Blind Rage - Chapter 3

Friday, July 18, 1997, 10:02 pm

San Antonio, Texas

Wagner couldn’t suppress an irritated grimace from flashing across his face when the berserker greeted him at the front door with a surly glare. Tucking the evidence envelope under his arm, he asked, “Are you sure there isn’t some way to let the other Jobe out?”

“Yep, but how long he stays out depends on you.” The berserker stepped back to let Wagner in. “After I finish my experiment, you can take me away from the house. Then Jobe can come out. The drug you’ve forced me to take keeps us from talking to each other the way we used to, so I’m going to leave him a recording.”

The berserker turned away from Wagner, talking while he walked. “I need you to come back to Gavin’s room. He has the computer back there.”

Wagner followed the berserker, but he couldn’t rein in his curiosity. “Why do you need the computer?”

“I’m going to record a message for Jobe and burn an audio CD. You can play it in the car once Jobe comes out.”

The berserker walked into Gavin’s room, and Wagner realized Gavin was still asleep.

The berserker kept talking as he went to the computer. “So that way, he’ll understand why he’s lost track of a full day. It should also help explain why Jobe can’t be around Gavin, unless you just want to see me all the time.”

“Shouldn’t we wake him up?”

The berserker shrieked, and Gavin shot off the mattress, landing on the floor a foot away from the side of the bed in a crouch. One hand was set on the floor, and the other was raised to throw a punch before his eyes lost their glazed look.

Gavin saw Wagner first, who clutched his chest and tried to get his lungs to start working again.

Gavin’s gaze flicked next to the berserker before his brow knotted in the middle. His mouth drew into a thin line as he stood up, and he had to fight to suppress the growl rising in his throat.

Chortling as he dropped into the seat in front of the desk, the berserker said, “He’s awake.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Wagner glowered as he rubbed his ear, but his attention moved back to Gavin as he thought, He looks different.

“My dad said that too.” Jobe ignored Gavin’s dirty look, pointing at Wagner. “Good morning, furball. We’re going to try an experiment, but let me set up the computer first.”

Gavin’s face relaxed as he glanced at Wagner for an explanation, but his supervisor had no answer aside from a shrug.

They both waited as the berserker set up a sound recording program. He whistled to check the microphone, and said, “Gavin, take the collar from Wagner. I want you to tell me if you notice anything.”

Wagner held out the envelope, and Gavin opened it, taking out the collar.

He closed his hand around the stone and waited. “No, I don’t feel anything.”

Wagner’s mouth fell open. “Gavin, your voice—”

“It’s deeper.” Gavin’s face drew into a look of confusion. “Will my voice change if I hand you back the collar?”

“You are such a dumb-ass.” The berserker shook his head. “Your voice is deeper because your chest is bigger. If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve gained two inches.”

“But that’s impossible,” Gavin said. He went to his closet and opened the door, checking himself in the mirror.

He still couldn’t believe what he saw. Surely, his clothes were tricking him. He peeled out of his shirt quickly.

It was too quick, or it should have been. Yet he felt only a dull throb in his side, and he peeled off his bandages.

The wounds inflicted from the bear were gone, and only a thin trail of pink lines remained. The deeper wounds caused by the bottle on his other side were still tender. But the scabs flaked away when he scratched them, and the only pain he felt was around his stitches.

He looked up at the mirror, and then his mouth dropped. “Whoa.”

The berserker said, “Jobe, to help you understand what’s going on, Gavin has just confirmed that the curse is changing his body.”

Gavin continued to pose, curling his arms across his stomach while he hunched over. Abs which had never existed on him before popped out like bricks under his skin. His chest rippled with muscle, and his arms looked like chiseled works of art.

The berserker continued his narration. “Currently, the curse isn’t that strong in him, so I’m not swelling up as much as I did with the orc-werebear.”

Wagner and Gavin both asked, “What?”

The berserker explained Erick’s visit, and Wagner walked to sit down on the bed, feeling ill.

Gavin turned back toward the mirror, twisting his limbs and his body to watch the resulting ripples of muscle.

