"Tulley!"
"Stroud!"
"More!"
"Blue! All accounted for, sir!"
From above Cage had continued to fire on the fleeing beasts. But he now communicated with the survivors. "We're sending down a rope ladder. See that you use it!"
The remaining pilot was having trouble keeping his craft steady, the rising waves of superheated air from the wreckage causing a sure disturbance here. Still, Cage was determined, and so down came the ladder. The roar of the helicopter drowned out any chance they might hear the stealthy creatures all around them. Only the light from the fire which singed their eyebrows helped them to see those among the wolf-people who were foolish enough to continue the attack.
Blue held them off, shouting for the others to take the ladder. "Go on! Go!" Blue's AK-47 stopped suddenly, and he grabbed Tulley's away from him. "Go! All of you! Go!"
Anna More went first up the rope ladder, followed by Tulley, as Stroud and Saylor argued who would go next. All of them had torn away their gas masks, and these dangled about their necks. They had also thrown aside the encumbering camera equipment on the race for the hill.
"Go, Earl! Now!"
"Don't be a fool, Stroud. You're the brains here. You get killed, and what's left for us to do? Me, I'm paid to stay. Now go! Go!"
Stroud stared for a moment, but then began the ascent to the helicopter, seeing that Anna was already climbing into the cargo bay door. He saw Cage waving him on madly between shots he was taking with the infrared-equipped rifle. Stroud climbed for his life and crawled in just behind Tulley, who had taken up a position the opposite side of the helicopter and was firing down on a party of the creatures coming in on Blue's blind side. Stroud took up a position alongside Tulley with a second infrared weapon, making each of his shots count.
Below them Saylor was yanking at Blue to get onto the ladder. Blue fought him, insisting that Saylor go ahead. Saylor started up, firing as he did so. Blue's gun quit on him and he threw it, raced for the rope ladder and caught it in midjump, scrambling up just behind Saylor when one of the creatures leapt up and held Blue by the legs, making him scream. Saylor threw down his rifle and pulled out a Beretta automatic, firing into the creature's head, but this one was replaced by another, and the weight of a second one sent the helicopter gyrating, with everyone aboard spilling about in its belly. Cage had been sent out the door and was holding on to the frame, with Anna trying desperately to help him. Stroud crawled to them and grabbed hold of Cage's hand, holding firm as Anna helped pull him back in. Then the machine swerved the other way, threatening to send them all out the other door.
Saylor fired past Blue's nose, but as soon as one creature dropped, it was replaced by another and another until Saylor was out of bullets.
They ripped and tore at Blue's legs, one suddenly coming away with his boot and his foot inside it.
"Blue!" Saylor screamed as Joe was torn away, and he fell into the waiting mob below the helicopter. The helicopter, released, careened skyward with Saylor dangling below it, the anguish in him at odds with the sudden realization he was free and alive.
Moments later, at the top of the rope ladder, the others helped Saylor onto a stable platform. No one asked him, but he said, "Blue almost made it ... but they tore off his leg ... loss of blood ... couldn't hold on."
Tulley trembled at the thought. "Earl, we ain't getting paid enough for this gig..."
Saylor went to Stroud, saying, "We're not done with these mothers yet, are we? Well, are we?"
"Cage estimates there are between a hundred and a hundred fifty left. We've got infrared spotting on the chopper, and now we've got fuel enough back at our base ... now the other machines are gone."
"Along with two good pilots," added Tulley.
"I'm for resuming the fight," said Anna More. "Stroud was right from the beginning. They must be exterminated."
"We need more help," said Cage. "We can't do it alone."
"That's right," said Tulley.
"We do this my way, Tulley!" said Stroud. "Bringing in more people would just get more killed. Can't you see that?"
"Earl, tell him! Tell him it's over!" shouted Tulley.
Saylor shook his head. "You didn't see what they did to Blue. I came to kill these bastards, and that's what I will do, Tulley, with or without you."
"We've got to prepare better," said Anna. "We need to ready more ammunition, do something."
"I say we put it to a vote," said Cage.
"No, Lou!" shouted Stroud. "This isn't up for a vote. We do it my way. Those of you who want out can wait for us at the base camp where we first dropped Kerac. As for me, I won't rest until Kerac is dead, along with all of his kind! And that's the end of the discussion. Anna's right. We've got to start using our heads. We've got to prepare. Priest, Nails and Blue didn't die in vain."
"Hell, we've killed almost half of 'em!" said Saylor. "Now we go back for the other half."
"And they've killed over half of us!" shouted Tulley. "I don't want to die the way Blue died, the way Priest died."
"Get hold of yourself, Tully"
"This ain't no goddamned army, Earl. If I want out, I'm out."
