Ancestor

  “Like anything … unusual? With your cows?”

  “Just came from da barn,” James said. “Everything is fine, why do you ask?”

  Clayton breathed a sigh of relief. “No reason. Sven said his cows were feeling a little sick.”

  “Mine are in da pink of health. But don’t take forever to fix those phones. If there’s some bug going around, I want to make sure I can reach Mister Feely, eh?”

  “More storms coming tonight, so no point in fixing da same shit twice. All will be shipshape by tomorrow afternoon. Good day, James.”

  “Good day.”

  Clayton broke the connection, happy there was one less thing to worry about.

  DECEMBER 2, 2:02 A.M.

  OUTSIDE SVEN’S BEDROOM window, the storm picked up intensity, swelling, swirling, growing. Loud enough to rattle the windows in their wooden frames, but that wasn’t what woke him. No, it was a pair of sounds—Mookie’s low, gurgling growl of warning, and the cows.

  The screaming cows.

  Stay away from da barn, Sven.

  He sat straight up in bed. He’d heard sounds like that once when he was a boy in Ontonagon. He’d left the barn door open just enough for a pack of starving coyotes to slink inside in the middle of the night and attack a helpless milk cow. Even as Sven hopped out of bed and quickly pulled on his snow pants and boots, he wondered at the high-pitched sounds of bovine terror, sounds so loud he could hear them over a twenty-mile-per-hour wind from inside a barn some fifty yards away.

  Why had Clayton told him to stay out of the barn?

  Sickness didn’t make cows sound like that. Predators did.

  He strode to his gun rack and grabbed his Mossberg 500 shotgun. He threw on his coat as he walked to the front door, switching the gun from hand to hand as he shrugged on one sleeve and then the next. The Mossberg was loaded, of course. He always kept it loaded.

  Mookie couldn’t take it anymore. Her little body shook with violent barks. Rorororooooro-ro-ro

  Sven opened the door just a bit and leaned through.

  Ro-roro-RORoro-ro

  Mookie’s slim body tried to squeeze between the door frame and his right leg. Sven turned his knee to block her. Each bark was an ear-piercing blast of animal rage.

  “Mookie, calm down!”

  Mookie did not calm down.

  The cows screamed louder. Sven heard noises like thunder, but it took him a second to realize what those noises actually were … fifteen-hundred-pound bodies slamming against stall walls, against the inside of the barn.

  He felt Mookie’s head suddenly slide between his calves. Sven slammed his legs together, but Mookie’s head and shoulders were already through. He squeezed his legs tighter and reached down with his right hand, fingertips sliding inside the dog’s collar.

  “Mookie, goddamit, stay!”

  Mookie lurched, yanking Sven forward. The shotgun stock caught on the door frame and the gun fell forward. Sven instinctively reached his right hand to catch it, and just like that, Mookie shot off the porch and tore ass for the barn.

  “Mookie! Stay!”

  Mookie did not stay.

  Sven ran after her. As soon as he came off the porch, away from the house’s shelter, the wind cut at him, pulled him. Snow flew so hard it stung his face and hands.

  As he ran, Sven pumped a shell into the chamber.

  Mookie stood in front of the barn’s big sliding door, barking with such violence that spit flew from her shaking head in gloopy strings that arced across her face and nose.

  Sven held the shotgun with his right hand as he planted both feet at an angle and slid across the snow. Mookie was preoccupied with the door and saw her master a second too late. She turned to run, but Sven’s left hand caught a handful of neck fur and lifted the dog high.

  “Bad dog! Bad!”

  Mookie’s long, fluffy tail tucked between her legs and she started yelping.

  “Oh, stop it, you damn baby. When I say you stay, you stay!”

  Something smashed into the barn door. Sven’s hands flew to the shotgun. Mookie fell to the ground. Sven leveled the Mossberg at the door. Mookie scooted behind him.

  Even over the wind, Sven smelled … burning fur?

  Cow screams, heavy slams, breaking wood, and … another noise … a kind of growl? Something was in there with his cows. This wasn’t sickness at all, and there was no way in hell Sven could walk away from some predator feeding on his animals.

