The Howling III h-3 Page 12

  "Yeah, okay. I get it." Craddock sucked noisily at the empty beer can. "Reading this stuff is mighty thirsty work, and damn if I don't think this is the last of the Coors."

  "Jesus, Abe, it isn't even noon yet, and you've put away a whole six-pack and part of another."

  "Hell, that's nothin'. You should of seen me and Curly when we really got down to some serious drinking. Hell, we wouldn't leave no bottle untapped in three counties."

  "I'll bet," Zeno said unhappily.

  "An" you did say you'd provide the drinking stuff as long as I gave my story to you and nobody else. Ain't that right?"

  "That's right, Abe," Zeno said. "Let's just finish this part where you walk into the woods and first see the Wolfman."

  Craddock coughed loudly. "Damn, Lou, I just don't think I can rightly concentrate any more without something to cool down my throat."

  "All right," the writer snapped. "I'll go get some more beer. Do you think a twelve-pack will hold you till lunchtime?"

  "Might be," Craddock said. "If you get the sixteen-ounce cans, it'll go farther."

  "Yeah, yeah, sixteen-ounce." Louis Zeno lowered the cover onto his precious portable Royal and stood up.

  Someday, some blessed day, Louis Zeno would finish the book that was finally going to make him some real money and free him forever from writing trash for the supermarket tabloids and dealing with scum like this foul-smelling Abe Craddock. He had the outline tucked away in his apartment in West Hollywood. All he needed was a free month or so to get it down on paper and off to a publisher.

  In the meantime, he would just have to keep turning out stories about mothers who stuffed their babies into microwave ovens, country girls fucked by green men from outer space, and assholes like Abe Craddock and his imaginary werewolf. He could look forward to one small victory when Craddock tried to collect the imaginary thousand dollars Zeno had promised him. The writer crossed the cabin's single room to where his jacket hung from a bent nail.

  "You might pick up some Fritos while you're at the store," Craddock suggested. "One of the big bags."

  "Big bag. Sure."

  "When you get back I'll tell you the part where I took on the wolf thing with my bare hands after I seen what he done to Curly. I mean, I was holdin" my own too. Maybe gettin" a little the best of things. If only I hadn't of caught my boot there in them bushes and tripped myself up it might of been a whole nother story."

  "Yeah, Abe, swell, but let's just stick to the story we've got. I'll ask the questions and you tell me what happened in your own halting words. I'm the professional. I know how to put these things together."

  "I guess that's right," Abe said slyly, "but without me you wouldn't have nothing to put together. Ain't that so?"

  Fuck you, you stinking ignorant redneck bastard! is what Louis Zeno thought. What he said was, "Yeah, that's so, Abe. Without you I'd be standing in the unemployment line."

  "Well, don't you worry, Lou buddy. You and me are going to make us a whole shitpot full of money with this before we're through."

  Zeno shrugged into his jacket and headed for the door.

  Neither man looked toward the dusty window pane at the side of the cabin. If they had, they might have seen the eyes that watched them. Eyes that gradually changed colour until they seemed to glow an unearthly green.

  * * *

  Derak watched the man from the city leave the cabin and stalk down the trail to the clearing where he had parked the little orange car. The engine fired and the city man drove off. Derak looked back through the window at the gross, murdering hunter. The smouldering hatred inside him kindled to a flame. Derak moved a short distance away from the cabin and carefully removed his clothes so they would not be shredded as the transformation began.

  * * *

  Abe Craddock thumbed a wad of Copenhagen into his cheek and sucked out the good tobacco flavour. He should have told the writer fella to pick up a couple tins of that too. The dumb prick would bring anything Abe wanted as long as he got what he called an exclusive on Abe's battle with the werewolf. In Abe's mind the whole thing by now had actually taken place as he told the story and retold it. He came out looking a little more heroic every time.

  There was no doubt in Abe's mind that he could milk more than a thousand dollars out of this. Hell, he could probably get double that. Those papers must pay good money for a story like this, and if Zeno was going to use his name he was going to have to pay for it.

