Night Freight

by Pronzini, Bill

  ". . . What kind of lunatic butchers sheep?"

  "Psycho," Hixon said. "Blown out on drugs, maybe."

  Larrabee nodded. He'd been thinking about it as they tracked. "Or a Vietnam vet, or one of those backto-nature dropouts. They come into wild country like this, alone, and it gets to this one or that one and they go off their heads."

  DeVries didn't want to believe it. "I still say it's an animal, a wolf or a cat."

  "Man goes crazy in the wilderness," Larrabee said, "that's just what he turns into—an animal, a damned wolf on the prowl."

  He wiped his hands on his trousers, took a drier grip on the Savage, and led the way toward higher ground.

  … We are not all the same. Your stupid folklore says We are but We're not. Over the centuries We have undergone genetic changes, just as you have; We have evolved. You are children of your time. So are We.

  My hunger is for animal flesh, animal blood. Sheep. Cattle. Dogs. Smaller creatures with fur and pulsing heart. They are my prey. One here, two there, ten in this county, fifty or a hundred in that state. You think it is one animal killing another—natural selection, survival of the fittest. You are right but you are also wrong.

  Believe it.

  We are not all the same. Others of Us have different hungers. Human flesh, human blood—yes. But that isn't all. We have evolved; our tastes have altered, grown discriminating. Male flesh and male blood. Female. Child. And not always do We desire the soft flesh of the throat, the bright sweet blood from the jugular And not always do We use our teeth to open our victims. And not always do We feed in a frenzy.

  I am one of the old breed—not the most fearsome of Us. And sickened by the things I'm compelled to do; that is why I'm warning you. The new breed . . . it is with the new breed that the ultimate terror lies.

  We are not all the same. . . .

  Larrabee stood on the bare knob, staring through his binoculars, trying to sharpen the focus. Below, across a hollow choked with brush and deadfall, a grassy, rock-littered slope lifted toward timber. The sun was full on the slope and the hot noon-glare struck fiery glints from some of the rocks, created thick shadows around some of the others, making it hard for him to pick out details. Nothing moved over there except the sun-dazzle. It was just a barren slope—and yet there was something about it. . . .

  Up near the top, where the timber started: rocks thickly bunched in tall grass, the way the brush was drawn in around that one massive outcrop. Natural or not? He just couldn't tell for sure from this distance.

  Beside him Hixon asked, "What is it, Ben? You see something over there?"

  "Maybe." Larrabee gave him the glasses, told him where to look. Pretty soon he said, "Seem to you somebody might've pulled that brush in around the base of the outcrop?"

  "Could be, yeah. That damned sun . . ."

  "Let me see," DeVries said, but he couldn't tell either.

  They went down into the hollow, Larrabee moving ahead of the other two. The deadfall tangle was like a bonepile, close-packed, full of jutting points and splintered edges; it took him ten minutes to find a way across to the slope. He'd been carrying his rifle at port arms, but as he started upslope he extended the muzzle in front of him, slid his finger inside the trigger guard.

  The climb was easy enough. They went up three abreast, not fast, not slow. A magpie came swooping down at them, screaming; DeVries cursed and slashed at it with his rifle. Larrabee didn't turn his head. His eyes, unblinking, were in a lock-stare on the rocks and brush near the timber above.

  They were within fifty yards of the outcrop when a little breeze kicked up, blew downhill. As soon as it touched them they stopped, all three at once.

  "Jesus," Hixon said, "you smell that?"

  "Wolf smell," DeVries said.

  "Worse than that. Something dead up there . . ."

  Larrabee said, "Shut up, both of you." His finger was on the Savage's trigger now. He drew a breath and began to climb again, more warily than before.

  The breeze had died, but after another thirty yards the smell was in his nostrils without it. Hixon had been right: death smell. It seemed to mingle with the heat, to form a miasma that made his eyes burn. Behind him he heard DeVries gag, mutter something, spit.

  Somewhere nearby the magpie was still screeching at them. But no longer flying around where they were—as if it were afraid to get too close to that outcrop.

