Night Howl (25 page)

Looking back one more time before disappearing among the trees, he thought about Gerson Fishman, dead in the backseat of the car. He didn’t have any regrets about it; it had been either kill—or be killed. He just wondered how he would explain his side once they’d had a chance to rearrange the facts.

And then he realized wherein his hope lay—once people discovered what kind of creature these people had created, they would understand what kind of people they were and would give credence to his explanation. How ironic, he thought as he broke out into a trot, that his fate might very well be tied in with the dog’s fate.

And like the dog, he thought of ways to throw off the same pursuers and put distance between himself and the institute that loomed behind him like a nightmare remembered from a sleep of madness.

The state police called Harry Michaels at home to let him know that Sid Kaufman was less than an hour from the hospital. He had asked them to call because he felt that he should be there to greet the man. Of course, Jenny bawled him out for it.

“You’ve got a fractured forearm, you’ve been through more hell in one day than you’ve been for an entire career, and you want to get up and go out again. It’s almost midnight, Harry.”

“I know, but that man’s goin’ to have a lot of questions.”

“Do they have to be answered tonight?”

“I feel a little responsible,” he said. He rose from the couch where he had fallen asleep in his clothes while watching the late news. Jenny had made him hot milk and had remained at his side, sitting in the old soft-cushioned chair, his chair, the chair she had threatened a hundred times to donate to the dump. Tonight she enjoyed sitting in it; she enjoyed the feel of its worn material and the weakness in its springs. It symbolized her husband, a part of him that was worn but precious; tarnished with age and use but as valuable as a youthful memory. For the first time in a long time, she felt the fragility of their lives. From the moment she had learned of all the terrible events, she hadn’t stopped shivering inside. She did a good job of hiding it, covering it with her shell of sarcastic wit. Even so, she sensed that Harry saw through her. He was just playing along for both their sakes.

“Good lord, Harry, how the hell are you responsible for this?”

“I should have paid more attention to the stories Sid Kaufman told me.”

“What stories? His son’s dreams about a dog, and his wife imagining their dog came back to life?”

“It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t someone’s imagination.”

“You sent patrols up there, you went there yourself.”

“I sensed something was wrong. I felt it, dammit,” he said.

“You know Harry, you should have been a rabbi or even a priest. You have the personality and the mentality for it.”

“I won’t be long.”

“I’ll be asleep. I shoulda gone to sleep an hour ago.”

“I’m just going up to the hospital and back,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

“I’m not interested. And besides, I don’t believe you.”

“Jenny, if you saw those children—”

“I don’t want to hear any more about it,” she said quickly. He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m not waitin’ up for you, Harry Michaels.”

“Good.”

“How can you drive with that arm like that?” she asked as he went to the door.

“It’s no problem.”

“My mother warned me about you. She told me not to trust a man with bushy eyebrows.”

“Your father had bushy eyebrows.”

“That’s how she knew.”

He left his laughter behind him, but on the way to the hospital, he made a firm decision about himself. He decided that he would give it a couple of weeks and then inform the town board that he intended to retire as soon as they had determined a replacement for him. He told himself that he was doing it for Jenny, but in his heart he knew that he was tired. His time had come.

Sid Kaufman arrived at the hospital only fifteen minutes after Harry did. He knew the man had been traveling fast. At this late hour, there were few non-hospital personnel around. Lights had been turned
down low and a quiet, subdued mood prevailed. He and one of the men on the hospital’s security staff had a conversation carried out in low tones.

But Sid Kaufman’s entrance shattered the mellow atmosphere. He rushed in, exhausted from the drive, his face filled with anger and anxiety. Before he even reached the receptionist at the front desk, he demanded to know his wife’s whereabouts. Harry moved forward to greet him.

“Mr. Kaufman. I’ll take you to her.”

“Chief. How is she?”

“She’s all right, she’s all right.”

“What the hell happened to you?”

“It’s part of it all. I’ll explain as we go up. She’s on the fifth floor.”

“ICU?”

“Yeah.”

