by Terry Yates
“You really fought that thing outside?” Sam asked.
“Hell yeah, we fought the thing outside! On the roof!”
“It must’ve gotten inside somehow.”
“Did you figure that out all on your own, Fong?”
“What was with the white hair?”
“White hair? What white hair?”
“The thing…the werewolf. It had long white hair. How could you miss it?”
“We didn’t miss it, Fong. We were so close to that beast that we could smell its ass…and there was no white hair!”
Potts watched as Sam rubbed his chin.
“What?” Potts asked. He was still in pain, but the redness had disappeared from his face.
“Colonel…” Sam began. That werewolf was in here. We all saw it, and we all saw that it had long white hair from its head, down to its back.
Potts grunted one last time before standing up. He couldn’t stand up completely straight yet. That skinny, ballsy doctor had popped him one good.
“I’m still not getting it, Fong.” Potts said to Sam. “You’re saying that it had long white hair?”
“Yes…like a mane, almost.” Sam thought for a moment, then his eyes lit up. “Colonel…you don’t think…”
Potts’ brain wanted to shut down. The doctor had knocked his cods up into his throat and now he was having to deal with something that he just wasn’t sure he could handle at that particular moment.
“So, you’re saying…” Potts started, but waited for Sam to intervene.
“Maybe, there’s two of them?” Sam finished.
“That’s just…”
“We all saw it, Col. Potts.”
“White hair?”
“White hair.”
“Damn!” Potts muttered before sitting back down on the cot. “Two of ‘em!”
CHAPTER 58
Michael Blum sat in a chair; once again his broken leg propped up in a chair across from him. Lauren O’Hearley had come along and sat next to him and talked for over an hour, before Locklear told her that it was time for her to go to bed. He couldn’t believe that he had enjoyed the company of the girl who was known as the school nut, but he had. She had talked almost nonstop and non-sensibly about everything from the werewolf to how many times a certain Irish duck pees in a given day. When she left, he felt empty. He knew he wasn’t in love with her or anything like that, but he was beginning to like her. She was brave…braver than he was. And she was kind, but most of all; she didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. He didn’t think he could be like that. He worried about what people thought of him, especially his dad…and his friends…the few that he had.
He watched Lauren walk to her bed and sit down on it, her back to him. After a moment, she turned around and looked at him. She smiled and gave him a short wave, and he did the same in return. She turned back around and looked up at her mother, who bent down in front of her. Michael could tell that she was opening Lauren’s shirt and checking her stitches. He couldn’t hear what Ariella was saying, but Lauren nodded her head, and then lay down on the bed. Ariella pulled the blanket up under her chin, bent down, and kissed her forehead before walking away. While they had talked, she didn’t talk about her parents much, other than to say the oddest thing that he could imagine anyone saying. She had told him that this experience…two hurricanes and a werewolf…had been the best thing that had happened to her family. It seemed strange when she had said it, but he thought he was beginning to understand. The O’Hearley’s were just like the Blum’s, not in the way they lived or talked, or the type of people that they socialized with, but in the way that neither of their parents were particularly warm individuals. Michael’s parents never hugged him or kissed him or joked with him like he’d seen his friends’ parents do with them…and he could see that it had been the same way with Lauren. Where his parents thought that showing affection…if it was possible for them to show affection…was a sign of weakness, the O’Hearley’s were geeks…and he knew very few geeks that laughed and told jokes or even got jokes for that matter. But since Lauren had come so close to dying, on several occasions now, her parents seemed to understand how close they had come to losing her, and were doing their best, in their own way, to make up for lost time. They were stroking her, holding her, and kissing her…and he was envious. He wondered if his parents would be treating him the same way as the O’Hearley’s were treating Lauren if they were with him now.
