by Terry Yates
“I’ll go with Pvt. Fulton,” Sam said, looking at Gringo, who remained silent.
“Here,” FranAnne told Kyler, sliding her pistol to him. Kyler looked at her and shook his head.
“Keep it. I’m no good with those things. I already lost one today.”
FranAnne nodded and took the gun back. The five of them stood up in the doorway. Gringo peeked around the corner.
“If I were you guys, I would take off right now,” he told them. “I don’t think you’re gonna get a better chance than this.”
“I’m not sure I remember where the shower or the laundry room are,” Kyler said.
“They’re just down the hallway from each other,” FranAnne answered. “We’ll pass the laundry room first. You guys can go in there while we run down and get Shelly.
Kyler nodded his head. At that moment, from down the hallway, they heard the creature howl.
“You better go now,” Gringo said. “While that thing is far away.”
Kyler looked at Sam, FranAnne, and then Zora.
“Ready?”
The three nodded.
FranAnne and Zora got in front of Sam and Kyler since they both remembered where the rooms were. They looked down the hallway where Joe and the werewolf had disappeared. Hopefully, Joe could hold out long enough to keep the beast at the other end of the floor while they went in the opposite direction.
“You better go,” Gringo said again. “Now!”
As if Gringo’s voice was a starter pistol, the four ran out of the doorway and began sprinting down the hall. They rounded one corner, then sprinted the length of a hallway, and then rounded another corner. Zora was flying ahead of them, while FranAnne began to lag a little, but Kyler and Sam wouldn’t pass her up, they ran in place behind her. They needed her to help leading them to the rooms.
“We’ve got to get the doggie!” Lauren squealed.
“Shh!!!” Ariella told her, rubbing her back. You’ve got to be quiet.”
Lauren, Ariella, Locklear, Sylvia, Samantha, Zack, and now Rob Olsen, whom Zack had pulled from his cot, were all lying on their bellies in the dark, just under the television set. Only Gringo stayed by the door.
“But the doggie!” Lauren squealed again.
“Lauren, you have to be quiet,” Locklear whispered, who was kicking himself for having given Potts his cardkey. They could’ve been in the elevator by now. He didn’t know where they would go, but they could’ve probably outrun the thing or hidden from it until daylight…maybe, but now they were screwed…and Potts, Hawkins, or Sgt. Cohen weren’t even there to help them.
Lauren began to sob.
“Will someone keep her quiet?” Samantha snapped.
“Samantha!” Sylvia hissed, shocked that the usually sweet and gentile, squeaky voiced model would say such a thing to a child.
“Well! She’s going to get us all killed,” Samantha came back, glaring straight ahead.
As Lauren cried, Michael Blum crawled on his stomach behind the line of people, until he made his way over to the O’Hearley’s. He watched as father and mother both had their arms around Lauren’s shoulders and her back and both were rubbing her gently. Another pang hit Michael. If they all died right now, Lauren would at least be in the arms of her parents. Why couldn’t his parents be here? They had ditched him…plain and simple. His father was powerful enough to have had him rescued by now, but he hadn’t. He had left him to his own devices. “Figure it out,” he would’ve said.
Lauren’s head was down now and she was sobbing into her arms. Michael couldn’t understand why he felt so sorry for the school kook. She was weird, odd, peculiar, and down right strange sometimes, but here he was, his heart hurting for her. Somehow her pain had become his pain, and that was the strangest feeling Michael Blum had ever felt.
From behind them, Michael tugged on Lauren’s pant leg. Lauren quickly looked behind her, thinking that it might be Joe, and that he had defeated the monster and had snuck up behind her and was tugging at her playfully, but to her surprise, it was Michael Blum, and he was motioning for her to come to him. She did a double take to make sure she was seeing things correctly, but he was still there, motioning for her to come.
Seeing Lauren looking over her shoulder, Locklear and Ariella turned their heads around, too, to see Michael Blum looking at them sheepishly, his index finger in mid beckon, ending with his finger looking like a warped candy cane. The three stared at him for a moment, causing him to blush in the dark. He always knew when he was blushing, because his glasses would fog over.
Embarrassed as the O’Hearley’s continued to stare at him, he motioned one more time for Lauren to join him. Lauren looked at Ariella and Ariella looked at Locklear, who nodded his head at Ariella, who in turn, nodded her assent back to Lauren, who turned around and slowly crept back to Michael. Once they were facing one another, head to head, Michael could see that her eyes were red, and a long string of mucus was hanging from her nose.
“Look…eh…Lauren…” he whispered, wondering why in the world he was doing this. “Joe’s going to be all right.”
Lauren wiped her nose on her sleeve and looked into his eyes.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I…I just do. We have to be brave for him, see…because…he’s out there trying to save our lives…so…uh…don’t be…uh…sad, okay?”
Lauren stared back at him, smiled, and nodded her head. “Thank you, Michael,” she said, touching his forearm.
“You’re…uh…you’re welcome,” he stammered back. He had a strange warm feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had never felt before. Even through his fear of dying and his throbbing leg, he felt good.
“I better be getting back now,” she whispered.
