Sal had been two days without sleep when he hit the animal. Truth be told, he couldn’t have said whether the lack of sleep really had anything to do with the accident. The thing just appeared there in his headlights, right out of nowhere, and even if he hadn’t been tweeking at the time there was probably nothing he could’ve done to avoid it. Probably.
None of this was going to make a damn bit of difference if the cops showed up and he had to submit to a blood test. That would, of course, show he had some pretty high grade crystal meth zinging through his veins right now, and confirm what any lawman worth a shit would have guessed from one glance at Sal’s saucer-sized pupils.
And would said lawman care that the meth was the only thing keeping him alert and alive on the road tonight along with half the truckers on this interstate? And that the chances it was gonna happen were actually a hundred percent anyway, no matter what he did? Yes, because when you look back at shit it’s all inevitable, because the future becomes the past, where one thing led to another in a tight chain of cause and effect, and that really puts the whole free will idea to bed for good, baby. I couldn’t help it, officer. Predetermination and all that crap.
Screw it all, he was just going to have to deal with it now. With luck he could keep the cops the hell out of it. No other vehicle involved, so why should they care, right?
He pulled over just after the impact and he didn’t really have any choice. That was a big damn animal back there. Large deer or small moose maybe. The steering wheel felt all loose and jangly and the front end was bucking like a cheap whore.
He turned the loping engine off, got out, and walked around front. It was ball-shrinking cold out here on an early February night and the fashionable coat he had on was not nearly up to the task. He might as well be wearing a leather T-shirt.
First thing he saw, by the reflected light of the one headlight that was still working, was that the front end of his 2002 Chevy Silverado was totaled. Frame might even be bent. No siree, he was not driving away from this one.
He checked his cell phone next. No bars. Perfect. He’d have to thumb a ride or walk on toward the next town and hope he came into range of a cell tower. But first things first, he wanted to fully assess the damage this beast had done to his ride.
He squatted down and took a closer look at that mashed in grill. There was a dark liquid that had to be blood in there and some matted hair too. He hadn’t had time even to tap the brakes before the impact, so he must’ve hit the fucker at seventy-five or so. Well, maybe eighty-five. He was lucky the thing didn’t come up through the windshield and take his goddamn head off.
He guessed the animal got knocked into the brush that lined the highway because he didn’t see it or any pieces of it on the road back there. No way the thing survived, but he had to walk over there and take a look anyway. That might just be the meth, but he didn’t care. Either way he had to know.
He stepped over and opened up the passenger side door and grabbed a flashlight out of the glove compartment. He flicked the switch a couple times but the light didn’t come on. Batteries were probably dead, and he knew he should’ve kept them fresh, but he was never really good with “should’ves.” He should’ve stayed in California, and he should’ve paid his alimony so he didn’t have to skip state, and he should’ve kept his dick in his pants before that, and he should’ve never married the bitch in the first place, and you could go all the way back to he probably should’ve not been born, because he wasn’t much enjoying this whole ride anyhow, and damn it was so fucking cold out here.
Fortunately it was a full moon out and a clear night and as he walked behind the car farther away from the lone headlight his eyes started to adjust. He could see pretty well, actually. The dilated pupils probably didn’t hurt that any either. The road stretched away before him, straight as piss for as far as you could see, and no headlights coming. Everything looked like an old movie to him right now, all black and white and shades of grey with sharp-edged shadows. He could see his silver clouds of breath in the moonlight and the idea came to him that every exhalation was carrying more heat away from his body, and that if the engine died in his truck and nobody stopped he would be at risk of freezing to death out here. The thought made him shiver as much as the cold did.
He was maybe a hundred feet down the road from the wounded car when he first heard the sound. Low and rumbling. Like a growl but wet and with a kind of a tone to it. Like a moan almost, but not human.
He stopped and had a sudden impulse to turn and run. Run right the hell out of there and not stop till he got to the next town. Then the sound came again. And yeah it was a moan. The awful thought came to him that he had hit someone walking in the road and his stomach did a backflip. But that wasn’t possible, that was just meth paranoia. He couldn’t have hit anyone. First of all, because who the hell would be out here walking in the middle of nowhere when it was colder than a witch’s tit out? And second of all, because he’d seen the animal flash through his headlights the instant before he hit it. He’d seen the dark fur. And a streak of white that he took for eyes. But now the image was popping back into his mind and he thought maybe, just maybe those had been teeth he saw.
“Help ... me.” It had come from out of the bushes to his right.