  Larrabee climbed to within twenty feet of it. That was close enough for him to see that the brush had been dragged in around its base, all right. Some of the smaller rocks looked to have been carried here, too, and set down as part of the camouflage arrangement.

  Hixon and DeVries had stopped a few paces below him. In a half whisper DeVries asked, "You see anything, Ben?"

  Larrabee didn't answer. He was working saliva through a dry mouth, staring hard at the dark foul-smelling opening of a cave.

  . . . Haven't you ever wondered why there have been so many unexplained disappearances in the past few decades? Why so many children are kidnapped? Why there is so seldom any trace of the missing ones?

  Haven't you ever wondered about all the random murders, so many more of them now than in the past, and why the bloody remains of certain victims are left behind?

  You fools, you blind fools, who do you think the serial killers really are? . . .

  They were all staring at the cave now, standing side by side with rifles trained on the opening, breathing thinly through their mouths. The death-stink seemed to radiate out of the hole, so that it was an almost tangible part of the day's heat.

  Larrabee broke his silence. He called out, "If you're in there you better come out. We're armed."

  Nothing. Stillness.

  "Now what?" DeVries asked.

  "We take a look inside."

  "Not me. I ain't going in there."

  "We don't have to go in. We'll shine a light inside."

  "That's still too close for me."

  "Do it myself then," Larrabee said angrily.

  "Charley, get the flashlight out of my pack."

  Hixon went around behind him and opened the pack and found the six-cell flash he carried; tested it against his hand to make sure the batteries were still good. "What the hell," he said, "I'll work the light. You're a better shot than me, Ben."

  Larrabee tied his handkerchief over his nose and mouth; it helped a little against the stench. Hixon did the same. "All right, let's get it done. Hank, you keep your rifle up and your eyes open."

  "Count on it," DeVries said.

  They had to prod brush out of the way to reach the cave mouth. It was larger than it had seemed from a distance, four feet high and three feet wide—large enough so that a man didn't have to get down on all fours and crawl inside. The sun glare made the blackness within a solid wall.

  Larrabee stood off a little ways, butted the Savage against his shoulder, took a bead on the opening. "Okay," he said to Hixon, "put the light in there."

  Hixon switched on, sent the six-cell's beam probing inside the cave.

  Almost instantly the light impaled a crouching shape—big, hairy, wild-eyed. The thing snarled, a sound that was only half-human, and came hurtling out at them with teeth bared and hands hooked like claws. Hixon yelled, dropped the flashlight, tried to dodge out of the way. Larrabee triggered his rifle, but the suddenness of the attack threw his aim off, made him miss. The man-beast slammed into Hixon, threw him down; slashed at him, opened a bloody gash along his neck and shoulder; swung snarling toward Larrabee and launched himself like an animal as Larrabee, fighting panic, jacked another shell into firing position.

  He wouldn't have had time to get off a second shot if DeVries hadn't held his ground below, if DeVries hadn't fired twice while the man-beast was in mid-lunge.

  The first bullet knocked him aside, brought a keening cry out of him and put him down in the brush; the second missed high, whanged off rock. By then Larrabee had set himself, taken aim again. He shot the bugger at point-blank range—blew the lef
t side of his head off. Even so, his rage was such that he jacked another shell into the chamber and without thinking shot him again, in the chest this time, exploding the heart.

  The last of the echoes died away, leaving a stillness that was painful in Larrabee's ears—like a shattering noise just beyond the range of his hearing. He got his breathing under control and went in loose-legged strides to where Hixon lay writhing on the ground, clutching at his bloody neck. DeVries was there too, his face pale and sweat-studded; he kept saying, "Jesus God," over and over, as if he were praying.

  Hixon's wound wasn't as bad as it first seemed: a lot of blood but no arteries severed. DeVries had a first aid kit in his pack; Larrabee got it out and swabbed antiseptic on the gash, wrapped some gauze around it. Hixon was still glazed with shock, so they moved him over against one of the rocks, in the shade. Then they went to look at what they'd killed.