"Fine! Fine, you pussy! Do just that while More here does your job for you. Sick, man!"
Tulley went for Saylor's throat with a bayonet knife. Stroud grabbed Tulley's hand just as Saylor's booted foot hit Tulley in the testicles, doubling him over. "Get hold of it, Tulley! Nothing to be ashamed of. We're all afraid. So am I. So's More over there, aren't you, Chief?"
Anna More gritted her teeth and nodded, saying, "Of course. Only a fool would be unafraid." She said it as if to Stroud, whom she stared at now.
"We're going back in at dawn. All of you, get some rest," said Stroud.
Stroud found a corner and nestled in it. His mind imagined a one-armed Kerac far below, baying up at the receding aircraft, secure in the knowledge that he had beaten Stroud.
Anna More joined Stroud. Exhausted, she slid down the bulkhead to sit alongside him. He looked into her dirt-smeared features, riveting her eyes with his own. "We are doing the right thing, Anna."
"The only thing," she agreed. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you, Abe."
"We've got to stay in the air, Stroud," said Cage. "We can't win on their level, not so long as they have Kerac as their leader."
For a time, Stroud dozed, exhausted along with the others. Anna put a finger to her lips, indicating that Stroud was asleep.
Cage squinted at the scene beside him. "Is he really asleep? Or is it another of his blasted blackouts?"
"He's exhausted. We all are."
"Exhausted, bleeding ... bruised, all of you," said Cage.
They were soon approaching the base site where additional provisions awaited them, and where the pilot could refuel. Meanwhile, Cage opened a second vat of silver nitrate in liquid form for the new ammunition supplies. As soon as they touched down, he would have to begin work on additional gas bombs. As they drew nearer, the helicopter about to set down, Saylor and Tulley nervously watched the perimeter. They were a good fifteen miles from where they had exited the forests, but they must never again underestimate the enemy.
"Wake Stroud," Saylor said to Anna.
"Let him rest," she replied.
"We don't know how safe this area is."
"He needs rest. We all do!"
"It's all clear according to what I can see on infrared," said Tulley. "I think we can all breathe easy, for the time being."
"Thank God," said Cage.
"We've got munitions to load, partner," said Saylor to Tulley. "You with me?"
Tulley, considerably calmed by a few drinks of whiskey that Saylor had offered him on the flight, nodded and took Earl Saylor's hand, apologizing for what he called his bad behavior.
Saylor said to think nothing of it, and then the two men were away, leaping from the helicopter even before the rotor blades shut down.
Anna, savoring the moment with Stroud, took his hands in hers a
nd quietly cried for those who had perished.
Kerac now knew that he must act before his kind were systematically exterminated by Stroud. He fought for control of the remaining numbers, his roars of warning telling them that the thing called Stroud would return to wipe them all out. The others led Kerac away, deeper and deeper into the forest, indicating they knew of a safe ground. Kerac went willingly. The others brayed about him, encircling him. With the others he was safe from Stroud.
He no longer thought of his former self. Kerac was no longer even a vague memory, and yet something about the Indian woman disturbed him. Seeing her again had stirred something in him, making him recall the other self, ever so indistinctly.
One of the were-women took Kerac's one good hand in hers, making him tear it away and howl at her. She howled back and was pushed off by a second of the females, who bared her fangs to Kerac. The first one leapt on this one's back and they began to rip and tear at one another.
Kerac and the other males watched the fighting with a mixture of admiration and lust.
A third of the females in the pack tugged at Kerac to come away. This one was older, silver-haired. She might have been as old as the leader Kerac had killed. She bellowed and howled and the others stopped instantly in their fighting. All of them started moving on again, on toward the safe ground.
Kerac tried to emulate the sounds made by the older one. He must learn to effectively communicate with all of the others, short of killing those who disobeyed him.
Several more of the women of child-bearing age came closer to Kerac, surrounding him in a mist of their musk. All about the fringes of the herd, Kerac saw the little ones who'd fairly well been kept in hiding during the battles.
Kerac thought of fathering such a child. Only a monster called Stroud stood in his way.
-20-
It was an abyss, the darkest, deepest hole he had ever seen, as if Stroud had fallen into the blank blackness of a computer screen. He felt nothing, no sensations of touch, only sound and smell. The deafening sound was a mixture of rushing water, wind and the howls of creatures hidden here. The sickening, overpowering odor was of their defecation, decay and rancid meat, intermingled with the unmistakable animal musk of the werewolf.
