HAPPY ACRES GOLF CLUB: SUNDAY, MAY 4
"Lost it in the sun, damnit!" Jack Youngman whispered.
"Good drive, anyway, Jack," Doug Miller said and teed up for his own shot. "I saw where it landed." They were at the ninth hole, a 413-yard, par-five dogleg to the left that Doug Miller always parred, but which Jack Youngman had parred only once.
Youngman growled back, "Just because I let you play through with me once or twice doesn't mean you can call me anything but 'Mr. Youngman,' you got that?"
Doug Miller grinned, shrugged, and took his shot. The solid thwack of the club head against the ball told him almost at once that it was going to be a long, straight drive, longer, perhaps, than Youngman's, who usually drove well but ended up taking two or three extra shots on the green.
Youngman watched the ball arch high, but not too high, then hit the fairway a good 260 yards straight ahead. He grimaced. "Where are those other assholes, anyway?" he said. "I'll be damned if I have to walk another nine holes with just you for company, Miller." He didn't add that the reason he'd let Miller golf with him these last six weeks or so was that Miller was just about the best partner a guy could ask for. He was a good golfer, for one-almost as good, Youngman thought, as he was-and number two, he was just asshole enough that he got the members of the other team mad and flustered enough that they screwed up a lot.
"They said they'd meet us here, right?" Miller asked. "At the ninth hole?"
"That's what they said," Youngman answered, a noticeable strain in his voice because he hated to wait for anyone. He glanced at his watch. It said 12:15. "We'll give 'em another ten minutes." He looked suspiciously at the wooden driver that Miller had just used. "What is that, Miller? Is that new?" He thought it was possible that the reason Miller's drives were so good was that he was using an illegal club, one with a head that was heavier than normal.
Miller handed him the club. "Nice, huh? English; custom made. You wanta try it? Go ahead."
Youngman shook his head as he studied the club. "I don't need no special club-"
Miller guffawed. "It isn't special, Jack." Youngman gave him a quick, critical glance. "It's a standard club."
"Uh-huh," Youngman said, unconvinced. "And what's this?" He pointed at three letters cut into the top of the club head: "DAM."
"My initials," Miller answered. "Douglas A. Miller."
"Uh-huh. What's the 'A' for-'Asshole'?" He grinned, pleased with his joke.
"No." Miller grinned too, as if sharing the joke. " 'Ashland.'”
"Who the hell gave you a name like that?" He handed the club back, but Miller said nothing; the answer to the question was obvious, and the other players had appeared.
~* ~
MONDAY, MAY 5: 1:00 P.M.
The man from Quality Control said to the man from Research as they both stood looking up at the Ansel Adams mural-transparency-"Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico"-near the Ridge Road exit at Kodak Park, "Wasn't that supposed to have come down last month, Earl?"
Earl nodded. "They were going to put something by Linda McCartney up there, I think, but it got spoiled in processing, so they've got to redo it. I guess it'll be another couple of weeks, anyway."
"Too bad," said the man from Quality Control. "I mean, this is nice and everything, it's really nice, but you get sick of any thing after a while, no matter how good it is."
"Even sex," Earl said.
"I wouldn't go that far," said the man from Quality Control, and, both of them chuckling manfully, they turned and left The Park by the Ridge Road exit-the same exit that Greta Lynch and George Dixon and Doug Miller (when he was tagging after Greta) and a thousand other people used-to have a liquid lunch at Jack Ryan's Grill, just five minutes away on foot.
TUESDAY, MAY 6: 4:20 P.M.
Okay, twenty-three-year-old Bud Wygant told himself, so this was where Walt Morgan bought the farm?! Big deal! People died every day; what did it matter if you died in your sleep or if you had your head ripped off like an overripe melon? You were still dead, still just a memory, you were still someone they'd called 'late,' whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Bud took an almost perverse delight in treating the subject of death as if it were nothing but an adolescent joke. That may have been because death had never come close to touching him or anyone he knew. What he knew about it was only what several thousand hours of watching the tube had shown him-a version of death that was as sanitized and lily white as the people who sold detergent and toilet paper or as overblown and exploitive as a bout of professional wrestling.
He said aloud, with feeling, "Hey, Mr. Werewolf, fuck you, and fuck the horse you may or may not have rode in on!" He chuckled. He was an apprentice copywriter in Advertising at Kodak's State Street office and was in The Park only because his girlfriend, Sandi Hackman, worked there, and he was on his way to see her to take her out when her shift came to an end at 4:30. He didn't need to go through Building Seven's basement corridor to get to her office, of course, but there was no way he was going to bypass it. It was, again, a way of sneering at Death. Like he did, he thought, when he drove with twelve beers in his gut, or went deer hunting in a camouflage suit-the other hunters wouldn't see him, of course, but then, neither would the deer. A way of sneering at Death. And a way of sneering at the horrific things, like this werewolf, that carried Death with them.
Roger Crimm, Doug Miller's new boss in Emulsion Technology, said, "Have you been to see her, Doug?" It was the first time the two had spoken that day. Roger had been in another part of the plant for most of the day, and for the past hour and a half he'd been shut up in his office going over Walt Morgan's Employee Performance Charts. At last he'd tipped them all into the circular file with a sigh, a shake of his head, and a mental note that The Peter Principle-which said that people worked up to their level of incompetence-had really applied in Walt's case.
"Who?" Doug said, looking up and smiling amiably from behind his desk.
"Greta. From what you've told me, I thought you'd be camped out at her door."
Miller shook his head once, quickly. "No, I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"At the hospital. I thought you'd be camped out by her door at the hospital, Doug."
