by Tad Williams
As the snout pressed down toward me, ropes of saliva dripping over the shotgun stock, I heard a rumbling I hadn’t heard before. For a second I hoped it was an earthquake, and that at least the house might collapse on this evil son of a bitch after he finished killing me. Then I realized it was more likely to be Henry or the other guard, hurrying to help their boss. I fought to get out from under Uberhardt, but it took all my strength just to keep the doctor’s jaws from my throat.
A second or two later the noise had grown so loud that even Uberhardt paused, orange eyes rolling to the side to see what was happening, his jaws still grinding on the wooden shotgun stock, which was starting to look like an old corncob. But neither of us was prepared for what happened next, namely eight hundred pounds of angry pork reaching the top of the stairs, accelerating down the hallway, then crashing through the door. Uberhardt and I had only broken the bolt on it and splintered the hinges. The arrival of George Noceda, werehog, blew the thing into matchsticks.
High-speed pig hit monster wolf like a diesel freight train at the end of a long downgrade. Both of them skidded across the carpet and smashed a huge dimple in the plasterboard wall, like a horizontal meteor crater, but they didn’t even seem to notice. I rolled to the side, and for about twenty dazed seconds that seemed longer, watched the damnedest fight I’d ever seen. I mean, seriously, if they’d put that thing on pay-per-view they could have made millions. Grunting, howling, barking, squealing, spraying blood, over a half-ton of meat and bristly hair rolled around the room.
But big as he was, and as many gouges as his tusks had already put in Uberhardt’s pelt, it was clear to me that George was going to lose this fight. He had size on his side, but the advantage of surprise was now gone and the tide was starting to turn. George didn’t have claws: the Uberhardt-wolf did, and even as George pushed him back against the wall, the doctor’s dirty talons raked his skin into tendrils of bleeding pork rind. I had to do something, anything, to change the odds.
I had a sudden idea, and slapped at my pocket for the silver bullet, but felt nothing there. I rolled out of the way again as the cyclone of teeth and tusks threatened to pull me in, but even when I turned my pocket inside-out, it was still empty. Petar Vesić’s silver bullet was gone, lost in my various struggles. Hope dissolved like snow in bright sunshine.
Then I heard a single word above the gasping and snorting of two immense animals locked in a death-struggle. “Here.”
I turned. The boy had climbed back onto the couch, but he was holding his hand out. The bullet lay in his palm, nestled like a pearl in an oyster. “Here,” he said again.
For the first time I saw that young Fritz’s eyes had a tinge of yellow around the brown. “Do you…do you know what I’m going to do with this?”
He only nodded. It seemed he spoke English after all. Still waters and all that.
I took it from him and turned, letting the silver cylinder slide down the barrel of the shotgun -- the barrel that still contained an unfired shell. Uberhardt was on top of George now, his snout darting over and over again toward George’s fat neck, and my friend was squealing in panicked rage -- he knew he was going to die. Horrible sound. Never want to hear it again.
I didn’t bother to make a speech, or give Uberhardt a chance to surrender. I’m an angel, not a saint. I just shoved the end of the barrel against the back of the wolf’s low, wide head and said, “God can decide what to do with you.” Then I pulled the trigger.
The echoes had gone before the wolf finished twitching -- at least I think so, because I couldn’t hear very well. The amateur folklorist in me was interested to see that Uberhardt didn’t revert back to human form after he died. Just lay there looking like a big pile of hairy, dead werewolf.
I stood over the body long enough to make sure, but pretty much everything above his lower jaw was gone. “I guess he’s not going to get that Nobel Prize now,” I said. I wanted to laugh or cry, but didn’t do either. George didn’t reply. I turned, suddenly terrified that I’d been too late, but my friend was struggling up onto his trotters. It looked like someone was trying to launch a crippled zeppelin smeared with red pain. “Jesus, George,” I said, “are you okay?”
