by Terry Yates
“Shit,” Kyler said under his breath.
“I know. I just didn’t think it wise to show it to his wife at the time…you know…in her state of mind.”
“Good call, Sergeant.”
“I just didn’t have the heart to do it. She was having enough trouble coping with the loss of her little boy, it just didn’t seem right. But now, I’m not sure what to do. She’s gonna spend another scary night away from him and I’m not sure she can take it, but I don’t feel right keeping it from her…but…”
“But if she sees it,” Kyler started, she’s going to realize that he was most likely eaten by that thing.
“Exactly.”
They both turned to find Shelly, sitting cross-legged on one of the tables, holding her sleeping baby, and singing softly to it, a blissful smile on her face. The men turned back around.
“What say, Sergeant, that we keep it under our hats for a little longer. She’s hanging on by a slender thread right now, plus the last thing we need with a hurricane coming is an hysterical person. I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to have enough of them on our hands before the night is over anyway, so…”
“I kind of hoped you’d say that,” Sgt. Cohen said, a look of relief on his face. He looked around one more time before putting the nametag back in his pocket. “Thanks, Doctor. Well…I’d better get back to my hammering.”
“Of course.”
With this, the man walked away, a little bit more spring in his step. He had needed validation for what he had done and Kyler had given it to him willingly.
Kyler turned around and looked at Shelly Dixon. At that moment, he wished Cohen hadn’t showed him the nametag. Where most people liked to put off the inevitable, Kyler hated it, because he was now going to have to live with the dread of Shelly finding out that her husband had been torn apart and possibly eaten by a werewolf. And worst of all…Kyler had the sinking feeling that he was going to have to tell her.
CHAPTER 27
It was eight-thirty and the wind and rain had begun to pick up, not much, but enough to shake the mess hall, its canvas walls beginning to flap hard even with the hundreds of nails that had been hammered into it by Gringo, FranAnne, Pvt. Hawkins, Zack, and Sgt. Cohen. The stranger had been watching them as he piled sandbags in front of the side wall which was closest to the ocean and made of wood. He had seen the five of them drag in three crates full of nails, open them up, and begin hammering the canvas flaps into the wood. In an hour’s time, they had not stopped hammering. It looked like they had only a few nails to go. The lady private kept looking at her hands, checking the blisters that were growing ever larger with each hammer stroke, but she had not stopped once to rest. It looked to him like she had something to prove, something to show someone…probably the colonel.
He, Sam Fong, Pvt. Gibson, Locklear O’Hearley, and Potts were also piling sand bags, Potts easily keeping up with the younger men, not so Locklear. He had started huffing and puffing after toting his second sandbag. By his third, his legs were wobbling so bad that the Stranger thought that the man would pass out. Locklear was a fairly large man, about six feet three and a paunchy two hundred and seventy pounds. He wasn’t made for hard labor, probably never had been. He’d been the nerd in school that never did anything physical, work or play, because he had too many allergies or asthma or something.
The Stranger looked at the sandbag wall which stretched across the side of the building, which, lucky for them had the shortest width. The front of the canteen, the widest part…about a hundred feet in width, faced the hills, so it was better protected from the storm, but the side might get slammed pretty good. They would need more help with the sandbags seeing as how they had only stacked the bags two deep all the way across, which meant that the lower four feet of the wall was protected, but the wall was at least ten feet high.
The Stranger stopped for a moment and peered into the darkness, the rain pouring off of him. All of this seemed somehow familiar to him. The sandbags…the hammering…the lightning in the distance. He closed his eyes, trying to remember something…anything. Images flashed before his eyes, but nothing would stay long enough to take hold.
“Are you okay, Mister?” Pvt. Gibson asked slamming the sandbag down that would begin the third row.
“Yes, I’m fine…thank you,” he lied. He really wasn’t feeling very well at all. When those images had flashed before him, he began to feel somewhat anxious, even though they had gone by too fast for him to see. Although the rain and the wind were cool, he suddenly felt warm all over as if he had just drank a whole bottle of cheap wine. Why did he know what cheap wine tasted like?
“Why don’t you go inside for a second,” Gibson suggested between gasps of air, “and have someone else come out to help us. Hell, get as many people as you can to come help us. We need to strengthen this wall. The five of us’ll never get this done in time…four if you count Prof. O’Hearley. He’s spent. Go on. Take five.”
The Stranger looked at the private and nodded his head. The warmth in his stomach was growing hotter and his anxiety was increasing. He’d better go inside and relax for a minute like the man suggested.
He walked around to the front of the mess hall and through the doorway. They were going to seal it last, when everything else was done, and everyone was inside. The hammering grew louder as he entered the mess. His temples began to throb from the sound. One minute he would hear five hammers hitting the wood at different times, and the next, they would all be hammering in unison, like ancient soldiers marching in step. Ancient soldiers? Why had he thought of ancient soldiers?
As he moved through the room, he saw the rest of the group moving all of the tables to the center of the large room where they were putting everything that they needed under them and placing sandbags around the perimeters to keep both the tables from flying away and to keep the wind and the rain off of their supplies.
