The policeman had not volunteered to drive her home, and since she was not going home this did not in the least disturb her. It was almost two in the morning when she stepped out into the street to find a cab. Fortunately, one was sitting in front of the hospital, its driver a small man with wisps of hair that stuck up from a freckled balding head. An oversized coat was bundled around his body and he was taking a secret drink from a bottle which Katrina knew was vodka when she opened the rear door. The driver, who had not noticed the potential fare, was so startled that he dropped the bottle.
Cursing as she closed the door behind her, the driver retrieved the bottle and said,
"I'm going home now. I'm through for the night. Get out."
Katrina calmly gave him the address on Malaya Molchanovka Street, not far from the embankment where Olga Stashov had been shot to death two hours earlier.
"I'm going home," he repeated, turning to face her over the top of the seat. "Home. Get another cab. There are three thousand cabs in Moscow."
"There are 16,154 cabs in Moscow. The one I am in will take me to Kalinin Prospekt," she said. "I am not getting out."
The man glared at her, but Katrina did not budge. Considering what had happened to her this night, his effort at intimidation was a joke as pale as the face of the dead ballerina against the swirling snow. She placed her purse and the bag containing the gift for Agda in her lap.
"What happened to your arm?" the cab driver said, the surly edge now blunt, not sharp.
"I was attacked by an animal," she explained.
"You want a bottle of vodka? I can sell you . . ."
"Drive, please," Katrina said.
The driver shrugged, patted down a few wisps of hair, which ignored his effort, and drove. He went through the empty streets to Kalinin Prospekt, made a right turn in front of the 17th-century Church of Simon Stylites into Vorovsky Street, and then a quick left down Malaya Molchanovka Street. About a hundred yards past the house where the poet Mikhail Lermontov had once lived the driver stopped the cab and pointed at a four-story apartment building.
"That's it," he said. "Four rubles."
Katrina paid without complaint and got out. The car had been poorly heated but the slap of cold as she stepped out, arm throbbing, made her consider getting back into the cab. The driver did not give her the I opportunity. He pulled away quickly, skidding tires sending the rear j end of the cab swaying for a moment before he righted the car and disappeared down the curved street.
The very real possibility existed that Katrina would not be able to get into the building. Even if she got into the building it was unlikely that she could get into the apartment even if someone were inside. But she had to try. When the sun came up, Nikulin the policeman would come, would find what he wanted to find and that would be the end for him and the world, but not for Katrina. She had seen what she had seen. She was a practical woman with an arm in pain. She was a woman who needed to understand, who needed to know how that woman had appeared with Katrina's bullets in her.
Katrina moved to the door of the apartment building, pushed it, and found it open. Inside the small lobby was warm and the names of the tenants—there were not many of them—typed clearly in little slots on a neat wall. A small telephone hung on a hook near a row of buttons for each apartment. Katrina pressed the button marked "Stashov" and picked up the phone. Nothing. She pushed again. Again nothing. She was about to give up when a voice came crackling on the line.
"Thank God," said a man on the other end.
"My name is . . ." Katrina began, but the man, who seemed to be sobbing, cut in.
"Do you have a key?"
"No," she said.
"Not a key to the door, any key?" the man said through tears.
"Yes."
"Put it in as far as it will go and turn it slowly right till the lock clicks. Then pull sharply. Hurry. For the sake of God, hurry."
Katrina put the phone back on the hook and moved to the inner door, removing the key to her own apartment from her purse and placing purse and her precious bag on the floor. She did what the weeping man had told her, but it was not easy. She had only one good hand and it took two hands, one to turn the key, the other to pull the door. In spite of her agony, she removed her left arm from the sling and pulled the door toward her when the key clicked. It wasn't nearly as painful as she thought it would be, but she hoped she would not have to go through such an effort again. She picked up her things and went in.
Finding the apartment was no trouble. It was on the first floor. Even before Katrina knocked she saw that the door was slightly open. But she did knock. There was a sound, a plaintive sound within. She knocked again and the sound was repeated, but the man did not come to open the door. She pushed the door open slightly and called, "Are you there?"
This time the voice of the man, muffled by a door beyond, called, "Yes, yes, oh, God, yes. Come in."
And Katrina entered.
The apartment was dark except for a very small light in a room beyond. Katrina paused where she stood and as her eyes adjusted she could see that she was in a very large apartment indeed, that she was standing in a large foyer just before the living room of which drapes were closed tightly. She moved forward cautiously, slowly as the man called,
"Where are you? Get in here. Get in here. Hurry."
Katrina moved forward, found the partly open door from which the voice came, and pushed it open. The smell was a sour punch to her chest, animal and foul, filled with memories of dead cats and a rat she had once found behind a can of peaches in her mother's pantry.
It was from this door that the distant light had come, a light which illuminated the room in dank yellow and sent shadows that Katrina knew she would never forget. Before her stood a cage, a simple cage like those at the zoo, a cage large enough to hold an ape, with bars the thickness of her wrists; and within the cage stood a man, a man in a suit holding two of the bars in white-knotted fists and looking at her.
