The Totem

ONE

Slaughter was drunk. he hadn't come back home until nearly one o'clock, and he had stayed outside just long enough to check his horses. Then he'd walked back to his house and with the porchlight on had stared down at the cooler filled with tepid water and the beer cans from this morning. There were empties on the porch as well. There hadn't been a chance to clean up. Too much had begun to happen. But he didn't clean up this time either, simply glanced out at the darkness and then turned to go inside where first he flicked the lights on to study another cooler in the kitchen before heading toward the cupboard where he kept the bourbon. That was something that he almost never drank, but this night had been special, oh, my God, yes, and he almost didn't even bother with a glass. He knew that would be too much weakness, though, and since he was determined to be weak to start with, he at least would set some limits. Reaching for the bottle and a glass, he fumbled in the freezer for some ice and poured the glass up to the top and in three swallows drank a third of it.

The shock was almost paralyzing. He put both hands on the sink and leaned across it, choking, waiting for the scalding flood to settle in his stomach. He could feel it draining down his throat. He felt his stomach tensing, and he knew that because he hadn't eaten since this morning, he might easily throw up. But then the spasms ebbed, and he was breathing, trembling. He leaned across the sink a moment longer. Then he poured some water with the bourbon, and he started toward the shadowy living room. Once, years ago, when he had learned that his wife was leaving him, he had felt emotions like this, ruin, fright, discouragement that bordered on despair. He had sensed those feelings building in him until the instant of the divorce, and going to his rented room, his legs so shaky that he didn't think he'd get there, he had stopped at a liquor store where he had bought the cheapest wine that he could find. A quart of Ruby Banquet, some god-awful label like that. And he'd somehow made it to his room where without pausing he had drunk the bottle in thirty seconds. Setting down the bottle, he had scrambled toward the bathroom, and the heave of liquid from him had evacuated more than just the wine. The sickness had been cleansing, purging all the ugliness, the hate and fear and anger. He had slumped beside the toilet bowl, and how long he had stayed there he was never certain, but when he got up and slumped across the bed, he found that it was night and that the slowly flashing neon sign outside his window was the pattern of his heartbeat, measured, weary. There was nothing in him anymore. He had passed the crisis, and he had a sense then of a new beginning. He was neutral.

Now he'd graduated from the cheap wine to the bourbon, and he would have forced himself to throw up, but he understood that this trouble wasn't over. No, his apprehension from the night before remained with him, and he was definitely certain that this wasn't over. First, there'd be the lawsuit. That much he could bet on. Against the medical examiner, and then like ripples in a pond, eventually against himself and against the town council that employed him. Then investigations to determine if the medical examiner and he should lose their jobs.

Hell, the medical examiner might even lose his license. That boy might have died because he was allergic to the sedative. There hadn't been the proper questions, proper cautions. They had let the trouble so distract them that they hadn't thought beyond it. They might very well deserve to lose their jobs.

He didn't want to think about that. He wanted only to shut off his mind and stare down at the bourbon in his hand. Avoiding the light in the kitchen, he sat in a dark corner of the living room and frowned at the darkness past the window. For a moment as he raised the glass, he didn't realize that it was empty. Better have another. So he went back to the kitchen, pouring more but putting ample water with it this time. He would have to talk to lots of people in the morning, and he wanted to be sober. He could recollect as if he still were there the father crying with the mother, cursing, saying that he'd warned them about so much force to catch a little boy. The hardest part had been his struggle with the father. "No, you can't go in to touch him."

"He's my son."

"I don't care. He still might contaminate you. As it is, your wife might be infected from that bite."

It took two men at last to keep the father from the back seat of the cruiser. Dunlap had continued taking pictures. Oh, my Jesus, what a mess. And when he'd finally mustered the energy to talk to Dunlap, there had been no sign of him. The man had sense enough to get away while he was able, likely fearing that his pictures would be confiscated. Slaughter didn't know if he would actually have grabbed the camera, but by then he had been mad enough to grab at something. It was just as well that Dunlap had not been around to serve that function. There wasn't much happening by the time he looked for Dun-lap anyhow. The man might simply have walked into town to get some rest. The mother and the father had been driven home. The medical examiner was going with the body to the morgue. The officers were locking the mansion until they'd come back in the morning to investigate. He himself had stood in the darkness by his cruiser, staring at the mansion, and he'd heard that howling from below him in the park again, but he had been too weary and disgusted to go down there. He had seen enough for one night, and he had the sense that he would see a lot more very soon. All he wanted was to get home and anesthetize himself.

But not too much, he kept remembering as he walked toward the living room and sat again in the corner, staring at the night out there. He'd have to do a lot of talking in the morning. Dunlap, Parsons, and the medical examiner. He didn't know who else, but there'd be many, and he wondered how he'd manage to get through this. All his years of working, and he'd never had this kind of trouble. No, that wasn't true. There was the grocery store. And on one occasion, he'd shot a man. Three, to be precise, but only one had died, and the inquest had absolved him. He'd been bothered by the killing, but he'd never felt like this, and he was grateful that the bourbon finally was numbing him. Even slumped in a chair, he was slightly off balance, and his lips felt strange. Too long without sleep, without a meal, but he was too disturbed to want either.

He was thinking of the medical examiner, the green walls of the autopsy room, the scalpel cutting. That was something else Slaughter hadn't done right. Because the father would no doubt press charges, Slaughter never should have let the medical examiner go with the body. Even if the medical examiner were able to determine that the boy was not allergic to the sedative, the father would maintain that the evidence had been distorted. What was more, the sedative had almost surely not reacted well with the virus. It had helped to produce the fatal symptoms of paralysis, so any way the problem was approached, the medical examiner had been at fault. He couldn't be objective when he examined the body. There'd be accusations from the council. Slaughter wished that he'd forbidden him to do the autopsy.

"But don't you see I have to know?" the medical examiner had begged him. Slaughter knew how he himself would feel and in the end had let him. After all, what difference did it make? The boy was dead. There wasn't time to bring in someone else to do the job. They had to know right now how this thing worked. He sipped his drink and wondered if the medical examiner would find out that the boy had died from other causes. That would be the best thing anyone could hope for. If the medical examiner did discover that, however, was it likely that the town council would believe him? Or yourself, he thought. Would you believe him? Do you trust him that much?

Yes, he thought, and when the phone rang and he reached for it, he guessed that this might be the medical examiner calling to report. But it wasn't, just a dead sound on the telephone.

"Who is it?" Slaughter repeated, but there wasn't any answer. He wondered if this might be the father. "Is there anybody-?"

But abruptly the dial tone was buzzing, and he stared down at the phone and set it onto its holder. Which he would have done regardless, because from the field down by the barn he heard the horses. They were whinnying and snorting. Through the open window and the screen, he heard their hoof-beats skitter one way, then another. In a rush, he set down his glass and rose from the chair. The bourbon made him dizzy, and he waited until his brain was steady before walking toward the door. He'd turned the porchlight off when he came in, but now he turned it on again and stepped out, pausing as he glanced around, then swung left off the porch to face the barn. There was something different, and he had to think before he noticed that he didn't hear any insects. They were always rasping in the bushes and the grass. They had been when he drove in, parking, going down to check the horses at the start.

But now the night was silent, heavy, except for the skittish whinny of the horses, and he wished that he had thought to bring a rifle from the house. He had his handgun, though, and in the dark its range was good enough for any target he might see. This likely would be nothing anyhow. The horses sometimes acted like this if they sensed a snake or a coyote down that drywash on the rear side of the barn. Often all he had to do was calm them or else shine a light out into the bushes, and the thing would go away. But with the bourbon working on him, he'd left his flashlight in the house, and he was wondering if he was in control enough for this. Considering the trouble that was going on, this might be something, after all.

