Full Moonster Page 2

  “There,” she whispered breathlessly, as she pushed the sofa in front of the doorway. “That moose ought to slack the appetite of anything this side of a lumberjack."

  Hopefully, the woman added privately. If not, she had a whole hickory smoked hog in the shed that was almost as big as the wolf itself! Odd noises came from the kitchen and she peeked in through a crack of the slats to see.

  Standing in the middle of the floor, her patient dominated the appliance filled room. Towering some seven feet tall, the beast was much more human in its manner and stance than before. Must have disguised itself as a common wolf as a purely defensive measure, she deduced. A monster? Me? Sorry, mate. I'm just a timber wolf. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

  Padding to the table, the beast picked up the warm red slab of moose and sniffed at it appreciatively. Hesitantly, it gave the morsel an inquisitive lick. An expression of disgust crossed its bestial features and with a snarl he threw the massive roast away. A meaty cannonball, the haunch plowed aside pots and pans to careen off the spice rack and smash through the curtained window. In a shower of glass, the moose returned to its natural habitat and disappeared into the night.

  Empty hands clutching at air, Dr. Abernathy backed from the door, cold terror chilling her bones. No. The wolf didn't want just any food. An old kill held no interest. It wanted fresh meat. Human meat! It wanted her. Alive.

  A massive shadow darkened the louvered doors.

  "Bon appetite, lupin!" Dr. Abernathy screamed, drawing the Webley .44 and emptying the handgun at the dimly seen figure. In spite of her fear, the veterinarian aimed high, trying to frighten the creature. Chunks of wood the size of saucers were blasted out of the slats, and the animal on the other side howled in fury.

  But as the hopeful woman holstered the revolver, a huge paw rammed into one of the holes, sharp talons clawing at the aged hardwood as if it was cardboard. When the cavity was large enough, the beast looked directly at the old woman, and it grinned.

  Self-preservation overwhelming her natural reticence, Abernathy moved fast to grab the Remington twin-barrel shotgun off the wall rack and, without bothering to see if it was loaded, rammed both of the barrels into the wolf's face and pulled the two triggers.

  The double explosion hurtled the man-beast from the ruined door. Blindly, the animal staggered about screaming and clawing at its face. But as the smoke of the discharge cleared, Abernathy saw the werewolf shake its head and the lead pellets scattered outward as if the beast was merely shucking water off fur.

  Merde! Desperate, the oldster lowered the shotgun and glanced about the room. Damn few weapons here. Never needed them before. Pistol empty, shotgun same, no time to load the 30.06 rifle. Used the dynamite for fishing. Having little choice, the elderly woman ran out the front door. It latched shut behind her.

  In the nighttime cold, without a coat, her choices were even less clear. Escape on foot? Fat chance. Her horse, Tramp, was in the corral. No good. She had never learned to ride without a saddle. Yes, the jeep! But no, the keys were on the hearth inside. Damn! Damn! Damn!

  The full moon clearly illuminated the yard around her cabin with a silvery-blue light, and she cursed the orb in acidic French using a few choice phrases learned from a U.S. Marine who had accidentally cut off his hand with a chainsaw.

  The woodshed!

  Frosty ground crunching beneath her shoes, Dr. Abernathy hurried across the few meters separating the cabin and the shed. Once inside, she swung the single thick door shut and dropped the big locking bar into place. A cord of split wood was neatly stacked along a wall while a few dozen smoked meats hung from the ceiling like so many condemned prisoners. The shed was a hundred years old, built to serve as an ice house in summer and to be a last refuge for settlers to hide in from attacking Indians, British troops and American Old West desperadoes. The walls were solid stone a good meter thick and the door was a seamless expanse of solid oak with four iron hinges. Although werewolves had not been in the original design specifications, it would serve. Then again, maybe they had been. How long had these things been around? Since prehistoric times? Which came first, the were or the wolf?

  A bellowing roar of rage thundered in the night, closely followed by the sound of screeching metal, and the woman knew the beast was loose.

  Praying silently, the vet backed into a corner, pushing her way through the dangling assortment of salt haunches, homemade sausage and dried birds. She took a position by Big Boy, her prize dead hog. Wolves had great vision, but they tracked by scent. With any luck, lost amidst the dozens of smoked meats, her bodily odors would be masked. However, it was a feeble hope.

