“That was a gunshot,” Ishmael said.
She squinted into the distance, then turned to listen to something behind her. “There was a man,” she said. She turned around completely. When she couldn’t see what she was looking for, she went to the back of the truck and spied down the road. There was a car parked a good distance behind them. “He went after Two-Trees and Bridget.” She struck off toward the commotion with Ishmael not far behind. He shivered and stumbled over numb feet. She took off her coat and gave it to him, but it wouldn’t fit. He couldn’t fill both sleeves at the same time without ripping something in between. He returned the coat and hugged himself.
“Just go,” he said. “I’ll catch up.” She watched him for a moment longer. He told her again to see if anyone needed medical attention—because the last thing anybody needed was for Bridget to cycle through because of an injury.
He slowed to a stop. His left hand felt strange. Not sore, not hot, just dull, as if his sense of touch was somehow congested. He bit his fingers. There was nothing wrong with his sense of pain. It just seemed to take longer for the sensory signal to reach his brain. And he was winded. Human or animal, he never used to get winded. He was in peak condition. Or had been.
He shivered and jogged on, if only to keep warm.
He heard Foster’s voice in the distance, then Two-Trees’. There was a stranger standing near the Padre, who lay on the ground in a worse state of undress than Ishmael, and who was struggling to unbuckle the collar about his neck. Bridget stood over the Padre protectively, fists raised and chin tucked down. Two-Trees was trying to tell her to stand down before someone got hurt, which was odd, considering the stranger was holding a smoking gun. Two-Trees squatted and helped get the collar off. The Padre rubbed at his throat and coughed.
When Ishmael caught up, no one was speaking anymore. Two-Trees’ hair had come loose from his ponytail, so he ripped the band out and let his hair fall over his shoulders. Bridget was spitting nails. The stranger was a wiry, jumpy little guy, and he moved his gun whenever he looked from one person to the next. He turned to Ishmael next, pointing the gun in a professional but very alarmed grip.
“Who the hell are you?” the stranger asked. “Are you one of them?”
“Sure,” Ishmael said.
“A cannibal?”
Ishmael frowned. “God no.”
“Prove it.”
Ishmael slowly canted his head. “Okay,” he replied, voice rich with sarcasm. “I won’t eat you.”
Infuriated, the little man shouted, “What the hell is going on?”
Bridget kept her eyes on the stranger, but Two-Trees, Foster, the Padre, and the stranger were all watching Ishmael.
Ishmael shrugged and pointed at the Padre. “He’s lying on the ground naked, and you’re pointing a gun at us. Pretty sure that’s what the hell is going on. Just not sure why.”
“He wasn’t . . . a man,” the stranger said. “I watched him. First he was a dog, and then he was a werewolf, and now he’s naked.”
“Therianthrope,” Ishmael said.
“What?” the stranger demanded.
“He’s not a werewolf. He’s a therianthrope. Coyote-hybrid type.” He made the sign of a cone before his face. “Muzzle’s too narrow for a wolf, and his ears are too pointed. Not a wolf-man.”
“Buckle, you’ve got to put that thing down and listen to him,” Two-Trees said.
Instead, Buckle shifted his stance, bracing himself behind the gun.
Ishmael pointed at Foster. “But she’s a werewolf, if you’re looking for one.” He pointed at Bridget. “Hyena-woman.” He pointed at himself. “Cold and half-naked.”
“A . . . another . . .” Buckle covered up his fear with a spurt of outrage. He looked like an artery was about to burst. “Like him?”
“Melanistic panthera pardus, or so I’m told,” Ishmael said. “Two-Trees, by the way, is as human as you are. I know it’s confusing, what with all the body hair, but you can tell by his beer gut.” Two-Trees gave him a look of mixed disdain and amusement. “And we haven’t eaten him yet either. Besides, any idea how much cholesterol there is in human tissue?”
Foster crossed her arms. “He’s right. Man-burger is a one-way ticket to a myocardial infarction. You know, if you shoot one of us, we turn into animals, self-repair, and then attack in pack formation. You think maybe you should put the gun down and listen to what Ishmael has to say?”
