“I think we should go back to the cabin and report it before we go looking,” Tab replied. “We should only interfere if need be.”
“Yes, lets do that,” the Indian said.
“Frank where did Patty go?” Tab asks as she stands up from the chair.
“She’s working for your sister Shirley.”
“Frank, these are dangerous times you have entered. You have to take care of my daughter and my ranch. Got that?”
“Yes,” Frank answers.
“And don’t forget I am always watching you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay chief, I’m ready.” As soon as Tab says this, the two dematerialize right in front of Frank. He watches as they lose substance and disappear from the kitchen completely. He walks out the kitchen door and around the house and looks and scans all of the bluff for any signs of activity. Other than birds flying in the air, he sees nothing at all, but wind brushing in and out of the trees making them give a voice to every wind and breeze that blew through it. He now looks toward the barn where the animals are kept just to be safe then returns into the kitchen. He pours himself a cup of coffee out of the pot and walks into the living room to watch for any news bulletins, comfortably on the couch. The news reports go on throughout the day. They are now showing the woman and her kids talk about wolf noises, like howls before all the people vanished in the suburb. The questions are riddled with times and if they got to see any of the wolf invaders. The lady stated they were all in the basement at the time. They never saw anything. It seemed like the story just got more strange as more evidence came in. They knew that the people had to be hurt because there was blood scattered all over in the suburbs and the accident area, but no bodies. When they went out to look, they found all kinds of carcasses of dead animals just beyond the scene of the incident making the story take an eerie twist Frank thought as he processed all the information.
“How can that many people just vanish?” Frank then thought about Patty’s mom, the lady in the blue jean jacket. She seemed scared when I mentioned the people disappearing. Her and the Indian left real quick after that. But she has Patty’s best interest at heart. It seems like she might not like me much, but she does need me for some reason. Even not trusting me, but maybe it’s just because I am from a different planet. I mean, if they came up to us in our world, would we trust them? We might I suppose. We have been studying earth for a long time.” Frank quickly gets the thought out of his head. He thought he better take a walk around the perimeter and check things out. It’s hard telling what is going on out there. He takes the shotgun by the door on the way out, knowing he is not as powerful in daylight as he is in the moonlight. In the moonlight, he knew he could out run a bullet, but he wasn’t so sure during the day. Jaws and the other dogs seem pretty calm, ready to play with Frank as he walked out the door. He refills the dog bowls quickly, next to the porch and heads over to the barn to check on all the animals. He keeps a good eye toward the bluff, just in case, but he sees nothing out of place in the barn or on the bluff. He couldn’t help but think that some of those wolves from the other night had something to do with it. That strange howl from right there on top of that bluff. He don’t know why, but if some of them people were hurt, why would they follow them? Why wouldn’t they stay put and get help? They would have to be bleeding to death up there, if that is where they went. He then puts the shotgun next to the barn door and walks toward a red handle pump coming out of the ground with a pail over the spout. He proceeds to pump the red handle up and down and the water comes gushing out on the third pull. He pushes down and the water comes out faster, quickly filling the pail. He stops and grabs it off the pumps spout and carries it toward the water bowl next to the dog food and pours it into the massive bowl. He goes back to the pump to place the bucket back on the slot of the spout where it will hang until he uses it again tomorrow. He really enjoyed the old pump and old farm equipment around the ranch. Some of it looking like it hadn’t been touched for decades in the barn. He never had something so tangible on the moon. This was true American craftsmanship everywhere around him. No plastic on these old machines. He imagined the belts and pulleys would have been made of rubber or maybe even leather. He would love to see them all in work, with their open pulleys turning and gears winding, whining with sounds. They were like works of art and moving art if the motors weren’t locked up. This planet had a lot to offer Frank he realized. Patty and her ranch had a lot to do with that. These strange new emotions and smells, they overwhelmed him and he is going to experience them all. Who better to share it with than none other than the first human he met. It will be the journey of a life time. ‘But would she really leave with me to explore this big new world?’ Frank sighed, thinking not. But he didn’t want to think on that. Not now. He could stay here with her, but everything was so new, he just didn’t know. Even being here, he still might be somehow dangerous to her and he wouldn’t want that. He would never want to hurt Patty. No, if she didn’t want to go, he would stay. He was amazed at how fast he changed his mind on that. Just being apart this long made his heart heavy. What would he do? Frank relaxes a little bit as he sits on the front porch, petting the dogs. “Yea, I could stay here,” he says directly to Jaws, who stares back at him enjoying the attention Frank is giving him. “I’ve come a long way with you too, haven’t I, Jaws? Why would I take off on you, bud. When we first met, you wouldn’t even come this close to me unless you were going to bite me in the butt.” Jaws acts different when Frank starts to talk to him. He sits up a little higher, a little straighter and he pants with his tongue sticking out of his mouth with a weird looking grin on his face, like he really enjoyed what Frank just said. Frank spies the red ball on the ground and gives it a quick toss. Jaws goes jetting after it along with four other dogs. Jaws quickly forgets all about Frank as the dogs play in the yard under the clothesline where the sundress and some jeans flap in the wind. Frank can’t help but laugh as he sees the dogs kick the ball like they are playing soccer. He quickly starts to miss Patty again as he pictures how beautiful she would look in that pretty flowered dress hanging on the clothesline. It was hard to deal with these new emotions, but Frank really enjoyed every moment of it. He guesses it was what merrily made humans human. He figured there had to be these struggles. Where he came from there were no struggles and people just weren’t as dedicated to their projects. It’s a big part of it, he realizes. Without these eternal struggles, you cease to exist. But being from a world so self absorbed, would they even realize it? Some would probably snap out. It’s too much at once. Baby steps. He realizes he is a newborn to this planet. But he will learn and he will grow, he insists. That’s all part of it. He now walks back to the barn to retrieve the shotgun that he left there as he glances at the terrain once more. He gets to the gun quickly and picks it up and then walks calmly back to the house. He liked the feeling he got as he returned to the porch, the sun blazing down now. It was really refreshing when he finally made it to the shade. The sky was a clear blue. There wasn’t going to be any shade today. Not a cloud in sight. “Yep, it’s gonna be a hot one,” Franks says. The old wooden steps moan in response as he steps down onto them, like they just answered one of his questions. Jaws gives a glance to Frank when he hears the creaks, then quickly returns to play with the other dogs under the hot afternoon sun. The air gets cooler as he walks in the front door. He can hear and feel the cool air from the central air unit with its electric hum that cooled the house.
12
The new formed pack made quick drying mud out of the dirt within the cave that was inside the crevice of the bluff hiding it completely. Before one of the humans barricaded it , he yelled outside the hole for the others to get in before he capped it up. They made sure there was no trace of their entrance inside the crevice. If Zoth happened to go into a hiding area like this before his attack, he is going to make sure there is no evidence of their hiding place, for only a fool lets his guard down. Zoth inspected the crevice thoroughl
y before entering into the cap. When he goes inside, one of the workers quickly fills in the gap. He says, “That will do it, boss.”
He continues to fill the hole until the last twinkle of light can no longer be seen, leaving the cave pitch black. The three wolves and some of the other nocturnal animals can see the walls of the cave just fine, but the humans, however, and some of the other animals, weren’t as lucky and were quite disadvantaged in the darkness. Some though, thought ahead enough to grab a flashlight, so there were bits and pieces but out of the little entrance only bits and spots of the massive line of people and animals trotting together in small openings had no light at all. But when they did finally reach big openings within the cave, it illuminated something totally different. The room was massive, going up as high as the eye could see, but yet still not breaking through the earths barrier above. All the humans huddled together with the light in the middle. There were two good floodlights. The other one was a small d battery mag type light. They murmured nothing but good things about their new leader, Zoth. How Zoth is going to save the earth and Zoth is going to cleanse the land of all the evils that will go against him because he is true leader. He is one with me, they would say, in a sick trance from the transformation from the previous night. They all shared the contaminated blood from the foreign mooner. Cursed of their own freedom of thought, the very essence that makes us human and replacing it with something totally false. Something that is interpreted from a whole different mind. The mind of a mutated moon made creation to protect now in its craziness wants to destroy. Zoth is filled with nothing but blood lust. His mouth drools over war. Zoth resents them all. They are all different from him. He was