Anti-Man

"It'll be all right." Even as He spoke, the bleeding slowed and stopped. His cheek seemed to crawl with a life of its own, wriggling, shivering, pulsating. He reached up and tore away the flap of flesh the wolf had loosened. I could see, beneath, the welling brightness of smooth, new skin. In moments, there was no sign of His wound; He had healed completely. "The other six," He said, indicating the last of our enemy.

But they were slinking off along the ridge, watching us carefully but with no apparent intent of attack. They had seen ten of their kind fall before us, and they had suddenly lost some of their pride-enough, anyway, to let them give up in hopes of finding easier prey.

"Let's go," I said, "before they change their minds and come back. Or before their comrades wake up."

"Just a minute," He said, kneeling before the wolf He had killed with His hand. He flopped it onto its back and began working on it. In a minute, He had skinned it as He had the rabbits. He tore large chunks of meat from its flanks and stuffed them into His mouth, ripping with His teeth just as the wolves would have ripped us had we not been too much for them.

"Wolf meat should be stringy," I said inanely.

"I need it," He answered. "I don't much care about the taste or the texture. The changes are accelerating, Jacob. I'll only be a few minutes here." He swallowed noisily. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Good," He said.

He continued cramming the bloody meat into his mouth, swallowing it with the minimum of chewing. I guess He had adapted His digestive system in some way to handle what He was throwing at it. Such a bolted meal of raw flesh would have had anyone else retching for the next three days as the stomach cleansed itself. I would have given just about anything at that moment to have been able to X-ray Him, run tests on Him to see exactly what He had done to Himself. It was the doctor in me, the medical curiosity surfacing even while wolves stalked in the night and World Authority police ranged somewhere behind, closing the gap. Ten minutes later, He had devoured most of the animal and was ready to go.

We walked down the slope and across the wolf-strewn valley.

I kept looking behind, expecting the flash of teeth, a guttural snarl, ripping claws.

It was going to be a bad night.

An hour and forty-five minutes after dawn, afraid every minute that we would be seen and apprehended even though the park seemed deserted, we reached the cabin. The sight of it filled me with the first warmth I had felt since the wolves had set me to sweating inside my bulky insulated clothing. The place was as I remembered it, a comfy nook nestled in a grove of pine trees with its back door facing a sheer cliff and its front door giving view to a breathtaking panorama of snow and trees and gentle foothills. It was not the sort of place a hardy outdoorsman would go to rough it. Harry and others like him paid well for the modern conveniences in the trappings of rustic simplicity.

I had no key this time. Even if I had thought of coming here right from the beginning, I would not have gone to Harry and implicated him by getting a key. This was my folly, and I would have to bear all the grief and punishment if things fell down around my head. I had to break a pane of glass in the door, fumble around for the inside latch, all the time wondering when someone would come running into the living room shouting, "burglar," and wielding a twenty-gauge shotgun. But the place was empty as I had imagined it would be.

Inside, we found a cardboard box and used one of the sides to cover the hole I'd made, thereby keeping out the worst of the wind. I plugged the heaters in after He started the generator in the attached utility shed to the rear of the cabin, and I thanked the gods that Harry had electric heaters as well as fireplaces. The fireplaces would give off smoke that would have every World Authority ranger and copper down on our backs inside of the hour. The electric jobs would keep the living room sufficiently warm and the remainder of the house just comfortable. And that was sufficient. We could not expect total luxury in our position. This little bit of peace and quiet and rest, after our days and days of running, did seem like total luxury. The heavy, whining noise from the generator would have to be risked. It was well-muffled, and if anyone got close enough to hear its low whumpa-whumpa, then chances were they were already suspicious and investigating the cabin.

"Good," I said, watching the coils begin to glow inside the heaters and feeling the first warm drafts of air as the blowers came on.

"The food," He said. "I want to see what I have to work with."