Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2)

by Walker, Robert W.

  Stroud flashed his light round for an escape route, snatched Anna's arm and raced down another stone corridor that seemed only to lead them deeper and deeper into the black prison.

  "Christ, it's my nightmare," he said, "and it's coming true. You should have stayed at the helicopter."

  They ventured deeper into the dark.

  -21-

  Earl Saylor and Wil Tulley had encountered no resistance, and they had made good time. They had placed the first charge at a smaller entranceway, and now the two veteran fighters slipped into the main hole where the werewolves had gone. "In and out," Saylor whispered in Tulley's ear.

  He needn't have bothered. Tulley wanted to be as far from here as possible, but he did believe that Stroud's plan had merit. If they could only pull it off.

  The fact they had met with no resistance bothered both of the soldiers. It wasn't what they had expected of their enemy.

  "Strange," Tulley said as they made their way down the mouth of the main entrance to the underground lair of the creatures.

  "Yeah," agreed Saylor. "Best keep still."

  Tulley nodded, recalling how sensitive the monsters were to sound. The cave smelled bad, worse than any bear cave Tulley had ever been in, and he had been in a few.

  Saylor indicated he would keep watch, but it was so dark the only way he might see was through the infrared binoculars he'd brought along with him. He dared not flash a light. Tulley went to work, placing the last of the plastique, having some difficulty finding a stable place for it. He wanted a clean surface to press it into, but could find none readily available. Crumbling dirt fell into his face where the twisted roots of vegetation from outside and above them sprouted tentacles that hung here suspended in air.

  "Come on," said Saylor.

  Tulley found a niche in a solid stone where one of the roots had forced open a hole. He shoved the plastique in, but as he did so, he heard Saylor scream.

  From out of nowhere, it seemed, various bones and parts of a body were thrown at Saylor, and among the parts were the remnants of Nells' head.

  Saylor opened fire, screaming. Tulley felt for his weapon, but at the same instant he felt himself lifted off the ground. One of the cursed creatures had him in its grip. Tulley screamed for help, begging Saylor to do something. Saylor hesitated, knowing he'd have to kill Tulley if he were to kill the beast that had him in its grip.

  The hesitation was enough for those creatures who now covered the entryway to come in on Saylor. Saylor grabbed one of the grenades on his belt, popped the pin and rushed at Tulley and the thing that had him in its grip. Tulley's arms were locked in front of him by the monster, but he grabbed on to Saylor's hands, which were wrapped about the grenade.

  A second beast reached them just as the grenade should have gone off. Tulley was screaming in the iron grip of the creature. Saylor gave a war-whoop, expecting the explosion to silence them all and likely set off the plastique overhead as well.

  But the grenade didn't go off.

  "Oh, Christ!" shouted Saylor, who reached for a second grenade, ripping it from Tulley's belt, but he was slammed to the earth, the second grenade rolling away from him as he felt the fangs of the wolfman atop him sink deep into his throat.

  Tulley's scream was the last thing Saylor heard.

  From the shadows, from behind the safety of a huge boulder, Kerac came forth, looking over the two captives. Kerac's followers had done well in not mutilating these two as they had the others. They had instead stunned them into coma, the venom making them prisoners within their own bodies. How much they sensed, heard, felt or saw around them was anyone's guess. Kerac's only concern was that they be kept alive--at least for now. This time, he had enough followers to protect the bait he would use to draw Stroud to him.

  Kerac and the others howled at the success of having lost only a handful of their number in gaining the prize of these two. Some of them were salivating over their prizes, however, fighting the desire to rend them apart and feed on their flesh. Kerac tore these away from the two humans, roaring and snarling at the others.

  Kerac then saw a light far and faint, deeper within the catacombs of the tunnels, and he roared at it, pointing, knowing somehow it was Stroud.

  Kerac, with his one good hand, lifted Saylor with little effort, standing the stiffened body upright. The others began to help him, and Tulley was stood erect. In the blackness all around them, the beasts disappeared, a pair of them holding onto and dangling the bait.

  Kerac backed off to a point of greater safety, a snarl of gratification curling his lip, baring his fangs.

  Dave T. Michelson didn't like the sounds he heard coming from out of the distance at the rock ledge. Gunfire had erupted, which meant trouble, and the others had been gone for almost an hour, and he was getting edgy. One of the rules of working for Dr. Stroud was that absolute allegiance must be given the millionaire, and every pilot working for him had to take an oath never to divulge anything he deemed a "secret" mission, such as this one.

  Dave would like to tell his father about this mission. He'd like to blow a hole in the old geezer's notion of the world, of good and evil, of man and angel. This werewolf thing, this the old man couldn't explain away with his Bible or anything else in his small-minded catechism.

