by Terry Yates
As she rounded the very last corner, she saw the dead end ahead of her. Excitement shot through her body, but as she took a step, she felt something else shoot through her body. It was a searing pain. She wanted to double over, but she didn’t because she was afraid she might drop the baby. She let out a loud grunt as the pain shot through her again. She knew it wasn’t cramps so it must be the early stages of her changing.
Shelly waited for another wave of pain, but it didn’t come. Maybe it was done for the night. She waited another minute or two before she slowly made her way to the end of the corridor.
As she reached the dead end, she placed Kayla over her shoulder and pulled the cardkey that Marcus had given her out of her panties. She would relax and take her time looking for the slot to put the card in. Last night, she had been in too big a hurry and panicked.
She took the card and placed it in a crack between two bricks and began to slowly move the card along the crack. She had remembered that Marcus had been looking down and to the right when he had opened the secret door, but since Marcus was six inches taller than she, she started at eye level, just to be sure.
Shelly moved the card along crack after crack, once going all the way to the floor, but having no luck, so she took a small step to the right and began the process all over again, moving the card to the right as far as she could reach and then down again, pressing the card hard against the cracks in case it took some pressure to open the slot.
Kayla moaned once in her sleep.
“We’re almost there, Baby,” she whispered softly as she laid her on the cool tile floor.
She was becoming frustrated, thinking that perhaps she wasn’t even at the right place. Maybe it was farther down the corridors. Maybe Marcus and Aurelio Martinez had taken Oliver and moved to another hiding spot, or maybe they left the building all together.
“Don’t panic, Shelly,” she told herself again and again as she continued to try and find the slot, but the more she told herself not to panic, the worse her fears became.
Tears began to well up in her eyes, almost completely blurring her vision, but she didn’t stop moving the card along the cracks. Realizing that she was running out of wall, she let out a quick, loud sob…and then another. She was literally crying now. She began to move the card faster and faster along the cracks, more out of frustration and anger. She was just about to pull her hand away when the card caught against something for a split second before continuing down the crack. Shelly stopped and slowly slid the card back toward the place where she had felt the card stop for that one moment. After a few seconds, it stopped. There was a notch in the brick, an uneven spot that was about three inches wide…the perfect width for a cardkey.
She turned the card lengthways, placed it in the crack, and applied pressure. Suddenly, she heard a faint buzzing, then a click. The card was suddenly snatched from her hand and pulled into the slot. She bent down and saw that for a moment, there was a red light shining through the crack, but it quickly turned to green. She heard a metal sound. Startled, she picked up Kayla and stepped back several feet. After a few moments, the wall opened up, revealing the small doorway that Marcus had taken her through two nights earlier.
She moved through the dark doorway, the baby in her arms, and stopped after a couple of feet. She remembered that it was a spiral staircase and that the landing was fairly small. She stood on the cold metal, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Since the lights from the hallway were out directly behind her, she wasn’t going to get much light to see by. She would wait until her eyes finished adjusting to the blackness before continuing. She didn’t want to take the chance that the small landing dropped away on either side.
Gradually, she began to see the staircase forming below her, the metal banisters curving to the right and disappearing into the darkness. She put Kayla under her left arm as she gripped the banister with her right hand. She carefully lowered her right foot looking for the step. After a moment, she found it, her foot cold on the metal. She slid her hand down the banister a few inches and then lowered her left foot onto the next step.
She continued her slow descent down the staircase, following the curve of the banister. After several minutes, she looked up. The dim light from the hallway was barely visible now. Damn, she had forgotten to take the cardkey out of the slot. She remembered that Marcus had taken it out, and then stepped through the door after which, it closed behind them.
“Shit,” she whispered. With the baby in her arms, it would probably take about a minute and a half to two minutes to get back to the landing. She couldn’t afford to waste the time. Kayla had started to stir and fidget, and she wanted to get down to Marcus. She shifted the baby into her right arm and began her slow descent into the darkness.
“Jesus, O’Hearley, you sure like to cut it close, don’t you?” Potts said, as Locklear and Zora joined Potts, Cohen, Hawkins, FranAnne, and Sam Fong. “It’s nearly nine o’clock.”
They were standing next to the first floor security console watching the two working security monitors as the video cameras swept across the front of the building. Littered across the security desk and the floor was nearly every weapon that had been in the hidden weapons room.
“What are we going to do, Sir?” Cohen asked, watching Potts stare at the monitors.
He was silent for a moment, never taking his eyes off of the monitors. He was studying the battlefield, looking at every inch of ground that he could possibly see.
“Cohen,” he finally answered, “you and I are gonna stay right here while Hawkins and Fulton go up to the roof. Since there are no more doors on the first floor…well, that we know about, they’re gonna cover the other three sides of the building from the roof. Since we have no way of communicating, we’ll use their gunfire to tell us where the thing is if it shows up in a blind spot.”
‘Then what do we do when we hear the gunfire, Colonel?” Cohen asked, dreading the answer.
Potts turned around and looked at his three-man unit.
