Wolf Flow (30 page)

    Rolling onto his back, Doot pushed himself up onto his elbows. The entire front of the building was engulfed in flames. The windows of the second story cracked from the heat, raining down brilliant shards of glass.

    He got to his feet, the fire shoving him back. With a roar, the boards over the entrance fell away, a gout of flame rolling out. The heat hit his face and chest, blinding him.

    When he opened his eyes, shielding them with his upraised arm, he saw the thing crawling through the center of the fire. Still alive, but now a mass of charred flesh wrapped in flames and smoke. In the burning doorway, it raised its blackened face. The raw sockets where the eyes had been could still see somehow; its empty gaze fastened onto Doot. The mewling sound, of hunger and rage, seeped through the cracked fragments of teeth.

    It raised its hand, now only a stump of bone, two fingers and a fused thumb gripping the scalpel. The mewling shrieked up in pitch, to a cry of animal hate, as the thing crawled across the verandah's smoldering planks.

    Then it died.

    It curled into an eviscerated husk, pitching forward onto the steps. The legs curled up into the chest, the bones of the knees cracking through the ribs, breaking the shriveled lungs apart. The heart, a black fist, clenched a final time, then dangled loose in its web of connective tissue.

    The blind face gaped up at the flames towering above. The hand's stump flopped against the bottom step, the scalpel falling into the dust.

    

    

    He found her by the edge of the swimming pool. The burning building lit the grounds and the hillside with a fierce, shifting orange radiance.

    Doot lifted Anne up, her limp arms trailing across the iron wheel of the pool's valve controls. Exhausted and soaked through, she clung to him, the dark water puddling at her feet.

    Running toward her, he had heard the sound of the water running from the pool's drain into the stone-lined culvert. Already the gushing noise had dwindled to a slow trickling.

    He heard another sound, as he wrapped his arms around Anne. A hissing, broken by something almost like sobbing-the last noises of a dying creature. It came from inside the pool.

    Doot looked over the tiled rim, holding Anne away from the sight. The pool was almost drained of the dark water now. The Nelder-thing lay at the bottom, its elongated carcass caught in the wet, charred timbers and debris. The arms of bone and raw stringy muscle moved, the clawlike hands flopping back and forth. It lifted its skull head, the gaunt jawless face gaping open, the throat dark and empty as the eye sockets.

    He pulled her away from the pool, onto the dirt.

    The flames' orange light danced across the dark puddle from which they'd stepped.

    His gaze fastened onto the shimmering wetness. Anne pushed herself back from his chest, her eyes searching his face.

    "Doot!" Alarm grew in her voice. "Doot, what is it?"

    He let go of her and knelt by the pool, drawing his hand through the thin layer of water. He stood up, holding his wet palm close to his face. The sulfur smell rose into his nostrils.

    The world turned silent. Beyond the roar of the fire leaping into the sky-another silence, that of things watching, and waiting.

    The creatures in the hills-they had ceased their howling. But they were still there. He felt the pressure of their expectant gaze, intent upon his every movement.

    He licked the water from his palm. Its sweetness burst inside his head. His blood sang, a shrill high note, as it surged into the muscles of his arms and chest.

    Anne grabbed his shoulders, bringing her face close to his. "Doot, are you okay?"

    He closed his eyes, then opened them; his tongue drew across the moisture on his lips. He looked past her, to the darkness in the hills.

    He nodded, slowly. "I've never… felt better…"

    Pushing her aside, he strode toward the culvert, and the pool's drain pipe. He knelt down, cupping his hands under the trickling flow. He gazed down at the dark water filling his palms, the thin rivulets running down his wrists. Then he raised it toward his mouth, to drink.

    Something hit his hands, dashing the water out onto the dirt.

    His head jerked around, the muscles of his shoulders and arms bunching. Teeth clenched, he gazed up in fury at Anne.

    She grabbed hold of his wrists, bending over him.

    "Doot…" She looked into his eyes, pleading with him. "Don't…" Her grip tightened, straining against the swelling muscle of his arm drawing back to strike her. "Do you want to end up like them?"

