Charlotte Boyett-Compo- Wyndsheer (21 page)

“I don’t like this. I’m slowing down,” the semi driver said and cut his speed to 40 mph, practically crawling on the winding mountain road.

Inside the semi, Ordwell looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading. “Why are we slowing?” he inquired.

“The Com is out, Sir. I can’t raise the driver,” a man sitting at the communications terminal replied. “Something must be up.”

Ordwell snapped the newspaper shut and got to his feet. He walked over to the Com Term. “Turn on the outside cameras.”

But all four cameras revealed nothing but electronic snow and the semi seemed to be slowing down even more.

Opening his eyes as the scent of fear spread through the trailer, Jamie managed to flex his arm and one leg, glad his motor functions were returning. All around him there was a flurry of activity as the scientists and the few guards stationed in the trailer began to feel the cloying sense of impending danger that was making them snap at one another.

“What is happening, James?” Ordwell demanded as he appeared above his prisoner. The man’s face was drawn taut, his gaze sharp.

Pretending he could not focus, the Lycant half-smiled as though he were on another plane of existence. His eyelids fluttered and closed. He sighed.

“How long will he be like this, DeLayne?” Ordwell shouted. “I need answers!”

“He took a large hit, Sir,” DeLayne replied. “I can’t adequately gauge ....”

The trailer lurched then came to a stop on a long hiss of air brakes. Eyes turned to Ordwell.

“Should we check outside…?” one of the guards asked.

Ordwell started to speak but his assistant put a quick hand to the scientist’s arm. “Sir,” he said, “if the creature Wendt told us about truly exists, it could be out there.”

“No!” Ordwell told the guard. “That door remains closed!”

Jamie could not keep the startled yelp from erupting when Ordwell grabbed a handful of the Lycant’s hair and jerked viciously. His eyes flew open.

“I thought you were pretending!” Ordwell sneered, his lips pulled back from his teeth. “Is the creature outside? Has it come to fetch you?”

Straining against the burning pull on his scalp, Jamie ground his teeth, speaking through the constriction of his clenched jaw. “How the fuck would I know? The walls around us are lead, aren’t they? I can’t penetrate them to find out.”

Ordwell bent over his prisoner, their lips almost touching. “What will the beast do?”

Jamie smiled hatefully. “Let’s just say you’re a walking dead man, sweet meat.”

Ordwell yanked Jamie’s hair. “But you’ll be dead before me!”

“Won’t matter,” the Lycant told him. “No one is going to leave this trailer alive and believe me when I tell you, where it is going to send all of you will be eternal and make the fires of hell look like an amusement park.”

Ordwell’s assistant backed away from the table, his face pale, eyes wide. “It can’t get in here because of the lead. It ....”

“Can rip this trailer apart as easily as you can pop a lid on a soda can,” Jamie said with a low laugh.

“That’s a lie. It can’t get in here,” the assistant said, shaking his head.

“Keep thinking that,” Jamie said, looking past Ordwell’s shoulder.

Eyes flew to the point where the Lycant was looking. There was nothing there to be seen yet the men were trembling, sweating, and making low whimpering sounds, backing away from that area of the trailer. With every passing second the terror raised another level until all but Ordwell, DeLayne and Ordwell’s assistant were plastered against the wall containing the door to the outside. Each of the men were shuddering violently and dropping to their knees, arms over their heads to protect them from whatever evil had arrived in their midst.

“How could it possibly enter?” Dr. DeLayne said, head swiveling from side to side as he searched the trailer for an intruder. “This is a maximum ....”

“Through the ventilation duct,” Ordwell’s assistant whispered. He was staring up at the small square of mesh that filtered the air and circulated it through the trailer.

Ordwell followed the other man’s gaze then looked down at Jamie. “Can it get in?” he asked and when Jamie only grinned at him, the scientist grabbed one of the transprobe guns and shoved the barrel tight against the Lycant’s temple.
“Can it get in?”

Only the Lycant could see the looming dark shadow as it built behind Ordwell, but every man there—especially the three standing around the exam table--keenly felt its presence. Sheer, stark terror shifted through every brain to loosen bowels, release piss, and start undulating cries of panic from every throat. A noxious, overpowering stench rose up to burn eyes and sting throats and snatch away breath. A cacophony of gagging and retching was added to the whimpering and men began pushing and shoving one another in an attempt to get out of the trailer.

