Night Freight

"Dressed how?"

"Wasn't dressed, not in clothes. I swear he was wearing some kind of animal skins. And he had hair all over his head and face, long shaggy hair."

"Bigfoot," DeVries said and laughed.

"Damn it, Hank, I ain't kidding. He was your size, mine."

"Sun and shadows playing tricks."

"No, by God. I know what I saw."

Larrabee asked impatiently, "Where'd he go?"

"Down the ravine. There's a creek down there."

"He see or hear you?"

"Don't think so. I was quiet?"

DeVries laughed again. "Quiet pisser, that's you."

Larrabee adjusted the pack that rode his shoulders; ran one hand back and forth along the stock of his .300 Savage rifle. His mouth was set tight. "All right," he said, "we'll go have a look."

"Hell, Ben," DeVries said, "you don't reckon it's some man been killing our sheep?"

"Possible, isn't it? I never did agree with you and Chancy. No wolf or cat takes sheep down that way, tears them apart. And don't leave any sign coming or going."

"No man does either."

"No ordinary man. No sane man."

"Jesus, Ben . . ."

"Come on," Larrabee said. "We're wasting time."

". . . How many of Us are there? Not many. A few hundred . . . we have never been more than a few hundred. Scattered across continents. In cities and small towns, in wildernesses. Hot climes and cold. Moving, always moving, never too long in one place. Hiding among you, the bold and clever ones. Hiding alone, the ones like me.

This is our legacy:

Hiding.

Hunting.

Hungering.

You think you've been hungry but you haven't. You don't know what it means to be hungry all the time, to have the blood-taste in your mouth and the blood-craving in your brain and the blood-heat in your loins.

But some of you will find out. Many of you,someday. Unless you listen and believe.

Each new generation of Us is bolder than the last.

And hungrier. . .

The ravine was several hundred yards long, narrow, crowded with trees and brush. The stream was little more than a trickle among sparkly mica rocks. They followed it without cutting any sign of the man Hixon had seen, if a man was what he'd seen; without hearing anything except for the incessant hum of insects, the yammering cries of jays and magpies.

The banks of the ravine shortened, sloped gradually upward into level ground: a small ragged meadow ringed by pine and spruce, strewn with brush and clumps of summer-browned ferns. They stopped there to rest, to wipe sweat-slick off their faces.

"No damned sign," Hixon said. "How could he come through there without leaving any sign?" DeVries said, "He doesn't exist, that's how."

"I tell you I saw him. I know what I saw."

Larrabee paid no attention to them. He had been sca

"Which way now?" Hixon asked him.

Larrabee pointed to the west, where the terrain rose to a bare knob. "Up there. High ground."

"You ask me," DeVries said, "we're on a snipe hunt."

"You got any better suggestions?"

"No. But even if there is somebody around here, even if we find him . . . I still don't believe it's a man we're after. All those sheep with their throats ripped out, hunks of the carcasses torn off and carried away . . . a man wouldn't do that."

"Not even a lunatic?"

". . . What kind of lunatic butchers sheep?"

"Psycho," Hixon said. "Blown out on drugs, maybe."

Larrabee nodded. He'd been thinking about it as they tracked. "Or a Vietnam vet, or one of those backto-nature dropouts. They come into wild country like this, alone, and it gets to this one or that one and they go off their heads."

DeVries didn't want to believe it. "I still say it's an animal, a wolf or a cat."

"Man goes crazy in the wilderness," Larrabee said, "that's just what he turns into—an animal, a damned wolf on the prowl."

He wiped his hands on his trousers, took a drier grip on the Savage, and led the way toward higher ground.

… We are not all the same. Your stupid folklore says We are but We're not. Over the centuries We have undergone genetic changes, just as you have; We have evolved. You are children of your time. So are We.

My hunger is for animal flesh, animal blood. Sheep. Cattle. Dogs. Smaller creatures with fur and pulsing heart. They are my prey. One here, two there, ten in this county, fifty or a hundred in that state. You think it is one animal killing another—natural selection, survival of the fittest. You are right but you are also wrong.

Believe it.

We are not all the same. Others of Us have different hungers. Human flesh, human blood—yes. But that isn't all. We have evolved; our tastes have altered, grown discriminating. Male flesh and male blood. Female. Child. And not always do We desire the soft flesh of the throat, the bright sweet blood from the jugular And not always do We use our teeth to open our victims. And not always do We feed in a frenzy.

I am one of the old breed—not the most fearsome of Us. And sickened by the things I'm compelled to do; that is why I'mwarning you. The new breed . . . it is with the new breed that the ultimate terror lies.

We are not all the same. . . .

Larrabee stood on the bare knob, staring through his binoculars, trying to sharpen the focus. Below, across a hollow choked with brush and deadfall, a grassy, rock-littered slope lifted toward timber. The sun was full on the slope and the hot noon-glare struck fiery glints from some of the rocks, created thick shadows around some of the others, making it hard for him to pick out details. Nothing moved over there except the sun-dazzle. It was just a barren slope—and yet there was something about it. . . .

Up near the top, where the timber started: rocks thickly bunched in tall grass, the way the brush was drawn in around that one massive outcrop. Natural or not? He just couldn't tell for sure from this distance.

Beside him Hixon asked, "What is it, Ben? You see something over there?"

"Maybe." Larrabee gave him the glasses, told him where to look. Pretty soon he said, "Seem to you somebody might've pulled that brush in around the base of the outcrop?"

"Could be, yeah. That damned sun . . ."

"Let me see," DeVries said, but he couldn't tell either.

They went down into the hollow, Larrabee moving ahead of the other two. The deadfall tangle was like a bonepile, close-packed, full of jutting points and splintered edges; it took him ten minutes to find a way across to the slope. He'd been carrying his rifle at port arms, but as he started upslope he extended the muzzle in front of him, slid his finger inside the trigger guard.

The climb was easy enough. They went up three abreast, not fast, not slow. A magpie came swooping down at them, screaming; DeVries cursed and slashed at it with his rifle. Larrabee didn't turn his head. His eyes, unblinking, were in a lock-stare on the rocks and brush near the timber above.

They were within fifty yards of the outcrop when a little breeze kicked up, blew downhill. As soon as it touched them they stopped, all three at once.