They stopped at the elevator and Sid straightened his posture.

“I’m here. No more bullshit. What happened?”

They got into the elevator and Michaels pushed the button.

“The dog got into the house and attacked her. He came at her more like a bull than a dog, striking her in the ribs with his head. He cracked her rib and ... the rib punctured a lung. They call it pneumothorax. I’m not trying to impress you with big words. I just wanted to remember everything right.”

The elevator stopped at the fifth floor.

“What are they doing now?”

“It’s going well. They inserted a chest tube to depressurize the area around the lung. The lung will self-inflate and she’ll heal.”

“Christ, where are my children?”

“Your in-laws took them home with them. They’re okay, but they had another terrible scare. A policeman was killed in your house.”

“What? The dog did all this? What kind of a dog was it, for Christ’s sake?”

“A military dog,” Harry said. “The government fucked up.”

“Military dog? What’s a military dog doing around my house?”

“Apparently it escaped from a training center, a secret one. They’ve been doing new things with the training and this dog went berserk.”

“That’s the story?”

“That’s what they told me. They were out looking for it and had tracked the animal to Ken Strasser’s house not long after all this happened. I’ll tell you more in the morning. They promised to have someone at the station when you’re ready.”

Sid nodded and started for the door to ICU. Then he turned back.

“Your arm? You got that in my house?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess I owe you my family.”

“No, sir. I’m just doing what they pay me to do.”

“No one gets paid to do this,” Sid said and went inside.

Harry stood there a moment and then nodded. “You might have something there, Mr. Kaufman,” he muttered. “You might have something there.”

When Michaels got to his car, the fatigue hit him, but he couldn’t keep his mind from working all the way home. The government people, especially that woman, struck him as odd. Everything had become so specialized these days, even the training of a dog. With all the new technological weaponry this country had, why be so interested in developing better attack dogs? he wondered. It was probably just another way to waste the taxpayers’ money, he thought, only this time there were going to be a good many red-faced officials,
even with the subdued way they were presenting the facts to the press.

At least these military people were in charge, now; they had the responsibility of finding the animal and protecting the population. By now a contingent of soldiers from Fort Drum was on the way. At first light they would comb those woods so thoroughly they would find Indian arrowheads. It was all right with him. They should clean up their own mess, Harry thought.

Hopefully, they would do it quickly and this would all be over. It was already over for poor Ken Strasser and Tom Carlson. He shook his head and tried to remember how it all had started. And then he recalled Sid Kaufman’s dog and that bizarre event.

It was beyond him what that had to do with all this, and he was tired of thinking. He couldn’t wait to get home and crawl into bed beside Jenny. He knew she’d be wide awake when he arrived, but she wouldn’t let on that she had waited up. Just before he turned over and closed his own eyes, he’d say, “Good night, Jenny,” and she would poke him. He smiled, thinking about it.

Phantom lifted his head from his paws and listened intensely to all the sounds that entered the garage. It was as though he had been kicked, but it was his sixth sense, his undiminished animal instinct that stirred him from his sleep. He recognized the feeling. It was the same one he had experienced back in that house, sleeping on the little boy’s bed. It told him that he was still being pursued and that the pursuers were drawing closer.

Only moments ago, at the crack of dawn, the woods around the Kaufman residence had been deliberately filled with bedlam. The search had been designed in the fashion of a battle. The forest had been divided
into sectors, and in each sector men were driving toward each other in pincer movement. In less than an hour, two helicopters would be brought in, and army personnel in jeeps were being sent to patrol the surrounding highways.

Phantom looked at the bitch. Since she was not the object of any hunt or the potential victim of a predator, she slept peacefully. Nothing alarmed her. She continued to enjoy a sleep of contentment and fulfillment. But he stood up and sniffed the air to sift the breezes caught in the garage doorway. The scents discouraged him and filled him with fear. They warned him of packs of men, but packs of a larger number than he could imagine.

