thoughts from Jack’s flying mind. Wolf was still alive, but partially pinned under a cow-sheep, which, although apparently unhurt, had frozen in panic. Wolf ’s hands waved with pathetic, flagging energy. As Jack closed the last of the distance, one of those hands dropped and simply floated, limp as a water-lily.
Without slowing, Jack lowered his left shoulder and hit the cow-sheep like Jack Armstrong in a boy’s sports story.
If it had been a full-sized cow instead of a Territories compact model, Jack would probably not have budged it, not with the stream’s fairly stiff current working against him. But it was smaller than a cow, and Jack was pumped up. It bawled
when Jack hit it, floundered backward, sat briefly on its
haunches, and then lunged for the far bank. Jack grabbed
Wolf ’s hands and pulled with all of his might.
Wolf came up as reluctantly as a waterlogged tree-trunk,
his eyes now glazed and half-closed, water streaming from his ears and nose and mouth. His lips were blue.
Twin forks of lightning blazed to the right and left of
where Jack stood holding Wolf, the two of them looking like a pair of drunks trying to waltz in a swimming pool. On the far bank, another cow-sheep flew in all directions, its severed head still bawling. Hot rips of fire zigzagged through the
marshy area, lighting the reeds on the tussocks and then finding the drier grass of the field where the land began to rise again.
“Wolf!” Jack screamed. “Wolf, for Christ’s sake!”
“Auh,” Wolf moaned, and vomited warm muddy water
over Jack’s shoulder. “Auhhhhhhhhhhh . . .”
Now Jack saw Morgan standing on the other bank, a tall,
Puritanical figure in his black cloak. His hood framed his pal-
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lid, vampirelike face with a kind of cheerless romance. Jack had time to think that the Territories had worked their magic even here, on behalf of his dreadful uncle. Over here, Morgan was not an overweight, hypertensive actuarial toad with
piracy in his heart and murder in his mind; over here, his
face had narrowed and found a frigid masculine beauty. He
pointed the silver rod like a toy magic wand, and blue fire tore the air open.
“Now you and your dumb friend!” Morgan screamed. His thin lips split in a triumphant grin, revealing sunken yellow teeth that spoiled Jack’s blurred impression of beauty once and forever.
Wolf screamed and jerked in Jack’s aching arms. He was
staring at Morgan, his eyes orange and bulging with hate and fear.
“You, devil!” Wolf screamed. “You, devil! My sister! My litter-sister! Wolf! Wolf! You, devil!”
Jack pulled the bottle out of his jerkin. There was a single swallow left anyway. He couldn’t hold Wolf up with his one
arm; he was losing him, and Wolf seemed unable to support
himself. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t take him back through into the other world anyway . . . or could he?
“You, devil!” Wolf screamed, weeping, his wet face sliding down Jack’s arm. The back of his bib overalls floated and
belled in the water.
Smell of burning grass and burning animals.
Thunder, exploding.
This time the river of fire in the air rushed by Jack so close that the hairs in his nostrils singed and curled.
“OH YES, BOTH OF YOU, BOTH OF YOU!” Morgan
howled. “I’LL TEACH YOU TO GET IN MY WAY, YOU LIT-
TLE BASTARD! I’LL BURN BOTH OF YOU! I’LL POUND
YOU DOWN!”
“Wolf, hold on!” Jack yelled. He gave up his effort to hold Wolf up; instead, he snatched Wolf ’s hand in his own and held it as tightly as he could. “Hold on to me, do you hear?”
“Wolf!”
He tipped the bottle up, and the awful cold taste of rotted grapes filled his mouth for the last time. The bottle was
empty. As he swallowed, he heard it shatter as one of Mor-
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gan’s bolts of lightning struck it. But the sound of the breaking glass was faint . . . the tingle of electricity . . . even Morgan’s screams of rage.
