Ravenous (32 page)

His eyes widened with disbelief. “You getting funny with me?” he said. His eyes were wide, showing a lot of white, and he did not stop moving—he jittered and fidgeted, never holding still. He slapped her again, this time fully intending to hit her face. He slapped her so hard, she almost fell over. She turned to him, eyes glaring, and her lips pulled back as she prepared to say something, to
shout
something, but at the last second, she stopped.

What am I doing?
she thought.
He'll beat me unconscious.

“You gonna talk back to me?” he said. “Huh? You talking
back
to me now?”

“Nuh-no,” she said, her voice quiet and soft again, meek. “No.”

“Go get some chips.”

“I ... well, Jimmy, I ... “
I what?
she thought. “I really don't think I should drive because I've got a, um, a really bad headache.”

“Headache's not gonna kill you. Go down to the 7-Eleven on the corner. Get me some Doritos. The cool ranch flavor.”

Andrea did not feel like driving—she wasn't sure she was
capable
of driving the way she felt, her hands trembled and her insides seemed to jiggle like Jell-O—but she did not see that she had much choice.

“Can I go, Mommy?” Jenny said.

“No, honey,” Andrea said. “No, you stay here.”

Jimmy got another beer and returned to his chair in the living room, to his game.

Anger surged through Andrea. She turned away from Jenny so the little girl would not see it on her face, the anger and hatred she suddenly felt for her husband. This was not typical of her—she usually felt cowed after he hit her or shouted at her. But at that moment, she burned with rage. She wanted to grab him and claw him and bite him and—Andrea took a deep, steadying breath. She leaned her hip against the counter and waited for it to pass, breathed it out of herself, tried to let go of it.

A few minutes later, her feet dragging and her mind twisted with distraction, Andrea left the house to get Jimmy's chips. But as she drove, she was filled with a nauseating certainty that something very bad was going to happen soon.

 

 

 

37

 

The Calm Before the Storm

 

 

Rain no longer fell from the corpse-grey sky, and the biting wind died down to nothing. A funereal stillness fell over Big Rock, heavy and ominous.

That Saturday morning and afternoon were as uneventful as the overcast, windless weather.

Below the Jags, foaming waves raged against the rocks and filled the air with undulating mist.

The two movie theaters in Big Rock did not do their usual booming weekend business, and even the mall wasn't very busy, with more space than usual in its sprawling parking lot. Most people stayed inside because of the cold weather and watched games or movies. That was what they told themselves, that it was because of the cold weather. The day simply felt ...
off
somehow, as if it was not Saturday, but some other day, some day not marked on the calendar.

Twice the normal number of deputies prepared to go on patrol that night. Daniel Fargo provided them all with countless silver ammunition for their pistols, revolvers, and shotguns. Many of the deputies wore strange expressions on their faces that afternoon—no matter how Fargo put it, or how much Hurley reinforced it, they all had a hard time with the fact that, come that night, they would be on the lookout for
werewolves
.

As the day wore on, a thick fog moved in from the sea. It moved slowly, easing in and curling around buildings, oozing up streets, swirling around traffic lights and creating eerie haloes.

Annie Culver was working dispatch, and 911 calls were at a minimum all day—a heart attack, a few car accidents, things like that, but not much for a weekend. At the end of Annie's shift, Shelly Blair relieved her and was told that it was slow. Shelly was glad to hear it—her three children had run her ragged all day, and she welcomed a slow shift.

But it was not to be.

As the day ended, something other than the darkness of night fell over Big Rock.

 

 

 

38

 

Incident at Willow Park Apartments

 

 

Shirley Kidderman had done her best with the mess in Vanessa Peterman's apartment, but she could not work miracles. She'd managed to sweep up the broken glass and vacuum up the tiny bits, as well as the dirt on the living room floor from the shattered potted plant. It had taken all afternoon, and the day was dying outside. Shirley's joints ached—they always ached a little these days, but the pain was worse now, having done so much bending over and sweeping and vacuuming.

Vanessa was still asleep in her bedroom. Shirley felt awful for the poor girl—she knew she cared for her married boyfriend a lot, and his death had hit her hard.