  Already breathing hard from an adrenaline surge and a strange feeling of desperation, Sven kept his right hand on the shotgun, finger on the trigger, as his left hand grabbed the sliding door’s black handle. He pulled open the heavy door an inch, just enough to peek inside with one eye.

  Smells billowed out: shit, animal fear, burnt fur … and the heavy scent of blood. Ninety panicked cows in a space built for fifty calm ones. They ran back and forth, as if they might find some way out, slamming into stalls, walls and one another. Blood streaked the walls, bales of hay, the cows themselves. Redness coated the floor in long slimy streaks and spotted hoofprints. Just in front of Sven’s boot, a long intestine snaked from one side of the barn to the other. Dirt and hay clung to its wet surface.

  Sven moved his head side to side so he could look into the barn at different angles, try to locate the danger. He wasn’t going to fully open the door until he knew what he was dealing with. He craned his neck, trying to see past the shuffling mass of cattle. He caught glimpses of mangled cow corpses, so torn up their coats looked bright red with dark-red markings rather than black and white.

  BAM

  A cow slammed into the door and Sven jumped back. Fear tingling through his chest, he leaned and looked in. The cow crashed forward again: the wood shook as if it had been hit by a lightning bolt.

  No ear tag … it was one of his.

  Two other cows picked up on the first’s efforts, perhaps sensing a possible way out.

  BAM-BAM-BAM

  All three hit the door, almost five thousand combined pounds of desperate animal pummeling forward. Sven stood amazed as the first cow struck again, this time with such force that the skin between her eyes split from the middle of her nose up past her ears. Blood poured down her face, but instead of stopping kept hurling herself forward.

  BAM

  None of these three had ear tags. They were his cows. He had to get his herd out. They’d already seen a way to freedom—even if he shut the door, they’d kill themselves trying to get away from whatever the hell was in the barn. If he let them out, he could shoot the predator, then he and Mookie could round up the herd.

  Sven set the shotgun against the door and put both hands on the cold, red-painted wood. The cows kept slamming against it, briefly jamming the roller wheels with each impact. He leaned back hard, digging in his heels, walking the door open with a herky-jerky motion. Each cow impact generated a thundering reverberation of rattling dry wood. The first cow, head bloody, scraps of skin dangling from her nose and face, pushed halfway through the door, shoulders wedging in the narrow opening. She pushed the bottom of the door outward, jamming tight the roller wheels on top. Sven pulled hard, but couldn’t budge it. The cows brayed in pure fight-or-flight panic.

  Another cow head appeared above the first, thrusting forward, trying to crawl over, push through the narrow opening, sharp hooves driving down on the head below. Sven desperately leaned back with all his weight, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  BAM-BAM, BAM

  A rifle-shot sound of splintering wood. Sven looked up; the left roller wheel had almost ripped away from the door.

  BAM-BAM, BAM

  All the wheels tore free, spinning out into the snow like shrapnel. Ten feet high, eight feet wide and three inches thick, the door dropped like a drawbridge.

  Sven almost made it clear.

  The thick wood kicked up a huge cloud of swirling snow when it drove on the ground—and onto his left foot, just above the ankle. His fibula and tibia snapped like fresh carrots.


  Eyes wide and white, froth covering their muzzles, the cows roared out like some powerful orgasm of terror. Each pounding step drove the door down onto Sven’s broken leg, pinning it, keeping him from pulling free. His screams joined the panicked cries of the stampeding herd.

  Some of the cows stumbled and fell. Those behind them plowed forward, sometimes going around, sometimes stepping on the fallen. They spread out like a black and white and red gas, dissipating away from the barn, moving out across the snowdrifted field and into the swelling storm.

  Sven lay in the snow, eyes twisted shut, teeth bared and mouth wide open in a silent scream of agony. He tried to pull his foot free, but each tiny motion ripped him with barbed-wire blasts. Swirling black spots clouded his vision. A fierce shake of his head cleared some of them away. Blood poured out of his boots, staining the snow in an expanding red slush.