“Why have I got to say it?” Ishmael asked.
“Senior ranking officer,” Bridget replied.
“I was demoted, remember?”
Two-Trees put his hand on Buckle’s gun. “Buckle, if they’d wanted to hurt you, they’d have done it by now. And if I’d wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead by now. Put the gun down. You’ve already got one bullet you’ve got to account for when you get back to the station.”
Buckle’s face went through contortions as he fought fear and horror and a hundred other emotions that were most likely walloping him all at once. He stared at the Padre, at all the hair the Padre had sloughed off, at the Padre’s shrivelled tail lying disembodied on the ground, and at the Padre’s fangs and slightly pointed ears.
Two-Trees took the gun from Buckle, flicked on the safety, and put it in his own waistband. “Is there some place quiet and warm we can discuss all this like rational beings?”
The Padre protested. “I had a trail!”
Now Buckle’s face went blank.
Ishmael nodded. “Yeah, the Padre was our cadaver dog.”
“You were in on this?” Buckle asked Two-Trees.
“From day one,” Two-Trees said.
“And . . . and . . . Reid?” Buckle pointed at the Padre. “Pritchard Park . . . ?” He looked at Bridget in a new light. “You were there, too.”
“Ishmael,” the Padre said, pleadingly. “I had a trail. Get me back on all four of my feet and let me follow it to the end.”
“How many?” Ishmael asked.
“At least six,” the Padre said.
Two-Trees gaped. “Six? Shit!”
“They were all over the place,” the Padre said, “washed out by the rain, and they were running all over the field as if trying to throw off the dogs from their trail—stuck to water as much as they could.”
“Which way?” Ishmael asked.
The Padre pointed north. “I have no idea how far. The trail was getting old fast. In another few hours, it’ll be gone.”
“What’s up that way?” Two-Trees asked Buckle.
Buckle didn’t answer. He was too busy watching Bridget’s arm flex when she pulled the Padre to his feet. The Padre stood unashamed but shivering in the nude. He was more concerned with crossing his arms and preserving body heat than faking modesty. Two-Trees took off his long overcoat and tossed it to the Padre, who gladly accepted it and promptly turned himself into a flasher. Bridget took off her coat and Ishmael’s jacket, giving the latter back to Ishmael.
“Buckle,” Two-Trees said.
Buckle was looking at Ishmael too, from the scars across his arm to the missing belly button above Ishmael’s waist band.
“Detective Sergeant Buckle,” Two-Trees said. “Think it through. Pritchard Park. One werewolf goes crazy. The other puts him down before anyone else dies.”
Buckle blinked behind thick glasses.
“This is the werewolf who saved your town. He’s no murderer, any more than you are. Bridget and I took him in, got him the hell out of town, put him in quarantine. That’s why you never found him. We’d come to Pritchard Park to help prevent an epidemic. And that’s why we set fire to the crime scene—to prevent a panic, and to prevent more lycanthropic infections. You’d have done the same.”
Buckle had a vacant look in his eyes.
“Ishmael,” the Padre said. “We’ve got to track these animals down.”
“Not like that, you can’t,” Bridget said.
“Damn it!” the Padre exclaimed. “After all that—this is shit.”
“What
are they?” Ishmael asked. “Human or otherwise?”
The Padre shook his head. “It’s faint, but it’s not entirely human.”
Strangled noises were coming from Buckle’s throat.
“I don’t know which one of the trails though. There were too many, and too little time. I couldn’t . . .” He shivered. “I couldn’t hold it together long enough.”
“Then let’s look around,” Ishmael said, “see if we can figure out where they were headed.”
Two-Trees shook his head. “Look at you. You’re both frozen solid. We need to get back to the hotel, regroup, cross-reference with the maps—”
“We can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget said, in a hollow voice.
“Why not?” Foster asked.
Bridget looked awfully like Claire Bambridge for a moment. She shook her head. “It wasn’t Ishmael. It wasn’t the Padre. It was their room,” she said, more confidently.
“What are you talking about?” Foster sighed.
“The Howard Johnson. The donut shop. The electronics store . . . We’re all picking up on it—that’s why we’re in a constant state of bitchiness—but in Ishmael’s condition, he’s super-sensitive to it.”
