Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (70 page)

Roy Lewis and Tom Mankowski first appeared in the J.A. Konrath novel
The List
, which ended in Springfield, Illinois. They have made cameos in several novels in the Jack Daniels series (
Cherry Bomb
,
Shaken
,
Stirred
). They are both Homicide Detectives that work in Chicago.

Dr. Frank Belgium first appeared in the J.A. Konrath novel
Origin
, working for Project Samhain in New Mexico. He’s a molecular biologist and has a speech dysfluency, where he sometimes repeats the same word three times.

Sara Randhurst first appeared in the Jack Kilborn novel
Trapped
, which took place on Rock Island in Lake Michigan. She’s a former guidance counselor.

Fran, Josh, and Duncan VanCamp first appeared in the Jack Kilborn novel
Afraid
, which took place in Safe Haven Wisconsin. They live in Hawaii with their pets, a basset hound named Woof and a capuchin monkey named Mathison. Josh and Fran live off a stipend. Duncan is fifteen years old, learning how to drive.

Moni Draper is a dancer and call girl who appeared in
Serial Killers Uncut
written by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch. She survived encounters with two serial killers, the Gingerbread Man (
Whiskey Sour
) and Luther Kite (
Stirred
).

About J.A. Konrath:

Joe Konrath has sold over two million books. He’s learned all he knows about writing from fellow scribes F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, and Iain Rob Wright. Joe has yet to read any of Jeff Strand’s self-described “thrillomedies”, but he’s pretty sure that some of them may be good, probably. You can read more about Joe’s work at
www.jakonrath.com
.

EBOOKS BY J.A. KONRATH

Jack Daniels Thrillers

Whiskey Sour

Bloody Mary

Rusty Nail

Dirty Martini

Fuzzy Navel

Cherry Bomb

Shaken

Stirred

Shot of Tequila

Banana Hammock

Jack Daniels Stories (collected stories)

Serial Killers Uncut (with Blake Crouch)

Suckers (with Jeff Strand)

Planter’s Punch (with Tom Schreck)

Floaters (with Henry Perez)

Truck Stop (short)

Flee (with Ann Voss Peterson)

Spree (with Ann Voss Peterson)

Three (with Ann Voss Peterson)

Babe on Board (short with Ann Voss Peterson)

With a Twist (short)

Street Music (short)

Other Books

Symbios (short,writing as Joe Kimball)

Timecaster (writing as Joe Kimball)

Timecaster Supersymettry (writing as Joe Kimball)

Wild Night is Calling (short with Ann Voss Peterson)

Shapeshifters Anonymous (short)

The Screaming (short)

Afraid (writing as Jack Kilborn)

Endurance (writing as Jack Kilborn)

Trapped (writing as Jack Kilborn)

Draculas (with Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson)

Origin

The List

Disturb

65 Proof (short story omnibus)

Crime Stories (collected stories)

Horror Stories (collected stories)

Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing

Be the Monkey (with Barry Eisler)

WOLF HUNT

By Jeff Strand

Wolf Hunt copyright 2010 by Jeff Strand

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

For more information about the author, visit
www.JeffStrand.com

CHAPTER ONE

Meet George and Lou

“Okay, it says here that you stole...” George Orton glanced down at his notebook, then flipped through a few pages. “Where did I write that down? Bear with me for a second...yeah, here it is. Sixty-three thousand dollars.” He whistled. “Wow. That’s a lot of skimming off the top.”

The old man’s eyes glistened. “I have a family. I have five grandkids. Please don’t hurt me.”

“Hurt you? For sixty-three thousand you should be begging me not to
kill
you, right?”

“Please don’t kill me,” said the old man, Douglas, in a whisper. “I’ll double whatever he’s paying you.”

“Hmmmm. Let me check my notes.” George glanced down at his notebook again. “Ah, here we go. ‘If he tries to bribe you, break an extra finger.’ Look at that, you just created more work for me.”

