by Terry Yates
Potts had not told them to keep their voices low, but in situations like these, a soldier is supposed to have his eyes open and his mouth shut. You were supposed to be aware of every sound that you heard. One of the first things you were taught in war games or night maneuvers, was that you never gave your position away until the enemy saw the fire from your rifle.
She was still feeling that sense of confidence and pride that Potts had instilled in her earlier. He had known about her prowess with a rifle. She was usually alone when she went to the base’s gun range. Seldom was there anyone there but the corporal who supplied her with bullets and the paper targets.
FranAnne was standing at the roof corner where she could see the front of the building and the west side of the building simultaneously, while Hawkins stood at the opposite corner where he could cover the back and east side of the building.
It was so bright out tonight that a person could see the blackest blackbird flying overhead. It was so bright that she could see that the roof was littered with spent cartridges from last night’s battle. She had almost put her hand on the very spot where Sgt. Cohen and Hawkins had stabbed the things claws, pinning it to the building, just before the colonel blasted it in the head. Dried blood and matted hair covered that part of the ledge. At one point, she had had the biggest urge to touch the hair just to see what it felt like, but decided against it, afraid that somehow, if she did touch it, she would turn into a werewolf. She knew that was nonsense of course, but she wasn’t taking any chances on anything anymore. From here on out, nothing was nonsense.
FranAnne was enjoying the cool night breeze when she thought she saw something move from her left side…the front of the building. The very front of the building was the one place where she had the most trouble seeing. The other three sides of the building were fairly easy to watch, because they were mostly fields, but the front had the small grove of still standing trees that stood about fifty yards directly in front of it. Without night vision glasses, a hippo could stay hidden behind the trees. Another disturbing factor was the debris from the hurricane had littered all sides of the building with cars, jeeps, barrels, and fallen trees. Even though there was no grove of trees on the three other sides, there were still plenty of places to hide behind once the enemy made it across the field.
Whatever moved, or whatever she thought she saw move, came from the grove of trees. It could’ve been the shadow from a cloud, which you could see with this sort of moon out, or the shadow of a bird flying overhead, but she wasn’t taking any chances, not with an enemy like this one.
She wanted to call for Hawkins, but she thought better of it. If she called him over and he didn’t see anything, they might be leaving the back door open for the werewolf, and the one thing you didn’t want to give that werewolf, was the element of surprise.
She kept her eyes peeled while gripping the AK that was draped over her shoulder. She had her other weapons, another AK, a regular army rifle, and an Uzi, lined up next to her. Both pistols were still in her belt as were the extra clips. She continued to watch the spot where she had seen the movement. Whatever it was had moved just to the right of the trees.
She stared at the spot for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only four or five minutes. Just when she decided to turn away and watch another area for a while, she heard what sounded like a fallen tree branch snapping.
“Hawkins,” she beckoned the private, trying hard not to raise her voice.
“What is it?”
“I heard something…sounded like a tree limb snapping under somebody’s foot.”
Hawkins was silent for a moment. She didn’t want to take her eyes from the spot under the trees. After a few seconds, she heard footsteps walking quickly, but quietly, behind her.
Hawkins moved up next to her, but she could only see him out of the corner of her eye.
“Where are you looking?” Hawkins asked, now looking at the grove.
“On the right at the very edge of the trees. I think I saw something move a while ago and I think I heard something coming from right about the same direction.”
Hawkins peered out toward the grove. He couldn’t see anything, but he was happy to take Fulton’s word for it, but he wasn’t happy about leaving the other three directions unwatched.
“Let me know if you see something again,” he told FranAnne. “I’m gonna go and keep an eye on the backdoor.
As he turned to walk away, FranAnne’s hand suddenly gripped him by the shirt, her fingers pinching his arm.
“Ouch! What the shit, Fulton!” he said, rubbing his arm. “Shit, man. That hurt!”
FranAnne did not speak, nor did she look at him. Her eyes had not left the grove of trees.
“What?” Hawkins whispered, forgetting about his sore arm.
Still not looking away, FranAnne slowly and silently raised her arm, the index finger on her hand pointing toward the trees. Hawkins followed her aim, but he hadn’t needed to, because there before him, standing directly under the bright moon, stood the beast. It stood pitch black against the moon, casting a shadow that stretched twenty feet in front of it.
It stood straight up, its forelegs sticking out like a two-gun cowboy who is about to draw down on some low down bushwhackin’ varmint. But there were no guns at its side, just a set of long claws sticking out from each hand. The claws also cast ten distinct shadows that appeared to reach to the ground.
“Damn…” was all that Hawkins could utter.
“It just stepped out from the trees and stopped,” FranAnne said, still unable to avert her eyes from the seven-foot silhouette.
“Up against the moon like that, it almost looks like that big light that signals
Bat Man,” Hawkins replied, also unable to tear his eyes away from the werewolf.
FranAnne would’ve normally cackled at Hawkins’ remark, but she was just too nervous at that moment. Fear had replaced the pride that she had been feeling.
“It’s not even moving,” she said. “It’s just standing there like it…”
“Like it wants us to see it,” Hawkins said, finishing her sentence.