  It was a man, all right. Six feet, two hundred pounds, black beard and hair so thick and matted that it all but hid his features. Fingernails as long and sharp as talons. The one eye that was left was a muddy brown, the white of it so veined it looked bloody. Skins from different animals, roughly sewn together, draped part of the thick-muscled body; the skins and the man's bare flesh were encrusted with filth, months or years of it. The stench that came off the corpse made Larrabee want to puke.

  DeVries said hoarsely, "You ever in your life see anything like that?"

  "I never want to see anything like it again."

  "Crazy—he must've been crazy as hell. The way he come out of that cave . . ."

  "Yeah," Larrabee said.

  "He'd have killed you if I hadn't shot him. You and Charley and then me, all three of us. It was in his eyes . . . a goddamn madman."

  Larrabee didn't respond to that. After a few seconds he turned and started away.

  "Where you going?" DeVries said behind him.

  "Find out what's inside that cave."

  . . . I am one of the old breed—not the most fearsome of Us. And sickened by the things I'm compelled to do; that is why I'm warning you. The new breed . . . it is with the new breed that the ultimate terror lies.

  We are not all the same. . . .

  DeVries wouldn't go into the cave, wouldn't even go near the mouth, so Larrabee went in alone. He took the Savage as well as the flashlight, and he went in slow and wary. He didn't want any more surprises.

  He had to walk hunched over for the first few feet. Then the cave opened up into a chamber nearly six feet high and not much larger than a prison cell. He put the light on the walls, on the floor: more animal skins, heaps of flesh-rotted bones, splatters and streaks of dried blood everywhere. Things had been killed as well as eaten in here, Christ knew what things.

  The stink was so bad that he couldn't stand it for more than a few seconds. When he turned to get out of there, the flash beam illuminated a kind of natural shelf in the wall. There were some things on the shelf—the stub of a candle stuck in a clot of its own grease, what appeared to be a ragged pocket notebook, other things he didn't want to examine too closely. On impulse he caught up the notebook by one edge, brought it out with him into the hot clean air.

  Hixon was up on his feet, standing with DeVries twenty feet from the entrance; he was still a little shaky but the glazed look was gone from his eyes. He said, "Bad in there?"

  "As bad as it gets."

  "What'd you find?" DeVries asked. He was looking at what Larrabee held between his left thumb and forefinger.

  Larrabee squinted at it, holding it away from his face because of the smell. Kid's spiral-bound notebook, the covers torn and stained, the ruled paper inside almost black with filth and dried blood. But on half a dozen pages there was writing, old writing done with a pencil pressed hard and angry so that the words were still legible. Larrabee put his back to the sun so he could read it better.

  . . . Believe it. Believe me. I am the proof

  We look like men, We walk and talk like men, in your presence We act like men. But We are not men. Believe that too.

  We are the ancient evil. . . .

  Wordlessly, Larrabee handed the notebook to DeVries, who made a faint disgusted sound when he touched it. But he read what was written inside. So did Hixon.

  "Man oh man," Hixon said when he was done, with a kind of awe in his voice. "Ben, you don't think . . . ?"

  "It's bullshit," Larrabee said. "Ravings of a lunatic."

  "Sure. Sure. Only . . ."

  "Only what?"

  "I don't know, it . . . I don't know."

  "Come on, Charley" DeVries said. "You don't buy any of that crap, do you? Some kind of monster—a werewolf, for Christ's sake?"

  "No. It's just . . . maybe we ought to take this back with us, give it to the sheriff."

  Larrabee gave him a hard look. "The body too, I suppose? Lug it twenty miles in this heat, smelling the way it does, leaking blood?"

  "Not that, no. But we got to report it, don't we? Tell the law what happened?"

  "Hell we do. How's it going to look? He's got three bullets in him, two of mine and one of Hank's. He jumped us out of a cave, three of us with rifles and him without a weapon, and we blew him away—how's that going to sound?"

  "But it was self-defense. The sheriff'll believe that . . ."

  "Will he? I'm not going to take the chance."

  "Ben's right," DeVries said. "Neither am I."

  "What do we do then?"

  "Bury him," Larrabee said. "Forget any of this ever happened."

  "Bury the notebook too?"