He didn’t smile at the improvements because the berserker had made the truth unavoidable. He was cursed by the orc-werebear.

When the berserker finished his story, Gavin said, “I’m cursed to become a werebear, right?”

“Yep,” the berserker said. “Gavin, grab some tools and pop a link on that collar. Then close the collar and cinch down the link.”

Wagner asked, “Why?”

“That collar keeps the wearer from passing the curse to anyone else. Gavin will need to wear it, so when he gets unbearable for the first time—” The berserker paused when Wagner groaned. “He won’t curse anyone else if he scratches them.”

Wagner didn’t bother arguing, and while he and Gavin worked on fixing the collar, the berserker leaned over the microphone, rubbing his forehead with agitation.

“All right, Jobe, here’s the score. You signed us up for this mess by confessing, and they won’t let me quit taking the drugs. The drugs are keeping us apart, and now I’m chomping pills to keep myself in check. But now you know everything I do, and I just want to know what you expect from me. Am I supposed to stay with Gavin? Or should I take off again to avoid trouble? Do you want me to sit here and leave it up to the cops to handle this? Just give me some idea of what I should do, because I’m feeling lost.”

Behind him, Gavin used a pair of pliers to squeeze open one chain link. He looped the link over, just to be sure it couldn’t break, and then he settled it over his head, noting how it wasn’t a collar so much as a long necklace on him.

Clutching the pendant in a tight fist, Gavin asked, “There’s more bad news, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. Even if you are wearing the collar, I want to rip your head off and pull your organs out through your throat.” The berserker sighed when Gavin took a step back. “The problem is, you’re cursed, and the stronger your curse gets, the angrier I get. I’m keeping myself in check only because of Wagner’s threat to fry my ass, and because I’m drugged with four times Jobe’s normal doses.”

“What?” Gavin started to shake his head.

Before he could object, the berserker spoke over him. “I have to. If I weren’t this heavily drugged, you’d already be dead. Wagner’s threat might not carry any weight once you hit your first full transformation.”

Jobe turned around to face the desk. Opening a side drawer, he took out a blank CD and started to pick at the wrapping while he said, “Gavin, as a final part of this experiment, why don’t you try to take off the collar and give it back to Wagner?”

Gavin picked up the amulet and tried to raise the chain over his head. He got the amulet level with his chin before he was straining to hold the stone up.

Gavin heaved and pushed until he was red in the face, but the stone couldn’t be moved any higher.

Panting, he shook his head and bent over to rest his palms on his thighs. “How did I get this damn thing off of the bear, anyway?”

The berserker answered him by reaching out to grab the back of the chain. He slid the chain off and said, “It’s probably a part of the spell.” He settled the chain back over Gavin’s head. “You broke the chain with the crowbar, so you only have yourself to blame for being cursed now.”

***

Friday, 10:26 pm

Jobe popped a pill and dry swallowed it while he listened to the CD. He had a stray thought and poured the pills out to count them. Yes, the berserker had taken many more pills, going over the regular dosage Jobe was supposed to have.

But when Jobe woke up, he was also feeling too clear-headed. The berserker burned through his medication at an alarming rate.

The CD finished, and Wagner said, “What do you think?”

Jobe shrugged, looking out the window. “Give me a minute.”

He needed a lot more than a minute. The rest stop where Wagner parked was too close to the highway, and Jobe picked up thoughts from drivers, all of them flicking in and out too fast for him to make anything out.

It felt like he was channel surfing on multiple televisions, and traffic was unusually heavy for that time of night.

The berserker didn’t seem to be as badly affected by the drugs. He was able to put a theory together about the collar before he’d talked to the elf. Talking to Erick only confirmed his suspicions, and Jobe would be stuck inside his mind, letting the berserker take full control if he stayed with Gavin.

Jobe sighed. “Drive back to the house, and ask the berserker one question. If he says no, get him away from Gavin, and then get Gavin in custody. If he says yes, you’ll have a follow-up question. The first question is, does he remember what my dad said in the afterlife?”