So, careful to approach the open barn door from an angle, he quickly reached inside to switch on the floodlights. There were two sets, one in front and back, that blazed out toward the drywash and the field beside the barn and toward the house. His eyes hurt briefly as he stared at where the horses galloped toward the right and whinnied and then swung fast toward the left. Their pattern was a kind of circle as if both felt threatened on each side, and although they were a distance from the fence before him, he could see their wild eyes and their twitching nostrils. "What the hell?"

The words were out before he knew he'd said them, and their sound, mixed with the horses' panic, startled him. He'd never seen them act like this. When there was something here that bothered them, they always made some slight disturbance and then shifted toward a better section of the field. But both were in a frenzy, snorting, twitching, galloping, and he was just about to climb the fence and go out there to calm then when he realized that they might be infected. Sure, a sudden change in manner. That would be a symptom. He could not afford to go to them.

But what else could he do? Assume that something in the darkness frightened them. He hoped that was the case. He loved these horses, and he'd hate to lose them. Well, get moving then. He realized that his reluctance was an indication of how much he'd been bothered, and he took a breath, pulled out his gun, then forced himself to walk along the fence to reach the drywash.

The floodlights brightened everything for fifty yards behind the barn. He saw the red clay of the gully, saw the bushes on the slope across there and the trees along the far rim. He glanced behind him, fearful that there might be something crouched behind the barn, and then his back protected, he walked slowly toward the gully.

There was nothing at the bottom, just the red clay and the boulders and the branches he had thrown in to stop erosion. All the same, he felt that there was something. In the field, the horses continued skittering and snorting, and he didn't know exactly how to do this. Under usual circumstances, he would have no second thoughts before he went down into the gully and then up the other side to check the bushes. After all, what normally would be out there that could harm him? But this trouble made him reconsider everything. He had to distrust every living thing and even dead ones. But he couldn't bear the horses' panic, couldn't tolerate their agony. He had to stop what they were doing. So he started down the gully when he heard the branches snapping.

Over to his left, across the gully in the bushes, where the glare from the floodlights blended with the darkness. Stepping back toward the rim, he walked along it, frowning toward the darkness. His handgun cocked and ready, he couldn't be certain if the branches snapped from something that came close or backed off. Then he heard another group of branches snapping, farther to the left, and he relaxed a little as he judged that it was something moving off. The branches snapped close to the first place he had heard them now, however-farther to the left again as well-and there was more than one thing out here, that was certain. He was rigid, fighting the urge to flee in panic like the horses.

Keep control. It's just coyotes. Sure, then why the hell have you quit breathing? When he heard the snapping once again and couldn't pretend anymore that it wasn't coming closer, he reacted without thinking. His instinct now in charge, he fired in the air and saw the lean four-footed object, furry, scrambling backward through the bushes. Then he saw the other, and another, and he might have shouted as he saw yet another coming nearer. He would never know for sure. He heard a noise down in the gully to his right, another on the far side of the barn, and he was running up along the fence beside the barn to reach the house. The horses galloped in a line with him, and then they bolted toward the middle of the field. He kept running, hearing noises close behind him, not once looking, only gasping, racing, and he reached the house and burst inside, slamming the door, locking it behind him. He dodged through the living room to reach the kitchen and the back door which he locked as well. He closed the windows everywhere. He locked them, pulling down the shades, and he was reaching for the phone, gasping, frantically dialing.

"Hello," a sleepy voice said. "Who, uh-"

"Rettig, this is Slaughter. Get Hammel and get out here."

"Chief? Is that you? I uh-"

"Rettig, don't ask questions. Just get out here."

"To the station? What time is it?"

"My place. Fast. I need you."

Slaughter repeated his instructions and set down the phone, hearing how the horses whinnied beyond tolerance. He started toward the windows on that side, reaching for a blind to pull it up and see why they were sounding like that. But the phone rang, and he stood immobile, one hand on the blind while he stared toward the phone. That god-damned Rettig. What's the matter with him? When Slaughter crossed the room and grabbed the phone, there wasn't anyone, however, just that same dead silence. "Tell me what you want!" he shouted to the mouthpiece, but the silence continued. Then he heard the dial tone again and scratching on the porch and only one horse out there now was whinnying. He faced the front door, his handgun ready, glancing at the window on the side that faced the horses. But he couldn't hear even one horse now, and as he scrambled toward the front blind, the scratching stopped. The night became terribly soundless.

TWO

Dunlap set down the phone. He was in his room, the camera and the tape recorder on the desk where he was sitting, his notes spread out before him. He was almost out of cigarettes. He frowned at the pint of whisky that he'd left here in the morning. Even though his body was in agony, he held firm to his promise to himself not to take a drink. The promise was a recent one, although there'd been others like it many times before, but this time he was absolute in his determination not to break it. He had walked back to his hotel from the park. He'd seen the mother and the father leave, had seen the medical examiner go with the body, and he'd known that Slaughter shortly would be turning on him. After all, he'd seen too much. He'd even taken pictures-of the grieving parents, of the body, of the medical examiner who looked so guilty that an image of him would be damning. Dunlap didn't know if Slaughter was as good a man as he appeared to be, but he'd seen even good men try a coverup if they were threatened, and the way those parents had reacted, Slaughter would feel threatened all right. Dunlap wasn't going to take a chance on him. He hadn't come across a story this strong in too many years, six of them at least, about the time that his drinking had gotten out of hand and the magazine had shifted him to minor stories. Now, though, he'd been lucky. What had seemed little more than a routine story had developed into something that would surely get his reputation back. Indeed if this situation got much worse-and he was positive it would-it might turn out to be among the ten best stories of the year, and he was not about to jeopardize his comeback. Actually he hadn't walked back to the hotel; he had run. He'd slowed on occasion, fighting for his breath, but mostly he had run the ten blocks to his hotel, knowing from the vantage point that the hill provided which way he had to go to reach the downtown section, and he'd often looked behind him just in case a cruiser might be coming, but there hadn't been one, and when he at last had reached the hotel and his room, the desk clerk downstairs frowning at him as he hurried up, he'd fumbled to unload his camera, looking for a place to hide the film. His room would be too obvious. He went out in the corridor and braced the cartridge behind a picture on the wall. He hid the tape from his recorder behind another picture. He had all their voices from the moment they had reached the ballroom to the instant when the grieving parents had accused the medical examiner of negligence. Oh, it was all there, every blessed detail, and he meant to keep it. Slaughter might come after it, but Slaughter wasn't going to get it.

Back inside his room, Dunlap had locked the door, and that was when his glance had settled on the pint of bourbon. He was moving toward it, even twisting at the cap, before he stopped himself. No, that was how he'd ended in this dump. He'd ruined every piece of luck he'd ever had by drinking, had nearly lost his wife and almost screwed up his career. If he got drunk now, he'd do something stupid, maybe talk too much when Slaughter came or even draw attention to those pictures in the corridor. For sure, he'd need his senses to keep up with what was happening. The time lost from a drunken stupor would fit the pattern, though. Like gamblers who kept losing, maybe that was what he wanted. To keep losing. Maybe something in him was determined to seek failure. Well, not this time. This time he was going to be a winner. He had lasted since the morning without booze, the first day he had managed that in years, and if he'd suffered this long, he could suffer just a little longer. Make it through the night. The melody to those words occurred to him, and he was laughing. Face this one hour, then the next. That was how the A. A. people were successful, wasn't it? Sure, take this one hour at a time.

