John Urbancik



HE WIND COULD be friend or foe.

At the moment, Jack perched downwind from his prey. He had two of them in his sight, pounding away at each other like animals. Doggie-style.

Their stench turned Jack’s stomach. But with the wind in this direction, the hunter was safe and undetectable. When the angle was right, he could pop them both with one shot. Coitus interruptus in the worst degree.

As far as he knew, no one had ever bagged one of these...it was best to call them wolves. His father had talked about it once, an expedition a generation old, when they had set out to find the creatures. They’d expected three, four, as many as six. The way dad told it, he was the only survivor. He wore the scar across his chest and shoulder like a damned trophy.

But Jack wasn’t interested in taking out all of them. He only wanted one. The double shot would just be a bonus. He planned to mount the head in the living room of his new house, soon as he bought one, to show his dad he could do something right. Anything. Especially something dear old dad failed to get done.

“C’mon,” Jack muttered, willing the creatures to get in line together. He wouldn’t have time to get off a second shot, and he couldn’t risk gathering the carcass if the second got away.

The male rode on top. He’d scratched her back to hell, and had reduced her clothes to bloodied tatters.

She screeched with a sudden orgasm. Jack’s finger tightened on the trigger. The wind shifted; it was now or never. Another moment, they’d detect his scent.

But the rotten, sex-riddled odor had permeated Jack’s nose. Stuck there. Forced itself even further into his brain. Too late, he realized it wasn’t his target he was smelling.

The wind had masked Jack, the hunter, and his own hunter as well. He turned just in time to see the creature leap.

The male in his sight howled in his orgasmic rush even as Jack’s throat was torn from his neck. He never had a chance to bring the rifle round to defend himself.



Dirk Hunter cursed as he pulled his truck to the side of the road, and again as he threw the gearshift into park. The snow, a minute ago floating all pretty-like and soft, had decided to clump into inch wide flakes and smack the windshield both wetly and relentlessly, doubling in strength and then doubling again.

The headlights barely reached ten feet ahead before dissipating into a wall of white.

Dirk waited ten, twenty minutes, before deciding to give up and head back. There’d been a motel on the side of Route 9, its lonely neon light a dim reminder that he hadn’t quite reached Montreal, or even Canada, but he was close. Close enough that he didn’t need to spend the night in a cheap, dirty room within a hundred miles of his destination.

He would still be early. Better to arrive just four hours ahead of schedule than to slide off the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and find himself in need of a decent hospital. Not that they weren’t around here, wherever the hell here actually was; he just didn’t want to find out.

The snow drove down so heavily now, it took ten minutes to maneuver the one mile back. He left the truck running—too much risk of it not starting up again if he found no vacancy—and walked straight and tall through the damned snow.

It didn’t even let up as he walked the five feet to the lobby. A tiny bell signaled his arrival as he pushed the heavy door open. He had to shove it tight behind him.

“Evenin’,” an elderly man said from behind the counter, looking up from his chair. He held a steaming mug of coffee between two mittens and wore a wool cap, even inside with heat blasting out of two space heaters on either side of the counter window. “Awful late to be needing a room,” the man said.

“Snow,” Dirk said by way of explanation, shaking it off his shoulders and boots. “How much for a room?”

The old man peered around Dirk, through the window and perhaps at his pickup. “You alone?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Suppose not,” the man said. “Forty dollars. And we’ll have coffee here by six in the a.m.”

Dirk sighed. Any other night, he was sure, the room would go for half that. “Fine,” he said.

“Got just one left, in fact,” the man said. He stood, slowly, methodically, and with a shaking hand took down the last key from a nail on the wall behind him. “Room 5. Go around the side here, behind me, and it’s down the hall, second from the end, on your right.” But he still held the key.

Dirk fished two twenties from his wallet and slapped them on the countertop. The old man grinned, showing a missing tooth and accentuating a scar that ran across one cheek from lip to ear, and held out the key. It was attached to an old, orange oval with a faded 5 hastily scribbled on it.