  Something scratched at the door.

  Abe took a look at his waterproof Timex. It was much too soon for Zeno to be back from the liquor store. He didn't want to see any of the reporters who were still hanging around Pinyon, so he'd have to drive clear to Darnay.

  Something scratched again.

  Could the damn fool writer have forgotten something and come back for it? No, they had a special knock that Zeno would give to show it was him. He didn't want anybody else getting close to Abe before he had the exclusive story all written and handed over to the editor. That was the whole idea of hiding up here in the Whitaker cabin where nobody had come in years.

  Scratch. Scratch.

  You don't suppose the widow Whitaker would of told somebody they were up here? Not likely, since she didn't know what the fool city man wanted with her broken-down cabin and was just glad to get the ten bucks Zeno offered her.

  Thump.

  There was sure as hell something outside the door. Well, it wouldn't hurt to take a tiny peek. Zeno had bored a hole in the door at eye level and stuck a patch of leather over it so he could look out in case anybody came sniffing around.

  Abe went over, lifted the leather patch, and put his eye to the hole. He had a full two seconds for his brain to register the fact that he was looking into another eye of the most terrible fiery green.

  Then the door splintered inward like it was dynamited.

  Abe staggered backwards, knocking over the card table with Zeno's typewriter on it and stumbling among the empty beer cans on the floor. The thing that came at him had to bend down to get its head through the doorway. Even inside the cabin the thing's pointed hairy ears brushed against the ceiling. The terrible black-lipped muzzle had a wet, just-born look. And the teeth. My God, the teeth. Abe Craddock vividly recalled what those teeth had done to Curly Vane, and all his heroic fantasies dissolved before the roaring reality.

  "No, don't! No, don't! No, don't!" Abe cried. He might as well have appealed to the wind.

  His back thumped against the opposite wall of the cabin and he could retreat no farther. A voice he did not recognize as his own whimpered in his ear.

  The beast paused before him, its mighty chest twice the girth of Abe's own. The powerful jaws worked up and down. The beast seemed to savour the helplessness of the man before it.

  When the beast struck, it was faster than Abe Craddock's eyes could follow. He was intent on those terrible teeth when it struck out at him with a forepaw. The razor talons ripped four parallel gashes down the front of him from sternum to pubic bone.

  For an instant Abe felt nothing. He looked down stunned at the slashes through his T-shirt, his jeans, his jockey shorts, and the fatty flesh beneath. Then the pain came. And the blood.

  The blood oozed at first, then bubbled out of him, splashing the bare wooden floor where he stood. Abe clutched at himself, trying to hold his intestines in place. But they bulged and coiled out over his hands like a nest of wet red snakes.

  The beast let him scream for a while, as his legs gave out and he sank to the floor in a pool of his own blood and guts. Abe saw the gaping mouth come down toward him. Felt the teeth clamp on his head. Heard the crack of his skull…

  * * *

  Derak curled himself on the ground near the pile of his clothes and focused his will on the shape change. The transformation from beast back to man held none of the wild joy that was a part of becoming a wolf. Ideally, there should be a full, uninterrupted night to let the tension ease and change back gradually. When it had to be forced and speeded
up, the changes to the body were painful in the extreme.

  However, there was no help for it now. Derak had a mission, and it was only partly complete. He had set himself the task of returning Malcolm to his own people before the boy could do irreparable harm to himself or others of his kind. If along the way he could destroy some human garbage like Abe Craddock, it would add pleasure to his task.

  Derak's body shuddered. He ground his teeth against the pain. The internal organs shifted and jumped under his skin. His skeleton cracked as the bones returned to human form. The body hair vanished as though sucked back into the hide. The ears shrank and rounded off, the muzzle pulled in, the killing teeth receded into the harmless molars and incisors of a man.

  Slowly, slowly, the pain eased. Derak moved, straightening his body, testing his limbs and extremities. He shivered with the cold on his naked flesh.