"Get me out," he said. "You must hurry."
Katrina hesitated.
"Get me out," he pleaded. "I've got to find her."
"Find her."
"Olga, my wife," the man said.
He was a tall man, about forty, with a day's growth of beard and the wild eyes of a man who was truly afraid. Katrina saw the speaker on the wall just outside the cage where the man could reach it.
"What are you doing in there?" Katrina asked, stepping forward.
"What am I . . . Get me out, damn you. Get me out, you cow," he screamed, shaking the bars, which ignored him. "I'm sorry. I'm . . . this is terrible. Please get me out. I'll beg if you like. I'll get on my knees. See, like this."
"No," said Katrina. "Why are you in there?"
The man on his knees suddenly became wary.
"Who are you?" he said without getting up. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
"My name is Katrina Ivanova."
"Your arm? What . . . No," he screamed, still on his knees, hitting himself with the palms of his hands. "Olga. Where is my Olga?"
"She is dead," said Katrina.
"Dead," the man said, shaking his head. "Dead. She can't be dead."
"I'm sorry," Katrina said, moving forward to stand in front of the cage door.
"No," he said. "You don't understand. She can't die. She is unable to die."
"I think I killed her," said Katrina, wanting very much to escape from this place but afraid to let her eyes wander from those of the caged madman.
The man laughed and shook his head. It was a loud, insane laugh.
"I shot her with two silver bullets," said Katrina, and the man's laughter stopped quite abruptly.
"Who are you?" he asked, looking frightened again.
"Katrina Ivanova," she said. "I am an elevator operator at the Ukraina Hotel."
"And you have a gun with bullets of silver?" he asked incredulously.
"Agda made the bullets," said Katrina. And then she understood and
&
nbsp; gave voice to that understanding. "She . . . Olga Stashova was a werewolf."
The man did not answer but Katrina could see that it was true. He sat back against the rear of the cage, his knees up, his face in his hands.
"She tried to kill me," Katrina explained, but the man did not respond. "I'll get you out."
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It doesn't matter anymore."
His head came up from his hands and he looked around the cage.
"I am a writer, Katrina Ivanova," he said. "I cannot write of such exquisite irony as this. I built this cage myself. I learned to build it. I built it so my Olga could be locked in it on the nights of the full moon. And then, this time, this one time I was late and it was I who ran to the cage, who locked myself in to keep from her claws and teeth. If she had killed me and found my body in the morning, it would have ... I don't know."
"How did she . . . ?"
"We were in Romania, a tour, performance in Bucharest . . . What does it matter now? The animal came running out of an alley behind the theater, attacked Olga. I tried to fight the vile, rotten-smelling . . . Others came to help and it ran, climbed, no it leaped up the side of a nearby building making screaming sounds. Olga had been clawed, bitten on the neck, body. She was covered in blood. I knew she would die on the way to the hospital, but she didn't and her recovery was a miracle. A stupid nurse said she was blessed. We found on the night of the next full moon when we returned to Moscow that it was a curse. Olga killed. I was away at . . . When I came home . . . What does it matter?"
"Where is the key?" Katrina asked.
"The table by the door," he said, looking at a space near the wall not at all near the table.
Katrina moved to the table.
"There is no key there," she said.
The man shook his head.
"She took it. I don't care. With her curse Olga could have lived through eternity. How many people in Moscow live to be even a hundred? With my protection and those I would find to follow me she could have lived for centuries. Can you imagine the skill a century-old ballerina could develop? Can you imagine what her eternal suffering would have done to create an exquisite pathos in her art? The curse could have made her the greatest dancer of all time."
"One hundred and thirteen," said Katrina.
"What?" asked the man, partly rousing himself and looking at her.
"There are now one hundred and thirteen people in Moscow over tl the age of one hundred," she said. "The police will be here in a few v hours. They will find a way to get you out. Can I get you something?" t
"If you had found the key," he said, "I think I would have killed you ; n when you let me out. I would have killed you for taking Olga from me t and from the future. What would have been the loss if my beautiful Olga had taken your small life?"
Katrina moved to the door and started to push it open. Her arm wasn't hurting as much as it had when she had entered the apartment. She was about to leave the room when she saw the key on the floor and decided that she had a better gift for Agda than the curd dumplings in the paper bag.
▼▼▼
It was just before 3:30 in the morning when Katrina quietly opened the door to the apartment she shared with Agda. She put down her purse and without turning on the light she tiptoed across the very small living room-kitchen to the even smaller bedroom. The door was open and she went in by the light of the moon through the bedroom window.
Agda stirred and turned over. Katrina climbed up on the bed eager j for her friend to awaken. In her hand, Katrina held her gift.
"Katrina," Agda said dreamily. "What is that awful . . . ?"
"I have something for you," Katrina said excitedly. "Something to I tell you."
"You've discovered the Moscow River has two hundred tributaries," Agda mumbled.
"It has over six hundred tributaries," Katrina said. "I have something for you."
