"He's gonna get me killed," Lou muttered,
unfastening his seat belt. "Or maimed. It's official: you're seeing
me alive for the very last time because of him. Son of a bitch.
Excuse my language."
"No problem."
Lou looked over at Michele, took the keys out
of the ignition, and pocketed them.
"So you're leaving me with no way to escape
if the wolf comes back out?" she asked.
"I'm leaving you with no way to ditch us,
correct."
A gunshot rang out from inside the house. Lou
hurriedly opened the door and got out of the van. More gunshots
went off as he ran toward the front door. Oh, how this sucked. This
sucked so thoroughly. It was hard to even quantify the level of
suck involved here.
He pressed the button on the handle of his
switchblade, snapping out the blade, and then opened the front door
and stepped into the living room, hoping to see George stomping up
and down on a pile of werewolf mush. Instead, the living room was
empty.
A commotion in the hallway.
He ran over there and saw Ivan, fully
transformed, looming over George. Ivan's back was to Lou. Lou's
first instinct was to freeze, but he forced himself to ignore the
terror and rush at the creature. He slashed diagonally across
Ivan's back, left shoulder to the right side of his waist, cutting
deep.
The werewolf howled in pain.
Wow. The switchblade seemed to work better
than bullets.
Ivan spun around and Lou slashed him again,
cutting in the opposite direction. Ivan howled once more, clawing
at the long red gash, and then violently shoved Lou out of the way.
Lou smashed into a dent in the wall that he thought may have
already been made by George, but kept his footing as the werewolf
rushed past him, through the living room, and out the front
door.
"You hurt him!" George shouted. "You
actually hurt the bastard!"
"Are you okay?" Lou quickly reached out his
arm. George grabbed it and pulled himself up.
"Yeah, I'm fine! What's
important is that he's
not
! Let's go!"
"Where?"
"After him!" George hurried into the living
room, and then into the kitchen.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm getting the guns!"
George returned, holding both pistols. He
gave one to Lou and hurried for the door. "Come on!"
"But--"
"If he's weakened, maybe we can take him
down! He's a deranged psychopathic killer, Lou! We can't let him
escape!"
Lou followed George out of the house.
Psychopathic killer? Who had Ivan killed? Was the blood on George's
clothing not his own?
Michele slammed the door of the van shut.
Clearly she'd been trying to make a break for it, but retreated
back to the safety of the vehicle when Ivan came outside. The
werewolf ran past the van and down the sidewalk, moving with great
speed yet at a visibly slower rate than during the previous chase
and leaving a small trail of blood.
"In the van!" George shouted.
"Oh, for God's sake!" Lou threw up his arms
in protest, but still got in the van. He tossed the keys over
Michele to George, who started the engine and sped off.
"We're going to run him down," said George.
"We're going to squash him underneath the tires, and then we're
going to back up and do it again!"
Ivan ran along the sidewalk, just ahead.
George looked wild-eyed, almost deranged and psychopathic himself,
and Lou suddenly wondered if he'd survived his brief fight with the
werewolf only to perish in a van wreck. "Don't drive on the
sidewalk!"
"I'm not going to!" said George, although it
kind of looked like he was.
Ivan darted across to the other side of the
street, then onto somebody's yard and crossed between two houses.
George slammed on the brakes.
Off in the distance, Lou heard sirens. "Damn,
it took them long enough," he said. "Okay, George, it's time to get
the hell out of here."
"We need to catch him."
"No! Now, I'm usually happy
to let you take the lead, and I've let you give orders all day, but
we need to
leave
!
I'm
not
going to
prison for this, do you understand? If you want to keep chasing
him, fine, but you're doing it on foot."
George gave him a look of absolute fury,
which immediately softened. Now he almost looked like he was going
to cry. "Yeah, you're right. We'll go. The cops'll take him
down."
"You okay?"
"
Should
I be okay?"