He felt as if he were falling over backward into a hole. A
grave, maybe. Then Wolf ’s hand squeezed down on Jack’s so
hard that Jack groaned. That feeling of vertigo, of having
done a complete dipsy-doodle, began to fade . . . and then the sunlight faded, too, and became the sad purplish gray of an October twilight in the heartland of America. Cold rain struck Jack in the face, and he was faintly aware that the water he was standing in seemed much colder than it had only seconds ago. Somewhere not far away he could hear the familiar snoring drone of the big rigs on the interstate . . . except that now they seemed to be coming from directly overhead.
Impossible, he thought, but was it? The bounds of that word seemed to be stretching with plastic ease. For one dizzy moment he had an image of flying Territories trucks driven by flying Territories men with big canvas wings strapped to their backs.
Back, he thought. Back again, same time, same turnpike.
He sneezed.
Same cold, too.
But two things were not the same now.
No rest area here. They were standing thigh-deep in the icy water of a stream beneath a turnpike overpass.
Wolf was with him. That was the other change.
And Wolf was screaming.
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Wolf Goes to the Movies
1
Overhead, another truck pounded across the overpass, big
diesel engine bellowing. The overpass shook. Wolf wailed and clutched at Jack, almost knocking them both into the water.
“Quit it!” Jack shouted. “Let go of me, Wolf! It’s just a
truck! Let go! ”
He slapped at Wolf, not wanting to do it—Wolf ’s terror
was pathetic. But, pathetic or not, Wolf had the best part of a foot and maybe a hundred and fifty pounds on Jack, and if he overbore him, they would both go into this freezing water and it would be pneumonia for sure.
“Wolf! Don’t like it! Wolf! Don’t like it! Wolf! Wolf!”
But his hold slackened. A moment later his arms dropped
to his sides. When another truck snored by overhead, Wolf
cringed but managed to keep from grabbing Jack again. But
he looked at Jack with a mute, trembling appeal that said Get me out of this, please get me out of this, I’d rather be dead than in this world.
Nothing I’d like better, Wolf, but Morgan’s over there. Even if he weren’t, I don’t have the magic juice anymore.
He looked down at his left hand and saw he was holding
the jagged neck of Speedy’s bottle, like a man getting ready to do some serious barroom brawling. Just dumb luck Wolf
hadn’t gotten a bad cut when he grabbed Jack in his terror.
Jack tossed it away. Splash.
Two trucks this time—the noise was doubled. Wolf howled
in terror and plastered his hands over his ears. Jack could see that most of the hair had disappeared from Wolf ’s hands in the flip—most, but not all. And, he saw, the first two fingers of each of Wolf ’s hands were exactly the same length.
“Come on, Wolf,” Jack said when the racket of the trucks
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had faded a little. “Let’s get out of here. We look like a couple of guys waiting to get baptized on a PTL Club special.”
He took Wolf ’s hand, and then winced at the panicky way
Wolf ’s grip closed down. Wolf saw his expression and loos-
ened up . . . a little.
“Don’t leave me, Jack,” Wolf said. “Please, please don’t
leave me.”
“No, Wolf, I won’t,” Jack said. He thought: How do you get into these things, you asshole? Here you are, standing under a turnpike overpass somewhere in Ohio with your pet werewolf.
How do you do it? Do you practice? And, oh, by the way, what’s happening with the moon, Jack-O? Do you remember?
He didn’t, and with clouds blanketing the sky and a cold
rain falling, there was no way to tell.
What did that make the odds? Thirty to one in his favor?
Twenty-eight to two?
Whatever the odds were, they weren’t good enough. Not
the way things were going.
“No, I won’t leave you,” he repeated, and then led Wolf to-
ward the far bank of the stream. In the shallows, the decayed remains of some child’s dolly floated belly-up, her glassy blue eyes staring into the growing dark. The muscles of Jack’s arm ached from the strain of pulling Wolf through into this world, and the joint in his shoulder throbbed like a rotted tooth.
As they came out of the water onto the weedy, trashy bank,
Jack began to sneeze again.