by Terry Yates
He stood still for a moment, waiting for another scream, howl, or growl, but it never came. She was quiet. He couldn’t even hear her breathing or panting or whatever it was that werewolves did. He was kicking himself for not retrieving the camera. He hadn’t forgotten about it. He’d left it. Gringo grew up on the streets, and one thing that he learned growing up on the streets was that, if you were being chased, and you dropped something, you didn’t go back and get it. You simply hoped that it didn’t get picked up or smashed. You could always go back for it later. And what if she did step on it? With today’s technology, there’d probably some way to retrieve the pictures from the debris, right? They were always doing things like that on cop shows. Even in real life, you would hear about how a cop found some microchip from a computer that had been torched and smashed, and that one little microchip held all the information and evidence to convict someone of a crime.
With that thought in mind, he put his ear to the door and listened. Nothing. He figured that if there was some sort of noise that it would be muffled somewhat, but he didn’t think that it would be completely noise proof.
He decided to get a better listen by flattening his whole head against the door, his ear almost forming a suction cup against the cold steel. It was still quiet inside. What could she be doing, he wondered. As he pressed his head even closer to the door, something hit the door hard causing a blinding pain in his ear and the side of his head. The force of the blow knocked him sideways and onto the floor. He grabbed the side of his head. Whatever had hit the door, hit it with such force that Gringo was pretty sure that he had a concussion.
“Shit!” he screamed, as he made his way to his knees.
He looked up at the door and saw that it had a large indentation in the iron right where his head had been.
“Yep, that would cause a concussion,” he said to himself.
He made it to his feet, but not before falling down once. As he stood up again, he kept his feet apart for better balance. The force of the blow had screwed up his equilibrium, causing him to teeter from side to side. Now he knew why boxers had trouble staying on their feet after even the slightest blow to the head. It wasn’t the force of the blow that made them wobble, it was the directness of the punch. If it got you just right, you were going down like Linda Lovelace.
He walked out of the kitchen, leaning against the counters as he tried to regain his balance.
“You better move fast, Buddy Boy,” he told himself.
He began to move as quickly as he could through the dark commissary, putting his hands against the tables for support. As he reached the door, he turned around and stared back toward the darkness. He didn’t hear anything coming from the kitchen area. As a matter of fact, he didn’t hear anything at all. It was way too quiet for his taste. He wanted to go back and check on Samantha. She was his wife and he loved her, but Gringo Boots was also pragmatic. There was absolutely nothing he could do about Samantha’s situation, so he couldn’t dwell on it. Dwelling on bad things wasn’t his nature anyway. If there was nothing he could do…there was nothing he could do. He rubbed the side of his head. He needed to get back to the others and find the doctor just in case he had a concussion. He’d heard of incidents where people ignored a concussion and went to bed only to find themselves dead the next morning. He considered that a stupid way to die. Before he left the cafeteria, he turned to the darkness one last time.
“I love you, Baby,” he said softly into the darkness. “Try not to step on the camera though, huh?” he added as he stepped into the hallway.
9:06 P.M.
Shelly was becoming frustrated again. She thought that getting through the hidden door would be the hardest part of her final human journey, but it wasn’t. The stairwell spiraled down and down into the darkness, and she couldn’t remember which door Marcus had taken her through. Like most stairwells, there was a door at every floor. She remembered that they had gone quite a ways down the staircase before they reached the right landing, but she couldn’t remember how far. It had also dawned on her that she should have gone back and gotten the cardkey, because Marcus also needed it to unlock the door that led into their hiding place.
As she continued down the stairs, Kayla became heavier and heavier, and there were no more ways to shift her to take the load off. She was becoming tired, and she had started to lactate. The front of her nightgown was becoming drenched. She needed to feed the baby soon.
Her bare feet were beginning to hurt as she stepped on the cold metal plates that lined each step. The darkness was overwhelming her. Why had she agreed to this? Why hadn’t she just said “no”? The staircase seemed endless, leading for all she knew, to the earth’s core.
Shelly began to move faster and faster down the staircase, the sound of each step echoing through the stairwell. She put the baby over her shoulder.
“Good baby,” she cooed. “Good baby.”
She rounded floor after floor, no longer even bothering to look at the closed doors now. She just kept descending and descending, going further and further down, the stairwell becoming colder with each step.
She had just put Kayla over her right shoulder when she felt something clamp around her arm. She cried out as it jerked her sideways and off of the steps. Whatever it was, it was strong, because it nearly picked her up off the ground as it pulled her.
“No! No! No!” she found herself screaming. “No!”
Now the thing had her by both shoulders and was shaking her. She clamped both arms around Kayla.
“Shelly! Shelly!”
“No!”
“Shelly!”
“Please!
“Shelly!”
“No!”
“Shelly! Stop it! It’s me! It’s Marcus!”
“Marcus?”
Shelly stopped screaming and struggling the moment she heard her husband’s name.
“Marcus?”
“Yeah, Baby, it’s me,” came the voice.
