Dead But Not Forgotten (20 page)

“Which makes me wonder why you're even here, Gundersen. Upstanding prison guard and all that shit.”

“Yeah,” said Gundersen with a sigh. “Everybody makes mistakes. You know that much.”

“What was your mistake?”

Despite his wounds, Gundersen colored. “Doesn't matter,” he mumbled.

“Come on, man. Out with it.”

“You're going to laugh at me.”

“I probably am.”

Another long sigh. “Shit. Online poker.”

“What?”

“Ran up a tab. Big tab. Nine thousand. No way I could pay it off, and the interest was insane. I could have lost my house.”

Mustapha didn't laugh. “I can understand it. I did it to get me and Warren the hell out of Dodge. For good.”

“Warren—?”

Mustapha hesitated. He'd kept his sexual orientation under wraps while in prison. A gay man could quickly become everybody's punch in the joint, and he didn't want to do all his time on his knees. And he didn't really feel like baring his soul to Gundersen. On the other hand . . . fuck it. What could this man do with that knowledge? Not a goddamn thing.

“He's my partner,” he said.

Gundersen didn't even blink. “Cool. He a good guy?”

“The best.”

“Cool,” the guard said again. “Good to have something worth fighting for. Someone to go home to.”

“What about you?”

“Wife left me, took the kids. But I get them on weekends and every other Christmas. I wanted to get clear of my debts so I could . . . I don't know . . . so I could be the dad they think I am.”

They looked at each other, nodded at the way the world spins.

“Jackals,” Mustapha said again.

“Jackals. So I'm making my way to the end zone when half a dozen guys step out of the woods. Pretty nice ambush. I'm so into my own pain and still half in the bag from the drug and suddenly there they are. None of them that big, but there's six of them, you know?”

“Sure. What happened?”

“Exactly what you think happened. They shifted into a pack of jackals and went for me.”

“Damn, son. How'd you get away? Six to one, why ain't you dead?”

Gundersen gave him a small shrug. “Still a bear.”

“There's that.”

“Jackals versus bear. If I hadn't been hurt, there'd be six dead goddamn jackals and me on the phone to the feds.”

“But—?”

“But I
was
hurt and I
was
still whacked out on the drug. So now there's one jackal dead and five jackals who didn't have the kind of afternoon they wanted.”

Mustapha grinned. “I'd have paid to see that.”

“Somebody probably did. There were plenty of cameras in the trees. That's probably why they chose that spot. Lots of coverage. Must have looked great on TV.”

“Unless you were betting on the jackals.”

“Yeah, well, I can't claim to have won every fight I've been in, but I never went down without a fight.”

“Heard that.”

“So, I got out of there. I had enough strength left to run, and I guess maybe I scared them bad enough so they didn't follow. At least not right away. Getting here, though, that took some doing. I'd spotted this place earlier today. The cameras don't really have a good view here, and I kind of nudged the ones around here to give me a bigger blind spot. Not something so obvious they'd send someone out to fix. I needed to rest up. The jackals, though, they cowboyed up after a while and came hunting. The five survivors and a few more. Maybe eight in all.”

“That many?”

“Yeah. But there could be more.”

Mustapha grunted.

“What?” asked Gundersen.

“You know, man,” said Mustapha slowly, “maybe this is something more than a handful of these jackal jerkoffs messing with us out here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe this is their game. Maybe the deal is that they get the rest of us to beat the shit out of each other, kind of take the edge off. Maybe they film that, maybe they don't. Then they wait until one of us comes along—tired, weaker, maybe hurt—and then they attack. If you're a jackal—and let's face it, they're smaller, and one-on-one they're not worth a wet fart—and you're on camera taking down a werebear? Or a werewolf? Even if you have buddies helping you, that's status. That's going to get you laid by some jackal honey or some were groupie. If you're doing it on some kind of pay-per-view murder channel, it's going to get you laid
and
rich. Who knows how many werejackals there are around the world with cable access and a PayPal account.”