But although Dunlap had laughed, his hands were shaking. He suspected he would throw up, and he set the bottle by the television, went into the bathroom, and drank some water. Hell, you're hungry, that's all. A little sick from all that running. But no matter the reason, he was close to throwing up. He stripped and showered, and that helped, the hot sting of the water flooding all the sweat and dust and tension from him, but he nonetheless was sick and wishing for a drink. The drink might make him even sicker, but he wanted it. Attraction and repulsion. So he put on fresh clothes. Why, he didn't know. He ought to go to bed, but he was thinking maybe he would take a walk. Instead he sat down at the desk and tried a first draft of some notes, just to flesh out what was on the tape and film. He smoked and scribbled his impressions, in no special order, just to get the words down, staring at the way his hand was shaking, and the sentences were scrawled so poorly that he almost couldn't read them. Why not just one drink? To brace you, get you through this. No, and glancing from the pint of bourbon, he kept smoking, writing.

Then he knew he had to get some sleep. He flicked the lights off, stretched out on the bed, and concentrated to relax his stiff, tense body. Hard, it trembled, and he eased the muscles in his feet, his legs, his torso, slowly moving toward his head. It might have been that he was even more fatigued than he suspected, or that slowly moving up his body was like counting numbers backward or repeating nonsense phrases, but his consciousness gave in before he ever reached his head. He woke in what he later learned was half an hour, almost screamed in the darkness but stopped himself. He found that he was sitting in the bed, that he was sweating, and he wavered to his feet, switching on the light. He saw numerous insects clinging to his window. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead. He had seen that image once again, that strange, half-human, antlered figure. But he always had associated it with nights of too much drinking. DTs, bourbon, nightmares. This time, though, he'd dreamed it even though he'd been sober. When the dream had first happened to him, almost three years ago, he hadn't thought much about it. Just another crazy nightmare. But the dream had come back in a month, and then another month, and he'd been slightly bothered by it. After all, his dreams before were always varied, and although he reacted to them as he dreamed, they never lingered after he wakened. This dream, though, was like an imprint, always vaguely with him, haunting. It was never different, an upright antlered figure standing with its back to him, and then the figure turning slowly, its body twisted, its head aimed past its shoulder, staring at him. That was all. But once a month became twice and then three times, and lately he had dreamed it almost every night. He had thought of going to a doctor, but he knew that the doctor would advise him to stop drinking, and he wasn't ready for that. Hell, if all the drinking did was cause a few bad dreams, so what? He willed himself to keep from dreaming it, and for a month, the tactic worked, but soon the dream was back again, and maybe its persistence, not its nature, was what bothered him. A repetition like that wasn't normal, but the image on its own was hardly normal either, part man, part deer, part cat, God knows what all, and that grotesque beard and that upright body turning sideways, its paws up, its round eyes staring at him. It was horrifying, monstrous. More than that, it was hypnotic, powerful, like magic, as if it were waiting for him, drawing him, and one day he would see it. He was frightened by it, by the riddle that it represented. What was happening to him? If he kept seeing this thing, he would end up in an institution. Never mind an institution. He'd be in the crazy house. He couldn't stand this anymore.

He had to talk to someone, but he didn't know anyone he could call. He crossed the room and grabbed the phone, surprised to find that he dialed his home number. That was something he never did when he was on a trip. The trouble with his wife was so great that they barely managed talking face-to-face, let alone long-distance. But he had to talk to her, to tell her that he'd managed to stop drinking, that everything was going to be all right. Maybe he was too optimistic, but he knew that he could stop at least as long as he was working on this story. After that, he couldn't say. "One day at a time," he reminded himself. Just take it one day at a time. He didn't even care that he would waken her, that in New York it was two hours later. He just had to talk to her and waited while the phone rang and kept waiting, but there wasn't any answer. Still he waited, and at last he had to admit that she was out. But where would she be at this hour? The doubts and the suspicions. He hung up and glanced at the bourbon before he picked up a cigarette. He had to talk to Slaughter and get their differences resolved so he could continue working with the man and have this story. When he found the number in the phone book and dialed it, he was suddenly uncertain, though. He didn't know how he would do this, how he would cancel the ill will he had created. As the phone rang, he was tempted to hang up, but Slaughter answered, and he found that he was speechless. "Yes, who is it?" Slaughter asked and then repeated. Dunlap waited, paralyzed. "Is there anybody-?" Slaughter asked, and Dunlap set the phone back on its cradle.

That was stupid. What's the matter with you? Dunlap thought. But he knew what the matter was, all right, although he had trouble admitting it. He was ashamed of what he'd done tonight, regretful and embarrassed. He'd grown to like the man. Granted, there wasn't any valid reason to pretend that they were friends. Dunlap nonetheless had thought of Slaughter that way. When they had gone out searching for the boy, Dunlap had felt that he was part of things, that he belonged and was involved. That feeling conflicted with his job, his instincts, and his training. No reporter ought to get involved with what he wrote about. His job was to watch objectively and then to write the story. But then maybe that had been his trouble all along, concentrating too much on himself and not on other people. For just a little while this evening, however, he had felt involved, and for that brief time, he hadn't felt hollow. Then they'd searched the mansion, and the boy had died, and he had remembered why he came here. He had realized how strong this story was becoming, had been mindful of the good that it would do him, and he'd switched the tape recorder on before he'd even considered what he was doing, and the next thing he had started taking photographs. Now he thought about the grieving mother and the father, how he'd used them, how he'd planned to benefit from what would happen to the medical examiner. He felt sorry for the boy and for the parents, sorry for what had happened up there, but he'd kept taking photographs. His career. That's where his sympathies had finally been strongest, and he couldn't stop his shame now and embarrassment. So what do you intend to do? Do you plan to give up those pictures and that tape? Do you want to back off from the story? No, of course not. You're damned right, you don't. Because that shame you're feeling is just one more way to be a loser. It's not your fault that the boy died. You're just here to write about that. You can go on feeling all the shame you want, but just make sure you get that story, just make sure that your emotions don't intrude on how you make your living.

He knew that he was right, but all the same he continued staring at the phone. Regardless of the friendship he imagined he had violated, he still had to talk to Slaughter, to smooth things, to fix them so he wasn't cut off from the story. Even so, he debated for ten minutes before picking up the phone again. He dialed Slaughter's number once more and waited while the phone kept ringing. This time Slaughter's voice was angry. "Yes, God damn it, Rettig, what's the matter? Get on out here." Dun-lap didn't answer. "Tell me what you want!" the angry voice demanded. Dunlap set the phone back on its cradle. There was no way he could make a man who sounded like that sympathetic. He would wait until the morning. So he smoked his final cigarette and looked down at his notes, and then he did a thing that he had never done before, had never even dared because he was so bothered by it. Unsettled by his dream, the image fixed in his mind, turning, glaring at him, he was forced (he didn't will it, but was passive, worked on, compelled) to sketch it. He was staring at it, swallowed by its eyes. He kept on staring, couldn't shift his head away. He felt a darkness in his mind begin to open, and he didn't weaken all at once. It took him several minutes, and he fought it, he would later give himself that credit, fought as hard as he could manage, but resolve diminished into pointlessness, and he was reaching for the bourbon.

