Chapter
Six
Zoey’s thoughts were interrupted as she found it
increasingly difficult to walk. The bite wound had begun throbbing
and burning horribly. Had she overdone it, used her leg too much,
too soon? Dear God, please don’t let it be
infected.
Suddenly a grizzled old drunk in a torn
plaid shirt rounded the corner, almost colliding with her. “Just
the gal I’m looking for!” he bellowed into her face, stinging her
eyes with the reek of alcohol on his breath. His face was a mass of
nasty cuts and scabs, interspersed with several days’ growth of
scraggly white beard. Zoey dodged him as he made a grab for
her.
“I got somethin’ for your little
newspaper,” he yelled and made another unsuccessful swipe. He was
neither quick enough nor coordinated enough to catch her. Instead
he fell sprawling to the sidewalk. Zoey hurried away as fast as her
injured leg would let her, gritting her teeth against the pain,
leaning one hand on the storefronts as she made her way down the
street. The man got up and staggered after her, shouting, swearing,
and raving about a story he had to tell her, something he wanted to
show her.
“For Pete’s sake,” she muttered. She
wasn’t scared, just annoyed. The old coot obviously recognized
her—one of the drawbacks to working for the media—and even if she
managed to put some distance between them and get off his radar
now, it was likely he’d show up in her office sometime in the
future. There’s one or two in every community. . .
.
“Where the hell’s the Neighborhood
Patrol when I need them?” Although she’d almost be embarrassed to
call for help. The man was far too drunk to catch her, and even if
he did, she imagined she would have little trouble defending
herself. He already looked like he’d been on the losing end of a
fight. Meanwhile, the slow-motion chase would no doubt make great
YouTube material—the gimpy victim fleeing the
staggering boozehound. Or perhaps a zombie
footrace, a little humor for a low-budget horror
movie.
Finally making it to her Bronco, she
risked a look back. The drunk was still following her, but was
better than half a block away now. She pulled the door open and
grabbed her phone off the seat just as he launched into a fresh
tirade, his gravelly voice echoing down the deserted
street.
“That damn vet thinks he can tell me
what to do,” he confided loudly to his
reflection in the dark store windows. “Macleod thinks he’s so
goddamn perfect, but he’s just like me. Just like me.” He suddenly
fell to his knees, his hands over his face, groaning and sobbing
loudly. “It wasn’t s’posed to work like that. It wasn’t s’posed to
be like that. It should have been you, ya
fucking bastard! Damn you, Connor Macleod!”
Zoey had the cell phone to her ear, but
froze at the mention of the vet’s name.
The drunk staggered to his feet, his
rage returned. He shook both fists at the empty street. “You hear
me, Macleod? But you’re not so smart. You wait, Macleod. I called
him, told him. Hear me? I told him fucking everything and he knows
what you are!” His tirade was suddenly redirected as a patrol car
swung lazily around the corner as if on cue and stopped in front of
him. “It’s about time you showed up!” he hollered.
“Looks like you got an early start
tonight, Bernie.” A young officer got out and opened the back door
for him, stood patiently as the old man staggered over, still
complaining loudly. “How’s that face feeling today? Maybe we could
get Doc Miller to come by the station and check it out for
you.”
The man stiffened and straightened.
Zoey gasped as he swung a hand around and pointed directly at her.
“That newspaper bitch wouldn’t listen to me. I got something to
show her, and she wouldn’t listen. You ought to do your damn job
and arrest her!” He clambered clumsily into
the back of the patrol car, continuing his rants.
The officer closed the door with
obvious relief and walked over to Zoey.“Are you all right? Has he
been bothering you?”
“I’m fine. He just yelled at me.” Up
close, this guy looked even younger than the one who had questioned
her about the animal attack.
“He does a lot of that. He’ll be doing
it all night too, I imagine. You can press charges, you know. You
don’t have to put up with harassment.”
She laughed. “I’m in the newspaper
business. Getting yelled at is sometimes part of the job. No harm
done. But can you tell me who he is?”
“Are you going to write about this?
Because technically, I’m not supposed to give out that
information.”
“What kind of story would it make?
Editor shouted at by drunk. Yeah, that’ll
sell a lot of papers. I just like to know the names of the people
who are upset with me. Helps me to avoid them.”
The young officer grinned. “Bernard
Gervais. He’s in a fantasy world most of the time, so I wouldn’t
worry about anything he says.” He touched his hat and returned to
the cruiser and its irate passenger.
Gervais. Lucinda and
Mabel had talked about a Gervais. Is that a French name?