“You and I, Cohen, are going to go outside and join the firefight from the ground.”
Cohen’s heart sank. He’d fought in El Salvador and Beirut, and once or twice in near hand-to-hand confrontations, but the difference in then and now was the fact that he knew the enemy in those countries, and he knew that they would die when he shot them. He didn’t have the same confidence when it came to fighting a seven-foot creature that could take bullet after bullet and still keep coming at you, and he had to admit, he was fifty-two years old now and not quite the daring soldier that he had been.
“Sir, what do we do if he…it…attacks from the front?” FranAnne asked.
“If it attacks from the front, we’ll see it approaching on the monitors,” Potts began. “In that case, I don’t want either of you to shoot until you get a signal from me.”
“What will that signal be, Sir?” Hawkins asked.
Potts smiled. “You’ll know it when you hear it,” he answered. “And when you hear it, start laying down fire on it. Be careful though, and keep a sharp eye out for Sgt. Cohen and me. Don’t shoot us…’cause if you do…there’s two more men down, and then you’re gonna be in a shit-sky world, so watch out.”
FranAnne and Hawkins both nodded as Potts studied their faces. Hawkins was hard to read because he always had a stoic look on his face, but FranAnne was obviously nervous.
“Listen to me,” he said softly, approaching the two. “You’re soldiers in the biggest and best army in the world, and I expect you to act like such. You signed up for situations exactly like this one, except for the werewolf part of course, but this is just another battle, no different than any other battle that’s ever been fought on our soil or foreign soil. Remember…keep your cool and keep your eyes peeled for the enemy and for each other. Got it?”
Hawkins and FranAnne both nodded, and then saluted. For the first time since they’d been put in this situation, Potts straightened up and returned the salute.
“Now,” Potts
told them, “take as many of these machine guns and pistols as you can both carry. Now, we have less than a thousand of the special cartridges, so make ‘em count. Hawkins…”
“Sir?”
“If it starts getting hot for Sgt. Cohen and me out there, make your way down and join us. From what I understand, Fulton is a pretty good marksman, so she’ll stay on the roof and keep pouring it down. Keep it hot, Fulton, and if the thing makes its way into the building, or if I call for you, come on down. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir.” FranAnne answered, a look of newfound pride stretched across her face.
“Good. Now get up to the roof,” Potts told them, looking at his watch again. “We’ve got about six to eight minutes left before the moon is full.”
“Are you sure that it’s gonna be full, Colonel?” Sam asked.
“Look,” Potts told him, pointing to one of the monitors.
They watched as the camera swept back and forth across the yard.
“There,” he said pointing.
As the camera moved, he pointed to a spot on the monitor. They could only see the bottom of the moon on the monitor, but what they did see was bright orange and round.
“Have you ever seen the moon when it was that big, that close, and that bright, and it wasn’t full?” he asked the group.
No one answered. They could tell by the way the front of the building was lit up that Potts was more than likely right.
“Brilliant, Colonel,” Locklear told him.
“Don’t be too impressed, Professor,” Potts started. “I also went up on the roof and saw it.”
With this, the group began to chuckle for a moment, but only for a moment, because there was no forgetting or escaping the gravity of the situation.
“Now get!” he ordered FranAnne and Hawkins, who grabbed three rifles apiece and slung them over their soldiers.
“Take some pistols,” Potts reminded them.
FranAnne placed the straps in strategic places around her shoulders, and then jammed two pistols into her belt.
“You’ve got about two hundred special bullets apiece,” Potts told them. “So once again, make them count. Don’t waste ‘em. Now go!”
With this, FranAnne and Hawkins nodded and left the room, FranAnne moving awkwardly from the weight of the weapons.
“What about us?” Sam asked. “What do you want us to do?”
Professor O’Hearley and Miss LeMarque will join the others in the bivouac room,” Potts answered. “Fong, I’m gonna need you to stand by the console here and let us in and out.”
“Colonel?” Locklear broke in nervously. “I’m thinking perhaps that I should stay by the console.”
“You? Why?”
“I know this building better than anyone else here…including my wife,” he answered. “If that thing gets inside…well…I pretty much know where everything is…well, from here down to the twelfth floor anyway.”
“Will you be able to handle it if it gets hot up here?” Potts asked him. “You look to be about forty-five and I saw you struggling to stack those sandbags the other night.”
“It’s true, Colonel,” Locklear said. “I am in bad shape, but if a werewolf gets behind me, I have no doubt that I could outrun any person in this place.”
“Okay then,” Potts laughed. “Fong, you and Miss LeMarque can join the others. I don’t have a gun to spare or I’d give you one. Hopefully, if the thing does get in, it won’t make it that far down.”
“And what if it does?” Sam asked.
“Then it does.”
9:06 P.M.