When she was finished cleaning, Vanessa went into the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator for something cold to drink, and poured herself a glass of grape juice. She was drinking from it when the piercing, horrible scream ripped through the silence from Vanessa's bedroom and so startled Shirley that she dropped the glass. It shattered on the floor and splashed grape juice over the tiles.

Shirley frowned down at the new mess and muttered, “Oh, of all the—”

The scream came again, and it did not stop. Shirley hurried through the apartment, down the hall, and stopped outside the closed bedroom door. Her eyes grew and her mouth fell open as she listened to the horrible sounds coming from inside—popping and crunching sounds, shattering glass, and screams, horrible screams.

“Van ... Vanessa?” she said, her voice weak. She put her hand on the doorknob.

The screams changed, became deeper, rougher. They turned into animal-like growling sounds.

Shirley started to turn the knob as she said, “Vanessa, are you—”

Something slammed into the door on the other side, and a splintered crack appeared down the center. Shirley was so startled, she cried out, then blurted, “My
Gawd
!” as she backed away from the door. “Vanessa?
Vanessa
!”

The door was pulled open.

Shirley slowly tilted her head back to look up at the creature, her mouth yawning, eyes open to their limit, arms out slightly at her sides with fingers splayed wide. Before Shirley could scream, her throat was slashed open so deeply that her head flopped all the way backward until it bounced between her shoulder blades. Before Shirley's body could collapse to the floor, the creature embraced her wavering torso and lowered its yawning, slobbering snout over the large opening in her neck to slurp at the ribbons of blood still pumping rhythmically from her torn throat.

 

* * * *

 

The sun had just set, and the thick cloud cover blocked the light of the moon and stars. At the Willow Park Apartment complex, bright lights around the central courtyard cast a glow through the misty night, illuminating the swimming pool.

Carrie Myers, a single mother of two, was about to take her children to

McDonald's for dinner. She'd promised if they were good that day, they'd get Happy Meals for dinner, and they had done their best to be well-behaved all day long. Mickey was five and Danika, Dani for short, would be turning four next week. They came out of the upper-level apartment and Carrie finished putting on her coat, then turned around and locked the door behind them. She'd left the yellow anti-bug porch light on.

That was when she heard the sound. It was a horrible, inhuman scream that sent ice chips down Carrie's spine. Then she heard a growl, the kind of growl she would expect a large animal to make—loud and rumbling and frightening.

Carrie froze.

“Whassat, Mommy?” Dani asked.

The growl sounded again, and it was close. It seemed to be coming from the apartment two doors down. Carrie frowned, trying to remember who lived there. Shirley Kidderman lived right next door to Carrie, and on the other side was ... some woman who usually kept to herself. Carrie could not remember her name. There'd been a lot of noise coming from there that morning—screaming and crashing and shattering. Carrie had looked out her door when she'd heard all that racket and saw Shirley going to the woman's apartment.

Farther down the walkway, at the bottom of the U formed by the apartment complex, a door opened up and Willard Borman stuck his head out. He wore a T-shirt stretched taut over his sagging belly, baggy green pants, and blue slippers. He was a widower in his sixties who was always winking and making eyes at Carrie. He seemed harmless, but Carrie kept her distance. Willard frowned in the glow of his porch light; Carrie looked at him and shrugged.

“A animal,” Mickey said. “Mommy, nobody's s'posed a have animals, huh?”

Carrie barely heard her son. She stood frozen in place with the house key still sticking out from her thumb and forefinger, wondering if they should go back inside.

The screaming and growling stopped. A heavy silence stretched on for awhile. Carrie started to move again, to head for the stairs with her children.

The door on the other side of Shirley Kidderman's apartment was pulled open.

Carrie stopped breathing, froze, and looked down the walk toward the apartment.

It had to duck to come through the doorway. It was enormous and hairy, with long, pointed ears and a narrow snout, and—

It turned and faced her and the children.

“Oh Jesus!” Carrie said with a gasp. She turned and tried to put the key back in the lock to open the door so they could go back inside, but the key jittered and clicked clumsily against the doorknob and simply would
not
slide into the lock and—

The thing growled again as it came toward them.

