Ravenous (28 page)

That seemed to register on Hurley's face, because Fargo shrugged one shoulder and said, “He knew before he ever came to me. He knew right away it was a werewolf that attacked him. And he won't be the only one. What about the two young women at the Jags tonight? Did either of them say anything about a wolf?”

Hurley pursed his lips a moment, thinking. Then: “Yes, one of them did. The one who was talking. I'm going to the hospital later to see the girl who was raped.”

Fargo spoke just above a whisper: “She has to die, Sheriff.”

Hurley chewed on his lower lip. “In my line of work, we only punish people
after
they've done something wrong, not because we
think
they will. The idea of killing her because she was raped by that thing ... it goes against everything I believe in.”

Fargo stood and stepped up to Hurley's desk, pressed his hands flat to the desktop and leaned forward on elbow-locked arms. “Sheriff Hurley, you need to inform your deputies and arm them with silver. I have scores of silver knives in my motor home. A simple knife could save their lives in a confrontation with one of the werewolves, and it would
end
the life of the werewolf.”

Hurley knew he had no choice, he would have to explain things to his deputies, even pull more deputies in from outlying stations—as many as possible would be required to hunt the things down.

“That's how we kill it,” Hurley said. “How do we
find
it?”

“You get a call about an attack, you take
all
your deputies to the scene, and get there as soon as possible. If the thing isn't still there, we spread out and hunt for it. This is all I've been doing for years now. It's all I know these days. I've never had a sheriff's department at my disposal before, though, and that will make a great deal of difference. The problem will be the den, if we can find it. We won't know how many of the creatures are in there till we get there, so we'll need all the men you can get together. Newly infected werewolves will be drawn to the original werewolf—in this case, Irving Taggart. So there could be ... well, however many will fit into the den. The bigger the den, the bigger the risk.”

“We need to be armed with silver bullets,” Hurley said. He sighed. “But how long will it take us to come up with that many silver bullets?”

Fargo smiled. “Not to worry, Sheriff. I have all the silver bullets you'll need.”

 

 

 

33

 

A Hospital Visit

 

 

Suzie Camber's thoughts were just beginning to take shape again. For the first time since she witnessed Bobby Sanders's brutal murder at the hands of—of what? What was it? And how long ago? She wasn't sure. Time seemed to have slipped away from her and no longer meant anything—she could have been lying in that Emergency Room bed for a few minutes or all night, she was unable to tell.

She burned and throbbed between her legs. It felt like something had torn her up down there. It was the only place on her body where she could feel anything. She was numb everywhere else, it seemed.

I was raped,
she thought for the dozenth time.

The word filled her with dread, because sooner or later, her father would find out. She knew how he would react. He would tell her she brought it on herself with the clothes she wore, the people she hung out with, the way she behaved in public—flirting with boys and joking around, not the way a young lady should behave. She dreaded having to sit and listen to him lecture her, quote the Bible to her, tell her about the hellfire that surely awaited her.

Bobby was dead. She'd watched as that ... what
was
it? She'd never seen anything like it in her life, not even on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet, where you saw just about every animal-thing there was on the globe. Whatever it was, it had done horrible things to Bobby ... things that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

And then it had been gone, and that man ... that half-naked one-eyed man with torn clothes dangling from his body in strips ... that man had raped her.

There were clothes on that monster, too,
she thought.
Dangling from it in strips, human clothes on that ... that animal thing. The same clothes that were on the man who raped me.

It made her head hurt. It was impossible. Surely her imagination had intervened and she'd only
thought
she'd seen the same tattered clothes on both man and monster.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Mom asked. Daddy had not come to the hospital, leaving Mom to come alone. Suzie was grateful for that, even though it was only a delay of the inevitable.

Suzie turned her eyes to Mom without moving her head. She wanted to respond ... but how? What would she say, do?

Suzie closed her eyes. She was unsure of how long they remained closed. She opened them when an unfamiliar voice said, “Mrs. Camber?”

A nurse was peering in through the part in the curtain.

“Yes?” Mom said.

“You have a phone call. You can take it on that phone on the wall over there.”

“All right, thank you.” The nurse disappeared and Mom turned to Suzie again. “I'll be right back, sweetheart. It's probably your father. Be right back, now, okay?”

Mom left the small enclosure, and Suzie was alone. She closed her eyes again.

Suzie preferred the warm darkness of the backs of her eyelids. She felt safe there, alone, unworried. Just floating in the blackness.

A sound. The rustling of the curtain. Had Mom returned already? Then the rustling of something else, some other material. Clothing?

Suzie opened her eyes. Slowly, her eyes grew larger as she looked up at the horrible scars on the man's face. They were darkened by the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. He was all dark in a long black coat, dark clothes under it. The only thing that was not dark about him was the knife he held, with its long, slender, glinting-silver blade. He was ugly as the devil. Maybe he
was
the devil, come to punish her for her sins. He quickly pulled the blanket and sheet down to uncover her chest.

Suzie could not move, and she found as she opened her mouth and tried to speak that she had no voice.

The pointed tip of the blade pressed between two of her ribs just to the left of her sternum.

Suzie's last thought as he slid the silver blade into her was,
Maybe Daddy's right after all ...

 

* * * *

 

When Edith Camber put the receiver to her ear, she heard a dial tone. She frowned as she put the receiver back on its hook, then turned and looked around the crowded, bustling Emergency Room. Had someone hung up on the call? Edith was confused—who would call her here and then hang up before she got to the phone?

She turned and made her way through the Emergency Room, moved the curtain aside so she could return to Suzie's bedside. Edith said, “I don't understand, the line was—”

Suzie's eyes were closed. She was asleep. She looked so peaceful with the blanket and sheet tucked up to her neck, her arms limp at her sides. Edith smiled gently as she sat down in a metal-framed chair beside the bed.

