by Terry Yates
“Hello, Doctor,” Klefka said, still staring out toward the ocean.
“From what I understand happened last night, you must be in God awful pain,” Kyler told him as he began to move toward the tree.
Klefka limply held his hands up and managed a weak smile.
“I believe you’re right, Doctor,” Klefka said, trying to maintain the smile, but faltering.
Kyler stepped through the weeds and side stepped the pile of debris, which looked like it had been stacked there by human hands.
“Did you make that pile yourself?” Kyler asked, finally reaching the tree, but still remaining at Klefka’s side. The man seemed to be enjoying the view of the ocean and he didn’t want to ruin it for him.
“It’s getting harder and harder to stay hidden with Col. Potts on the loose. He’s got more tenacity that many werewolves I’ve seen,” Klefka said, his voice still barely audible. “Can you imagine if he was a werewolf?”
The thought of Potts as a werewolf made Kyler shudder. He bent down next to Klefka. The entire side of his face was either ripped, torn, or swollen from the previous night’s ordeal.
“You should’ve seen me this morning,” Klefka said, as if he had read the doctor’s thoughts. “I’ve healed considerably since last night.”
Kyler took the morphine pills that they’d found in the bunker and forced two into the side of Klefka’s mouth, one staying on his lip until Kyler pushed it in with his finger. Klefka leaned his head toward the sky and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as if he were having trouble swallowing. Finally, he made a gulping sound, which told Kyler that they had gone down.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“Speaking of last night…” Kyler started, taking Klefka’s left wrist from his chest. “Opal Munn turned into one of you last night.”
“Who?”
“The old lady that you bit at the hospital. She turned into a werewolf last night.”
“Did she…kill anyone?” he asked after a long pause.
“Her grandson.”
Kyler saw the man close his eyes and grimace for a moment, before opening them again.
“I’m sorry.”
Kyler turned over Klefka’s left hand. A big puss filled gash ran through the middle of his palm. It was obvious though that it was healing. The blood had coagulated and he could see a little red scar that showed him how long the gash had been when the knife went in.
“That must’ve hurt,” Kyler said, laying the hand back on the man’s chest.
“It did this morning. So, where is the lady now?”
“Dead, I’m afraid.”
“Did someone behead her?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. And that’s what I came out here to talk to you about.”
“If she wasn’t beheaded, then how?”
“I don’t know. She went through as much hell as it looks you did last night only she didn’t make it. She died from her wounds.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Klefka told him. “Even an old werewolf will heal. It might take them longer, but they will eventually heal.”
“Well she didn’t. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I said I don’t know!” Klefka shouted in anger, turning his head toward Kyler.
Kyler hadn’t seen Nicholas Klefka’s whole face yet, but when he did, he wanted to turn and run away. There was a large hole, actually a gap, at the top of his forehead that caused the top of his head to appear to be almost split in two. The top of the man’s head looked like a pie wedge, the empty space being where the one piece would fit. The split caused his eyes to be farther apart, making him look not unlike a hammerhead shark that Kyler had seen at Sea World once. He could actually see the cortex of the man’s brain exposed before his very eyes. It seemed to be pulsating.
“Don’t tell me that this looked worse this morning,” Kyler said.
“Well…once again, Doctor, it has healed considerably.” Klefka forced a smile, which made him now look like a smiling hammerhead shark, which was even creepier when Kyler thought about it. He was right. The doctor could see that the man’s head was healing. The missing pie wedge had been wider but had grown together some. He could actually see the skin gradually growing back together.
“My guess is that it was a forty-four,” Klefka said, still trying to force the shark smile. Kyler secretly wished he wouldn’t smile at all.
“Potts carries one.”
“Figures,” Klefka said, turning his head back to the ocean.
“How did she die, Nicholas?” Kyler asked.
“I told you…I don’t know. If she wasn’t beheaded then I just don’t know.”
“You told me yourself just yesterday that there are other ways for a werewolf to die, but you wouldn’t say how. Self-preservation. Remember?”
Klefka was silent. His eyes seemed to be staring out at the crashed jet.
“Something’s happening out there,” he said, possibly as much to himself as to Kyler.
“What do you mean?” Kyler asked him, taking his other hand and seeing the same puss filled gash on that hand. Christ, this man could handle pain.
“I don’t know, but something seems to be changing. I can feel it. Plane crashes, hurricanes, even full moons. I can’t think right now, but if I’m not mistaken, there shouldn’t have been this many nights of full moons around here. What’s it been now…three here and one when the jet crashed. That’s four in a row. I’m not sure that’s supposed to be right. Normally, I could tell you, but with the way my head is right now, I’m a little lost with facts and figures.”
As Kyler laid the man’s right arm back on his chest, he noticed something on his forearm. The bite mark that Joe had left two nights before hadn’t healed. It looked pretty much like it did the day before. Joe had ripped the werewolf’s skin almost completely off and it had barely healed. He could see that some flesh had grown back together, but not much. He looked down at Klefka’s ankle, and saw the same thing. The bite mark that Joe had left down there was barely healing, too. Kyler couldn’t see the bite mark on the back of his calf, but common sense told him that that bite mark was probably healing just as slowly as the other two.