“What’s the second question?”

“Ask him if he agrees with my dad or not. If he says no, go back to the top of the list.”

Wagner smiled faintly. “And if he says yes?”

“Then let him go, and we’ll see what happens.” Jobe sighed. “There’s one other thing. When you can find time, explain to him what happened with Wendy. He doesn’t know that he sent her away, so maybe that will help him with managing his temper.”

***

Friday, 10:39 pm

Becoming aware of his surroundings again, the berserker looked around as the car pulled up to the house. “What did he say?”

Wagner repeated the first question, and the berserker nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

“Do you agree with him?” Wagner asked.

The berserker opened his mouth, but he snapped it shut on his first answer. He wanted to say that there were exceptions. Yes, he agreed that Jobe should stop using bombs. Yes, he agreed that it was best to avoid killing innocent people.

But sometimes, some things needed to be killed.

What about Gavin? the berserker thought. Does he need to be killed? If he is supposed to be your friend, shouldn’t he mean more?

In the silence, Wagner coughed. “Jobe had another message for you. He wanted me to tell you that Wendy left because of you.” Wagner looked around through the driver’s side window before he added, “Jobe didn’t bring this up, but I wanted to let you know that Jamie is dead.”

The berserker’s mouth trembled, but he bit down on his lips. Even drugged, the pain of both revelations was too sharp. It cut through the drug armor to lance his heart, first one stab, and then another.

He took a long breath and muttered, “Jobe, you tricky bastard.”

Wagner shook his head, confused. “That’s not the answer I was expecting.”

“Of course Jobe wanted a yes or no answer. He knows the damned orc also applies, just like Erick said. If I don’t agree, you have a decision to make. But if I say yes, that means I’m agreeing to look for a cursed orc. Then I have to figure out what to do with him, somehow.”

“In theory, we could just let nature run its course,” Wagner said. The berserker glared at him, and he asked, “What?”

“Let me explain why that won’t work. By the time anyone else can figure out what’s going on, our giant ‘friend’ will have made a few more people like Gavin, and wouldn’t you know it? We’ve only got one collar. Either we go looking for the orc, or there’s going to be a big increase in the wild werebear population in America.”

Wagner cut off the engine.

After several minutes of staring, he thought, Hell, now it’s rubbing off on me.

But for as much as he wanted to say something, Wagner was being pushed past his definitions of what was possible.

It was one thing to handle the reports Gavin delivered. He read the reports and believed every word.

Which is why he destroyed the hard copies. First he put the files through a shredder, and then he set fire to the remains. Then he flushed the ashes.

He filed a separate set of reports, and those were complete fabrications. Those reports were rational, and they seemed factual, but they weren’t the truth.

So what report would be filed to explain that Gavin was attacked by a werebear? How could they possibly explain that the bear was really an orc, and that he’d been brought to Earth from another plane of existence by a black elf?

But more than that, what would they do about Gavin?

The berserker nodded, clearing his throat. “Gavin and I will have to track down the orc. He’s alone, so it’s not likely that he’ll want to hunt near the cities. I expect that he’ll hunt on the outskirts of towns. He’ll be picking off strays, and he’ll stay to the wooded areas.”

“Jobe, you can’t be serious. You’re not in the right frame of mind to handle investigating any case, and Gavin...how long does he have before he starts changing?”

“Weeks,” the berserker said. “Within a few days, the curse is going to start provoking a stronger physical response from me. We’re both going to become more aggressive, but we’ll also become more sensitive to our surroundings.”

He paused and glanced at the house. “All I have to do is figure out how to deal with him once the full change occurs.”

“You’ll kill him then?”

“I don’t want to.” The berserker looked at Wagner, his scowl still etched on his face though his eyes were filled with many conflicting emotions. “But once he transforms, the furball might not recognize me. I can become a snack just as easily as anyone else.”

“So why would you want to take on this case when you know neither of you will be able to keep your minds on the job?”

“When Gavin turns, I need to come to terms with him, and I need to make sure we’re far away from humans when that happens. The fight is going to be ugly, and one of us might not survive. But if we do I can promise you, delivering the orc will be the easiest part of our job.”

