The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 5

  “Ballard,” the beast smiled.

  Its voice clung to coherence only with the greatest difficulty, but Ballard heard the remnants of Mironenko there. The more he scanned the simmering flesh, the more appalled he became.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Mironenko said.

  “What disease is this?”

  “The only disease I ever suffered was forgetfulness, and I’m cured of that—” He grimaced as he spoke, as if each word was shaped in contradiction to the instincts of his throat.

  Ballard touched his hand to his head. Despite his revolt against the pain, the noise was rising and rising.

  “. . . You remember too, don’t you? You’re the same.”

  “No,” Ballard muttered.

  Mironenko reached a spine-haired palm to touch him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You’re not alone. There are many of us. Brothers and sisters.”

  “I’m not your brother,” Ballard said. The noise was bad, but the face of Mironenko was worse. Revolted, he turned his back on it, but the Russian only followed him.

  “Don’t you taste freedom, Ballard? And life. Just a breath away.” Ballard walked on, the blood beginning to creep from his nostrils. He let it come. “It only hurts for a while,” Mironenko said. “Then the pain goes . . .”

  Ballard kept his head down, eyes to the earth. Mironenko, seeing that he was making little impression, dropped behind.

  “They won’t take you back!” he said. “You’ve seen too much.”

  The roar of helicopters did not entirely blot these words out. Ballard knew there was truth in them. His step faltered, and through the cacophony he heard Mironenko murmur:

  “Look . . .”

  Ahead, the fog had thinned somewhat, and the park wall was visible through rags of mist, Behind him, Mironenko’s voice had descended to a snarl.

  “Look at what you are.”

  The rotors roared; Ballard’s legs felt as though they would fold up beneath him. But he kept up his advance towards the wall. Within yards of it, Mironenko called after him again, but this time the words had fled altogether. There was only a low growl. Ballard could not resist looking; just once. He glanced over his shoulder.

  Again the fog confounded him, but not entirely. For moments that were both an age and yet too brief, Ballard saw the thing that had been Mironenko in all its glory, and at the sight the rotors grew to screaming pitch. He clamped his hands to his face. As he did so a shot rang out; then another; then a volley of shots. He fell to the ground, as much in weakness as in self-defence, and uncovered his eyes to see several human figures moving in the fog. Though he had forgotten their pursuers, they had not forgotten him. They had traced him to the park, and stepped into the midst of this lunacy, and now men and half men and things not men were lost in the fog, and there was bloody confusion on every side. He saw a gunman firing at a shadow, only to have an ally appear from the fog with a bullet in his belly; saw a thing appear on four legs and flit from sight again on two; saw another run by carrying a human head by the hair, and laughing from its snouted face.

  The turmoil spilled towards him. Fearing for his life, he stood up and staggered back towards the wall. The cries and shots and snarls went on; he expected either bullet or beast to find him with every step. But he reached the wall alive, and attempted to scale it. His co-ordination had deserted him, however. He had no choice but to follow the wall along its length until he reached the gate.

  Behind him the scenes of unmasking and transformation and mistaken identity went on. His enfeebled thoughts turned briefly to Mironenko. Would he, or any of his tribe, survive this massacre?

  “Ballard,” said a voice in the fog. He couldn’t see the speaker, although he recognized the voice. He’d heard it in his delusion, and it had told him lies.

  He felt a pin-prick at his neck. The man had come from behind, and was pressing a needle into him.

  “Sleep,” the voice said. And with the words came oblivion.

  At first he couldn’t remember the man’s name. His mind wandered like a lost child, although his interrogator would time and again demand his attention, speaking to him as though they were old friends. And there was indeed something familiar about his errant eye, that went on its way so much more slowly than its companion. At last, the name came to him.

  “You’re Cripps,” he said.

  “Of course I’m Cripps,” the man replied. “Is your memory playing tricks? Don’t concern yourself. I’ve given you some suppressants, to keep you from losing your balance. Not that I think that’s very likely. You’ve fought the good fight, Ballard, in spite of considerable provocation. When I think of the way Odell snapped . . .” He sighed. “Do you remember last night at all?”