“So, you have no idea how Opal Munn died,” Kyler said, trying to keep his eyes off of the bite marks.
Klefka didn’t answer.
“I’m stumped as to what to do,” Kyler told him, breaking the silence. By rights, I should go and find Potts, and tell him to come running, sword in hand.”
“But you can’t, can you?”
“No.”
“And you have no idea why you can’t do it, do you?”
This time, Kyler didn’t answer.
“It’s like I told you yesterday, Doctor…”
“Richard.”
“All right…Richard. You can’t do it because you’re a healer, Richard. And you’re also a man who would never leave a person to their own fate if you could help it. Many years ago, a man like you would’ve been considered a great man. Unfortunately, over the centuries, things have changed…like they’re changing now, my friend.
“How do you know? I mean, how do you know for sure that things are changing? Is it something you see in a crystal ball, or what?”
Nicholas Klefka forced a smile again.
“For one thing, I’m part animal, and as we’ve all come to learn over the years, animals have certain instincts. Elephants go to elephant graveyards when they realize that it’s time to die. Geese fly south for the winter. Baby sea turtles come out of the egg and immediately swim for the ocean. They could very easily go three other directions, but they don’t. It’s all instinct. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you come to realize that everything comes in cycles. Things begin simply, but then progress is made, and more progress is made on top of that progress, and then people get arrogant, and try to fly to the sun, but they always come crashing down in the end. It�
�s a pattern I’ve witnessed over and over again. As a matter of fact, I saw the Great Depression coming down three years before it did.”
“How did you do that?” Kyler asked him.
“Like I said, Richard…cycles and patterns.”
“So, it looks like things are changing again, does it?”
“Most definitely.”
“So, you think that it’s nature thing, and not a God thing, eh?”
“I’m sure if God is there, he has a hand in it somewhere.”
Kyler tried to think of how to phrase his next sentence.
“It’s very strange from my point of view…” he began. “To sit and chat with a man right here, right now, and to know that when the moon is full, he would try to rip me in half if he could. I mean if you’ll kill…”
Kyler stopped. He had just been about to say, “If you’ll kill your wife, you sure as hell wouldn’t stop at me”. He looked at Klefka and saw that the meaning hadn’t been lost on him, for the man was now either morose or the morphine tablets were kicking in.
“Well,” Kyler said, standing up. “I’d better be going.”
Klefka didn’t answer him, but remained staring out at the ocean.
“Here,” he said, handing a half dozen morphine tablets to Klefka. “These are all I can spare right now. I have to save some for the others. He started to put the tablets in Klefka’s hand, but thought better of it, seeing as how the man’s hands made him look like he’d just been crucified up on Calvary Hill. Come to think of it, the man’s whole life had been one long, painful crucifixion. How many times, he wondered, in the last half century, had the man sat under a tree; prostrate and weak because of something he had no control over.
Without another word, Kyler unbuttoned and took off his fatigue shirt. He was wearing a white T-shirt underneath that was much too big for him. He took it off and laid it down on the ground next to Klefka, and then removed his fatigue bottoms where underneath, he was wearing a pair of blue gym shorts he’d found in the locker room. He dropped the gym shorts on top of the t-shirt, and then put the fatigue top back on.
“It’s not much, Nicholas,” he said, but it’s all I could sneak out. Any more layers than that on my skinny body, and people would start to get suspicious, don’t you think?”
Klefka looked down at the gym clothes, and then forced his head up where he could see Kyler’s face.
“Thank you, Richard,” he said softly.
Kyler bent back down in front of Klefka.
“Here,” he said, grabbing the gym shorts. “Let me help you put these on.”
As he reached for the man’s leg, Klefka flinched. He didn’t know if was from reflex or from pain, but he stopped immediately and instinctively put his hands in the air as if he had just had a gun pulled on him.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Kyler said standing up.
He looked down at Klefka. The man’s head seemed to have grown back together a little bit in just the short time that they had been chatting.
“You better stay low. Potts will probably be along this way in another couple of hours,” he told him.
Klefka nodded weakly.
“Thank you, Richard.”
Kyler didn’t know what to say, so he simply smiled and began to walk away with the same guilt he had felt the day before. He should turn him in. If Klefka had killed someone last night, it would’ve been his fault. If the moon’s full tonight and he kills someone, it will be his fault. But yet, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Klefka was like a wounded animal that was being relentlessly hunted by the villagers. It must be a strange feeling to know that people want you dead with your head on a spike to parade around the village to show how man holds dominion over beast. He took one last look over his shoulder, and began to walk back to the bunker.
CHAPTER 63
It was one in the afternoon when Potts returned. He walked into an office where Kyler, Locklear O’Hearley, and Sam Fong had taken Opal Munn’s body. They had laid her out on a boardroom table and covered her with a sheet, the top of her gray head sticking out from under the sheet.
“Still dead?” Potts asked, walking up to the table.
No one said anything. Kyler guessed that they had not found Nicholas Klefka, mainly because Potts wasn’t singing, whistling, or doing a soft-shoe dance like he probably would be doing if they had killed him.