“Don’t open the door!”
Dr. DeLayne screamed.
“Don’t let it in!”

“It’s already here,” Jamie said softly.

Ordwell squeezed the trigger of the gun and the fiery current ricocheted through the Lycant’s brain to stiffen his body. An unearthly howl of agony was ripped from Jamie’s throat, then he began convulsing so violently he broke the restraints locked around his wrists and, ankles and chest.

A vicious roar shattered the eardrums of the humans as Ad Fear Liath Mor took corporeal form within the confines of the trailer. The vile odor it gave off in its anger was enough to plummet most of the men into unconsciousness and the humans fell in a clump, unable to draw breath into their lungs. So enraged was the creature, it manifested in its full height and breadth, blowing the top off the metal box with a resounding shriek of scraping metal and expanding its sides until the lead buckled and collapsed outward away from the frame to fall out on the dark highway. Any man who dared to look upon the beast was plunged into madness and hearts stopped still.

Ordwell’s assistant was shrieking like a young girl as he stared up at the creature hunched above him. DeLayne was dead on his feet, held erect only by the rigid grip of his fingers on the edge of the exam table. Then the assistant met his own doom, every vein in his body exploding as the Guardian wrapped a meaty paw around the poor man’s head then squeezed until there was nothing left but pulp.

The gun still in his hand, Ordwell squeezed off a burst of the transprobe and the current hit the Guardian in the center of its broad chest.

Ad Fear Liath Mor looked down where its fur was smoking from the electrical charge then leveled its crimson bore of a stare on the scientist. It growled deep in its throat.

Ordwell released another blast, a third then a fourth, but though the fur crisped and shriveled beneath the zap and gave off a putrid smell, the beast only smiled. It was a purely vicious smile that revealed long, sharply pointed fangs from which hung long strands of thick salivation. The black face crinkled with obvious amusement and the deadly gleam in its blood-red eyes began to sparkle.

“You,” it said, pointing a long, yellowed talon at Ordwell, “will know hell such as no human ever has since the dawn of time.” It moved its gaze briefly to Jamie then leveled it on the scientist.

Ordwell had one last round left in the transprobe gun. There was enough there to kill a normal man. Rather than suffer what the creature no doubt had planned for him, the scientist turned the gun toward himself, aiming it at his own temple, but before he could fire the gun was plucked from his fingers and went sailing into space.

“No,” the Guardian said. “It won’t be that easy.”

Jamie was thrashing upon the exam table, his eyes rolled back in his head. He had swallowed his tongue and was unable to breathe. His body was rigid in its throes, his bare heels drumming on the table. He was dying from lack of oxygen.

“I can save him,” Ordwell said, moving quickly to the table. “I can save his life!”

The creature did not move as the scientist bent over the Lycant and pried his jaws open, ran a finger into Jamie’s mouth to anchor his tongue. It merely watched the overweight man with its giant head cocked to one side as a child would observe the antics of a bug crawling upon the ground.

“It’s all right, James,” Ordwell said. He snaked out a hand and grabbed the stethoscope from around DeLayne’s neck and stuck the terminals in his ears. Putting the bell to the Lycant’s chest, he listened for a second or two then turned to point at the crash cart. “He is in defib. I need that!”

Ad Fear Liath Mor glanced at the strange-looking thing on wheels then shrugged indifferently, folding its massive arms over its singed chest. It possessed the power of life over death and would not allow the Lycant to succumb to whatever had been done to cause him to shudder so pitifully. It had already spread a veil of numbness over Jamie MacGivern’s mind so he would not feel pain even though his body continued to convulse. What it did now was merely toying with its victim.

“If you don’t want him to die ....” Ordwell began, but the beast merely threw back its head and laughed.

“The old woman had done you no harm,” the creature said in a low, throbbing voice.

Ordwell blanched. “She didn’t suffer,” he was quick to say. “She had been given a drug before she was hanged. She ....”

“The old woman had done you no harm.” The words were repeated with a savage snap of tone.