He nodded his head as she turned around and slid back in between her parents, who once again, put their arms around her.
As he crawled back to his spot next to Zack and Rob Olsen, he saw Zack look at him and wink. Michael somehow felt complete at that moment, and if he had to die, well then, he had done at least one good thing in his life.
CHAPTER 54
Kyler, Zora, Sam, and FranAnne were sprinting down a long hallway. Kyler was stuck in the middle, fear making him want to pass the others up, but he stayed where he was, impressed as he could be in this situation with Zora who seemed to run like the wind…and not in a girly way either. She had arms pumping and legs kicking. She must have run track in her Belgian school days.
“How far?” Sam asked.
“One more turn,” Zora answered back.
As the three rounded the last corner, they could see the laundry room light on about halfway down the hallway on the left, but the shower room, which was farther down the corridor on the right, had no light beaming out into the hallway.
As they neared the laundry room, Kyler and Zora moved to the left side of the corridor, while FranAnne and Sam moved to the right. When they reached the laundry room door, Kyler and Zora began to slow down, while Sam and FranAnne sprinted past them.
Zora ran into the room first with Kyler right on her tail. When she saw Wilbur Munn’s mangled body, she stopped suddenly, causing Kyler to run into her, knocking her forward. As she did so, she had to jump over his remains. She landed on her feet, but one foot slipped in a large pool of blood, causing her to fall to one knee, where she placed a hand behind her back to brace her fall. Her hand, leg, and right hip landed in the blood, but she didn’t fall completely backwards, managing to land on her right elbow.
She rolled out of the muck and looked up at Kyler, who was staring down at what had once been the nice but frightened young corporal. Actually, it was about half of what had once been the nice but frightened young corporal…the upper half to be exact. His whole stomach was torn open, revealing his rib cage, which had been completely caved in. His entrails dangled from the open cavity where his stomach had once been, and spilled into the puddle of blood that Zora had just slipped in. The upper part of his spine was sticking out of the r
ib cage, the lower part of the spine completely severed. And his face…or what was left of it was a mass of jelly, as was most of his head. His blond hair was the only thing that told a layperson that the smashed and eaten object before them had once been a human being.
“Oh my God…” was all that escaped Zora’s lips as she stood up and wiped her bloody hand on her pant leg. “Wilbur.”
Kyler nodded. “Wilbur.” He was impressed that Zora was handling it so well. “Where’s Opal?” he asked.
He stepped over what had once been Wilbur.
“Are you all right?” he asked Zora, who was still looking down at the bloody mess covering the floor.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“We’ve got to find Opal,” he told her.
Zora nodded her head and the two began to search the laundry room.
FranAnne and Sam had run into the dark locker room, which lit up once they crossed the threshold. There was no sign of Shelly or little Kayla.
“Shelly,” FranAnne had whispered. Shelly, are you in here?”
Sam walked to the shower and peaked inside. “It looks like she was here. The floor’s wet,” he told FranAnne who was searching the locker room.
FranAnne’s throat began to tighten. She had made herself responsible for Shelly and she had lost her to the beast…she and the baby.
“Come on,” Sam said, seeing that she was staring off into the distance. “We’ve got to get out of here. Private Fulton!”
FranAnne snapped out of her trance and looked at Sam.
“Come on,” he repeated. “We have to go back and get the doctor and Miss LeMarque!”
FranAnne nodded and walked past Sam and into the hallway. He came up behind and the two looked both ways down the corridor, before running back toward the laundry room. As they reached the door, they met Kyler and Zora running out of the room. Only a quick sidestep by Kyler kept the four from crashing into one another.
“What happened to you?” FranAnne asked, looking down at the blood on Zora’s clothes.
“Where are Miss Munn and Wilbur?” Sam interrupted.
“We don’t know where Opal is,” Kyler answered. “And there is no more Wilbur. Where’s Shelly and the baby?”
“They weren’t in the locker room,” FranAnne came back, looking down guiltily.
“Great. We ran all the way down here for nothing,” Kyler said.
“We’ve got to find Shelly!” FranAnne said, a pleading look on her face.
“Where could they have gone?” Zora asked FranAnne.
“Professor O’Hearley and I found Shelly earlier today wandering the halls,” Sam informed them. “She was in sort of a daze, but…”
“Where was this?” Zora interrupted.
“All I can really remember is that it was…that way,” he answered, pointing his finger down the opposite end of the hallway.
The four stared at each other for a moment.
“Well?” Kyler asked.
Without another word, the four of them, led by Sam, began to run down the corridor. When they reached the end of the hallway, Sam stopped.
“Which way?” FranAnne asked him.
“I think…this way,” Sam answered, pointing down the left corridor. “Yes…I think…yes!”
Sam began to sprint down the hallway, quickly followed by the others, taking them farther and farther away from home base.
CHAPTER 55
The beast paced back and forth in front of the building, snorting and growling. The creature that by day was Nicholas Klefka was hungry. It hungered for flesh and blood…it hungered for two-leggers. Since its transformation, it had gone back and finished the last bits of the two-legger that it had killed on top of the hill the night before, but there hadn’t been much. The rain or whatever animals were left on the island, dragged most of what was left away. The food only whetted its appetite.
