Saint Peter’s Wolf (24 page)

The smell of the trees was delicious, eucalyptus and Monterey pine. This night, possibly the last night of my life, was glorious.

As I had feared, more cars, stuttering with police radios and shouted commands, were ahead of me. I told myself they did not see me. I pounded the green of the golf course. Fear was power. Stiffness loosened, eyes saw more because of fear.

There was a sound like a woman whispering, a low note, like a barely uttered song. The turf ahead of me kicked. There was another whisper, and turf spouted ahead of me, so close that dirt littered my snout as I ran. These were not small bursts, but great divots ripped in the grass.

The reports were delayed by the distance. A shot cracked, and another. There was a sniper with a high-powered gun, and I knew who he was. His rifle was designed for a large animal. His gray eyes saw me easily. His infrared scope tracked me. I could feel the crosshairs like a slash on my shoulder. I knew that he had me in his sights, even now. My body flushed with a fear so sharp it was pain.

I felt a cold breath at my ear. This shot was closer yet, and when I crashed through a stand of eucalyptus, the tree above me exploded, leaves and branches spinning, fluttering to the ground.

But now, at last, he could not see me.

The trouble with running through this tangle of underbrush was the sound. My passage was scarcely secret. I crashed, thrashing, snapping branches. Men shouted, a helicopter rattled, and then I pounced to the edge of a cliff.

But I realized this too late, cannonballed by my own momentum off the cliff, into the dark. It was not like any other dark I had ever experienced. It was the surf-dark, the scent of sea water so strong it was nearly blinding, metallic, seething. My legs continued to paw air, a running motion I could not cease.

The cold was a shock. The cold, and the slam of the water. I thought I would never be able to move my limbs again. Water burned my eyes. The pebbly bottom rushed up at me, and I sprawled, rocks and sand swimming about me.

The ascent to the surface took longer than I had expected, but at last I tossed salt water out of my mane, and coughed. I gulped air, fighting to keep my leaden body from sinking.

I began swimming south, parallel to the shore, with strong urgent strokes. My body was heavy, but it was powerful. To my amazement, I swam with tremendous lunges, cutting through the tossing water.

I swam hard. The light of the Cliff House drifted by. The headlights and police cars were glittering on the Great Highway, and I was tempted to make my landing on the beach. I believed, though, that this was what they expected me to do.

I wanted to swim as far south as the zoo, and longed to see my friends, but I knew the wolves would be secured and guarded. They would, perhaps, even expect me there, and have their snipers on the alert. They would use my friends as bait.

Cunning. I needed my cunning now. If they were alert, I would have to be all the more keen. Skill, not ferocity, would save me.

The night was clouding, and helicopters were merely blushes of light in the sky over Land's End. There was one bit of luck. The tide was surging in through the Golden Gate, and the helicopters expected me to be following the current, carried into the bay. They had not anticipated my ability to swim so well. As I plunged through the water, the sound of helicopters thudded more and more indistinctly, and the police cars on the highway diminished.

The word must be out—he's in the bay. They would be poised, guns ready, at the breakwater at Fort Point, and along the Marina. The entire city would be nervous, guns brought out of bottom drawers, doors chained, lights blazing. I had not realized how notorious I had become, but I saw now that never again would I be a secret, my existence a matter of debate.

Every human being would be afraid. Every human being would want me dead. My strokes were slowing as the cold soaked into my muscles. Landfall, I thought. Harbor. Must touch ground soon. As strong as I was, I could not endure hours of this. Even now a wave swamped me, and I fought upward, gasping.

Swells lifted me, and let me fall again. As I swam south, the current dragged me north with greater and greater urgency. To keep from simple drowning was a battle. My legs began to cramp. At last the surf carried me uncontested, and my paws dragged sand.

I crawled, my long fur dragging the beach, and collapsed. For just a moment, I told myself. For just a moment of rest. I had no thought but: cold. My bones ached. Even my teeth throbbed with cold.

I shook myself, water flinging about me. Dragging myself, I worked to the edge of the beach, slinking to the side of an abandoned car. I shuddered there. The fear that had ignited me had burned to ash. Now I was blank, empty. I heard a rumble from my lungs, iron fury at the thought that men wished me dead.

