* * *
A patient hopped past her, one leg in a cast, crutch forgotten somewhere. He was terrified. Heather counterintuitively ran toward the danger. An older woman in a bathrobe was right behind the hopper. She screamed something incoherent, hobbled back into her room, and slammed the heavy door. Heather rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. She bit back a cry.
It was a bloodbath.
The hallway had been painted red. She’d only been gone for a few seconds. It looked like the scene of an industrial accident. Is that one body? Two? She wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t really tell now. There was just a jumbled mass of limbs in a pile. Unconsciously she started walking backward, toward safety.
Someone screamed inside Buckley’s room.
Her boot clicked on the linoleum, and Heather realized that she’d been retreating. She stopped. Despite her best judgment, all reason, and logic, Heather knew her job, and nobody had ever accused her of not doing her job. “Crap, crap, crap.” Drawing her Beretta, she flicked the safety off and raised it in both shaking hands, walking toward Buckley’s room.
Temple flopped into the hallway, slipping onto his hands and knees, scrambling madly through the blood. Shirt rent open, he was bleeding from several deep lacerations. “Help me!” He had made it a few feet toward her when a black mass of hair bounded into the hall at his heels. It was unbelievably fast, and it certainly wasn’t human. The animal grabbed Temple by the foot and in one smooth motion dragged him back into Buckley’s room. Her fellow deputy disappeared, a look of shocked disbelief on his face.
There was a drag trail through the blood. It had happened so quickly that Heather hadn’t even fired a shot. What was that? “Buckley?” Temple bellowed in agony. Heather forced herself forward. “Hang on, Chase! I’m coming!”
Then the beast moved back into the hall. It came so quickly that it just seemed to materialize. It saw her, and there was no hesitation. Growling, it charged on all fours. Heather yanked the trigger repeatedly. It covered the distance in a split second. The creature leapt high. There was no time to dodge. She shut her eyes before impact.
There was a bone-jarring bang, but the expected hit never arrived.
Heather opened her eyes. The creature was sliding down the floor away from her, wearing what she could have sworn was a too-human look of surprise on its awful canine face.
A man in a leather jacket had come out of nowhere and was standing protectively in front of her. He was shaking his right hand loose as if he’d just struck something hard. “Stay behind me.”
“Did you…Did you just punch that thing?”
“Seemed like the thing to do,” the stranger grinned, winked, and that’s when she recognized the annoying Southerner from the traffic stop earlier. “Any chance I can get you to rip up that ticket now?”
The animal came off the floor, roaring, and charged. “Look out!”
Nonchalant, the man turned back as a big stainless revolver appeared in his hand. He fired so quickly that the shots sounded like a continuous crackle. Every bullet struck home, right into the animal’s head. Blood and fur splattered the walls. It collapsed, limp, forward momentum sliding it onward. The man opened the cylinder of his revolver, punched out the spent casings, and slammed in a bundle of six more so fast that his gun was reloaded by the time the creature reached them. He casually raised one boot and put it down on the body, stopping it in place.
“How? What? How?” Heather stammered. The thing under the stranger’s boot was bizarre, unnatural. One of its claws had come to a stop only inches from her foot. “Ack!” She kicked the hand aside.
Taking his time, he put one last shot right between the animal’s eyes. Heather flinched. “Silver bullets,” he explained. He stuck his gun back into his holster, then took a cigarette out of his coat and put it in his mouth. “Your regular ones won’t do shit to a werewolf. I’ll give you a B for effort, though.”
Heather was stunned. The fearless weirdo showed up, punched a giant animal down the hall, shot the hell out of it, and now he was talking about werewolves. “Huh?”
“Grading on a curve, obviously. I’ve got to reserve the A for this kid that works for me, killed a werewolf with his bare hands one time. Got another with a pool cue.”
“Werewolf?”
“Yup. That there’s one dead-ass werewolf,” he explained, gesturing at the body. A Zippo appeared in his other hand, and he lit up. He took a long drag then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Name’s Earl. Earl Harbinger.”
She was still staring at the animal. “Uh. Yeah.”