He watched as the doctor busied himself with securing the boy’s broken leg, checking his stitches on the young girl, and giving medication to the man who had lost his wife. He still had not learned how the man had lost his wife. He assumed it had been the storm, but no one was really talking about it.
People moved all around him as he leaned against a supporting tent pole, which was actually about the size of a railroad tie. He dropped his head and closed his eyes for a moment. What was going on inside him? This feeling…this warm…sickness inside him, seemed familiar to him. He knew this wasn’t the first time he had ever felt this way. He took a few deep breaths. God, he felt like he was busting out of his skin.
He kept his eyes closed for a moment hoping the feeling would pass. When he opened his eyes, they were blurry from tears of pain. He saw the dog pacing back and forth, growling in his direction. The old lady was staring at him, too, a smile so wicked on her face, that it actually scared him. Whoever he was, he must be a really brave character, what with letting octogenarians frighten him.
As he clung to the pole, he began to hyperventilate, not much, but enough to catch the doctor’s attention. He had just been checking the status of the baby, who was wailing at the top of its lungs. The Stranger knew the feeling, because that was exactly what he wanted to do at that moment.
He looked up to see that the doctor was approaching him, a look of concern on his face.
“What is it?” Kyler asked him, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You don’t look so good.”
Kyler put both hands on the man’s cheeks and looked at his face. He was burning up. He could see beads of sweat mixing with the raindrops. He moved his hands down to the man’s neck.
“Do you know…uh…try to remember…think hard and try to tell me if maybe…diabetes sounds familiar?”
The Stranger shook his head weakly. Kyler didn’t know whether to take that as a no, or that he couldn’t remember. Kyler checked the man’s neck for swelling or lumps. As his fingers moved down to the man’s jugular, he was startled to find that both sides of his neck were pulsating
hard. His heart must be pumping at an ungodly alarming rate.
Kyler peeled back the man’s eyelids to check his pupils. As the doctor was doing this, another vision flashed lightning quick before his eyes, but was still too fast for him to see it and understand it.
“Could someone bring me a flashlight, please?” Kyler called out.
Burt Burns took one off of a table and moved as quickly as his seventy-three year old tired legs allowed him to.
“Here you go, Doctor,” he said, handing the flashlight butt end to Kyler.
Kyler thanked Burt for the flashlight, but the Stranger did not hear it because the doctor had suddenly become yellowish in color and his voice seemed to slow down and echo as he spoke. He looked past Kyler to see that the whole room was now tinted in yellow and green.
Another flash. This time he saw something. He was inside a small room with seats and people…people who were looking at him…and screaming in terror as their red eyes fell upon him. Just as quickly as he’d seen it, the vision disappeared, barely leaving a trace. What was it? Why were those people with the red eyes afraid of him? Another flash. A soldier with red eyes. He was also terrified and screaming.
Pain suddenly shot through the man’s stomach, nearly sending him to his knees, the only thing stopping him, the doctor and the old man who each took an arm and began to move him toward a table. Another flash! He saw a woman whose face was blurred. Another flash! A jet. Another flash! He was knocking down a door in the small room where the terrified people had been screaming only moments before, only he knew that they were dead. He had his back turned to them as he broke down the door, but he still knew that they were dead…and that he had killed them.
“Help me,” he gasped as the doctor and the old man sat him down on one of the long tables.
By this time, everyone in the mess hall had stopped what they were doing and began to look at the stranger who was now beginning to hyperventilate.
“Here! Lie down,” Kyler told him, lying him down on his back while Burt Burns picked the man’s legs up off of the floor. They stretched him out on the table. The Stranger was sweating profusely now, his head moving from side to side as if he were having a bad dream. He continued to hyperventilate, faster now.
“What’s wrong with him?” Gringo asked, joining the two men at the table.
“I don’t know…I can’t…diabetic shock…heart attack…some sort of overdose…I don’t know, but whatever it is, it ain’t good!”
The man continued to roll his head and hyperventilate. Kyler had no medicines to deal with this sort of attack. The best he could do would be to shoot him up with a strong sedative.
“Nurse!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Nurse Wall…”
As he turned, he almost ran into Nurse Walling who was standing right behind him, a syringe in her hand that would’ve poked him in the shoulder if he hadn’t stumbled as he turned.
“How many cc’s?” he asked her.
“Whatever’s in the syringe.”
Kyler took the syringe and turned back to the Stranger. He took an arm and was about to plunge the needle into a vein, when the man’s arm shot out at lightning and grabbed Kyler’s wrist. Kyler winced in pain. He had never felt a grip so tight. He looked down into the Stranger’s face. He was no longer hyperventilating nor was his body shaking anymore. The man was calmly looking back at Kyler. Other than the sweat on his face and his rain-matted hair, he seemed perfectly normal.
“Something’s wrong,” he spoke calmly, still looking at the doctor.
“You’re telling us, Bro,” Gringo shot back. “We thought you were gonna come apart at the seams there for a minute.
The Stranger released his grip on Kyler, motioned for him to step, back, then quickly shot up in a sitting position.
“No, something’s terribly wrong. I shouldn’t be here.”
He swung his legs off the table, pausing for a moment, before cautiously standing up.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said calmly, his eyes fixed to the floor.”
