Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  There was open black space at her feet, the gap there up to her ankles. From her ankles to her tummy there appeared multiple strata of building materials: drywall, plywood, a thick gunmetal-colored layer that might have been the cooling duct, then the sub-floor and floor of what she assumed was the fourth level of the Devil’s Lair.

  Savannah stared at the narrow gap and felt her heartbeat slamming harder and harder. She took hold of the elevator doors, attempted to prise them apart, but they didn’t budge at all.

  Then she’d just have to squirm through the opening as it was. Savannah slid her arms through the gap at chest level, turned her head sideways to make it through the narrow aperture, then pushed off as hard as she could to lift herself through.

  Her breasts wedged painfully against the door; she cursed how much nursing Jake for the first two years of his life had enlarged them. Who gave a damn if men found her boobs attractive? Practically speaking, they were a pain in the ass, two leaden volleyballs she had to lug around constantly. And now it appeared they might get her killed.

  Baring her teeth, she pushed up harder, but the moment her nipples scraped beyond the rubber edges of the door, the elevator car gave a violent lurch, and she found herself lifted off her feet, tossed upward, then caught again. The car was descending.

  She was about to be chopped in half.

  With a gagging scream, she thrust backward into the car, and a split second later the car jerked downward another three feet. The upper passage through the elevator doors—the one leading to the fourth floor of the Devil’s Lair—was completely gone.

  Rough fingers seized her hair, yanked her upward.

  Savannah shrieked, but the sound was cut off when her head collided with the jagged split metal of the ceiling. She felt icy fire spread through her scalp, the hair tearing free, the sharp metal digging grooves in her skin. She grasped the werewolf’s hand, which felt as large as a baseball glove, and sank her nails into the tough, leathery flesh. Rather than relinquishing its hold on her hair, the werewolf jerked up again, the concussion even more severe this time, a glancing blow against the vicious metal flaps that plowed trenches through her scalp, sent smoldering rivulets of blood streaming down her forehead. Savannah battered at the werewolf’s hand, but it did no good, the creature’s grip as implacable as it was cruel. Savannah began scissoring her legs, screaming, flailing like a berserker against the monstrous grip, and as it yanked her up a third time, she felt vast clumps of her hair tearing out by the roots. As her bloodied scalp rammed the metal flaps for the third time, her weight finally separated her from the werewolf’s grip, and though the pain in her torn scalp was exquisite, she cried aloud with joy when she thumped down on the elevator car floor.

  The roar from above her made her teeth chatter.

  Another hole appeared in the ceiling, this one horribly close to the first one, and as Savannah watched, a miasmal dread spreading through her, the werewolf set to smashing the tendril of metal between the two punctures.

  Savannah clambered toward the slim gap in the doors. The car seemed to have stabilized, but even if it did lurch down again, remaining in the car was madness. As she shoved herself through the ten-inch aperture, she saw, peripherally, the metal tendril split open, the oval hole in the ceiling now a foot long.

  It was still too narrow to accommodate the beast’s girth, but the werewolf would widen the gap. She had to escape.

  Savannah gritted her teeth, drove with all her leg strength and moaned as her breasts cleared the doors. Then her tummy was scraping through.

  A shriek of rending metal above her. Savannah didn’t need to turn to know the werewolf had widened the hole.

  She’d reached the place where her hips were the main concern, and before Savannah could get wedged within the gap again, she braced her hands on the smooth outer surface of the doors and thrust against them, her neck and head straining into the third floor corridor to free her hips from the doors’ embrace.

  The werewolf snarled, and she knew from the sound it had spotted her below, that it knew she was making progress in her escape.

  Or perhaps, she amended, reprieve was the more appropriate word.

  No. She would get away, would get through this gap, dammit, because she had to, had to escape this nightmare alive, had to live to see Jake grow into a man.

  She wouldn’t leave him without a mother.

  It was this prospect that galvanized her, that compelled her forward. She thrust against the grip of the doors, and then her hips were squeezing through, her sundress tearing. Her pelvis scraped against the doors, her upper thighs. She was making it out!