    His arm froze in place, the clenched fist raised above her head.

    The water trickled from between his fingers, running to his elbow. He looked away from her, to the black, shining thread, radiant in the burning light.

    Then he cried out, head tilted back, throwing his hand out in front of him. The black drops scattered onto the dust.

    

    

    Thin smoke drifted in the early morning light. He brought the Peterbilt to a halt, then pushed open the cab door. At the head of the lane, he stood looking at the smoldering ruins.

    Then the trucker spotted the figures lying on the ground in front of what had been the old clinic building. He ran toward them, already knowing that one of them was his son.

    "Jesus fucking Christ!"

    It looked even worse when he got up close. There was a Corvette parked near the burned building, the red paint of its fender and hood blistered from the heat. And in the charred rubble sprawled a blackened corpse, barely recognizable as having been human, the stumps of its hands clawing out from the ashes.

    The trucker knelt down and lifted Doot's head. His son's eyes dragged open; they pulled a glimmer of recognition into focus, then started to fade away again. The trucker stood, bringing Doot up with him. Doot hung, limp from exhaustion, against his father.

    He brushed his hand against Doot's brow. "What the hell happened out here?"

    Doot opened his mouth, as though about to speak, then shook his head. It would have to wait.

    The other figure, a girl he recognized now from Doot's high school, had stirred, raising her face from the ground. Her clothes were sodden and stained dark. The trucker left his son wobbling for a moment, and helped the girl to her feet.

    "You all right?" He bent down to look in her eyes.

    A nod. "I'm…" She drew a deep breath. "We're okay."

    He walked them toward the truck, one on either side, their arms thrown over his shoulders.

    Doot stopped halfway up the lane. He turned his head, looking back at the remains of the building. This close to him, the trucker studied his son's face. He hadn't ever seen him like this. No longer a gangly kid, but… different. Older, and harder, as though the fire had melted something out of him.

    "What is it, son?" He tried to see into Doot's eyes. "What's wrong?"

    Doot's gaze went out to the empty hills. He shook his head, slowly.

    "Nothing." His voice quiet. "I just want to get out of here."

    Then he turned back toward his father and the girl, and smiled-his real smile-and walked with them toward the truck.

    

    

    The hawk circled in the radiant sky. The scent of fire and smoke had drawn it; sometimes, when the endless sweeps of dry grass burned, the flames drove the small, tender creatures out into the open. Or when the fire was gone, leaving nothing but the blackened valley fields, the dead things brought out others to feed on the scorched carcasses. Then the hawk could wheel about, and dive, and eat his fill.

    But not this time. There were dead things in the ashes-one burned, a thing of ash itself; the other still wet and red, soft hanging meat on the arms clawing up from the bottom of the empty pool. The pieces of another lay mired in the thick, shallow water. But nothing would approach these things to pick apart the bones and find the bits that could be eaten. The dead things smelled of death, and worse; their decay seeped into the earth and poisoned it.

    The hawk's wings stroked the air, lifting it above the dry hills. Its razor eye saw a shack below, in a small open space. And a stone basin, filled near to its edge with dark, oily-looking water. The water shimmered with circular ripples from the slow dripping of the spigot at the basin's head.

    The hawk spiraled upward. But it could still see. Everything-that was its nature. It saw a lean wolf shape come out of the shaded recesses of the hills. The animal put its paws on the basin's edge and leaned its sharp-pointed muzzle over. It drank, tongue lapping up the water.

    Sitting back on its haunches, the wolf shape watched the distant hawk, the red eyes following the slow curve inscribed against the sky. Then it eased away, back to join the others, out of the mounting heat.

    The hawk drifted away, scanning the ground for the small life that fed its own. It rose in the sky, the level earth falling away, the empty space held in the hawk's bright, unblinking vision.

    Slow hours passed, or didn't pass; nothing saw or marked them.

    The dark water reached the rim of the basin, trembled, then with the next drop that fell, spilled over the side, a thin line running down the stone.

    It didn't seep into the ground. A twisting, snakelike shape formed, a black thing without eyes. For a moment it was still.

    Then it moved, inching across the dry earth.