Saint Peter’s Wolf Page 18

  Then there was something wrong. I sat up, my ears turning toward the distant sounds. More sirens. A helicopter thumping and clattering. All far away, harmless.

  But there was something wrong. Something unnameable. There was something there among the sirens and the indistinct voices of men. They had brought trouble, and it was there with them, alive and very dangerous.

  They had brought treachery. I sniffed the air, but the wind was blowing toward them. This was very bad. It meant that the air told me nothing about them, and that they could read my location as easily as a headline.

  I was trapped.

  The raccoon scrambled into the drainpipe, and splashed his way up the tube. It would be pointless for me to follow. I was huge, and hiding would not help me now. The raccoon knew as I did that this trouble was deadly.

  I would have to run. I clambered up the slope to a bare knoll where, to my horror, buildings glittered. The Presidio was, after all, a military compound, for all its parklike verdure. In the distance a voice spoke, some human blather. An engine started.

  I hurried back down the slope, splashing through the water, sniffing the air, all the while trying to convince myself that I was wrong. Surely it could not be true.

  But it was true: they had dogs.

  They had been prepared for this night. Somewhere in the glittering city, an intelligence had planned for this night, this hunt. The baying voices, eager for the hunt, reached out to me and seemed to claw at me. Yammering, excited, obsequious to men and mindlessly cruel to quarry.

  I knew them well, these pack-hunters. I did not guess how, but I had met them before, these leash-wights. They had sought me before, and as the fur along my spine bristled and the skin of my snout peeled back to expose my fangs, I released a growl. The sound was as rumbling and all-shivering as the grind of an engine.

  Come and find me, I thought-sent to them. Come to where I am and have a taste of me. It was as though I had done this all before, and more than once. On previous nights like this they had found me, but I could not remember what had happened. All I could taste now was my hunger for the fight.

  Let them come.

  Without any will on my part, I sank to my haunches and lifted my head. I closed my eyes, and sang. The tune echoed among the trees, mingling with the salt air from the distant surf. It stilled the voices of hound and man. I lifted a song, a long, lingering word, like the first syllable ever uttered.

  The dogs were hushed. The men were silent. Then the hounds burst into yaps, straining, I knew, at tethers, mad with the hunt: I laughed, and cantered to the stream.

  The note of the hunt-cry had deepened. They were on their way. My fangs showed themselves in the cold, and I growled again. This time it was a low promise to myself.

  They were already much louder, the mass of yelps and barks separating into individual tongues. There was one especially, a baritone lead hunter, who keened after me. He had my scent. He pulled the others with his call.

  I splashed up the stream, trotted around the drainpipe, and then continued wending the horsetail reeds, following the trickle of water. An owl opened like a book above me, and its talons left their perch with a noise like two breaths.

  The stiffness in my haunches continued, but now the numbness, which had troubled me, was a relief. Let pain come later. I trotted up-slope, and turned several times to judge their distance, their angle of approach, and to count them. I knew how to do all this expertly. I worked the stream until it speared a roadbed.

  I stole across the road, and was among buildings. I tried to find an easy stride, but the obstacles, trucks, back steps, the stink of a cigarette, all forced me to veer, skulk, and dash. There was open ground beyond, but I was trapped in a knot of buildings.

  I threaded a parking lot, a streaking shadow. But I was not as fast as I had been. My hind leg was beginning to drag once more, and all around me I could feel the urgency. Telephones, questions, hurried steps. The warning was out. Everyone knew I was among them. I was huge and panting, and all around me were guns and men who could use them.

  The dogs were gaining on me. I slipped from the parking lot, and followed the edge of buildings, doubling back several times, circling to make the trail confusing. I swung myself up, and bounded over a rooftop, and fell again to the damp grass.

  They were still gaining! They had been bred for this, and had yearned for this each breath of their lives. They fit me like my own fur, and when at last I reached the trees again I could not run fast enough.

