Page 2

Midnight found him up near the top of a hill near the beginning of the forests that crowded on the flanks of the town. He had no real idea how he had got there, and only a vague impression of whom he had seen on the way; a couple of late-night pedestrians, walking hurriedly home; a policeman on his rounds, but stepping nervously this close to the full moon; a prostitute, desperate enough for money to be out on the streets at this hour of the night, when danger crawled round corners and dropped from the shadows. The hooker, thin and only a little older than he, had smiled at him and raised a tentative hand as he walked past. He had actually felt how her blood would taste, spurting.

Up here the town was so old that the streets were cobbled and the houses huddled together like skinny frightened people. Garbage rotted in communal dumps, and his nostrils twitched at the smell. There was decomposing offal in the garbage, and he caught the whiff of clotting blood, but he didn’t have time to think about that.

They came out of an alley to his right, six or seven of them. The oldest must have been about eighteen or nineteen, the youngest the boy’s own age. They circled him like predatory animals looking for a weak point.

"What are you doing here?" The leader had a wispy moustache and smelt of cheap deodorant that did nothing to mask his sweat.

The boy said nothing. He could feel the adrenaline begin to flow, and his hands began to clench into fists.

"Got nothing to say? Or maybe you think you’re too good to talk to us?" The leader grinned over his shoulder at his followers. "Shall we teach him to talk? What do you think?" The others tittered appreciatively.

"Let’s take his money and let him go," one of the young ones suggested. His eyes were flat and black as he looked at the boy, and his tongue flicked constantly across his lips, like the tongue of a snake.

"Oh, we’ll take his money all right." The leader laughed, throwing back his head. "But, let him go? I don’t think so. You’ve got to toughen up, Pickerel."

"Well, then, let’s get to it," said a thickset youth with a bluish birthmark across his face. Slapping his fist into his palm, he stepped forward.

At that moment the boy felt himself beginning to Change. It was just the first twitches in his feet and hands, and the tingle of hair sprouting along the line of his backbone. His gums began to stretch as the huge canines and carnassials began pushing at his gums. A low growl began to rise in his throat.

"What’s that?" The black-eyed one with the flickering tongue, the one the leader had called Pickerel, stepped back, looking around nervously. And the boy charged.

He flung himself across the ground, slamming himself into Pickerel, knocking him over, his sneakers trampling the boy’s body and face. He threw himself into the darkness near the old church, and raced down the alley there at top speed, knowing that he had to get away before they caught up with him, knowing that if they caught him now they would kill him. They must know these alleys as well as their own homes – probably better than they knew their own homes. He growled now, no longer capable of speech, bent over and scrambling on all fours as he ran.

Now he could hear them behind him, shouting orders to each other. They had not found him yet. They must not find him. His eyesight was clearing steadily, the retinas of his eyes shifting, cones giving way to rods and colour being discarded for night vision. Now he could see better than they could, and if he had Changed completely, he would have taken them on, and beaten them too. But he didn’t know how to control the Change, and it was coming slow, too slow.

He came to a wall. It was quite a high wall, much higher than his head, and topped with jagged shards of broken glass. On both sides were tall brick buildings without windows. Behind, and increasingly close, he could hear the pursuit. They would know where he was, and there was no way out. 

He stepped back from the wall, snarling with frustration. There was just one chance, and he took it, taking a running jump at the wall, hitting it near the top and rolling over, ignoring the slashing cuts in his palms and through the cloth of his trousers.

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