  At first his mind’s eye was blind. But then the memories began to come. Vague forms moving in a fog.

  “The park,” he said at last.

  “I only just got you out. God knows how many are dead.”

  “The other . . . the Russian . . . ?”

  “Mironenko?” Cripps prompted. “I don’t know. I’m not in charge any longer, you see; I just stepped in to salvage something if I could. London will need us again, sooner or later. Especially now they know the Russians have a special corps like us. We’d heard rumours of course; and then, after you’d met with him, began to wonder about Mironenko. That’s why I set up the meeting. And of course when I saw him, face to face, I knew. There’s something in the eyes. Something hungry.”

  “I saw him change—”

  “Yes, it’s quite a sight, isn’t it? The power it unleashes. That’s why we developed the programme, you see, to harness that power, to have it work for us. But it’s difficult to control. It took years of suppression therapy, slowly burying the desire for transformation, so that what we had left was a man with a beast’s faculties. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. We thought we had the problem beaten; that if the belief systems didn’t keep you subdued the pain response would. But we were wrong.” He stood up and crossed to the window. “Now we have to start again.”

  “Suckling said you’d been wounded.”

  “No. Merely demoted. Ordered back to London.”

  “But you’re not going.”

  “I will now; now that I’ve found you.” He looked round at Ballard. “You’re my vindication, Ballard. You’re living proof that my techniques are viable. You have full knowledge of your condition, yet the therapy holds the leash.” He turned back to the window. Rain lashed the glass. Ballard could almost feel it upon his head, upon his back. Cool, sweet rain. For a blissful moment he seemed to be running in it, close to the ground, and the air was full of the scents the downpour had released from the pavements.

  “Mironenko said—”

  “Forget Mironenko,” Cripps told him. “He’s dead. You’re the last of the old order, Ballard. And the first of the new.”

  Downstairs, a bell rang. Cripps peered out of the window at the streets below.

  “Well, well,” he said. “A delegation, come to beg us to return. I hope you’re flattered.” He went to the door. “Stay here. We needn’t show you off tonight. You’re weary. Let them wait, eh? Let them sweat.” He left the stale room, closing the door behind him. Ballard heard his footsteps on the stairs. The bell was being rung a second time. He got up and crossed to the window. The weariness of the late afternoon light matched his weariness; he and his city were still of one accord, despite the curse that was upon him. Below, a man emerged from the back of the car and crossed to the front door. Even at this acute angle Ballard recognized Suckling.

  There were voices in the hallway; and with Suckling’s appearance the debate seemed to become more heated. Ballard went to the door, and listened, but his drug-dulled mind could make little sense of the argument. He prayed that Cripps would keep to his word, and not allow them to peer at him. He didn’t want to be a beast like Mironenko. It wasn’t freedom, was it, to be so terrible?; it was merely a different kind of tyranny. But then he didn’t want to be the first of Cripps�
� heroic new order either. He belonged to nobody, he realized; not even himself. He was hopelessly lost. And yet hadn’t Mironenko said at that first meeting that the man who did not believe himself lost, was lost? Perhaps better that – better to exist in the twilight between one state and another, to prosper as best he could by doubt and ambiguity – than to suffer the certainties of the tower.

  The debate below was gaining in momentum. Ballard opened the door so as to hear better. It was Suckling’s voice that met him. The tone was waspish, but no less threatening for that.

  “It’s over . . .” he was telling Cripps “. . . don’t you understand plain English?” Cripps made an attempt to protest, but Suckling cut him short. “Either you come in a gentlemanly fashion or Gideon and Sheppard carry you out. Which is it to be?”

  “What is this?” Cripps demanded. “You’re nobody, Suckling. You’re comic relief.”

  “That was yesterday,” the man replied. “There’ve been some changes made. Every dog has his day, isn’t that right? You should know that better than anybody. I’d get a coat if I were you. It’s raining.”