Dirk took the key and turned to go. “Pleasant dreams,” the old man said.

Out the door, Dirk returned to his truck to retrieve his overnight bag and keys. Four, five hours sleep, he’d worry about starting his beast in the morning.

For a full motel, there didn’t seem to be many other cars out there. Dirk saw only two, in fact, one a pickup in worse condition than his, the other a station wagon with Quebec plates.

The hall was short, four rooms on either side, rather bland and barren. The usual accoutrements afforded to even the sleaziest motels, like payphones and plastic trees, had been excluded. With some effort, Dirk keyed into his room and dropped his bag on the floor next to the bed with a thud.

The clock said 1:49. The room was cold, almost as if the heater hadn’t been on at all. But it chugged away, blowing out all the hot air it could manage. Against the windows, the wind sounded like a wailing banshee. The road was too far to the side to be visible, even when the snow eased. Dirk yanked the drapes shut and sat, disappointed, on the side of the bed.

Another hour and a half, or less, and he would have been in Montreal. Saint Catherine Street. A stripper on either side and whiskey to warm his gut. He’d still do the job tomorrow night, and be back home in Centerport by dawn.

Maybe he was better off without the distractions. But he sure could’ve used at least a beer.

He heard the first scream about ten minutes after closing his eyes. The second followed immediately, and he heard a woman’s voice through the wall saying, “It’ll be alright, hon, don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

Something heavy shifted in the next room, someone opened a door onto the hallway, and a little girl called out for Fluffy.

Ten seconds later she called out again, and Dirk knew he wasn’t about to get any sleep until the damned dog was found.

He shrugged his clothes back on and stepped out into the hall. The lights, though dim, were bright compared to the darkness of his room. He shielded his eyes as he glanced in both directions.

“Have you seen Fluffy?” the girl asked.

“Not yet, kid.”

She came into view only gradually: three foot tall, cute in a little girl way but without the pigtails, tears welling up in her eyes but refusing to fall.

Behind her, the mother was pretty cute, herself, even partially concealed in the shadow of her doorway. Killer body under that nightgown, maybe more visible than it should be because Dirk only saw her in silhouette. He couldn’t even tell what color her long hair was.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” she said.

“Just got in,” Dirk said truthfully. He didn’t move closer. “Haven’t had time to fall asleep.” He bent at the knees so that he was on the kid’s level. “So, where was Fluffy?”

“In bed,” the girl said.

Dirk nodded. A glance at the mother gave him no help. He figured the little dog—he imagined it was one of those white, powdery dogs a person might have taken to a show if it had been better groomed—hadn’t gone outside. Too cold. And he’d never find a white dog in the snow.

The girl and her mom were in the last room of the hall, which ended at a bare wall and a tightly shut window. No escape that way.

No one else seemed to have been roused. Dirk swept his eyes down the hall, meaning to check the remaining six doors—four across the hall and two on his left—but there was no need. Directly in front of him, the door was ajar.

He undid his lock to make sure he could get back and then knocked on the open door. “Hello?” No answer. “Fluffy?”

He knocked again, hard enough to push the door slightly open. It was dark. No one answered. The old man up front had said Dirk filled the motel; he half expected to find a groggy-eyed traveler—on her way to Montreal, like him—petting the straggly dog that had somehow gotten in. She’d look up at Dirk, shrug, and say, “Yours?”

That didn’t happen.

The room was a shell. The door looked fine on the outside, but inside it hadn’t even been sanded down. There were beams supporting the outside wall and the one to the hall, but no other walls, no furniture, no light switch, only bare wood and wires hanging haphazardly from the ceiling.

Where there should have been a wall to the next room, Dirk walked straight through. It encompassed all four rooms on this side of the motel, one long Hollywood behind-the-scenes facade. Outside, everything looked fine. Inside, Dirk left a second set of footsteps in the sawdust.

Five steps in the room, he wished he’d taken his guns.

“Fluffy?”

