There was a sound and the sound said his shoulder was broken. He merely scowled and brought his rifle up again, broken shoulder and all, and then I knew.
I shot him. I poured the whole clip into him and the rifle kept kicking back against my shoulder, the stock slapping my cheek, and I didn't want to think. It was not until the last bullet went whonking home that he fell. It was a sound that only a hunter or a killer knows—the whonk of lead into flesh at close range. It is a horrible sound when what you're shooting at is a man.
Was a man.
Or looked like a man.
Because, as he fell, Jason Woods Stevenson changed. The features melted, became indistinct. The limbs fell in on themselves. The body grew big and round—bloated and somehow obscene. In seconds what had been a man was a shapeless, quivering, dying mass of protoplasm. A Wompan.
Then Harry Conger screamed.
It was a scream of sudden awareness and fear. It was worse for Harry than it was for me. Harry was falling in love with Ginger, and now—
I went crashing through the fern-brake, seeking them. I shouted at the top of my lungs now. "Harry! Harry!"
I found them when it was almost too late. Harry was down on his back, a dazed look on his face. There was a smear of blood across his face from ear to mouth. There was a strange look in his eyes.
Ginger Stevenson stood over him with the short-barrelled Mannlicher. I shot six times with a new clip before she fell. Harry climbed to his feet and stormed at me, raging like a mad-man. "You killed her!" he cried. "You—"