by Heide Goody
“Is Col going down the path with all the traps?” he whispered, fingers crossed.
“Should be.” Tony stepped out beside his son. Nick was having a lot of trouble not making much noise, and marvelled at how lightly Tony trod. Was it a werewolf thing? Or a dad thing?
“Can’t see him,” said Nick.
“I can smell him,” said Tony.
“Where?”
“How about behind you, you feckin eejits,” said Col. “Turn slowly.”
Nick and Tony turned slowly. The man stood six feet away, his submachine gun pointed straight at Nick’s belly. He was a pale, slender man. He didn’t look like a soldier; more like the shifty kind of guy you saw in the corners of pubs. The ones Nick instinctively knew to steer clear of if a fight broke out.
“No sudden moves, Tony,” said Col. “Or I’ll shoot young Nick here.”
Tony was already raising his hands. For a moment Nick thought about going for the handgun stashed in his belt before common sense took over.
“You’ve been busy here,” said Col. “Doing your little wilderness trap thing. Grand pair of little Rambos with your war paint and everything.” He smirked. “You should learn to hide your traps better though, else a man with a keen eye might walk round them all and sneak up on you from behind.”
Nick looked at Col’s feet. Either the man was supremely confident or he had failed to notice his foot was inches away from one of the first two traps they had set.
“Now, you boys owe me a heart,” said Col.
“We had it,” said Nick.
“We lost it,” said Tony.
“She took it.”
“She destroyed it,” said Col.
“She what…?”
Col nodded. “So you owe me a heart, a werewolf’s heart.” He smiled a little. “Tony, you look like you’ve been through the mill tonight. All the blood on your nice shirt there, and not a scratch on your body. How might a thing like that come about, now?”
“You’re not touching my dad,” said Nick.
“We’ll do it humane, like,” said Col. “Nice hospital. Pretty nurses. The whole feckin Bupa thing.” His gun didn’t waver a millimetre as he tapped his throat mic. “Walshe, bring the chopper over. Outside the farmhouse. Two to pick up. Me and old Tony here.”
“Roger that,” said a voice in Nick’s earpiece.
“If you have any fond farewells to make, Nick,” Col said. “Now would be the time.”
65
Finn heard the helicopter take off. It came in low over the trees, searchlight cutting narrow beams through the trees, its light a pale mockery of the Moon. So, Col was planning on taking the old man’s heart: he’d picked up the gift too, apparently. Had she done that when he attacked him? Had he been converted by the werewolf’s bite, like her?
Part of her was filled with excitement at the prospect of meeting another of her kind. She had known Oz as a wolf only very briefly, back when she had been a mere human. She very much wanted to meet this new wolfman and discover if she was a lone wolf or a pack animal.
Another, more coldly rational part of her, knew there was a decided advantage to being the only werewolf in existence. To be a lone wolf was to hold a monopoly. There was no point sending out her calling card to Mr Argyll, festooned with humiliated corpses and treetop intestinal bunting, if he had a pet wolf of his own. No way could she let Col whisk Tony away before she could meet him and, after a familial reunion, kill him.
The helicopter searchlight beam momentarily picked her out among the trees. She growled and leapt on, tree branch to ground to tree branch, racing ahead of it. No one was getting choppered out of here tonight.
She had to take it down. She had to disable it. Werewolf body or not, she had few weapons to use against a helicopter. She roared in delight: these were the moments she lived for. Whether it was a hand in a toaster, a corkscrew in the carotid or a bungee cord made of guts, she loved improvisation.
Finn bounded to the top of a rise where two boars stood, staring at the helicopter. The rise offered a vantage point which would, for a few seconds, give Finn an unobstructed view. She grabbed a boar by the leg and, before it could even squeal, she hoisted it up.
She spun – one footstep, two – and hurled the fat piggy skyward like a discus.
66
There was a burst of static over the radio.
“There’s something – pig! Incoming pig!”
