Breeds 2 by Keith C. Blackmore Page A

“No. Just out for a drive. Saw the cabin from the road. Stopped to take it all in.”
    “Just takin’ a look?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re late then. All the action happened the other night. I have a place just down the road here. Gunshots got me moving for the phone. I moved out here to get away from this kinda shit in Halifax. Never figured I’d move closer to it.”
    “That bad, huh?”
    “Terrible, terrible night,” the old guy said and stared sadly at the scorched structure. “Three men died in that blaze. All burned up. A fourth was torn apart and a fifth was shot. Had his damn head blown off. Damn, damn shame. Drugs and booze behind it all, least that’s what I heard.”
    Kirk studied the old man’s profile. “Really? Drugs and booze?”
    “Oh yeah. Overheard some of the paramedics leaving the scene. The one guy who lived was strung out on a mix of ganja and beer. Or so I heard, like I said. I’m not so sure. I’ve seen a lot of violent drunks, but not one violent hophead. Strange.”
    “A guy was torn apart, you say?” Kirk asked.
    “Yeah,” the neighbor said with face of horror. “Didn’t see it, only the little markers the cops set up to show all those places. Where the limbs and other parts fell.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Yeah. Something, ‘eh? Done by a wolf or a breed of coyote and wolf. There were tracks all over the place. Strange thing, though.”
    “Another strange thing?”
    “This one has strange all over it,” the old guy said with an incredulous air. “The owner of the place was a man by the name of Hutchinson. He was taken away by the police for questioning. As he was being walked out—walked out, mind you—he was going on about how he shot the animal right there on his front lawn.”
    A hand pointed in the general location but nothing marked the spot.
    “Anyway, the weird thing was… Hutchinson swore that he blew the head off the animal. Like, emptied the magazine into the thing until there was nothing left. A shotgun decapitation.”
    A ghostly breath chilled Kirk and his mouth went dry.
    “Killed the thing dead, and left fragments of head all over the place. But when the cops got there, it wasn’t a wolf or coyote or whatever. It was a naked man.”
    Kirk tried hard not to show any emotion, but blinked all the same.
    “What?” the warden whispered, knowing he had to have heard wrong.
    “Oh yeah,” the old guy said with the conviction of a person who’d witnessed it all. “Shot an animal, he said, and it changed into a dead man. Makes me wonder just what they’re loading into them Mary-Ju-Wanna sticks these days.”
    Kirk’s head swiveled toward the cabin’s front, his eyes narrowing, magnifying the wrecked details of the destroyed weekend getaway. His body temperature dropped a couple of degrees. More words zipped past him, spoken by the kindly old codger orbiting on his left, but Kirk had zoned out of the message.
    “Excuse me,” the Halifax warden finally said. “You mentioned… you mentioned something about a wolf having its head shot off?”
    “Oh yeah. Well, it was really a g––”
    “The whole head?”
    The neighborly gent studied Kirk as if he were a victim of a car wreck. “You okay, buddy?”
    Kirk couldn’t muster a smile. “Stomach cramps. Listen, the head. Of the wolf. You’re sure it was gone? I mean, destroyed?”
    The old man whisked his fingertips underneath his chin and across his throat in the universal meaning. “Nothing above the shoulders. Hutchinson unloaded the whole magazine of a twelve gauge into that poor bastard’s pudding. The whole melon was gone. Totally gone. I didn’t see but someone said there was nothing left but shards. Like a clay pot dropped from three or four floors up. And afterwards? There was a whole army of cops and plainclothes types like them you see on the forensic TV shows, ‘eh? At one point I thought they might break out the vacuum cleaners, just to see what they might turn up in the grass. One