Fury: I would not die. It was this stubborn beast, my hunted shape, that dragged me across the lanes of the highway. My hope was frozen. There was only animal stamina. Ice plants crushed under my paws. I sniffed the air.

Men were awake late this night. This was not the usual tempo of these neighborhoods. The news bleated into every home. Lock the doors, the news said. Men have died tonight, said the news. I showed my fangs to the glittering lights.

I traveled hard.

My hindquarters ached, but the pain was unimportant, a vague hum. It was this single-mindedness that forced a shot dog to run for hours, that let a fox gnaw through his trapped forepaw. It was the lack of choice, the ugly command to live. Many animals, when they are shot, will die falling in the direction of their burrows. It was this drive, deeper than an instinct, that stole me through the gardens and alleys. Several times I had to melt into the shelter of a garage or a tangle of trees. Many times a dog, made nervous by his master's fear, would yammer as I whispered by him. Many times a police car, his circling light punishing the street, would lurch around a corner as I lanced the dark.

I did not decide what to do. It was done for me, by the knowledge in my blood. When a policeman opened a car door, or a Doberman shrieked, I wended down another street, so fast weeds whipped my flanks.

The dogs were what I feared more than anything. They were close enough to being my kind that they knew something about me, if only my scent. And the police were gathering new dogs. I could hear it in the damp. Smarter dogs, as capable as guns. German shepherds, more patient on the leash, more silent on the hunt. Even when my night self was done, I sensed that these smarter creatures would still be able to trail me. My night scent would be alloyed with the scent of a man, but a keen dog would not be tricked.

I ran well, but I knew that wherever I turned, I ran to my death.

Twenty-Seven

The last hours of my flight were a trance, a running stupor. I dodged headlights, started at slammed doors and distant whispers. I was still quick, but the messages bypassed my consciousness. I knew what I was doing only after I had done it.

The dark was fading. Night was dying. The sun, I believed, was the enemy. Must hide, I told myself. A star dissolved as I watched. A bird opened its cry, joined by another, a sound like machinery glazed with rust.

No time, I thought. I was running out of time.

I was surprised, then, when I flung myself over a fence, and tumbled into my own garden. Or, what had been my garden when I had been a human being, with a human's hopes. Home. The refuge, the place of my own scent.

For a moment, my night self and my human frontier were one. Sanctuary. Safety. I panted on the wet grass. Then I struggled to the back steps, and lurched into the house.

I was not safe. I was safe nowhere.

I fell to the carpet, feeling the foreign rasp of this woolen textile, the confinement of the walls. I can't stay here, I thought. The dogs will find me here.

Because I heard them. Dog chains tinkled. The scent of large, deliberate dogs reached me even here. They were nearby, encouraged by their handlers. These dogs would not bay. They would not choke at the leash. They were calm masters of their powers, these German shepherds. They would not find me immediately. It might take hours, or, as the scent faded, days. But they were hunting, even now.

But that was my fear warping the truth. There was only silence outside the house. For the moment, I was safe enough.

Each bone was split by a pain so bright it was nearly pleasure. My teeth were jammed upward and downward, forcing my mandible open, my voice rasping, a whispered cry. My skin shrank, tightening around me. It squeezed the air out of my body.

I could not breathe. I felt my strength dissolve, eaten away as by an acid. I melted into a human shape as I sprawled there, like ice in great heat, until I had shrunken into my merest configuration.

I was human once again.

Human. Weak. Ungifted. A mere man.

Now if the dogs found me I would be a naked, powerless creature. I crept to the bathtub, and let hot water play over my numb, human feet. The hot water rose around me. The warmth soaked away some of the ache.

Don't think, I told myself. To think is to fear. Rest now.

It was past time to rest, and to hide. The hot water had soaked away some of the ache, but not all. My skeleton throbbed. I found my way, like someone in a stranger's house, to the bed.

I woke suddenly. I was up, clutching a blanket, panting.

