We hit the line of wolves. I felt the thump of bodies against the van. One wolf hit the roof and rolled over it, keening in pain.
We were through the battle line, but we weren’t free of the wolves. Those at the outer edge of the phalanx began to run with us. They were frighteningly fast, their powerful hind legs moving like pistons. They glided on all fours like sleek greyhounds, their yellow eyes never leaving us. For a moment my eyes locked with one of them, slower than the rest, its loping strides hampered by a hitch as it favored one paw—
“Shit!”
We had slowed hitting the line, and Pettis fought to control the van and get it back up to speed. For a moment it looked as though he had failed, and we went into a sideways skid. I felt the van tilt, and then suddenly Cowboy had it righted and we straightened. He slipped into third gear and we began to pull away from the pack.
One wolf, however, kept pace. In his eyes I thought I detected some of the raw hate I had confronted in the original beast that had invaded my home. It was logical that the meteor-borne wolves would be faster than the human victims they had added to their ranks.
The speedometer read close to seventy. Still the wolf kept pace. He was shearing closer, eyes tight on the van as if magnetized, tongue lolling in exertion.
“Come on,” Pettis urged the van. He glanced at me. “Get your shotgun and try for him.”
I pushed the curtains completely aside, flipped the window latch, and slid it open. I steadied the gun against the window frame, feeling like a frontiersman aiming out of a stagecoach. I sighted along the barrel into the burning yellow eyes of the wolf.
I pulled off one shot, then another. Both went wide.
“I told you you were a lousy shot,” Pettis shouted.
Holding the steering wheel tightly with one hand, he thrust the Uzi at his daughter in the seat next to him. “Try this.”
She rolled down her window and sprayed the wolf with fire. It broke stride, then recovered. She fired again, putting a bullet into its throat. It screamed, stumbled, then with a burst of resolve closed the distance between us and leapt at the side of the van, hitting the front door. It howled piercingly.
Amy screamed, sliding away from the window as the thing held onto the open window frame with its claws.
It began to pull itself into the car. I fumbled with my shotgun, trying desperately to load it. Amy had dropped the Uzi and screamed, pushing herself against her father as he fought to control the vehicle.
Calmly, as if he was taking out a mechanical pencil, Doc removed a pistol from his pocket, pointed it at the monster’s head, and pulled the trigger. The body fell out and away, tumbling to the desert where it lay unmoving.
Amy was hysterical. Pettis held her against him for a minute, then pushed her gently back into her seat. She stared at the blood on the door, then rolled the window up, shivering.
“Why did you wait so long?” I asked Doc, who was serenely returning his gun to his pocket.
“I thought you’d prove yourself a good shot after all,” he quipped, smiling slightly at the spill of shotgun shells in my lap and the still empty shotgun.
Pettis brought the van up to seventy-five. I saw the green glow of his watch.
“Six thirty-five, Doc.”
Doc paused before saying, “We might just make it.”
CHAPTER 17
Night Journey
Twenty minutes later, we began a long climb into the mountains. There was something strangely familiar about the road we were on. I would have known it immediately had I been able to associate our van’s flight with the pleasant and frequent afternoons I had spent as a tourist on just this trip. A few minutes later my realization was confirmed when we made a sharp turnoff beside a small sign that read gift shop and information center ahead, and the looming white outlines of two telescope domes rose tantalizingly into view before dropping behind the curve of the steeply climbing road.
“Mount Locke Observatory?” I asked.
Doc looked at me. “Of course.”
When I continued to look dumbly at him he said, “This is where Proctor will be.”
Pettis added, “If he’s still alive.”
Doc merely looked quietly past me through the window as we drove by the parking area, past the administration building, and the headlights illuminated the damage that had been done to the dome of the 102-inch telescope.
“Goddamn,” Pettis spat.
The dome’s observation slit stood open, as on any night, but its beautiful white coat, trimmed in orange, was scored with claw marks. One of the tall antennas mounted beside it had been ripped out; it stood out from the side of the white structure like a spent arrow.
“Not very pretty,” Doc offered.
Pettis grunted in reply.
Far below us, at the base of Mount Locke, we heard a wolf cry. Before long, the enemy Moon would make that lonely sound epidemic.
Pettis drove the van around the dome to a small cove beneath the telescope set into the rock wall of the mountain. There was a garage, its door opened wide. Three of the four berths contained wrecked automobiles. The fourth was empty and Pettis parked in it.
We unloaded, and Pettis then scattered broken glass and metal parts from the other three cars over the van.
“Will it work?” I asked.
“Stay out and see if you want,” Pettis answered testily.
Brandishing his Uzi in one hand, a flashlight in the other, Cowboy began to walk toward the main building containing offices. Doc stopped him. “That’s not where he’ll be.”
“It’s the only secure—”
“Come with me,” Doc answered.
The glass doors to the 102-inch dome had been smashed, the steel frames twisted. The elevator inside was open, but the control buttons had been ripped out of the wall and one of the doors caved in. The stairs were littered with debris—broken frames exhibiting photographs of comets and galaxies, scattered pamphlets preaching the wonders of astronomy and of the telescope the visitor was about to see.
Pettis went up first, the short snout of his gun raised in front of him. The stairs ended in a short landing. There was a sign that said 2nd floor.
“Keep going,” Doc urged.
We went up. “I don’t like this,” Pettis said. A moment later he motioned us to stop. “There was a sound downstairs,” he said, but we heard nothing farther. We went on.
When we reached the third floor Doc told us to stop.
Pettis regarded the door, which was pitted with dents. “I still don’t like this. There’s no way—”
“You’re not the only one good at surviving, Cowboy,” Doc replied. He pushed past us and opened the door.
Flashlights beaming ahead of us, we entered a cavernous room dominated by the monstrous tan-colored tube mounted in the center. It resembled a wide artillery gun whose short barrel might propel Jules Verne’s capsule from the Earth to the Moon. Beneath it, cables snaked across the floor over the huge disk-shaped base that rotated the telescope.
It was deathly quiet in the room. Our steps echoed with the same sound one hears when walking in an empty church.
A flash of red lit the top of the telescope tube.
Pettis was faster than I was. His machine gun targeted the light.
“Wait,” Doc called out sternly.
At the top of the tube there was a metallic scrabbling sound. In the lighter contrast of the night sky filling the open dome slit I saw the outline of a head.
“Goddamn,” a voice called down angrily. ‘Turn those white lights off!”
“Wyatt?” Doc shouted up, cupping his hands around his mouth.
“That you, Baines?” the voice answered in a milder tone. It held a drawl that was not altogether Texan. The red light went out, and then a white light went on, illuminating what looked like a square cage with a man in it. “Come on up.”