Bad Glass

Neither Mac nor Taylor saw me coming: Mac remained focused on the room beyond the threshold, and Taylor couldn’t even look back over her shoulder.

“She’ll listen to you,” Mac growled into Taylor’s ear. “Make her—”

And I swung.

The bat slammed into the side of Mac’s knee. Tendon gave way, and he crumpled to the ground, pulling Taylor down on top of him. I bent forward and slid the barrel of the bat past Taylor’s head; she was still in his grasp, clenched tightly against his chest. I pushed the bat through Mac’s beard and slid it right up against his Adam’s apple … then I shoved him hard against the floor. He gagged as I applied more pressure.

I bent forward and rested my weight against the bat’s handle.

“I owe you a fucking shot to the head,” I hissed. “And if you make me do it, I’m not going to be laying down no fucking bunt. I’m going to drive your head out of the motherfucking park.”

His hand loosened on Taylor’s neck, and she pulled her way free, immediately recoiling in disgust against the tunnel’s far wall. She let out another sob and buried her face in her hands. I kept the bat extended out toward Mac as I moved carefully to her side. Before I could put my arm around her shoulder, however, she pulled back once again, shaking her head.

“No, please,” Mac said from his place on the ground. The crazed expression suddenly fell from his face, and his eyes filled with tears. “Please … You’ve got to just … Please!… Amanda … Amanda.” And his eyes spun back toward the brightly lit room on the other side of the threshold.

I stayed where I was, but Floyd stepped over Mac’s legs and looked out into the room. “Dean,” he said, looking back at me after a handful of seconds, his eyes wide, his voice filled with wonder. “You’ve gotta see this shit.”

Floyd and Charlie kept an eye on Mac while I peered into the room.

It was a disorienting sight.

I barely recognized Amanda. She was standing among a crowd of wolves on the far side of an oversized hub. They were pressed tightly around her; it looked like she was standing waist-deep in a furry, attentive pool. Since we’d last seen her, she’d lost all of her clothing, and she was now dressed in nothing but streaks of mud—intricate markings, purposefully drawn, like patterns of pigment in fur—across her cheekbones, her breasts, her belly, down the length of her arms.

I took a step into the room, and the pack of wolves tensed forward. A low groan filled the hub, a faint subvocal growl filled with warning and menace. Bright light was flooding into the room from one of the connecting corridors, and two dozen sets of fangs glittered sharply in the orange glow. I felt a twinge of pain in my hand and pulled back instinctively. Once bitten …

Amanda moved her arm, reaching forward slightly, then pulled it back toward her stomach. In response, the wolves settled onto their haunches, sitting almost in unison.

“Amanda?” I said.

She didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide, curious, but completely uncomprehending. They were the eyes of an animal. An attentive animal.

“Amanda, it’s me, Dean. Remember me? Remember taking me to the park, finding the tunnel. The wolves? Remember looking for your dog—” I tried to remember its name, finally managing to fish it up from the depths of my memory. “Remember Sasha?”

Her brow crinkled slightly at the name, and she reached down to touch the wolf at her side. The wolf showed me its teeth briefly—a tiny warning—then glanced up at Amanda’s face. It raised a strangely jointed paw and touched her side, as if it were offering her comfort.

And there was silence. And the room was still. Her face flickered from that tiny questioning expression back to placid calm.

I raised the camera to my eye and took a quick shot. It was an amazing, improbable scene, and my hands just reacted—a nervous gesture, really, something to occupy my eye, my hands, and a detached part of my mind.

“She’s gone,” Taylor said in the tunnel behind me. “Mac and I have been here for the last fifteen minutes. He’s been quizzing her, coaxing, trying to get her to remember who we are. Who she is.” There was anger and disgust in her voice. “But she doesn’t remember. They all just stand there. And they won’t let us get anywhere near.” She hawked up a glob of phlegm, and I heard her spit into the dirt at my back.

“Face it: Amanda’s gone,” Taylor repeated. “And there’s just this … this empty shell in her place. This animal.”

“No!” Mac roared. He rolled up onto his knees and pushed me aside, nearly sending me sprawling to the floor. He moved fast. “Amanda!” he yelled.

None of us tried to stop him. None of us saw it coming.

In a matter of moments, he was up on his feet and colliding with the wolves, trying to wade through the sea of fur and muscles and teeth, trying to reach Amanda on the other side. I saw her cringe back in fear, and the wolves surged forward, putting themselves between Mac and their mistress. That’s what she is, I realized, that’s what she’s become.