Nick, Tony and Col all looked up. The helicopter searchlight wavered.
On the radio there was the sound of smashing glass and a sudden violent, two-tone scream.
“It’s a fucking pig! A fu—!”
The chopper listed violently and dropped. It pulled up sharp and sudden, clipping the treetops. Wooden debris rained down. Nick tried to cover his dad’s head as the helicopter howled directly overhead. It cannoned against something and—
“The farmhouse,” whispered Tony.
The explosion shook the floor of the forest. A fierce glow erupted through the trees.
Nick realised he was the only one standing. Col was crouched, staring at the fireball which was his ride out of here. Nick groped for the handgun in his belt. It was still there.
Col looked at him. He shook his head, almost amused, as he stood.
Nick pointed the gun at him. “I will shoot,” he said, as Col considered his own lowered weapon.
“You will so?” said Col with grim smugness. “I don’t think you even know how to fire the thing. You’ve never even held a gun before.”
“We were going to do some clay pigeon shooting this weekend,” said Tony.
“If you’d come tomorrow instead of today it would have been a totally different story,” said Nick.
Col shrugged. “Take your best shot then.”
Nick thought about what he’d done the first time he’d fired the pistol. He’d pressed – or was it depressed? – this button here, did something with the little lever on the side there, gripped the slide on the top and—
The pistol went off, jolting violently out of his hand. There was a puff of leaves and dirt an inch from Col’s feet.
“You stupid fecker!” He raised his submachine gun, stepping back. “You nearly had my feckin toes off there—!”
Col stepped into the snare just behind his left foot. It snapped up with not quite enough force to hoist him from the ground. Col hopped awkwardly for a couple of seconds before his right foot found another nearby snare. He was whipped upside down, a loop of wire around each ankle, each straining to pull him in a different direction. The submachine gun slipped from Col’s hand, fell out of reach. Nick winced at the sight of the man: it looked as if he would be torn in half at any moment.
Col twisted in vicious fury, every action hauling his ankles further apart. “You murdering bastards!” he yelled.
Nick thought that was a bit rich, given Col had clearly demonstrated what kind of murdering bastard he was willing to be.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Col demanded.
“Us?” said Nick. “We’re just a couple of regular guys.”
“Having a weekend away together in Scotland,” added Tony.
“Enjoying the countryside.”
“The wildlife.”
“Spot of shooting.”
“A walk in the woods.”
“Traditional father-son activities,” said Nick.
Col made an angry gargling noise. With effort he folded at the waist. Grunting, he strained up to grab a gun from an ankle holster. Tony elbowed Nick. His son agreed: time to make a speedy exit. They ran over the nearest bank and ducked through the trees before Col opened fire. Nick heard the constant hammer of gunfire; none of the bullets seemed to be coming anywhere close.
They moved towards the fiery glow of the downed helicopter. Nick looked at it between the silhouetted trees. It had just missed the farmhouse, clipping one of the outbuildings. Some of the smaller buildings were on fire. The farmhouse windows had been blown in but it appeared oth
erwise intact. The bullet-punctured diesel tanker in the yard somehow remained unexploded. Nick was sure any self-respecting fuel container should have exploded spectacularly by now. It seemed almost churlish not to.
“Crisis meeting,” said Nick. “Let’s figure out a few things.”
They hunkered down at the edge of the trees and spoke in low tones.
“We’re doing great, son,” said Tony. You know that? We’ve taken down nearly all of the bad guys.”
“Yeah, but the one left is the very worst,” said Nick.
“Which one?”
“Finn. The terminator woman.”
“The werewolf woman.”
“Right. I don’t even know how we can kill her. She’s not going to get caught in a trap for more than a second, then she’ll just rip our heads off.”
“Well,” said Tony, “maybe we need to use your thinking out of the box skills.”
“Yeah,” said Nick. “Not sure about that. Look where it got me with Kirkwood saus—” Nick stifled a squeak of excitement. “I might actually have an idea. Dad, you’re going to love this!”