He whined; he couldn’t help it. The vaguely lit world was fraught with danger. The bitch opened her eyes and, seeing him up and about, rose quickly in anticipation. But he was concentrating on avenues of escape. He walked right past her as though she weren’t even there; he stepped out onto the driveway. The sun itself was not visible because of the heavy forest to the east, but the dawn light filtering through the trees made the leaves look phosphorescent. The darkness, which had been a friend to him, was in retreat everywhere.

He turned and started to the right, but after traveling only a dozen feet or so, he stopped. They were coming from that direction, as well. They were as clear to him as if they were standing right before him. Spinning quickly, he went into a run and headed toward the rear of the house. He drove himself through the heavy brush and splashed through some swampy ground. There was forest this way, too, but no sooner had he reached the rim of the trees than he heard the not too distant bark of hound dogs. He was going directly toward them.

Frustrated, he stopped and remained in the same
spot for nearly a minute. Not since leaving the institute had he felt so restricted. It was as though they had thrown invisible chains over him. How could he flee? In what direction should he go?

He looked back at the garage. The bitch had started her own barking, calling to her masters, demanding food. He trotted to the right and then moved back slowly until he reached the rear of the garage. The side door of the house opened and the boy emerged with a dish of food. While the boy walked to the garage, Phantom slunk against the opposite side of the building. There he waited, listening to the boy talk to the bitch.

“Okay, Candy,” the boy said, “you can run loose a while, but I gotta tie you up again before we leave. Grandma says so.”

The bitch didn’t run off. She stayed there, eating her food. A few moments later, the boy was called back to the house. After he went inside, Phantom appeared in the garage entrance. The bitch had cleaned her dish, but she growled possessively, anyway. He ignored her and went toward the rear of the garage instead, hiding himself behind sacks of fertilizer and a small tractor.

The bitch looked at him curiously, but she didn’t follow him to the rear of the garage. Instead, she took advantage of her freedom and headed off down the road to the right. Almost immediately afterward, a car pulled into the driveway. The man who got out was big, over six feet four and easily two hundred and fifty pounds. Before he reached the side entrance, the door opened.

“On time for a change,” Stanley said. “That’s good.”

“Well, I promised Dora I’d be back ‘for seven. She’s got somethin’ goin’ for her sister. Hiya, Tony.”

“I’m goin’ too,” Tony said.

“No shit.”

“Don’t make a big thing of it. His grandmother’s pissed off. Okay, boy, get your jacket. Mac and I are goin’t’ finish loadin, the truck.”

“Right, Grandpa.”

The two men came down to the garage. Phantom lowered himself as close to the floor as he could, but it didn’t matter. The two men were intent on the loading of the used appliances and didn’t look into the garage once.

Just after they finished, a helicopter was heard coming from the east. They looked to the tops of the trees and saw it sweeping over the forest. Its low altitude made it curious, but their curiosity was whetted even more when a military jeep went by.

“What the hell is it, an invasion?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Mac said. They watched the helicopter go over the house and head south. Tony came charging out of the house to see it.

“What’s that, Grandpa?”

“I don’t know, son. You say good-bye to your grandmother?”

“Yep. Oh, I gotta tie up Candy. Where’s Candy?”

“We don’t have time to go looking for that mutt. Your grandmother’ll do it. Get in.”

“How many stops do we have, Stanley?” Mac asked.

“Four this trip.”

“All in the Bronx?”

“Yep. Just finish tying down that canvas and I’ll be right out,” Stanley said, and he went to the house. Mac tightened the rope of the canvas so the rear of the truck was somewhat closed in. All the used appliances were secure as well. Satisfied, he got into the truck cab and he and the boy waited. A few moments later, Stanley emerged. He took a quick look at the rear of the truck and then got into the driver’s seat.

Almost as soon as he did so, Phantom emerged from
the rear of the garage. Crouching down and keeping to the side, he moved with the muscular sleekness of a bobcat. The truck engine started, and the vehicle began to move forward slowly. Phantom paused at the garage entrance. Despite the sound of the truck’s engine, he could hear the voices of men approaching from the forest to the left. They had successfully followed his path. In a few moments they would be on him. He saw and he understood.