“Do think the colonel is seeing it right now?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I can’t remember how far back those cameras went,” he answered.
“What now?” FranAnne asked. “Do we wait for it to do something?”
“That’s all we can do. We can’t go wasting our ammo on something that far away.”
The two privates stood as stone still as their adversary…but for different reasons.
“Here I am,” it seemed to say to them. “Come and get me.”
The moon reflected brightly off the werewolf’s already yellow eyes. The beast stood still in the moonlight. It had turned just minutes before, and now its instincts told it to finish what it had started the night before. It knew that there were more like it inside the giant rock…even more than the previous night, but it didn’t really care about the other werewolves at the moment. It wanted the two-leggers that were inside the building. It had not been able to feed the night before, and it was hungry…hungry and angry…angry because it remembered the pain that the three two-leggers had caused it the night before. They had hurt it badly, and now it wanted them all…and when it got them all, it would feed and feed and feed. It grunted at the thought of the feast that it would soon have…but it had to be careful tonight. They had hurt it badly several times now. It would be careful, but not shy. It wanted them to see it. It wanted them to know that it was coming.
It watched as the two-leggers on top of the giant rock attempted to stand as still as it did, but neither of them would be standing still for very long, because it was coming for them…all of them.
“Colonel?” Locklear O’Hearley said, nervously, looking at the video screen. “Colonel?”
“What is it?” Potts asked as he and Sgt. Cohen moved away from the door where they had been leaning, rifles in hand, waiting for any sign of the monster.
“Look at
this,” Locklear answered as the two joined him at the monitor.
Potts and Cohen stood on each side of the professor as they watched the screen. The building’s front camera was sweeping across the front of the building as it had been doing since they had gotten there.
“What?” Potts asked, annoyed.
“One moment, Colonel,” Locklear answered, his finger on one of the console buttons. “There!” he said, pressing the button.
As soon as he pressed the button, the camera stopped.
“I don’t see anything,” Potts said, peering at the screen.
“I see it,” Cohen said.
“See what? Where? What are two going on about?” Potts was becoming frustrated with the pair.
“There,” Locklear repeated, pointing to the top of the screen. “Right there.”
It took Potts a moment, but then he saw it…or most of it. At the top of the screen, they could see the bottom half of the werewolf standing motionless. They couldn’t see its head, but the claws told them everything that they needed to know.
“What in Dick’s pajamas is it doing?” Potts asked.
“It looks like it’s inviting us to come out and play,” Cohen answered him.
“I’ll be damned,” Potts said, taking a cigar out of his breast pocket.
Potts loved wearing fatigues, because it meant that there was going to be a fight. He didn’t have to wear the blazer, the perfectly creased slacks, or the officer’s cap during battle. It was the kakis and the helmet…no muss, no fuss.
He put the cigar in his mouth and chomped down as he stared at the monitor. Sgt. Cohen looked over at him. To Cohen, the colonel looked almost giddy as he watched the beast. He would be willing to swear that there was a hint of smile on the cigar side of the man’s mouth.
“What’s he waiting for?” Locklear asked.
“It’s making sure that we see it…that we know it’s coming,” Potts answered.
“What are we going to do, Colonel?” Cohen asked.
“We’re gonna wait. If it wants us, it’s gonna have to come and get us.”
“Do you think that he…it…is going to attack us?” Sgt. Cohen asked, nervously rubbing his chin.
“Oh yeah,” Potts answered.
FranAnne and Hawkins continued to watch the beast, their rifles at the ready.
“What are you waitin’ for, you son-of-a-bitch?” Hawkins whispered. “Here we are.”
“It’s trying to make us nervous,” FranAnne replied. “It wants us to get itchy, so we’ll make mistakes.”
Neither of them had taken their eyes off the monster since FranAnne had first seen it.
“I don’t know which part I hate the most,” FranAnne said. “Actually fighting the thing, or standing here waiting for it.”
“I’m with you there, Sister,” Hawkins told her, gripping his rifle tightly.
After a moment, they saw the thing move…not move, so much as twitch. It wanted them to know that it was still alive and well. Then, without warning, it turned its nose to sky and let out a long, wailing, angry howl that chilled FranAnne’s blood solid. At that moment, she was reminded of one of her favorite old movies. It was The Alamo with John Wayne. The Duke had been her father’s and her grandfather’s favorite actor. It seemed that the only time the three of them ever got along when she was growing up, was when there was a John Wayne western on the TV. They always made a point of watching Red River, The Searchers, Stagecoach, or Big Jake, any time that they were on…but The Alamo was an event. It was over three hours long…with commercials, four hours. At one point in the movie, when the volunteers and the Texians are about to do battle with Santa Anna’s heavily outnumbered army, they hear the Mexican army play a tune called “El Deguello”, which was a bugle song that told the Alamo defenders that there would be no quarter…no prisoners taken…everyone was going to die. That would be something that would make even the hardest man want to pee in his buckskins, but not the men of San Antonio de Bexar. They simply stood stoically on that wall and waited for death to come…and they faced it silently and bravely, ready to take out as many of the enemy as they could before falling. Now, FranAnne had read several books and seen several specials on A&E about the Alamo and knew that there was a blurred line between fact and fiction, but in every account of the story, one thing was always the same. With the exception of one man, none of them ran away. They stood their ground until there was no more ground to stand on. They fought and died knowing that something greater would come from their sacrifice. FranAnne wasn’t sure what greater good would come from her dying, but who knew, maybe before it was all over, one of them would destroy the thing and put a stop to all of the carnage that the monster had caused for God knew how long.