Wagner debated with himself for a long time before he let himself ask, “If you captured the orc, what would we do with it?”

“That’s your job to figure out, boss,” the berserker said. “I will take it alive. It’s what Jobe wants, and it’s what Erick wants. I’ll turn it over to you, but I suspect its fate will be determined more by how many people it kills before we capture it.”

***

Saturday, July 19, 1997, 2:51 am

Boerne, Texas

George Brahms pulled the patrol car to a stop in front of the open barn doors, his brow humping down over his deeply inset brown eyes while he tried to figure out what he was looking at.

Leaving the headlights on, he got out of the car, and the farmer who called him ran from the front porch across the yard in a crouch.

Rufus Zielinski was dressed in white boxer shorts and his work boots, and the wreath of white hair wrapped around the sides and back of his mostly bald head stuck out in all directions. His wrinkled face glistened with nervous sweat as he waved to the thing curled up inside the barn.

Rufus whispered, “It didn’t wake up when I opened the door, but it took me a while to figure out that all that snarling was just snoring.”

George wanted to go through formal procedures and ask when Rufus first noticed the animal. He wanted to file a report, and then get on the radio to call out the animal control agents.

But his gaze was frozen on the broad grey back of the animal. The boney ridge of the animal’s spine divided two mountainous piles of muscle under mottled skin. The muscles twined down into two thick ropes on the animal’s lower back, and below an extremely ugly bare ass was a pair of feet. George’s gaze froze there, because he counted five toes. Five normal, almost human toes, if not for their much larger size.

The foot was enormous, and George thought, Holy shit, it’s Bigfoot.

Rufus cocked a shotgun, and George’s body jolted.

He dropped his hand to his revolver and spun his head, thinking, Why didn’t I notice the gun before?

But he hadn’t missed it. He’d just been standing frozen while the elderly farmer had returned to the house to fetch the gun. Rufus was also wearing a pair of jeans, so apparently he’d been feeling modest in his underwear.

Relaxing, George asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to sneak in and blast it.”

“No, I should call this in,” George said. “Animal control can—”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Rufus waved the gun barrel toward the animal. “Look at the size of that thing. Animal control doesn’t have a truck big enough for it. Besides, whatever it is, it’s diseased. Nothing normal looks like that nasty color of grey. It’s got splotches all over its skin, so obviously it’s sick.”

George nodded. “All right, but look at the size of it and ask yourself if that’s a big enough gun.”

“I’ve got a slug in here, and I pack my shells with plenty of kick.” Rufus patted the side of the shotgun and grinned. “I’m aiming at point blank range, so I’m sure this’ll get through the skull no matter how thick it is.”

George wanted to argue the point, but his own thoughts were also wandering toward killing the animal before it could wake up.

The plan sounded even better once it occurred to him that the creature was probably what had killed Albert and Mildred Fitzgerald.

George trailed a few paces behind Rufus into the barn. He looked down and the first thing he noticed was how the arms and legs appeared humanoid. The hair-covered limbs were tucked close to the animal’s thick chest, and the head was hunched down. 

George jumped at the click of the light switch, and he cringed as the metal-housing lamps mounted to the supporting posts filled the lofts with bright light.

Only after he was sure the animal hadn’t moved did he spin on his heel to glare at Rufus. The farmer shrugged, indifferent to his authority and his anxiety.

Heaving an irritated sigh, George turned around to examine the animal in better detail. The splotchy grey face wasn’t even close to human. Fangs big enough to be called tusks jutted from bulging lips, and the blunt nose turned up in a snout. The eyes were widely spaced, but with the lids closed, the animal had a tranquil expression.

George thought of a gorilla, but neither the face nor the body proportions were right. Though the limbs were covered in coarse hair, it was much less dense on the body. The arms weren’t long like an ape or a gorilla.

If he ignored the face, he could almost convince himself that he was looking at a primate, or possibly a giant human.