It was also angry. Angry at whomever or whatever took the two-legger pup from the shelter that the werewolf had built for it. For reasons that the beast could not fathom, it had decided to spare the pup and make it one of its own rather than eat it. It had taken the baby from the hospital to the woods where its instincts told it to bite just a tiny portion of its skin…just enough to make it become like him. The pup had hardly cried as the werewolf bit into it. The beast was used to hearing screams and howls, and cries of death, but this pup had hardly made a sound. The werewolf deemed it worthy to receive its blood. After it had built a temporary shelter for its new protégé, it had gone to find more food. The two-legger pup would need nourishment and better shelter. The creature had returned to find the shelter empty. Its instincts told it that it was taken by a two-legger, possibly one of the ones in the field that had gotten away from it, but not before being bitten. It had trouble recalling such events, for its memory was not much better than any other canine’s. Most of its memories were hazy and blurred after more than a day or two had elapsed. But it knew that one or possibly two of the pain stick carrying two-leggers from two moons before had gotten away from him in the field. It had stalked them in the field soon after it had left the big white rock. It wasn’t sure nor cared who or what had carried its pup away, but it did know that it was in the big rock that stood before him. It could smell it and it could feel it. It also knew that there were more like him in the rock…at least three…maybe more.
It growled angrily as it pounded its huge clawed fists against the two steel doors, trying to find the smallest crack to wedge open, but they were too solid for even it to knock down. It growled again in anger and moved off the porch. It looked up at the building as if it were some large animal that it knew it could defeat if it could only find a weak spot.
It lumbered around the building. There was no rain or strong wind tonight and the creature liked that. It could concentrate better on the task at hand when things weren’t flying through the air striking it on the head.
It moved to the side of the building and looked up. Five centuries of life had taught it that there was always some way to get through an obstacle. It only had to be patient. Patience was always the key. It knew that no animal could destroy it, but instinct told it that it could be destroyed, so it always remained cautious. But unlike other animals, which learned by experience, the werewolf continued to probe and prod until it found a way to achieve its primal goals…mainly food and survival of its kind.
The werewolf extended its claws as much as possible, and then with all of its might, thrust them into the brick and stone. Good. The brick and stone didn’t crumble, but allowed the beast to grip and take hold of the side of the building. It took its other forepaw and did the same thing again, only this time it reached a little higher. It then took the first fist out and reached up and smashed a hole above the other one. Yes, that’s it. It would climb the building, claws over claws, until it reached the top. Once on top, it would find a way in. There was always a way in. Be patient, its instincts told it. It was a long way to the top, but if it just took its time, it would be up there soon.
It smashed hole after hole into the side of the building, gradually making its way to the top. It couldn’t find enough strength with its fore-claws in the brick to kick its hind claws into the stone, so it crawled foreleg over foreleg. Each time its claws shattered the brick, the powder and loose pieces of the stone would fall into the beast’s eyes and nostrils causing it to sneeze and its eyes to tear up.
As it inched its way to the top, the creature felt elation. The moon was orange, bright, and big, giving the monster a feeling of true power. It was king of the night…king of all predators. It felt excited and it felt invincible. It wanted to raise its head to the moon and howl long and loud, letting every creature on the island know that this was his island, and to make way when he walked by or be made to suffer the consequences, but he didn’t. Stealth was what was needed right now.
It was halfway up the side of the three-story building when a smell entered its nostrils. It sto
pped climbing for a moment and sniffed. It was two-legger flesh and its nostrils were filled with the aroma. It turned its nose to the sky, closed its eyes, and took a huge sniff, filling its lungs with air as it did. There was more than one…there were several…and they were close. It opened its eyes and laid its ears back. Yes. This is what life for a werewolf was all about. The hunt.
It raised its nose to the air again, and took in one more deep sniff. Yes, the smell was strong now. Just as it suspected, the smells were coming from above…and yes, there were three…and if they were out, there was probably a way in. He would feast on those at the top of the giant rock, and then get inside and feast on the others, take his wolf pup, let the pup feast, and then maybe…its brain wasn’t sure…kill the others like himself. The land was too small for more than one or two of them…survival of the fittest. It would decide when the time came.
Along with the strong scents, it now heard voices…hushed voices…quiet voices. It flattened itself against the wall, pricked up its ears, and listened.
“Keep your voice down, Hawkins,” one voice said.
“Sorry, Sir,” another said.
It didn’t understand what the two-leggers said in their strange tongue, but it could feel their wariness…their apprehension. It would have to move slowly, which proved to be difficult, because its claws couldn’t penetrate the brick without making some kind of noise. If it was going to make it to the top, it would have go fast, and risk making noise, but it might be able to attack them before they had a chance to react.
It remained flattened to the wall, but stuck its rump out the way all of his kind did when they were stalking their prey. It pinned its ears behind its head and prepared to run to the top. As it was about to pull its right claws out of the brick, it heard a voice very close to him…almost to the edge of the roof.
“This coffee’s goin’ right through me,” it said.