Shelly could only see a silhouette in the dark, but she knew it was him. There was no doubting it…the height, the build, everything told her that it was her husband. Everything, that is, but the smell. He had a strange smell about him…sort of a wet dog smell.
“Marcus,” she cried relieved. “I tried to get here last night but they stopped me! I tried! I promise! They dragged me away with them! I fought them, but…”
“I know, Shelly. I know,” Marcus said, pulling her and Kayla tightly to him.
She knew that it was her husband. She had rested her head against that muscular chest of his hundreds of times. He seemed to be breathing hard. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest. She couldn’t remember having heard it beat that fast before. His breath was hot against her head, and it had a strange smell to it. He probably hadn’t been able to brush his teeth the last couple of days, so it probably would be a bit rank.
The sound of Marcus’ soft baritone voice was having a calming effect on her…and Kayla, who had stopped squirming around the instant Marcus pulled them close.
“We have to get inside, Shelly. There isn’t much time,” he said.
Marcus looked down at Kayla. The darkness covered most of his face, but Shelly could see that he was smiling as he gently stroked her head. After a moment, his smile disappeared and he pulled Shelly through the doorway and into room.
“How’d you get the door to open?” she asked. “I left the cardkey upstairs.”
“I found another one,” he answered, taking a cardkey out of the wall and putting it into his pocket. Shelly knew that he’d probably retrieved one from one of the corpses.
It seemed darker than it had two nights ago. The smell was atrocious. She knew that it had to be the decaying bodies of the soldiers or whatever they were, that Marcus and Aurelio had killed. Although she had never been around decaying corpses, she had, like most people, smelled decaying animals, and this odor was ten times as pungent.
Marcus pulled her through the room, dodging the turned over desks and cha
irs, stopping in the middle of the room next to the console that these people had been watching them from.
“Where’s Oliver?” she asked.
“He’s over here,” Marcus answered, pulling her further into the room. She still hadn’t gotten a good look at Marcus yet, but she really didn’t need to, she supposed. It was him and that was good enough for her.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Right over here.”
Marcus stopped next to a small table where Shelly could clearly see the outline of Kayla’s twin. She could see his little arms and legs moving in the darkness.
“Look, Kayla,” she said, “there’s your big brother.”
She laid Kayla down next to Oliver. She wasn’t sure, but it looked as if Oliver’s head had turned and was now looking at his twin. She then looked up at Marcus, whose silhouette was even darker with the light behind him.
“Where’s Aurelio?” she asked.
“Over here.”
Shelly spun around to see a figure moving out of the darkness.
“Here I am, Shelly,” he said, walking into the dim light.
Shelly gasped when she saw him, his almost unrecognizable face shining clearly under the low lights. His forehead was bulging out, causing the bones behind his eyebrows to slant downward. His nose looked different as well. It was black and rectangular like a dog’s. His hair had formed a widow’s peak down onto his forehead. To Shelly, he looked like a bat…either that, or Eddie Munster. When he spoke, she could see that his front teeth were trying to force their way out of his mouth, giving him the look of someone after they put in those old, plastic fold-over vampire teeth.
“We turned last night,” Aurelio told her, grinning a wicked toothy grin. “Tell her, Marcus.”
“Marcus?” she beckoned as she turned around to her husband again. But what stood before her wasn’t her husband. Marcus had either moved into the light or her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. Her husband looked almost exactly like Aurelio, bat face and all. If his skin hadn’t been darker, and his hair thicker and curlier, she would’ve guessed them to be brothers.
“Martinez is right, Shelly,” Marcus told her. “We turned last night and we’re about to turn again at any minute. That’s why I wanted you here. We need to change Kayla now. Once we do that, we’ll be a family again.”
“I…I don’t know, Marcus. All of this is beginning to scare me…”
“We have to hurry,” he said. “We want to do it before we turn.”
Shelly saw that his face was changing as they spoke. Hair was beginning to spread across his face, and his forehead almost seemed to be bubbling.
“Let’s do this, Marcus,” Martinez said.
Marcus moved toward the table, but only got a few feet before a sharp spasm doubled him over. He let out a loud grunt as he held his stomach.
“It’s starting to happen,” he grunted to Shelly.
“Marcus?” she whimpered, as she reached for him. “Aurelio?”
She turned to Martinez only to find him on his hands and knees, his head bowed almost to the floor.
“Oh that hurts,” Martinez grunted. “You okay, Marcus?”
“No,” Marcus answered through gritted teeth. “It’s coming on!”
Shelly didn’t know what to do. She wanted to go to Marcus and help him, but she also wanted to snatch her twins off the table and run like hell.
“Bring her to me, Shelly,” Marcus gasped.
Shelly had decided that they were going to be a family and if this was the only way that they could be one, then so be it. She took a few steps toward the table when the same pain that she had felt earlier in the corridor hit her again, causing her to double over just like Marcus.
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, his voice now sounding guttural.
“Marcus!” she groaned. “Something’s happening to me! I think I’m…turning!”
