Robert R. McCammon

by The Wolfs Hour

  He ate, and let the mysteries drift away. But when the brown male and the amber female began to rip at the huge orange-haired corpse on the floor, he shuddered and went outside, where he was violently ill.

  That night the stars came out. The others began to sing, their bellies swollen. He joined them—tentatively at first, because he didn’t know their rhythms, then full-voiced as they accepted his song and swirled his into their own. He was one of them now, though the brown wolf still growled and sniffed disdainfully at him.

  Another day dawned, and passed. Time was a trick of the mind. It had no meaning, here in the womb of Wolftown. He gave the others names: Golda, the yellow leader, older than she appeared; Ratkiller, the dark brown male whose principal pleasure was chasing rodents through the houses; One-eye, a beautiful singer; Yipper, the whelp of the litter and not quite right in the mind; and Amber, a dreamer who sat for hours gazing from the rocks. And, as he soon learned, Amber’s four pups, sired by Ratkiller.

  A quick shower of snowflakes fell one night. Amber danced in their midst, and snapped at them as Ratkiller and Yipper ran circles around her. The snowflakes melted as soon as they touched the warm ground. It was a sign of summer on the way.

  The following morning he sat up on the rocks while Golda honored him by licking the crusted blood away from his skull wound. It was a language of the tongue, and it said he was welcome to mount her. Desire stirred in him; she had a lovely tail. And as he roused himself to please her, he heard the drone of engines.

  He looked up. A huge crow was rising into the air. No, not a crow, he realized. Crows didn’t have engines. An aircraft, with an immense wing span. The rising of the plane in the silver morning air made his flesh crawl. It was a horrible thing, and as it turned southward he made a soft groaning noise deep in his throat. It had to be stopped. In its belly was a cargo of death. It had to be stopped! He looked at Golda and saw she didn’t understand. Why didn’t she? Why was it only he who understood? He propelled himself off the rocks and raced down to the harbor as the transport aircraft began to grow distant. He clambered up onto the seawall, where he stood moaning until the plane was lost to sight.

  I’ve failed, he thought. But exactly what it was that he had failed at made his head hurt, and he had to let it go.

  But his nightmares seized him, and those he could not escape.

  He was human, in the nightmares. A young human, with no sense of the world. He was running across a field where yellow flowers budded, and in his hand was a taut string. At the end of that string, floating up into the blue, was a white kite that danced and spun in the high currents. A human female called him, a name he couldn’t exactly understand. And as he was watching the kite sail higher and higher the shadow of the glass-eyed crow fell over him, and one of its whirling propellers chewed the kite into a thousand fragments that blew away like dust. The airplane was olive green, and riddled with bullet holes. As the severed string fell to earth, so did a mist. It swirled around him, and he breathed it. His flesh began to melt, to fall in bloody tatters, and he pitched to his knees as holes opened in his hands and arms. The woman, once beautiful, staggered across the field toward him, and as she reached him, her arms outstretched, he saw a bleeding cavity where her face had been.

  In the stark daylight of reality he sat on the dock and stared at the burned hulk of a boat. Five, he thought. What was it about the number that terrified him so?

  The days passed, a ritual of eating, sleeping, and basking in the wanning sun. The corpses, hollowed-out and bony, gave up their last meal. He reclined on his haunches and regarded the knife, stuck there in a cage of bones. It had a hooked blade. He had seen that knife, in another place. Being driven down between a pair of human fingers. Kitty’s game, he thought. Yes. But who was Kitty?

  An airplane, its green metal pocked with painted holes. The face of a man with silver teeth: a devil’s face. A city with a huge clock tower, and a wide river meandering to the sea. A beautiful woman, with blond hair and tawny eyes. Five of six. Five of six. All shadows. His head hurt. He was a wolf; what did he know, or care, of such things?

  The knife beckoned him. He reached for it as Golda watched with lazy interest. His paw touched the handle. Of course he couldn’t pull the knife out. What had made him believe he could?

