by Gene Lazuta
Until the man behind the truck’s wheel snapped his head and turned to face the detective, stopping him in his tracks. For a split second their eyes met, and then the man made Cooper believe everything by grinning madly, slamming the truck into reverse and swerving backward, right into a pair of approaching deputies who screamed and tried vainly to dive out of the way.
“You fucker!” Cooper shouted, raising his gun. “You meant to do it!”
The two men kept screaming while one crawled on his hands and knees in the slush toward where a police car was parked, and the other rolled in a ball, back and forth, pressing his forehead to his knee and leaving a terrible red stain on the snow beneath him that glistened almost black every time he moved.
Conway was waving his arms.
Cooper drew his sight on the pickup’s cab.
And the driver turned to face him again, frantically working the gearshift through a gale of laughing howls.
He’s crazy! Cooper thought, involuntarily holding his shot. He’s completely out of his mind.
Just like the sheriff said.
A man leapt onto the back of the pickup, and his body tumbled in a flail of waving arms and legs as the truck lurched forward. In an instant he was up again and moving toward the front compartment, his gun drawn and his balance unsteady.
The truck performed a perfect doughnut, settled into a roaring charge, and then made a beeline for a gaggle of deputies huddled close together near the motel office.
The man on the back of the truck had on hand on the cab, but to Cooper’s amazement, once he was settled, he turned and began shooting back at the deputies they had just passed. He went right on shooting until the truck slammed into the side of the motel and his body was thrown over the cab and onto the Chevy’s hood.
Someone grabbed Cooper’s shoulder just as the truck’s rear window exploded into a million glittering chips and more shots echoed from around the yard. Before his amazed eyes, the truck was overrun with ugly black holes as deputies poured round after round into its sheet metal and, apparently, its driver.
The hand on his shoulder was Conway’s, and roughly Cooper shrugged it off. There was a roaring in his head and when he spoke, he screamed.
“How can it be?!?!”
Conway’s expression betrayed his utter bewilderment.
“What difference does it make?” he shouted, waving his arms as if to indicate everything around them as one, complete example.
Then the truck was moving again.
With a grunt, Cooper threw himself into the sheriff, knocking the older man back. Rolling over so that he came up on one knee, Cooper locked his pistol arm and braced its elbow with his other hand. The truck roared past not five feet to his right, and as he held his breath and focused his complete attention on the driver’s bobbing head over his gun’s sight, it swerved abruptly backward, toward where the wounded man still rolled in the snow.
“You’re gone,” he hissed, feeling his arm slam with impact two times…
Then four…
And six.
The truck’s windshield went white with insane, lightning bolt patterns of splintering glass. Almost instantly, its front wheels turned hard and its body lurched up as if it would leave its chassis, careening within inches of the man in the snow and ending its assault where Cooper had seen it begin: rammed into the side of Woodie’s ambulance.
The impact was anticlimactic, but a split second after it happened, the man on the ground screamed, “Fuck yeah!”
Cooper’s hands were shaking, his neck was sweaty, and his heart was singing in his chest…but it skipped a beat when, with his arm still upraised, he saw, close to the blur of his gun, Robert Norris, his friend and—at least according to Woodie’s book—the cause of everything that had happened so far, step unsteadily from the motel’s office, squinting in the sun. He paused, surveyed the lot, and began walking, with single purpose, toward his truck.
Upon seeing Norris, Cooper’s skin seemed to go into immediate convulsions and, mindlessly, he began scratching his arm.
Conway was heading toward Norris’ Bronco.
Cooper ran behind.
In his mind he was going over it: his arrival in town, his first meeting with Conway, the things the “witness” had said…
And the sheriff’s solemn announcement that “this ain’t exactly the first time I had trouble with the Norris family, especially the boys.”
Cooper hadn’t been surprised to hear that the Norris boys had been familiar to the sheriff of the town in which they had been raised. Woodie was wild, and the detective imagined that he had probably gotten into quite a bit of trouble when he was younger.
But he was surprised to hear that Conway wasn’t talking about Woodie. He was talking about Robert, the other brother…the woodsman, college graduate, and member of every animal protection and ecology outfit in existence: the good one, in other words.
“He practically made me crazy, him and his father, for years, when I first got on the department,” Conway had said, his eyes sparkling a weird, iridescent red as the light of an ambulance revolved through an open door, making Woodie’s body appear to squirm on the floor. “His father told me that the boy’s got the woods in his blood—that’s he’s wild. Not like his brother’s wild: boozing it up and chasing girls. Bobby’s father said that he was really wild, like an animal. Or at least that’s what he said.”
And that’s what the sheriff believed, as it turned out: that Robert Norris was somehow dangerous, just being himself. That just being near him could prove harmful.
“That’s why I was so goddamn glad to see him move north,” he had explained while they waited for Norris to arrive after Cooper’s call.
“That’s it!” Conway was screaming as Cooper reached him. “We’re gonna finish it now!”