Edith found herself thinking about what had been done to her little girl. Tears burned her eyes. She prayed the police would catch her rapist and he would go to jail for a long time.

But for now, she was happy to see that Suzie had found a little peace in sleep.

 

 

 

34

 

Night Hunger

 

 

Andrea Norton awoke suddenly and with a gasp. She lay there staring into the darkness for awhile, tense and tingling. She rolled and tossed, trying to find a comfortable spot, but she could not relax enough to go back to sleep. An image remained in her mind, an image from her sleep. A dream ... but then, not quite a dream. Something else. Something vivid and strange.

She turned and watched Jimmy sleep. He snored loudly. He'd come home early from work that day saying he didn't feel well. That was about
all
he'd said to her. He'd paced the house, drinking one beer after another—and yet he did not seem to get drunk. Instead, he'd become increasingly manic until he'd finally left the house. He'd come back late that night, just a she was on her way to bed. He'd looked as if he'd been in a barroom brawl. His clothes had been torn, and he'd had what looked like a smear of blood around his mouth. His eyes had been unusually wide, and yet he'd appeared clearly exhausted. Surprised, Andrea had taken in a breath to ask him what had happened, but those wide eyes had turned to her and narrowed. She'd kept quiet and gone to bed. Jimmy had stayed up awhile, finally coming to bed reeking of beer. She could still smell it now as he snored louder than usual.

She got out of bed and put on her heavy blue-and-grey robe and a pair of sneakers. She went to the kitchen, opened a cupboard, reached back behind the coffee mugs on the bottom shelf, and retrieved her hidden pack of Winstons and a Bic lighter. She stuffed them into the right pocket of her robe, then made a cup of tea.

All day long, she'd been unable to think of anything but Jason. But now, something else bothered her. In her sleep, she'd seen a house. But it was far more real than any dream. There was something very important about the house, but she was not sure what. It stirred in her a feeling of urgency and need, a pulling sensation, as if the house were drawing her in, dragging her mind toward its front door. The house was familiar, but she was unable to identify it. She had seen the house before, but couldn't remember where or when. Upon waking from that dream, she felt a strange hunger. She went to the refrigerator and looked for something to appease that hunger, but nothing appealed to her, nothing was right. She was hungry for ...
something
.

Andrea closed the refrigerator and paced the kitchen, chewing on a thumbnail. She thought of Jason. No one had ever made love to her the way he had. No one had ever treated her that way, touched her that way. Certainly not Jimmy, and there had been only one guy before Jimmy. Of course, she'd never told Jimmy that—as far as Jimmy was concerned, he was her one and only.

Once her tea was ready, she took it with her to the front of the house and went out the front door. It was foggy and cold outside, but her robe was heavy. She sat down on the top step of the front porch, set her tea down beside her, and lit a cigarette. She so seldom smoked that when she did, the nicotine hit her hard and made her dizzy after that first puff. It felt good, that brief buzz, but it was gone almost before it started. Once again, she was feeling the strange anxiety that had dragged her from her sleep, thinking of that big dark house, trying to ignore the hunger clawing in her stomach, aching in her very bones.

She took another puff on the cigarette. If Jimmy knew she smoked, he would dole out some serious punishment. But he did not know. It was one of the few things Andrea had that was all her own, her little secret.

But as enjoyable as it was, she would give it up in an instant if only she could spend some time alone with Jason.

 

* * * *

 

While Andrea thought of Jason, he was driving home from the Sheriff's station and thinking of her, just as intensely, just as hungrily. He glanced at the dashboard clock—it was twelve forty-three in the morning, long before he'd have any chance of seeing Andrea. He had planned to see her that day, but when he'd gotten home from work, Jimmy had already come home, for some reason. So he had not been able to see Andrea at all that day.

He'd already decided to call in sick the following morning. His injuries were reason enough to miss a day. Besides, he was having Andrea withdrawals. He knew that Jimmy worked on Saturdays, so Andrea would be alone with her little girls that day. Thoughts of her chewed on his mind with tiny razor-like teeth.

He turned onto his street and looked ahead at his house. He pulled his gaze back just a bit when he thought he'd seen a shadowy figure on the porch in front of Andrea's house. He slowed down, and as he passed, he saw that Andrea was sitting on the top step. The burning red eye of a cigarette flared, then died down again.

Jason's heart suddenly pounded in his throat. He pulled over and parked at the curb in front of his house, got out of the car, and ran to her.

She was up off the porch and hurrying across the lawn, the cigarette between two fingers trailing strings of smoke.

Andrea gasped as she got closer. “Your face! My God what happened to—not here, not here,” she whispered as they closed the space between them. She tossed the cigarette away.

Jason smiled even though it hurt his injured face to do so. He grabbed her hand and quickly led her over to his house and into the garage.

“Let's go up to my apartment,” Jason said.

He led the way up the stairs, pushed the rug away, and entered his apartment. She was right behind him. The second she was in, he threw an arm around her waist and pulled her to him hard. Andrea made a small sound in her throat as their mouths met and Jason sucked her tongue into his. As they kissed, he moved his hands all over her, at the same time leading her clumsily toward the bed.

She finally pulled away. “I can't be gone long, I don't know when he'll wake up.”

Jason pulled back a little. “Really? Is there a chance he'll wake up and find you gone?”

She thought about it a moment, then smiled. “To be honest, he's pretty much down for the night. He's a very heavy sleeper, and he drank a
lot
of beer tonight.”

“Just playing hard to get, huh?”

“What happened to your face?”

“Long story. I'll tell you later.”

“All those bandages and—oh my God, your
hair
!”

“Yeah, that's funny, isn't it?”

“Funny? Jason, you have a streak of
white
through your hair.”