"Greta's in the hospital?" Miller was stunned; it was the first he'd heard of it. The previous day, a Monday, had been his regular day off, and Sunday had been his golfing day with Jack Youngman. "I don't understand. I thought this was her day off." For the last two weeks, Tuesdays had been Greta's regular day off, a situation she'd arranged because it gave her three days in a row away from Doug Miller. "Why's she in the hospital?" He stood shakily. "What happened?"
Roger Crimm went over to him, put a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. "Are you okay, Doug? Can I get you something?"
"No!" Miller shook his head quickly, in agitation. "No!" He looked urgently, pleasingly at Crimm. "What hospital? Please. Which one?"
"Strong Memorial. I thought you knew. I'm sorry-"
And Doug sprinted around from behind his desk and headed for the Ridge Road exit. He got all the way to the street and stopped. What the hell was he doing? he asked himself. His car was in the north parking lot on the opposite side of the plant, where he always parked it. Greta, he told himself. Greta; it's you, isn't it?! Because there were those countless end-of-shifts when he'd walked her to her car out the Ridge Road exit, and now, with her so much on his mind…
He turned around and went back through the doors he'd just come out, because it was easier to get to the north parking lot by going through the plant than going all the way around outside.
He stopped.
Above him he saw the magnificent Ansel Adams mural-transparency-"Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico."
And he felt something strange inside him, as if there were insects loose in his belly, and in his groin.
Sandi Hackman tugged on Bud Wygant's arm as he led her through Building Seven's basement corridor. "Bud," she said testily, "I mean it, I really do mean it. If you make me do this, we're done, through, kaput, over, finished!"
But Bud, to whom No from a woman had always meant "Yes, harder!" (and to whom Yes meant "Yes, but make me say 'no' first") merely grinned and led her farther down the corridor that led, quickly enough, to the exact spot where Walt Morgan had been killed. "I wanta show you something, Sandi." What he wanted to show her were some remnants of Walt's blood that the cleanup crew-who'd come and gone from the area as fast as spinning tops-had left behind in the seams where the baseboard met the wall.
"Well I don't want to see it, whatever it is!" Sandi protested, but they were at the junction where the south corridor meets the west corridor-the corridor where Walt's murder had happened-and Bud's need to strut and sneer in the face of Death and so impress his lady was nearly overwhelming. "Don't be a wimp!" he said, glancing back at her. "Don't be a wimp!" he repeated.
She looked confusedly at him. "Huh?"
"Just c'mon," he snapped at her, and pulled her arm harder. She followed very reluctantly, as much afraid now of Bud himself as of the thing that moved about in these basement corridors.
But the thing wasn't moving about. It was still. It was numb, confused, frightened, hungry all at the same time, and it, like Bud, had an overwhelming need to fill; because when it was filled, the anguish, the hunger, the fear, and the numbness would end.
It had followed the lead of its twisted and tortured soul. Down. Into the lower levels. Into the earth, after a fashion. Because it realized, with the kind of horrible intuition that all such creatures shared, that the way to its satisfaction lay in the quiet and aloneness that existed in the lower levels.
It had sought out the room marked "AIR," because there was peace of a sort in it. And it was a place to lie in wait, as well, for the prey that inevitably appeared, as if fulfilling a role of its own.
"No, Bud!" Sandi said, planting her feet firmly on the cement floor. I'm not going to go a step farther. I'm going to turn around and I'm going to go back upstairs, because I think you're acting like a crazy man."
He whirled around and slapped her hard across the face; she staggered to the right and nearly fell. He pulled her closer, hissed at her, "Don't you ever call me crazy again!"
She said nothing. She stiffened up.
"Because if I was crazy, and you called me crazy-listen to me, goddamnit-if I was crazy, and you called me crazy, then I'd get upset." He stopped, listened to himself, mentally said Huh?
And from the other end of the corridor, from the room marked "AIR," both of them heard a deep, low growling sound that came and went as quickly as a burp. Bud smiled. It was the werewolf, sure (it was The Great American Hero, it was Mork from Ork, it was Kitt the Wonder Car). He grabbed Sandi's arm, pulled her down the corridor.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" she screamed.
"It's okay," he assured her. "It'll be fun!"
"Let me go, you asshole, you jerk, you numbskull, you cretin!"
Bud glanced around at her; she'd never called him a cretin before, and he wasn't sure he liked it. "I'm not a cretin," he said, almost sullenly. "I just want us to have some fun. Everybody's gotta have fun, Sandi."
Sandi quieted, her gaze riveted on the door marked "AIR," which had just opened toward the two of them, so whatever had opened it was hidden by it.
Bud saw her wide-eyed gaze and for a moment did not want to turn and look; if he didn't look, of course, there wouldn't be anything there. But then he did look, smiling, at the door marked "AIR," and he saw what Sandi had seen, although now a huge, misshapen, reddish hand with wide, yellow, pointed nails appeared around the edge of the door frame, and Bud wondered Why's it red? and answered himself, looking more closely. It's fur, and he called, "Hey, Mr. Werewolf, fuck you, Mr. Werewolf, and the horse you may or may not have rode in on." He looked, smiling, at Sandi, who was still wide-eyed, still moving stiffly along behind him; and he said to her, "Funny, huh?" But she didn't answer. She'd fallen into a kind of paralyzed recognition of her fate and was hoping deep within herself, as Walt Morgan had hoped, that there wouldn't be much pain.
Then Bud looked back and saw a flat, wide, reddish face appear-like a cross between the face of an ape and the smashed, beaten face of a pig-and he whispered to himself, "Oh, awesome!" turned to Sandi again, "Hey, looka that, Sandi!" turned back to the thing that had been near the end of the corridor, behind the door marked "AIR," and saw that it was nearly on top of him now, its great shaggy arms outstretched, and Bud thought, Time for a commercial.
But there was no commercial. The show went on without a break for a full five minutes. And the special effects were terrific.