Lou didn't say anything. They kept to
the speed limit to avoid attracting police attention, though of
course it was entirely possible that the cops were also seeking a
black van as a vehicle of interest in the disappearance of Michele.
Much to Lou's relief, they ended up making it out of the town and
back onto Tamiami Trail without even driving past one of the cops
or emergency vehicles.
George stared straight ahead
as he drove, looking more spooked than Lou had ever seen him. That
was only to be expected--Lou was more spooked than
he'd
ever been, too, and
most likely Michele felt the same way. But George's mental state
seemed to go beyond simply "Holy shit! That werewolf almost killed
me!"
"Do you need to go to the hospital?" Lou
asked.
George shook his head.
"We can. I mean, if you're that badly hurt. I
can drop you off at the door, or I can come in with you if you need
it, or whatever."
"Do you know what he did?" George asked.
"What?"
"He killed the lady who lived in that house.
Not just killed her--he made her talk about her family, and then he
slashed her up, like it was a great big joke. Remember that hit we
saw two years ago in Buffalo?"
"Yeah."
"That guy laughed and it was frickin'
chilling, but that was an 'I finally got revenge' laugh. You could
sort of understand where he was coming from. This was...it was just
like 'Look how much fun I'm having stabbing this woman.' It was
playtime."
"Jesus."
"He kept doing it after she
was dead. He sat there stabbing her corpse. And her
kid
was in the
house."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. He was hiding in the bedroom. This
little kid. He's already terrified, and he's going to walk into the
kitchen and find his mom in a great big pool of blood, stabbed to
death by a madman. I should have gotten him out of there. Should've
taken him to a neighbor or something. He's five, Lou. He shouldn't
see that. What's going to happen to him?"
"He should be okay, right? I mean, Ivan's
gone."
"I'm not talking about whether or not he gets
killed by a goddamn werewolf. I'm talking about him seeing his dead
mom!"
"Okay, okay, I dunno what to tell you,
George! It's heartbreaking, but we didn't have a choice. We
couldn't hang out there any more. Protecting the kid from
psychological trauma isn't worth going to prison, right?"
"I guess not."
"No, no, don't use the word 'guess.' This is
a definite. I'm not going to jail for a kid."
"Yeah, you're right."
"I am right, and we need to get this
perfectly clear: we're not heroes. If you wanna be sad about the
kid, I completely understand--it's disturbing as hell. But don't
sit there thinking that we should've taken him by the hand and led
him over to the nice old lady who lives next door. You got me?"
"I've got you."
"Good. I'm not a cold-hearted monster.
I'm gonna have some sleepless nights over this whole thing, but the
reason I'll get to have those sleepless nights is that I'm still
alive."
"I said I've got you! Quit hammering in the
goddamn point!"
"And now I think we should call Ricky."
"Aw, shit."
"Yeah."
"Who's Ricky?" Michele asked.
"If we're lucky, he's going to be the guy who
covers our butts." George took his cell phone out of his
pocket.
"You want me to do it?" Lou asked.
"Nah, I'll take the heat."
"Don't throw up on the phone."
"I won't."
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Difficult Confession
George took a deep breath, exhaled slowly in
an effort to calm himself, then called Ricky. He hoped that the
little prick didn't give him any crap, because George was
positively not in the mood for it.
Ricky answered. "George?"
"Yeah."
"Hey, I was half a second away from calling
you. Your dog problem is on the news. I thought you were just
yanking me, but I'm looking at it right now. Anyway, I just got off
a conference call with Bateman and Dewey. Intense stuff."
"Intense how?"
"Manic depressive intense. Anger and joy. I'm
glad I only have to deal with them over the phone. So here's the
deal: get off the road ASAP. Find someplace safe to hide out. Get
as far off the beaten path as you can. They weren't anticipating
any problems like this, so they're going to send out a bunch of
reinforcements and collect the furball from you."
"Oh."