The fear hit him like a baseball bat to the back of the neck, and god he needed to pee. Right now. He was tearing at his zipper when his bladder let go and the first wet gush went right into his pants. Then he felt the warm piss on his fingers and hands as he whipped his dick out over his underwear and let the stream play onto the road where steam rose off it like it was boiling water. He was just finishing when he heard it again.
“Help me.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He had hit someone. How the hell? And, oh shit, they had to be hurt baaaad. Real bad. He’d killed someone is what he’d done here, ladies and gentlemen, because there was no way anyone was gonna live through that even if there was a damn life flight helicopter full of medics taking off right now.
The moan rose up again as he stood there, but wet and gurgling now. He turned and took a few quick steps back toward the truck as he zipped up his fly, then he stopped himself. Had he really heard a voice? No. No, it just wasn’t possible. It had to be the meth. And the only way to prove that was to go take a look at whatever dying animal was bleeding out in the bushes over there. Otherwise he’d never know, and no fucking way was he ever going to be able to live with that.
His legs felt like sacks of sand and it took a ridiculous amount of concentration to trudge forward one step, then another, then another. The front of his pants were already freezing where he’d wet himself and he could feel a cold trickle running down the inside of his left leg into his sock.
His shoe slipped and he almost went down on the road. He’d stepped in something slick. Some darker splotch on the already dark roadway, with a pinpoint of light in it--the reflected moon. There were more splotches ahead. It was a blood trail.
He followed the trail another twenty feet or so to the side of the road where he stepped off into the bushes. His legs didn’t feel like they belonged to him now and his heart was banging in his ribcage like a gacked-out punk rock drummer. He took three of four more mechanical steps and then he saw it.
He let out a long ragged breath in a kind of desperate relief. It was an animal. What kind he couldn’t tell. It was mangled and the limbs were sticking out at impossible angles. Then the meth played an awful trick on him and told him the thing was wearing pants.
“No way, no way, no way,” he said to himself. But the illusion persisted. The thing was wearing blue jeans. And a belt.
It lifted its head and its yellow eyes met his.
“You hit me,” it said.
Sal felt the blood drain out of his face and just managed to turn away a little before he started projectile vomiting. His legs went next and he sank down to all fours there in the weeds. He emptied his stomach and then dry-heaved three or four times. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sucked in some air that tasted oddly sweet.
He didn’t want to, but he had to turn and look again at the thing. He was closer to its face now down here. His mind wasn’t working right, because it was a human face, but only kind of. Human eyes, but a canine snout. All covered with short, black fur.
“You fucking hit me, man,” the thing repeated.
“You’re not real,” Sal said. “I’m just tweeking.”
“I’m fucking real all right, asshole.” When the thing spoke, Sal could see red blood on its white teeth.
Sal tried to stand, but before he got halfway up the world started to spin and he knew he was going to vomit again even though he’d already barfed up everything he ate in the last week, and he sank back down into a crouch and took a couple more deep, shaky breaths.
The thing was lying on its back, sort of, or more on its side. One leg was twisted up behind it and its right arm was half torn off and lying on its chest.
“I’m dying,” it said.
Sal took a couple more breaths until they evened out a little and again told himself, silently this time, that this thing wasn’t real. He was having a full-on psychotic episode and the thing to do was not to fight it. That only made things worse, and he knew that from experience. The thing to do here was to go with the flow, and so he decided to talk to the beast. Maybe if he listened to whatever his brain was trying to tell him with this fantasy, he could kinda smooth out the conflict in his mind. Yeah, he needed to get all Jungian on this motherfucker.
“What the hell are you supposed to be, huh?” Sal said.
The thing just looked at him for a long moment then laid its head down so that its eyes were staring up at the stars now. That was easier for Sal than when the thing was looking right at him, at least, and he was grateful for that.
“Fucking tweeker,” the thing said.
“You’re tweeking?” Sal asked.
“Not me asshole. Jesus, you’re really out of it aren’t you? What the fuck were you doing driving in this state you moron. Ah, ahhh ...” And then it started to moan again until the moan turned into a bone-chilling howl.
And then Sal suddenly understood what the hallucination was trying to present to him. The thing down here in front of him. It was something right out of a Hammer horror movie. It was a goddamn werewolf. Half animal, half man. And a flood of relief surged through his system liked a Valium IV drip. Because even on a multi-day run he knew a couple of things for certain. And one of them was that there wasn’t any such thing as werewolves. This was all an hallucination.
