Robert W. Krepps

“ Like single-minded hounds, they never looked up. I laughed and gathered myself and jumped across the yawning void, alighting easily on the next roof.
I was beginning to take a keen gratification in my agility. Even the lifting of my Gladstone, the feel of sentient muscles gliding over one another to apportion the work between them, gave me intense pleasure. Thus must an animal feel when he moves about his small enterprises, knowing his body will answer any call he cares to make upon it. ”

“ Gray hair covered the massive forward-thrusting head thickly, and tufts of it boiled up from the collar of the white shirt on the barrel-sized chest.
Skagarach came up to me and saw my knowledge in my face. "Yes," he said, "There is the true strain of our race; there is the result of inbreeding over a number of generations. The true he of our people."
I growled. "No truer than I, Skagarach. His are the features, but mine is the memory and the dawn brain."
He laughed. He seemed to find humor in everything. "I foresee strife," he said quietly. "You're a headstrong beast, Cuff. Never mind! ”

“ Five generations later a pup was born that was all wolf, every last ounce of him. Perfectly untameable little brute. We have that same tenacious blood-line, but to an almost incredible degree. In fact I think it is not so much blood with us as a strain in the mind. In us it has carried down through the uncountable years since prehistory. As that dog was no dog, but a true wolf, so we are not men, but—what we are." He broke off and looked at me appraisingly. "I have hopes for you," he said. "The tide runs high in you, Cuff. We will win back the world some day, we who are not of mankind. ”

“ I had slain and slain, brutally, and—yes, and lapped up blood from torn throats, hot and bubbling between my lips. Was I a vampire? Were my kind the origin of that legend?
The race-recollection died away. I heard the shouts of my twentieth century foeman, who had found the two dead policemen. I walked to the edge of the roof and gauged the distance to the next building, which was several feet lower than this one. There was a gap of no more than ten feet. I threw the suitcase across. Men appeared eighty feet below, running through the alley. ”

“ I said. I knocked his hand off. "Here, here," he yelped, "don't get tough or I'll have to rough you up a little."
He clutched my arm again. A scarlet curtain of rage shut down over my senses. I reached out and took his throat between my hands, dragged him to my chest, tightened my fingers and pressed and twisted till his flashlight dropped to the stone floor and went out with a pitiful tinkle. There in the unbroken dark of the deserted museum I held him until he was dead, until his head was turned over his shoulder and his popping eyes stared sightlessly down his backbone. ”

“ Hounds gave tongue in a continuous chorus of hate, seemingly all about me. I ran and ran. Now I could hear the thick shouts of men, in a language that was foreign to me, though it had almost as many gutturals and slurrings as my own speech.
I was of a very ancient race in these parts (wherever they were) . My people were classed as vermin, along with the dire wolf and the gray ape and the last surviving remnants of the hyena tribe. Man hunted us with his dogs, great vicious brutes with saber fangs.
I burst through a screen of hanging moss and fell into a spongy patch of swamp. ”

“ Forget your hostilities between nation and nation—they have no importance compared with our crusade. Put by your silly fears of invasion from other worlds—your foe is here, has always been here, and is an enemy you cannot even recognize. ”

“ Just let them come three or four at a time, armed however they wished, and I would meet them. But no, they must needs draw their game in great packs of howling humanity. Humans! How I loathed them!
What was I? I was myself, Bill Cuff, some centuries before. My vision was strangely two-fold. I could see the sooty hotel chimneys and could realize where I stood, and at the same time I was again creeping round among the gables and towers of the medieval castle. ”

“ You hate the race of men. You have racial memories of living in caves, of being harried by men. What do you do? You never heard the name of—what we were and are. Science has told you nothing of prehistory. ”

“ The sky was growing more gray than black, and the lamps were beginning to take on the futile appearance they have in the half-light of earliest dawn. I wanted to put plenty of distance between me and this city that was too aware of me within it. There was a rickety ladder leading down the side to a fire escape. I descended it one-handed, jumped to the metal framework, trotted-down to the street. Cars lined it, and the third I checked was unlocked. There are ways to start a car without the key. ”

“ The lunatic dungeons. Fancy ladies come and giggle at you, the murderous madman, through the bars. You pine for fresh air and freedom, because freedom is even more precious to our race than to man. You die. ”

“ So watch for us.
Don't feel sheepish if you find yourself glancing back on the lonely road. Don't be self-conscious if you draw away from the silent man who sits next to you in the subway, he may not be a man at all. ”

“ I was Bill Cuff, law-abiding writer; if not exactly an altruistic dweller by the side of the road and friend to man, at least I had always been a normally decent guy who would go to a lot of trouble to keep from hurting anybody. ”

“ Yes, we can organize, can sheer off from the pack of humankind, and strengthen our race by inbreeding. We have children here and in the other HQs, born of two of us who remember what they are before they can read and write. I said it was a powerful strain. Listen. I raise dogs. Once I bred a wolf to a shepherd. ”

“ Lest you object that the Old Companions are madmen, that there is no strain in mankind excepting that of man (and, if you are one of that foolish breed who misreads Darwin, of monkey) , let me also tell you this:
Most scientists agree that Homo Neanderthalensis was no true man, but a kind of animal in manlike form, with several improvements and more specialized faculties than man. ”

“ He is still a man, has the reasoning ability of a man, is thoroughly Homo sapiens in everything, except that suddenly he can swing through the trees and can think in a manner strange to man—a furtive, sly, cunning, beastly way, if you like, but a way that will help to preserve him even in the stone jungles of man. ”

“ As for the general why of it, it's blood and bone and sinew and soul come down to us from the beings we once were. It's a powerful strain—so powerful that powerful is a weak word for it. I think it must be the strongest blood-strain that ever ran in animal veins. ”

“ Sometimes we must have mated with them, infusing our dark strain into their pale stock. But blood ran in our veins and thoughts coursed in our brains which were as alien to man as the blood and the thoughts of tigers. But it is a proud if lonely thing to be a tiger....
CHAPTER IX
The hounds bayed on my trail, and the voice in my head called me forward. I picked up the Gladstone and hastened on, following an invisible path between oozing stretches of swamp under great creeper-festooned oaks, never putting my feet on anything but firm ground. I seemed closer to the earth than I had ever been. ”

“ We got a brooch over there that Napoleon gave to Catherine of Aragon. Make a nice haul by itself."
"I dare say, especially as she died some centuries before he was born. A unique bit of trinketry indeed." I disliked this guard more with each word. "You knucklehead," I said, "I told you I fell asleep. I was looking for a watchman just now."
"That's what they say. You come on with me. We got to see a cop, bud."
"For the love of—I can identify myself. Here's my driver's license."
"Stole, probably. We've had sneak-thieves in here before. You come on with me, bud."
I counted ten. "Cuff, Bill Cuff." ”

“ That chimed with the curious recollection I had had in the cave, and with the accent I had several times put upon the word man to describe my enemies. A gorilla? I laughed to myself. An intriguing thought, indeed! I did not for a minute believe it. But what?
CHAPTER V
I caught the five A.M. train for another big city—never mind which. I had about two hundred dollars in my wallet, a fair selection of clothes and essentials in my Gladstone, and the portable typewriter in its beat-up case. For a while I was well enough provided for. ”