“Please--”

“Not to mention that you probably intended to pay that bribe out of the money you stole, so in a few hours I’d have men at my house wanting to break
my
thumbs. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of getting double pay for this job, but you’re asking me to put future earning potential at risk. That’s an unfair thing to ask of somebody you’ve just met.”

Douglas’ voice cracked. “There has to be a way we can work this out.”

“There’s really nothing to work out. Were we sent here to break your thumbs? Yes. Will your thumbs be broken when we leave? Yes indeed. Does it have to be the worst experience of your life? Not necessarily.”

“I’m sure that--”

“Discussion over. I want you to understand, Doug, that I’m no sadist. I’m here to do a job like any other working man. If it were up to me, there would be no snapping of bones in the next few minutes. But it’s not up to me. So now that we’ve established what is most definitely going to happen, let’s see if we can work together to make it go as smoothly as possible.”

Douglas looked over at George’s partner, Lou Flynn, as if for help. Lou shrugged and leaned back in the recliner, the briefcase of recovered cash resting in his lap. The old man had been skimming for the past few months but hadn’t spent a cent, which made things a lot easier for everybody.

Really, the old man should’ve felt lucky that it was George’s turn to handle the uncomfortable part of the business. Lou was pretty good with knives, but he cringed at the act of breaking bones, which meant that he didn’t always get it done on the first try. Yeah, Lou was doing an excellent job of presenting a casual front, pretending to be sitting there all cold and emotionless, but George knew that he was feeling sick to his stomach.

Apparently realizing that no help was forthcoming, Douglas looked back at George. A tear trickled down his cheek. “Yes, sir.”

“Good to hear. Do you have a cover story?”

“Excuse me?”

“For your family. You’re not going to tell them that a couple of hired thugs came over and broke your thumbs for stealing from a drug lord, are you?”

“I guess not.”

“Are you clumsy?”

“I...I can be.”

“So, theoretically, you could have tripped, put out your hands to break your fall, hit the floor, and snapped your thumbs, correct?”

“I’m not sure.”

George sighed. “Work with me, Doug. This is for your benefit. I’m trying to protect your marriage. You want your grandkids to know that you’re a scumbag sleazeball criminal? You’re way too old to start your life from scratch, so you need to commit to the story, make it believable. Let’s practice.”

“I fell...and, uh, hit the floor...”

“That’s total crap. You need conviction, and you also need a sheepish demeanor. Look me in the eye and start it off with something like ‘You’ll never believe this,’ and then hold up your thumbs. That’ll make it seem like you aren’t trying to hide anything. It’s kind of a ridiculous story, so your performance needs to be spot-on.”

Douglas cleared his throat. “You’ll never believe this...but I was walking through the living room...”

“Hold up your thumbs.”

Douglas held up his thumbs. “I was walking through the living room, and I tripped on a dog bone--”

“Chew toy sounds better.”

“A chew toy. I fell and tried to break my fall, and I hurt my thumbs.”

“Nobody’s going to punish the dog for making you trip, right?”

“No.”

“Good.” The Yorkshire terrier had been shut in the bedroom after George and Lou arrived. “Let’s hear it a few more times.”

The old man recited his story five more times, refining it upon George’s suggestions. “You’d buy that, wouldn’t you?” George asked Lou.

Lou shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“That’ll have to do.” Douglas seemed like a decent enough guy, and he’d clearly learned his lesson, so George didn’t want to see him lose his family over this whole mess. “So, Doug, are you ready?”

“Isn’t there a way out of this?”

“Oh, come on now, we were doing so well. Why would you want to backtrack like that? Give me your hand.”

Douglas hesitated for several seconds. “Which one?”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re doing them both.”

After a few more seconds of hesitation, Douglas held out his left hand. George took it gently in his own, then wrapped his right fist around Douglas’ thumb.

“Just close your eyes and breathe deeply. Think about something else. Do you like skiing?”

“No, sir.”