created, he wasn’t born. He feels inferior, so he destroys everything that he thinks despises him. It’s not truly his fault. He just acts defensive. It’s not who is he, it’s who he created. He figures if he is the first of his kind that he will make his own rules. He has always considered himself the leader since the day he was created. He has proven it. With his newfound army, they will never touch him again. He tells the other three wolves which he tells all the other people, humans and animals that joined his pack, that they are the leaders of them as well as him. One of the human woman rub a brush through the back of Zoth’s head and down his back. Some more women quickly retrieve their brushes out of their purses and run toward the other three wolves. Some letting them brush their manes, while others don’t. Doing nothing more than pleasing the leaders is all that they want to do. It only makes them happy to serve. They hate themselves if they don’t serve. They don’t know what to do with themselves. Its torture to them without it. They feel like they are disappointing the wolves greatly if they do not serve them. The rat stays right beside Zoth. Zoth highly suspects it of being the one that gave them all the conclusion that they could transform animals into their slaves. He has never named any of the wolves or humans by name, but he does call the rat Uno, for he was the first one to change on the earths surface. Uno didn’t leave the cave much, but when Zoth returned to the cave, he would be the first one Zoth would meet. The little rat made sure of that, fighting off other rats just to get in front. But Zoth was cursed at the same time for having such a big army. They all served the same collective thought. He could hear their murmurs of worship towards him and it flooded his mind in the big room. He frequently had to exit it to gain back any sense of sanity, but it was a small price to pay for the wolf to fulfill his goals and the waves of thought would come and go like a gust of wind. In an instant it could disappear. He could control it though towards a single individual if he concentrated hard enough, but in a sea of murmurs it would take a tad longer to find in a sea of thought. But he constantly worked the waves of thought and picked one out from another. After the thoughts would slowly dissolve into nothing but thoughts of him. They were his. He could only control them by bits and pieces until he broke them of that last grasps of themselves. After that he could manipulate his own waves. He has done it with the pack of wolves before they died on the bluff. He can do it with these. It just took a little longer to break them.
“Soon all these murmurs of worship will be gone, along with their individuality, until we are all one with each other. And you three, are the first to arrive, the same as me, you will reap what I sow. You will reap it all. Just like me. All you have to do is keep creating a bigger army, understand?” Zoth asks.
The three wolves shake their heads in agreement, not even looking at each other.
“Good.”
One of the wolves approaches a little closer and bends his front legs and puts his nose to the ground. “What are our plans for moonrise, sir?” He then looks up at Zoth.
“Same as always,” Zoth replies. “Search, seek, destroy. Except you three. You three will help me procreate. We are going to slip a little farther into town tonight and maybe the next night if the moon permits.”
Zoth hears, one of the wolves on the left, thought before the wolf can even come out and say it. Zoth remains quiet, looking directly at him and waits for the wolf to have the courage to speak it.
“After these moon cycles are finished, will these humans still follow us?”
Zoth just laughs after finally hearing it with the wolfs voice and replies, “You always have haven’t you?
“Yes, sir.”
Zoth quickly recognizes the wolf all the way to the left and beads his eyes down a little bit. “Ahh, I remember you from the simulation back on the moon.”
The wolf on the left, gives a little gulp and cringes back a step with an uncontrollable shake as Zoth approaches him. His tail quickly lowers even deeper toward his belly as he backs up even farther with shaky nervous steps. He whimpers a cry that’s barely understandable and he repeats, “Yes, sir.”, more deeper so that the others could understand.
Zoth growls at the weakness of the wolf. He’s more irritated at that than anything.
“Stand tall,” Zoth says.
His tail quickly uncurls and he straightens up with his head forward, not looking at Zoth at all, but more behind him in the dark, through him, scared to look directly into the eyes of his leader.
“Good,” Zoth says. “I don’t want you to show any weakness from here on out, you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” the wolf replies more firmly.
“To even think about what you did, will be suicide, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The wolf doesn’t dare shake even an inch of his body now.
“I see you still have the scar on your lip,” Zoth says calmly now.
The wolf quickly glances at Zoth, before glancing away again, almost like an answer in itself.
“You know why I let you live that day?” Zoth asks.
The wolf looks directly at Zoth with shock. He nervously replies, “No, sir.”