Looking about him frantically, Ordwell took a step toward the ruined side of the trailer, but the beast moved to block his escape. He felt a trickle of urine run down his leg.

“The wolf had done you no harm,” the beast stated.

Ordwell licked his dry lips, panic seizing him with jagged claws. There was no way for him to escape, no easy end and as evil as he knew he was, the thing standing before him was a thousand times worse.

“All the wolf and the old woman wanted to do was live in peace.” A thick ridge of fur shifted, bunched across the creature’s sloped forehead. “But you would not allow that.”

“I am a man of science,” Ordwell defended. He held his hands up for the beast to see. “I wield the power of life and death in my hands.”

A slow smile pulled at the creature’s mouth and it shook its shaggy head. “You have no authority over such matters, little human,” it said. “You thought you did, but you were wrong. You might cause pain. You might torment and torture and even kill, but that is not power.” Dark death blossomed in the carnelian glare. “That is nothing.”

“And you have such power?” Ordwell challenged, though he was quaking inside.

“I do.” To prove its point, it switched its gaze to the remains of Ordwell’s assistant and reanimated the dead man, causing the corpse to dance like a puppet upon a string. Other obviously deceased men came suddenly ‘alive’ and jerked and pranced about that end of the trailer—a macabre clicking sound eliminating from the otherwise lifeless bodies.

“That isn’t life,” Ordwell scoffed and felt watery stool trickle down his legs as the creature bestowed a fierce frown upon him.

“Not life as you perceive it. In the Abyss where their souls now reside, there is consciousness. That is what you believe life to be,” Ad Fear Liath Mor stated. “You will soon find that life can be much more.”

Ordwell became aware the Lycant was no longer moving. He looked down at the man on the table and winced. “You let him die,” he said. He put a trembling hand to Jamie’s arm as he hung over the side of the table. Something that might have passed for regret shifted over the pudgy face then vanished. He looked to the creature. “Will you make James dance, as well?”

Without moving a muscle of its massive body, the beast stared at Ordwell. It had stopped transmitting the fear pheromones and the cold mountain air had blown away the stench of its shaggy fur. Nothing moved with a mile radius of the destroyed trailer--even the sky overhead had stopped its spectacular fireworks for the creature’s rage had left it. Now, only grim determination filled the crimson glower.

“The Lycant is my friend,” the Guardian said. “When I am finished with you, I will give him back his life and he will live that life with his mate as the gods intended. As for you, life of a sort will continue though you will wish it had left you as it left these others.” It smiled. “You will
pray
it will leave you, but it will remain for as long as there is time in the megaverse.”

The last thing on this earth Simon Ordwell saw was a giant paw coming at him. The last thing on this earth he felt was the wrapping of that paw around him, his feet leaving the wreck of the trailer, his body stinging as it was drawn up through the frigid heavens. The last thing he heard on this earth was his own scream of terror as he was thrust into the very maw of evil and It swallowed him whole.

Epilogue

Mairi blotted the perspiration from her forehead as she sat cross-legged on the blanket and watched the men putting the green tin roofing on her new home. The day was bright and sunny with just a hint of wind to cool it. Around her, the village men had set up plank tables and the women were busy now putting out the covered dishes that would be the noon meal. Children ran about laughing and taunting one another, and pet dogs scampered about in their little masters’ wakes. Here and there a baby cried or cooed to its mother. It was just a typical early spring day filled with the camaraderie of a tightly-knit community.

She put up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, seeking her husband among the workers toiling on the house. At first she didn’t see him, but then she noticed Rick Baxter--the former agent whose eyes still bore a slight trace of madness from his brush with the Guardian. Jamie had taken Baxter under his wing and the two men had become very close. So close, in fact, Baxter would be building a cabin not too far from Mairi’s door.

The lilting sound of a tin whistle wafted over the air and everyone paused in what they were doing to listen. It was a soft, pleasing sound and where in the past it had caused fear and trepidation, it now soothed and calmed.

“It’s the Guardian,” she heard a little boy say. “He’s going to serenade us again!”

“How lovely,” a middle-aged woman said with a sigh, and began tapping her foot in time to the rhythm.