Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  “You’re cussing a lot.”

  “So? It feels good to cuss.”

  “You don’t think of me that way,” he said, angling the Silverado onto the deserted street.

  “It was different,” she said, a trace of panic stitching her voice.

  He looked at her.

  “In the elevator tonight,” she explained. “In the Devil’s Lair. On the way up to the top, I kept thinking about you. About how we rode in it together. I…I missed you.”

  “No one ever said you don’t care about me, Savannah.”

  He made a U-turn, pulled the pickup to a stop along the curb. Shifted the truck into park.

  “I see what you’re doing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You’re getting even with me. You’re getting revenge for all those years I never paid attention to you.”

  He cut the engine, turned in the seat. “Listen, Savannah.”

  “Go to hell,” she said, looking out the passenger’s window.

  Duane looked too. Was Jake okay inside the station?

  He thought so. When they’d made the U-turn, he’d caught a glimpse of two people inside the station, one of them a uniformed officer, the other a woman who looked like a receptionist.

  Neither of them looked like werewolves.

  Jake was safe inside.

  Savannah had apparently come to the same conclusion. Tears dribbled down her cheeks, but she seemed in no hurry to get out of the car.

  “Savannah, I don’t know how to…” He sighed. “You ever watch romantic comedies?”

  She glared at him. “Why? Because I’m a girl, and all girls love chick flicks?”

  He waited.

  She looked away. “Yes, I watch them.”

  “You like them?” he asked.

  “And you don’t, I suppose. Because you’re a big, tough man, and men don’t like that mushy crap.”

  He chuckled softly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Just get it over with, Duane. Stop trying to let me down easy.”

  He smiled sadly at her, scratched the back of his neck. “I sort of do like some of them. A couple of my favorite movies are romantic comedies.”

  She swiveled her head toward him, suspicion plain in her narrowed eyes.

  “It’s true,” he said. “But most of them are really bad.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

  “Not because they’re not well made or because they’re poorly acted…though now that I think about it, quite a few of them are poorly made and poorly acted.”

  “Duane.”

  “But the point is, the reason I don’t like most of them has nothing to do with the acting or the direction.”

  She studied his face. “So…what? You don’t believe in love?”

  “Quite the opposite,” he said. “I believe in love more than anyone I know. But it has to be the right kind of love.”

  She continued to watch him, something dawning in her blue eyes.

  “The problem with most of those films is the belief that there has to be a tidy, upbeat ending. That the two main characters have to wind up together.”

  “There are movies where they don’t.”

  “But most of the time they do.”

  “What’s your point?”

  He leaned toward her. “That most of the time, they shouldn’t. That being attractive or funny or whatever isn’t a reasonable basis for spending the rest of their lives together.”

  “Duane—”

  “You care about me, Savannah, I know that. And if I were somebody else, or you were somebody else, maybe we could end up together, and that would be the right thing.”

  “I’m not talking about getting married tomorrow, Duane.”

  “I know you’re not, but there’s a whole lot neither one of us is saying. That maybe, in time, you can learn to look past the fact that you’re not attracted to me.”

  “You don’t know how I feel.”

  “I know you’ve never looked at me the way you used to look at Mike. Or even Glenn.”

  “Low blow.”

  “Savannah, it’s—”

  “About sex, isn’t it? That’s what it comes down to. You’re just like—”

  “No one, Savannah. I’m like no one and you know it. Now stop steering the argument in that direction. I’m talking about romantic love, which, without the sex or not, is a part of marriage. Or should be. And while I’ve pined away for you like a lovelorn puppy for the better part of two decades—”

  “Duane—”

  “—you’ve never felt the same thing for me.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “It’s not a put-down, Savannah. It’s the cold truth. And saying otherwise only delays the inevitable.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That I’ll be your friend for as long as I can.”

  She drew back from him, a hurt, frightened look on her face. “What are you saying?”

  He opened his mouth, then thought, No, don’t be too nice. Hurting her now will be better than the alternative. Having been on the other end of this sort of thing your whole life, you should sure as hell know that.

  “Duane?” she asked, her eyes shining. “What are you telling me?”

  He straightened in his seat, nodded toward the glass front doors, where the uniformed officer was now standing, watching them. “You need to get in there with your boy.”

  “But you’re coming with me, right? You have to come in.”

  Duane stared out the windshield, unable to meet her gaze.

  “Duane?

  “I’ll see you soon, Savannah.”

  She made no move to leave. “Damn you, Duane, I need to know what’s happening.”

  Duane couldn’t look at her. “Go to your boy. He needs you.”

  She was watching him, but she wasn’t speaking. Peripherally, Duane noticed that the cop at the glass doors had been joined by the receptionist.

  “They’re waiting,” he said.

  She reached up, took hold of the door handle and paused. “Will Jake and I be safe?”

  And then Duane finally did look at her. Looked at her and smiled at her without guile or concern. “That’s one thing I can promise you, Savannah. Nothing’s going to happen to you or Jake.”

  She glanced down at her lap, the tears welling over, pattering on her bare, scraped-up knees. She took a deep breath, let it out and opened the door. She looked back at him once, but he’d withdrawn by then and only barely glimpsed her anguished expression. The door closed with a thud that Duane felt in his bones.

