Blind Rage - Chapter 1

Thursday, July 17, 1997, 8:42 pm

San Antonio, Texas

In hindsight, Gavin would admit that it was a stupid thing to think. They were less than two miles from the house, driving on an isolated part of Interstate Highway 10 when he thought, I wish something would happen to break him out of his shell.

Jobe started speaking, but didn’t turn away from the window. “It’s hard, coming back to your sanity. You...you have to remember what you did, and it no longer feels like you anymore.”

He turned his head to stare at Gavin with a slack, tired expression. “I just woke up from a nightmare, but now I can’t get away from it, and the new nightmare isn’t much better.”

“I don’t understand.” Gavin frowned. “Am I somehow making things worse for you?”

“No, it isn’t you. Damien took away my humanity and set me apart from normal people. I’m not just some crazy guy acting on my whims. I’m a halfling mutant. I can’t be around my family, and the one person like me that I liked being around...she doesn’t want me.

“I want to think of something else. I don’t want to keep thinking about myself, and I don’t want to think about her. But all that leaves are my victims. When I think of them, I don’t see people. All I can see now are the bodies.”

Gavin nodded. “Jobe...” He couldn’t offer advice, not on the topic of getting rid of distracting thoughts.

He had his own problems with distracting thoughts, though his weren’t so dire as Jobe’s.

After several awkward seconds of silence Jobe said, “I prefer being in the city. Then I can’t think for myself. I only hear everyone else. But when it’s just you and me, I can’t help but go back over the same thoughts.”

Gavin nodded his understanding. “Maybe we should take you in to talk to a—”

A flash of white light burst in front of the car, blinding Gavin. He threw a hand in front of his eyes, but he didn’t panic and let go of the steering wheel. His instincts were already moving his foot to the brake pedal, and he stepped down gingerly to ease the car to a stop instead of a screeching halt.

The car was just starting to slow down when it hit something and lurched into a clockwise spin.

Along with the sound of rending metal, a furious bellow filled the air.

Making two full turns, the grey Taurus swerved to a stop. Gavin rubbed his eyes, trying to get rid of the huge white spot blotting out his vision. He could just barely see things at the corners of his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to give him a clue of what he was looking at.

He asked, “Did you see anything?”

“I saw a light.” Jobe’s voice sounded deeper than normal, as if he were furious. Before Gavin could ask him what was wrong, he growled, sounding like an angry animal.

He said, “I’m still seeing it.”

“Yeah, me too.” Gavin sighed and blinked rapidly, trying to make the blind spot fade faster.

Seconds later, he noticed an odd hiss that he couldn’t place. He wanted to search for the source of the sound, but trying to look around the blind spot only annoyed him. He forced himself to look straight ahead and wait for the white spot to fade.

When it did, he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. The front of the car was folded up like scrap-metal on the right side, and the engine was dead. The left headlight was still on, the beam falling on a massive animal lying across the road.

Gavin leaned his head over, his face pulling into a baffled expression. The back end of the animal looked vaguely like a bear. But that was impossible for many reasons.

First, there weren’t any bears in the area, except those living at the zoo. Second, the animal laying in the road was too big, and third, the legs of the animal were too long.

Gavin was going to ask what the thing was, but then he recognized the hissing was Jobe panting through his nose. He looked over, his eyes widening at the sight of Jobe’s furious expression.

Jobe’s whole body was tensed and shaking, and his hands clenched on his knees, his knuckles white. The rest of his skin was flushing with a red color, and his arms were swelling.

Jobe raised his right hand and moved it to the door handle with an exaggerated slowness. “Stay in the car.”

Only, it wasn’t Jobe. His voice was even deeper, every word full of growling anger.

Gavin flinched involuntarily, forcing himself to look away from Jobe and back out the front windshield.

The animal was getting up. It rose onto four long limbs, pushing its massive black body up out of the range of the headlight. Gavin saw the head only as a shadowy outline, but he still would have sworn that he was looking at a bear.

Jobe got out of the car, and Gavin thought, What? Is he serious?