Zoey could still hear the man in the backseat raving at full
volume, even though all the car windows were closed. Saw the
officer shaking his head as he drove away. “Glad I’m not you,” she
murmured and climbed into her truck. She sat for several long
minutes, grateful beyond words to be off her feet and especially
off her injured leg. What could the drunken old geezer possibly
have against Connor Macleod? Was the guy a farmer, had Connor
treated his livestock? Maybe he was upset about the bill. . .
.
She heaved an irritated sigh as she
found herself wanting to defend the tall veterinarian. All that
walking, all that work, and here she was thinking about Connor all
over again. Exasperated, she looked over at her office window and
resolutely climbed out of the truck. Maybe it was time to check out
those newspaper articles that Lucinda and Mabel had mentioned. Her
psychic gift was silent but her reporter’s intuition was tingling,
and she would bet money that the old drunk was involved in the wild
story.
The werewolf stories were surprisingly
easy to find. Just over two years had passed since Barry Gordon,
Bernard Gervais, and Jeb Luken had called the police and then the
newspaper, claiming that a werewolf had chased them.
The men had left the Jersey Pub after
last call and were winding their way on foot to Luken’s house. “A
great and enormous gray wolf came out of the shadows. It had green
glowing eyes and was snarling like a pit bull,” Luken told the
reporter. “Straight out of hell it was and no mistake it was going
to attack us.”
Zoey sat down abruptly amid the piles
of newspapers. Green glowing eyes. The wolf
that attacked her also had strange eyes, demonic, as if lit from
within. She still saw them in her dreams. Still heard that horrible
throaty snarling. . . .
Cut that out,
dammit! With an effort she shoved the memories away and
focused on the article. Luken and Gordon had scrambled into a
Dumpster, holding down the metal lid with all the strength they
could muster. They didn’t know where Gervais had gone, didn’t hear
anything but growling as the monstrous creature had sniffed around
the Dumpster. “The wolf jumped right on top of it, bold as brass,”
Luken was quoted as saying. “We could hear him walking back and
forth, pawing and scratching at the lid. Damn, I don’t mind saying
I was some scared. Scared shitless, both of us.”
Gervais claimed he had hidden inside
the covered bed of a parked pickup. “I got separated from my
buddies when the wolf showed up. It was every man for himself. I
just dove for cover like everyone else.” A photo of the trio
confirmed what Zoey already knew, thanks to the officer. Bernard
Gervais was the drunk who had pursued her down Main
Street.
The Dunvegan Herald
Weekly had published the report on one of the inside pages
and below the crease, no doubt hoping to bury the story. It hadn’t
worked. A veritable flood of letters followed in subsequent issues,
some of them complaining about the press the men were getting for
such a wild tale, but others claiming to have seen similar
creatures.
Zoey scanned the letters. Enormous
wolves in every color had been sighted at various times in the
area, but never in town. Some people had sighted very large wolves
running as a pack near Elk Point. All of the stories could be
chalked up to ordinary sightings of ordinary wolves. After all, her
own research had shown that wolves could reach 175 pounds or more.
With so much wilderness to roam in and an abundance of game, it
stood to reason that this part of northern Canada simply produced
big wolves.
Reason didn’t have an answer for the
diary entry however. Just as Mabel and Lucinda had said, a page had
been photographed and printed. The caption said the journal had
belonged to one Jack Harrison, a schoolteacher who had homesteaded
in the Spirit River area and established a ranch there. Zoey
squinted to read the ornate scrawl.
February 28,
1904.
Got a big black wolf in
my trapp today, biggest I ever saw. Had a white star on its chest
and white on its nose and tail like a dog. Thought it were a bear
at first until it puts its ears up and looked at me. Rifle jammed
up and then there was no wolf in the trapp, just a young man. Snow
was deep but he had no coate or boots. Asked him where my wolf was
because I wanted that pelt, but he shook his head. Then he opened
the trapp with his bare hands. Knew he must be one of the wolf
people my dad told me about because two good men aren’t strong
enough to open that trapp without the key. He pulled his leg out
and it was bleeding bad but then it stopped right quick. I tried to
unjam the rifle in case he might want to kill me but he just walked
away and headed west to Macleod’s land.
“Omigod,” breathed Zoey. Connor’s
family was actually named. And guilt by association undoubtedly
followed. Sure enough, a small letter made it to print in the very
next issue of the newspaper, pointing to the Macleods as the cause
of all the trouble.
