Creature

Gingerly, he tried to take a step forward.

He couldn't walk.

"He'd better be up here," Frank Kramer groused fifteen minutes later. They had come out into a clearing on a bluff above town, and Mitzi was sniffing eagerly at the base of a large boulder. Kramer wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow and tried to catch his breath, silently promising himself that after tonight he'd get serious about the diet and exercise he'd been putting off for longer than he cared to admit.

The other three men, he noticed, didn't even seem to be breathing heavily.

"He's up here,"Ke

"How can I look with that damned light in my eyes?" Kramer muttered. Then: "How long do we keep looking? He could be anywhere up here."

Ke

The dog had abandoned the boulder now and was once again pulling at the lead as she tried to scramble up the steep trail. The four men followed her for another ten minutes, until she stopped abruptly, her whole body rigid as she stared into the darkness ahead.

Ke

He was crouched down by another large boulder, and in the glare of the flashlight his eyes seemed to glint u

A cornered animal. He looks just like a cornered animal.

"It's okay, Jeff," he said out loud. "We're not going to hurt you. We're just going to take you back to town."

JeffLaCo

Ke

Joe Rankin glanced at him curiously. "Hurt? Christ, Dick, he's not Charlie Manson. He's just a kid."

ButKe

Kramer and Rankin moved off to the left and Wes Jenkins slipped into the woods to the right asKe

He began talking to Jeff, speaking in the soothing tones he'd use on a frightened animal.

As Frank Kramer drew close, Jeff suddenly struck out with his right fist, clipping Kramer on the shoulder, sending him reeling back. "Shit!" he heard Kramer exclaim. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

But Jeff didn't hear, his eyes now fixed warily on Wes Jenkins.

Then, as Joe Rankin approached from the opposite side,Ke

Jeff, ignoring the injury to his ankle, scrambled to his feet and pressed closer to the boulder. His fists began to lash out as the three men closed on him.

It finally took all four of them to subdue the furiously fighting teenager, and in the end they had to carry him back down the hillside, his hands cuffed together behind his back, his ankles manacled with a second set of handcuffs. Even as they carried him across the footbridge and worked him into the back of the station wagon, he was still thrashing in their arms, twisting wildly as he tried to escape their grasp.

From his throat emerged a series of feral howls, like the anguished cries of a coyote whose foot has been clamped in a trap.

Chapter Twelve

"What the hell's wrong with him?" Frank Kramer asked. He glanced nervously over his shoulder. In the rear compartment of the station wagon JeffLaCo

"Some kind of mental breakdown," DickKe

"It's better than listening to the racket the boy's making," Rankin replied sourly. Then, catchingKe

Mitzi's barking subsided to a low growl, but as the station wagon gained speed and they left the town behind, Rankin could still feel the tension in the dog's muscles.

Ke

He braked to a stop in front of an open door. The harsh brilliance of halogen floodlights cut through the darkness, andKe

The white glare of the lights shone brightly through the car's windows, and the sudden illumination seemed somehow to have affected the boy, for suddenly he was lying still, his eyes clamped shut, his neck twisted at an u

Martin Ames, wearing a white lab coat unbuttoned down the front, only partially covering his fla

Ke

Joe Rankin carefully raised the station wagon's rear door.

Almost instantly Jeff twisted himself around and his legs lashed out. Rankin dodged away from the boy's flailing kicks, and with Wes Jenkins's help, pinioned his legs to the floor of the car. A moment laterKe

"In there," Marty Ames instructed, nodding to an open door a few yards down the hall. The four policemen carried Jeff into a small room, its white wallsshadowlessly illuminated by overhead fluorescent tubes. In the center of the room stood a large table with heavy mesh straps laid neatly across each of its ends. As two attendants moved the straps aside, the officers placed JeffLaCo