Right away, Sheriff,” the deputy said, turning and walking away.

  “You four, and you two,” Hurley said, pointing deputies out as he skipped the steps and jumped down to the sidewalk below. “They haven’t gone far. Come with me. Now.”

  He took his flashlight from his belt and turned it on as he ran across the lawn and into the street, which throbbed with the red-and-blue lights of the cruisers parked all along the sidewalks on both sides. The deputies ran with him, flicking on their flashlights, their footsteps machine-gunning over the wet pavement. They ran across Doris Whitacker’s front lawn and down the left side of her house. At the rear of the backyard, they vaulted over a four-foot wooden fence and rushed across the short expanse of empty field beyond it, then into the woods.

  * * * *

  Jason heard a distinctly canine whimpering and realized it was coming from him. On his knees, he rocked forward and back, clutching Andrea’s hand as he watched her die.

  She continued to change back and forth, blisters rising on her bubbling flesh, sores opening and running. She howled again, the sound cutting through the misty night.

  “Andrea ... Andrea ... “

  Jason repeated her name again and again as she grew worse, became more and more unrecognizable. He spoke her name softly, though he felt like screaming until his throat tore open, like tearing his hair out, clawing his own flesh, and gouging his eyes. Hot tears ran down his cheeks as he died inside.

  Gradually, he became aware of other sounds, in the distance at first, but rapidly growing closer—rustling bushes, footsteps, quiet voices. Jason turned and looked back the way they had come, his eyes narrowing as he focused his hearing in that direction.

  They’re coming, he thought.

  Behind those running sounds were others—two groups were rapidly heading toward him.

  He looked down at Andrea again and fought to pull himself together. He leaned in close, until his face was almost touching hers. He placed his hand gently to her cheek, feeling the horrible, moist activity in her flesh.

  “Andrea,” he breathed, not knowing if she could hear him, if she was even aware of his presence. Her eyes looked through him as they narrowed in pain and agony. “Andrea, I ... I love you. I love you.”

  Her body jerked violently under him once, twice, then stiffened. She made a choking sound in her throat.

  The footsteps and the sounds of voices grew even closer. They would come through the mist soon, both groups, and they would see him. They would raise their guns and fire, and the silver bullets would pierce his flesh. Then he would become like Andrea ... and eventually, he would die.

  Jason stood slowly, his body changing again as he did so—the hair on his body returning, the muzzle growing out of his face, teeth lengthening into fangs. When he looked down at Andrea, she was still lying rigidly on the ground, making awful gurgling sounds. He tore his eyes from her, forced himself to turn away.

  As he ran into the woods, that old house was foremost in his mind once again. But vaguely, he was aware of the hot tears stinging his eyes.

  * * * *

  The beam of Hurley’s flashlight fell on the first group of deputies, then lowered to the body on the ground. It was still alive, but he immediately recognized the condition and knew it was dying.

  Two of the deputies spoke almost simultaneously:

  “Holy shit.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Hurley hissed, “Shh!” He listened for a moment, but heard no movement around them, no sounds of something retreating quickly. “Well,” he said, looking down at the bleeding, wheezing creature, “we got one of the two, anyway.”

  “Shouldn’t we, uh ... kill it?” a deputy asked, his voice unsteady.

  “We already have,” Hurley said. “It just takes a little while for them to die.”

  He looked ahead into the dark, dripping woods and wondered where the other one had gone.

  41

  In the House

  The house rose up out of the night and grew quickly in size, filling Jason’s field of vision—as if it were approaching him rather than the other way around.

  As he’d headed for the house, led by an inner sense of direction that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside his head, Jason’s belly had growled with hunger, and his heart still ached over the loss of Andrea. But as strong as these were, his hunger and emotional pain could not overwhelm the need, burning like fire in the front of his mind, to make his way to the house. Something there drew him, reeled him in like a fish on a line.

  The house stood before him, a blacker structure against the blackness of the night, with soft light glowing vaguely in some of the broken, glass-fanged windows. Jason stood cautiously across the street, staring at the house from the safety of a stand of Sitka spruce trees, eyes narrowed, his breath loud in his alert ears. He could feel the beating of his heart in his chest. Pulled toward the house by something he did not understand, he moved forward across a deep ditch running with water that was cold against his feet, then loped into the road and headed toward it.