The bowels of this underbelly of earth that Stroud had lost himself in were enormous, long and winding; it reminded him of the treacherous vampire cave in Andover, Illinois, where other creatures of the night had kept their lair, feeding on other animals and people they had dragged down into it. The vampires in Andover that Stroud had vanquished from that place had used a method of cocooning up their victims, keeping them just barely alive, so as to produce for the monsters an endless supply of blood to feed on time and time again.
But there was none of the vampire stench here.
This place, wherever he was, reeked of the freakish wolf-people, the dank hair and hide smell of a mammalian-human aberration, almost ratlike in its bodily odors.
Stroud realized only now that he was defenseless, without a weapon. He wondered where the others were. He wondered where Anna had got off to. He wanted to run, but which way? Every direction was unfathomable via normal eyesight. He found a pair of huge infrared binoculars around his neck. His fingers went to binoculars, lifting them without feeling them, and he hesitated before putting them up to his eyes.
He heard clearly now the rushing water, but it was not water after all, but breathing. All around him, hundreds of breathing animals in the dark. He sensed them there behind the wall of darkness that denied him vision. Did he dare lift the glasses to his eyes?
He steadied his hands and lifted the glasses, pressing them to his eyes, but they were working improperly. He could see nothing but dense grays. He tried to adjust the infrared dials. Nothing. No change. He stared again through the binoculars, feeling he was taking an inordinate amount of precious time with the damned things when he saw something before him, yet not before him.
It was the image of a woman.
There came a distant whine, a human sound of a dazed, semi-conscious woman, plaintive and pleading. Was it Anna?
According to the binoculars, she was right before him, standing close enough to touch him, and yet her features remained indistinct. He put out his right hand toward the apparition, but touched nothing. In a moment, he realized she was part of a kaleidoscope forming inside the binoculars.
From the frayed gray matter that created her, like images in smoke, deep inside the binocular darkness, Stroud made out the features of the dead woman, Nells. She was pushing the dead air ahead of her as if waving him away, as if warning him off from this place. Then she vanished into the mist of the world inside the oversized binoculars in Stroud's hand, to be replaced by Priest--or an image of Priest--as he was before they mutilated him. Priest spoke but could not be heard. Stroud tried to read his ghostly lips, coming up with the words "down and below." This, moments before Priest faded, and with his fading, Stroud heard the distinct scream of a woman. Her screams riffled through the cave and through the binoculars and through Stroud's brain. It was the horror-filled scream of terror and pain he most feared hearing in the world. It was Anna More's screams.
Suddenly the infrared capability on the binoculars was operational, and through them Abe saw in the red glow of the underground world Dr. Louis Cage, Tulley and Saylor--all of them, bent over Anna, stripping parts of her flesh away, feeding on her. All of the men had become werewolves, and the walls and ledges of this place were filled with other werewolves looking on, howling in a chanting fashion at the display before them.
"No!" cried Stroud, who suddenly saw Kerac's one good claw come down at his eyes, taking half his head away.
Stroud's scream turned into a gurgle for breath and he came suddenly into consciousness, sitting upright on the cold, hard metal of the helicopter's cargo bay. The others were filling the bay with provisions, and all of them looked at Stroud now, staring. Anna climbed in and rushed to him, taking Stroud's hands in hers.
"It's all right, Abe ... it's all right," she assured him.
Shaken, sweating with fear, Stroud tried to gather in his breath. He felt as if he'd been crushed by a great weight, as if Kerac's nightmare claw had indeed cut him in two, as if Anna had been killed and all the others had been changed by Kerac into what Kerac had become.
Cage came to him with a cool, wet rag, placing it over his forehead and giving him a shot. Stroud objected, "No barbiturates, Lou! Nothing that's going to--"
"Just a little energy boost, Abe," Lou assured him. "I gave it to the others as well."
"Must've been some dream," said Saylor from the cargo bay door.
"Yeah ... some kind of dream," Stroud said. His head was pounding with a horrible physical pain, and it was filled with the image of the cave where they had all died. He thought better of telling them a word of it. If it was a premonition, he must change the course of history, he told himself. He prayed it was just a nightmare ... yet, it was so real. He feared telling the others that he had just been visited by the ghosts of Nells and Priest.
"He'll be fine now," Cage assured Anna.
"Are you all right?" she asked Stroud.
He nodded several times, but his eyes were on the overhead ceiling of the helicopter where the predawn light danced in from the doors on either side, making Anna look up as well. She could not see the images of Blue, Nells and Priest that danced also in the light.
"Down ... below"
Stroud repeated the words of the ghost.
"What?" asked Cage.
Anna, seeing nothing on the ceiling, looked back into Stroud's eyes and once more saw there the odd, near-human-faced shadows, like dots on his cornea, moments before they simply disappeared.
Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2) Page 22