  Dave was born a minister's son and raised in a stifling, strict and frustrating environment in Oklahoma, just outside Tulsa. He ran away from home at seventeen, bummed around for a time and then joined the army, where he learned to fly. Dave had some Seminole blood in his veins, and this had made him very much in tune with Chief Anna More, the goings-on here, the old legends of wild men that roamed the darkest areas of the continent still, and maybe he was even in tune a little with Dr. Abraham Stroud. Dave liked Stroud very much, and he meant to do his duty by standing his post, staying with the helicopter ... and yet, those cries he heard welling up from the earth ... Maybe they needed his help down there. Maybe he should rush in.

  Then there was a strange, sickening silence and Dave wondered if all the others were dead, and if he was alone--completely--except for the beasts.

  Every bird in every tree made him turn. He smelled the werewolves all around. He sensed their eyes on him.

  Dave had wandered closer and closer to the caves but he took up the binoculars again and stared and stared and saw nothing. The quiet all around seemed suddenly unnatural. He turned and looked back at the helicopter, clutching the AK-47 in his hands tightly. The chopper was one of the finest he had ever flown, and he enjoyed being employed by Stroud Enterprises for the very reason that Dr. Stroud allowed his pilots to believe they owned the machine they flew. Stroud left all flying to his pilots. He never interfered.

  Dave had heard stories about the strange Dr. Stroud for a year now, one about his having uncovered and destroyed a vampire colony in Andover, Illinois. Dave no longer doubted the authenticity of the story, not anymore. He wondered now if Stroud lay down there brutalized and dying, alongside Anna More, Cage and the others. He trembled at the thought and silently cursed Cage for having left him alone.

  Dave then heard something below him in the brush, and his quick turn detected the movement of leaves. "Dr. Cage! Cage, is that you?"

  There was no answer, just an uncanny silence again. Something was in that brush. Dave lifted his gun to fire. "Announce yourself, or I'll fire!"

  Still no answer. Dave stared at the place where he had seen the movement. It was perfectly still. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him.

  "I will fire!" shouted Dave, opening up on the brush, tearing it to pieces, feeling like a fool, when suddenly one of the beasts lifted in a roar of pain and fell the distance from the brush to the bottom of the ridge.

  "Sonofabitch," said Dave in response.

  He turned and started to scale the hill, going back to the helicopter. He'd get her ready should the others show; and if other beasts began to come for him, Dave might have to simply save himself.

  He heard the stones beneath his feet cascade down
as he stepped up his pace for the chopper. But he also heard other sounds, other stones, and suddenly, all around him, what seemed like boulders and sand and bush lifted up and started toward him. He was surrounded by the beasts. Dave knelt and spun round and round, firing and firing, bringing down one after the other of the attacking beasts, but there were too many of them, and they were too close. They overpowered Dave, and his screams were instantly stifled by a massive claw that replaced his throat as it was ripped from him.

  -22-

  Abraham Stroud and Anna Laughing More heard the screams that seemed to well up from the earth below them as it traveled the walls of the cavern. They heard the deafening gunshots. Anna thought she recognized Tulley's voice in the screams.

  "It's impossible to tell from what direction it's coming," said Stroud, "but I think it's that way."

  She followed his lead. The noise resounded off the walls, the ceiling and the earthen floor. Still, Stroud pursued the sounds, inching along the wall, having doused his light.

  "They need our help," she whispered.

  Stroud said nothing, pushing on faster.

  Saylor's shouts and rancor had barely been heard above the automatic gunfire. Stroud came around a corner too quickly and a spray of bullets sent him diving back, shoving her down when a spray of gunfire bit into the stone all around them.

  "Saylor! Tulley! We're on the other side!" Stroud shouted. But there was no answer and the guns were silent.

  "Saylor! Saylor! Answer me, damn it! Saylor!" cried Stroud to no avail.

  Anna took up the shouts, but it was no use, and Stroud shushed her, holding her, feeling her tremble in his arms. "We're going to die in here, aren't we, Stroud?"

  "No."

  "That's what you dreamed."

  "No!" he denied it.

  "Saylor, Tulley, me and you..."

  "And Cage," he said, "but Cage isn't here, and I tell you, I'm not ready to die. Are you?"

  "Do you think Tulley placed the other two charges?"

  "We'll know pretty soon. Cage has orders to detonate if we don't return within the hour."

  Stroud now took the last of the plastique from his jacket and found a place for it over his head. As he turned from this, he saw Tulley and Saylor coming toward them at the end of the tunnel, and he pointed.

