Night Freight (15 page)

Neither of us said anything.

Jerry said, "I'll get one for each of us," and the screen door
banged shut.

I looked at Verna again. She was still sitting in the same
posture, head down, staring at the steps with that funny look on her face.

"I know about him killing me all the time," she said. "Did you think I didn't know, didn't hear him saying it?"

There were no words in my head. I closed my mouth.

"I wanted to see how it felt to kill him the same way," Verna said. "And you know what? It felt good."

I backed down the steps, started to turn away. But I was still looking at her and I saw her head come up, I saw the odd little smile that changed the shape of her mouth.

"Good," she said, "but not good enough."

I went home. Mary Ellen was upstairs, taking a shower. When she came out I told her what had just happened.

"My God, Frank. The heat's made her as crazy as he is. They're two of a kind."

"No," I said, "they're not. They're not the same at all."

"What do you mean?"

I didn't tell her what I meant. I didn't have to, because just then in the hot, dead stillness we both heard the crack of the pistol shot from next door.

I've always been fascinated by the werewolf legend. In the late seventies I edited an anthology of quality stories built around the theme, Werewolf!, but it wasn't until 1991 that I was able to work up a satisfactory plot for a lycanthropic tale of my own. The impetus was an invitation to contribute to an anthology called
The Ultimate Werewolf
, edited by Byron Preiss; "Ancient Evil" was the result of that and a considerable amount of head-scratching and brain-cudgeling.

L
isten to me. You'd better listen.

You fools, you think you know so much. Spaceflight, computer technology, genetic engineering . . . you take them all for granted now. But once your kind scoffed at them, refused to believe in the possibility of their existence. You were proven wrong.

You no longer believe in Us. We will prove you wrong.

We exist. We have existed as long as you. We are not superstition, We are not folklore, We are not an imaginary terror. We are the real terror, the true terror. We are all your nightmares come true.

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. . . .

T
hey might never have found him if Hixon hadn't gone off to take a leak.

For three days they'd been searching the wooded mountain country above the valley where their sheep grazed. Tramping through heavy timber and muggy late-summer heat laden with stinging flies and mosquitoes; following the few man-made and animal trails, cutting new trails of their own. They'd flushed several deer, come across the rotting carcass of a young elk, spotted a brown bear and followed its spoor until they lost it at one of the network of streams. But that was all. No wolf or mountain lion sign. Hixon and DeVries kept saying it had to be a wolf or a mountain cat that had been killing the sheep; Larrabee wasn't so sure. And yet, what the hell else could it be?

Then, on the morning of the fourth day, while they were climbing among deadfall pine along the shoulder of a ridge, Hixon went to take his leak. And came back after a few minutes all red-faced and excited, with his fly still half-unzipped.

"I seen something back in there," he said. "God-damnedest thing, down a ravine."

"What'd you see?" Larrabee asked him. He'd made himself the leader; he had lost the most sheep and he was the angriest.

"Well, I think it was a man."

"You think?"

"He was gone before I could use the glasses."

"Hunter, maybe," DeVries said.

Hixon wagged his head. "Wasn't no hunter. No ordinary man, either."

"The hell you say. What was he then?"

"I don't know," Hixon said. "I never seen the like."

"Dressed how?"

"Wasn't dressed, not in clothes. I swear he was wearing some kind of animal skins. And he had hair all over his head and face, long shaggy hair."

"Bigfoot," DeVries said and laughed.

"Damn it, Hank, I ain't kidding. He was your size,
mine."

"Sun and shadows playing tricks."

"No, by God. I know what I saw."

Larrabee asked impatiently, "Where'd he go?"

"Down the ravine. There's a creek down there."

"He see or hear you?"

"Don't think so. I was quiet?"

DeVries laughed again. "Quiet pisser, that's you."

Larrabee adjusted the pack that rode his shoulders; ran one hand back and forth along the stock of his .300
Savage rifle. His mouth was set tight. "All right," he
said, "we'll go have a look."

"Hell, Ben," DeVries said, "you don't reckon it's
some
man
been killing our sheep?"

"Possible, isn't it? I never did agree with you and Chancy. No wolf or cat takes sheep down that way,
tears them apart. And don't leave any sign coming or
going."

"No man does either."

"No ordinary man. No sane man."

"Jesus, Ben . . ."

"Come on," Larrabee said. "We're wasting time."

".
. . How many of Us are there? Not many. A few hundred . . . we have never been more than a few hundred. Scattered across continents. In cities and small towns, in wildernesses. Hot climes and cold. Moving, always moving, never too long in one place. Hiding among you, the bold and clever ones. Hiding alone, the ones like me.

This is our legacy:

Hiding.

Hunting.

Hungering.

You think you've been hungry but you haven't. You
don't know what it means to be hungry all the time, to have the blood-taste in your mouth and the blood-craving in your brain and the blood-heat in your loins.

But some of you will find
out. Many
of
you,
someday. Unless you listen and believe.

Each new generation of Us is bolder than the last.

And hungrier. . .

T
he ravine was several hundred yards long, narrow, crowded with trees and brush. The stream was little more than a trickle among sparkly mica rocks. They followed it without cutting any sign of the man Hixon had seen, if a man was what he'd seen; without hearing anything except for the incessant hum of insects, the yammering cries of jays and magpies.

The banks of the ravine shortened, sloped gradually upward into level ground: a small ragged meadow ringed by pine and spruce, strewn with brush and clumps of summer-browned ferns. They stopped there to rest, to wipe sweat-slick off their faces.

"No damned sign," Hixon said. "How could he come through there without leaving any sign?" DeVries said, "He doesn't exist, that's how."

"I tell you I saw him. I know what I saw."

Larrabee paid no attention to them. He had been scanning with his naked eye; now he lifted the binoculars that hung around his neck and scanned with those. He saw nothing anywhere. Not even a breeze stirred the branches of the trees.

"Which way now?" Hixon asked him.

Larrabee pointed to the west, where the terrain rose to a bare knob. "Up there. High ground."

"You ask me," DeVries said, "we're on a snipe hunt."

"You got any better suggestions?"

"No. But even if there is somebody around here, even if we find him . . . I still don't believe it's a man we're after. All those sheep with their throats ripped out, hunks of the carcasses torn off and carried away . . . a man wouldn't do that."

"Not even a lunatic?"

".
. . 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. . . .

L
arrabee 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.