THREE

The medical examiner gave himself the first shot in the lip, frowning at the mirror while he spread the injured portions and then slipped the needle in. It stung, and he was too quick on the plunger so that he felt the liquid spurting through his tissue. All he could be grateful for was that he held his breath and didn't spill the liquid up across his lip and hence he couldn't taste it. Human antirabies serum manufactured from the blood of persons who'd been vaccinated against rabies virus. That would help his system to produce the necessary antibodies and in tandem with a second kind of treatment, it was his best chance to survive contagion. He winced as he drew the needle out. Next he set it down, undid his pants and dropped them, pulling down his underwear and reaching for a second needle that he inserted into one buttock. This injection too was antirabies serum, and he wouldn't need another needle until just about this time tomorrow. Even so, that didn't give him comfort because, if he winced to draw this needle out, tomorrow's shot would be the start of worse things. It would not be antirabies serum; it would be the second kind of treatment: rabies vaccine. Anyone who'd been injected with it cringed when they remembered it. First developed by an Englishman named Semple who had done his research in India in 1911, it was rabies virus taken from the brains of rabbits, mice, or rats, and then killed by incubation in carbolic acid. The dead cells helped the body's immune system. Although harmless in themselves, they encouraged the body to reject the not-yet-rampant live cells that were like them. But the trouble was that not just one injection of the vaccine was sufficient. Fourteen were the minimum, and twenty-one were even better. Each injection was given daily to the muscles of the abdomen. A clockwise pattern was required because the shots were so excruciating that the muscles became extremely sensitive. And maybe you could bear the first five or the second, but the last few were an agony, and this was not a thing the medical examiner was looking forward to.

He didn't have a choice, though. He had indirectly been exposed, and if indeed he had it, the disease would surely kill him without treatment. There were only two examples in which persons had lived through the virus, and there was doubt that they had really had it since their symptoms had been like encephalitis. With the treatment, he still took the chance that he would die from the disease, that it would be too strong for his precautions, but the likelihood was small, and anyway, as he kept thinking, he didn't have a choice. Even rare reactions to the vaccine, like a fever or paralysis, were nothing when compared with certain death. But all the same, the start of treatment didn't calm his fears. The dog had gone through pre-exposure vaccination. It had died, regardless.

The start of treatment didn't calm his sorrow either. He was thinking of the boy lying on the table in the autopsy room, of how he should have had the foresight not to give him the sedative. Those parents. How could he absolve himself? He could still hear the mother shrieking. Well, he meant to find out everything he could about this thing. When he was finished, he would know this virus more than any other he had ever worked on. He had once been famous as an expert in pathology. So now he would discover just how much an expert he could be. That's right. You think you know so much. Get moving. Now's the time to prove it.

So he pulled his pants up, buckled them, and thinking of the tests he would perform, he turned and started from his office. Owens would be here soon with the dog's brain to compare what he had found with what the medical examiner would find inside the boy downstairs. Meanwhile, he himself would use the simple test for Negri bodies. He would also use a more elaborate test in which a brain smear was treated with fluorescent antirabies serum and examined underneath an ultraviolet microscope. To watch the symptoms of the virus, he'd inject a half dozen newborn mice with portions of the boy's brain. He would also want a picture of the virus using the electron microscope. Whatever this thing was, he meant to have a look at it, and when he opened that body, he would understand why the paralysis occurred so quickly, why it worsened with sedation.

As he walked along the corridor, he saw the nurses staring at him. Word had gotten around, all right, and fast as only people in a hospital could spread it. They were looking at a man whose error had been fatal to a patient. Then he told himself to get control. They maybe were just frightened by a thing they didn't understand. Or maybe they were startled by the grim way he was walking. Well, he didn't plan to ask them, and if they knew what was good for them, they'd stay away from him.

He reached the door down to the basement. He thought of Slaughter who would need injections, and the mother and the man who had been bitten, and the man who owned the dog. There were too many details he had not attended to. What was more, he needed sleep. And food, he hadn't eaten since this morning. Well, he would do this and take care of everything. With Owens here to help him, he could find the time to call those people, get them down here for their shots. But he knew what he really wanted-to learn what had killed this boy.

The medical examiner reached the bottom of the steps and went through to the corridor. He came to the far end of the hallway and entered the morgue. In the anteroom, he washed his hands and put on a lab coat, a cap, a mask, and rubber gloves. Just to be exact and avoid contaminating his samples, he even stepped inside protective coverings for his shoes, and then with nothing further to detain him, he pushed through the door and he was in the autopsy room.

Green tile on the walls reflected the glare of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. A counter with steel sinks and trays of instruments was flanked by three tables, each with gutters and a drain for blood. The tables were arranged sideways as he faced them, one behind the other, and the third was where his eyes were focused, on that tiny lump beneath the sheet. He walked with slow determination toward it, breathing through the clinging vapor that collected on the inside of his face mask. Then he paused and gently pulled the sheet back, staring at the naked body on the table. So small, so battered, all those bruises from the fury it had been through. There was caked blood on the lips which swollen, slightly parted, showed some damage to the front teeth. But these details weren't important. Even with them, the boy was striking. Blond, angelic, innocent. This was the first time that the medical examiner had worked on someone he'd observed in life, the first time he had done this to a patient. But then that was just the point. He never had a patient. That was why he'd become a medical examiner-to keep these feelings of regret away from him, to shun these awful obligations to the memory of the living. Well, he'd brought this on himself. He had become responsible, and he paused to eliminate emotion before reaching for the scalpel that he would use to peel the hair away. He took a breath and didn't want to do this, but he leaned close to select his point of contact while the eyes flickered suddenly below him and then stared at him, but they were purged of any innocence, as old and stark as any eyes he'd seen, and they kept staring. When the boy's hand came up, the room appeared to swivel, and his own hand to his mouth beneath his face mask, the medical examiner stumbled backward, screaming.

FOUR

Marge had stayed on duty at the police station until everything was finished at the mansion. There was nothing she could do up there to help, but she could free a man from night shift on the radio while he went up to lend a hand, and Slaughter needed every officer in town. So she had gotten the news in bits and pieces from the radio, and when she'd found out what at last had happened, she had done her best to keep from crying. Slaughter didn't need the people he depended on to break down when he most required them. Marge couldn't help it, though, and she had sat there, wiping at her tears, relaying messages. She knew the mother and the father. She had gone to school with older sisters in the mother's family. She had known this woman since the woman was a baby. Why, the woman lived just two blocks down from Marge's house, and Marge had often gone to visit, to see the boy, to bring him presents. Now the boy was dead, and partly out of sympathy for what the parents must be feeling, partly out of sorrow for the boy, she wept. But she did her job, and when the man she had relieved came back to resume his shift, she tried to hide that she'd been crying. All the same, the man had noticed, and he sat with her a while until he felt that she could drive. "You need a little sleep is all," he told her, but they both knew that it wouldn't be that easy. There were many people now who wouldn't get much sleep tonight, and she had thanked him, walking to her car. He'd asked if he should walk outside with her, but she had thought about the radio, with no one to attend to it, and she had told him that he really didn't have to. Anyhow, from five years of work with Slaughter, she had learned the value of control, and she was certain she'd be fine.

So she had gone out to her car and driven from the parking lot. Almost midnight on a Saturday. She normally would have expected lots of movement in the streets, especially outside the bars, young trail hands come in for a weekend's fun, but she was not surprised when she saw little action. A few cars and pickup trucks, a couple of men who stood outside a bar and sipped from beer cans. But in contrast with a normal weekend, this was more like a quiet Tuesday, and she wondered if the word had spread, or if ranchers, losing stock, had stayed home watching for some trouble with the cattle. But no matter what the reason, things were quiet, and that bothered her. As she drove through the outskirts, she saw lots of houselights on, and that was hardly normal either. She wished that she'd had the chance to talk to Slaughter, but he'd been so busy, and she didn't want to stay at home alone, so she drove past her house, went two more blocks, and if there were lights on, she meant to go in and console the mother and the father There were lights on for sure, the whole house both in front and back. She saw the plumber's truck, the car before it. Both the mother and the father must be home then, and she parked her car, wondering if she would be intruding. Well, she'd come this far, and after all it was her duty, so she got out, locked her car, and started up the sidewalk. She could hear the crickets screeching. She was peering toward the lights in all the windows, wondering if anybody else had come to visit, when she heard the voices. Loud: two men it seemed, and they were shouting. Then they were screaming. Marge was paralyzed. The cool night air was still, the crickets silent now, as someone ran out onto the porch as if for help, a man she once had met from two doors down, and he was staring at her. "Jesus, she's gone crazy."