  The two men looked strange, as if stricken, and their movements were not animated. They looked like cardboard likenesses of themselves. Something was moving them. Something was behind them.

  "What's the matter with them?" asked Anna.

  "They've taken the venom. They're in a kind of suspended animation. Sometimes these beasts, for no apparent reason, don't feed on their victims, but turn them into werewolves instead. My guess is that they want to use Saylor and Tulley against us."

  "What should we do?"

  "Do for them what you wanted to do for Kerac, Anna. Do it ... now!"

  They both opened fire on Tulley and Saylor, instantly killing them, along with the monsters holding them up and moving them along toward Stroud. From behind these leapt others; one of them displayed a missing forearm.

  "It's Kerac!" shouted Anna, firing anew, wasting bullets in the sudden pitch.

  "They're gone, Anna! They're gone for now."

  "We've got to find a way out, Abe. They know every rock, every crevice. We're blind down here."

  Stroud backpedaled, taking her along with him, when he saw a light some distance behind them. "Could it be a way out?" he asked her.

  "Dunno, but it's our only hope."

  They rushed toward the moving light, Stroud's own flash beginning to wane when he saw Louis Cage at the end of the flashlight ahead of them.

  "Lou!"

  "Abe! Anna! Is that you?"

  "Yes, yes!" she cried.

  "Hurry!" shouted Cage. "This way."

  It looked like Cage, and it sounded like Cage, but after the frightening use of the bodies of the soldiers, Stroud was suspicious and unsure. Suppose Cage had been bitten, as was the case in Stroud's dream. And suppose Cage was suckering them into a trap at this moment.

  "There's a way out, here!" Cage called.

  Stroud watched Cage's body language as they approached. He was far from stiff, and his animated gestures seemed a sure sign of his being free from the contamination of the beasts.

  "Thank God I've found you. They got Tulley and Saylor, saw the whole thing, but there wasn't anything I could do. Fired and fired into them, but it was useless. Abe, it's madness to be here."

  "Which way?"

  "Follow me."

  They traversed a series of boulders strewn in their path and made for a patch of light in the distance. One of Kerac's kind might be behind every rock, pressed against the sides of the cavern, ready to pounce. One or two were suddenly in pursuit, and ahead the light was blocked by a third. Stroud took careful aim, fired, and suddenly the light was back.

  "Hurry! Run!" Stroud shouted to the others.

  Anna fell, scraping her leg badly, but she fired from a sitting position, police fashion, and brought down another of the pursuing beasts. Stroud turned, fired and brought down several more as Cage helped Anna to her feet.

  Cage went through the opening first, followed by Anna, as Stroud staved off the others coming at him. He pulled a grenade pin and tossed it at the remaining pursuers, leaping into the opening and rolling away as the blast sent up rock and dirt and shrapnel.

  The three of them, supporting one another, rushed into the thickets around the mound. Cage radioed back to the helicopter to detonate the plastique. There was no answer.

  "Dave! Dave! Michelson! Where are you? Come in!"

  Still there was no answer.

  "We've got to blow those charges, Lou, before Kerac figures out what we had in mind, and why we risked going in after him and the others."

  They raced for the chopper, seeing some of the beasts beating about it, tearing things apart, certain that Dave Michelson had been killed by them. Stroud's long legs placed him ahead of the other two, and when he came up on the rise, he was facing six of the beasts, who stared back at him, most with their hands filled with this object or that. Beneath the chopper were the remnant parts of Dave Michelson. They had fed on his body.

  Seeing red, Stroud opened fire, riddling the monsters with the silver nitrate carried into their systems by the bullets. They charged as he fired, the last one falling at Stroud's feet. Stroud then raced to the machine for the detonation device when suddenly one of the beasts that had been cowering inside leapt out over the top of Abe Stroud, sending him to the earth, rolling wildly away from the helicopter.

  Anna More and Louis Cage arrived at the same instant, seeing the beast fly over Stroud. Anna took aim at the rolling, moving target, Cage cautioning her. She threw down the rifle and went for her Smith & Wesson, holding it firmly with both hands. At the instant the creature was about to chomp down on Stroud's throat with its salivating fangs, she fired and it was instantly killed. Stroud threw it over and watched it roll down toward the caves where others of its kind, including Kerac, stared out at their enemy.

  "Fire on them. Pin them back inside!" Stroud shouted to Anna and Cage, who promptly began a volley at the main entranceway to the cavern. Stroud raced once more for the helicopter and found the detonator which Tulley had set to simultaneously set off all four of the plastique charges they had placed inside the cavern.