Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas 1)

Besides, the batteries in my flashlight most likely wouldn’t last an hour. For all my brave talk earlier about being unafraid of the unknown, I could not tolerate being trapped in the pitch-black Quonset hut in the company of a dead man.

With nothing to entertain my eyes, I’d obsess on the recollected image of his bullet wound. I’d be convinced that every breath of the night breeze, whispering at a broken window, was in fact the sound of Bob Robertson peeling out of his cocoon.

I went in search of something to throw at the coyotes. Unless I was prepared to strip the shoes off the corpse, I had nothing but the two empty beer bottles.

After returning to the door with the bottles, I switched off the flashlight, jammed it under the waistband of my jeans, and waited a few minutes, giving peace a chance, but also letting my eyes adapt to darkness.

When I opened the door, hoping the chow line had broken up and slouched away, I was disappointed. The three remained almost where they had been when I’d left them: two in front of the car, the third near the forward tire on the passenger’s side.

In sunshine, their coats would be tan with reddish highlights and a peppering of black hairs. Here they were the patinated gray of old silver. Subtly their eyes glowed with a moony madness.

Solely because it appeared to be the boldest of the trio, I pegged the nearest coyote as the pack leader. It was the biggest specimen, as well, with a grizzled chin that suggested much experience in the hunt.

Experts advise that, when confronted by an angry dog, you should avoid eye contact. This constitutes a challenge to which the animal will respond aggressively.

If the canine in question is a coyote pondering your nutritional value, the experts will get you killed. Failure to make eye contact will be read as weakness, which indicates that you are suitable prey; you might as well offer yourself on a platter with double spuds twice in Hell and an order of midnight whistleberries.

Making eye contact with the pack leader, I tapped one of the bottles against the metal door frame, then tapped harder, breaking it. I was left holding the neck, jagged shards protruding from my fist.

This would be a less than ideal weapon with which to confront an adversary that had the stiletto-packed jaws of a dedicated carnivore, but it was marginally better than my bare hands.

I hoped to challenge them with such confidence that they would have a momentary doubt about my vulnerability. All I might need to reach the open back door of the Chevy was a three-or four-second hesitation on their part.

Letting the door fall shut behind me, I moved toward the pack leader.

At once it bared a wicked clench of teeth. A low vibrous growl warned me to back off.

Ignoring the warning, I took another step, and with a sharp snap of my wrist, I threw the intact beer bottle. It struck the leader hard on the snout, bounced off, and shattered on the pavement at its feet.

Startled, the coyote stopped growling. It moved to the front of the car, not retreating from me, not drawing any closer, either, but merely repositioning itself to present a united front with its two companions.

This had the desirable effect of presenting me with a direct, unguarded route to the open back door of the Chevy. Unfortunately, a full-out run for cover would require that I take my attention off the pack.

The moment that I sprinted for the car, they would spring at me. The distance between them and me was not much greater than the distance between me and the open door—and they were far quicker than I was.

Holding the broken bottle in front of me, thrusting it at them in sharp, threatening jabs, I edged sideways toward the idling Chevy, counting every inch a triumph.

Two watched with obvious curiosity: their heads raised, mouths open, tongues lolling. Curious but also alert for any opportunity that I might give them, they stood with their weight shifted toward their hind legs, ready to launch forward with their powerful haunch muscles.

The leader’s posture troubled me more than that of the other pack members. Head lowered, ears laid back against its skull, teeth bared but not its tongue, this individual stared at me intently from under its lowered brow.

Its forepaws were pressed so hard against the ground that even in the wan moonlight, its toes spread in clear definement. With the forward knuckles sharply bent, the beast seemed to be standing on the points of its claws.

Although I continued to face them, they weren’t directly in front of me any longer, but to my right. The open car door was to my left.

Fierce snarling could not have frayed my nerves as effectively as their bated breath, their expectant silence.

Halfway to the Chevy, I figured that I could risk a rush to the backseat, throw myself into the car, and pull the door shut just in time to ward off their snapping jaws.

Then I heard a muted growl to my left.

The pack now numbered four, and the fourth had stolen up on me from the back of the Chevy. It stood between me and the open door.

Sensing movement to my right, I snapped my attention to the threesome again. During my brief distraction, they had slunk closer to me.

Moonlight silvered a ribbon of drool that slipped from the lips of the pack leader.

To my left, the fourth coyote’s low growl grew louder, rivaling the grumble of the car. It was a living engine of death, idling right now but ready to shift into high gear, and at the periphery of my vision, I saw it creep toward me.

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE DOOR OF THE QUONSET HUT LAY A DAUNTING distance behind me. Before I reached it, the pack leader would be on my back, its teeth in my neck, and the others would be tearing at my legs, dragging me down.

In my hand, the broken beer bottle felt fragile, a woefully inadequate weapon, good for nothing more than slashing my own throat.

Judging by a sudden overwhelming pressure in my bladder, these predators would be getting marinated meat by the time they took a bite of me—

—but then the nasty customer to my left chewed up his growl and let out a submissive mewl.

The fearsome trio to the right of me, as one, traded menace for perplexity. They rose from their stalking posture, stood quite erect, ears pricked and cupped forward.

The change in the coyotes’ demeanor, so abrupt and inexplicable, imparted to the moment a quality of enchantment, as though a guardian angel had cast a rapture of mercy over these creatures, granting me a reprieve from evisceration.

I stood stiff and stupefied, afraid that by moving I would break the spell. Then I realized that the coyotes’ attention had shifted to something behind me.

Warily turning my head, I discovered that my guardian was a pretty but too thin young woman with tousled blond hair and delicate features. She stood behind and to the left of me, barefoot, naked but for a pair of skimpy, lace-trimmed panties, slender arms crossed over her breasts.

Her smooth pale skin seemed luminous in the moonlight. Beryl-blue eyes, lustrous pools, were windows to a melancholy so profound that I knew at once she belonged to the community of the restless dead.

The lone coyote on my left settled to the ground, all hungers forgotten, the fight gone out of it. The beast regarded her in the manner of a dog waiting for a word of affection from its adored master.

To my right, the first three coyotes were not as humbled as the fourth, but they, too, were transfixed by this vision. Although they hadn’t exerted themselves, they panted, and they licked their lips incessantly—two signs of nervous stress in any canine. As the woman stepped past me and toward the Chevy, they shied from her, not in a fearful way but as if in deference.

When she reached the car, she turned to me. Her smile was an inverted crescent of sadness.

I stooped to put the broken bottle quietly on the ground, then rose with new respect for the perceptions and priorities of coyotes, which seemed to give greater importance to the experience of wonder than to the demands of appetite.

At the car, I closed the back door on the passenger’s side, opened the front door.

The

woman regarded me solemnly now, as though she was as deeply moved by being seen, years after her death, as I was moved by seeing her in this purgatory of her own creation.

As lovely as a rose half bloomed and still containing promise, she appeared to have been not much more than eighteen when she died, too young to have sentenced herself for so long to the chains of this world, to such an extended lonely suffering.

She must have been one of the three prostitutes who were shot by an unbalanced man five years earlier, in the event that had closed Whispering Burger forever. Her chosen work should have hardened her; but she seemed to be a tender and timid spirit.