  There was a short silence, then Cripps said:

  “All right. I’ll come.”

  “Good man,” said Suckling sweetly. “Gideon, go check upstairs.”

  “I’m alone,” said Cripps.

  “I believe you,” said Suckling. Then to Gideon, “Do it anyway.”

  Ballard heard somebody move across the hallway, and then a sudden flurry of movement. Cripps was either making an escape-bid or attacking Suckling, one of the two. Suckling shouted out; there was a scuffle. Then, cutting through the confusion, a single shot.

  Cripps cried out, then came the sound of him falling.

  Now Suckling’s voice, thick with fury. “Stupid,” he said. “Stupid.”

  Cripps groaned something which Ballard didn’t catch. Had he asked to be dispatched, perhaps, for Suckling told him: “No. You’re going back to London. Sheppard, stop him bleeding. Gideon; upstairs.”

  Ballard backed away from the head of the stairs as Gideon began his ascent. He felt sluggish and inept. There was no way out of this trap. They would corner him and exterminate him. He was a beast; a mad dog in a maze. If he’d only killed Suckling when he’d had the strength to do so. But then what good would that have done? The world was full of men like Suckling, men biding their time until they could show their true colours; vile, soft, secret men. And suddenly the beast seemed to move in Ballard, and he thought of the park and the fog and the smile on the face of Mironenko, and he felt a surge of grief for something he’d never had: the life of a monster.

  Gideon was almost at the top of the stairs. Though it could only delay the inevitable by moments, Ballard slipped along the landing and opened the first door he found. It was the bathroom. There was a bolt on the door, which he slipped into place.

  The sound of running water filled the room. A piece of guttering had broken, and was delivering a torrent of rain-water onto the window-sill. The sound, and the chill of the bathroom, brought the night of delusions back. He remembered the pain and blood; remembered the shower – water beating on his skull, cleansing him of the taming pain. At the thought, four words came to his lips unbidden.

  “I do not believe.”

  He had been heard.

  “There’s somebody up here,” Gideon called. The man approached the door, and beat on it. “Open up!”

  Ballard heard him quite clearly, but didn’t reply. His throat was burning, and the roar of rotors was growing louder again. He put his back to the door and despaired.

  Suckling was up the stairs and at the door in seconds. “Who’s in there?” he demanded to know. “Answer me! Who’s in there?” Getting no response, he ordered that Cripps be brought upstairs. There was more commotion as the order was obeyed.

  “For the last time—” Suckling said.

  The pressure was building in Ballard’s skull. This time it seemed the din had lethal intentions; his eyes ached, as if about to be blown from their sockets. He caught sight of something in the mirror above the sink; something with gleaming eyes, and again, the words came – “I do not believe” – but this time his throat, hot with other business, could barely pronounce them.

  “Ballard,” said Suckling. There was triumph in the word. “My God, we’ve got Ballard as well. This is our lucky day.”

  No, thought the man in the mirror. There was nobody of that name here. Nobody of any name at all, in fact, for weren’t names the first act of faith, the first board in the box you buried freedom in? The thing he was becoming would not be named; nor boxed; nor buried. Never again.

  For a moment he lost sight of the bathroom, and found himself hovering above the grave they had made him dig, and in the depths the box danced as its contents fought its premature burial. He could hear the wood splintering – or was it the sound of the door being broken down?

  The box-lid flew off. A rain of nails fell on the heads of the burial party. The noise in his head, as if knowing that its torments had proved fruitless, suddenly fled, and with it the delusion. He was back in the bathroom, facing the open door. The men who stared through at him had the faces of fools. Slack, and stupefied with shock – seeing the way he was wrought. Seeing the snout of him, the hair of him, the golden eye and the yellow tooth of him. Their horror elated him.

  “Kill it!” said Suckling, and pushed Gideon into the breach. The man already had his gun from his pocket and was levelling it, but his trigger-finger was too slow. The beast snatched his hand and pulped the flesh around the steel. Gideon screamed, and stumbled away down the stairs, ignoring Suckling’s shouts.