Norris didn’t hardly even seem to hear him. He was calmly rummaging through a pile of stuff in his truck’s front seat, apparently moving things from one bag to another, as if he were packing. His movements were easy, and his expression placid. He looked very much like a man who had made a decision.
“Goddamn it! Talk to me!” Conway screamed, reaching out as if he intended to spin the younger man around.
In midair his hand stopped, and standing behind him, Cooper could feel the tension that stiffened the sheriff’s body.
Norris straightened himself up and turned around.
“Bob,” Cooper said, hoarsely. “What is it…I mean, really…?”
“It’s bad,” Norris responded, sliding a rifle from off its rack behind the driver’s seat and picking up the backpack he’d just filled. “Believe me, if you only knew the half of it. But there’s nothing you can do or say, Mike. You’re going to have enough trouble while I’m gone just keeping things together here. I’d imagine that they’ll make it very difficult for you now that it’s begun.”
“Now that what’s begun?” Cooper found himself shouting.
Conway began running his hands over his upper arms.
Norris’ face took on a sadness unlike anything Cooper had ever seen. It was an emotion so deep that it seemed to alter everything about his features, making him look almost completely different than he had…as if he’d been changed: really changed. In his eyes there was a jumble of hidden responses that seemed to be arranging themselves for some kind of reaction. But just when Cooper believed that his friend would let it out, that there was something there to release that he could understand, a darkness fell over his face and he said, “Lock yourselves inside.”
Then he headed back out across the lot. Pausing at the wrecked pickup truck, he glanced inside and motioned with his head.
“See?” he asked.
And Cooper, following behind, looked in to find that the driver was gone.
His mouth fell open.
Men scattered as Norris approached the woods, swinging his knapsack and resting his rifle on his right shoulder.
Cooper had never really seen him so much in his element before, he r
ealized, amazed at his perception and the fact that he’d had it now. But Norris looked…well, he looked good. He looked like a man at peace with his surroundings. His tall, lean body, dark, piercing eyes, and sandy, soft hair, all flowed together seamlessly as he ambled along. The closer he got to the trees, the more alive he seemed to grow, until, when he reached the very edge of the woods he turned, and Cooper found in his expression the logic of their relationship: Cooper could follow no father because he didn’t belong where Norris was going.
“It’s a woman, I think,” he said, as if fulfilling an obligation. “I’ve seen her, and I think that she might even be Woodie’s ‘girl.’ Although I can’t be sure.”
His narrow eyes drifted, far away.
“It’s all coming back to me, as I think it was intended from the first. It doesn’t make a lot of sense right now, but I suppose that it doesn’t have to.”
Cooper’s composure was all but ruined. He could feel himself quivering in his spot, and to his amazement, an almost unbearable urge to fall to the ground and to avert his eyes nearly overcame him. It was a reflexive, innate sensation, and he had to consciously force himself from succumbing to it.
Norris’ cheeks flushed a little as he lifted his arm and waved it at the motel yard saying, “Hide them from the moon.”
“Bob…oh, Jesus, Bob!” Cooper stammered, straining to take just one step toward his friend.
Norris’ expression squeezed in tight.
“I thought I knew you,” Cooper said—as Norris had said an hour before.
“I guess that we were both wrong,” Norris responded. “Now listen: you said that these are my woods. And you don’t know how right you were. Whatever has to be done here, I’ll have to do it alone. You can’t help me. No one can. So you’ll just have to do your best here. If I’m not back before the sun goes down…” His voice wavered. “If I’m not back…then leave.”
He’s crazy, Cooper decided, silently, experiencing a sense of loss so deep that it nearly choked him. He’s crazy just like his brother. Just like the sheriff said he’d be.
“I can’t let you go, Bob,” the detective said, trying to summon up his official voice. “I’ve got to explain.”
“It’s too late for that, Mike,” Norris responded with a sad shake of his head. “Now, go back to your kind while there’s still time.”
Cooper raised his hand.
In it, he held a gun.
“Good bye, Mike,” Norris said, turning.
“You’re under arrest,” Cooper said, feebly.
Norris took two steps into the woods, threw his knapsack over his left shoulder, and skipped over an icy log.
“Stop!” Cooper begged, trembling.
Norris didn’t respond.
Cooper squeezed his teeth together, drew his sight squarely on a spot between Norris’ shoulder blades…
And watched him disappear into the gnarled tangle of the silent, frozen trees.
He just watched him go.
And then he turned to face the parking lot, where Sheriff Conway was waving into the woods two big men wearing heavy, white-and-green splotched jackets. They carried knapsacks and rifles, and each had a walkie-talkie dangling from his belt. The sheriff watched them carefully slide into the tree line moments after Norris disappeared, and a grim look of satisfaction hardened his expression. Lifting a walkie-talkie of his own, he gave the one-word command that would send two more two-man teams—one stationed about a half mile due north, and the other waiting an equal distance to the south—into the woods. These teams would use radio contact with the lead team to triangulate Norris’ location. Then they would follow him, even though they all had a pretty good idea of where he was going. They would follow him, and he wouldn’t even know they were there. From here on out, he would be under constant scrutiny, no matter where he went.