Carrie screamed and grabbed her children, pushing them toward the stairs at the end of the walkway, saying, “Go, now, go go go!” She grabbed their wrists, one in each of Carrie's hands, and Dani was lifted up off the concrete as Carrie dragged Mickey along with them to the stairs. She hurried down the steps praying silently in her mind,
Please Jesus don't let us fall—what the hell
is
it?—don't let us fall don't don't don't
—

The thing put a long-fingered, clawed hand on the black metal railing and hiked its legs up and over the rail. It dropped from the upper level and landed in a squat on the concrete below, as easily as if it had jumped off a curb.

As Carrie screamed, Dani cried, and Mickey shouted, “Mommy Mommy Mommy!” They neared the bottom of the stairs.

All around the complex, doors opened and heads popped out, curtains were pulled aside, blinds were parted so eyes could see what all the commotion was.

A woman screamed from her doorway and someone else shouted, “Oh my God!”

The creature went to the bottom of the stairs and started up.

“No!” Carrie screamed as she began to drag her children back up the stairs.

The creature was on them in two broad steps. With a backhanded swat, it knocked Carrie over the rail—she hit the concrete hard, and was dazed. Screaming, Mickey turned and tried to run up the steps. The creature swept Dani up and held her with both hands as it closed its snout on her chubby belly. The little girl made horrible gurgling sounds.

Carrie screamed gibberish as she struggled to her feet to fight the creature for her daughter, unaware that her head was bleeding.

The creature made wet snarling sounds as it ate Carrie's little girl.

Carrie threw herself at the beast, but it reached out and closed one hand on her face and twisted its wrist with a jerk. Carrie's neck snapped and she crumpled to the steps, dead.

The creature held Dani with both hands again, one at each end, as if she were an ear of corn, and buried its fangs into her bloody belly.

At the other end of the upper walkway, Willard Borman came out of his apartment with both arms spread, bent slightly at the waist, and beckoned for Mickey to come to him.

“Come on, boy, come on, hurry!”

Crying, Mickey ran to Willard, who grabbed his hand and pulled him through the open door of his apartment. Willard went in with the boy, but a moment later, he came out armed with a large pistol.

By then, the creature was back on the upper level. It stopped to continue eating. Blood dribbled down from the small, still body that the creature held.

“Call nine-one-one!” someone shouted. The voice was nearly lost in the cacophony of screams and shouts that rose up from the complex as people watched the creature on the southern side of the upper level eat little Dani Myers.

Willard approached the creature, his pale face open with fear, and aimed the pistol. It fired with a loud crack once, twice, three times.

The creature tossed Dani's body over the rail and moved toward Willard.

Willard began to make a high, shrill sound as he fired the gun again and again.

The creature merely flinched with each shot as it closed in on him. It pulled back its right arm, then swung it in an arc, its claws slashing through Willard's thick neck. His severed head spun through the air, leaving a trail of spattering blood as it tumbled over the rail and dropped into the swimming pool below. Mists of red spread through the blue water. Willard's body fell backward, gun still aimed, and hit the concrete. It convulsed a few times before becoming still.

The creature turned to its right and faced the closest apartment window. Two faces peered through the glass, curtains pulled aside—a young man and woman gawked at the beast, horrified.

It pounded the windowpane, shattering the glass as it reached in and clutched the woman's shoulders. Without effort, it jerked the woman out the window, dragging her over the sharp shards of glass that stuck up from the bottom of the window frame.

The woman screamed and behind her, the man shouted in a high, tremulous voice, “No! No! No!”

More screams as the creature threw the woman over the rail. Then, once again, the hulking beast hopped over the rail and dropped lightly into a crouch on the concrete below, just inches from the still body of the woman who had landed with a splat only a moment before. It went to her on all fours, tore at her clothes, and exposed her flesh. It clawed at her breasts with one hand, lifting her upper body off the concrete with the other so it could close its fangs on one of them, tearing and chewing on the breast and finally pulling it away, leaving behind a great black hole where the breast had been. It made satisfied grunting sounds as it ate.