The new guy was completely calm, not even bothered that there were fresh brains on his boot. “That would normally be the part where you tell me your name, Deputy…”
“Kerkonen.” Could that thing really be Joe Buckley? Harbinger had called it a werewolf, but that was just absurd.
“Talkative, ain’t ya? Well, Deputy Kerkonen. Congratulations. You just survived a monster attack. Welcome to big-boy town. Now, how about we go see if there are any other survivors?”
“Temple!” She stepped over the animal’s arm. Heather refused to think of it as a werewolf or Joe Buckley. She couldn’t think of that thing as Buckley without endangering her sanity. “There were others in that room.”
“Let’s go then,” he said, removing his boot from the animal.
She took one last look at the dead body. It had been mere inches from pouncing on her. “Thank you,” Heather stammered as she realized just how close she’d come to being torn apart. Pistol in hand, she started for Buckley’s room.
The two of them had only gone a few feet when the beast rose up behind them like a great black shadow and sunk its fangs into Heather’s shoulder.
* * *
Deputy Kerkonen looked at Earl with an expression of complete surprise as the teeth pierced her. The disbelief turned into realization, and she cried out as the pain hit. The werewolf lifted her off the floor, shook her, then hurled her down the hall. The cop hit hard and went skidding away. The werewolf turned toward Earl, bloody jaws wide.
Earl reacted and slammed his fist into the werewolf’s snout. Bones cracked. Teeth went flying. He slugged the werewolf again with a blow that would have surely killed any human, and then, as the werewolf staggered back, Earl kicked it in the stomach hard enough to knock the werewolf through a heavy wooden door and into the room beyond.
Impossible. He’d put multiple silver bullets into the new werewolf’s skull. There was absolutely no way that it could be alive. None. All werewolves were vulnerable to silver. Earl followed it into the room. There was an old lady on the bed, watching the creature on her floor in surprise. She took the oxygen mask away from her face to point and screech incoherently about wild animals waking her up.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Earl said politely. The new werewolf was rising. Earl slammed his boot into the back of its head and put it back down, holding it there. He drew his Smith, then paused. “Would you kindly cover your ears?” He waited for the old lady to comply. Then he pumped the remaining five rounds into the werewolf’s head. It made a ghastly mess on the floor. The patient began mashing her button to summon a nurse. “I don’t think anybody’s coming, ma’am.”
“What kind of lousy hospital is this?” she wheezed. Grumbling, she got out of bed, grabbed a cane, and headed for the door.
As the patient slowly fled the room, Earl watched the bullet wounds pull themselves closed. He took a moon-clip from his belt and checked it before reloading. Sure enough, it was standard MHI ammo; a silver ball sealed into a regular jacketed lead hollow point. The werewolf should be assuming room temperature, not twitching its way back up to ruin his day. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
The regeneration time was remarkable, faster this time than the first go around, almost like it was adapting on the spot. It was already rising. Strong, too…Earl was shoved back as the muscled beast forced itself from the floor.
Claws lashed out. Earl barely moved aside as they cleaved the air where his head had been. Too fast. Jaws flashed, and Earl calmly fed the werewolf his right arm. Teeth clamped down on his jacket and shook him from side to side. He could feel the intense pressure through the leather, but hardly anything on Earth could pierce minotaur hide. He kept a small, Entrek fixed-blade knife at the small of his back for just this sort of occasion. Calmly, Earl pulled the blade free with his left hand and drove it between the werewolf’s ribs.
The werewolf let go, surprised. Earl moved in a blur, slashing the blade across his enemy’s throat. The werewolf stumbled, gurgling, brain temporarily deprived of air, but Earl was already doing the math. The kid was too fast, too strong, and already healing. Earl wouldn’t be able to outfight him in human form, and it was too dangerous to invite a change with all these bystanders around. Unexpectedly, he had a real fight on his hands, and this kid needed to be put down before he hurt anyone else. The bigger weapons were in the truck, and he hadn’t thought to stick a hand grenade in his coat before dinner.
Then Earl spied the abandoned oxygen bottle and had an idea. As his daddy, Bubba Shackleford, the greatest Monster Hunter who’d ever lived, had always taught: when all else fails, kill it with fire.