"What?"

Abruptly Marge heard the snarling. Instinct almost made her run away, but she moved slowly forward as the window in the dining room came bursting toward the porch, two figures struggling through the broken edges, falling, writhing on the porch. The mother and the father, the mother snarling, the father screaming, and the mother was on top where she was scratching, biting.

Marge ran up the steps. "You've got to help me! Get her off him!"

"But she's crazy!" the neighbor said.

Marge would later recollect how she had thought of Slaughter at that moment, wondering how the chief would try to handle this. She wanted him to say that she had done the right thing when an instant could make all the difference. She pushed at the man behind her, shouting "Go get help!" as she looked all around for something to subdue the mother. She wasn't about to grab the mother and get bitten like the father screaming there, but when she saw the thing she needed in one corner of the porch, she couldn't bring herself to grab it. Warren evidently had been playing with it the day before he died. She didn't want to touch it, but the father's screaming was too much. She reached for it. Slipping on the broken glass, she lurched toward the mother, raised the baseball bat high above her head, and thinking about Slaughter, started swinging.

FIVE

Slaughter waited in his locked house until Rettig and Hammel arrived. He shouted out the window that they'd better look around before they left the cruiser. So they flashed their searchlights, but there wasn't anything. He went outside to meet them, staring past them, scanning all around them and then pointing. "This way."

"Well, what is it?"

"Don't you think I wish I knew?"

They stiffened. They were dressed in jeans and sport shirts, a gunbelt strapped around each waist. They saw that Slaughter had his own gun out, and they were drawing theirs as they walked toward the fence where he was pointing.

"Shine your flashlights."

The beams arced out across the field.

"But I don't understand this," Rettig said.

"Just keep your back protected. Keep looking all around you," Slaughter told him. "There was something out here. Hell, it came up on my porch."

Slaughter climbed over the fence and flashed his light while they jumped down beside him. Then he started walking with them through the field.

"Your porch?"

"That's right." Slaughter was embarrassed, determined not to admit that he'd run in panic. He felt safer with his men to help him, but he couldn't subdue the burning in his stomach, and he wished they wouldn't ask too many questions.

But they kept on. "Well, what is it?" Rettig asked again.

"I told you, I don't know. I never got a look at them."

"Your porch, though."

"I was talking to you on the phone when I heard it. When I looked, it wasn't there."

Then Slaughter saw what he was searching for and wished that he'd been wrong. With his flashlight aimed, he glimpsed the fallen objects in the field, and he was hurrying through the grass toward them. He stopped and stared. The horses were mangled like the steer that he had seen by old Doc Markle, like the other steer that he had seen by Bodine's pickup truck, except that these were worse, so mutilated that he almost didn't recognize them. He heard his men gasp.

"Some damned thing was out here all right. God, I'm sorry, Chief."

"These horses… They were all I…"

Slaughter stalked toward the gully. "I heard three of them up in those bushes, two more by the barn. I'd like to-"

"Wait a second, Chief." Rettig grabbed his shoulder.

Slaughter pulled his hand away. "These god-damned-"

"Wait a minute. We don't even know what we'll be up against. You say that there were five of them?"

"That's right. Like a bobcat."

"Five of them?"

"I know it doesn't make much sense, but-"

"I don't care about that. Sure, bobcats don't hunt in packs, but anything can happen. What I mean is, we need help to do this. We need better light."

"You want the sun to come up? Damn it, they'll be long gone when that happens."

"You can find a tracker."

"Who, for Christ sake? I already thought of that. These cowboys maybe think they're expert trackers, but I never saw one yet that knew enough to be able to trail a sick man to the outhouse. If we don't go now, we'll never find whatever did this."

"I'm sorry, Chief, but I'm not going."

Slaughter scowled at Rettig, then turned to Hammel. "What about you?"

Hammel shrugged.

"You don't have a lot to say since we saw Clifford's body."

"Well, I figure I'll just watch and learn," Hammel said.

"Yeah, I bet you will."

Slaughter spun to face the gully. Even with his flashlight and the moon, he couldn't see much in the bushes, and his anger became fear again.

"Okay, you're right. It's stupid to go in there. Looking at these horses, I just-"

"Don't you worry. We'll be sure to get whatever did this," Rettig said. "But not right now."

Slaughter's anger changed to grief. He had to get away from here.

"But what about your horses?" Rettig asked.

"Leave them. Hell, what difference does it make?"

Slaughter heard his men walking behind him as he climbed the fence, and when he stepped down, from the house he heard the phone again. Whoever kept on calling, he was thinking, livid. He would make sure that they stopped it. He was running, cursing, toward the house, but when he burst in, grabbing for the phone, he heard a voice this time, and as he listened, he mentally started running again. It seemed as if the last few days he'd never stopped.

SIX

He charged along the corridor, the nurses staring at him. Rettig and Hammel were on guard back at his house, and he was thinking of his mangled horses, hoping that the two men would be safe as he pushed through the door marked morgue and rushed across the anteroom to push against the second door. The morgue looked like a shambles. There was blood and broken glass and scattered instruments. The medical examiner was leaning against a table. He had blood across his gown, his face mask hanging around his neck. His face was pale in contrast with the blood. He looked as if he'd been sick, although he might have seemed that way because the neon lights reflecting off the green tiles tinted everything a sickly pallor. The medical examiner was shaking, and the man beside him, wearing street clothes, didn't look much better. Owens. Slaughter recognized him as a veterinary whom he had come across from time to time and had last seen on Friday morning when they'd looked at old Doc Markle on the floor beside the mangled steer.

The two men turned to him, and Slaughter kept glancing all around. The smell of chemicals, of sick-sweet clotting blood. He didn't understand it. He inhaled, drawing breath to ask them, but the medical examiner interrupted. "I just killed him."

Slaughter stared at him and then at Owens. He was puzzled, walking toward them. "Look, you'd better take it easy. When you called, you sounded like you'd had a breakdown."

"But I killed him."

"Yes, I know. You told me on the phone. You said that at the mansion. But you had no way of knowing that the sedative would kill him. What's this blood here? I don't understand what's happened."

"Christ Almighty, listen while I tell you. I just killed him."

Slaughter spun toward Owens. "What's the matter with him?"

"Over there. You'd better take a look."

Owens had trouble speaking. He pointed toward the far end of the room, beyond the final table where a smear of blood was trickling down the wall, and Slaughter felt apprehensive again. He started forward, although a part of him was holding back. He peered down past the corner of the table, and he saw the tiny feet on the floor. Then he leaned a little closer, and he saw the boy, his belly sliced wide open. "Christ, you mutilated him!"

"No! I told you, I killed him!"

Slaughter swung and glared. "You said that he was dead back at the mansion!"

"I was certain that he was. I would have bet my reputation."

"Bet your reputation?"

"Never mind that. I did every standard test, and he was dead."

"Well, then he-"

"Seemed to come back from the dead and tried to grab me."

Slaughter felt as if he'd heard some unknown language. The words made no sense. They didn't have a meaning. Then he understood what he'd been told, and he stepped back from the medical examiner. "My God, you've really had a breakdown. You've gone crazy."

"No, just listen. I don't mean that the way it sounds."

"I hope to God you don't."

"I mean the paralytic stage of the disease must have been aggravated by the sedative."

Slaughter shook his head in confusion.

"He was so unconscious that his life signs couldn't be detected."

"What the hell is this now?" Slaughter asked him. "Edgar Allan Poe?"