  Pain or no pain, he had to get free, even if he had to tear off his own leg to do so. The thing that butchered the cows was still inside. Fighting through the agony, he sat up and worked his fingers under the door. He only had to lift it a little …

  His old, well-worked muscles bunched as he desperately tried to lift the three-hundred-pound door. The wood rose, just a fraction of an inch, but it was enough for him to redouble his efforts. It rose another half inch, then suddenly slammed down as if God himself had willed it.

  Sven’s head snapped back in an involuntary scream. Tears streamed down his face, quickly freezing into glistening trails on his cheeks. He looked up.

  A cow stood on the door.

  It wasn’t braying or panicking, it had just walked a few feet onto the fallen door and stopped. Sven recognized the white head with the black eyepatch—Molly McButter.

  “Move, goddamit! You fucking cow, move!”

  She didn’t. Mookie rushed in, snapped at her feet, but she didn’t budge. Molly stood there, snow accumulating on her back, her head bent almost to the ground, glazed eyes staring at nothing, her heavy belly round and distended and hanging low.

  Hanging low, and moving.

  “Get off da door, you motherfucker! Get da fu—”

  Sven’s epithet died in midsyllable: a long, thick stream of blood poured out of Molly McButter’s mouth to splash against the fallen barn door. The flow stopped briefly, just a few drops dribbling down, then it poured free again like crimson vomit. She turned her head to the side, weakly, as if it took some great effort, and looked right at Sven.

  Mooooo

  That mournful noise was the last Molly McButter ever made. As it faded out, another sound replaced it. The muffled snap of a single cracking rib.

  Sven’s pain wasn’t forgotten, but now it seemed far away, an echo of its former intensity.

  Another crack.

  Molly’s ribs … moved.

  A bloody paw ripped out of Molly, six-inch gore-covered claws tearing a huge hole in her belly. Blood and fluid poured forth in gallons, splashing against the barn door, spraying into Sven’s horror-stricken face.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  Molly’s knees wobbled. Her eyes rolled back, leaving only half-lidded whites exposed. She fell hard to her side, driving the door even farther onto Sven’s nearly severed leg. Pain rolled through his head. A swarm of black bees filled his vision, threatening to take him into darkness.

  A bark at his side brought back his focus. Mookie stood next to him, chest out, hackles raised impossibly high, teeth bared, the sound coming out of her mouth more a roar than a bark.

  Molly’s belly, once swollen and distended, now sagged against her rib cage. The claw came forth again, tearing her from sternum to vagina. A bloody, slime-covered thing slid out.

  Sven’s vision blurred from tears and from pain. Unconsciousness threatened to pull him under. He snarled and dug his fingers under the door—he had to lift, lift or die. Sven threw all his strength into it, until the wood dug into his flesh, until his finger bones started to crack from the strain. The door didn’t budge. His muscles weakened, only slightly, and in that moment he knew there was no escape.

  Through a haze of semiconsciousness, in the snow-streaked glare of his barn’s light, Sven saw the creature lift its blood-smeared head. A big, triangular head, too big for the body. Beneath the red-blood slime, it had fur like a cow … a white head, with a black patch surrounding the left eye.

  Eyelids opened, blinked, and the thing looked right at Sven. He fell back into the snow, the black bees in his vision now big as sparrows, flying about his head, blocking out everything. With his last ounce of energy, he lifted himself up on one shoulder. He looked for the shotgun—but it was somewhere under the door. The sparrow spots grew to the size of fat crows.

  Movement from the barn. Through a waving haze, he saw three creatures step out, one after another. These were also covered with blood, mostly dry except for their mouths and claws, which were lacquered in wet red. Black and white and red. They moved clumsily, each step a new discovery.

  One of them opened its big mouth and bit down on Molly’s rear leg. The thing shook its head like Mookie shaking a chew toy. Bones cracked, blood splattered, and with a snap the lower half of the leg came free. A lift of the head, a few more crunches, and the leg was gone. The other two started tearing into Molly, ripping free huge chunks.

  Molly’s mucus-covered eyes were still blinking.

  The one that had come out of her belly, though, didn’t tear into the still-living cow. It stood on wobbly legs and staggered toward Sven.

  Then Mookie attacked it, snarling with lip-curled fury as her white teeth locked down on the creature’s big head. The dog jerked and twisted, ripped her mouth away, taking the creature’s right ear along with it.