It was the telephone. The answering machine cut in after the third ring. Only the telephone. Not the doorbell, not the voice of someone in the room.

There was still an abiding chill, deep inside me. I tugged on a thick, wool bathrobe. I peeked out the window. It was full morning outside. I was limping, and the pain in my leg was enough to make me pause before lurching down the stairs. I took three Excedrin, and drank four glasses of water.

Then I worked my way to the answering machine. I was stiff, and allowed myself some time before I reached it.

Don't touch it, I warned myself. You don't want to hear from anyone.

But perhaps—it's not impossible—Johanna has tried to reach me. It was this hope that made me sit down beside the telephone.

“Ben, I need to talk to you,” said the answering machine. “I really need to talk to you right away. Please call me as soon as you can.” It was Stan Houseman, his voice sounding shaken.

I stalled. There was a trace of paw print beside the daphne. I erased it with my bare, human foot. There was another mud trace on a sidewalk. I swept it until it was gone. This was a waste of time, of course, if they brought dogs here. A dog would know me at once. A human being, however, would see no trace.

Run. Run away now.

Don't call him. Pack a suitcase and leave immediately, telling no one anything. The only one to talk to is Johanna. Tell Johanna. Only she can help you. But my curiosity was too great, and perhaps I was too weary, in the midst of my anxiety, to think straight. I punched Stan's home phone, and he answered on the second ring.

“Did you hear about Orr?” he said.

“No,” I said, truthfully. I had, in fact, not heard. “What happened?”

Was there, even in the way I formed the words, a betrayal of the truth? Did my tone communicate the awareness that Orr was so much cold meat?

He almost could not say it. “He's been killed.” His voice was trembling. Murder does that to people, especially kind people like Stan.

Stan sketched a violent story. The same kind of vicious animal as before. Huge, evidently surprised while feeding on kitchen scraps. Cherry and Carliss both hospitalized, “under sedation,” but unhurt.

“Jesus!” It was horror that made me feel so cold, shock at the truth. Hearing it from Stan made it cut deep.

“I know how awful it is, Ben.” He offered the threadbare condolences we share at such times.

I managed some numb conversation, all the while thinking: I had killed Orr, my former business partner, my rival. A man I had known well. Cherry was safe, and Carliss. But the blow was hard. I had acted out of personal spite, not out of animal hunger. I had killed as I hated.

We fumbled on to other topics, as shaken people will. Chicago had been fine, Stan said. The kids were fine, everything—the word cloyed—was fine. Then he said, “Ben—I'm afraid. I know I'm crazy, but it's true. And you know something else?”

“I don't know anything. I can hardly think.”

“My first thought when I heard that Orr was dead was that you had done it.”

Again, fear sounded close to ugly surprise. “How could you think that?”

Stan sounded near tears. “I'm crazy. Forgive me, Ben. I just—when I heard about it. I just knew it was you. I knew it, in my bones.”

“What a terrible thing to think, Stan.” It was the stunned detachment of real shock, and Stan accepted it, while misunderstanding it.

“I don't think that any more. I was crazy—I told you that. But I knew Cherry left you, and that she was living with Orr, and I thought the worst. Please forgive me, Ben. I was relieved when the whole story came out.”

What, I managed to ask, was the whole story?

“It turns out that a big animal did it, some sort of wolf. The news of Orr's murder was on before eleven, but the news about the animal was on a couple of hours later. It's been on television all night. They thought they had shot it over near Twin Peaks, but it turned out to be just another dog. There were guns going off all over the city. People are really frightened. I had a talk radio program on after midnight, and that's all anyone wanted to talk about. They still think this animal, whatever it is, is at large somewhere.”

“You've been up all night?”

“A lot of people have. I know you aren't the news addict I am or you would have heard about it. Everyone in North America must know about it, except for you and a few Trappist monks somewhere.”

“I slept so well last night—”

“And I'll be the first to admit it. I'm afraid.”

He was about to ask about the fangs. I could feel it in my bones. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he still had the fear that I had done it. He was struggling to suppress it, and would hate to admit it. Some intuition, some queasy suspicion, was his guide.