Gundersen thought about it. “Shit,” he said.

“That's what I think's happening. And I think you killing one of them isn't going to help ratings.” Then Mustapha corrected himself. “No. I'm wrong. It's going to jack up the betting 'cause this shit's real now. You killing one of them made this a real life-or-death show.”

“Balls.”

“Kind of sucks that you just made the game better for them. Worse for us.”

“Goddamn it.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, chewing on the facts. The night deepened around them and the moon was moving toward the mountains. Soon it would be pitch-black. Gundersen flexed his legs.

“Cuts are healing. Hurts like a bastard, but better all the time.”

“Faster than usual?”

“Much faster. I think I could walk again soon.”

“Same thing with me. Those slashes you gave me should have put me down for the night, or maybe down for good. But now . . . all they do is itch.”

“That's weird.”

“It's weird I don't mind,” said Mustapha. “Don't understand it, but I don't mind, that's for damn sure.”

“You think it'll last?”

“I don't know,” said Mustapha. “But I doubt it. It's a drug. It'll pass through us. I think we got this for now, but not for long. So we'd better use it.”

Gundersen nodded.

An owl inquired of whatever passed in the night.

After a moment, Gundersen said, “You think they used the drug on anyone else?”

Mustapha chewed his lip for a moment. “Maybe. That werepuma I fought. Much as I'd like to take credit for kicking his ass so easy, I think maybe he was whacked out. He fought sloppy and I took him out like he was nothing. But, shit, man, he was a puma.”

“So he was drugged?”

“Don't know, but I'd bet he was. Maybe there was some asshole sitting in the bushes with a blowgun.”

“Pretty sure they use rifles.”

“Not the point. I think they wanted to amp all of us weres up. Make us go crazy and beat the shit out of each other. Then maybe they'd hunt the winner.”

“That would be risky for them, though.”

“Would it? If we're all doped up and going ass-wild on each other, what are the odds any of us would be in perfect shape afterward? Shit, look at what we did to each other. If the jackals had caught up with me a few hours ago they'd have been able to bitch-slap me all over this forest. Maybe they already took down the puma and whoever else. The people watching TV wouldn't know the jackals were fighting a doped were. All they'd see is jackal versus puma, or jackal versus wolf. That'd be some big shit on a high-def TV.”

Gundersen ground his teeth. Then he cocked his head to one side and said, “If that's true, then I think that proves they don't know about the side effects. About what that stuff did to you and me. Amping up the primal versions of what we are.”

Mustapha nodded. “Yeah. You're right.”

“You think anyone else's figured it out? Any of the other poor dumb schmucks like us?”

Mustapha grinned. “Be kind of fun to find out.”

“Fun? How the hell would that be any fun?”

“How could it not be, man? You think any of them are going to be happy about what those jackal dickheads are doing to us?”

“No, but . . . it still leaves us six miles up shit creek. The jackals are holding all the cards right now.”

“Maybe not. Maybe they done stuck their dicks in a doorjamb.”

“How so?”

“Because I think I just figured out how to win this game.”

-12-

The jackals moved in a pack.

Gundersen had been wrong about the size of the pack. There were twelve of them. All average-sized men. Maybe on the smaller side of average. Five-seven, five-eight. One-sixty or thereabouts. Individually, nothing. In a pack?

Deadly.

Mustapha watched them from beneath a pile of pine boughs he'd torn down. They moved along a firebreak cut into the vastness of the big forest. One of them walking bold as balls down the center, the others split into two smaller subpacks that ranged forward just inside the forest walls. One pack, nicely placed for an ambush.

Twelve of them.

Mustapha cursed under his breath.

He was bone tired and bleary-eyed. It had been a long damn night. First the fight, then the ravine, then Gundersen. After that . . .

A long night.

Now the red eye of morning was opening. It was one of those mornings where the sun seemed to light a match to the streamers of clouds. The sky looked as if it were too hot to touch.