  Light suddenly surrounded him and he turned to his left and raised his claws slightly, just as two glowing orbs rushed at him fast. A terrible screaming sound, vaguely familiar, cut through the night—

  tires

  brakes

  —and the lights veered sharply to the right. For an instant, Jason caught a glimpse of two pale, horrified faces beyond the windshield—a man and a woman. The car thumped loudly as it hit the ditch, then slammed into the trunk of one of the spruce trees with a thunderous crunch. Upon impact, the car’s lights blinked out and the passenger shot through the windshield like a missile, flying clear of the hood and disappearing into the dark.

  Still standing in the road, Jason turned away from the wrecked car and almost immediately forgot about it as he focused his attention once again on the house. He crossed the road quickly, before anymore lights came, and bounded over the broken-down old fence in front of the house. He stood on the broken walkway that led to the porch and stared at the house.

  A voice spoke inside his head:

  “You’re heeere ... come iiin ... come iiin ... come iiin ... “

  Jason lifted his leg past the broken front steps and moved up onto the porch. It creaked and crackled under his weight but held him as he went to the door. He stopped and stood there for a long moment, uncertain, mildly confused. The house seemed to be trying to embrace him, to take him in invisible arms and hold him closely, tightly.

  He sensed something ... an unfamiliar feeling, but one he recognized nonetheless. He sensed ... others. Suddenly, he knew he was no longer alone. On the other side of the battered, cracked old door in front of him, there were others ... like him ... hungry ... burning with lust ... and there was something else ... someone else ... a strong presence that felt even stronger as it drew nearer to him, until—

  The door was pulled open slowly. In the darkness beyond stood a tall, hulking figure.

  Jason focused his eyes, released a low, warning growl without even realizing he was doing it. At the same time, he felt the tingling sensation of his fur shifting over his flesh, as if a breeze were passing over him. The figure stood perfectly still, and yet Jason felt as if it were moving closer to him, closing in suddenly,
stepping into his space and crowding him.

  A single silver eye stared back at him for awhile, then the shape stepped forward. It had halted its transformation around the halfway mark—it was a man covered with hair, with tall, pointed ears on each side of his head, and a mouthful of fangs but no snout. His left eye was gone and skin had mostly grown over the empty socket.

  The man spoke in a low, rumbling voice, and as he spoke one word, the same word was echoed in Jason’s head, as if the wolf-man were communicating with him in two ways at once:

  “Jason.”

  “Jaaasooon.”

  For an instant, a terrible fear rose up in Jason. He took a fraction of a step backward and almost turned and ran, but other eyes appeared in the darkness behind the hairy, one-eyed man. They glimmered and flashed as they stared directly into Jason’s eyes—

  —and suddenly, he felt welcomed, as if they had been waiting for him. For indeed they had, and now they were glad he’d arrived.

  Just out of the reach of his mind’s hearing, like voices that could barely be heard on a radio with bad reception, Jason heard the others, felt them, picked up the very edges of their thoughts as they reached out to him from behind their glistening eyes. At the same time, he heard them with his ears, as well—the low, not unpleasant growling sounds they made deep in their chests. The growls were almost voices, but still not quite human.

  “Come—”

  “—iiin—”

  “—in,” the man said. “You’re—”

  “—hooome—”

  “—home now.” He lifted his arm slowly, reached out a hand to Jason, its black claws like needles coming from the tips of his fingers.

  Jason took in a deep breath, then released it tremulously. He stepped forward as the man and the others stepped back, and Jason entered the house.

  * * * *

  Doris peered out her front window through her binoculars. Sheriff’s Department cruisers were parked everywhere, most of them with their red-and-blue bars of light on top flashing, the colors bleeding all over the road and sidewalks and yards. Through the open doorway of the Norton house, she could see a body lying on the floor. It seemed to be moving slightly, but no one was nearby or helping out—all the police were outside.