It almost seemed like a perfectly ordinary function that had somehow been lost in this awful place where nothing was funny at all.
“Hey, man,” Ruby Sue said, waltzing over, “don’t leave me out, I wanna hear it, too.”
Lou started into it again, glad as always to have an audience. Johnny and Lisa sat raptly for the second telling (entertainment being scarce in Cut River). Even Joe came over this time. Lou had just gotten his stride down when he heard it.
“Listen,” he said, not smiling now. “You hear that?”
“What?” Lisa said.
“Listen. The churchies downstairs…”
“They’ve stopped singing,” Johnny said.
“Don’t the natives stop drumming right before they attack in those jungle movies?” Ruby Sue offered, but everyone ignored her.
“You hear that?” Lou said.
They all did. A muted, distant popping.
“Gunfire,” Johnny announced. “Maybe the cavalry’s rolling in. Maybe.”
“Do you think so?” Lisa said hopefully.
But then it was gone. After five minutes of silence, it still had not returned.
The vacuum created by the lack of muted hymns and distant gunfire only lasted a moment or two. Then another sound rose up to take its place. It came from outside.
“Jesus,” Lou said, “what the hell is that?”
And that was the question that played at all their minds.
Because they could hear it rising up, getting louder and louder: a mournful baying sound as though dozens of wolves were howling in the night. It was an eerie, discordant melody.
Lou heard and it made the skin at the back of his neck tighten. The flesh at his spine began to crawl.
Someone said, “Dogs, it’s dogs.”
“No,” Ruby Sue said. “It’s not dogs. Listen. It’s them. The rabids. They’re howling…”
They went to the window to look.
Lou crowded there with the others.
Yes, the nocturnal hordes.
The moon was high and full over the town and the rabids had climbed to the peaks of roofs, the tops of cars, shimmied up telephone poles and snaked up trees. He could see them, man and woman and child, staring up at the moon with horrid fascination, baying like mad dogs, held in rapt lunatic fascination by that glowing orb. Like the tides or the weather, the rabids were moved by unseen forces.
“Jesus Christ, that sound,” Lisa said helplessly, “it’s driving me nuts. I… I can’t think…”
It seemed to work some nerve, aggravate some atavistic memory and everyone suddenly got very restless. In fact, it seemed like those baying voices were unlocking some primitive drive of aggression and hatred. Everyone in that room refused to look at one another. Afraid, maybe, that they’d see the faces of beasts.
Lou felt it as strong as any other.
He couldn’t seem to think straight. He wanted to run, to attack, to ravage. His muscles were tensed, his teeth gnashing, his dick hard in his pants.
And they were suddenly all like that.
Circling each other like beasts of prey, refusing to accept what that they were hearing, what it was doing to them. Trying without luck to block out that song, the song of the hunt, the song of some primeval festival of bloodlust and hunger.
And it was about that time that Nancy woke up.
She emerged from her frightful sleep like a swimmer breaking the surface of an icy lake. Her throat felt tight, her body felt cold. She sat up and the blanket fell from her. Her hands were hooked and arthritic in her lap. She could see the others. They were walking in circles, breathing heavily. She could smell them, smell something rank and musky coming off them. It made her nipples go hard, made waves of warmth tremble in her groin.
Her mouth was sticky, her lips swollen and parched.
She’d never known such thirst.
She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was so dry that all that came out was a strangled barking sound.
There was a glass of water on the table before her. Her fingers shaking, she reached out for it, even though the sight of it made her somehow nauseous. She shook her head, trying to free herself of the strange impulses and shattered thoughts that tumbled through her brain. She brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply.
The water was like acid in her belly.
Convulsions ripped through her and she vomited it back up in a warm stew of bile that ran down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and was not surprised to see a smear of blood.
She tried to stand and fell over, crashing into the table.
She couldn’t seem to draw a breath; it was like trying to breathe through canvas. The air she sucked in felt heavy and wet. The room spun and her head reeled. Black dots swam before her eyes.
Then it seemed to pass.
Drool ran from her lips and her teeth chattered. She pulled herself up, more spasms trembling through her like labor pains. She saw faces staring at her and what remained of her thinking, rational brain tried to put names to the faces, tried to fit together all the images in her mind, and tried desperately to make some lucid connection.
But it was impossible.
Her thoughts were disjointed, confused, and feral.
The people… they were saying things to her.
Moving in closer now. Especially the tall, bearded man.
Threatened.
Yes, she felt threatened.
They were trying to draw her into a trap, tightening their little circle around her. They would get her down… bite, claw, rend, and kill. She snarled at them, trying to frighten them off. Her skin was tight and pebbled with gooseflesh. Hairs on her arms, the back of her neck were standing taut. She remembered speech and tried to use it. Her jaws snapped wildly, her lips pulled back.
Hissing now, she slipped away from them, saw the window and knew it was a way out. But when she got close to escape, they all started to cry out and in the glass she saw a distorted, drooling face capped by a wild pelt of hair and jumped back.
It was her reflection.
Spasms jerked through her, convulsions hit her with the shuddering impact of machine gun fire. The world spun, steadied itself. A low hoarse growling erupted from her throat.
They were closing in on her.
She sighted on their throats, knowing it was where she must sink her teeth.
Her brain raging with hallucination and nightmare imagery, she stood her ground, ready to disembowel the first that came within reach.
Ben was the first to try to get within reach of her.
When he was within a few feet, she snarled and spit at him. Using her fingers like claws she tore at his face. Ben stepped back, realizing with terror that she’d been going for his eyes.
Like an animal, an animal, she’s not even human now…
Lou approached cautiously from one side, Johnny and Lisa from the other.
“Don’t get too close,” Lou said to Ben. “Talk to her. Try to soothe her.”
Ben was trying. Speaking in low, hushed tones like the sort you’d use to calm a child who’d awoken terrified from a bad dream, he tried to reason with her. He told her who he was. He told her who she was. He spoke about things only she would remember, hoping to trigger some memory. He spoke of their children. How much she loved them. How they loved her. He kept speaking, tears running down his cheeks now, knowing that Nancy was dead and this thing was not her.
Lou knew it was bad, the worst-case scenario.
But if nothing else it had snapped them out of whatever had possessed them. A problem had presented itself. A problem that took human minds to solve, one that required sensitivity, care, and logic—human traits.