  Behind her, the werewolf thumped down into the car.

  Savannah’s eyes shot wide, her breath freezing in her throat. Frantically, she wriggled away from the doors, her movements increasingly unfettered, the reality of her exposed calves, her vulnerable bare feet too ghastly to consider. Any moment she’d feel the searing talons rake down the length of her ankles, feel the agony of razor teeth shredding her toes.

  Savannah’s calves scraped through. She jerked her feet toward her just as something grabbed for her right foot. Gasping, Savannah scrambled to her feet and pelted down the corridor.

  This was the zombie floor, she remembered, the level during which the Devil’s Lair became downright scary. But she could deal with anything as long as the werewolf was stuck in the—

  The werewolf let loose with a deafening roar. She chanced a look over her shoulder, saw the beast’s hateful face shoved through the elevator doors. Its claws were grasping the doors, grinding them slowly but inexorably apart, and in moments the beast would be through.

  Savannah pounded around the corner and almost smashed into the black door beneath yet another red exit sign. She put a hand on the knob and had started to turn it before she realized something was terribly amiss. For one thing, it wouldn’t budge. For another…

  The crimson light was faint, but her eyes had pretty well adjusted to the near darkness of the corridor. She noticed how the door was bowed in the middle, had been bent out of shape near the knob. She took a step back to examine the damage, and her bare foot squelched in some viscous substance she knew was blood despite how black it appeared in the gloom. Goddammit! The blond werewolf—or one of the others—had twisted the door out of shape, almost certainly to prevent its victims from escaping. There was no getting through this way.

  Savannah spun and sprinted back the way she’d come, for a moment darting past the corridor leading to the elevator. The brief glimpse she caught of the blond werewolf showed her it had almost made it through the double doors, would soon be running her down like a defenseless animal.

  No! She dashed past the corridor, followed the curving walkway to the left, and though her bloody feet slipped a few times on the smooth wood of the floor, she felt as though she’d never sprinted so fast, was beginning to believe she might outrun the beast.

  A growling figure lunged from between red curtains and nearly landed on her. Savannah squealed, ducked and skidded on her knees before she realized it was a fake zombie, just some fucking mannequin cooked up by the Devil’s Lair designers to scare the bejesus out of people.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed at it, and then she was on her feet again, racing around a tight corner, only jumping a little as another zombie flopped out. Ahead, the hallway forked, and Savannah took a left, thinking it would lead to a down-trending ramp, the path that would eventually deliver her to the second floor. Then, if she could reach the stairwell, or even follow the corridors to the first floor, she might—

  Pitch blackness ahead. Oh shit, she thought. A dead end. She was about to turn when a group of zombies flailed out at her, a half-dozen screaming mannequins, and despite herself she shrieked again, then balled her fists and shook them at the stupid fucking zombies, who’d not only succeeded in making her piss herself in terror, but who’d likely coerced her in
to announcing her exact position to her pursuer.

  Cringing, she wheeled back the way she’d come, scampered toward the fork in the hallway, and glimpsed the werewolf only thirty feet to her right.

  It spotted her, the yellow eyes flashing in triumph.

  But as it surged ahead, one of the zombies who’d scared the crap out of her came screaming out of the darkness at the blond werewolf. And though Savannah wouldn’t have believed it possible, the werewolf recoiled, startled. It straightened, roared, and as Savannah took off again through the nearly lightless tunnel, she saw it swipe ferociously at the zombie mannequin, the undead rubber head tumbling off as neatly as a snipped rose.

  Savannah heard the clatter of the werewolf’s toenails as it rumbled toward the forked corridor, but she was already rounding another corner, this time realizing with a surge of hope that she’d chosen correctly, that she only needed one more turn to make it to the ramp leading downward to the second floor. There, she could either continue her dire flight through hallways fraught with vampires, werewolves and other fake beasts, or risk taking the more direct route, the stairwell leading straight down to the ground floor.