“No te preocupes por mi, Bobby,” he told me, then listed a little to one side before getting all his feet under him again.
“You saved my life, buddy.” I looked him over, but despite some awful gouges near his throat and deep scrapes on his belly, none of the wounds seemed life-threatening. “I mean that. I was on the way out.”
“All in a day’s work, Mr. D.” He drooled some blood, then spat to get rid of some more, which took a few moments. He looked over to the boy on the bed, who didn’t seem any more upset or frightened than he had before his grandfather’s head was blown into sticky specks. “Why don’t you go find the rest of your clothes?” George said to me. “I’ll talk to the kid.”
I nodded. That’s why I’d brought him along, after all.
The first thing I did was look out the broken window. I was half-hoping that poor, crazy Maria Uberhardt would be gone, that she had survived and escaped, but the pale, broken body of the white wolf still lay on the concrete below.
We’re going to have to take the boy out another way, I decided.
Limping, dripping more than a little blood, I explored the rest of the house, or at least enough to see that I didn’t really want to spend much time on Uberhardt’s downstairs lab at all -- just a glimpse of it made me feel pretty sick. None of the subjects of his experiments were still alive, but there had been plenty of them, now preserved in freezers and formaldehyde. I called him “Mengele” before, but Mengele was a piker compared to the wolf doctor.
When I struggled back to the upper part of the house, I saw that unlike the doctor’s daughter, the two guards had vanished, although not without leaving a lot of their blood around first. That was okay, since I’d given both of them a few good shots to remember me by, and I had no interest in trying to get them sent to jail for Aiding A Known Werewolf or Torturing An Angel. Even in San Judas, the cops have their limits.
I had put my shoes on and was buttoning my shirt -- the only things I had now, including my skin and hair, that weren’t stiff with drying blood -- when I got back to the playroom. George was sitting on the floor talking quietly but intently with the boy, who by his expression might have been having a very ordinary conversation with a very ordinary human.
My friend looked up. “Fritz says he won’t mind staying with me for a while. Until we figure out what’s best for him. He needs food and he needs a safe place to sleep.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense.”
George gave me a look. Pigs can shame you. Don’t think they can’t. “Jeez, Bobby, what were you going to do, just let him out on a street corner? You’re not very good with kids, are you?”
“Nobody’s ever accused me of it.” I looked around me at the unholy mess, most definitely including the large, bestial corpse in the center of the room. “But, no, I wouldn’t have put him on the street. This is Petar Vesic’s great-grandson, after all.” But I didn’t want him to see what was going to happen next. “Why don’t you take young Fritz out to your trailer, George? I’ve got a few more things to do here.”
“Okay.” George levered himself onto all four feet. “He can ride up front with Javier.”
“So Javier came back?”
“He went to take a leak, like you said. He’s the one who let me out. But I couldn’t sit around any more waiting to see what happened. I was worried about you, Bobby, and it was getting late…”
“Thanks, George. And I mean that.”
“Anyway, Fritz can ride up front with you and him. The sun will be up any time now. I wouldn’t want to scare the kid by him seeing me… that way.”
“No, of course not. Everybody likes a talking pig. Nobody likes a grunting naked man.”
“You joke about it, but it’s true.”
“I know, man. Forgive me, I’m tired.”
The kid walked down the stairs with one hand on George’s back, like they were already fast friends. When they were out of the house, I took the cans of gasoline I’d found in the garage -- these Nazi-hideout people always keep things like that around for their generators in case of the Great Race War -- and sprinkled it liberally around the doctor’s unpleasant lab, trying not to look at any of the specimens this time. Then, when I could scarcely breathe from the fumes, I took a couple of more cans and soaked the carpets on the stairs all the way to the top floor to make sure that hellhole of a place was burning good and proper before any fire crews arrived. Then I went back for one more can and poured the whole thing over Uberhardt’s corpse. The doctor from Mauthausen might not have felt he had much in common with Hitler, but I’d seen more than a few similarities, so I thought it was appropriate their mortal remains disappeared the same way.
