v2.0
October 2006
The Wolfen
Whitley Strieber
IT HAPPENS IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
A series of killings with bizarre characteristics that have the police baffled. When the news becomes public, people in the city begin living in terror.
THE WOLFENThere is no defense…
contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE WOLFEN
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
William Morrow and Company, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Morrow edition published August 1978
Bantam edition / July 1979
2nd printing… July 1979 4th printing… July 1979
3rd printing… July 1979 5th printing…December 1979
6th printing…August 1981
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1978 by Whitley Strieber.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,
103 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
ISBN 0-553-20268-5
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and In other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.
For Anne
Since all is well, keep it so: Wake not the sleeping wolf.—Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 2
Chapter 1
^ »
In Brooklyn they take abandoned cars to the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound adjacent to the Fountain Avenue Dump. The pound and the dump occupy land shown on maps as “Spring Creek Park (Proposed).” There is no spring, no creek, and no park.
Normally the pound is silent, its peace disturbed only by an occasional fight among the packs of wild dogs that roam there, or perhaps the cries of the sea gulls that hover over the stinking, smoldering dump nearby.
The members of the Police Auto Squad who visit the pound to mark derelicts for the crusher do not consider the place dangerous. Once in a while the foot-long rats will get aggressive and become the victims of target practice. The scruffy little wild dogs will also attack every so often, but they can usually be dealt with by a shot into the ground. Auto-pound duty consists of marking big white X’s on the worst of the derelicts and taking Polaroids of them to prove that they were beyond salvage in case any owners turn up.
It isn’t the kind of job that the men associate with danger, much less getting killed, so Hugo DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan would have laughed in your face if you told them they had only three minutes to live when they heard the first sound behind them.
“What was that?” Houlihan asked. He was bored and wouldn’t have minded getting a couple of shots off at a rat.
“A noise.”
“Brilliant. That’s what I thought it was too.”
They both laughed. Then there was another sound, a staccato growl that ended on a murmuring high note. The two men looked at one another. “That sounds like my brother singing in the shower,” DiFalco said.
From ahead of them came further sounds—rustlings and more of the unusual growls. DiFalco and Houlihan stopped. They weren’t joking anymore, but they also weren’t afraid, only curious. The wet, ruined cars just didn’t seem to hold any danger on this dripping autumn afternoon. But there was something out there.
They were now in the center of a circle of half-heard rustling movement. As both men realized that something had surrounded them, they had their first twinge of concern. They now had less than one minute of life remaining. Both of them lived with the central truth of police work—it could happen anytime. But what the hell was happening now?
Then something stepped gingerly from between two derelicts and stood facing the victims.
The men were not frightened, but they sensed danger. As it had before in moments of peril, Hugo DiFalco’s mind turned to a brief thought of his wife, of how she liked to say “We’re an us.” Dennis Houlihan felt a shiver of prickles come over him as if the hair all over his body was standing up.
“Don’t move, man,” DiFalco said.
It snarled at the voice. “There’s more of ’em behind us, buddy.” Their voices were low and controlled, the tone of professionals in trouble. They moved closer together; their shoulders touched. Both men knew that one of them had to turn around, the other keep facing this way. But they didn’t need to talk about it; they had worked together too long to have to plan their moves.
DiFalco started to make the turn and draw his pistol. That was the mistake.
Ten seconds later their throats were being torn out. Twenty seconds later the last life was pulsing out of their bodies. Thirty seconds later they were being systematically consumed.
Neither man had made a sound. Houlihan had seen the one in front of them twitch its eyes, but before he could follow the movement there was a searing pain in his throat and he was suddenly, desperately struggling for air through the bubbling torrent of his own blood.
DiFalco’s hand had just gripped the familiar checkered wooden butt of his service revolver when it was yanked violently aside. The impression of impossibly fast-moving shapes entered his astonished mind, then something slammed into his chest and he too was bleeding, in his imagination protecting his throat as in reality his body slumped to the ground and his mind sank into darkness.
The attackers moved almost too quickly, their speed born of nervousness at the youth of their victims. The shirts were torn open, the white chests exposed, the entrails tugged out and taken away, the precious organs swallowed. The rest was left behind.
In less than five more minutes it was over. The hollow, ravaged corpses lay there in the mud, two ended lives now food for the wild scavengers of the area.
For a long time nothing more moved at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The cries of gulls echoed among the rustling hulks of the cars. Around the corpses the blood coagulated and blackened. As the afternoon drew on, the autumn mist became rain, covering the dead policemen with droplets of water end making the blood run again.
Night fell.
Rats worried the corpses until dawn.
The two men had been listed AWOL for fourteen hours. Most unusual for these guys. They were both family types, steady and reliable. AWOL wasn’t their style. But still, what could happen to two experienced policemen on marking duty at the auto pound? That was a question nobody would even try to answer until a search was made for the men.
Police work might be dangerous, but nobody seriously believed that DiFalco and Houlihan were in any real trouble. Maybe there had been a family emergency and the two had failed to check in. Maybe a lot of things. And maybe there was some trouble. Nobody realized that the world had just become a much more dangerous place, and they wouldn’t understand that for quite some time. Right now they were just looking for a couple of missing policemen. Right now the mystery began and ended with four cops poking through the auto pound for signs of their buddies.