  The werewolf raced on behind her, but Savannah was flying now, her legs pumping as though she engaged in this sort of activity all the time, moving faster than she had since high school. She rounded a corner and pelted down a long ramp, and within moments she was hustling through the archway of the second level.

  There was an exit sign ahead.

  Savannah darted toward it, felt her stomach clench in dread at the prospect of this door also being mangled beyond functionality, then twisted the knob and felt its weight swing freely open, a flood of surprise surging through her.

  Savannah paused under the exit sign and debated whether to take the carnage-strewn stairwell or brave the monster-filled second floor.

  Savannah lurched through the door and pulled it shut behind her.

  She’d had enough of werewolves for one night.

  Two more shooters materialized to Melody’s right, and though she heard children’s voices and was momentarily heartened that they’d survived, the shooters opened fire anyway, spraying the air with bullets, risking not only her life but the lives of the survivors who were now emerging from their hiding places all over Beach Land. Hot torrents of rage washed over her at sight of the shooters, these men not cops and therefore even less cautious than the cops had been. These men were her classmates, Colton Crane and Randy Murray, and they were firing at her so wildly they might as well have been drunkards playing a video game.

  Melody hustled past the Turtle Cove rides, hurdled the gate enclosing the Viking ship, and then the Devil’s Lair loomed over her, shadowed her, and as the bullets pinged off its stone façade, Melody hurried into the darkness beside the building.

  And promptly encountered a policeman.

  There was no avoiding it this time, not unless the cop decided to give her the chance to—

  But no, he was already leveling his gun, was pointing it at her face, and as it spat its yellow fire Melody lashed out, removing the gun and the hand that gripped it, the blood jetting over her face as the report of the pistol pummeled her sensitive eardrums. From behind her came a shout, and Melody knew the two classmates who’d chased her were about to open fire. She didn’t want this one-handed, gape-mouthed cop to get caught in the crossfire, didn’t want to end his life because, as foolhardy as he was, he’d only been trying to do his duty. She bounded to her left, toward the stone walls of the castle, and a huge white object filled her vision—a propane cylinder. She leaped away as the bullets whined, hoping she’d gotten away from it in time, but then the propane tank exploded, the flames billowing out in a rolling maelstrom, and the cop whose hand she’d torn off was incinerated, the classmates who’d fired at her were blasted back, and Melody herself was propelled high into the air, the flames blistering her back, scorching the hair and skin off her shoulders, her ass, and she continued outward, her arms and legs pinwheeling, the brown water of the bay racing toward her. Melody splashed under, the lake water instantly soothing her roasted flesh, and though her ears rang from the earth-rattling explosion, she hoped she would live through it.

  As for her classmates, the two idiots who’d blown up the propane tank…

  Underwater, Melody’s lips curled into a snarl.

  My God, Savannah realized. I might actually make it out alive.

  As she’d expected, the stairwell was a nightmare reel of gore and mayhem, the body count in the dozens.

  At least the stairs were better illuminated than the rest of the Devil’s Lair. It was still dim here, but state safety codes likely prohibited the same stygian gloom that enshrouded the rest of the castle from enveloping this route. Savannah tried not to think about the bloody goulash through which her feet were sloshing, tried not to fixate on the staring eyes and the plum-colored intestines strung across the steps like moist Christmas garland. Savannah navigated the landing without issue, but nearly plunged headlong down the stairs when she slipped on a puddle of blood that appeared to issue out of a young man’s severed head.

  Above her, the second-story door banged open.

  But she was well ahead of the werewolf and still making good progress. She heard the thudding clatter of the beast’s feet above her, but she could see, below and to her left, the door that would lead to the holding area.

  Savannah was halfway down the last flight of stairs when the Devil’s Lair seemed to shift sideways and the body parts underfoot to reanimate.

  A shrieking boom shook the world.