It’s about time someone
called a spade a spade, and revealed the creatures who think to
live among us undetected. Families like the Macleods have blurred
the line between man and beast for decades, intermingling with
humans and converting them to their kind. They look like us on the
outside but underneath they’re all teeth and claws, just waiting
for a chance to use them.
The bizarre letter was signed by
Roderick Harrison. Good grief, was he a descendant of the man who
wrote the diary? It’s almost like a feud,
thought Zoey. Harrisons and Macleods instead of Hatfields and
McCoys. She empathized with Connor. No wonder he hadn’t wanted the
werewolf stories to resurface. Just look at the craziness he’d have
to deal with—something Zoey could certainly relate to.
She shook her head, trying to get back
to business. Harrison’s letter should never have been published—any
newspaper that printed such a personal attack was opening itself up
to a lawsuit. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Ted had fired the
editor responsible. Most of the publications Zoey had worked for
would have done the same simply as damage control.
Subsequent editorials were allegedly
devoted to quelling the “mass hysteria” yet special feature
articles appeared on the myths and legends surrounding werewolves. So-called experts flew in from all over, and
The Herald dutifully interviewed most of
them. Even the one who insisted the U.S. government was conducting
the top secret testing of a breed of superwolves in the Canadian
north, and the one who claimed that aliens
were masquerading on this planet as wildlife. Zoey rolled her eyes
and wondered how the reporter had managed to keep a straight
face.
To her surprise, the story died out
abruptly only eight issues later—not a very long run for such a
sensational event. Zoey scanned all the issues up to the present,
but no further mention of wolves, were or
otherwise, was ever made. Undoubtedly, her hot-tempered publisher
had killed the story the moment he returned to the office. She had
little trouble picturing Ted Biegel’s wrath descending on the
parties responsible. She smiled as she remembered Mabel Rainier’s
words. Zoey only had to check the issue following the last werewolf
update to see a change in the editor’s name!
No wonder the village officials had
been rude. She supposed she might even have to do some sort of
damage control herself, to make certain she didn’t become
affiliated with the werewolf stories in any way. But it rankled.
She had never hesitated to take a stand with a story, no matter how
unpopular it might be. As a professor had once told her, the
concept of journalistic impartiality was a myth the public made up.
No reporter could write without taking sides at least a
little.
But this was different. There was no
lone citizen taking on city hall, no one’s rights to be defended,
no issues to be brought to light and championed. Just a bite from
an animal she couldn’t prove was a wolf and reports of werewolves
from the local drunks. No doubt Larry, Moe, and Curly would have
more credibility than that trio. And as a stranger in town, her own
credibility wouldn’t be much better.
It was long past midnight when Zoey
finally drove home. She was going to feel like dirt in the morning,
but thank heavens it would be a Sunday. She shook her head as she
limped up the stairs to her apartment. Werewolves, for God’s sake. She’d stayed up all night
researching werewolves. Who’d have thought? She hadn’t read
anything to make her believe in the creatures, but the description
given by Jeb Luken and some of the letter-writers matched what she
herself had seen only a few days before. A wolf, a real wolf, obviously roamed this area. And it wasn’t
afraid of people. The fact that it had wandered right into town
made it every bit as dangerous as a garbage-eating bear. She had
the proof of that on her very own leg.
Yet when the trio had reported it two
years ago, the RCMP and the Fish and Wildlife officers hadn’t
appeared overly concerned. The newspaper had quoted them repeatedly
as saying the animal was a dog. Maybe a wild or feral dog, but a
dog. Nothing more. Which was pretty much the
reaction Zoey had gotten when she’d called those departments after
the attack.
Was it so damn far-fetched that there
could be a real wolf? Wolves were certainly native to northern
Canada and known to live in the Dunvegan area. They weren’t
endangered here as a species, were plentiful in fact, and ranchers
and farmers routinely shot them. However, prevailing theories
claimed that wolves never attacked people—although there was an
incident a few years ago with campers in Tofino, and more recently,
a hiker killed in Saskatchewan. There was that poor teacher up in
Alaska too. . . . Still, it all made for poor statistics.
Three recorded attacks in over a century?
Obviously Connor was right; the wolf was sick or old and not acting
normally. But it wouldn’t be sick for two years . . . it would
either have died or recovered. If it recovered, could attacking
humans be a bad habit now? She’d have to ask Connor about
that.
Connor again. Her mind had come full
circle and she was once more thinking about the tall, dark-haired
vet. So much for trying to distract herself. Zoey was far too tired
to fight it and instead just let her imagination roam. She fell
asleep clutching her pillow and pretending she was snuggled up with
him, moaning a little as she dreamed of those big workingman’s
hands stroking her naked skin.