“Change pheromones, all over Elmbury,” Foster said with a snort. “In public.”
“You got a better theory?” Bridget asked.
“Of course I do. Ishmael’s broken and he’s setting us all off.”
“He wasn’t at the donut shop a couple of hours ago,” Bridget retorted. “And yet I started slipping. Ask Two-Trees. He’s the one who saw it before I even felt it.”
Two-Trees nodded. “And that’s why I’m saying we need to look at those maps. See if we can pick up a pattern, triangulate—”
“You’re implying that there are no less than six lycanthropes running around Elmbury shedding change pheromones,” Foster said. “You can’t do that without being in a state of change! You’re saying that there are werewolves changing in public, right under a thousand surveillance cameras.”
Bridget turned to Two-Trees. “We can still follow up on those pheromone hot spots. That was the plan. Use me as the miner’s canary. I can pull back from a cycle if we catch it soon enough. And if it’s a strong enough reaction, maybe I can trigger the Padre. Get him up-cycled closer to the trail this time.”
“How do we get the pheromones outside though?” Two-Trees asked.
“Stop,” Foster shouted. “Just . . . stop. Will you listen to yourselves? It’s change pheromones that set you off, Bridget. And you’re trying to tell me that in stores and hotels all over Elmbury, people are just randomly changing? In public? Come on. People are quick with the cameras when they see a murder suspect who’s been missing for six years, Bridget. Don’t you think they’d be even quicker if they saw somebody just up and tear their skin off?”
Bridget ran out of steam. Her shoulders sagged. Then she straightened her shoulders again. “I know one person who can change in public, and no one would suspect a thing.”
Foster was already shaking her head.
“Good God, you’re right,” the Padre said. “If Eva and Holly can do it, what’s to say nobody else can? I can’t—but I can pass for a four-legged animal and you can’t. So why is it so hard to believe that someone has a strain similar to yours?”
“She’s not infectious,” Ishmael replied.
“Well, she got it from somewhere,” the Padre said, pointing at the “she” in question. “Maybe someone else got it from a common source.”
Ishmael thought of eight young women wearing Ishmael’s fur. He’d thought he was the only one of his species too, until seeing that video. Why couldn’t it be the same for Holly?
Foster was shaking her head. “So what then, someone’s walking around from store to store to store, anticipating our every move? They figure we need to hit the electronics store, so they go in ahead of us and fart out a few change pheromones, then sneak back out again, all a-giggling? And then think, ‘They’re going to crave a nice cruller later’, so they visit the donut store?”
“But no problem at the liquor store,” the Padre said, offhandedly. “You’d think they’d have gone there first.”
“There probably wouldn’t be a problem at the pet store, either,” Two-Trees said. “If the animals go crazy when you people walk in, they’d probably go crazy when our suspects walked in too.”
“Which means they wouldn’t risk working there,” Bridget pointed out. “And yes, I do think it’s the people of Elmbury—the citizens, not the visitors—who are setting us off.”
Foster opened her mouth to argue, but nothing seemed to come to mind.
“The point is, we can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget said. “At least, Ishmael can’t.”
“No matter how badly Ishmael needs a pair of shoes,” Ishmael said. “She’s right. I can’t risk it. I seem to be fine outdoors, but for the love of God, someone, please, get me my shoes.”
“You might not be able to wear them,” Bridget said. “Anything that was in that hotel room would have pheromones on them. Someone’s going to have to do a load of laundry with their nose plugged.”
“And we still need a place to set up shop,” Foster added. “I’m waiting on a shipment from the medical supply store—the needles, the centrifuge, the DNA sequencing kits . . . I need electricity, access to the internet—and we need to get in contact with Gil. I need his help.”
“But we can’t go back to the hotel,” Bridget insisted. “Think about it—what if it was housekeeping that pooted those pheromones? All of our rooms would be compromised.”
Two-Trees was staring at the tops of his shoes. “There is a place you could go.” His expression was guarded, maybe a little angry. “If it’s still standing.” He looked at Buckle. “But we’ve still got to deal with him.”