  As he pulled his clothes back on, Derak froze at a sound from the road below and ducked behind a bush. The little orange car chugged into the clearing and stopped. The man from the city climbed out, bringing with him a half-case of beer and a crinkly bag of chips. Derak watched as the man laboured up the path with his burden toward the cabin. The wise thing would be to destroy him, but the blood lust was stilled, and Derak had no wish to kill now without reason.

  He waited until the city man had lumbered past the bush where he crouched, then he loped silently down the trail to the car. The door was unlocked. He tore away a fibreboard panel beneath the dash and found the ignition wires.

  At the top of the trail the man from the city had seen the shattered remnants of the door. He dropped the beer and the bag of chips and walked stiff-legged toward the cabin. Derak stripped the wires with a tough thumbnail and twisted them together.

  By the time Louis Zeno staggered out of the cabin, white-faced, with his mouth agape in a silent scream, his little orange car was turning onto the road toward the town of Pinyon.

  * * *

  As he drove, Derak pulled tissues from a carton on the dash panel and wiped away what he could of the blood and mud from his face. He was a fastidious man, and it made him uncomfortable not to bathe after a killing. However, this time the change back had to be done so fast there was no time.

  Derak's mind had not completely reoriented, and as soon as he had a chance, he pulled the car off into a sheltered spot alongside the road next to an Exxon station. He was startled to see only then that the backs of his hands were still thickly overgrown with hair. He tucked the hands away out of sight, leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and let himself slip into a light doze.

  He awoke some time later, refreshed and alert. He rubbed his hands front and back to be sure that the change was now truly complete. Only then did he realize he had brought the little car to a stop almost directly across from the office of La Reina County's sheriff.

  Derak immediately choked down an impulse to panic. If anyone were still looking for a man of his description after the wild werewolf tales that had clouded the killing of Dr Qualen, they would hardly expect him to be sitting in a car parked almost under the sheriffs nose.

  Using mental techniques learned from those who had travelled his road before, Derak settled into a quiet watchfulness that had protected his kind through the ages.

  A small, square car pulled into the parking area before the sheriffs office. A young woman got out. The doctor. Derak had followed closely the events in Pinyon, and he knew that she, of all the people here, was the most anxious to find Malcolm. If anyone could lead him to the boy, it would be she.

  Derak slid lower in the driver's seat and watched as the young woman got out and went into the office.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Deputy Roy Nevins was alone in the sheriffs office when Holly entered. She barely recognized the man. Deputy Nevins's uniform was spotless and pressed, complete to the military creases in the shirt. His boots, belt, and holster were shined. He was freshly shaved, and had obviously just had a haircut. He was even making an effort to hold his stomach in.

  "Morning, ma'am," he said, getting to his feet. His speech seemed to have softened into more of a Western drawl.

  Remarkable, Holly thought, what a touch of fame will do.

  "Good morning, Roy. Is Gavin around?"

  "The Sheriff and Deputy Fernandez are out on a call, ma'am. Left me in charge. Seems there's been some trouble down at the old Whitaker cabin."

  "Will you cut out the ma'am stuff, Roy? You make me feel like Dale Evans."

  The deputy grinned a little sheepishly. "I just thought we ought to be a little more businesslike around here, what with all the reporters and television people and whatnot."

  "Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. How soon do you expect Gavin back?"

  "That's hard to say. Seems whoever it was made the phone call wasn't bein" very clear about what the trouble was at the cabin."

  Holly chewed at her lower lip. Why was there never a cop around when you needed one?

  "Anything I can help you with?"

  "It was just a message I wanted to give the Sheriff."

  "You're welcome to sit yourself down and wait for him." Roy wheeled one of the unused swivel chairs over for her.

  "No thanks, Roy, I'm in kind of a hurry. I'll leave him a note."

  She tore a page from Ramsay's calendar pad and wrote:

  Gavin

  I managed to find out where Dr Pastory's clinic is without getting in the way of any of your "duly authorized police officers'.

  I'll let you know when I've found Malcolm.