“Fishing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Imagine that you’re fishing. Picture yourself on the bank of a calm lake, sitting in your favorite lawn chair, watching a bobber float. You’ve got a cold beer in your hand. It tastes good, doesn’t it? Ahhhh, nothing better than a nice cold frosty beer. Do you taste it?”

Douglas’ shoulders trembled and he was on the verge of sobbing.

“Nod if you taste it.”

Douglas nodded. In one sudden motion, George jerked his thumb backwards until there was a loud
snap
.

The old man screamed in pain. George grabbed his other hand and quickly broke his right thumb as well. Douglas’ scream intensified, becoming so high-pitched that George might have almost found it amusing were this not a serious, professional matter.

George waited patiently for a couple of minutes until Douglas stopped shrieking and thrashing. “It’s all over now,” he said. “I know it hurt. But, hey, in another time and place they would’ve chopped your hand off for stealing a loaf of bread, so a pair of broken thumbs for sixty-three thousand dollars isn’t a bad deal. A better deal if you’d actually got to
keep
the money, but you know what I mean. So are you cool with your cover story?”

Douglas nodded and wept.

“Technically, I’m supposed to break another finger for your attempt to bribe me, but I like you and I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen. You should feel lucky--I’m not always this nice. We won’t tell if you don’t. We’ll get out of your hair now. Please don’t take any more drug money that doesn’t belong to you, okay?”

* * *

“Jeez, I hate that sound,” said Lou as they pulled out of Douglas’ driveway. “I’d almost rather have his fingers get cut off, know what I mean?”

“I don’t think he’d agree with you.”

Lou shivered. “It’s just disturbing.”

“I thought he took it pretty well.”

“They usually do, when it’s your turn. Maybe we should stick with that dynamic. I kinda like being the quiet creepy one.”

George chuckled. “Nice dynamic. You supervise and I do the manual labor. Screw that.”

“I’m not saying I won’t
ever
rough them up. You’re just a better communicator is all.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I hate this car.”

“Me too.” George and Lou were both big guys, and the car wasn’t designed for big guys. George stood six-five, and though he wasn’t quite the all-muscle physical specimen at age forty-three that he’d been at age twenty, he was still in fine shape. Lou stood an inch taller and had let himself go a little bit, but even with a potbelly, he was one intimidating son of a bitch.

They both had black hair. George wore a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, while Lou favored a full beard, which he was in the process of re-growing out like a mountain man, since he’d reluctantly trimmed it before a classy job a couple of weeks ago. Normally they wore black suits, but it was too damn hot and muggy down here in Florida, and so they wore only their white dress shirts. Red tie for George, no tie for Lou, sweat stains for both.

George’s cell phone rang. “It’s Ricky,” he said.

“Tell that scrawny punk to get us a bigger goddamn car next time.”

George pressed the “talk” button and put the phone to his ear. “Get us a bigger goddamn car next time, scrawny punk.”

“I love you too, George,” said Ricky. He made a kissy sound into the phone. “So did the old guy cry like a baby?”

“There were tears.”

“Oh, yeah, I bet there were, I bet there were. Did you leave his fingers at a freakish angle?”

“Why’d you call, Ricky?”

“I pulled some strings and got you a top-notch assignment.” 

In Ricky-speak, that translated to
I’ve got a crap job that nobody else wants.
“What is it?”

“I can’t talk about it over the phone. Let’s just say that I hope you’ve got some silver bullets handy.”

“What are we doing, killing a werewolf?”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Look, George, pretend to be surprised, okay? I wasn’t supposed to give the werewolf part away.”

“You’re serious? Some whack-nut really wants us to kill a werewolf?”

“What werewolf?” Lou asked. George waved at him to shut up.

“It’s an easy job,” Ricky insisted. “There ain’t no such thing as werewolves, I know you know that, but this guy Bateman, he swears he’s got one in captivity, and he needs you to drive it up to this other guy Dewey.”

“Dewey. Like the decimal system?”

“Yeah. And you should make that joke when you see him. Guys in his position, they get a real big kick out of people making fun of their names.”