Gringo sat on the table, camera in hand, watching Samantha, whose eyes were closed. She was pretending to be asleep, but Gringo had caught her peeking through a closed eyelid. He pretended not to notice. She had tried everything from sweet talk to flat out threats in an attempt to get him to release her from her chains, but it hadn’t worked. This was probably their last chance to become rich. Sure, they could talk to reporters about everything that they’d seen in the last couple of days, but who would believe them? The military gang and the O’Hearley’s would be sworn to secrecy, as would that teasing Zora bitch, herself a scientist, leaving only a crazy man, a couple of kids, a ditzy model and her blind as a bat photographer, a nutty mother and her infant baby, a Chinaman, and himself, and who would believe them, huh? People who read the National Enquirer, that’s who. Sure, they might make a couple of thousand from the rags, but that wasn’t good enough for Gringo Boots. He wanted it all, and with pictures as proof, he would get it.
He looked at his watch. 9:06. If she was going to change, it should be anytime now. The thought had no sooner entered his mind, when he looked up. Samantha was staring at him wide-eyed, her eyes completely brown now. There was no more white to be seen in either eye, just that strange liquid brown that he had seen in the burned man’s eyes just before he turned.
“This is it, Honey,” he said softly, getting off of the table, his hands unconsciously moving the camera into picture taking position. “Here’s where we get the money shot.”
He put the viewfinder up to his eye and bent down a little trying to get at eye level with Samantha. Through it, he could see that her eyes were squeezed tightly shit now and she was grimacing in pain, her neck muscles bulging out so much that Gringo thought that they might explode. She began to rock back and forth like she had done earlier when she had been trying to escape the chains, but now she was doing it because the chains were becoming too tight. Gringo could see them digging into her skin. She was changing.
“Don’t fight it, Baby,” he said softly. “Let go.”
Samantha’s eyes flew open and she began to grunt loudly as she continued to rock back and forth. She then let out a wail that was so loud, it made Gringo jump, but he quickly gathered himself when he saw that she had fangs beginning to grow inside her mouth. The camera made a clicking sound. He wanted to try to capture it as she morphed. Click again. Another good shot.
“Come on, Samantha,” he said loudly. “Come on!”
He snapped another good shot as a widow’s peak began to form at the top of her forehead. Click. Click. Great! Beautiful! Her fingernails were now beginning to sprout claws as she screamed in agony. Click. Click. She was getting hair on the hands, the face, and her naked breasts. Beautiful! Click. Click.
Finally, Samantha let out a roar that made Gringo drop the camera.
“Geez, Baby! You scared the shit out of me!”
He looked down and saw that her feet had torn through her shoes, and her already long legs were elongating, hair sprouting from the top of the feet. Gringo picked the camera up, and began to snap more pictures.
Samantha let out a howl of pain as a snout began to form. It was pushing its way through her nose.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” Gringo said loudly, pushing the shutter button. “Get ma-a-a-a-d, Baby!”
As he continued, Samantha howled again and again as the wolf nose pushed its way completely through her face, and her ears began to form into hairy points, both growing straight up.
“That’s the stuff!” Gringo yelled, clicking away.
Gringo felt something against his shin and looked down. Samantha’s feet were touching his legs. She had grown at least a foot in the last thirty seconds. As Samantha struggled against the chains, her hips, thighs, and calves began to tear her pants away, the fabric tearing loudly as it began to shred into tiny ribbons of cloth.
“We’ll have to get you some sort of stretch pants, won’t we Baby?” Gringo said loudly above Samantha’s roaring.
Gringo was about to get one last picture, when Samantha’s head began to quickly rock back and forth, her screams almost deafening as the complete wolf face tore through her own face, her jaws cracking as they pushed their way through her cheeks. Through her open mouth, he saw that all of her teeth had grown at least an inch and were sharp and pointed, except for the four large front teeth, which had already grown to their max which was at least three to four inches long.
&n
bsp; As her forehead began to make its way to the fore, Samantha shot up from the chair, both chains snapping from across her chest, the broken links clattering to the floor.
“Oh shit,” Gringo said in a barely audible voice. He hadn’t counted on her breaking the chains that quickly.
Samantha shook off the chains. She screamed and growled as her blood began to boil. The only evidence that showed that she’d ever been human at all, were the two remaining patches of skin left on her body. There was a large patch that went form her chin to the top of her chest, and there was a small patch still left on her right shoulder, but it was beginning to disappear right in front of Gringo’s eyes.
He began to move backwards toward the door as he watched her hairy shoulders and chest beginning to bulge, growing larger by the second. He began to realize that he had a full-grown werewolf on his hands…a full-grown werewolf that was loose and about to be completely transformed.
She let out one last guttural scream as first one shoulder, and then the other formed. Gringo turned to run, but slammed gut first into a table, the camera falling from his hands, and onto the floor. Panic stricken, he turned around expecting to see the she-wolf that had been Samantha towering over him, getting ready to turn his ass into hairy pate’, but she wasn’t. She had her back turned to him. He could see her backbone starting to push its way through her back. She hadn’t completely transformed yet, and he wasn’t going to wait around until she did. He ran out of the cooler and quickly closed the heavy door behind him. He heard the latch catching telling him that the door was completely closed. It was a thick, iron door, so hopefully, she wouldn’t be able to get out. That had been the others plan, so they must have thought it out first.