Michael laid his head back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. As he did, he suddenly had an epiphany. He wanted to be a doctor…or at least a scientist. Not a senator, not the president, not even a king. His twelve-year-old brain wanted him to be like Dr. Kyler. He helped people and he was brave…brave enough to take on a werewolf and kick Col. Potts in the nuts. That was enough to convince him. He smiled, trying to remember if he’d ever had a thought like this before…one where he decided something…not his parents. Maybe he’d be like Prof. O’Hearley and have cardkeys that could get you into places that only a select few are allowed to enter. Either way, he knew now what he wanted to do. Dr. Blum or Professor Blum…they both sounded great.
His smile turned into laughter when he felt something tickling the foot on his broken leg. He looked down to discover Joe, who seemed to be either bandaged or stitched from head to paw, licking the bottom of his foot.
“Stop it,” he laughed.
The dog sensed that the boy was actually enjoying it, so he went from licking the bottom of his foot to between his purple toes. His golden eyes gleamed with delight as the boy laughed harder. After a few more wet swipes with his tongue, Joe moved up to Michael’s side. He sensed that the boy was lonely.
“Look at us, Joe,” he said, scratching the top of the dog’s head, which was about the only place on the canine’s body that wasn’t bloody, scratched or torn. “We’re just alike, aren’t we? Both beaten up and alone.”
He dropped his hand from Joe’s head, but the dog was having none of it. He put his head back up under the boy’s hand, and made him continue scratching, which of course, Michael did.
Michael’s eyes began to get heavy. He leaned his head back again, and then closed his eyes. As he drifted off, he began to dream, the images forming behind his closed eyes making no sense at all to him, but they were peaceful images…serene images. He saw himself flying through billowy white clouds in a contraption much like a gyrocopter. It was only big enough for him to fit into. The small propellers hummed as he weaved in and out of the clouds, using a single stick for steering, much like the ones he’d seen in his father’s helicopter.
He flew over water, then over snowcapped mountains, then over green meadows that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. He found himself flying straight toward the sun, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. The sun wasn’t hot, but warm…warm like a nice May afternoon when the day was bright and breezy and you just wanted every day for the rest of your life to be like that day. In his dream, the sun was making his eyelids heavier and heavier, as if it were trying to induce him to sleep, which it did, both in the dream and in the real world.
As his hand slipped from the top of Joe’s head, down to his side, the dog looked at him. The boy was smiling. Seeing the boy at peace, the dog walked away and over to Lauren’s cot, where the young girl was lying on her side with her knees drawn up. Seizing the moment, he slowly climbed up onto the cot, his body hurting, and curled up at the bottom of the bed. Joe closed his eyes immediately. He was exhausted after having fought the strange two-legged she-dog. Joe’s dreams weren’t nearly as complicated as the boy’s. He simply dreamt of running through green grass with Lauren and Michael and maybe other children he had seen or known before the water fell from the sky.
CHAPTER 59
Kyler had showered and changed into another uniform. The pair of pants that he took from a locker was made for someone at least three inches shorter. On the way back to the sleeping quarters, he had closed the laundry room door where the remains of Wilbur Mun
n lay, all alone and broken. He couldn’t bring himself to look into the room again after having just washed some of Wilbur off of him. He closed his eyes, reached out, and pulled the door to. Someone would have to go in there and clean up the place, he supposed, but that could be done in the morning. Right then, all he wanted was to just go back to the sleeping quarters, check on Lauren, Gringo, Michael, Shelly, and Joe…if they were awake…one last time, and then lie down and sleep for the next two days, or until they were rescued, whichever came first.
As he neared the door, he saw Sgt. Cohen, FranAnne, and Hawkins talking to Potts, who stood in the doorway, his arms folded in front of him. Kyler guessed that the swelling had gone down.
Kyler and Potts made eye contact, but Potts looked away to deal with the situation at hand. Kyler had not looked forward to seeing the colonel again. When he had stormed out of the sleeping quarters, he had been angry, but the shower had cooled him off and he had begun to dread their next meeting, because he had cheap shot a man who, although sixteen or seventeen years older than he, and four or five inches shorter could, on any given day, break him in half. He let out a small sigh once he figured out that Potts’ attention wasn’t on him at the moment.
