Animal Nature

Prologue

He staggered deeper and deeper into the forest night, unable to scream despite the blinding pain in his leg. The moon in its last stages provided little light for him to see by, even if the savage hurt didn't cause black flashes to appear before his eyes. An animal's teeth—what kind of animal, he didn't know, all he had seen were teeth coming through the campfire and then through the yellow tent fabric—some crazed animal's teeth had ripped through his flesh to the shinbone. With every step, the pain seared like a white-hot poker into his brain.

His body convulsed with the desire to scream. But he couldn't scream, because his vocal cords could no longer produce that sound.

An infection raced through his veins, replacing his blood cells with something different, something wild that made his heart race. He could feel it spreading without understanding why, only knowing it came from the bite in his leg. Rabies, he thought. Brain-disease. Soon he would be frothing at the mouth. Whatever kind of animal had bit him had to be diseased.

He could barely remember it now, less than an hour later. There was an image of fire, and a monster coming through. It had jumped through the campfire at them, this thing that was all fangs and fur and claws much sharper than he would have imagined on something that looked so much like a wolf.

The warmth of the fire was long gone, miles behind him. Maine's late August cold didn't register, though he felt his bare skin exposed to the air. His skin burned with the pain from his leg. The prickly pine cones and sharp sticks that dug into the pads of his feet didn't detract from that pulsing pain.

The thoughts that drove him—Run away, get away from it, escape, escape, escape—these thoughts kept him running when he wasn't sure he should even be able to walk. He imagined he could hear the creature's breath panting at his back. He imagined he heard quick padding steps rushing to overtake him. He thought he could smell it, fecund and bloody, the hot breath that would reek of dead meat and slaughter.

But a howling far off brought reality home. He was safe, if safe could mean seriously injured miles from civilization and alone. And then he stumbled and fell to his knees, then to all fours, his hands grasping fistfuls of pine needles. Bile rose from his stomach and forced its way up his throat. He retched, over and over again.

When he finally finished vomiting, he took deep breaths through a mouth which seemed wider than it should be. His tongue lolled out of his mouth. Let the frothing begin, he thought. He felt crazed already. Despite the pain in his leg, he knew he had to get up and somehow get help. He tried to stand, and couldn't.

His legs felt fused in a crouched position.

Deep breaths, he told himself. Forget about the pain. You need to get away from that thing back there—

Suddenly he realized he didn't need to forget about the pain. It wasn't there. Looking at his leg, his breath stopped.

There was no wound at all.

Even if there was a wound, the gray hair now covering his leg would have completely concealed it. His leg had transformed into that of a dog's—

—or a wolf's.

And, he realized in one of his last moments of human awareness, he was still wearing his boxer shorts.