“Because I know you are hunting for the same thing as me. You crave it and you need it, just like me. Soon you all will.” Zoth says in a shout that echoes throughout the cave. All the humans and animals alike, stare in the direction of Zoth, a lot not knowing exactly where the sound came from, but all looking in the same direction. Beyond the flicks of light, most see only darkness. But all of them hear more from their new leader. Zoth now draws his attention more toward the crowd and adds, “When true night falls, each word draws louder as Zoth gets more drunk with the power of the collective mind melt. The murmurs stop in his head and then Zoth continues. “Humankind will join us or parish.” He then turns and walks into the smaller entrance way above the crowd up high to perch on the cliff within the big hall of the cave almost like the wolfs personal penthouse. Before he emerges into the hole to another room, he turns and walks to the edge where just moments ago he gives his speech. The big floodlights finally appear on the massive leader leaving even a bigger shadow behind him on the cliffs wall. Now the whole room and all of his followers can see him and he knows it, he feels it inside. Everything stops. There is no sound at all in the room. Not a footstep, just the trickle of water dripping off the wet caves ceiling i
nto various puddles within the distance of the cave. Then Zoth gives out a howl. The other three wolves join in and continue on and off upon one another so that the sound is continuous and doesn’t stop. All of the people are in awe and when the wolves finally do stop their continuous howl, a thunderous applause and cheers can be heard throughout the crowd and little squeaks from mice and taps of hoofs from deer and growls from wild mountain lions and a beaver pats its big tail on the ground with the audience and they cheer and they cheer until Zoth finally gets bored of it all and enters into the hole to the other chamber. They all seem to cheer even louder at this hoping that it will draw their leader back out for one more glimpse, but then things stop as they finally realize that their fearless leader isn’t going to appear out of the hole once more. The crowd slowly staggers off except for a few hangers that just stand in the massive room and look towards the bluff. One of the lights are taken now as they need it for something else, but one floodlight stays on the little entrance permanently. The people instantly start scavenging the cave for ways to make weapons to please the master for the attack tonight. All they can think of are ways to be triumphant. Nothing would please any of them more than to die in battle protecting their new masters. Even the hangers slowly realize this and scavenge around the cave for some way to make a weapon. A lot of them tore off there walking sticks on their way in and had various types of weapons already that they thought they might need when they were entering the woods. Others brought kitchen knives and guns with them when they left their houses that night, but the few that brought nothing at all were the ones that really scavenged the cave. Others just wanted something just in case they ran out of bullets or lost their knives. Back up, if you will. They were well aware of the rule because it was the only rule. ‘Search, seek, destroy.’ Anything that the master wanted, the master got. Zoth liked the cave a lot. He can inspect his troops well upon the bluff of it throughout the darkness. He would sneak around and they wouldn’t even know he was looking at them along the big dome of the cave through little trails that the rats had made within the walls. He figured they took the same path for centuries. It was so wore down that the big wolf could maneuver along it quite well. The dumb asses still had the light way over there at the entrance that he left hours ago. He liked the cave, but he knew he would soon outgrow it as his army grew. He kind of was disappointed at that. The secluded woods and mountain were good terrain for a wolf and he didn’t want to leave it, but he knew eventually he would have to go to the city and take it over as well, but damn, he is going to miss this cave, he thought as he looked over his flock. He quickly looked down as Uno approached and laid down right next to the wolf and wrapped his little bald tail around the massive paw of the wolf. Uno never uttered a sound laying there. Zoth couldn’t even hear the little rat breathe. In fact, he could just pick up his paw and smash it in one little swipe and flick him over the edge and almost did, but since it was the first one to change, sympathy did appear. It happened very rarely, but it was the rats lucky day, for sure. Zoth well knowing that, if he wasn’t in such a pleasant mood, that little rat UNO would have been a goner for sure. He snickered at the thought. But why do that. He is such a good size to do recon on the enemy and his troops, if need be. He sits and watches down as the humans slowly lose themselves completely, not really resembling their former selves at all with the dry blood and mud caked all over their bodies and not caring to even groom themselves anymore. They have no more selfish needs. All they have is him. All they need is him. His needs are their needs. The wolves tried not to wound them too bad when they changed. Some just mere scratches or bites. Others though, weren’t so lucky, for the ones who fought back, had chunks out of their legs and arms, but not the neck. Not so much to kill them, like the smaller animals in the woods. It was hard for the wolves to control that part of them to not totally take them out in the heat of battle. To have a killer instinct and not be able to use it was something that they were never taught. But the fruits of their labor outweighed the urge. Their new army will serve them well. The big room was massive, he figured he could hold