From the distance, it had seemed like a wolf, but now as he came closer, it looked more like a bobcat, smaller, with long hind legs and a face that wasn't pointed but flat. The fur was draped around it more than growing on it. The fur was ragged, torn in places, and some sections of the skin were bare. There wasn't any tail, and coming closer, Wheeler was frowning, thinking that this was his imagination, trying hard to calm himself. But then he stopped and saw the feet and hands and nose, and what he felt was like a replay of that instant twenty-three years ago. God, he'd shot somebody! Not a man! A boy! The kid looked maybe twelve. But why was this kid dressed in ragged pelts the way he was? Had children from the town come out to scare the cattle? Had some campers…? But Wheeler knew the answer even as he asked those useless questions. That long hair below the shoulders. Christ, he'd shot another hippie.
He pivoted, scowling around him. Had another bunch come through here? Was that first bunch still up in the mountains? He had heard that they had left, but if they hadn't, this might be one of their kids. That big hole in its back from where the bullet had burst out. That motionless, silent body. He was nudging at it with his boot, but nothing happened. He breathed, shaking. How could he explain this? First one, now another, and the town would act the way it had the first time. No one would believe him when he said it was an accident. They'd send him back to prison, and he knew he couldn't bear that. Not that guard again. He couldn't stand it. Just because these god-damned hippies came down here to take things out on him. He started digging with his rifle butt, but all he did was chip the wood because the ground out here was hard, and he needed tools, a pick and shovel. Quick before somebody found this. He stumbled from the figure, bumping against the tree, and lurching toward his ranchhouse. Then he started running. Have to hurry, get that pick and shovel, make the hole deep, make sure scavengers don't dig up the body, sprinkle it with quicklime. He ran harder. His fear had changed to a frenzy, his speed now almost manic as he saw the ranchhouse in the distance while, his stomach churning, he kept charging toward it.
PART FIVE. The Lake
ONE
Slaughter stood before the glass partition, numbed by what he saw. Cody who had found the boy inside the mansion last night and been bitten was now snarling, writhing to escape the straps that bound him to the bed. His throat was bandaged, and the damage there might help explain the hoarse inhuman sounds he made, but Slaughter didn't think so. No, the virus was at work. The man was like a lunatic, and Slaughter thought again about the medical examiner's remark, about the madness from the moon. "It's just a guess," he told the orderly beside him. "Turn his room lights off, and maybe that will calm him. God, I wish he'd pass out."
Even with the window as a buffer, Slaughter felt the snarling touch him. He was nauseated by the foam that drooled from Cody's mouth. The snarling and writhing became more extreme. Cody tried to twist his head to bite the nearest strap around him.
"I can't watch this."
Swallowing, Slaughter glanced at where Marge waited at the far end of the hallway. She was peering through another window. Slaughter knew that the mother of the dead boy was inside there, and he took one final look at Cody before walking slowly toward Marge.
"I just hit her," Marge said, not turning to him. 'There was nothing else I could do. I didn't mean to hit her so hard. She was-"
"You can't go on like this."
"But she's got a fractured skull."
"You'd rather that she'd killed her husband?"
"No, I…" Marge faced him.
"Then take it easy. You did what you thought was necessary. As it is, she's going to live. That's all that really counts, although I don't know what they're going to do with her. There isn't any way they know to cure her."
He peered through the window at the mother who was strapped unconscious to her bed, bandages around her skull, an intravenous bottle draining toward a needle in her arm.
"We know this much," Slaughter said. "She shouldn't be sedated, so the fact that she's unconscious from the blow you gave her might turn out to be the best thing, all considered. If she were awake, she'd be hysterical like Cody up the hall."
Even here, Slaughter heard the snarling from the other room.
Marge leaned against the wall.
"Hey, why not go home?" Slaughter suggested. "There isn't anything that you can do here. You'll be told whatever happens."
"What about yourself?"
"Oh, don't you know? I'm trying for a record. How long I can go without sleep."
He hoped that would make her smile, but she only stared.
"Marge, I know that what you did was hard."
She studied him.
"I know that if there'd been another way you would have chosen it. I think that you did fine. I wish you wouldn't feel so bad."
"You'd feel the same."
"Of course, I would. But then I'd need a friend like you to say what I just said to you. I mean it. You did fine. I don't want you to worry."
"Thanks." Marge bit her lip. "But it doesn't help."
"All the same, go home. I'll get word to you."
She nodded. Even so, she lingered.
"Come on. Let me walk you down."
He touched her arm, and she responded, walking with him along the hallway. Neither looked at Cody. At the corner, she glanced back at the windows in the wall down there, and then she went downstairs with him, and he was watching by the back door as she walked across the parking lot.
That poor, sad, lonely, tortured woman, he was thinking. When she raised that baseball bat, she must have been in agony. He waved in farewell as she drove away, then thought a moment before heading toward the phone inside the nurses' station.
He'd avoided making this call much too long, reluctantly dialing Parsons' number, and the man answered, sleepy, angry.
"Slaughter? Eight o'clock? On Sunday? Can't this wait until a decent hour?"
"No, we really have to talk."
"Well, Jesus, Slaughter-"
"This is serious. We don't have too much time."
Parsons exhaled. "All right, then. I'll see you in my office in an hour. But this better be important."
"Oh, don't worry," Slaughter told him. "You'll wish that you didn't know."
Slaughter frowned and hung up. He was thinking that in all the years he'd lived here he had never been to Parsons' house, and he wondered why just now he'd thought of that, with everything he had to keep his mind on. Then he guessed it was because of all the power games that Parsons liked to play. The man kept his subordinates away from where he lived because he wanted to dissociate them, keep them from assuming friendship. That way he intimidated them. But Slaughter didn't care much. He had never been afraid of Parsons, although in truth he didn't want to go through this with him, and needing to keep occupied, he went out, driving to the station where already, even early in the morning, there were calls about more prowlers, about mangled cats and dogs and cattle, several missing persons. Well, it's just beginning, he decided. Then he did his best to shut his mind off as he cleaned up, washing in the men's room, changing from his sweaty shirt to one he kept inside his office drawer. No, Parsons wasn't going to like this, and a half hour later, as the two men (Slaughter unshaven) sat facing one another, it was worse than Slaughter had expected. Parsons had been fifteen minutes late, and Slaughter had been forced to wait outside the locked doors of the Potter's Field Gazette. Then Parsons had shown up, freshly showered, wearing a suit and tie. "No, not yet. Wait until we're in my office," the man had told him, and upstairs the man had listened, then quite calmly answered, 'You expect me to believe this?"