It kept its nose to the air and continued to wail for a good twenty seconds before stopping. It looked their direction one last time and then, much to their shock, the thing literally morphed into a four-legged creature, its hind legs longer than its forelegs, making its rump stick up in the air, and giving it the appearance of an animal who was just about to pounce on its prey. It gave one loud grunt, smoke like breath shooting out of its nostrils and mouth, then pointed its bright yellow eyes straight at them and began to move slowly forward, disappearing into the shadows.
“Let’s show him no quarter…how about that?” FranAnne said aloud, to herself, gripping her gun even tighter.
Potts, Cohen, and Locklear watched the thing morph onto two legs, and begin to move stealthily toward them.
“Ah…” Potts said calmly, shifting his cigar to the side of his mouth like Clint Eastwood had done in all those spaghetti westerns. “The game is afoot.”
Sgt. Cohen and Locklear watched nervously as Potts took a single match from out of his breast pocket, held it between his index and middle finger, and then extended his thumb above the match and brought it down on the match-head, the hard callous on his thumb acting as friction. With one single down stroke of his digit, the match lit. Cohen and Locklear almost “oohed” in awe as the colonel put the match to the cigar and puffed three or four times, never taking his eyes off of the monitor.
Sgt. Cohen unconsciously put his hand on his holster. He figured that if he had to face that thing, there was no man on Earth that he felt more confident facing it with than Col. George Patton Potts, the scourge of No Name Island. He slowly pulled out his pistol, placed his left hand on top of the revolver and pulled back the lever and let it slide into place again.
“All right, Mr. Klefka, or whatever your name is,” Potts started taking his cigar out of his mouth, and blowing a perfect smoke ring. “Let’s get it on.”
Zack Olsen rounded the corner and slammed into Kyler, sending himself, the doctor, and the glass of water crashing to the floor. Kyler slammed his elbow onto the cold hard tile as the plastic glass rolled away. Zack landed on top of him with a loud “oomph”.
“Zack?” Kyler moaned, holding his elbow. He never knew why they called it the “funny bone”. There was absolutely nothing funny about slamming it against a hard surface.
“Sorry, Doctor,” Zack said hurriedly.
He quickly rolled off of Kyler and tried to scramble away, but Kyler caught by the cuff of his pant leg.
“Zack!” Kyler yelled. “Stop!”
“My dad’s gone!” Zack replied, trying to pull away from him.
“Wait! Wait! Zack! Stop, will ya’!”
Zack relaxed seeing that Kyler had a firm grip on him and wasn’t going to let go without a good, swift kick to the head.
“Now settle down, Zack,” the doctor said calmly. “Talk to me.”
“Okay.”
Kyler released his grip on the boy’s pant leg. Zack got to his feet, and looked down at Kyler who was holding his elbow and grimacing in pain. He reached out his hand and Kyler took it. The boy was strong, pulling Kyler to his feet with ease.
He looked at Zack. The boy was white as a sheet and breathing heavy.
“Now what happened, Zack?” he asked, still ho
lding his elbow.
“My father…” Zack started, trying to catch his breath. “He’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Kyler quickly realized that he’d just asked a stupid question that was right up there with “you can’t find your keys…well, where did you leave them?”
“Start at the beginning, Zack. What happened?”
The boy was anxious to run, but didn’t.
“I just walked into the meeting room…the sleeping quarters…whatever…and he was gone. Mrs…uh…Dr. O’Hearley, Lauren, and Mike were the only ones there, and…”
“The only ones there?” Kyler interrupted. “Where were Shelly and the baby?”
Zack quickly shook his head. “They weren’t there. Anyway, Mike had been there alone and told me that he hadn’t seen my father since he’d come back from the arcade room.”
“There’s an arcade room?”
“Doctor!”
“Go ahead.”
“Mike hadn’t seen him. He didn’t know how long he’d been gone. He could be anywhere!”
“You’re sure you didn’t see Shelly…eh…Mrs. Dixon and the baby?”
“No one was there, Doctor Kyler, except the three of them…and Joe. What am I gonna do? My father’s all I’ve got left and he was my responsibility!”
“Look, Zack,” Kyler said, taking the boy gently by the shoulders, “You can’t go running around the halls at this time of night alone and unarmed.”
Zack pulled the pistol from out of his jeans and flashed it in front of him.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Mike gave it to me.”
“Where the hell did he get it?”
“I don’t know, Sgt. Cohen I think, but it didn’t work for him when he tried to shoot Lauren and her mom.”
“What?”
“Doctor, I have to go!”
Kyler didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t tell the kid to just go back to the room and wait for a grownup to come along and help him. He was pretty sure that everyone else had…or were soon to have…their hands full.”