“D’ja figure out how she died, Kyler?” Potts asked.
“I was just about to start working on it,” Kyler answered, looking down at the sheet-covered body. He didn’t look forward to checking out the old woman who…just the day before…had looked him in the eyes and had spoken to him. Such is life, he thought to himself. One moment, you’re there, and the next…poof! The lights go out. So long, sayonara, nice knowin’ ya’, goodnight Gunga Din.
He pulled the sheet back to reveal the old lady’s naked body. She lay on her back, but the twisted leg was still facing downward. Zora and Ariella had cleaned the wounds as best they could and then had left to go clean up what was left of Wilbur Munn. With all of the blood gone from her body, they could see the wounds more clearly. Kyler wasn’t happy with the job at hand, because he was a three-month resident physician, not a coroner. Of course, he had seen cadavers in med-school, but he had never had a discussion with any of them while they were still alive. It was a spooky feeling. He wasn’t going to cut her up, just simply look at the wounds, but he felt guilty because now Opal Munn looked at peace. Her eyes were closed and Sam had crossed her arms over her naked chest, as if to give her one last little bit of dignity before she was to be poked and prodded for the last time.
“Yuk,” Potts said, disgustedly.
“There are a lot of wounds on her,” Kyler said over his shoulder where the colonel was standing.
“It’s not that,” Potts came back. “I just don’t want to look at some naked eighty-something year old broad.”
Kyler wanted to kick him in the nuts again, but guessed that that would be a big mistake. Potts would never let him get away with that again. Doctor or no doctor, he wouldn’t be surprised if Potts didn’t either shoot him or beat him to death if he ever tried that little number again.
Kyler started with her arms. There were three knife wounds on her right shoulder. Gringo had sent them deep inside her clavicle and collarbone. They were starting to slowly heal, the skin gradually growing back together. There were six large purple marks that Kyler knew to be exit wounds from FranAnne’s pistol, which she had unloaded point blank into Opal’s back. They were ugly and purple, but the holes were gradually closing up. Most of the rest of Opal’s wounds were rip and tear marks that Joe had inflicted on her legs, arms, face, chest, but mostly her legs. The wounds didn’t seem to be healing. There was no red scarring or any tissues growing back together. The flesh remained torn and ripped and chewed away. He could see muscle and bone showing through many of the wounds. Joe’s bites alone couldn’t have killed her. It couldn’t be that easy. Then, he thought of Nicholas Klefka whose head was growing back together after Potts had almost split it in half with his trusty forty-four, yet Joe’s bite marks…that he had received two days earlier weren’t healing.
“It’s Joe,” he said softly to himself.
“What?” Potts asked, moving to Kyler’s side.
Kyler was at a crossroads that he’d been dreading since yesterday, and especially since this morning. Should he come clean with Potts, and tell him everything that he knew about Nicholas Klefka or stay silent as long as possible? He knew that sooner or later, he was going to have to say something. He had no choice. If they weren’t rescued that day, then they were going to have to deal with Klefka again. If he told Potts right now…that very instant…where Nicholas Klefka could be found, then there would be absolutely no problems that night. They could sleep soundly knowing that both werewolves were dead. The only thing left to worry about would be getting rescued, and if that didn’t happen, they still had enough food, water, medicine, and clothing in the building
to last several months, if not longer.
“What were you saying about the dog, Kyler?” Potts asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
Kyler decided to tell a half-truth.
“It’s Joe’s bites,” he answered. “It must be what killed her. There’s no other explanation. Bullets had no effect on her or the other werewolf. Neither did knives. But she’s dead, and from what I’ve been told…eh…read about werewolves, they can’t be killed except by beheading.”
“Or silver bullets,” Sam Fong chimed in.
“Yeah…or silver bullets, and I don’t think FranAnne’s…Pvt. Fulton’s gun was loaded with silver bullets, unless that’s a little army trick I haven’t heard of.” Kyler was trying to choose his words carefully. He was struggling hard trying not to mention Klefka’s name or anything about him, because it was difficult to talk about one werewolf without the other.
“You’re telling me that dog greased the old lady?” Potts asked, folding his arms, and glaring up at Kyler.
“I’m saying that that’s what I think happened,” Kyler told him matter of fact, ignoring the man’s stern glare and checking more of Opal’s wounds. Everything’s healing or healed on her body except for the bite marks. I don’t know, maybe it’s the way he bit her or something. I couldn’t tell you, but the proof is in the pudding.” He felt stupid for using that old anecdote, not being completely sure of its entire meaning.
“Maybe it’s something in his saliva glands,” Locklear threw in. “Maybe it’s in his enzymes. The saliva might react the same way that two different blood types would react with each other. You can’t mix O-Positive blood with B-Negative. If enough of the wrong two blood types interact, it’ll kill you.
“Or it could act like sulfuric acid would against your skin,” Sam said.
“Besides,” Locklear continued. “Joe doesn’t have any collar or tags or anything that shows where he came from. For all we know, he could’ve been genetically engineered or altered.”