tension in the air, the pressure of coming battle. The bomb shelter was like a fort before the next attack, anticipation souring the atmosphere.
The woman and girl appeared in the kitchen doorway with the pot of chili.
“Dinner,” the woman called, tonelessly.
It was a cheerless meal, with little conversation. The card playing engineer, named Rhodes, chided the Army private about his poker strategy; the private smiled distractedly and studied his chili bowl. Doc ate as if he wouldn’t have noticed if he had been served dog food. The two older women, who reminded me of nuns out of habit, stared at the table, intent on not drawing attention to themselves.
I ate as much as I could. To me, the meal, the first hot nourishment I had had in three days, was anything but dog food. When the young girl produced a plate of
Oreo cookies for dessert, along with Styrofoam cups filled with hot coffee, I nearly cried with pleasure. A week ago, this meal in this place would have seemed hell; this night, it was paradise.
But the tension in the room was rising. Finishing my second cup of coffee, I looked at my watch. It was nearly seven o’clock. The rest didn’t seem to need a watch. Brittle silence was broken now and again by the engineer’s coughing; after the fit passed he would light another cigarette, pulling one from a pack in his pocket, then discarding the pack to take another from the half-full carton next to him. I hadn’t seen him without a cigarette since the poker game.
At seven o’clock Pettis looked at Doc, who nodded. Everyone got up, retrieved weapons from the lockers against the wall, and retired to various spots in the room. Even the young girl had a handgun.
Pettis unbolted the shelter door. Two empty chili bowls were there. With his boot he kicked them into the room.
“Anything up there?” he called to Biancalata and Myerson.
Somewhere far off, I heard a howl, then another.
Myerson’s deep voice answered, nervously, “It’s starting.”
Pettis turned to me. “Lock it behind me. I yell, open it
Doc ambled over to look into the darkened hallway leading to the steps upstairs. He had a cigarette of his own dangling from his fingers. He wore a seriously bemused look. He looked at me as if I was something worth studying.
“He trusts you,” Doc said, smiling slightly.
“That surprises you?”
“He doesn’t trust anybody.”
I locked and checked the bolts on the door. “Does anybody trust him?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” He paused to lift his cigarette lazily to his mouth, then drop his hand again. “He’s been up there every night; saved Wilkins over there,” he gestured toward the chain-smoking engineer by brushing his hand in the man’s direction, “two nights ago. Without Pettis I doubt any of us would be alive.”
Up above, beyond all the doors, in the night, I heard a clique of closer, hungrier howls.
“The young woman with the girl doesn’t seem to think much of him.”
Doc regarded me; his eyes were gray, clear, and even. “You mean Moira. I wouldn’t count on your assessment.”
“Why not?”
“She’s his wife. The girl is his daughter.”
A great noise sounded above us. Wilkins shouted, “They’re going to try from above!”
The staccato of random noise became an avalanche. Up the stairs, outside our door, howls of rage mixed with the sounds of metal striking metal. I pressed my ear to the door, straining to hear Pettis’s voice should it come.
Doc said, “There are at least a hundred of them up there now.” A particularly gruesome wail tore through the air, directly above our heads. Doc added, looking at the ceiling, “Perhaps more.”
Doc moved to an empty spot between the Army private and the two older women, who huddled weaponless in the corner by the lockers.
From above came the sound of ripping metal, followed by three gun blasts. I heard a scream. Two more shotgun blasts ensued; then I heard Pettis’s voice.
“Open it!”
I slid the bolts aside and it was thrown open. Pettis bulled his way in, dragging Myerson behind him. The left side of Myerson’s body was covered with blood. There were rake marks down his shoulder across his ribs to his belt, which had been sliced in half.
“Close it!” Pettis screamed.
I pushed the door closed and knocked the bolts into place. The others were dragging whatever wasn’t tied down toward the door. I stepped aside as a metal locker (dragged by the two older women, who had shaken themselves from their stupor), the wooden bench that had lined one wall, even the chairs we had sat on to eat our dinner, were piled up. Over these, the sleeping bags were thrown.
It was clear from the ferocious wails of hunger emanating from the other side of the door what had happened to Biancalata.
They dragged Myerson to the back end of the room near the kitchen. Pettis bent over him, ripping Myerson’s clothing, minutely examining the wounds.
Doc shook his head. Pettis held him off. “The first one in got him,” he said. “Raked him up with a garden tool.” He continued to examine Myerson, ignoring the man’s cries. “I just don’t know if it got at him with the claws or not.”
“Can we take the chance?” Doc asked reasonably.
Pettis paused. “Yes, damn it.”
Pettis wiped his bloody hands on his pants. Wilkins and Cooper stood nearby. “Put him in the kitchen,” Pettis ordered. “Bandage the wound. And then tie him up
Wilkins, a cigarette still in his mouth, nodded, and he and Cooper took Myerson away.
Doc stared at the barricaded door, behind which the screams of wolves battling over blood had diminished somewhat. “It won’t be long.”
Pettis looked at the ceiling. “Have they tried to get through that patch-up?” he asked.
“No,” Doc replied.
And then there came a sound that made everyone in the room, even Pettis, stop what they were doing and listen in awe and fear.
I must try to describe this sound. It was a single keen, transformed into a choir, mounting in killing lust until the chorus became a single, numbing shriek of devotion and madness. It was the kind of sound the earth itself might make when opening up to release Satan from hell.
“My God,” said Wilkins.
“The full Moon,” Doc whispered, staring at his watch to see that it was, indeed, seven-ten, his predicted time of arrival.
I could imagine it out there, rising over the edge of Earth—the Moon, Luna, Selene, who now sought mastery of her father planet. She was in triumph tonight; even now, new meteors would be spitting down from her face to secure conquest. I wondered if the Earth was to become the Moon herself, trading spiritual place with her parent. The Oedipus complex had come to planetary physics, with the transference of souls from a dead white world to a wet living one.
The two old women were back in their lockerless corner, cowering. Pettis, Doc, and the others, myself included, stared up at the source of those horrible primal sounds, as if the ceiling had melted away, giving us the same cold view of the Moon the wolves enjoyed.
“Jesus,” Pettis said, and I saw him trade a look with his wife. “Jesus.”
Myerson moaned from the kitchen.
That broke the spell. Pettis checked all firearms. “They’re going to come in fast,” he announced.
They came in fast. The roaring became a cacophony of mindless screams. The first assault struck the door. There was a loud tearing noise but the bolts held. One of the sleeping bags slid slowly from its perch atop the pile; as it folded to the floor, the second charge came. This time the barricade shuddered. On the third attack I heard the