  Savannah had hobbled halfway to the double doors before the cop and the receptionist apparently realized what a terrible state she was in. The cop came rushing out to throw an arm around her, and the receptionist appeared to call to someone over her shoulder.

  Duane slid the truck into gear.

  The cop was glaring at Duane through the windshield, as though Duane were the one who’d beaten Savannah up so badly, but Duane hardly noticed. He was watching the receptionist, who in turn seemed to track the approach of someone else, someone Duane fervently hoped was Jake.

  It was, he saw a moment later, and that was his cue. Before the boy could spot him behind the wheel, and more importantly, before Duane could be persuaded to climb out and sweep mother and son into a joyful embrace, he eased the pickup away from the curb and was lucky enough to hit a green light when he came to Illinois Street.

  He made it back to Washington, and by then, the tears had come, and he drove slowly to give them time to flow. He’d never been a big crier when he got sad—he was more the kind of guy who cried at the end of movies—but now he indulged himself a little. Goddammit, he did want to be Jake’s stepfather, and though he’d meant what he’d said about Savannah not being attached to
him in a romantic way, a part of him wondered if things had changed enough for those romantic feelings to start developing. He was a different man than he’d been a week ago, with a different outlook. He’d killed a werewolf, for chrissakes, and if that didn’t show an increased sense of adventure, he didn’t know what did.

  But this, Duane knew, had nothing to do with self-esteem, had nothing to do with being more courageous. This was about…this was about…

  The tingling in his wounds.

  Ahead, sirens wailed on Beach Road. More state troopers, or maybe police from the surrounding towns. They’d soon join the fire trucks and the ambulances, and though Duane suspected the ambulances would be of little use—all the victims he’d spotted had been mutilated beyond recognition and in most cases beheaded—he hoped the fire trucks would be able to slow down the conflagration at the Devil’s Lair.

  A police cruiser whizzed by as he neared the turn onto Beach Road. Duane turned left to follow the cruiser, though it was going so fast it swiftly became a distant flicker of red-and-blue lights. Duane considered turning on the radio, but most of what would be on was shit. He could play his audiobook—Stephen King’s fourth Dark Tower story—but damned if he felt like hearing about more death just now.

  Instead, he thumbed down his window and leaned into the opening, the sultry summer air moistening his face. He kept it around thirty-five even after leaving the city limits because every now and then he had to pull over as another police car zoomed by. He passed the cornfield that hid Savannah’s subdivision, and soon he was nearing Beach Land, which was lit up like a Parisian music festival. Above the sodium lights of the south entrance and the trees fringing the bay, he could see orange billows of smoke, the continuous strobe of multitudinous flashing lights.

  But before he reached the south parking lot, he turned left.

  In this direction everything was dark. The bean fields to his left, the humble cottages to his right. The forest that soon swallowed the road.

  As the hellish orange sky behind him gave way to an endless navy-blue dome overhead, Duane became aware of a tingling at the base of his spine. It whispered up his vertebrae, thrummed in his shoulders. He caught his left foot drumming on the floor mat and forced it to remain still. He applied more pressure to the accelerator despite the approaching incline and the railroad tracks at the crest of the rise. The pickup was doing fifty when it launched over the tracks, and for a long moment Duane felt himself rising weightlessly toward the roof. When the truck jounced down, the front end began to yaw to his right, all four tires skidding deliriously on the lonesome strip of asphalt. Duane easily corrected the skid, motored on for another mile or so before taking his foot off the accelerator and allowing the Silverado to ease gradually to a stop.

  The grassy shoulders on either side of the road were pretty much level with the asphalt, so Duane angled the pickup gently to the right until he’d completely vacated the road.

  Duane slid the pickup into park and got out.

  He crossed the road without checking for cars. There was no need. It was utterly deserted out here, the nearest farmhouse a half mile away.

  Duane stepped into the grass and continued into the bean field.

  He breathed deeply of the country air, which had never been so redolent of life, of good soil.

  His shoes were drenched with sweat and blood, and besides their generally slimy feel, they felt restrictive. So he removed them, as well as his socks, and left them lying at the edge of the field. Savoring the soft earth under his feet, Duane strode slowly into the field. As he moved, he kept his eyes on the rows of beans ahead, though it was his sense of smell he primarily relied on. From the direction of Beach Land, he heard another siren shrill past, but it was so faint he didn’t give it much thought. No one would be coming this way.

  Duane ambled deeper into the field. He’d ventured about a hundred yards when he scented what he’d been searching for. He jogged purposefully forward, his body responding sharply to his commands. He accelerated to a sprint—a tight, efficient sprint—then he suddenly halted, his gaze avid and his flesh prickling.

  He discerned footprints in the bean field.

  They moved from the east—from Beach Land—to the field bordering Melody Bridwell’s property.

  Duane turned his back on the distant orange glow, cleared his head of the sirens. Upwind of the park, there drifted only the faintest tinge of smoke, but it still displeased him. Acrid, unwholesome.

  He followed Melody’s tracks.