He wouldn’t escape.
With a sigh, Cooper realized that, despite a couple of unforeseen complications, everything was going more or less according to Sheriff Conway’s plan. He didn’t know how he had done it, but the man had apparently arranged things perfectly.
21.
After saying the words, Ernie Cray launched himself from his bedroom window and plunged into the welcoming embrace of his beloved forest. At almost the exact instant that his feet hit the snow, the process of transformation that had begun while he was still in bed with his wife started into its next phase. He stopped, lifted his head, and smelled the air.
Blood.
The aroma delighted him, and he nearly succumbed to his desire to chase, tear, and kill. He could feel the urges welling up from inside of him like a fever. It seemed as if there were a spot—behind his heart, maybe—that was sending out pulsating, sonar blasts that vibrated the fluids in his brain and made it hard for him to think…hard for him to do anything but listen to the demands of his nature…
Which were Wild!
Before the transformation, he’d been a louse…a real low-life bastard—even by the relatively relaxed standards of a mind-your-own-business town like Harpersville. His sins were basically private ones, directed at his wife, who he treated like a dog. The only time he did anything out of order in public was after he’d been drinking the moonshine he bought from some of the boys who made it up in the woods. Store-bought liquor was easily available, and in some cases even cheaper than the homemade stuff, but Ernie was of the old school, and preferred good, solid, corn “squeezins” to anything that came in a bottle with a fancy label. There was a mystique about moonshine, a special essence that started with it name.
They called it moonshine because it was made at night by men who used the moon for light. And because, when swirled in a cup outdoors in the dark, it shone that same whitish-silver pale of the moon itself. The story went that good moonshine liquor, the kind made by special men taught by their fathers, was more than just alcohol. It was liquefied moonlight…the pure, untainted tincture of night that reached to a man’s soul and withdrew the pieces of his most carefully concealed personality in a way that nothing else could. Not even “white lightning,” which, to a connoisseur, was a different proposition altogether.
Moonshine was an almost holy thing, and the men who drank it were devout. Not everyone could handle it, both because of its strength, and because of the things they might discover about themselves under its influence. When Ernie drank it, the ugliest foulness of his soul emerged in full flower, and for a few glorious hours he wallowed in the depravity that was at the heart of his being.
For Ernie Cray was one of those not-so-rare people: a born brute, a throwback to an earlier time when mankind was a little closer to the woods and depended more heavily on the tooth for survival. Once, men like him, possessors of the blood spark, were valued for their ferocity. They were the hunters, the killers, the warrior princes. They were the beasts in disguise that protected the tribe, or fought for the king, and the appetites that came with their fierce natures were tolerated…and fed.
But that was long ago.
In modern times civilization constrained men like Ernie, confining their Wild natures with stringent laws that threatened punishment and death for any who engaged in behavior that just a few hundred years ago had been valued and encouraged. Cowed by overwhelming odds—because in nature the sheep always outnumbered the wolf—the ancestors of those who had once ruled by the fang became society’s frustrated, secretly angry outsiders: watching with red, predatory eyes from behind the obsequious placidity that marked the Flock’s members. But inside, these people were like raging furnaces, just waiting for the proper fuel to send their flames burning out of control. Fuel like good moonshine liquor, made right, that would let a man do what was in his soul, and then enable him to deny responsibility for his actions because the booze had made him a little crazy.
But that was all over now—at least it was for Ernie Cray. What was inside him was coming out, literally and physically. Something had come to Harpersville—something so powerful that just its proximity was enough t
o change him, to alter him in ways that he had never thought possible, and to release his animal’s soul. Whatever had come was so powerful that it would have made the change possible even without the belt he had made from his wife, he realized. But he was glad he’d made it anyway.
For a moment the blood smell intoxicated him, and he wavered in the trees like a drunk, gripping a branch so as not to fall. In this posture he paused and listened for the voice that had come into his head when he had perched himself in his former bedroom’s window—he’d never sleep indoors again—and spoken the words he had been compelled to utter to the great man kneeling on the floor.
Suddenly a spasm overran his limbs, and he quaked with its impact, grinding his teeth together and squeezing his eyes shut as a powerful surge of energy ripped through his body. Its source was the same place from which the words that had filled his mind had come—a specific location, transmitting invisible waves from deep in the forest that reached out and worked a kind of magic on his body that fully brought his insides out.
He groaned, released the branch he’d been holding, and clutched his stomach. Staggering in a knock-kneed circle as a sticky stream of viscous black bile spewed from his lips, he dropped heavily to the ground and rolled in the snow, smearing himself with mud and his own waste beneath the sun, which blazed maddeningly through the dark, tangled branches that swirled overhead. His mind exploded…not with the sequenced progression of impulses that he would have called thoughts before the onset of the change, but with a shattering miasma of sharp, vivid images, like snapshot pictures of frozen moments in time. There was no logic to this flood, no unifying theme that might link them together and create one identifiable impression. It was as if he’d been sucked inside another, greater consciousness, and was seeing the most violent contents of that being’s memory, piecemeal, and all at once.