Ishmael grunted. “Little choice now. Bring him with us.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“VAMPIRES SUPPOSEDLY HAVE these human slaves,” Bridget was saying, “people who could do stuff during the day for their vampire masters.” She shuffled the cards and bridged them. “Investments during banking hours, property deals, whatever. Then the vampires get up in the night, flit around sucking blood from people, then go back and sleep it off. Can you think of any creature more pathetic than a vampire? I mean, what’s the point of being immortal if you can’t even do your own damned banking?”
Foster snorted a laugh and picked up her cards.
“God, I feel useless out here,” Bridget said.
Ishmael stood before the boarded up window, looking between the slats across the abandoned property and into the trees. The cobbled walkway had been mossed over. Firewood rotted where a burnt barn had once stood. Inside the old cabin, load bearing timbers were so rotted no one could risk scavenging for supplies upstairs, or even in the kitchen, where the floor had fallen into the root cellar. Everywhere, memories of the ’70s and ’80s rusted, unravelled, and went mouldy: feathered blonde hair on the cover of an old TV guide, small empty cans of vintage Coca-Cola, a crocheted granny-square blanket made of black and orange acrylic wool. Near an upended La-Z-Boy chair was an eviscerated pillow with a picture of ET embroidered on one side. Near the back screen door there was a Pepsi can with the skeleton of a small snake stuck in the pull tab. Rotted window sills were littered with the corpses of potato bugs. Old LP sleeves were stuck together with mildew—Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, and Bachman Turner Overdrive. No turntable to go with them, and no electricity to power the turntable anyway. The back porch was the sturdiest construction left standing. In another ten years, the roof would cave in. In another twenty, the timbers would all be gone. In fifty years, someone would stumble across the old place and declare it an archaeological find.
And in all that time, Anders Jewell Anderson will still be playing backgammon with the younger lycanthropes, and history would have forgotten all about the six of us.
For all that, Ishmael wasn’t uncomfortable with his surroundings
. Tiger Dogs were accustomed to desolation. At least these ruins had interesting things to look at between crises.
“What about Ferox?” Foster asked.
“Ask her yourself in a few hours,” Bridget said. “If we ever find her.”
“No, I mean . . . how is she doing? Really.”
Ishmael scavenged through an old desk in search of anything that could be salvaged, like scissors or a letter opener. He didn’t need any new weapons, since one good sneeze was all it took to make him break out in whiskers, but it was better than sitting around playing pinochle or whatever it was Foster and Bridget were up to.
“Last I knew, she was having a tiff with Dep,” Bridget said.
Who has false starts?
And why is Ahab bald?
“She can hold her own, though,” Foster said. “In fur and out of it. There was this one time . . .”
Ishmael found books in one corner, and when he drew nearer, he saw that most of them had thin spines but were long, like the LP sleeves. He tilted his head. There were only three titles, but many copies of each book. He pulled one out. Sister Whitehair and the Broken Smoke, by H. Red Cloud. He pulled out another one. Sister Whitehair and the Bone Fish Man, by H. Red Cloud. The last was called Sister Whitehair and the Trickster, by H. Red Cloud and Hector-Younger Two-Trees. Grinning, Ishmael pulled the book all the way out. Its spine and opening edges were dented and freckled with mild, but the interior was in perfect condition, if it smelled a bit musty.
Pictures by H. Red Cloud Two-Trees, the interior said. Story by H. Red Cloud Two-Trees and his grandson, Hector-Younger.
He’d have to tease the living hell out of Two-Trees for this. At the back of the book, they even had an early 1970s “making of” picture of tiny Hector Two-Trees in a black wig with giant rabbit ears, and otherwise wearing nothing but a pair of brown Adidas shorts with a fluffy brown tail pinned to it. At the other side of the picture, a white haired man in a t-shirt stood behind an easel with a paint brush and palette, halfway through finishing a painting that matched the cover.
There was a break in the chatter. The women played on in silence, while the Padre slipped between the broken door and the frame, headed outside for air that didn’t smell like dry rot. Ishmael stayed inside and read the book co-authored by his new favourite human.
Helix: Plague of Ghouls Page 30