He jumped, the girl’s voice startled him so badly. Not good to get jumpy like that, even in the middle of the Twilight Zone. No wonder the motel had filled up so quickly; it was only half a motel. Or less.

The footprints Dirk had been following ended abruptly, with neither a turn to one side nor a reversal of direction. Someone, not too long ago, had stopped here. Every muscle in Dirk’s body tensed. A small pool of blood, thick and congealed, had spread to about half a foot in diameter just a few steps beyond where he stood now. A splattering of fresh stains surrounded it.

Slowly, Dirk raised his head to see, in the highest rafters, a man’s naked, ravaged body The arms and legs were pinned, crookedly, between the beams and the ceiling. Bones must have been cracked to force the arms in those directions. The chest cavity had been savagely opened, the organs removed without delicacy, leaving a gaping hole with the sharp edges of ribs protruding randomly.

From the door, he hadn’t seen the body; he hoped the girl with the lost dog didn’t, either.

He didn’t want to stay long to look at it, but a few peculiarities struck him. The eyes had been popped out. He hadn’t been stripped, but his clothes had been shredded to nearly nothing.

Dirk never had time to consider what might have done this before the girl and her mother let out a pair of high-pitched screams. There were words underneath, totally lost beneath terror, but Dirk didn’t need to discern the words to understand the meaning.

He crouched, turned, and stepped aside in a single motion. The creature, stooped even lower, snarled. It separated Dirk from the open door, from which the women had fled.

Its snout was wolf-like, its fur silvery gray, but its eyes were human. Angry, maybe, but human. Its front legs were actually arms hanging, knuckles scraping, to the floor. Saliva dripped from its jaw. Canines glistened, catching every ounce of available light from the hallway.

To Dirk’s left, another creature growled. There was probably another behind him; like a pack of wolves, they’d surrounded and trapped him.

He knew what had killed the man in the ceiling.

Fluffy emerged from wherever she hid, teeth bared, barking, tail tucked tight behind her. She was not white at all but sandy, medium-sized, half the weight of the creature blocking the door. She’d come from behind it.

When the creature turned, Dirk knew he’d never get another chance. He dashed for the door, passing too close to the thing. He heard the other behind him.

The girl appeared at the doorway with Dirk. He ran straight into her, and they toppled to the ground. Behind him, the dog yelped and then was silent. Dirk scrambled to pull the door shut, untangling himself from the screaming girl whose Fluffy had led him into this room in the first place.

In that brief moment, he saw that two of the creatures had ripped the dog in half. One scooped internal organs out of its torso; the other crouched on its legs, staring at Dirk.

Dirk managed to pull the door shut before two other creatures, bounding toward him from opposite corners of the room, slammed into it. The whole motel shuddered with their momentum.

The girl was incoherent, calling for Fluffy and reaching for the door. “No,” Dirk said, dragging her bodily away.

“Jessie, no!” the mother cried, rushing toward them.

The creatures opened the door behind him. They didn’t tear it from the hinges, and hadn’t pounded through it with brute strength. Rather, one had reached for the knob, turned it, and almost silently pulled it open.

Dirk, half on his feet and half carrying Jessie, threw an arm around the mother as he crossed the hall and shoved her into his room. He slammed the door and locked it behind him.

Again, there was no pounding.

“What...what...?” Mother couldn’t finish the question, but Dirk didn’t have any answer. Still carrying Jessie with one arm, he went to his bed. He shrugged the girl off and reached into his bag.

The room became very quiet, with only the wind howling against the windows.

“What are you doing?” the mother finally asked. When Dirk turned to face her, he had a semi-automatic in each hand.

“Get to the center of the room,” he said.

The creatures, whatever they were, hadn’t tried to force their way through the door. He didn’t know what they’d do, or where they’d come from. The ceiling seemed a likely choice; it had been higher and unfinished across the hall. They might crawl over and drop in through the cheap, white tiles. Or they might, with a singular effort, smash their way through the door.