As we drove the big trailer down the hill, the boy sitting quietly on my lap watching the trees go past, the rearview mirror showed me the first flames reaching high into the sky behind us, scorching the last hour of night like a bright star over Bethlehem.
Heaven was waiting for me. No sooner had I fallen into my own bed at about dawn on Christmas morning than I found myself in the dim, strange place we call Outside. Ambriel and the soul of Petar Vesić were waiting for me.
“Where is my grandson?” the old man demanded even before Ambriel spoke.
I looked to the brightness that was the judge, but Ambriel made no sign, so I told Vesić the whole story. When I said that his grandson was buried on the hillside beside the pile of ashes that had been Uberhardt’s retreat, he wept. Yes, souls can weep. You damn bet they can. “God save his soul, I will never see him again,” Vesic said. “He was a good boy. He will be in Heaven, and I…” He trailed off, but we all knew what he meant.
“But there’s more you need to know,” I said, and told Petar Vesić about his great-grandson -- the descendant he hadn’t known he had.
I’d hoped it would cheer him, but at first it seemed only to do the reverse. “But what will become of him? Who will take care of him? Oh, merciful God, if you are real, why have you left my great-grandchild alone in the world?”
“Actually, he’s in very good hands.” I thought about how bizarre it would sound if I tried to explain it. “He’s with a friend of mine. A friend who… understands. A friend who has some of the same problems.”
“Truly?” Vesic looked like he wanted to believe but couldn’t.
“I swear to you it’s true. On my honor as an angel. On my own soul.”
The old man looked at me long and carefully. Then he turned to Ambriel and said, “All right. It’s enough. I have to trust you all. I’m ready to go to…” He took a breath. “I’m ready to go.”
The radiance that was Ambriel flared a little. “For the crimes you have committed, Hell should be the only proper punishment, Petar Vesić. But you were not to blame for most of the evil you did, and you tried to repair what you could.
“You are sentenced to a hundred years in Purgatory. If you continue to show repentance there, I will recommend that Heaven accept you when your sentence ends.”
Vesic’s look of astonishment as he faded away was something I can’t describe. I was a little surprised myself. “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “That family deserves better than they got.”
“Many do,” said Ambriel. “And now, Doloriel, one further matter. From what you have said, your friend the unfortunate George Noceda risked his life to save the child.”
“And me. He definitely saved me. George is a good guy.”
Ambriel was silent for a moment, flickering. “It is beyond my power to undo his curse,” she said, “but a small reward is within the discretion of my authority.” Her fires dwindled a little, and when they blazed back up again they were brighter, hard to look at straight. “There. It is done. Tell him this will only last until the first hour of the new year, so he should enjoy it while he can.”
“I thought Earthly calendars didn’t mean anything in Heaven,” I said.
“That is so,” she said. “But sometimes it is good for Heaven to be reminded of the bright, brief flicker of earthly lives.” Then she was gone and I was lying in my bed in my own place, aching like a piece of tenderized meat, but with a good feeling inside. That doesn’t happen that much when I’m dealing with Heaven, so it was a nice Christmas present.
Later in the morning, after a shower and sleep and enough coffee and breakfast in me to fuel an entire squad of Santa’s elves, I drove back up to George’s place in the hills. Javier let me in, looking like a man who’s just seen Martians land on his lawn, and I quickly found out why. George stood up as I got to the living room. That was the first amazing thing -- George had never been inside his own house as long as I’d known him. But there he was, wearing a terrycloth robe over his bulky form -- his bulky, human form. Young Fritz sat on the floor beside him, playing with a toy car set that I suspected Javier had just bought that morning at the first open place he could find. There was even a tree in the corner, obviously improvised because it had no lights and all the ornaments were Christmas cards from local businesses. Still, it looked pretty damn festive.