He apparently was, and Gavin shouted, “Jobe, what are you doing?”

Jobe slammed the door without answering.

The giant bear shook its head and growled, still dazed. The car had clipped the leg of the animal, and it had slammed down face first onto the pavement.

Gavin thought, But, there wasn’t anything in front of the car before the light flashed. He was certain of it. He’d been looking ahead, and there was no way he could have missed a giant bear standing in the middle of the road.

The bear saw Jobe and reared up on its hind legs. Gavin leaned forward in his seat, his mouth falling open.

It’s standing like a man. He shook his head, trying to deny the thought. But the beast resembled a giant man in a bear costume. This was further confirmed when the front “paws” loosened, and four taloned fingers and a thumb extended to form ugly hooks.

Gavin thought of his gun, back at home, locked in a gun safe. The only weapon he could think of was the crowbar in the trunk, and he didn’t want to use that.

The seconds that passed while Jobe and the animal stared at each other lasted an eternity. Gavin felt like he already knew the outcome of the approaching fight, and he was dreading it.

Despite his own thoughts about the inadequacy of the crowbar, his hand dropped to the trunk lever near the bottom of his seat.

The trunk clunked open, and then the animal bellowed, dropping onto Jobe with a blurring speed.

Jobe blurred too, lunging to one side before he clasped both of his hands together and drew them back. The animal looked up, and Jobe swung, slamming his knuckles into the side of the furry head.

Impossibly, the bear staggered up and back from the blow, and a pained roar erupted from its wide barrel chest. The bear recovered and swept a left paw at Jobe.

Jobe stepped in, trying to grab the limb. He was knocked off the road, over the barbwire fence, and into a pasture.

The high weeds masked his actual landing point, but the bear loped in the right general direction. His front legs snapped all three of the barbed wires, and the animal stumbled, losing speed for only a second.

Finding its footing, the bear sprang to land on an indent in the tall weeds. It dropped its head, and again reared up and back.

Another pained roar filled the air, but there was also confusion and agitation in the sound. This hunter wasn’t used to being denied, and especially not from what looked like an easy meal.

Gavin opened his door and got out. Part of his mind argued for staying in the car, but the folded fender and crumpled chassis did not inspire confidence in the safety of hiding in a crippled car. The bear could and probably would peel off the roof once it had dealt with Jobe.

Admittedly, Jobe was doing much better than Gavin would have thought possible. With every lunge the bear made, he was rebuffed by an unseen attack.

Gavin looked away from the fight and dug in his trunk for the crowbar. It was 24 inches long, and suddenly, it looked so much shorter than it ever had when he was changing a flat tire. He wanted a gun.

No, fuck that, he thought. I want a bazooka, with a silver shell.

Under less hectic circumstances, he might have paused to question why he chose silver-coated missiles instead of the standard issue ammunition. But his thoughts were focused on Jobe, who was still trying to fight off the massive beast by himself.

Gavin ran to the pasture, and if the bear heard him, it was too aggravated with Jobe to pay attention.

When the bear dropped for another attack on Jobe, Gavin lunged forward and swung the crowbar with the clawed head facing out.

He was stunned to hear a metallic clank before the claw bit into flesh and produced a wet squelch. He barely laid eyes on Jobe lying on the ground, curled in a ball, and then he was yanked off of his feet when the bear rose up on its hind legs.

Let go, he thought, and he did.

He was still dropping when the bear spun and caught him under his arm with a swiping attack. Claws raked his skin, but the blow didn’t cut Gavin much before he was hurled across the field.

He landed on his side, and he felt something crunch. Pain exploded across his chest and abdomen while the wind was knocked from his lungs.

Gavin struggled to sit up, and the bear was bearing down on him, loping on four legs. Gavin raised his hands in a warding gesture.

But before he could close his eyes, the bear blurred, dropping toward the ground while it uttered a confused growl.

Gavin stared at the empty space where the bear had been, his breath hitching in jagged gasps while he waited for it to rise up from whatever hole it had tripped in.

A minute passed, and still it didn’t get up.