“What do you mean?” Kyler asked, rubbing his sore wrist.
The man kept his eyes to the floor. “I shouldn’t be here.”
He looked around the room. By this time, Potts and the others had walked in out of the rain.
“What in the hell is going on?” Potts asked, annoyed that he’d had to go out in the rain in his dry uniform.
“I think Mister…uh…this gentleman…has a bad fever.”
“Oh yeah?” Potts replied, uninterested.
“No. Listen to me. This isn’t right,” The Stranger seemed to be trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Look, Friend…”
“I’ve…got…to get…out of here.”
“Where do you think you’re gonna go right now,” Potts asked.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
Another flash! He was in the small room again with the terrified people who were once again alive and screaming! Another flash! The moon! Another flash! Fire! Another flash! A jet! Another flash! He saw himself breaking down the door of the little room. There are three men. Three men in uniforms. Blue uniforms. Blue uniforms with caps. Flight crew uniforms.
Something was drawing him to the window. He moved quickly toward it followed by Kyler, Gringo, and now Potts and Cohen. The wind and the rain were beating against the plastic window causing it to flap hard. Beads of rain were running down the plastic making any sort of clear view of the night sky next to impossible, but the Stranger seemed to be looking right through it. Lightning flashed across the sky as the hot feeling returned to his body. His jaws began to hurt causing him to clinch his teeth in pain. Once again, he felt like he was going to break through his skin. Another flash! An old man in a hospital bed. Another flash! This time, an old woman is in a hospital bed.
His whole body was on fire now, the sweat once again beginning to pour down his face, and the hyperventilating was beginning to return.
“What’s happening to him?” Michael Blum asked Zack Olsen who had moved next to him.
“I have no idea,” Zack, answered, his eyes transfixed upon the man.
The man felt a hand on his shoulder. Out of some strange animalistic instinct, he whirled on his heels as if ready to fight. It was only the doctor. He’s no threat, his instinct told him. He looked at the doctor whose eyes were now red. He quickly scanned the room and saw that everyone’s eyes were red…even the dog, who was now pacing and growling menacingly, had red eyes. The only one without red eyes was the old lady. She just sat still and smiled at him. The doctor stepped back in front of him blocking his view of the others.
“Come on…lie back down,” he told him.
“No!” The Stranger’s voice sounded almost guttural now. “I have to leave!”
The change in the man’s voice made Kyler shudder. Goose bumps were rising all over his body.
“You can’t leave right…”
Before Kyler could finish his sentence, the Stranger turned on his heels again and began to move toward the doorway. Kyler looked at the others, not sure of what to do. They, in turn, were looking back at him as if they expected him to do something.
“We’ve got to stop him,” he said, looking at Potts. “We can’t let him leave.”
Potts looked from the doctor to the stranger. “Hawkins…Gibson…get him.”
Immediately, the two privates rushed to the door, and each grabbed the stranger by an arm just as he was about to walk through the doorway, which was the last part of the mess hall that hadn’t been nailed shut.
“Come on, Sir,” Hawkins said softly, but authoritatively, “why don’t you lay back down for awhile and let the doc take a look at you?”
“I can’t,” he answered just as softly, yet with a more guttural tone than before. He almost sounded as if he were growling. “I can’t stay here. I must go.”
“Well, you can’t go right now,” Gibson told him calmly. “It’s too
bad out and you’re sick, so just come along with Pvt. Hawkins and me.”
The Stranger shot a look at him. “Let me go…now!”
Gibson looked into the man’s face. Something about it was different now. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was definitely different. It was his eyes. The man’s pupils were down to pinpoint size even though it was dark outside and pretty badly lit inside. His brown eyes seemed to take up the whole socket, which made him look soulless. Gibson felt that the man was looking at him like Wile E. Coyote looked at the Road Runner.
The Stranger began to move toward the door again, but Hawkins and Gibson tightened their grip on him.
“All right, Sir, we have to stay inside now,” Hawkins was still trying to maintain a soft, soothing voice.
By this time, Potts and Sgt. Cohen and moved up behind the trio. Potts put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Let’s go, Son…back to the table…doctor’s orders.”
“Please!” the man pleaded, his eyes cast down, trying to control his hyperventilating. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
The four soldiers looked at one another. All but Sgt. Cohen were smiling.
“We don’t want to hurt you either, so come on back so Dr. Kyler can get a better look at you,” Potts told him in as calm a voice as he could possibly muster. He wasn’t averse to kicking the shit out of the guy if they had to, because for all he knew, the man was a terrorist or a spy. “Let’s make this easy on all of us, shall we?”
Without warning, the Stranger broke the grip of the two privates. Then, in the blink of an eye, grabbed their arms and slammed the two soldiers into each other, their foreheads cracking together. Hawkins and Gibson immediately hit the mess hall floor, both knocked cold. As he turned to walk out the door, Potts barreled into the man’s back while Sgt. Cohen tackled the back of his knees, sending the Stranger to the floor. Gringo jumped into the fray to help hold the man down.
“This guy’s strong as an ox!” Gringo yelled, using all of his weight to keep the man from rolling over. “Somebody help!”