  He began to pay attention to the rising and falling of the sun and the passage of days. He noted the days were lengthening. The five of six. Whatever that was, it was fast approaching, and that thought made him shiver and moan. He ceased singing with the others, because there was no song in him. The five of six dominated his mind and would not let him rest. Hollow-eyed, he faced another dawn, and he went to stare at the knife in the stripped skeleton as if it were a relic from a lost world.

  The five of six was almost upon him. He could sense it, ticking nearer. There was no way to stop its approach, and that realization chewed his insides. But why did it not bother any of the others? Why was he the only one who suffered?

  Because he was different, he realized. Where had he come from? At whose nipples had he suckled? How had he gotten here, in Wolftown, as the five of six neared with every breath he drew?

  He was with Golda, basking in the warming breeze near the seawall as the stars blazed in the heavens, when they heard Yipper give a long, quavering note from up in the rocks. Neither of them liked that sound; there was alarm in it. Then Yipper began a series of fast, harsh barks, relaying a warning to Wolftown. At once the black wolf and Golda were up off their bellies, hearing the noise that made Yipper shriek with pain.

  Gunfire. Golda only knew it meant death. The black wolf knew it was the noise of a Schmeisser submachine gun.

  Yipper’s shrieking stopped abruptly as another burst rattled. Ratkiller took up the alarm, and Amber spread it. The black wolf and Golda ran deeper into Wolftown, and soon they smelled the hated scent of men. There were four of them, coming down the rocks into the village and sweeping their lights before them. They fired at everything that moved, or that they thought might have moved. The black wolf caught another odor, and recognized it: schnapps. At least one of the men, perhaps the others, too, was drunk.

  In another moment he heard their slurred voices: “I’ll make you a wolfskin coat, Hans! Yes, I will! I’ll make you the most beautiful damned coat you’ve ever seen!”

  “No, you won’t! You’ll make it for yourself, you son of a bitch!”

  There was rough laughter. A burst of bullets whacked into the side of a house. “Come on out, you hairy shits! Come out, and let’s play!”

  “I want a big one! That little thing up on the rocks won’t even make a decent hat!”

  They had killed Yipper. Drunken Nazis with submachine guns, hunting wolves out of sheer boredom. The black wolf knew this, without knowing how he knew. Four soldiers, from the garrison that guarded the chemical plant. Shadows stirred in his mind; things moved, and sleeping memories began to awaken. His skull throbbed—not with pain, but with the power of recollection. Iron Fist. The Flying Fortress. The five of six.

  The fifth of the sixth month, he realized. The fifth of June. D Day.

  He was a wolf. Wasn’t he? Of course! He had black hair and claws and fangs. He was a wolf, and the hunters were almost upon him and Golda.

  A light streaked past them, then came back. They were caught in its glare. “Look at those two! Damn, what coats! Black and yellow!” A submachine gun chattered, and bullets marched across the ground beside Golda. She panicked, turned, and fled. The black wolf raced after her. She went into the house where the skeletons lay.

  “Don’t lose them, Hans! They’ll make fine coats!” The soldiers were running, too, as fast as their unsteady legs could manage. “They’re in there! That house!”

  Golda backed against the wall, terror in her eyes. The black wolf smelled the soldiers outside. “Get around to the rear!” one of them shouted. “We’ll catch them between us!” Golda leaped for the window as bullets whacked into the frame and splinters flew. She fell back to the floor
, spun madly in a whirl of yellow. The black wolf started out through the door, but a light blinded him and he retreated as bullets knocked holes in the wall above his head.

  “Now we’ve got them!” a coarse voice crowed. “Max, go in there and clean them out!”

  “Not me, you bastard! You go first!”

  “Ah, you gutless shit! All right, I will! Erwin, you and Johannes watch the windows.” There was a clicking noise. The black wolf knew a fresh ammo clip was being loaded into the gun. “I’m going in!”

  Golda again tried to get out through the window. Splinters stung her as another burst fired, and she dropped back with blood on her muzzle.

  “Stop that shooting!” the coarse voice commanded. “I’ll get them both myself!” The soldier strode toward the house, following his light, the courage of schnapps in his veins.