  "What notebook?" Larrabee said.

  . . . You fools, you blind fools . . .

  They dug the grave for the crazy sheep-killing man and his crazy legacy in the grass above the outcrop. Deep, six feet deep, so the predators couldn't get at him.

  Writers are forever being asked where they get their ideas. We chafe at the question because it is really unanswerable. Ideas come from everywhere and nowhere. Some develop slowly, requiring a good deal of thought and reshaping. Others seem to fall out of the blue and smack the muse's head like the apple allegedly struck Isaac Newton's. Take this story, for instance. One day I was browsing through some old mystery magazines, and halfway through a wholly different and not very good tale of a menaced family, "The Monster" suddenly appeared. Full-born and nasty, first sentence to last, title included. I wrote it in an hour, virtually as you'll read it here—and I seldom consider any piece of writing finished without extensive revisions. Ideas? Hey, don't ask me where they come from.

  The Monster

  He was after the children.

  Meg knew it, all at once, as soon as he was inside the house. She couldn't have said exactly how she knew. He was pleasant enough on the surface, smiling, friendly. Big and shaggy-haired in his uniform, hairy all over like a bear. But behind his smile and underneath his fur there was menace, evil. She felt it, intuited it—a mother's instinct for danger. He was after Kate and Bobby. One of those monsters who preyed on little children, hurt them, did unspeakable things to them—

  "Downstairs or upstairs?" he said.

  ". . . What?"

  "The stopped-up drain. Downstairs here or upstairs?"

  A feeling of desperation was growing in her, spreading toward panic. She didn't know what to do. "I think you'd better leave." The words were out before she realized what she was saying.

  "Huh? I just got here, Mrs. Thompson. Your husband said you got a stopped-up drain—that's right, isn't it?"

  Why did I let him in? she thought. Just because he said Philip sent him, that doesn't make it so. And even if Philip did send him . . . Oh God, why him, of all the plumbers in this city?

  "No," she said. "No, it . . . it's all right now. It's working again, there's nothing wrong with it."

  He wasn't smiling anymore. "You kidding me?"

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Yeah, why? Over at the door you said you been expecting me, come on in and fix the drain."

  "I didn't—"

&nb
sp; "You did, lady. Look, I haven't got time to play games. And it's gonna cost you sixty-five bucks whether I do any work or not, so you might as well let me take a look."

  "It's all right now, I tell you."

  "Okay, maybe it is. But if it was stopped-up once today, it could happen again. You never know with the pipes in these old houses. So where is it, up or down?"

  "Please . . ."

  "Upstairs, right? Yeah, now I think of it, your husband said it was in the upstairs bathroom."

  No! The word was like a scream in her mind. The upstairs bathroom was between their room, hers and Philip's, and the nursery. Baby Kate in her crib, not even a year old, and Bobby, just two, napping in his bed . . . so innocent and helpless . . . and this man, this beast—

  He moved past her to the stairs, hefting his tool kit in one huge, scab-knuckled hand. "You want to show me where it is?"

  "No!" She cried it aloud this time.

  "Hey," he said, "you don't have to bust my eardrums." He shook his head the way Philip did sometimes when he was vexed with her. "Well, I can find it myself. Can't hide a bathroom from an old hand like me."

  He started up the stairs.

  She stood paralyzed, staring in horror as he climbed. She tried to shriek at him to stop, go away, don't hurt the babies, but her voice had frozen in her throat. If any harm came to Kate and Bobby, she could never forgive herself—she would shrivel up and die. So many childless years, all the doctors who'd told her and Philip that she could never conceive, and then the sudden miracle of her first pregnancy and Bobby's birth, the second miracle that was Kate. . . . If she let either of them be hurt she would be as much of a monster as the one climbing the stairs—

  Stop him!

  The paralysis left her as abruptly as it had come on; her legs pumped, carried her headlong into the kitchen. A knife, the big butcher knife . . . She grabbed it out of the rack, raced back to the stairs.

  He was already on the second floor. She couldn't see him, but she could hear his heavy menacing tread in the hallway, going down the hallway.