"Your voice sounds funny."
"Yeah."
"Just relax. It's all going to be taken care
of. Your buddy Ricky makes your headaches go away."
"So, Ricky, what if there was another problem
that they hadn't anticipated?"
"What do you mean?"
George could almost feel the new ulcer
burning into his stomach lining. "What if we lost our cargo?"
"Oh, shit, George. Don't tell me that. Please
don't tell me that."
"I'm sorry."
"You lost him? For real?"
"Yeah."
"Oh my God. This is--you've got to be--how
the hell do you lose a guy in a cage?"
"He escaped! He changed into a werewolf and
escaped!"
There was a long silence, and then Ricky let
out a sigh of relief. "Ah, okay, you're just screwing with me. Good
one. I almost had a heart attack over that."
"I am absolutely dead serious! He transformed
into a wolfman and got out of the cage!" George didn't see any
reason to confess to his own starring role in the escape.
"
What
?"
"That's what happened!"
"Listen to me. I've got to report back
to Bateman and Dewey, and it's fine if you want to goof around with
me, I deserve it, but these men have no sense of humor and I need
to know the truth: do you still have Ivan with you?"
"No."
"Shit!"
"I'm sorry."
"Shit! Oh, shit! How could you lose him? You
idiot!"
George bristled. Whether he was an idiot or
not, he didn't appreciate being called one by a little punk like
Ricky. "He changed into a wolf, that's how I lost him! I wasn't
expecting it!"
"But everybody told you he was a
werewolf! I know for a frickin' fact that it came up in the
conversation!"
"I didn't believe it! You
didn't believe it either! Why the hell would I believe something
like that? If there's a real-life werewolf involved, that's a
concept you need to do a better job of selling! You need to give me
pictures or video or expert testimony! I thought he was just some
skinny guy in a cage! And it's not even the full moon! The full
moon was supposed to be a crucial element! I'm sorry things went
bad like this, but we were
not
given enough information to successfully carry out
this task!"
Ricky sounded as if he were about to
hyperventilate. "You have no idea how bad this is. They're going to
execute you!"
"Execute us? Nobody said this job had the
risk of us getting executed!"
"Every job has the risk of you getting
executed! You know that!"
"Why did they pick us to do it? If this was
so important, why didn't they get one of their own men?"
"Because you and Lou are good! And because it
was supposed to be an easy transport job!"
"Well, it wasn't!"
"Look, George, this is a nightmare scenario,
but I'll do everything I can to keep you guys alive. I'll stick out
my neck for you. Is there anything else I should know?"
George hesitated. "No."
"Why'd you hesitate?"
"Okay, the werewolf murdered somebody. A
lady."
"Aw, damn it."
"And when we were at the gas station,
we picked up this girl who was being attacked by the dogs. She 's
in the van with us now."
"Are you tugging my dick?"
"No."
"You brought a witness? Are you on
crack?"
"The dogs were going to kill her!"
"You didn't have to let them kill her, but
that doesn't mean you had to--you know what, I'm not going to have
this conversation. I'm going to get back on the phone with a couple
of very violent men, and get my ass chewed out while I try to
figure out how to unfuck this disaster. Did your werewolf buddy
bend the bars?"
"No."
"Then lock the girl in there."
"Are you kidding me?"
"Do I sound like I'm kidding? We're in
hardcore damage control mode. This is 'fingernails ripped out
before they drown you' bad. You need to put that girl in the cage,
hide out, and pray to God that we can clean up the loose ends. Now
I have to go."
George flinched as Ricky slammed down the
phone in his ear.
"Did that go as bad as it sounded?" Lou
asked.
"It did go poorly." George's head was
pounding. "It's not our fault, right? How could we know? Even if we
believed in the werewolf thing, it's not a full moon. We
specifically discussed the full moon issue when we picked him up,
right? I made that comment about not following the lunar cycles
that closely. It's not our fault, right?"