“What do you mean, you can’t find it?” Kyler heard Potts ask angrily.
“We lost its trail,” Cohen told him, trying not to look into the colonel’s steel blue angry eyes.
“How in Cheyenne’s bag could you lose its trail? I heard the thing was dragging half its body behind it!”
“The blood trail dried up, Sir,” Cohen reiterated. It just disappeared.
Potts looked at Hawkins and FranAnne who both nodded.
“Well, you’re gonna have to stand guard tonight,” Potts told the trio. “Sgt. Cohen, you and Hawkins will be on the roof. Fulton, you’ll patrol these hallways. Take plenty of firepower, got it?”
The three nodded.
“Sir?” Cohen started. “Why are we guarding both perimeters?”
Potts looked over at Kyler, and then turned around to make sure no one was listening behind him.
“Because I think there are two of them now.”
Kyler and the three soldiers simultaneously dropped their jaws.
“Two of them?” Kyler asked, stunned.
“Yes, two of them,” Potts answered.
The five of them stood in silence, no one was sure exactly what to say. Potts let it sink in before continuing.
“I don’t believe it,” Kyler said loudly.
“Quiet!” Potts hissed at him. “We don’t want to start a panic!”
“They have a right to know,” Kyler said, pointing into the room.
“Go tell ‘em then,” Potts told him, stepping out of the doorway.
Kyler looked inside the large room. It looked as if everyone had pretty much settled in for the night. All three of the O’Hearley’s were asleep, as was Gringo, who was lying on his back and snoring loudly, Sylvia, Shelly and Kayla, and even Zora was asleep, curled up on her side facing him. She looked beautiful. Her dark wavy hair cascaded down the side of her face. He saw her body move slowly up and down, telling him that she was in a deep sleep.
The only ones awake were Zack Olsen who was sitting on the cot next to his sleeping father, Sam Fong, who was carrying a sleeping Michael Blum from the chair over to a cot and, of course, Samantha Gould, who was sitting in a chair looking up at the television, her back to him.
“Well?” Potts asked.
“They should at least be told in the morning,” Kyler said, leaning back out of the room, and looking at Potts. “I suppose there’s still no news about any sort of rescue copters?”
“No…and for right now…I think we’re on our own.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s like I’ve been saying. The army wouldn’t dare leave a place like this unguarded for too long. Either they can’t get back here right now because of what those two hurricanes did to the coast, or…”
“Or what?”
Potts looked away from Kyler. “Ah…nothing…” he answered.
“No what? Come on, Colonel.”
Potts stared across the hall.
“You’re thinking maybe they won’t come back to the island?” Kyler asked him.
“I don’t know,” Potts answered, looking back up at him. “I’m not sure about anything anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, the government’s been known to keep their secrets pretty well. They do it by never letting one hand know what the other is doing. That way there are no paper trails.”
“Yeah, but someone always finds out if they dig hard enough,” Kyler told him.
“And some of those diggers have a tendency to end up being killed in hit and run accidents, drug overdoses, heart attacks, strokes, and just about every other way that doesn’t arouse suspicion.”
“Like the Kennedy assassination witnesses?”
Potts smiled. “I don’t know much about that one other than what I’ve read or seen in the movies…you know the ones that make Oswald look like a choir boy who was being set up years in advance.
“Couldn’t you be wrong? Maybe they just can’t get to us right now?”
“Sure, but I don’t think so. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Kyler lowered his head for a moment, and then looked down into Potts’ eyes.
“Colonel…about kicking you…you know…” He was sort of hoping that Potts would interrupt him or wave him off or tell him to forget it, but he wasn’t making it that easy. “I’m…well…it was a bit of a cheap shot, I know…but you did grab me by the mouth, and I do hate bullies, but anyway, I’m sorry…because it was a cheap shot.”
