Whitley Strieber The Wild

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fence.
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A click resounded in the silence. Bob knew that it was the hammer of a pistol
being cocked. Then another click, and another. Bob scrabbled at the far side
of the fence, seeking purchase. A shot thundered, then more shots. Hot wind
passed him. One of them brought searing heat to his thigh. With all of his
strength he launched himself into the darkness. He fell hard into a flower
bed. The cops behind him reached the wall and started scaling it. "We got 'im
now," one of them said. "That garden's not open to the street."
Hearing that, Bob almost despaired. His impulse was to lie down, to curl his
tail in against his body and close his eyes. Then he saw a glass door that led
into the lobby. Bob ran to it the damned thing pushed out, not in. A thud
followed by the whoosh of breath and a curse indicated that one of the cops
was already over the wall. Bob worked at the door with the claws of his right
paw claws, he noticed, that had a lot of blood on them. He had hurt that poor
man in the alley terribly.
"Holy shit, that thing is smart!"
Bob got the door open enough to slip through. He dashed across the slick
marble floor, his claws ringing, then silent when he reached a huge Kerman
rug.
"Good heavens," a doorman in dark blue livery cried. "Oh Lord." He grabbed a
telephone as Bob rushed out into the street. He trotted down the curved
driveway, then broke into a run again, dashing toward First Avenue. He knew
that Carl Shurz
Park wasn't far away, but it was too small to hide him. His objective was
Central Park. He could crawl down into the brushy part of the Ramble and hide,
and nurse this throbbing thigh. He hoped that it wasn't just adrenaline
driving him, and that there was only a graze wound.
Ahead of him another police car sped into view. It screeched to a halt at the
corner of First. The doors flew open and five cops leaped out for all the
world like clowns coming from a circus car. Deadly clowns, though. He could
see the somber gleam of the streetlights on their pistols.
He was not a man of action. It took him time to figure out how to deal with
situations like this. He kept trying to talk. Explanations clogged his mind.
"Excuse me, I've had a slight accident. . . Pardon me, but I'm not nearly as
dangerous as I look. . . Ah, the police at last! Could you return me to my
home?" To a listener, though, his most civilized, reasonable words sounded
like chilling snarls. A repertoire of barks, growls, whines, and howls was
totally inadequate to the delicate clarifications his predicament demanded.
And that last human vestige, the scream, didn't help a bit. It drove the
ignorant to blind panic, and made even decent people vicious.
The wolf, the traditional monster, was on the loose. To live through this.
Bob was going to have to concentrate completely on the situation at hand. He
could not wonder at the evil miracle that had afflicted him. Right now he had
to put
a line of cars between himself and those police pistols. The cops would blow
his heart out if they could, and mount his head on the wall of their precinct
house.
Behind him an entire SWAT team appeared in the street, all running like
maniacs, waving shotguns, tear-gas grenades and pistols. Regular cops were
closing off the intersection ahead. He'd have to rush somebody, and he chose
the street cops. On them he smelled at least a little fear. The members of the
SWAT team had an unpromisingly solid odor: sour beer, gunpowder, steel. They
weren't even nervous.
For all his soul was worth, he ran. The air roared around him, his ears swept
back, his dewlaps parted, and wind rushed coldly past his tongue. It was
exhilarating, it was like flying right into the barrels of five pistols.
Just then, though, there was an intervention: a stocky man burst out of a
building ahead. He was carrying an aged 30-30 rifle and wearing a blue
bathrobe.
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His slippers plopped as he ran, his glasses danced on his face. "He's mine,"
he screamed, "he's goddamn mine!"
Bob passed right between the churning legs and the man went up into the air,
his gun describing the arc of a windmill. The man hit with a soft, painful
crunch.
Then the rifle struck the ground and went off, its report cracking the air,
the bullet ricocheting off a wall. "Goddammit, move your fat ass," one of the
cops yelled.
It was like flying, or being a ghost, and Bob knew where all the flying dreams
come from, those escapes of the night when we leap the houses and the fields:
they come from the past, when we could truly run.
"Move! Move! Move!"
The cops were in trouble, their guns glaring straight into Bob's face, unable
to shoot because of the civilian still floundering around behind him. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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