Mustapha took a deep breath, mouthed a silent promise to Warren, and stood up. The pine boughs fell away as he rose and the bloody sunlight painted him crimson from head to toe.

He took another breath, then bolted across the width of the firebreak, running as fast as two human legs could carry him. Even tired and recovering from wounds, Mustapha was fast.

“There's one!” came the cry from the jackal walking point. “He's making a break for it.”

Mustapha cut a look over his shoulder and saw them all freeze and turn their eyes his way. Twelve men. Naked, painted in camouflage military greasepaint to let them blend in with the forest.

Bet they think it looks great on TV,
thought Mustapha. He thought they looked like a pack of damn fools.

And then the men were gone.

The air around them shimmered as if heat were rising from the ground.

The men changed. The features of each man seemed to melt and run. Painted skin stretched over bones that were reshaping. One by one they dropped to all fours. Skin ruptured with a wet
glop
and bristled along their sides and shoulders and legs. Tails stretched out, ears elongated.

Mustapha staggered to a stop to watch, his chest heaving, body aching.

Twelve men had been there.

Now a pack of jackals faced him.

And with a chorus of mocking cries, they charged.

“Shit,” he breathed. He whirled and ran as fast as he could.

There was a winding trail that spurred off from the firebreak and snaked its way through the forest. Mustapha reached the trail one hundred fifty paces in front of the pack.

One hundred fifty paces was no distance at all.

The jackals were fast. Damn fast. In bursts they could run thirty-five to forty miles an hour, and they could run at ten miles per hour all damn day.

“Catch me if you can, assholes,” growled Mustapha as he crumpled to the ground, his bones grinding within him as he changed. His mouth opened to scream, but that sound changed as the shape of his throat and jaw, neck and teeth changed. The colors of the day changed, the visible spectrum broadening as man became werewolf and werewolf became
dire wolf
. It happened fast. So much faster than ever before. Maybe, if these drugs were going to pass through him, this was the fastest it would ever be for him. If so, what a rush. His hands became paws as they struck the ground.

The jackals were almost on him.

If he could have laughed, he would have as the wolf launched itself forward.

His speed increased. Forty-five miles an hour.

Fifty.

The jackals howled as they fought to catch up.

The wolf ran on, delighting in its own power, however temporary. Drawing on resources Mustapha could not even guess at. The dire wolf tore through the forest, miles burning away beneath its feet.

The jackals barked and cried as they struggled to keep their prey in sight. They knew—as the wolf knew—that if they caught up, their numbers would matter more than speed or purity of nature.

In the end it was always numbers.

The wolf ran on.

Above the forest, the rays of the sun slashed at the clouds, soaking the morning with blood.

Then the wolf began to slow.

As it ran up the side of a steep mountain, it slowed.

Its mass and speed warred against gravity, and lost. And it slowed.

Exhaustion that was too deep, too comprehensive for even its power dragged at it, and it slowed.

And the jackals caught up.

The wolf staggered into a clearing that was already splashed with blood. A man lay sprawled against a fallen log, his body crusted with dried gore.

The wolf finally stopped, sides heaving, spit flecking the corners of its mouth.

With howls of delight the jackals burst into the clearing and raced toward the two weak and spent victims.

High on a tree above them, a camera saw it all.

That should have been the first warning.

The camera should not have been there.

The camera belonged to a different tree in a different part of the woods.

It was here now, though. Watching. Recording. Transmitting. Everything.

The man.

The wolf.

The pack of jackals.

The microphone mounted on the camera could capture every yip and gasp and grunt and hunting cry as the jackals closed in for the kill.

Just as it captured—with excellent clarity—the words spoken by the man as he, despite apparent injuries, suddenly rose to his feet. The words were spoken in the split second before man became werebear and werebear became primal bear.

The words were spoken with deliberate clarity and projection. The man wanted each word recorded.

“Payback's a bitch,” he said. “Take 'em, boys.”