Potts stared at him and waited to make sure he was finished before he spoke.
“Go to bed, Doc,” was all he said.
Kyler nodded before walking into the room where he saw Sam Fong pulling the covers over himself, and taking a deep breath before closing his eyes. He walked over to Zack who was still sitting on his cot, his face in his hands. He seemed to be nodding off, only waking up when his head started slipping through his hands. Kyler stood over him and tapped him on the shoulder giving the sixteen-year old a start. He started to jump up.
“Relax,” Kyler told him, placing a hand on his shoulder and easing the boy back down onto his cot.
“Doctor Kyler,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
Kyler sat down next to him and looked at Rob Olsen who was still fast asleep.
“Do you think he’s dreaming?” Zack asked, now looking at Rob.
“We all dream when we sleep,” Kyler answered, watching Rob’s eye movements. They were quick and back and forth. He was in REM sleep. “I learned that in Psych class.”
“What do you think he’s dreaming? I mean…do you think he’s normal in his dreams, or is he crazy in them, too.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that he was crazy,” Kyler told him. “But I also learned in Psych class that the brain and its inner workings will probably be a mystery that will never be completely solved. Think about it. Our thoughts and our dreams are the only places that we and we alone can go, and nobody, I mean nobody, can get to us there. No one can ever truly know what you’re thinking or dreaming. Sure, they can hook you up to stress machines and gage if you’re stressed or scared or calm, but they can never truly know exactly what’s going on in your head.”
He turned to Zack.
“Fear strikes us all differently, Zack. You’re dad went through an ordeal…a shock…and he just hasn’t recovered from it.”
“Yeah, but…we’ve all been through the same fear and shock he has. Look at Mike and Lauren. They saw the same thing that my dad did and they’re just kids.”
Kyler had to suppress a laugh. Hearing a sixteen-year-old call someone a kid made him want to chuckle.
“Well, in all fairness to your dad, Michael and Lauren were under a pile of hospital beds and saw very little after…uh…the man transformed, plus Lauren was unconscious most of the time anyway. We’re
not exactly sure what your father saw. He might’ve seen the thing…uh…”
“Eat my mother?” Zack asked, now looking at Kyler, tears streaming down his face.
Kyler exhaled. He hadn’t quite expected the boy to put it so bluntly.
“Have you been…you know…thinking about her?” he asked.
“I haven’t had much time because of dad. I guess I’m mad at him because he left her to the monster.”
“He might not have had a choice, Zack.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she might have been beyond hope when he left.”
“Even if that were true,” Zack started. “He still shouldn’t have left Mike and Lauren…or my grandmother…or Mr. Burns…or Miss Munn.”
“Maybe he thought all hope was lost,” Kyler replied. “Let’s say that you saw everyone that you know and love fall over the edge of a cliff. You wouldn’t jump off the cliff yourself to try and save them, would you? Maybe he just thought that there was nothing else that he could do.”
“But he used to be so strong!” Zack said, his voice cracking.
The boy put his face in his hands again. Kyler wasn’t sure whether the boy was just tired, or crying for his father, his mother, or the fact that his whole world had been turned upside down in a matter of minutes. He put his arm around his shoulder.
“Come on, Zack. Give your dad a break. Who knows…maybe he’ll just snap out of it soon. You gotta have a little faith, Buddy. And go ahead and grieve for your mother and your grandmother, too. No one’s gonna think any less of you if you do.”
Zack kept his head in his hands, but nodded.
“And while you’re giving your dad a break, go ahead and give yourself one, too, okay?”
Zack nodded again.
“Now get some sleep. You’re dad will be all right tonight.”
With this, he walked back over to the door, and put his hand on the light switch before sticking his head through the doorway and into the corridor. Potts was gone, but he could hear FranAnne walking the hallway. She was just around the corner, and he could see her shadow like he’d been able to see the werewolf’s shadow just hours ago.