  Lumbering up a hill, I swept the weeds with my nose, searching for a burrow, and I scented rabbit—old, dried droppings. And squirrel, a hole and a warm body quivering at the thud of my step. I lunged upward through the pines. It was desperation that forced me to search for a hiding place in the earth. A helicopter clattered. Sirens spiraled through the dark. I fought my way uphill, and when I could smell the surf spray, I turned.

  They were in the parking lot. Their cries echoed off metal and the men they led were trailing far behind. I read the terrain around me. I even surveyed the trees, wondering if I should climb. I growled again, and then I knew that I was about to battle for my life. It would not be a matter of flight, and not a matter of simple combat.

  They wanted to tear me apart.

  This certainty did not resemble in any way human fear. It resembled the simple decision that had caused me not to kill the second policeman. It was a fact, like sky or earth. Running was futile. My body knew exactly what to do. I clambered to a large pine, and put my back to it.

  My mane bristling around me, I bayed back at them. My barks silenced them, great blasts as from a howitzer. They had long since outstripped their human handlers, and they had not been deceived for more than a few strides by any of my backtracks.

  This was the night I had remembered when I held the crossbow in my hand. This was the night I had tasted when I had thought of Gneiss, or the many traps and lies of men that could net me at any moment. Humans would stop at nothing. They and the powers they enjoined were the worst enemy imaginable. I wrinkled my snout to expose my fangs, and lifted myself onto my hind legs.

  On a night with my full strength, with four sound limbs, there would be no contest. Now I had to stand and take them as they came. I barked again to hurry them. I wanted them to find me. It was my sole chance.

  “Come!” my baying cried. “Make no mistake. I want you here!”

  And they came.

  Twenty-Six

  The lead hound bounded up the hill ahead of them all. I could not see him through the trees, but I heard him well, and at last I could scent him.

  He was nothing but tongue—a voice, a cry. There he is, he called. There he is, what we have hunted every heartbeat of our lives. I felt a stab of compassion. These poor slaves had no choice. Men had deformed their genes, and now they were blind weapons. They were eager, even ecstatic, to be tearing through the pine needles toward me, this huge, unknown, inconceivable beast. They did not know anything of the world, and fear had been bred out of them. A wild beast needs his fear as he needs his eyes. These slaves were much more simple.

  I saw him at the same moment he saw me, and when he leaped toward me he was a ball of hound, a blur scored with a flashing set of teeth. He was brave, if you can call such inherited fearlessness bravery. I slammed him with a paw, and his body spun, wheeling, and crashed against a tree.

  He was up at once, without hesitation, and on me. He could not leap high enough to snare my throat, so he snapped at the thick fur of my chest as I plunged a claw into his belly from below, and raked him.

  Hot intestines spilled down me, and the hound stared into my eyes, seeing what he had hunted for the first time. His eyes had never been his primary faith. His nose was everything, and now that he perceived my dimensions he did not experience confusion or fear. He was pleased—I was exactly what he had hoped for, and as his eyes went dead he fell, victorious. He had found the greatest quarry in the world.

  Then the rest were upon me. A few cringe
d away when they saw my snarl, and felt the heat of my growl. But most came on, hard. I swiped at the leader of the wedge, and tore him open. I sliced the next, and sent it yammering, tripping over its bowels. I seized the next, and tore him in two, hoping that the pack would see that they had no chance.

  I flung the rent body, and clutched the next hound by the scruff and hurled him, nearly unhurt, far into the dark. The next I swung by the hind legs, and skimmed him howling into the tree tops. But another persisted, tangling his teeth into my fur, and so I reached down with both paws and squeezed his skull. There was a loud pop, and hot matter squirted onto me, and onto the pack.

  The remaining dogs began to doubt. The cringers retreated, and the dogs I had hurled fled crying. The unthinkingly brave remainder, sensing their diminished numbers, tried to rally and attack as a pack.

  The knot of hounds set upon me. My paws slashed, and ribbons of hide spun through the air. The pack shrank back, barking, as though their arguments would pursuade me. I fell on all fours, splashing in the blood and sodden pine needles. I lifted my head and howled, a cry of such momentum that birds far away woke, chattering.