  The black wolf knew he and Golda were doomed. There was no way out. In a moment the soldier would be at the doorway, and his light would catch them. No way out, and what would fangs and claws be against four men with submachine guns?

  He looked at the knife.

  His paw touched the handle.

  Don’t fail me, he thought. Wiktor had said that, a long time ago.

  His claws struggled to close around the handle. The soldier’s light was almost into the room.

  Wiktor. Mouse. Chesna. Lazaris. Blok. Names and faces whirled through the mind of the black wolf, like sparks escaping a bonfire.

  Michael Gallatin.

  I am not a wolf, he thought, as a blaze of memory leaped in his brain. I am a—

  His paw changed. Streaks of white flesh appeared. The black hair retreated, and his bones and sinews rejointed with wet whispering sounds.

  His fingers closed around the knife handle and drew it out of the skeleton. Golda gave a stunned grunt, as if the air had been knocked from her.

  The soldier stopped on the threshold. “Now I’ll show you who your master is!” he said, and glanced back at Max. “You see? It takes a brave man to walk into a wolf’s den!”

  “Two more steps, coward!” Max taunted.

  The soldier probed with the light. He saw skeletons, and the yellow wolf. Ha! The beast was trembling. But where was the black bastard? He took the two final steps, his gun ready to blow its brains out.

  And as the soldier entered, Michael stepped out from his hiding place beside the doorway and drove Kitty’s hooked blade into the pit of the man’s throat with all the strength he could summon.

  The German, strangling on blood, dropped the Schmeisser and the light to clutch at his severed windpipe. Michael scooped up the submachine gun, planted a foot against the man’s belly, and shoved him backward through the doorway. Then he fired at the other man’s light, and there was a scream as the bullets mangled flesh.

  “What was that? Who screamed?” one of the men at the rear of the house hollered. “Max? Hans?”

  Michael walked out the door, his knee joints aching and his spine stretching. He stood at the corner of the house and took aim just above the two flashlights. One of them weaved toward him. He sprayed fire at the Nazis. Both lights exploded and the bodies crumpled.

  That was the end of it.

  Michael heard a noise behind him. He turned, an oily sweat leaking from his pores.

  Golda stood there, only a few feet away. She stared at him, her body rigid. Then she showed her fangs, snarled, and ran away into the darkness.

  Michael understood. He did not belong to her world.

  He knew who he was now, and what he had to do. The transport plane had already taken the bombs of carnagene away, but there were other crows on the field: the night fighters. Those each had a range of about a thousand miles. If they could find out exactly where Iron Fist was hangared, and…

  And if it wasn’t too late. What was the date? He had no way of knowing. He hurried to find clothes that might fit him from the four dead men. He had to settle for the shirt and jacket from one soldier, the trousers from another, and the boots from a third. All of the clothes were damp with blood, but that couldn’t be helped. He stuffed his pockets with ammo clips. A gray woolen cap, free of bloodstains, lay on the ground. He put it on, and his fingers found the gash and the scabbed crust on the right side of his head. A fraction of an inch more, and the bullet would have smashed his skull.

  Michael strapped the submachine gun around his shoulder and started along the road to the rocky slope. The fifth of June, he thought. Had it passed already? How many days and nights had he been here, believing himself a wolf? Everything was still dreamlike. He quickened his pace. The first task was getting into the plant; the second was getting to the stockade and freeing Chesna and Lazaris. Then he would know if he had failed or not, and whether tattered bodies lay in the streets of London because of it.

  He heard a howl, a floating quaver, behind him. Golda’s voice. He didn’t look back.

  On two legs he climbed toward his destiny.

  9

  They had made a meager effort to fill up the hole he’d dug under the fence, but it was obvious their shovels had been lazy. It took him a few minutes to scoop the loose dirt out, and he winnowed under again. The thumping heartbeat of the plant was in operation again, light bulbs glowing on the catwalks overhead. He went through the alleys, threading his way toward the edge of the airfield, where the stockade was. A soldier came around a corner and strolled in his direction. “Hey! Got a smoke?” the man asked.

  “Sure.” Michael let him get close and dug in a pocket for cigarettes that weren’t there. “What time is it?”

