There was a rough parade ground on Jack's side, a long log building on Richard's. The log building looked like the bunkhouse in a Roy Rogers movie, but Richard guessed that it was a barracks. In fact, this whole place looked more familiar to Richard than anything he had seen so far in this weird world Jack had taken him into. He had seen places like it on the TV news. CIA-supported rebels training for takeovers of South and Central American countries trained in places like this. Only, the training camps were usually in Florida, and those weren't cubanos pouring out of the barracks - Richard didn't know what they were.
Some of them looked a bit like medieval paintings of devils and satyrs. Some looked like degenerate human beings - cave-people, almost. And one of the things lurching into the early-morning sunlight had scaly skin and nictitating eyelids . . . it looked to Richard Sloat like an alligator that was somehow walking upright. As he looked, the thing lifted its snout and uttered that cry he and Jack had heard earlier: Grooo-OOOOO! He just had time to see that most of these hellish creatures looked totally bewildered, and then Jack's Uzi split the world with thunder.
On Jack's side, roughly two dozen Wolfs had been doing callies on the parade ground. Like the guardhouse Wolf, most wore green fatigue pants, boots with cut-off toes, and bandoleer belts. Like the guard, they looked stupid, flatheaded, and essentially evil.
They had paused in the middle of a spastic set of jumping jacks to watch the train come roaring in, the gate and the unfortunate fellow who had been running laps at the wrong place and time plastered to the front. At Jack's cry they began to move, but by then they were too late.
Most of Morgan's carefully culled Wolf Brigade, hand-picked over a period of five years for their strength and brutality, their fear of and loyalty to Morgan, were wiped out in one spitting, raking burst of the machine-gun in Jack's hands. They went stumbling and reeling backward, chests blown open, heads bleeding. There were growls of bewildered anger and howls of pain . . . but not many. Most of them simply died.
Jack popped the clip, grabbed another one, slammed it in. On the left side of the parade ground, four of the Wolfs had escaped; in the center two more had dropped below the line of fire. Both of these had been wounded but now both were coming at him, long-nailed toes digging divots in the packed dust, faces sprouting hair, eyes flaring. As they ran at the engine, Jack saw fangs grow out of their mouths and push through fresh, wiry hair growing from their chins.
He pulled the trigger on the Uzi, now holding the hot barrel down only with an effort; the heavy recoil was trying to force the muzzle up. Both of the attacking Wolfs were thrown back so violently that they flipped through the air head-over-heels like acrobats. The other four Wolfs did not pause; they headed for the place where the gate had been two minutes before.
The assorted creatures which had spilled out of the bunkhouse-style barracks building seemed to be finally getting the idea that, although the newcomers were driving Morgan's train, they were a good deal less than friendly. There was no concentrated charge, but they began to move forward in a muttering clot. Richard laid the Uzi's barrel on the chest-high side of the engine cab and opened fire. The slugs tore them open, drove them backward. Two of the things which looked like goats dropped to hands and knees - or hooves - and scurried back inside. Richard saw three others spin and drop under the force of the slugs. A joy so savage that it made him feel faint swept through him.
Bullets also tore open the whitish-green belly of the alligator-thing, and a blackish fluid - ichor, not blood - began to pour out of it. It fell backward, but its tail seemed to cushion it. It sprang back up and leaped at Richard's side of the train. It uttered its rough, powerful cry again . . . and this time it seemed to Richard that there was something hideously feminine in that cry.
He pulled the trigger of the Uzi. Nothing happened. The clip was spent.
The alligator-thing ran with slow, clumsy, thudding determination. Its eyes sparkled with murderous fury . . . and intelligence. The vestiges of br**sts bounced on its scaly chest.
He bent, groped, without taking his eyes off the were-alligator, and found one of the grenades.
Seabrook Island, Richard thought dreamily. Jack calls this place the Territories, but it's really Seabrook Island, and there is no need to be afraid, really no need; this is all a dream and if that thing's scaly claws settle around my neck I will surely wake up, and even if it's not all a dream, Jack will save me somehow - I know he will, I know it, because over here Jack is some kind of a god.
He pulled the pin on the grenade, restrained the strong urge he felt to simply chuck it in a panicky frenzy, and lobbed it gently, underhand. 'Jack, get down!'
Jack dropped below the level of the engine cab's sides at once, without looking. Richard did, too, but not before he had seen an incredible, blackly comic thing: the alligator-creature had caught the grenade . . . and was trying to eat it.