Back in the apartment Becky went to the bedroom and peeled off her clothes. She checked her feet, found no signs of frostbite. Still shaking, she went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower. When the warm billows of steam hit her naked body she actually laughed with delight. Warmth, delicious warmth was all she could think of as the water sluiced over her body. It had been a brutal, killing two and a half hours and she was bitterly tired. After a thorough shower she toweled and powdered herself, then once again put on long johns, jeans, and a heavy sweater. Anything could happen tonight and she wasn’t about to assume that she wouldn’t be going outside again, maybe in a hurry.
When she went into the living room, Wilson was hunched over the radio and Dick was suiting up. He was doing it slowly but he was doing it. For a moment she was confused—how long had she been in the shower—but then she realized what was happening. “Just hang on, buddy,” Wilson was saying, “Neff’s gonna be up in a minute and you can come down.”
The reply was garbled.
Becky flared with anger. “That little creep! Leave him where he is.”
“I ain’t hurryin’, honey,” Dick said mildly. “He’s been whinin’ ever since he got up there.”
“He’s by the door,” Wilson called from his station at the living room window.
“The hell!” Becky said. “We need that little bastard. The three of us can’t take his time.”
“We got to. Dick’s gonna take an hour, I’ll take an hour, then you take a half hour. Then Dick does his full shift and I do mine. That’s what we have to do.” He said it laconically but his voice was tired. They all knew what hell it was up there.
“It’s no surprise. You can’t expect an untrained man to withstand that kind of punishment But I still ain’t hurryin’.”
“As if we were in any better shape ourselves. Hell, none of us are street cops.”
“Speak for yourself, dear. I’m in good shape. You and Wilson’re a mess, but—”
“OK, so how’s about you take his shift and yours too. Five hours. Sound good?”
“That’d be convenient, wouldn’t it, honey?” He spoke in a quiet, level tone. What in the name of God did he mean? He couldn’t possibly suspect that there was anything between her and Wilson. There wasn’t— at least very little!
She decided not to pick up on it.
Again the three of them took the elevator to the roof, and there was Ferguson sitting in the stairwell looking bleak. Nobody spoke to him, just took the equipment and got Dick checked out. The door to hell opened and closed again and Dick was gone.
The ride down was strained and silent. Once in the apartment Ferguson began silently picking up his things, a book, his wallet and keys which he hadn’t wanted to take to the roof. “That roof was too much for me,” he muttered. “But I’ll make it up to you, I’ll do exactly what I should have done in the first place.” He slipped out, the door clicking behind him. A last glance revealed a face set with fear and determination, the eyes wide and glazed.
“Don’t let him,” Wilson murmured.
“Yeah, don’t let him.”
But neither of them moved. Maybe he was going to die out on the street and maybe he wasn’t. It was his risk, he had chosen it. “We should have stopped him.”
“How? He’s a determined man. Brave, too, even if he couldn’t handle the roof. Signal Dick, let’s get started.” They went to the radio.
“White male about thirty-five exiting building,” said one of two plainclothesmen who were sitting in a car in front of the building. “Nah, it ain’t Neff.” The other plainclothesman hadn’t even opened his eyes. Inside the car it was warm and quiet, the two cops barely moving through the long hours of the shift. Another four hours and they would be relieved. Hell, you could get a worse gig on a night like this. Likely Captain Neff wasn’t going anywhere anyway until tomorrow. Still, he had that fancy camera, he must be planning to do something with it.
The two plainclothesmen didn’t watch Ferguson as he rushed past the front of the building and turned the corner. If they had they would have noticed the furtiveness of his movements, the desperate way his eyes darted around. But they would not have seen what happened when he turned that corner.
They were waiting there under cars. They had placed themselves just inside the alley. This way they could hear both front door and back and at the same time watch the apartment. When they heard familiar footsteps crunching on the snow they were filled with eagerness. The pack was damaged and angry, hungry to kill.
When they came out from under the cars, Ferguson stopped. They could smell fear thickly about him, it would be an easy kill. He spread his hands in the palms-up gesture he had seen in the ancient book. They took their time getting positioned. He looked into their faces. Despite his fear he was fascinated by them—cruel, enigmatic, strangely beautiful. They stepped toward him, stopped again. “I can help you,” he said softly.
Three of them executed the attack while the fourth kept watch. He was dead, his body rolled under a car within five seconds. One jumped into his chest to wind him; another collapsed his legs from behind, and a third tore his throat out the moment he hit the ground.
Their race had long ago forgotten its ancient relationship with man. His hand-signals had meant nothing to them, nothing at all. The four of them literally tore him apart in their fury, ripped at him in a kind of frenzy of rage. They were the mother, the second-mated pair and the female of the third. Old Father had disappeared, they weren’t sure why. Perhaps he was too ashamed or too hurt to take his new place behind the youngest in the pack.
But he was nearby. Older, cannier and more sensitive than the others, he knew better than they how desperate the situation had become. He was determined to right the wrong he had done his pack— even at the cost of his life. Although he was unable to see them, he heard their attack. “They act from fear,” he thought. “They need strength and courage.” And he resolved to help them. He had been aware for some moments of a human presence on the roof of the building and took care to stay close to the wall, out of the line of sight from above.
He went quickly to the front of the building, slid under a car and waited. A few minutes later a pedestrian came along, opened the door to the lobby. He ran in past her.
“Hey!”
“A dog—damn it, Charlie, I let in a dog!”
“I’ll get it—Jesus, it’s moving!”
He raced for the stairs and went up. He knew exactly where he was going and why. He trusted to luck that these were the right stairs. The shouts of the humans faded below him. Maybe they would rationalize his presence, maybe not. He recognized the danger of what he was doing and he knew how it would probably end.
But he owed this to the pack he loved.
Dick Neff cursed out loud when he felt the cold and was tugged by the wind. Becky was one hell of a girl to have endured this for two Goddamn hours! He was proud of her, there hadn’t been a single peep of complaint. A person like that humbled you, hell, awed you. She was a total pro, no question about it.
He was heavier than his wife and the wind didn’t force him to slither on his stomach. But he crawled. He crawled slowly and carefully, not liking the way those gusts hit him from behind and made him slide. Thirty stories was a long Goddamn drop. You went over, you’d have time to think about it on the way down. Plenty of time. He hated heights like this. The view from his apartment was beautiful but he hated this. In his nightmares he always fell, and lately he had been falling a lot. His subconscious reached out to him, imparting a strange déjà vu. It was as if he had been here before, crawling toward this precipice, shoved and jostled by this same wind. This was going to be a test of every particle of endurance and courage that he had. No wonder Ferguson had caved in so fast, this was a direct confrontation with the wild power of nature—and beyond that there was the even greater danger of what they faced.