Jobe did, and he strode across the grass, passing over the same space without falling.

Only then did Gavin notice how much bigger Jobe had become. His body swelled, stretching his clothing so much that several seams of his T-shirt and his jeans had burst.

He still wore a scowl of pure rage, and Gavin flinched when Jobe leaned over him and growled. It was an animal sound, a warning that shot cold sparks across Gavin’s sweat-slicked skin.

Jobe said, “I told you to wait in the car.”

Gavin wanted to say something, but when Jobe glanced down and grimaced with disdain, Gavin bowed his head to check his wounds.

His shirt was slick. He barely felt the wounds, but the blood was on the wrong side from the claw marks.

Gavin turned his head and found the myriad glimmering reflections of a broken glass bottle. The crunch he’d felt was the bottle shattering.

These clues still did not add up to explain why he was bleeding so much on the wrong side. He was in shock, and his mind was distancing him from the pain and trauma of his injury.

Putting the pieces together was too much for his addled mind, so he rolled onto his less injured side and away from the glass, closing his eyes before his mind shut off.

***

Friday, July 18, 1997, 12:08 am

Gary Wagner rubbed his forehead while Gavin talked about the accident and ensuing fight with the “unknown animal.” With his senses returned to normal, he would not refer to the animal as a bear, and Wagner was finding his refusal annoying under the circumstances.

Still he held his tongue and let Gavin deliver a rambling report.

Wagner reminded himself to stop rubbing at his temples, since it would only kill off some of his dark brown hair and give him higher widow’s peaks. He stuffed his hand into his pocket, fumbling with his key ring while he tried not to pace at the foot of the hospital bed.

Gavin finished, and when Wagner raised his head, his expression was filled more with annoyance than skepticism.

Wagner knew the truth about Gavin’s previous investigations in Odessa and Tucson. As Gavin’s supervisor, he was one of the few people in the San Antonio branch office who Gavin felt certain that he could trust.

He was still Gavin’s supervisor as well, and for the time being, Gavin was supposed to be on extended medical leave. He was not supposed to be drawing attention to himself, and he had, in a major way.

It was not the accident itself that upset Wagner, nor was it the agent’s decision to abandon all common sense and attack an animal that outweighed him by at least 900 pounds.

In fact, these were interesting side details. What upset Wagner was how Gavin had spoken to a reporter during the first few hours after he’d been brought into the hospital. Dazed from his injuries and drugged on painkillers, Gavin had truthfully reported everything that had happened to anyone who would listen.

Unfortunately, somewhere early in the line of people who’d heard the story, a reporter and her cameraman had come in for a full interview, and they’d slipped out of the hospital with a major scoop before anyone recognized them.

The freelance team had already sold the tape, and Wagner was sure that the morning news programs of several stations would be running the story of an FBI agent being wounded in a fight with a giant bear on the outskirts of the city.

Gavin could not be faulted for confessing in his shocked mental state, so Wagner chose to ask about Gavin’s motivation for becoming suicidal. “Why would you leave the car to fight a...werebear?”

“I didn’t call it that,” Gavin said.

“How big would you estimate it was?”

Gavin raised his head in thought, staring at the tile ceiling of the hospital. But instead of estimating the bear’s size, he was thinking, I’ve spent way too much time in hospitals these days.

He forced himself to try and remember the attack. It wasn’t easy, because the drugs stole memories and hid them in the back of his brain. Keeping the details out of his reach, the drugs reduced the bear into a hazy shape with features too blurry to recall.

Finally, he guessed, “Roughly eight or nine feet, when it stood on its back legs.”

Wagner asked, “And you took it on with a crowbar?” He snorted when Gavin nodded. “Maybe we should start prescribing medication for you too.”

“I think they already did.” Gavin pointed up at his IV bag, but his sarcastic smile faltered at a random thought. “How’s Jobe?”