It was possible that the creatures might just go away. Dirk doubted it. So he listened to every sound, watched every corner and shadow through the corners of his eyes, and held his fingers tight on the triggers.

The girl sniffed. Once. Otherwise, he heard nothing except his unsteady breaths.

“I’m not happy about this,” the mother was saying. “Not happy at all.”

“We have to get out of here,” Dirk said, not turning his attention away from the door. “Get my keys.”

“What about our bags? Our car?”

“You want to go back and get them?” Dirk asked. When she didn’t answer, he added, “We’re going through the window, straight to my truck, and snow or no snow we’re getting the hell out of here.”

Jessie sniffed again, but otherwise made no noise. He was so glad she wasn’t crying; he didn’t know how to handle something like that. His jobs were usually solo gigs, involving no one and nothing else, and he’d never had to protect anyone before.

He didn’t have to protect this woman and her daughter, either. But he did. There was an obligation there that went beyond the stereotypes of “Me man, you damsel in distress.” It was because he had the guns. He was trained. But mostly because it gave him a goal just a little bigger than getting out of here alive. Made him feel important. Like he mattered.

“Where are they?” the mother asked, rifling through his bag and the other weapons.

“My coat,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

He looked just in time. The window smashed in as one of the creatures leapt through it, claws extended on all four limbs and teeth bared. Jessie screamed but she didn’t distract him. Turning, Dirk fired with both guns. Both bullets hit their target, tearing through the creature’s chest and spraying blood and tissue behind it. The thing folded in midair, tumbled across the bed, and landed on the mother.

“Fuck!” she cried. “Fuck Fuck Fuck!” She screamed, swirling her arms, spasms rocking her body as if she suddenly realized a spider crawled down the back of her shirt. Its guts spilled over her, but the thing was dead; its limbs hung loosely, and it only moved when she did. But underneath it, she must’ve thought it was alive.

Dropping one gun on the bed, he shoved the creature aside. “It’s dead,” he told her.

Snow swirled into the room. This side of the motel faced the woods; the road and parking lot were just a few rooms down to the right. The wall of white falling from the sky made it impossible to see more than a few feet beyond the first trees, if that far. His truck wouldn’t be visible until they’d covered half the distance at least.

He retrieved his gun, now aiming one toward the window and one toward the door, and said, “We’ve got to run now.”

“Wait.” The mother pulled the keys out of his coat pocket. “I’m not going anywhere with a stranger.” She looked pathetic, strands of creature flesh clinging to her hair.

“We hafta,” Jessie pleaded.

“What she said,” Dirk said. “Name’s Dirk. That’s good enough for now.”

“Diane.”

“Fine,” he said, inching toward the windows. “Get out there. Now.”

Diane carried her daughter through the window, already shivering and red because of the cold. None of them were dressed for the weather. They didn’t have time.

He backed to the window, keeping most of his attention on the door. Had he been organizing the attack, he would have sent in three or four of the creatures through the door at the sound of breaking glass, but there were none.

No, there were more. He knew it. He just didn’t know how many, or where they hid, and now he doubted they had any strategy at all.

As one, Diane and Jessie screamed. Dirk had reached the window, and easily saw what they saw. In the woods, not too distant, were three sets of eyes. Four. Maybe five. Blinking but unmoving. Shit, they were everywhere. Did he have enough ammo?

“Close to the wall,” Dirk told the girls. “Straight toward the parking lot. Don’t look at them. Don’t even think about them. Pretend they’re not there.”

“Fuck you,” Diane said.

“I’m trying to convince me,” he snapped. Dirk swung one leg over the edge of the window. Another creature dropped down on him from the roof.

He shifted at the last moment, catching sight of it (despite the white on white) in his peripheral vision. Still, one clawed hand ripped through his shoulder. Dirk pulled back, firing point blank at the back of the creature’s skull.

The others attacked from the woods.

They were fast. Too fast. His torn arm came up slowly, somehow still gripping the 9mm. He fired repeatedly with the other; all the creatures were coming at him now, ignoring the women.