  A flash of claws. Mookie’s guttural growl instantly changed to a yelp, a real yelp, not the fake show she put on when Sven had tried to discipline her. Mookie was knocked away somewhere to the right. Sven didn’t see where she landed, because through his spotty vision he saw the creature coming toward him.

  Black eyes, locked on his.

  Mouth, opening … teeth, blazing.

  Hot breath in his face, breath like a puppy’s. Sven’s brain filled with a wonderful memory, of a tiny ball of warm black fur that fit in one hand, a tiny pink tongue kissing his cheek.

  Then something stung his neck, a dozen poking knives.

  The crows turned into giant buzzards that blocked out all light.

  Then nothing.

  DECEMBER 2, 6:02 A.M.

  TED NUGENT ROLLED to a stop in front of the big stone church. The dying storm drove snow off the black stone walls in every direction—down, sideways, even up. Sara, Tim and Clayton hopped out and walked to the door. Sara watched Clayton pull off his mittens and search his oversized key ring.

  The church’s black walls looked fortress-solid. If there was any place on the island she could hold out and wait for help, this was it.

  Clayton found the key. The twelve-foot-high door opened with a gothic screech. Sara and Tim followed Clayton inside, then shut the door, blocking out the wind. Snow that had blown into the church gently dropped to the floor.

  Sara stared up at the wooden beams of the thirty-foot cathedral ceiling. The wood was a warm brown in some places where bits of varnish remained, but blackish gray most everywhere else. Early-morning light filtered through stained-glass windows depicting scenes of the Twelve Apostles. Most of the pews remained, although all were rotting to some degree. Two or three had broken bases, resting with one end on the ground.

  A choir balcony hovered above the tall front door. The loft ran along both the church walls and underneath the stained-glass Apostles. At the back of the church, a granite, three-step altar stuck out from the wall like a stage. At the back of that stage stood a twenty-foot-high cross. At the front, a rotted, ornate wooden podium. The whole building smelled of a cold, musty, wet-stone dampness.

  Sara pointed to the choir loft. “How do we get up there?”

  “Stairs are behind da altar, off to da right,” Clayton sa
id. “Narrow, but solid. And before you ask, you get to da bell tower from da loft.”

  “Magnus come here?” Tim said. “This his spot to tear the wings off baby birds? Maybe skin squirrels alive?”

  “I’m da only one with a key to this place. As long as Sven keeps his mouth shut, no one will come looking. Only action here was about forty years ago, when me and Elvis came in after hours and knocked back a pitcher of screwdrivers with Ann-Margret, but now’s not da time for stories.”

  Sara looked up at the stained-glass St. Andrew. The left side of his face had fallen out at some point. Bits of snow blew in through his open cheek. “So what now?”

  Clayton scratched his gray stubble. “Well, I’ve got to use da secure terminal to call my son, see when he can get da boat out here.”

  “Clayton,” Sara said, “won’t Magnus be watching that secure terminal?”

  He thought for a moment, staring at a dusty, stained-glass image of St. Paul, then nodded. “Yeah, maybe he will. But we don’t have a choice.”

  Clayton was risking his life for them. If Magnus had murdered irreplaceable scientific talent, it certainly wouldn’t bother him to kill a janitor with digestive issues.

  Clayton slipped out the front door and quickly returned, arms loaded with blankets, a flashlight, a plastic case and a kerosene heater.

  “There’s a preparatory room to da altar’s left. It’s small, so that’s where I’d put da heater. Knock a hole in da ceiling so da fumes can vent. No windows there, so no one will see da light. There’s some food in this case. Keep warm—it’s going to get cold tonight.”

  Sara took the heater and the blankets. “When are you making the call?”

  Clayton thought and scratched at his ear. “I have to make sure no one sees me. I also can’t just stop doing my work, or Magnus might get suspicious, eh? I’ll fix da phone line breaks on da south side of the island, keep checking in and see when I can be alone in da security room.”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “But how long, man?”

  “Put a sock in it, boy,” Clayton said. “I will get you off da island. Once I make da call, it’s three hours for Gary to get here. You two just stay out of sight.”