"No, please. I listened for his heartbeat. I checked his breathing. I even took his temperature when I got back here. Everything was negative."

"You did a brain scan?"

"I did everything, I told you. He was dead as far as I could tell. I started working with him on the table, and he looked up, and he grabbed for my throat. I-"

"Take this slowly. One thing at a time. You're saying he was catatonic. That's it? That's your story?"

"On occasion, it can happen. Rarely. There are cases where a patient has been certified as dead, and he wakes up on a slab at the morgue."

Slaughter looked at Owens. "This is true?"

"I'm not a doctor, but I've heard of things like that. It's rare, just as he said, but it can happen."

"But Jesus, a brain scan."

"Look," the medical examiner said. "Once we thought that no sign of a heartbeat proved that someone had died. Then we found out that a person's heart could beat so weakly that our instruments couldn't detect it. So we made up other tests. For body heat. For electrical impulses in the brain. The fact is, we don't know exactly when a person dies. A patient goes to surgery. He's doing fine when suddenly his heart and brain fail.

We try everything we can to resuscitate him. No success. He's dead. Then all of a sudden, on its own, his heart starts beating again. So tell me how that happened. You explain it. I can't."

Slaughter looked at them, more disturbed. "All right, let's assume your argument's correct. The sedative wore off along with the paralysis."

"He grabbed for me. We fought. I knew I couldn't let him bite me, scratch me. Never mind how small he was. I couldn't let him touch me. He kept coming at me. I was kicking, yelling for help, but those two doors muffled the sound. We dodged around the table. I got cornered. I was scared and lashed out with the scalpel I was holding, and I killed him."

They were silent, staring at each other.

"Oh, my God." The medical examiner pounded a fist on the table.

Slaughter walked close. "Take it easy."

"But I-"

"Take it easy. Everything is going to be all right."

The medical examiner trembled.

"Something else. The mice died," Owens told them.

"What are you talking about?"

"We have mice down at the lab for doing tests on viruses," Owens said. "The mice were born and raised in sterile conditions, as the parents were, and those before them, so we know they're not contaminated. We can study any symptoms they develop from injections we give them and be certain that the injections caused the symptom. It's a way of isolating what we're dealing with and finding what will cure it. Anyhow, a standard test for rabies is to inject infected tissue into mice. If they live, then we're not dealing with the virus we suspected. If they die, then we have perfect samples of the virus to examine. Well, our first tests on this virus weren't conclusive. Oh, we knew that it was deadly, but the slides we studied looked a little different than they should have, so I did more tests. Instead of looking at the dog's brain, I injected several mice."

"And now they're dead?"

Owens nodded.

"Well, that isn't news. You said that it was deadly."

"But the mice don't normally develop symptoms for at least a week. These mice died in less than four hours. It was like a spedup version of the rabies symptoms. First, a subtle difference in behavior, then hostility, lack of coordination, finally paralysis and death. The hostility was quite pronounced, although they didn't snap at one another, only at the glass enclosures. But the point is that instead of surviving for seven days, they barely lasted four hours."

Slaughter's mind raced, making jumps in logic. "Show me."

Owens frowned at him.

"I want to see them. Show me where they are," Slaughter insisted.

"I didn't have the instruments I needed. An electron microscope for one thing, so I came up here to-"

"Never mind. Just show me."

"Over there. I brought them with me."

Slaughter pivoted toward a metal case and reached to lift its clasp. "It's all right if I open this?"

Owens nodded. "Everything is sterile. You won't be infected."

Slaughter pushed the lid up, staring at the specimens in sealed glass containers. He saw the white fur of mice, and something else that he had dreaded but expected, lifting one container, showing it. The medical examiner had turned now, he and Owens staring, and the mouse in there was snarling at them. Slaughter felt the scrape of its claws through the glass.

"But they were dead, I tell you!" Owens insisted. He crossed to Slaughter, pulling out the other glass containers. In them, every mouse was frantic.

"You're certain?" Slaughter asked him.

"Don't you think I know when something's dead?"

The medical examiner added, "As certain as I was when I examined that boy."

They continued staring at the frantic mice.

"Then I believe you." Slaughter grimaced. "I didn't, but I do now. I don't know what's going on, but I do know that it's happening." He frowned at the farthest table. "What about the boy? The mother and the father won't believe us when they see him. I can't think of any way to tell them."

"Then we won't." The medical examiner braced his shoulders, coming toward them, color in his face now. "I'll continue with the autopsy. I'd have to do it anyway, to learn how the virus works. I'll fix that slash across his stomach so it looks like it was part of the autopsy, and the three of us will be the only ones who know."

Suddenly they looked at one another, understanding the significance of their conspiracy, ever after their dependence on each other.

They were silent. Slaughter nodded, Owens with him.

"Owens, did you bring the samples for the microscope?"

"I've got them with the mice."

"Okay then, let's get started. Slaughter, if you go up to my office, you'll find a stack of books beside my desk. Search through the master index and read everything that you can find on rabies. That's not what we're dealing with. It's close enough, though, and we can't waste time from now on, telling you what we'll be doing."

Slaughter studied him. "How long till you know?"

"At least a couple of hours."

Slaughter glanced at his watch and saw that it was three a.m. "I don't look forward to the morning."

"For a lot of reasons."

"They'll be coming to me with their questions."

"Well, let's see if we can find the answers."

Slaughter nodded. Trying to smile in encouragement but failing, he started toward the doorway.

SEVEN

"This is what a rabies virus looks like."

Slaughter peered at where the medical examiner was pointing.

"Yes, I know. I read about it," Slaughter told him.

"Fine. Now here's a micrograph from the electron microscope. The virus from the dead dog."

Slaughter watched the medical examiner put down the micrograph beside the book that they'd been looking at. He studied it.

He thought about it quite a while. "Well, this one's thinner than the rabies virus."

"Yes, that's one of several contrasts. Normally we say a rabies virus has a bullet shape, but this one looks like, I don't know…"

"A missile," Owens said.

They glanced at him.

"Why not? All right, then, a missile." The medical examiner pointed at the micrograph again. "A missile is in keeping with the speed of this thing anyhow. The point is that a lot of viruses are shaped in general like this. Vesicular stomatitis would be one. But this thing isn't quite like any of them. It's much sleeker, and while there's an indentation at the bottom, there's no sign of an appendage there. What's more, the nervous system of the boy was not infected."

Slaughter looked at him. He knew enough from what he'd read that rabies moved along the nervous system, fed off it, and finally destroyed it. He frowned. "But I thought that-"

"Yes, I know. It shouldn't be. This is unlike any virus I've ever studied. It did infect his limbic brain, however."

Slaughter didn't understand. He tried to recollect what he had read, but nothing on that subject came to him.

"The limbic brain," the medical examiner repeated. "It's the part around which all the other sections of our brain developed. It's sometimes called reptilian, but I think of it as animal. It causes our survival instincts, our emotions and Aggressions. Infection there would help explain why that boy acted as he did. Put simply, he became an animal."

"But what about the coma he went into?"

"Just don't rush me. Wait until I get to that. It's my guess that this virus is transmitted through the bloodstream. That explains the quick communication through the body. You should know that when I looked at where the boy said he was cut by glass, I found some evidence that he'd been bitten. When the doctor at the hospital examined him, he had no reason to assume the boy was lying, and besides the wound was jagged as if from a broken bottle. But the boy was bitten, all right. There isn't any question. Not more than a day ago. The virus travels through the bloodstream. It's selective. Only certain cells appeal to it."

"The limbic brain."