  Even through the thick stonewalls, Abernathy could faintly discern the destruction of her jeep and the screaming death of Tramp. A tear welled in her eye, and she used a sleeve to wipe it away. Unable to find her, the wolf was going on a rampage of destruction. Oh God, what had she unleashed upon herself? This was a nightmare! It seemed obvious now that the werewolf must have fallen from that passing jetliner, and only the granite ledge had stopped it from forming an impact crater in the soil. If not, then the people who shot the beast would still be in pursuit. They had silver bullets! She only had the useless slug. Oh Lord, oh God, what could an old woman with arthritis do against a creature that took a 20,000 foot drop onto solid rock and was merely stunned?

  Until tonight, Joanne Abernathy had never believed any of the wild stories told around the campfires. Monsters? Creatures of the night? Ridiculous! But now she desperately racked her memory for any detail that would help her in this fight for life.

  Ghostly images of movie monsters filled her mind and Abernathy fought to rid herself of the nonsense and concentrate on what she had heard. Werewolves were ... what? People cursed by gypsies, or victims bitten by a werewolf? They only appeared during a full moon. Well, the moon was definitely full. Wolfbane! They couldn't stand wolfbane! Yes, but what was it? An herb? A root? A long drawn howl sounded from outside. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia was in the kitchen and that was no longer a proper environment for scholarly pursuits into toxic botany.

  Resting her cheek against the cold stone, Dr. Abernathy let the rich flavored scent of wood and meat fill her lungs like a healing potion. Scenes of her youth flowed into her mind, but Abernathy forced herself to concentrate on the present. She wasn't dead yet. Think, Joanne, think. Wait a minute, silver killed werewolves! Or was it only silver bullets? The vet shook her head. That didn't matter. She certainly had no silver bullets, and the slug in her pocket was too distorted to be used without being melted and reformed. Okay, any silver in the house? Silver knives? Goblets? Hell and damnation, this was a Yukon cabin, not the Montreal Hilton!

  Wait! Digging into her pants pockets the vet found a fistful of change. Most of it dime and quarters! Those were made of silver ... no! Furious, she dashed change to the ground and tromped on the coins. Darn money was only a copper disk with a thin electroplating of silver! Utterly useless.

  Suddenly a throaty laugh came from the door of the shed, and Dr. Abernathy knew the beast had found her.

  The entire cabin shuddered from the impact of something on the other side of the barred portal, the cord of wood toppled over and the hanging meat danced a ghastly jig. In heart-pounding fear, Abernathy glanced about the enclosed structure, but there was no place to run or hide. She was trapped. This was it. Tonight was her final day. Here was where she'd die. That foul beast would be the last thing she saw before death.

  A great calm came upon the elderly woman, similar to the emotionless elation she experienced when performing a delicate operation. So what would be the final act of Dr. Joanne Gertrude Abernathy upon this Earth? Cowering submission? Hysterics? Suicide?

  Several minutes later, the oak beam barring the door finally cracked and the wolf stooped over to enter the shed. Appended on a length of chain, the hundred kilos of hickory smoke, sugar cured, Big Boy hog slammed the beast in the face. Roaring in annoyance, the werewolf ripped the giant hog off the steel support hook and
tossed the carcass into the litter filled yard. Behind the werewolf, the cabin was on fire.

  The dancing flames cast eerie shadows inside the darkened shed, but the wolf could still clearly see the old woman standing brazen. She held a machine thing in her hands.

  “Okay, lupin, you want me?” Dr. Abernathy snarled. “Then come and get me!” With a snarl, she tore a piece off the machine.

  The bold defiance puzzled the man-beast for a second, but as the elderly female did not hold the booming-device-which-killed, the wolf steadily advanced.

  Yanking on the starter cord again, Abernathy got the chainsaw to come to deadly life. In a stuttering roar, the linked array of carbide-steel teeth moved in a thundering blur of speed, great billowing clouds of exhaust spewing from the rusty side-mounted muffler.