  She experienced a weightless moment of shock, the vertiginous sensation of floating in bare space, and then she was bumping down the steps knees first, her bare flesh cracking against the merciless concrete edges, their impacts like hammerblows to her kneecaps. Savannah groped desperately for the railing, but it was slick with blood, and she was tilting sideways, nearly to the bottom now, her useless right arm choosing this inopportune moment to awaken, to reach out to pad her fall, and then her entire weight came down on her broken arm, the pain a titanic, soul-destroying burst of white light, and when she rolled onto her back she beheld the werewolf at the top of the stairs, the yellow eyes like hellfire, the satanic leer pronouncing her life over, her pitiful existence expunged.

  “No,” she moaned. She rolled over on her side. Above her she sensed the werewolf gathering for its leap down the stairs. But as she crawled toward the door, she smelled something new, something acrid and penetrating, something patently out of place in this corpse-choked stairwell.

  Smoke. Curling in pale wisps under the door.

  The werewolf sprang.

  Savannah clambered forward, the smoke insinuating itself into her nostrils, making her eyes water, her throat itch.

  The beast hit the wet concrete six feet behind her, its momentum carrying it forward into the cinderblock wall. Savannah made it to the door, scrambled over the heaped bodies, reached out, twisted the knob.

  Scraping, clittering behind her. The werewolf was scrambling toward her.

  Savannah dove through the doorway, the air at her feet whickering with the swipe of the werewolf’s claws. She pushed to her feet, shambled into the holding area, past the elevator doors.

  Behind her the stairwell door whooshed open. She heard the werewolf surge toward her.

  Savannah limped ahead, straining against the pain, pleading with her legs to move, move, move. The bright lights of the broad thoroughfare blinded her, but she hobbled toward them, humming deep in her throat. She emerged from the castle.

  Behind her the werewolf barreled closer.

  A shockwave of sound and heat flattened Duane.

  Blinking, the trees and lights overhead swimming, splitting, reforming, Duane strove to recover his senses. Something terrible had happened behind the Devil’s Lair, some explosion that had almost certainly taken more lives. I
t had come from the exact place where the brown werewolf and the shooters—Colton Crane and Randy Murray?—had gathered. Duane didn’t give a shit about Colton and Randy; they were thoughtless assholes who deserved little better. But the brown werewolf…there’d been something familiar about it. Something different from the others he’d encountered tonight.

  And there was still the matter of Savannah’s whereabouts.

  It was this thought that got Duane moving. He opened his eyes, and though the world still swirled in a sickly, blurred kaleidoscope and his ears felt as though they’d been stuffed with gauze, he was able to roll over onto his stomach and push to his feet.

  Where he swayed, yawed to the right, and promptly landed on his side.

  His right side, of course, and his injured right hand. He didn’t need to glance at the severed fingers to know the wounds had begun to leak again. Damn, it hurt. But there was no time for that now. Because something had happened…something near the bay…

  Duane gained his feet again and this time took it easier, his arms extended as though he were treading on a balance beam rather than flat concrete.

  He limped toward the luminous main thoroughfare, but he’d only advanced a few steps when he realized how surreal the area between the Viking ship and the Devil’s Lair appeared. Smoke was skirling there and growing thicker, and he distinguished a shape shambling through the misty air, the person injured and wearing…

  Jesus Christ, he thought. Savannah.

  Duane broke into an awkward run. He reached down for the machete but realized he’d dropped it at some point, likely when he’d been leveled by the explosion. He opened his mouth to hail her, but the smoke he sucked down irritated his throat, sent him off on a ragged series of wet coughs. Goddammit, of all the times to be doubled over, to be incapacitated by something as simple as smoke. Though the coughing fit refused to loose its hold on him, he compelled his body forward, toward Savannah’s lurching form.

  Another figure emerged from the Devil’s Lair. An enormous figure. Savannah went down. The blond beast surged out of the darkness and made straight for her. It would arrive there well before Duane would. He urged his legs to move faster, horribly aware of how fruitless it was. Savannah had survived until the end, but now the queen beast was looming over her, preparing to kill.