  As the beast raised his hand to sniff the blood on his palm there was a flash of fire, and he felt the blow to his shoulder. Sheppard had no chance to fire a second shot however before his prey was through the door and upon him. Forsaking his gun, he made a futile bid for the stairs, but the beast’s hand unsealed the back of his head in one easy stroke. The gunman toppled forward, the narrow landing filling with the smell of him. Forgetting his other enemies, the beast fell upon the offal and ate.

  Somebody said: “Ballard.”

  The beast swallowed down the dead man’s eyes in one gulp, like prime oysters.

  Again, those syllables. “Ballard.” He would have gone on with his meal, but that the sound of weeping pricked his ears. Dead to himself he was, but not to grief. He dropped the meat from his fingers and looked back along the landing.

  The man who was crying only wept from one eye; the other gazed on, oddly untouched. But the pain in the living eye was profound indeed. It was despair, the beast knew; such suffering was too close to him for the sweetness of transformation to have erased it entirely. The weeping man was locked in the arms of another man, who had his gun placed against the side of his prisoner’s head.

  “If you make another move,” the captor said, “I’ll blow his head off. Do you understand me?”

  The beast wiped his mouth.

  “Tell him, Cripps! He’s your baby. Make him understand.”

  The one-eyed man tried to speak, but words defeated him. Blood from the wound in his abdomen seeped between his fingers.

  “Neither of you need die,” the captor said. The beast didn’t like the music of his voice; it was shrill and deceitful. “London would much prefer to have you alive. So why don’t you tell him, Cripps? Tell him I mean him no harm.”

  The weeping man nodded.

  “Ballard . . .” he murmured. His voice was softer than the other. The beast listened.

  “Tell me, Ballard—” he said, “– how does it feel?”

  The beast couldn’t quite make sense of the question.

  “Please tell me. For curiosity’s sake—”

  “Damn you—” said Suckling, pressing the gun into Cripps’ flesh. “This isn’t a debating society.”

  “Is it good?” Cripps asked, ignoring both man and gun.

  “Shut up!”

  “Answer me, Ballard. How does it
feel?”

  As he stared into Cripps’ despairing eyes the meaning of the sounds he’d uttered came clear, the words falling into place like the pieces of a mosaic. “Is it good?” the man was asking.

  Ballard heard laughter in his throat, and found the syllables there to reply.

  “Yes,” he told the weeping man. “Yes. It’s good.”

  He had not finished his reply before Cripps’ hand sped to snatch at Suckling’s. Whether he intended suicide or escape nobody would ever know. The trigger-finger twitched, and a bullet flew up through Cripps’ head and spread his despair across the ceiling. Suckling threw the body off, and went to level the gun, but the beast was already upon him.

  Had he been more of a man, Ballard might have thought to make Suckling suffer, but he had no such perverse ambition. His only thought was to render the enemy extinct as efficiently as possible. Two sharp and lethal blows did it. Once the man was dispatched, Ballard crossed over to where Cripps was lying. His glass eye had escaped destruction. It gazed on fixedly, untouched by the holocaust all around them. Unseating it from the maimed head, Ballard put it in his pocket; then he went out into the rain.

  It was dusk. He did not know which district of Berlin he’d been brought to, but his impulses, freed of reason, led him via the back streets and shadows to a wasteland on the outskirts of the city, in the middle of which stood a solitary ruin. It was anybody’s guess as to what the building might once have been (an abbatoir? an opera-house?) but by some freak of fate it had escaped demolition, though every other building had been levelled for several hundred yards in each direction. As he made his way across the weed-clogged rubble the wind changed direction by a few degrees and carried the scent of his tribe to him. There were many there, together in the shelter of the ruin. Some leaned their backs against the wall and shared a cigarette; some were perfect wolves, and haunted the darkness like ghosts with golden eyes; yet others might have passed for human entirely, but for their trails.