another three hundred people in it easy if need be. But there will be a lot more than that when he captures the town. But here deep within the mountain, there is only one way in and one way out, except for his private corridor, of course. That is so secure, no one would get through it. He made sure of that. He wondered why the tasty humans were never in the simulators back on the moon. He found them to be the best and trickiest prey of all, but he guesses the quickness of the deer in the simulators was a good training for him and the other wolves. They were more agile when it came to pursuits. But the humans were tricky and smart. He knew if he was going to beat them, he would have to learn their technologies. The human slaves were paramount in that quest. Once he turns the ones who created him, he will use them like they used him, but he will have to do it quick because there are many of them and there is merely a hundred or more of us. He dreaded the thought of it, but he knew it would have to be done. He knew he would have to question the humans down there and see what the best strategy would be after nightfall when they transform into the beasts. He creeps back to his chamber slowly and silently with no one the wiser of it. The other three wolves are still lined up the way they were before within the chamber. He wants to know more about the attackers on the bluff as well but they never found them yet so he figured he gave them the slip completely. They were dangerous and more transparent. They couldn’t sink their teeth in those enemies. They were like the ones that held him captive on the moon. They had human forms, but they obviously weren’t. ‘Are there more mooners down here on earth? Were they mooners? Or something entirely different?’, he wondered. Not knowing the surroundings was starting to appear to be extremely difficult. After an hour or so of questioning, he knew less about the ghost than before. It was one of the human ladies who coined the word ‘ghost’ to him. She said, “If they didn’t have an organic form, they had to be ghosts.” She believed in them, but never saw one. He wondered how they could avoid detection for so long among their own people or how they could even regroup after they died, but their human weapons, the ones that attacked them beyond the bluff from a distance, he could definitely get hold of these weapons. Maybe they could help, he thought. Humans said that the best ones were at the army bases. He really wanted to see this army base now. He was pretty saddened when he found the closest one was quite a ways. Then one of them suggested that he could drive a semi with them all packed in there if need be. That’s when the wolf gave the most evil grin you ever saw. It was big and white with sharp teeth running all through it. He liked how organized they could be with their maps and weapons. The truckers map was quite useful on the table, which really wasn’t a table at all. It was more like a giant flat rock in the middle of the small dwellings floor. But it was so perfectly flat, they used it for this purpose alone. Zoth jumps on the table and looks down at the map to study it, questioning every line and word until he eventually figures out how to work the thing. He now knew where the highway went that he constructed the accident on and the suburb in which he attacked and he could guess about how far from there the city would be. The trucker pointed out where they could pick up weapons if they decided to go to the army base. He said about ten years ago he had a contract and he was delivering there from one of the weapons factories. He told Zoth of the planes and the tanks and the hangars just full of boxes of weapons. He drew out his own map of which buildings were where within the facility of the army base. He pointed then on the map where all the electrical grids were suggesting the best way to do it would be to knock out all the energy that the town had. He said, “If you did this, it would be harder for them to call for help. They would be blind from the darkness, making them a much easier prey.” More and more of the victims come in to give Zoth information so dearly needed. Even on the giant rock slab, Uno the rat, stays faithfully by his master side, Zoth notices when he looks at the map once more. The other wolves are now in the corner, scavenging off a few o
f the carcasses, not able to control their hunting urges anymore. Just wanting to sink their teeth into some more flesh. A woman in scrubs, the bottoms were burgundy and the top had designs of little nurse and doctor teddy bears. She had five long straight scars on the left side of her face that went to her forehead all the way down to the bottom of her neck just ending before the v-neck shape in the collar of the scrubs that she was wearing. She pleads to the wolf to give her supplies so she can bandage up herself and the others so that they could serve Zoth better in their mission before they leave. He complies to her wishes, stating that they could scrounge up whatever clothes or anything else that they brought with them to do the job and that if they needed more medical supplies, maybe she or the others could pick them up as well when they go into the city tonight. The woman nods in agreement and leaves the chamber into the bigger room. He tells them all to leave the little room. The wolves drag off the carcass and the humans quickly descend into the bigger chamber back toward where the floodlight burns, that gave waves of heat in the cold dampness of the cave. Amazingly, the little rat, Uno, doesn’t leave, but stays next to Zoth’s side. Zoth becomes very angry at the defiance of the rat, but shakes it off. He lies down on the slab of stone and the mouse quickly nuzzles in beside the wolf like a tired baby mouse would do with a mother, searching for comfort and warmth. Then they both drift off to sleep.
Moonweavers Page 12