The medical examiner nodded. "It produces the symptoms of rabies very quickly; passes through, let's say, a twelve-hour phase in humans, paralyzes, and produces a coma. Evidently when the brain shuts down, the virus becomes dormant. When the victim regains consciousness, the virus starts to work again. It's really quite efficient, feeding until it produces near death and then holding off until the victim can sustain it once again. Because it passes through the bloodstream, it would show up in the salivary glands, infect the spittle, and pass to another victim in a bite. But if you were cut already and you came in contact with its blood, you'd get it just the same."

The medical examiner pointed toward the scab on Slaughter's cheek, and Slaughter suddenly was worried, raising one hand to it, frowning.

"It's too late to worry, Slaughter. If you'd been infected, we'd have known about it yesterday. But next time don't be so damned cavalier."

"If what you say is true, there wasn't anything that you could do about it anyway."

"That's right. Our vaccine would be useless." The medical examiner reached up to touch his own face then, his lips scabbed and swollen. "I got lucky, too. I would have had it by now if this cut had been contaminated. As it is, I gave myself two antirabies shots. Absolutely useless. Christ, I don't know what we're going to do."

"You say you never saw a virus like this? You never even heard about it?" Slaughter asked.

The medical examiner shook his head.

"Well, I did," Owens told them.

They studied him.

"I read about it," Owens said. "Nineteen sixty-nine in Ethiopia. A herd of cattle came down with a special form of rabies, little frenzy, just paralysis. They all collapsed. The owner didn't know exactly what they had. He gave them up for dead, and then they all recovered."

"What?" The medical examiner looked astonished. "Nothing can survive it. That's impossible as far as I know."

"This herd did. The problem is they still retained the virus and in several days they manifested symptoms once again. They had to be destroyed.

"You're certain it was rabies?"

"Oh, yes, all the later tests confirmed it. And I read about another case in India two years ago, but this time it was water buffalo."

"But this thing isn't rabies. Any vaccine they developed wouldn't be of use here. Even if it would, there isn't any time to get it."

"What would cause a brand new kind of virus?" Slaughter asked.

"You tell me," the medical examiner responded. "You want to know the truth? I wonder why it doesn't happen all the time. Never mind a thing like legionnaires' disease, which evidently was around for quite a while, but no one diagnosed it. Never mind a thing like staph or gonorrhea which mutated into forms resistant to a drug like penicillin. Let's just go along with my contention that this virus is a new one. Asking what would cause it is like asking why our ancestors developed a big brain from their limbic system and turned into humans. There's no ready answer. Evolution is an accident. A cell develops in an unusual fashion. Something happens to the DNA. We like to think that everything is fixed and ordered. But it isn't. Things are changing all around us, not so quickly that we recognize the change, but it's occurring, people growing taller, dogs whose breeds are now defective, dying out. We recognize extremes, of course. We call them monsters. But the really startling changes are occurring in those simple life forms that we hardly ever notice. Cells. Their time scale is much different from our own, much faster. Evolution has sped up for them, the chance for random variants. But evolution doesn't even have to be in stages. Quantum leaps can happen in an instant. Every time a person gets an X ray, tiny bullets zinging past those chromosomes. You want a model? Let's try this one. Let's assume we've got a dog. The dog has rabies, but the symptoms haven't shown up yet. The dog is hurt, though. Let's say that it's got a broken leg or some internal swelling so the owner takes it in for X rays, and the dog is treated and gets better. But the damage has been done. The rabies virus has by chance been struck by just one X ray. Hell, it only takes one mutant cell that lodges in the limbic brain and starts to reproduce. Now the owner goes on holiday. He takes the dog up into the mountains. The dog goes crazy, and it runs away. Contagion starts."

"What you said about these dogs up in the hills. Psychopathic animal behavior," Slaughter told him.

"Sure. Just two roads from the valley," Owens said. "The mountains are around us, so the virus has been localized. But why did no one ever recognize it until now?"

"Because, so far as I remember, no one ever tested for it," the medical examiner said. "Ranchers maybe shot a few dogs and then buried them, but did you ever have a look at one?"

Owens shook his head.

"Well, there you have it."

"But you told me Friday night that people have been bitten by them," Slaughter said. "They would have come in for the rabies treatment but, in spite of that, have developed symptoms."

"And they did come in for treatment, and there wasn't any problem. So the dog that bit them didn't have the virus, or the virus didn't mutate until later. That's no argument against the model."

"But the virus is so virulent that everything would have it by now," Slaughter insisted.

"I don't think so. The attacks we've seen were plainly murderous. I doubt too many animals or people would survive them. Plus, the victims must be weakened by the virus. When the winter comes, it likely kills them. That's a natural control. We haven't studied any long term consequences of the virus. Maybe there's a calming process. I don't know at this point."

"So why now would the virus show up suddenly in town?"

"You know why as well as I do. All it takes is just one dog to wander in. But I think there's another reason. Don't forget the winter was a hard one. It drives victims down from where their normal hunting routes are in the mountains. That's one version of a model anyhow. I might be wrong. At least, it's something. What we do know, in addition to our tests, is that the victims are nocturnal."

The medical examiner pointed toward the case that contained the jars of supposedly dead mice that Owens had brought from the veterinary clinic. Owens had discovered that the mice were peaceful if concealed in darkness, that their rage was manifested only when their eyes were aggravated by light.

"That's another symptom this virus has in common with the rabies virus," the medical examiner continued. "Intense sensitivity to light. That was why the dead boy snarled the way he did. The moon was shining through the upper windows of the mansion. And that helps explain why so much trouble has occurred at night. The victims hide and sleep in daylight. Then they come out after dark, but now the moon is almost full, and they're reacting to it."

"One thing more. We know that they're not dangerous to one another," Owens said. "When I put some of them together in the same container, they ignored each other, staring fiercely at the light and lunging at the glass around them."

Slaughter thought about the figures he had seen up in the bushes by his barn tonight. "You mean they hunt in packs?"

"Not necessarily, although it's possible."

"But what would make them do that?"

"Look, this virus gives control back to the limbic brain and makes it act the way it once did several hundred thousand years ago. To hunt in packs is natural. It's even a survival trait. Individual behavior, at least in humans, is by contrast very recent."

EIGHT

Wheeler braced himself up in the tree and waited for the sunrise. He'd been up there all night, and his back and legs were sore and twisted from the way he was positioned among the branches. He was numb from lack of sleep, his eyelids heavy, plus his hands were cramped around the rifle he was holding, but for all that, he was satisfied. His effort had been worth the pain. He smiled toward the murky rangeland and the object lying by the sagebrush. Yes, he'd gotten what he had come for, which was something very different for him, getting what he wanted. Things had not gone well for him in quite a while. Since 1970 and that October afternoon when he had shot that hippie. On occasion when he managed to be honest with himself, he recognized that he had been in trouble long before that, with his wife and in particular his son, but if he'd helped to make that trouble, it was nothing that they couldn't have worked out among themselves. What had made the difference were those god-damned hippies who had come to town. They were the cause of this, their loud mouths and their garbage. He remembered how he had gone to town and first had seen them, angered by their sloppiness, their easy answers to the country's problems. Sure, drop out and act like children, more than that, like animals. Oh, that was some solution, all right. They were just afraid to go to Vietnam is all, too god-damned yellow to protect their country. He had been there when the town had forced them from the valley. He had helped to push them out. He'd kicked and thrown rocks as had others. He had shut their filthy mouths for them and hoped they'd learned their lesson. But his son had gone up to that lousy commune then, and he himself had been made to look like a fool. No son of his was going to end up like those freaks, not so that the town could make jokes about him.