“Look, Bobby!” said George. “I’m human! I mean, my human brain is in my human body!”
“I know, George. And that’s great, really, but…” I trailed off. I hated having to spoil the amazing look on his face with the rest of the story.
“But it won’t last. Shoot, Bobby, I know that. I can feel the timer ticking in my head, if that makes sense. I only have a few days.” But he didn’t look very upset about that.
“Until New Year’s,” I said.
“That’s plenty of time. Right, Fritz?” The boy looked up, smiled a secretive smile, and went back to his cars. He was a quiet one, the kid, silent and deep, but of course, he’d seen a lot of weird things in his short life. I couldn’t help wondering what the rest of his story would be like. I hoped it would turn out as nicely as we all wanted.
“So what are you going to do, George?” I asked. “You could spend some time in Vegas. Drinks, shows, find a woman…” I tried to imagine what I’d do if I had my own body back for the first time in decades. “Maybe more than a few women.”
George spluttered his derision. I’d never seen his big, round face with intelligence behind the eyes. He looked like a really nice guy. “Booze and hookers? Come on, Bobby, not in front of the boy. Nah, I don’t need that.”
“Then what?”
“What do you think? I’m going to spend time with this little guy here, before he goes to live with my cousin Rosa.” He ruffled the child’s dark hair. “Your Tio Bobby here will keep an eye out for you when I can’t, Fritz. He and Tia Rosa will take really good care of you. And you can come visit me any time you want!”
“When you’re a pig?” the boy asked without looking up.
“Of course. I’m usually no fun when I look like a person. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” said Fritz, and sounded like he meant it. “I like you when you’re a pig.”
“Hold up just a second,” I said. “Are you really going to take this once-in-a-lifetime chance and spend it all at home?”
Human George was just as capable of showing disgust as Porcine George. “Not even! First we’re going to go out to dinner, so I can see what human food tastes like again with a human mouth. Then we’ll go down to see the Christmas lights -- they keep them up for days. And we’ll go to the beach, or maybe up to Big Basin to hike…! Man, there’s a ton of stuff to do, right, Fritz?”
And the kid smiled, a real, honest, childhood smile. That was it right there as far as I was concerned, the highlight of the whole thing. The reason for the season. “To the beach, Tio George?” he said. “You mean the ocean? The real ocean?”
“Haven’t you ever been?” George shook his head. “Heck yeah, the real ocean. And we’ll go to the boardwalk, too. Have you ever been on a roller coaster?”
I left the bi
g bad pig and the last little wolf discussing how many rides they could fit into an afternoon. I had the distinct feeling that I wasn’t needed, and I liked that feeling.
So I drove home. The Christmas lights were off in the middle of the day, of course, and the decorations were looking just a tiny bit bedraggled, but they still looked mighty nice to me. The streets of San Judas were mostly empty because a good chunk of the populace was home, surrounded by a sea of torn wrapping paper, eating peanut brittle and cookies, and trying to remember where they’d put the AA batteries. Later they’d be driving to visit relatives, and the Jewish ones would be out getting Chinese, and me -- well, I’d probably be down at the Compasses slamming back a few with the rest of the workaholic angels. For now, though, I was just enjoying the quiet streets, and being scraped up and bruised but not dead. Okay, and enjoying the fact that I’d done something good for someone. I almost felt like putting on some Christmas music.
Almost, but of course I didn’t. I’m an angel, not a sap.
The Bobby Dollar Series by Tad Williams:
The Dirty Streets of Heaven
Happy Hour In Hell
Sleeping Late On Judgement Day
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlepig
The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series by Tad Williams:
The Dragonbone Chair
Stone of Farewell
To Green Angel Tower (parts 1 and 2)
The Otherland Series by Tad Williams:
City Of Golden Shadow
River Of Blue Fire
Mountain Of Black Forever
Sea of Silver Light
The Shadowmarch Series by Tad Williams:
Shadowmarch