  Good luck with your big murder investigation.

  She read it over, then crumpled the page and threw it into the waste basket. Cheap sarcasm was not her style. On another calendar sheet she wrote:

  Gavin

  Dr Pastory's clinic is located in Bear Paw. I'm on my way up

  there. I'll check with you as soon as I find anything.

  Take care, Holly

  She placed the note in the centre of his desk blotter, anchoring it with a stapler.

  "Thanks, Roy," she said. "I'll see you."

  "Any time, ma'am," he said, reaching for the brim of the hat he was not wearing. Then, grinning, "Oops. I'm kinda getting into the habit, I guess."

  Before leaving the office Holly checked the big map tacked to one wall. It covered all of La Reina County and included parts of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Kern Counties as well. She located the tiny community of Bear Paw just on the other side of the Tehachapi Pass, beyond Clarion. She figured it as a two- to three-hour drive, depending on road conditions. There certainly wouldn't be much traffic between here and there.

  She filled the tank of her little Rabbit across the road at Art Moore's station, then headed north. Holly's mind was filled with thoughts of what she was going to say to Wayne Pastory when she found him, and she did not pay any attention to the little orange car that pulled on to the road behind her and followed her out of town.

  The roads were good all the way, although narrowing to a cramped two lanes as she left the state highway. It took her slightly less that two hours to reach the community of Bear Paw. Had she not been actively looking for it, the entire town would have been easy to miss.

  There was the Bear Paw Ski Lodge, a faintly alpine A-frame building with the windows shuttered and a chain across the driveway leading to the entrance. A hand-lettered sign hanging from the chain read: CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.

  That was it, except for a paint-peeling frame building that was combination post office/grocery store/gas station /tavern. Out in front were parked a grimy Ford pick-up and an equally grimy Plymouth some twenty years old.

  Holly pulled to a stop at the old-fashioned gas pumps. When no one appeared after a minute, she got out and went into the building. Three men, none of them younger that seventy, sat around — not a pot-bellied stove — but an electric heater. The temperature inside was a stifling 80. Behind a scarred wooden counter a grossly overweight woman with a moustache sat on a stool reading a paperback novel called
Love's Raging Heart.

  The three men looked up when Holly entered. The woman continued to read. No one spoke.

  "Hi," Holly said finally. "This is Bear Paw, I hope?"

  "Sure is, honey," said the woman. She marked her spot in the book with a forefinger and looked up. "What can we do you for?"

  "I was wondering if you knew of a clinic around here. Owned by Dr Wayne Pastory."

  One of the men around the heater worked his lips noisily over toothless gums. "You a friend of his?"

  "Not exactly. We sometimes work together. The clinic is around here somewhere?"

  Another of the men spoke up. His hands were gnarled and knobbed with arthritis. He kept them lying awkwardly in his lap as though they did not really belong to him. "What you want to go up there for, anyhow?"

  Holly was about to tell the man it was none of his damn business, but brought herself under control. "I have to see Dr Pastory about something," she said, as courteously as she could manage.

  "You sick?" said the woman.

  "I'm a doctor."

  "You don't look like a doctor," said the third man. He had one eye that appeared to be glass. Cheap glass.

  "Well, I am." Holly began to feel more than a little irritated with these unpleasant rustics.

  "If you're sick, you'd do a lot better to go to Doc Simms down in Clarion," said the man with arthritis. "Good man, Doc Simms. Been around long enough to know what he's doing. Your Doc, what's his name, Pastorini… "

  "Pastory."

  "Whatever. He don't look like he's dry behind the ears yet. Name sounds like a foreigner, besides."

  "Look," Holly said, putting some authority into her voice, "I'm in something of a hurry. Could you please tell me where the clinic is?"

  "No need to get snippy about it," said the toothless man. "You want to go to the doggone clinic, that's your business. We sure ain't stoppin" you."

  "Where is it?" Holly was surprised at the whip-crack in her own voice. The four people stared as though really seeing her for the first time.