Plus, those hippies might be dangerous. The drugs they took, they might do anything. Wheeler had known he had to get his son back. So he'd gone up to the commune, and of course, they tried to fight him, to hide what they were up to. There'd been no choice. He'd had to shoot the hippie who had come at him. It was self-defense. The town would understand that, Wheeler had figured. But it hadn't understood, and his son had turned against him as well, and he himself had gone to prison for two years. Oh, that was fine, the way his friends had turned against him. He couldn't count on anyone. He should have learned that lesson years before, but he had learned it then all right. His son had run off after that, and then while he himself had been in prison, he had gone through all that trouble with the guard. The guy just wouldn't let him alone. There wasn't any choice except to fight. By Jesus, he wouldn't be pushed around, so instead of getting time off for good behavior, he'd been forced to serve the full extent of his sentence.

What did he expect? If they were out to get him, he was powerless, and then his wife had turned against him. She'd been keeping up the ranch while he was gone. She hadn't come to see him, but he'd figured that she'd been so busy that she couldn't get away. The day he came home he found out the truth, however. She told him that she'd stayed to manage things because she didn't want to leave the place to strangers, but she wasn't going to live with him, and now that he was back, she wasn't needed, she was leaving. He had fixed her for that. She had limped out to the taxi when it came for her. He didn't help her with the bags. He let the driver do that. He just stood there on the porch and cracked his knuckles, telling her that he would never take her back, that if she tried to come back, he would beat her even worse, and that had been the last he saw of her. Well, that was fine as far as he was concerned. She'd never been good for him, always nagging at him about how much he was drinking, about the work he didn't want to do. Christ, he was better off without her and without that mouthy, trouble-making son. He didn't need them. He could get along without them.

But Wheeler had trouble, all the same. His former friends avoided him, although he expected that. They really hadn't been his friends. All they'd wanted was a sucker to buy them drinks. Sure, they'd been lying to him all the way. But he'd found new friends, trail hands and a couple ranchers in the valley who were not so god-damned proper that they wouldn't take a little time out to relax. A man got stale if all he did was work. That wasn't any kind of life. But then Wheeler's cattle got sick one year. The next year, there were many stillbirths. After that, the price of beef went down. There wasn't any way to get ahead once everybody turned on you. This year, the bank was making noises about mortgage payments that he hadn't met; the barn was close to falling down; the winter had been so bad that he'd lost more stock than he had counted on; and now the predators were moving in.

Wheeler had found the first steer Friday morning, so disfigured that he almost didn't recognize what it had been. He'd never seen a carcass like it. Not just one wolf or a coyote, but a whole damned pack had done this, in a frenzy. He heard that night about another rancher who had found a steer like this, and in the morning when he'd gone out to check his stock, he'd found three other mangled steers, and he couldn't stop from cursing. Hell, they meant to ruin him. He heard that a dozen ranchers in the valley had also found cattle like this, and they didn't know what they could do except to post some guards and maybe have a meeting. There was no sense in their leaving poison that the cattle might get into. But Wheeler knew what to do. He was not about to let this thing continue. He meant to stop it dead right now. Those predators had picked the wrong man to play games with.

In the afternoon, he chose three steers and led them to the spot where he had found the mutilated carcasses. The predators were in a routine, choosing this location each time. With the foothills so close, they just figured they could slip down for an easy kill and aggravate the man who owned their supper. But tonight he would surprise them. First he staked the cattle, leaving portions of the mangled steers to spread their odor and to hide his scent. If he had lately not been good at ranching, he was very good at hunting, and he'd gone back to his house to eat and get his rifle and the Benzedrine he'd been given by a trucker in a bar one night. He'd walked back toward where he had staked the cattle. That was crucial, not to drive his truck and warn whatever might be watching. When he'd come to within a quarter mile, he had eased down, crawling, inching toward a solitary tree that was between him and the three steers. From there, with the moonlight to help him, he would have a good view, and he stayed low by the tree until sunset, waiting even longer for the darkness to enclose him before slowly standing, hidden by the tree, and climbing through its branches to a cradle near the top.

He moved as silently as he was able. Then he settled back against the trunk and swallowed a Benny, staring toward his cattle. He checked his rifle and made sure that he hadn't lost the extra rounds that he'd put in his pocket, and he knew that he was ready. Even with his jacket, he was cold, but that was just because he couldn't warm himself by moving. He ignored the cramps in his legs and scowled toward the cattle as the moon rose higher and higher.

The cattle were nervous, but he saw no sign of anything coming toward them. Soon he swallowed another Benny. Abruptly he saw shadows moving and aimed his rifle, only to realize that the shadows were only in his imagination. Shit, this idea had been wonderful when he had planned it. Being here was something different, and he almost climbed down, going to his house, when what seemed several hours later, they were out there.

First he heard them baying at the moon. He tensed. Then he saw a silhouette to one side, next another just behind it. As he blinked, he saw the darkness filled with them. He couldn't wait until they came so close that they would see the tethers on the cattle, dimly sensing they were ambushed. He quickly aimed, but he couldn't chance a poor shot that would scare them off and make this agony of waiting worthless. He would have to do this properly, and breath held, he was thinking of his wife, his son, the prison guard, his former friends, imagining that they were swarming out there. He was easing his finger onto the trigger as one silhouette became distinct, and when he fired, the recoil knocked him hard against the tree trunk. He worked the rifle's bolt and fired again, but they were gone now, although he saw a huddled figure out there by the sagebrush. It was still and silent, and he smiled to think that he had dropped one, maybe more if he kept waiting, and he shivered from excitement, from the Bennies and the cold, but he didn't see further movement in the shadows. He just heard them howling somewhere in the distance. Then the howling stopped when the moon went down.

He waited even longer. Once he thought he saw something, but it darted so fast that he didn't know what it was, and he wanted to go down and see what he had shot, but he'd stuck things out this long, he might as well stay put a little longer. For a change, he'd see a project to the finish. But his legs were sore and twisted, and the darkness was turning gray, the sun about to rise. At last, he climbed down the tree and hobbled toward the figure.

From the distance, it had seemed like a wolf, but now as he came closer, it looked more like a bobcat, smaller, with long hind legs and a face that wasn't pointed but flat. The fur was draped around it more than growing on it. The fur was ragged, torn in places, and some sections of the skin were bare. There wasn't any tail, and coming closer, Wheeler was frowning, thinking that this was his imagination, trying hard to calm himself. But then he stopped and saw the feet and hands and nose, and what he felt was like a replay of that instant twenty-three years ago. God, he'd shot somebody! Not a man! A boy! The kid looked maybe twelve. But why was this kid dressed in ragged pelts the way he was? Had children from the town come out to scare the cattle? Had some campers…? But Wheeler knew the answer even as he asked those useless questions. That long hair below the shoulders. Christ, he'd shot another hippie.

He pivoted, scowling around him. Had another bunch come through here? Was that first bunch still up in the mountains? He had heard that they had left, but if they hadn't, this might be one of their kids. That big hole in its back from where the bullet had burst out. That motionless, silent body. He was nudging at it with his boot, but nothing happened. He breathed, shaking. How could he explain this? First one, now another, and the town would act the way it had the first time. No one would believe him when he said it was an accident. They'd send him back to prison, and he knew he couldn't bear that. Not that guard again. He couldn't stand it. Just because these god-damned hippies came down here to take things out on him. He started digging with his rifle butt, but all he did was chip the wood because the ground out here was hard, and he needed tools, a pick and shovel. Quick before somebody found this. He stumbled from the figure, bumping against the tree, and lurching toward his ranchhouse. Then he started running. Have to hurry, get that pick and shovel, make the hole deep, make sure scavengers don't dig up the body, sprinkle it with quicklime. He ran harder. His fear had changed to a frenzy, his speed now almost manic as he saw the ranchhouse in the distance while, his stomach churning, he kept charging toward it.