He led the way round to the food prep outbuilding. The fire raging in the outbuildings had so far left the farmhouse untouched. The lights still worked and, apart from Oz’s messily disembowelled corpse and the mess from the creosote and pig pellets, the place was intact. Nick indicated the butchery equipment pushed against the back wall.
“Ta dah!”
Tony inspected it, looking at the huge hopper and the grinding teeth within. “And this is…?”
“A giant mincer. I’d like to see a werewolf heal itself after being put through that.”
Tony examined the controls. “Well, it looks like a great piece of equipment, and I agree it would probably do the trick. I do have one question though.”
“Yes?”
“How on earth do we get her into it? We could put up a sign saying free hugs this way but I don’t think she’s the hugging type.”
“That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet,” said Nick with a sigh. “How do you suppose the farmer gets a side of meat in there when it needs mincing?”
Tony looked up at the ceiling. “Pulley system. I feel the need to point out it very much depends on the meat not fighting back.”
“Hm.” Nick counted things off on his fingers. “So, number one, we need to hide the mincer, so it’s not an obvious trap. Yeah?”
Tony nodded.
“Then we need to trick her into being higher up somehow,” Nick continued, waving at the high roof for emphasis. “On one of those beams, maybe. And finally, we need to push or drop her in there while it’s running.”
“Yeah.” Tony looked around. His face betrayed the hopelessness of the plan; then he gave a small thoughtful node. “I guess the way to hide the mincer would be to surround it with these fridges. They’d look a bit out of place, but let’s go with it.”
“Yeah!” said Nick, excited his dad was running with his plan. “Then what?”
“Well, we’d need bait,” said Tony. “Something she’ll want to go after.”
Nick grinned. “Yeah! Oh. Right.” His grin faded as he realised what the bait was going to be.
67
The Moon was high in the sky. It filled Finn with so much energy she wanted to run fast and far to truly exercise her sleek new form. Her legs carried her and her nose led. Through the shadowed forest, up a rise to the place where Col swung between two saplings, his legs pulled apart in painful splits.
He squirmed and twisted as the dogwolf, Pickles, nipped playfully and hungrily at his dangling arms.
Finn was undecided on the dog. It was obvious it didn’t like her. She entertained the idea it could be disciplined to obey her. She wasn’t sure how, but it might be a useful tool. Dogs were reputed to be intelligent and loyal, and this one was as clearly in tune with the Moon as she was herself. A human companion was as out of the question as it had ever been, but could she picture a dog at her side? She had decided to kill all the humans, but the dog could be spared, perhaps.
Col saw her and fixed her with a furious glare.
“You look shtupid,” she lisped.
He did. He looked like something dangling in a butcher’s window. All the blood had run to his face. His gear hung awkwardly on his upside down body.
“Least I’m not a feckin monster!” he managed to say, trying to swat Pickles’ overgrown mouth aside.
“I wazh a monshter long before thish. Shtill think you can take my heart, Col?”
“Just give me the chance,” he spat.
She stepped forward, grabbed his front to steady him and pulled a hunting knife from the sheath hanging off his belt.
“Here’sh your chance, boyo.” She put the knife in his hand. The words were barely out of her mouth before he lunged at her. She bent out of range, danced aside, and let him have at her again. Every thrust made him swing more violently and the grunts of effort became grunts of pain as his tendons and muscles gave way to the green strength of young trees.
“Feckin, feckin … fecker!”
Finn laughed, let him have one last pathetic stab before knocking the knife from his hand. She slashed at his defenceless groin. Tendons flew apart like violin strings beneath her razor-edged claws. Col’s last, screamed “Feck!” rose up through the octaves. The remaining connective tissues gave into the forces pulling at him.
A severed leg flew into the air. Breaking free of its snare, it spun away like a boomerang into the woods. Pickles barked in excitement and ran after it. The rest of Col’s body sprang up, bungeed back down, and swung in front of her like a bloody piñata. Col, barely conscious, groped for his bleeding stump, crooning in pain and misery.