  They were spaced far apart, but they fell evenly, right foot, left foot. No palm prints, no fingerprints. She’d made her escape upright and proud. Duane recalled the look on her face just before she’d spared his life. Had it been recognition, as he suspected? Or just some residual trace of human compassion?

  He didn’t know.

  But he knew he could never go back to Savannah and Jake, even if he wanted to.

  Duane knew Melody wouldn’t be in the house even before he neared the thick gravel driveway. Her scent led first to the pole barn, but a fresher trail led across the driveway to the house. He was glad to bypass the pole barn because the odor wafting out of its ugly yellow façade made him more than distrustful—it made him angry. But when he crossed to the house and caught a whiff of the death within, he was overcome with a dozen swirling emotions, almost all of them powerfully negative, though somewhere within that black, churning cloud there were glimmers of pain for Melody, a regret for the suffering she’d endured. Duane made it to the porch steps and almost went in, but before he allowed the stinking sarcophagus of the Bridwells’ home to swallow him up, he was assailed by three incontrovertible certainties:

  All the male Bridwells were dead.

  Melody had stopped here after her escape from Beach Land.

  She was gone now.

  A quick sniff of the yard confirmed this. The trail was fresher here than any he’d yet scented, and it was fresher by a goodly margin. Which told him she’d lingered in the house for several minutes before moving on. Maybe he’d just missed her.

  Why had she stopped here? Given the reputations of her father and her brothers, it hadn’t been for sentimental reasons.

  Duane opened the side door, peered in.

  And gagged at what he saw. Two skeletal black dogs perched on the kitchen table, their faces buried in the remains of Melody’s father. Not only did the sounds of snarling and smacking fill the kitchen, Duane thought he detected similar sounds from the basement as well.

  So that’s why she’d stopped here.

  To feed the dogs.

  Duane hurried outside and gazed hard into the distance for a large brown shape, but though his eyes worked exceptionally well given the late hour, the only things he could make out ahead were more fields, more thickets of trees.

  Duane surged forward, his bare feet molding to the grass, the road beyond, then the soft soil of the cornfield. The abrasive husks scraped his arms and face as he barreled along, but he soon learned that by ducking somewhat and charging forward in that position, he could avoid the worst of the assault.

  Melody’s scent grew stronger. Exhilarating, invigorating. He felt an almost sexual thrill at the idea of overtaking her.

  Presently, Duane burst out of the cornfield, vaulted an overgrown barbed-wire fence, and wove his way through a thicket of pine trees. Though the smell of the pines—verdant and rife with sap—made him grin with happiness and sent shivers of warm pleasure through his limbs, it was the undercurrent of Melody’s passage that entranced him. He was close to her, by God. Close enough to spot her should he make his way out of this burr-ridden forest.

  Soon, he did. He managed to locate a trail of sorts, and when a downed bough from one of the giant oak trees barred his way, Duane merely hurdled it, landed and sprang up again, his large girth easily clearing the barbed-wire fence separating the thicket from the next field, this one
rolling and furred with knee-high wheat.

  Duane advanced farther into the wheat field until he spotted the figure in the distance, the moonlight bathing its motionless form on a gentle rise between the wheat field and another forest.

  Duane continued his approach, and though he didn’t move cautiously, he took his time now.

  The figure wasn’t fleeing.

  When he got within fifty yards of the figure, he realized it wasn’t as large as he’d thought. Yes, there was a spray of wild brown hair surrounding the silvered moon of a face, but the figure was just a woman after all. Nude, her skin tawny and supple, Melody peered at Duane through the moonshot night, her expression betraying nothing, her posture proud, unafraid.

  Duane stepped closer, closer, only twenty feet away now. He realized that Melody was very close to the forest. Only two or three strides and she could disappear within its enclosing shadows. Behind her, the wheat field seemed to stretch for miles.

  Duane stopped ten feet from Melody and gazed up at her.

  The silence drew out.

  The verdant air around them seemed to crystallize, to bind them in its warmth, its fecundity. Duane found himself averting his eyes from her nude body, not out of embarrassment or desire, but in attempt to breathe again in the presence of her awe-inspiring beauty.

  His gaze settled on his right hand.

  The blood was crusted and nearly black in the moonlight, but the stumps of his missing fingers had altered. The change had been nearly imperceptible as he’d driven Savannah into town, but now there was no doubt about it at all.

  The fingers had begun to regenerate. The skin there was pink, the infant nubs tender but undeniably longer than they’d been only a half hour earlier.

  This surprised him, but what surprised him even more was how clear his feelings were, how powerful.

  He looked up at Melody. Her eyes were riveted on his new fingers.

  Something seemed to flit across her face, but it was gone before he could identify it.

  Unable to stare into that ethereal face too long, Duane allowed himself to study her naked body. Unmarked, lovely. He shifted his gaze to her face so he wouldn’t faint.

  Her eyes were locked on his, and though her mouth didn’t move at all, he was sure he could make out the ghost of a smile. She watched him unself-consciously, the wry gleam in her eyes perhaps excusing his obvious attraction to her. He opened his mouth to speak, then realized no words would be right. He would only taint their communion and the deep, moonlit night.