“Turning?” Martinez said, barely audible with his teeth trying to push their way out of his mouth. “You shouldn’t be turning now! It took us two days!”
“Smaller body, maybe,” Marcus replied, also down on all fours now. “Less mass might not take as long.”
Shelly dropped to the floor and curled up in the fetal position, her blood beginning to boil. She closed her eyes tightly and held her hands to her stomach. As one hand touched the other, she could feel hair growing out of the back of her hands, and her nails seemed to be growing longer. She hadn’t counted on all the pain that went along with turning into a werewolf.
Both Marcus and Aurelio were groaning loudly now. Shelly rolled flat onto her back and bent her legs, her knees pointed straight up.
“Honey?” Shelly grunted through her clenched teeth.
“Yeah,” Marcus answered, sounding as if he were hyperventilating.
“Did you kill anyone last night?”
“I don’t think we ever left the room, because when we…”
Shelly never heard the rest, because the pain shooting through her body had become so unbearable that the only thing she could hear was the sound of her pulse beating loudly in her ears. Her gums were beginning to hurt. She put her hand up to her mouth and felt her teeth, the front four of which were already growing longer.
“I wish I hadn’t agreed to this!” she screamed at Marcus, a low moan escaping her lips as she finished.
“We’ll be a family now,” he answered.
Shelly could hear that he was beginning to make panting sounds. She lay on the floor and thought about Kayla.”
“Kayla will be all right, won’t she?”
She wasn’t sure if Marcus had heard her, because he had started to emit short howling sounds.
“Yes…(Howl)…even if we turn…(Howl)…I don’t think…(Howl)…we would hurt her…(Howl).
Shelly listened as Marcus and Aurelio began to grunt and howl from the floor. She could tell that they were thrashing about. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling lights were becoming dimmer as she began to turn.
“We’ll be a family,” she said to herself as she began to suddenly feel disconnected from her body.
Marcus and Martinez’ howls were fading now. Shelly knew that she was beginning to lose her human consciousness. Just as the ceiling lights above her, were fading to black, she heard a high-pitched howl that didn’t sound like either Marcus or Aurelio. It didn’t sound like either one of theirs, because it was hers…her very fist howl.
“Mommy…(Howl)…loves you…(Howl)…” she moaned, as the lights from the ceiling completely faded to black.
9:06 P.M.
Michael Blum sat quietly, never taking his eyes off the door. He was completely alone now. The gun still lay in his lap. He didn’t want to touch it. It felt like a ten pound weight on his lap that was turning into a thousand pound weight on his lap. Sylvia Morrison had gotten up and walked out of the room without saying a word, the only sound she uttered was a small yelp when she had misjudged the width of the doorway and had bumped her shoulder against it on the way out, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Michael had never felt so alone in is life. He could feel his good leg shaking against the chair. He didn’t feel anything in his broken leg, because fear had completely paralyzed it. The door was across the large room and to his right. He could only see a tiny sliver of the left side of the hallway, and he hadn’t heard a sound come from it since Sylvia had departed.
His rapid breath was causing his glasses to fog over. As he reached up to wipe them off, he heard noises…footsteps…coming from down the hallway. Because of the echo, Michael couldn’t judge how far away the footsteps were or how many there were. He slowly moved his hands down to his lap and laid them gently on top of the gun, the metal cold against his palms.
Michael became more nervous as each echo resounded louder and louder. One minute, he thought he heard the sound of someone walking down the hallway in shoes, the next, the slapping of bare feet against tile, and the next minute he thought he heard the clicki
ng of claws on tile.
Never taking his eyes off the door, Michael slowly began to feel his way along the gun, first finding the butt with one hand, and the barrel with the other. As the echoes became increasingly louder, he slid his hand down from the barrel to the trigger guard. Gently straightening the gun, he wrapped one hand completely around the butt, while slipping his index finger through the trigger guard, and placing it lightly against the trigger itself.
The footsteps were getting closer now, the echoes loud enough to tell him that whomever it was, wasn’t far from the door now. For a moment, he thought he heard someone speaking, but he wasn’t sure. A small wave of relief swept over him, but it didn’t last long, because the next thing that he heard was a growl, a growl so low that he knew it had to have come from a dog…or a wolf!
He raised the gun from his lap. Once again, it felt heavier than he had expected it to. If he had heard a voice, he wasn’t hearing it now, only the growling. The footfalls stopped. Whoever it was, was just outside the door, but on the right side, not the left where he could at least see a little ways into the corridor.
Although the footfalls stopped, the growling didn’t, instead they became increasingly louder. He continued to raise the gun farther up until it was at chest level. The pistol felt awkward in his hands. How did the cops do it on TV, he wondered, trying to remember all of the cop dramas he’d seen in his twelve years.
His hands shook as he moved his trigger hand down over the other hand. He had both hands wrapped around the butt of the gun now. He raised his left hand up just a little so that it was a little higher than the other one, allowing him to put his finger back on the trigger. That was it, he thought to himself, nervously. That’s how the cops on TV do it.