v2.0
October 2006
The Wolfen
Whitley Strieber
IT HAPPENS IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
A series of killings with bizarre characteristics that have the police baffled. When the news becomes public, people in the city begin living in terror.
THE WOLFENThere is no defense…
contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE WOLFEN
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
William Morrow and Company, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Morrow edition published August 1978
Bantam edition / July 1979
2nd printing… July 1979 4th printing… July 1979
3rd printing… July 1979 5th printing…December 1979
6th printing…August 1981
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1978 by Whitley Strieber.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,
103 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
ISBN 0-553-20268-5
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and In other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.
Since all is well, keep it so: Wake not the sleeping wolf.—Shakespeare
Chapter 1
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In Brooklyn they take abandoned cars to the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound adjacent to the Fountain Avenue Dump. The pound and the dump occupy land shown on maps as “Spring Creek Park (Proposed).” There is no spring, no creek, and no park.
Normally the pound is silent, its peace disturbed only by an occasional fight among the packs of wild dogs that roam there, or perhaps the cries of the sea gulls that hover over the stinking, smoldering dump nearby.
The members of the Police Auto Squad who visit the pound to mark derelicts for the crusher do not consider the place dangerous. Once in a while the foot-long rats will get aggressive and become the victims of target practice. The scruffy little wild dogs will also attack every so often, but they can usually be dealt with by a shot into the ground. Auto-pound duty consists of marking big white X’s on the worst of the derelicts and taking Polaroids of them to prove that they were beyond salvage in case any owners turn up.
It isn’t the kind of job that the men associate with danger, much less getting killed, so Hugo DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan would have laughed in your face if you told them they had only three minutes to live when they heard the first sound behind them.
“What was that?” Houlihan asked. He was bored and wouldn’t have minded getting a couple of shots off at a rat.