  Brushing aside the brandished log-cutter, the wolf racked a paw at the woman's throat, but Dr. Abernathy raised an arm to block. The claws shredded cloth and flesh. Blood sprayed everywhere. Writhing in agony, Abernathy went sprawling upon the floor, trembling fingers trying to staunch the flow of blood from her slashed forearm.

  The drooling beast came closer. Then from underneath, the old vet swung the small hand axe used to split kindling. The attack was so pitiful, the werewolf paused in astonishment. It was only for a single moment that he saw the tiny silver slug neatly impaled on the edge of the axe blade.

  This was an impossible gambit and Dr. Abernathy's very last chance for life. A wild gamble on a possible flaw in the gypsy legend. A werewolf could only be killed by a silver bullet, that was stated plain and simple. No if, ands, or buts. Yet nowhere did it say the monster had to get shot.

  Guided by the expert knowledge of a trained veterinarian, the axe blade sank into the chest of the beast, directly between the fifth and sixth rib, missing the sternum entirely and driving the misshapen silver slug deep into the animal's heart.

  Galvanized into immobility, the wolf screamed in an amazingly human voice, and its eyes rolled into its head until only the white showed. Dropping to its knees, black blood gushing in horrid amounts, the entire body began to shake.

  In reverse motion, the full coat of hair withdrew into bare pink skin. The snout retracted and teeth blunted. The ears moved down the side of the changing skull, talons became fingernails. The Z-style joint of the lower canine legs twisted around to become a single knee. The body shortened, a face formed. And in mere seconds there lay on the floor of the shed a naked dead man with an axe in his chest.

  Finished wrapping her plaid shirt around the gash in her arm, Dr. Abernathy climbed shakily to her feet and glared down at the would-be killer. Sacre bleu, it had actually worked. Momentarily, she wondered who he was and what his story had been. But Joanne Abernathy realized she would never know. He was dead and that meant she was safe. Safe!

  Then the elderly woman frowned. Of course, she had the minor problem of a nude corpse on her hands and a home that resembled Quebec after the riots. But those were minor matters compared to the singular implications of her wound.

  Deep as the slash was, the blood was slowing in an unnatural manner, which highly raised her suspicions. If the legends held true, and they had so far, then a bite from a werewolf made you one as well. But did getting clawed also result in the cursed transformation? Even if you killed the first werewolf? Was it an event chain that could be broken, or a series of isolated events each alone and independent? Dr. Abernathy didn't know, and wouldn't. Not until the next full moon.

  Exiting the bloody shed, the exhausted woman stumbled into the yard and sat on Big Boy. The possibilities were endless and frightening. Every month to lose her humanity and become a non-sentient animal. To roam the woods and back alleys of towns searching for helpless people to slaughter. Then to eat.

  Calmly watching her home burn to the ground, Abernathy came to a decision. No. It would never happen. She would not let it happen. She would wrap herself in chains every month. Get drunk. Use illegal narcotics to stupefy herself. Anything! But she would not kill again. Ever.

  Facing the starry sky, Joanne Abernathy made a solemn vow. Doomed as an immortal slayer, a cannibal beast, the retired veterinarian would not rest until she found a cure for this artificial disease of lycanthropy. She would find it. Even if she had to move Heaven and Earth to do so!

  Or even Hell.

  INFORMATION

  CLICK “Good evening and here now the news. Today, the president announced that..."

  TOPSECRETTOPSECRETOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOP SECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRE TTO PSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECR ETT OPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRET

  SECURITY LEVEL TEN

  ULTRA-RED ALERT

  EMERGENCY SITUATION

  PRIORITY ONE

  ATTENTION ALL BUREAU 13 PERSONNEL:

  Yesterday, at 14:43 Eastern Standard Time, there occurred somewhere in the continental United States an unprecedented disturbance in our plane of existence. Momentarily, a rift formed between the ethereal dimension and our own universe, a vibrating portal which released a wild energy burst of staggering proportions. In ordinary language: 12 hours ago somebody set off the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

  Instantly, every telepath in North American was rendered unconscious and/or dead from the secondary psionic shock waves produced from the tremendous pulse of raw power. Plus, there's not a single functioning crystal ball remaining from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Circle. Temporarily, the Bureau has been made blind and deaf; sans such crude electromagnetic communications as this printed message overriding your local television broadcast. A totally unacceptable situation. Who knows what the hostile supernaturals of our country may be doing in this brief interim of unrestricted freedom? The mind boggles. While our physicians and mages try to resuscitate the comatose telepaths, replacement crystal balls are being flown in from around the world.