  The German checked his wristwatch. “Twelve-forty-two.” He looked at Michael and frowned. “You need a shave. If the captain sees you like that, he’ll kick your—” He saw the blood, and bullet holes stitched across the jacket. Michael saw his eyes widen.

  He hit the German in the stomach with the gun butt, then cracked him across the skull and dragged his body to a group of empty chemical drums. He took the watch, heaved the body into a drum, and put the lid on it. Then he was on his way again, almost running. Forty-two minutes after midnight, he thought. But of what day?

  The stockade building’s entrance was unguarded, but a single soldier sat at a desk just inside the door, his boots propped up and his eyes shut. Michael kicked the chair out from under him and slammed him against the wall, and the soldier returned to dreamland. Michael took a set of keys from a wall hook behind the desk and went along the corridor between several cells. He smiled grimly; the log-sawing snore of a certain bearded Russian reverberated in the hallway.

  As Michael tried various keys in the lock of Lazaris’s prison, he heard a gasp of surprise. He looked at the cell two doors down and across the corridor, and behind the barred inset Chesna, her eyes brimming with tears in her dirty, haggard face, tried to speak but couldn’t form words. Finally they burst out: “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Lying low,” he said, and went to her cell door. He found the right key, and the latch popped. As soon as Michael had pulled the door open, Chesna was in his arms. He held her as she trembled; he could feel her ribs and her clothes were grimy, but at least she hadn’t been beaten. She gave a single, heartbreaking sob, and then she struggled to gather her dignity. “It’s all right,” he said, and kissed her lips. “We’re going to get out of here.”

  “Well, get me out of here first, you bastard!” Lazaris shouted from his cell. “Damn it, we thought you’d left us to rot!” His hair was a crow’s-nest stubble, his eyes glaring and wild. Chesna took the submachine gun and watched the corridor as Michael found the proper key and freed Lazaris.

  The Russian emerged smelling of something more pungent than roses. “My God!” he said. “We didn’t know if you’d gotten away or not! We thought they might have killed you!”

  “They gave it a good shot.” He glanced at the wristwatch. It was creeping up on one o’clock. “What’s the date?”

  “Hell if I know!” Lazaris answered.

  But Chesna had kept count of their
twice-daily feedings. “It’s too late, Michael,” she said, “You’ve been gone for fifteen days.”

  He stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Today is the sixth of June,” she went on. “It’s too late.”

  Too late. The words had teeth.

  “Yesterday was D day,” Chesna said. She felt a little light-headed, and had to grasp hold of his shoulder. For the last twenty-four hours particularly, her nerves had been worn to a frazzle. “It’s all over by now.”

  “No!” He shook his head, refusing to believe it. “You’re wrong! I couldn’t have been a… couldn’t have been gone that long!”

  “I’m not wrong.” She held his wrist and looked at the watch. “It’s been the sixth of June for one hour and two minutes.”

  “We’ve got to find out what’s going on. There must be a radio room here somewhere.”

  “There is,” Lazaris said. “It’s in a building over by the fuel tanks.” He explained to Michael that he had been forced to work along with some other slave laborers to unclog an overflowing cesspool near the soldiers’ barracks, which accounted for the reek of his clothes. While up to his waist in shit, he’d been able to gather information about the plant from his fellow laborers. Hildebrand, for instance, lived in his lab, which was at the center of the plant near the chimney. The huge fuel tanks held oil to heat the buildings during the long winter months. The slave laborers were kept in another barracks not far from the soldiers’ quarters. And, Lazaris said, there was an armory in case of partisan attack, but exactly where that was he didn’t know.

  “Can you get in that man’s clothes?” Michael asked Lazaris, once they were back to where the guard lay sprawled. Lazaris said he’d give it a try. Chesna went through the desk, and found a Luger and bullets. In another few moments Lazaris was in a Nazi uniform, the shirt taut at his shoulders and the trousers drooping around his legs. He pulled the belt to its last notch. At least the guard’s flat-brimmed cap fit. Lazaris still wore the boots that had been issued to him when they’d left Germany, though they were encrusted with indelicacies.