"In the morning," Agda said with annoyance. "Stop bouncing on the bed. It's the middle of the night. I've got to get to work in the morning."
"This will take a moment," Katrina said. "I promise."
Agda sat up with a sigh of resignation and looked at her friend and the present she held out, but nothing was clear, not even Katrina's voice. Agda reached over to the small table near the bed, put on her glasses and turned on the little night light.
When she turned she saw something that had once been her friend Katrina and in part still was. The creature before Agda squatted on the bed on its rear legs bouncing up and down. The hands were not hands
but twisted dark claws lhat vibrated nervously holding out the gift. But that was not the worst. The worst was the look on the face, a face which was both Katrina's and that of some hairy animal with its lips pulled back to show wide, sharp blood-stained teeth. There was no doubt. The monster was happy. The monster was smiling as it handed Agda the heart of Olga Stashova's husband.
WOLF WATCH
Robert E. Weinberg
▼▼▼
EvENIN'," said Carl Jones, the night crew manager, as Otto came tramping through the back door. "How's the weather outside?"
"Starting to snow," said Otto, punching in on the time clock. Carl liked to make small talk before leaving each night. Usually they chatted about sports or the latest political scandal. Tonight, though, the manager had other things on his mind.
"Mr. Galliano plans to stop by tomorrow morning before the store opens," he said, the words tripping out of his mouth in a rush. "He specifically asked that you stay around till he arrives."
"He wants to see me?" asked Otto, not sure he heard the other man correctly. Carefully, he hung his threadbare overcoat in his locker. He placed the paper sack containing his lunch on the floor, near his overshoes. His thermos, filled with hot coffee, went next to that. Licking his lips nervously, he added, "He say what for?"
Drawing out his uniform jacket and cap, he dressed quickly. A short, husky man, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, he could barely button the snaps on his coat. He had been putting on weight the last few months.
A powerful flashlight and a nightstick completed his outfit. Some night watchmen carried guns, but not Otto. He disliked weapons of all types. The billy club was only for show. He never used it.
"Not a word," said Carl, a touch of apprehension in his voice. "The boss never came around to our section before. He always left everything to me." He shook his head. "It ain't natural. Not natural at all. I don't like it."
"You don't like it?" said Otto, with a sigh. "He's coming to see me. I'm just a part-timer. Union rules don't protect my job. I can't even apply for membership till next week, after Christmas."
"Yeah," said Carl. "The boss always reviews a new employee's records after three months on the job," He donned his winter coat and wrapped a heavy scarf around his neck. "Seems to me you've been here that long."
" 'Bout that," said Otto. Without thought, his hands constricted into fists. "You think the old man plans to fire me? I heard he likes to hand out the pink slips himself."
"That's right," said Carl. "Mr. Galliano prides himself in delivering all the news, both good and bad. He stays on top of things."
The night watchman put on a pair of earmuffs, then covered his balding head with a fur hat. "The cleaning women all checked out a half-hour ago. See you tomorrow morning at seven. I'll keep my fingers crossed."
"Good night, Carl," said Otto, raising his nightstick in farewell. A few swirls of snow whipped into the locker room as the night manager departed. The snow outside was getting worse. "And thanks."
Otto carefully locked and bolted the rear entrance to the store. He glanced over at the time clock. It was a little before eleven p.m. For the next eight hours, until the morning crew arrived, he was the only person legally allowed in the Big-G department store. It was his job to keep all others out.
Most of his time he spent patrolling endless corridors, with only his thoughts for company. It was a lonely, dull routine, but Otto didn't mind. It felt good working
again.
A quiet, private man, he actually enjoyed the solitude of the deserted building. He had never functioned well surrounded by people. The sounds and smells of crowds served as a constant distraction and made work difficult. Though not terribly bright, Otto recognized his limitations and tried to work around them.
Previous to this job, he had labored for thirty years on the midnight shift at the south side steel works. His wages there barely covered his living expenses. Fringe benefits consisted of a Christmas party once a year.
Last year, the company abruptly cancelled the party. On New Year's Day, a terse notice in the paper announced the mill's closing. Decades of mismanagement had thrown the corporation into bankruptcy. Hundreds of middle-aged men suddenly found themselves out of work.
The union pension fund, owed millions by the company, collapsed in ruin. Most of the members were left without a cent to their name. Otto considered himself one of the lucky ones. He owned the small cottage where he lived. Many of his old cronies lost their homes and all their possessions during the hard months that followed.
It took him eight months to find this job. Fifty years old and without any experience other than making steel, he was not qualified for most positions advertised in the newspapers. If he was terminated here, future prospects appeared grim.
Otto shrugged, as if shouldering a heavy burden. There was nothing for him to do but wait. In the meantime, he had work to be done.
Forcing the depressing thoughts from his mind, Otto began his rounds. First, he checked all the doors and windows on the first floor. Satisfied they were securely locked, he then took an elevator up to the sixth and highest floor of the store.
The Ultimate Werewolf Page 30