  The dogs fled, yammering, and I turned and clawed my way up the steep hill. Gradually I slowed my pace to a lope, allowing myself to savor what had happened.

  I had escaped. I had won a victory. I had fought for my life, and the prize was this freedom. I had not felt such exhilaration before.

  This golden feeling was so powerful that I made a tremendous blunder.

  In my days, and even weeks, of avoiding the news, I had not informed myself as to how desperately the police wanted to catch me. This was no ordinary rape, and not simply another ugly pair of murders. Without my knowledge the public had been inflamed, and the police had prepared for this night. Of course, it all made sense. I was aware of this as I ran, hound blood clotting my fur. They no doubt believed they were hunting a normal beast, and had planned hounds and devised strategies to ensnare him. They must have been puzzled at the invisibility of the beast during the day, but such carnivores are often nocturnal, they would have reasoned. He will be hungry again, and we will strike.

  I thought, though, that I had taken their measure tonight. I thought that by defeating the hounds I had won freedom. I actually thought of it, like a banner from some faded propaganda in my mind: freedom won.

  So when the lights went on, bright and blinding as a blow to the face, I lunged to one side, unable to think. Cars had blocked the road, and men were strung out in a battle line, some of them armed with oversize flashlights, which blazed at me. There was the black scent of firearms, and the redolence of dozens of frightened human beings.

  I was deaf—it was that sudden. One moment I heard everything, each breath, each click of steel, and the next I had no hearing at all. The stink of explosion scalded my nostrils.

  A dozen guns let loose, and I had nowhere to go but forward, and that is where I went, faster than any of them could have dreamed, faster than I could have imagined. I lunged over a police car, and, hurling myself with all my weight, crushed a man’s skull against the pavement. I turned to tear at another man wrestling with a shotgun, and then I saw him.

  It was a glimpse, only, but there could be no mistake. He stood like a man apart from the rest, an observer. His white linen suit was supplemented by a sheepskin jacket, and he wore a dark scarf against the chill. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his jacket, and he seemed unafraid, and unsurprised.

  Karl Gneiss watched from beneath the dark branches of a cedar, and his eyes glittered. It was as though he, too, had seen me before, in another life. And he seemed relaxed, one foot forward, a man watching a race on which he had wagered nothing. Then I saw the rifle in the crook of his arm. It was a heavy, black firearm, and it had a large scope along its barrel. An unusually long scope. A scope, I thought, designed for night vision.

  Time slowed and stopped, and I had the feeling, sharp as a pungent taste, a kind of knowledge: this man was going to kill me.

  I was by them all, running hard.

  Like a battery of heavy guns, many of the lights could not be turned. A few shots split the buzz of deafness in my ears, and then my deafness began to fade. The gush and gulp of my own panting was loud. Far behind me came the barking of larger dogs, German shepherds, straining leashes. The police would not loose these intelligent animals after me, and I was thankful that I would not have to harm such creatures.

  I was, though, running out of land. The ocean was ahead of me, and to my right. I did not bask in triumph. Freedom was forgotten. I was in cold, single-minded panic.

  I ran hard, keeping as low to the ground as possible. My injured hind leg did not matter, it was now totally forgotten. Helicopters whipped lights over huddled pines. Two policemen had taken positions on the golf course. Cars were squealing into position ahead of me, and yet, as dangerous as they all were, and as fearful as the thought of a bullet might be, I was more concerned with the surf I heard churning ahead of me, off Land’s End.

  The smell of the trees was delicious, eucalyptus and Monterey pine. This night, possibly the last night of my life, was glorious.

  As I had feared, more cars, stuttering with police radios and shouted commands, were ahead of me. I told myself they did not see me. I pounded the green of the golf course. Fear was power. Stiffness loosened, eyes saw more because of fear.

  There was a sound like a woman whispering, a low note, like a barely uttered song. The turf ahead of me kicked. There was another whisper, and turf spouted ahead of me, so close that dirt littered my snout as I ran. These were not small bursts, but great divots ripped in the grass.