From the corner of his eye, George noticed Rufus edging closer. He reached out when the shaking farmer tried to bring up the gun.

“Wait,” he whispered, his gaze returning to the animal’s closed eyes. “Listen, whatever this is, it’s not...not native.”

“I guessed that,” Rufus said, trying to raise the gun again. George stopped him, and Rufus made a quiet groan. “Will you back off and let me kill this thing already?”

He spoke too loud, and the animal’s eyes opened. Dark red eyes locked on the gun and the mouth opened in a snarl.

George took a step back, and the animal snapped out its arm, trying to close its massive hand around his leg.

George pulled his leg away, and jagged brown nails raked his calf. Blood soaked his sock and shoe before he’d taken two steps, and then he couldn’t support his own weight. He dropped to the ground, thumping on his coccyx.

Rufus raised the gun, and the animal grabbed the barrel and pushed up. Crying in dismay, Rufus flew back and hit the ground, holding onto the shotgun as though his life depended on it.

Hopping on his good leg, George limped over to Rufus, who recovered himself and sat up. George dropped to his knees and pushed down the barrel just before the shot went off.

The heat of the shot singed his hand, and the barrel bucked from the over-packed shell, almost snapping his wrist.

The animal spasmed at the sound, and then it froze. Its gaze remained on the hole in the ground, which was still smoking from the point-blank-range shot.

Rufus glared at George. “Are you crazy?”

George shook his head. “Listen, if you shoot it, you’ll just piss it off.”

Rufus cocked the shotgun, and the animal blurred into motion. Neither man had a chance to move before it stood over them, its ugly face twisted into a mask of rage.

Rufus tried to raise the gun, and George stopped him again. Raising his voice, he asked, “Whose side are—?”

“Shut up,” George hissed, unable to speak above a whisper. “You’re going to get both of us killed.”

The angry expression of the animal faded, and its brow rose in a thoughtful arch as its gaze flick between the men. The glimmer of rage left the red irises, but it was hard to tell. The bloody pools were surrounded by black, and more of the dark color was revealed as the creature’s eyelids relaxed open.

To George, it looked like the animal was trying to sort out which of the men was a threat. It settled its gaze on George, but it raised its hand to grab Rufus by his head.

The farmer uttered a muffled scream and tried to claw at the animal’s thumb. Unfazed, the animal clenched its fingers. The scream stopped, and then the skull popped.

George’s stomach crawled into his throat when something wet splashed his cheek and dripped over the side of his mouth. His gaze was locked with the animal’s, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Rufus’ body go limp.

His neck stretched, the skin bearing all of the weight of the body once the skull was crushed and separated from the spine.

The animal growled and squeezed again, harder. Blood sprouted from between the animal’s fingers, more of it splattering George.

By then his heart and his intestines were trying to join his stomach in his throat. If his testicles joined the dog pile he would choke from fear before the animal could kill him.

It released what was left of Rufus’ head, and the body dropped out of George’s sight.

The animal raised the bloody hand to its mouth and slid out a thick, purple tongue to  lap away the stain.

Gagging, it spun its head right to spit a wad of bright red on the ground. Deep wrinkles of disgust creased its ugly features, and it used a hairy forearm to wipe its tongue.

It finished, smacked its lips, and started snarling and grunting.

George gawked, dumbfounded by the babbling animal. The guttural grunts and snarls were some kind of speech, but he had no idea what it was saying.

He couldn’t think straight to say anything. Beside him lie proof that he needed to be careful about making fast movements, and he wasn’t sure if sitting still was much better.

The animal finished rambling and huffed. It turned away from him, dropping its head to spit again.

With only a few thumping footsteps, it left the barn. Seconds passed, and then the thump was too far away for him to hear it.

He thought he still could until he recognized the thumping as his heart, which had crept past his stomach to share space with his brain.

George stared at the door. He didn’t know if the animal was coming back, but what froze his head in place was the dreadful images his mind conjured of the mess that lay behind him.

When he turned to look at Rufus, the reality was far worse than anything he’d imagined. Horrified, he swung his head away from the body and vomited.