  However, TechServ theorizes that the ethereal radiation has already dropped beneath detectable levels, and since there should be no physical destruction from the blast, it will be extremely difficult for us to find the epicenter of the disturbance. Yet pinpoint it we must. And fast. Before it occurs again with more permanent results.

  ORDERS: As of this moment, all vacations and sick leaves are hereby canceled. Students have graduated early from our Bangor, Maine training academy. Retired and/or dead agents have been recalled to active duty. Every field team and solo agent is directed to fully investigate any unusual occurrence, no matter how minor or seemingly inconsequential, even if it does not blatantly involve the supernatural. Especially any bloody crimes of violent murder involving cannibalism. Occult power such as this usually requires a human sacrifice. Maybe several.

  Okay, people. We're dealing with the totally unknown here, even more so than usual, so get moving, stay hard, be alert.

  And pray.

  Horace Gordon

  Division Chief, Bureau 13

  TOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRET ETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRET ETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRET ETTOP ... Slam!

  “Lucy! I'm home! Ai carumba! What have you done to your hair?"

  "Waa ...!"

  ACTIVATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  We headed for death at sixty miles per hour. Had to. That was the speed limit.

  As I checked the loads in both of my .357 Magnums, the world moved silently past the bulletproof windows. Swiftly, our RV maneuvered through the thinning traffic of the West Virginia Highway, its sixteen-cylinder engine oblivious to the mountainous terrain we had to overcome. Although deemed a major transportation route by the locals, I considered I-65 little more than a roller coaster ride cast in stone. Just over the edge of the berm was an astonishingly deep ravine filled with white-water rapids, jagged boulders and somber metallic signs saying ‘please do not feed the grizzly bears your hand'.

  It sounded like a joke. But in truth, the doctors of West Virginia were the best trained physicians in the world on the tedious microsurgery involved in re-attaching severed limbs.

  Trying to ap
pear casual, I surreptitiously raised the Armorlite window. Just in case we encountered any hairy hitchhikers with bad attitudes and no respect for the law.

  “Everybody ready?” I asked, angling the 38-foot van off the main road onto a paved secondary route. Traffic disappeared. As we bumped over potholes and dead raccoons, a ragged chorus from the aft passenger section of the huge RV answered my question.

  “Of course we're prepared, dear.” Jessica Alvarez smiled.

  “Bonsai, Ed,” Mindy Jennings added.

  “Rock-n-roll, chief,” George Renault grunted positively.

  “Anti-no, kemo sabe,” Raul Horta intoned, arms crossed mysteriously.

  “Da, comrade Alvarez,” Katrina Sommers said in her deep sultry Russian voice.

  “Hssss...."

  Taking a fast peek in the rear view mirror, I could see that my team was relaxed, alert and heavily armed. That last response had been from Amigo, the Gila lizard who traveled with us as a pet and bodyguard. Currently, he was lying on the carpeted floor, sunning his belly and digesting a truly impressive meal of crickets. Only two feet long, with a pebbled hide the color of a rainbow, the softly burping desert reptile didn't appear very impressive. Yet Amigo was more loyal than a dog, faster than a fish, smarter than an elected official and deadlier than a grenade in your shorts. If the tiny lizard ever had to battle a pack of lions, it should be even money on the outcome. Should be. But wasn't. Amigo didn't fight fair.

  Satisfied with our status, I returned my attention to the road. Hadleyville, here we come.

  * * * *

  Despite the ominous warning received on our television from the big boss, Horace Gordon himself, my team was still in good spirits. This morning we had neatly neutralized a haunted prison in Pittsburgh by reenacting the execution of The Evil Doctor Salvatore, ending his irate spirit's ten-year-long rampage of death and destruction. But this time, just as my team was about to hang me disguised as the deceased physician, there was a last minute stay from the governor. The ghost was so overcome with elation that he lost his tenuous hold on this plane of reality and faded away forever. Ha! Child's play. Leaving the execution cell, we blessed the prison, dynamited the building and went for lunch.