  The reports were delayed by the distance. A shot cracked, and another. There was a sniper with a high-powered gun, and I knew who he was. His rifle was designed for a large animal. His gray eyes saw me easily. His infrared scope tracked me. I could feel the crosshairs like a slash on my shoulder. I knew that he had me in his sights, even now. My body flushed with a fear so sharp it was pain.

  I felt a cold breath at my ear. This shot was closer yet, and when I crashed through a stand of eucalyptus, the tree above me exploded, leaves and branches spinning, fluttering to the ground.

  But now, at last, he could not see me.

  The trouble with running through this tangle of underbrush was the sound. My passage was scarcely secret. I crashed, thrashing, snapping branches. Men shouted, a helicopter rattled, and then I pounced to the edge of a cliff.

  But I realized this too late, cannonballed by my own momentum off the cliff, into the dark. It was not like any other dark I had ever experienced. It was the surf-dark, the scent of sea water so strong it was nearly blinding, metallic, seething. My legs continued to paw air, a running motion I could not cease.

  The cold was a shock. The cold, and the slam of the water. I thought I would never be able to move my limbs again. Water burned my eyes. The pebbly bottom rushed up at me, and I sprawled, rocks and sand swimming about me.

  The ascent to the surface took longer than I had expected, but at last I tossed salt water out of my mane, and coughed. I gulped air, fighting to keep my leaden body from sinking.

  I began swimming south, parallel to the shore, with strong urgent strokes. My body was heavy, but it was powerful. To my amazement, I swam with tremendous lunges, cutting through the tossing water.

  I swam hard. The light of the Cliff House drifted by. The headlights and police cars were glittering on the Great Highway, and I was tempted to make my landing on the beach. I believed, though, that this was what they expected me to do.

  I wanted to swim as far south as the zoo, and longed to see my friends, but I knew the wolves would be secured and guarded. They would, perhaps, even expect me there, and have their snipers on the alert. They would use my friends as bait.

  Cunning. I needed my cunning now. If they were alert, I would have to be all the more keen. Skill, not ferocity, would save me.

  The night was clouding, and helicopters were merely blushes o
f light in the sky over Land’s End. There was one bit of luck. The tide was surging in through the Golden Gate, and the helicopters expected me to be following the current, carried into the bay. They had not anticipated my ability to swim so well. As I plunged through the water, the sound of helicopters thudded more and more indistinctly, and the police cars on the highway diminished.

  The word must be out—he’s in the bay. They would be poised, guns ready, at the breakwater at Fort Point, and along the Marina. The entire city would be nervous, guns brought out of bottom drawers, doors chained, lights blazing. I had not realized how notorious I had become, but I saw now that never again would I be a secret, my existence a matter of debate.

  Every human being would be afraid. Every human being would want me dead. My strokes were slowing as the cold soaked into my muscles. Landfall, I thought. Harbor. Must touch ground soon. As strong as I was, I could not endure hours of this. Even now a wave swamped me, and I fought upward, gasping.

  Swells lifted me, and let me fall again. As I swam south, the current dragged me north with greater and greater urgency. To keep from simple drowning was a battle. My legs began to cramp. At last the surf carried me uncontested, and my paws dragged sand.

  I crawled, my long fur dragging the beach, and collapsed. For just a moment, I told myself. For just a moment of rest. I had no thought but: cold. My bones ached. Even my teeth throbbed with cold.

  I shook myself, water flinging about me. Dragging myself, I worked to the edge of the beach, slinking to the side of an abandoned car. I shuddered there. The fear that had ignited me had burned to ash. Now I was blank, empty. I heard a rumble from my lungs, iron fury at the thought that men wished me dead.

  Fury: I would not die. It was this stubborn beast, my hunted shape, that dragged me across the lanes of the highway. My hope was frozen. There was only animal stamina. Ice plants crushed under my paws. I sniffed the air.