Somehow, he managed to put down each creature before it reached him, though one got near enough that when it fell—momentum pushing it toward him despite the gunshot—it crashed heavily into his legs.

He glanced back into the room as he started to follow Diane and Jessie; creatures were pouring into it from the hall and crashing through the ceiling, perhaps a dozen in all.

He ran.

Diane threw her daughter into the front seat of the truck and, glancing back only a moment, followed. The ignition growled but started right up. The brake lights flashed a moment, and then dimmed; she wasn’t planning to wait for him.

Dirk dove for the bed of his truck, catching it just in time. The truck slid sideways when Diane turned the wheel too sharply, and then they were on the road, snow as relentless as earlier.

Peering over the back of the truck, Dirk watched what looked like an army of those white furred creatures loping after them, some almost quick enough to catch up. Diane pushed the pickup as fast as it might go, which was probably too fast for her on this slick road, but he wasn’t about to slow her down.

Later, they’d have a little talk about her trying to steal his truck. Maternal instinct, he reminded himself; she wanted to get her daughter to safety. Was that enough of an excuse to forgive her? Well, she was cute. He had a weakness for cute.

The distance between truck and creatures grew, and Dirk allowed himself to relax.

The truck stopped suddenly, smashing into something with a cacophony of grinding metal and shattering glass. The rear end of the truck jumped; Dirk flew forward, over the cab. He hit the edge of the crumpled hood on the way down—it was wrapped around a tree—thumped on the ground and slid through the snow. He heard screaming, but saw nothing until he stopped.

Despite the pain that wracked the entire left side of his body, he saw what had caused the accident: creatures, dozens of them, several deep across the road. Rather than barrel through the mass, Diane had tried to swerve around them. She was still in the truck, head bleeding, bits of windshield hanging in front of her. She appeared to be unconscious. The girl, Jessie, had been ejected. One of the creatures picked her up like a fireman carrying a victim from a burning tower, like a demented hero saving the child from harm.

Every creature’s eyes were turned on Dirk.

He got up, pushed himself to run despite the pain, picking one of the 9mms off the ground as he ran (pure luck, of course, but even still nowhere near enough bullets). He should not have been able to run. His ankle was broken, and his arm, at least three ribs. Breathing was a chore. But he did it. He had to. The only other option was death.

He didn’t look back as he ran. He’d know when the creatures caught up to him. He heard them in the snow, but only because of their number.

Up ahead, a house came into view as the snow let up. If he could get inside, he could maybe bar the door. Find a vantage point from which to use up the rest of his ammunition. Maybe another weapon.

Maybe he’d last the night, and the creatures would flee with the coming light.

Dirk pushed the idea of failure out of his head. Diane and Jessie were gone now. He never knew them, anyhow.

Behind him, one of the creatures howled. It sounded just like a wolf, and so drastically different that the chill already eating his bones frosted over. Impossibly, he reached the front door of the house, pounded with one fist (his bad arm) and shoved with his other. The door gave way too easily. He stumbled inside, slamming it shut behind him, panting, desperately forcing back the pain. But inside, safe for half a moment more than he had been, his weight was suddenly too much on his ankle and he crumpled to the floor.

A moment passed. Only one. He had time to twist painfully onto his side, an opportunity to see the white night against the windows—but it was every window, ground level and above, as if there were no walls inside this house. Just like inside the motel.

Silhouettes appeared in the windows. As his eyes adjusted to the low light levels, Dirk saw that he was in another facade: there were no walls, merely two by fours propping the exteriors up. He’d crossed into a Twilight Zone Hollywood set, littered with fakes, perhaps a whole town like that.

He knew he’d find nothing to reinforce the door. No weapons. Not even a light switch. Turning so he was completely on his back, he pointed his weapon at the front door.

When it opened, he shot. And shot. Dirk kept shooting until he was out of bullets. The creatures poured into the false house.

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