There was a grenade hanging from his belt: a phosphorous grenade. Principally used as smoke grenades, white phosphorous burned at over two thousand degrees centigrade and did the most wonderful things when in contact with human flesh.
“Perfect.” Finn grabbed it and held him still. She pulled the pin and, leaving the grenade on the belt, loped to a safe distance.
Col was too far gone to scream when the white phosphorous ignited. For an instant, the woods were transformed in a world of searing white light and perfect black shadows. Almost as quickly, it went out.
Finn panted in excited approval. The dog, Pickles, reappeared. It had shreds of Col’s clothing hanging from its mouth.
“I’m not done killing,” Finn told it.
Pickles growled, understanding perfectly, and ran off.
“Sho be it,” said Finn. She sprinted towards the house, and her last two victims of the night.
Her nose was her guide. The enhanced sense of smell was an amazing gift. She could smell everything: a boar which had just taken a shit a hundred yards away, the sharp tang of burning from the farmhouse, the cloying aroma of spilled diesel, the pathetic stink of father and son. None of the smells were repulsive to her, there were no good smells and bad smells any more: everything held promise and fascination.
The smell of Nick and Tony led clearly back up to the farm buildings. She bounded towards them, unhurried. Once they were dead she had the rest of the night to run and play in the moonlight, before presenting herself to Mr Argyll.
The fire around the farmyard had lost its initial intensity. It still sent powerful blasts of heat through the night air, along with the occasional crash of sparks as the outbuildings’ roofs collapsed piece by piece. There was another sound: a subdued rattling from the food prep room. Finn slipped through the door. The room looked different. Fridge units had been bunched together in the centre of the room.
Tony’s scent was fainter, as though he was hiding, but the fearful stench of the son, Nick, was bold and bright. Besides, the whimpering sound was unmistakeable. Nick was standing on a cross beam, just below the skylight. He looked very unhappy. He positively radiated fear.
She had no idea why he was up there. Perhaps Tony had lost patience with his whining and put him out of the way. Perhaps he�
�d pushed the fridges over there to try and climb to the skylight, and the roof. Height equalled safety? Well, not in this case.
“Going shomewhere, Nick?” she said.
Nick looked down. “You can’t get me!” he shouted.
Finn prepared to jump up onto the beam before spotting an easier option. She scooped up a bottle lying among the muck and dust.
“Talishker wishky. Exshpenshive shtuff.”
“You have no idea,” said Nick with heartfelt sorrow.
She hurled it at him. Terror gave him speed and he ducked. The bottle smashed against the ceiling, golden spirits trickled down the wall.
“Missed,” he gasped, more in amazement.
She sprang onto the beam in a single leap. She bore down on him with her most predatory smile. He surprised her though. Instead of quailing or pleading for his life, he whipped out a knife from his coat: a silver knife. He swung. She dodged. She looked down and saw the trap: the whirring toothed rollers directly below her.
“You dare?” she snarled.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered.
She punched him. Her claws encountered something hard beneath his chest, a metal food tray. Armour wouldn’t protect him. Another punch: he stumbled and pitched from the beam. He swung like a drunken clown, teetering but not falling. Only then did she see the loop of wire running under his arms and up to the skylight.
That was clever. Infuriating, but clever.
There was a fizzing, sparking sound. The splashed whisky had dribbled down the wall and hit a plug socket. Another spark and the spirits ignited. Blue-yellow alcohol flames exploded up the wall. Finn stepped back in momentary alarm.
Nick kicked her in the shins and gave her a whole-body shove. She plunged off the beam towards the maw of the machine. Nick would have tumbled with her but for the wire holding him up. She raked for the beam as she fell, but she couldn’t quite reach.
The plug socket spat, the lights went out and Finn landed feet first in the mincer.
Nick looked down at her.