The werewolf was finished howling, and it turned its bloodshot yellow eyes back on Sal. It seemed to read something in his face. “Oh, so you’re figuring it out now, are you?”
“Yeah, I figured it out. You’re not real, man.”
“Of all the ways to go,” the werewolf said. “Run down by a fucking meth-head.”
“Yeah, right,” Sal said. “Except if you’re really a werewolf, you can only be killed by a silver bullet.”
“Yeah, because every piece of stupid lore about a world you didn’t even know existed until two minutes ago is true and accurate. Goddamn idiot.”
“All right,” Sal said. “So educate me. You’re really some part of my mind trying to tell me something, so just tell me. I’m not into all this symbolism bullshit anyway.”
The werewolf turned its face back toward Sal again. “I’m flesh and blood, just like you, dipshit. My cells need oxygen just like yours. What about being half wolf is going to change that, huh? I know you’re higher than a kite, but you should be able to process that much. And I’m bleeding out here, thanks to you. So do the goddamn math.”
“So how’d you get to be a werewolf? You got bit by another werewolf? That’s bullshit, because that means that he got bit by a werewolf, and that one got bit, and all the way back to what? How’d the first one get turned into a werewolf, huh? Logically there had to be a first one.”
The werewolf grimaced in pain, and Sal was worried it was going to let out another one of those horrible howls, but it didn’t. It just swallowed and said, “It’s a curse, okay? And I don’t know how the first werewolf got cursed, but he did. And he passed it down.”
“So it's like hereditary or something?”
“What?”
“It's hereditary? Is that was my brain is trying to tell me? That it’s like a hereditary addiction? Which is a disease too, addiction. And my dad was a tweeker. And I said I’d never do it. And I did. So he cursed me. It's hereditary. Is that what this is all about?”
The werewolf didn’t answer. It just looked suddenly tired as hell. It laid its head down again. Then it mumbled something.
“What?” Sal asked.
It mumbled again. And Sal thought he heard the word “destiny.” And what was his brain trying to tell him? It was an opportunity he had here. Like in a lucid dream, where you get a chance to talk directly to your own subconscious mind. What was his mind going to tell him about his destiny? He needed to know.
He leaned in closer. “What about my destiny?”
The werewolf was silent.
He shifted his weight forward and got on his hands and knees so he could lean in more closely. “What about my--”
And that’s when the werewolf lunged at him. And he had a flashback to when he was a kid, and he was petting a strange dog, and it suddenly lashed out and bit him on the face. He still had the scar.
He jerked back and his hand flew to his face. It was wet. Was that saliva? Then he felt the flap of skin. And the warmth running down his cheek.
“You fucking bit me!” Sal said.
“You’re goddamn right I bit you, asshole. You thought you were going to get away with this, with killing me and no payback? Fuck you.”
The emotional outburst or maybe the bite itself seemed to take something out of the werewolf. It sank back down. Then it coughed a wet cough that turned into a choking sound. A moment later it started to convulse.
Sal had flipped back onto his ass when the bite happened. Now he scuttled backwards, crablike, until he was a couple of body lengths away. And he watched.
Something was happening to the werewolf. His face changing. The snout shortening. And the hair or fur seemed to be thinning. And just like a special effect in one of those old movies he transformed back into a fully human man. Then he let out a kind of shuddering breath and went still.
He was dead.
Sal rose unsteadily to his feet and looked down at the man he’d run over. He took a couple of steps forward and nudged the body with his shoe. No movement. And it felt real enough. Was the hallucination over?
He looked up at the full moon watching from above and a tremendous surge of strength and vitality gripped his whole body. It felt like every atom of him was vibrating in time to some magnificent cosmic symphony. He looked down at his own hands and watched as the fingers stretched and the claws tore through his nails. He felt his muzzle growing and the canines pressing down on his lower lip. And he knew with absolute certainty that this was no hallucination. Because no hallucination had ever felt this good. Like the best hit he’d ever taken multiplied a thousand times over.
He walked back to the truck feeling no cold now at all. He opened the door and the cab light came on. He looked at the yellow-eyed animal looking back at him in the rear view mirror.
He was a werewolf. A bonafide, real life, right out of a horror film werewolf, baby.
He got out and grabbed a shovel from the cargo bed. He was going to need to bury that body back there. And then ...
California was still back there wasn’t it? And it might have proved more than a match for Sal in the past. But now? Well, sweetheart, when the full moon was out, some big, burly bill collector coming after late alimony payments wasn’t going to be the scariest thing prowling the Los Angeles streets.
Not anymore.