“He’s on sedatives, but other than that, he’s fine.” Wagner pointed toward the door. “I left him in the waiting room, but I’ll take him back to the house and stay with him tonight. The doctors told me that most of your wounds are superficial, so you’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

Gavin nodded. “Can I get permission to omit this from my reports? I’m not sure how to explain a bear popping up in a bright flash of light and attacking me before it...it fell into the ground.”

Wagner blinked at Gavin. “You don’t remember talking to the reporter when you were brought in, do you?”

Gavin frowned, his black eyebrows bunching together while he tried to search his memory. It was like trying to search for a lost bar of soap in a bubble bath. Every time he thought he had a grasp on a memory, it slipped away from him.

He asked, “There was a reporter?”

“Yeah, there was.” Wagner made a frustrated tsking sound as he looked away from Gavin. “You’ll have to make something up for your report, because the story is going to be public knowledge. Even if it wasn’t, the doctors are damned curious about the hair they found stuck in some of your wounds. They say they’ve never seen any animal like this before.”

Gavin considered an idea before he said, “Then maybe I can use that. I don’t know what the animal really was anyway.” Gavin shrugged, regretting it a second later when his wounds throbbed.

He forced himself to ignore it. “For once, maybe I can just write the truth and you can file it away under unsolved mysteries.”

***

Friday, 2:30 am

Despite being exhausted, Wagner couldn’t get any rest. To avoid Jobe he stayed in the kitchen, but he got tired of pacing around the table.

He walked into the living room, where Jobe sat with a chair facing the wide picture window. “Can I get you anything?”

“No,” Jobe said.

“Uh...do you mind if I turn on the TV?”

“No, go ahead.”

Jobe never moved. He never looked away from the window, and his troubled expression worried Wagner.

Wagner stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking down at the floor. “Do you want to tell me about what happened?”

Silence.

Wagner thought, At least he didn’t say no again.

Wagner moved to the couch to sit down, and he was reaching for the remote when Jobe said, “The medication doesn’t keep him in check.”

Wagner turned to sit sideways on the couch. “Who?”

“The berserker,” Jobe said. He spoke with a slow, slurring pace. “I thought I was doing okay, but when I saw the werebear, he came out. He told me that we had to kill it, or it would kill Gavin.”

The sedatives pulled at his thoughts and made speech even harder on him.

Jobe slipped his hand into his hip pocket, pulling out a long metal chain. Several of the links were covered in blood, and there was a pendant unevenly set on the chain, suggesting that a link had been broken on the side.

The pendant looked like it was made from turquoise, and tiny black inscriptions were painted on the surface.

Jobe said, “I have no idea where I got this.”

Wagner got up from the couch and walked around it. “What is that? A collar?”

“I don’t know that either.” Jobe passed the necklace to Wagner, who peered at the inscriptions.

The symbols meant nothing to him, and he moved his attention to the blood. “Do you think this came off the bear when Gavin attacked it?”

“I don’t know.” Jobe shrugged at Wagner’s heavy sigh. “I’m sorry that I don’t have any answers for you, but I don’t remember anything after looking at the bear and giving in to the berserker. I don’t remember being taken to the hospital, and I woke up while you were driving away from the hospital parking lot. Everything in between is a blank. I think I was given sedatives at the hospital.”

“Yes,” Wagner said.

Jobe turned his head to stare at his reflection again. “So, even after you sedated him, the berserker wouldn’t let go of me.”

Wagner walked around the chair, leaning on the windowsill. “So what does it mean?”

Jobe raised his head, and his eyes shone bright, glassy with tears and haunted by some inner turmoil. “It means I’m still crazy.”

He blinked, and a tear slipped from the corner of his eye, crawling down the bridge of his nose.

Discomfited, Wagner bowed his head to stare at the chain. He wasn’t looking at it, and his mind churned in a desperate hunt for something useful to say. “Maybe we just need to find the right medication.”

“You can try. But I’ll still be stuck with him.” Jobe sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m still crazy. The damned reflection was right, and no matter what, I’ll always be crazy.”

Wagner had no answers, and Jobe returned to staring out the window.

Moving to the couch, Wagner turned on the TV.

No matter what question came to mind, he quelled it.