“ … meeting with other representatives from our group. We are not forcing you to do anything nor are we requiring membership. We will come and talk. That’s the only commitment you’re giving right now,” Conall said. “Clear?”
The group nodded and murmured in agreement.
“Good. The next thing. The man who approached you, Dave, he works for one of three groups as near as we can figure. Two of them are bio medical companies who have been chasing us for years for research purposes. The other is a nasty group of religious zealots who feel we are of the devil and must be destroyed. I have to say, if it were those nut balls they would have come in guns blazing right away, so I don’t think that’s it.”
There was a lot of looking across the room to gauge everyone’s reaction. So far everyone was holding it together. Even Willie was holding his tongue.
“Second thing, these murders happened a few weeks ago, correct?”
Josie, who was always on top of scheduling, was on it.
“Sandra died just under two weeks ago. Byron the same night but they didn’t find him until the day after.”
“OK,” Conall said. “So it took Mr. Stander about a week to find you which, to be honest, is quicker than I would have liked. We pride ourselves on having very advanced algorithms that track the sort of news stories and keywords that would point toward a group of your sort. What we didn’t count on was that you’d be in a place so remote that you barely have media.”
“The newspaper is a weekly,” Carl added.
“And they don’t have a fucking website … sorry, a website so you can’t set keywords for content that isn’t there. Anyway, they found you fast which means, if we’re lucky, the second wave won’t be here for another twelve hours or so now that he has confirmation of contact.”
“Second wave?” Dave asked.
“They try to buy you and if that doesn’t work they try to trap you. I got to you before you could consider the ridiculous amount of money he was going to offer you to come with him. Believe me, Dave, once you agreed and showed up at their facility, all his promises are worth fuck all.”
“How much money?” Willie asked.
“Do you like having your nutsack cut open, old man?” Conall finally snapped. “I’m talking about this group harvesting your corneas. I’ve seen their plans myself and there’s not enough money in the world for some of the shit they’re going to do to ya if they get the chance.”
“So what do we do?” Dave asked.
“Do you have a place that you go when you change? A place where you run? Are you catching my drift?”
“Yeah,” Dilly said. “It’s up by …”
“Don’t tell me,” Conall said. “I don’t want to hear it but I want you all to think of it. If something goes bad or if you’re attacked or if you feel like you’re in danger, that’s where you meet to regroup. Second thing, we need to get you all out of here.”
“Out of here,” Willie said. “That ain’t happening.”
“It’s not permanent,” Conall said. “In eight or twelve hours when the men with the guns show up …”
“I thought you said we have eight hours,” Dave said over Conall. “ … you will not want to be here. Once you’re safe we’ll figure out what to do.”
“Can we call the police?” Josie asked.
“And tell them what, exactly?” Conall said. “Officer so and so, a group of biomedical researchers are coming with guns to try and capture my friends and family and harvest my eyeballs because I do this little parlor trick, you see …”
“Grey Allen couldn’t do shit anyway,” Willie added.
“Grey Allen isn’t the sheriff anymore,” Kenny Kirk said. “Keep up, man.”
“I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said,” Ron piped up. “But you’re asking us to put our lives in your hands and all we have is Dave’s word that you’re like us.”
Conall took a moment to turn and look at Dave for a long beat.
“The word of your alpha isn’t enough for you?”
No one said a word as the question made the air thick and every noise amplified. Carl shifted in his seat and the sound of denim on a fake leather was suddenly deafening.
“I kind of want to see a talking wolf,” Dilly said.
The laugh started with Kenny Kirk and rolled around the room. Within ten seconds everyone was at least chuckling and Willie sat in the corner with a big grin on his face. Conall tapped Dilly on the shoulder.
“All right, then, boy.”
Conall walked over to the two smaller windows in the living room and drew the shades. Then he arched his back into a hunched position, then pulled up hard, suddenly taller. He didn’t scream or yell as the boys of Cherry sometimes did and when the hair sprouted it was thick and fast. Aside from the quick rustling of the transformation, the loudest sound was the stretch of the Irish Wolf’s fingernails as they lengthened and cracked, eventually sharpening into claws. The man’s clothing stretched with his changing body as it was designed to do.
The result was very similar in shape to what the pack from Cherry looked like, but the posture was different and the eyes sharper and brighter. He was more frightening than Dilly had expected because, he figured out later, he looked like a beast that would chase you. Also, the sight of a snarling creature in a domestic setting accentuated just how big he was and, somehow, how terrible.
“I … speak,” the Irish Wolf said in a growl so low and awful that everyone had to focus, hard, to understand him. “It’s easier when I’m … angry. Is this enough for you? Does this make you … trust me?”
No one spoke, but they all nodded and the Irish Wolf, having sharp eyes, registered them all. Suddenly the wolf started twitching and banged his head against the wall in one smooth, violent motion.
“I must run,” the Irish Wolf continued. “I will return … be ready. We leave soon.”
The living room in the Rhodes household was sunken from the kitchen and bedroom area, leaving the Irish Wolf with the difficult task of walking up the five stairs to the front door on padded feet bent at odd angles. He would have leapt up the stairs easily, Dave figured, but the ceiling was too low.
Dave tried to help but the Irish Wolf snapped at him, crawled his way up the stairs and turned back at the group, who were transfixed.
“Sorry … about the … door.”
With that the beast gave a hard push off the carpeted floor and exploded through the Rhodes’ front door, pieces raining and glass smashing and crunching. Dilly ran to the window only to catch a glimpse of the Irish Wolf’s hindquarters as he ran down the street and disappeared into the woods to the south of town. Pieces of door were still falling from the sky when Kenny Kirk broke the seal.
“Holy shit, man,” he said. “I cannot believe that. Can you believe that? I can’t believe that. I can’t believe he can chat looking like that, I can’t believe he busted your door into a million pieces, I can’t believe we need to run for our lives, man.”
“We don’t need to run,” Willie said. “We just need to scratch. Let them take their shot. They’ll end up dead in the woods somewhere.”
“We need to think about this,” Ron said.
“Yeah,” Dave said. “Because no one will notice a paramilitary group prowling around the woods with guns and no one will notice eight or ten dead bodies in the damn woods. Use your brain, Willie.”
“If you had used your brain, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Willie said.
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Dilly added.
“No one’s going to make you kill anyone,” Josie said. “We’d never do anything like that so don’t worry.”
“You should damn well worry about it,” Willie said. “So, he can turn into a wolf. That doesn’t mean anything he’s said is true. All it means is that there are more of us out there. That is it.”
“Why would he reveal himself like that?” Ron said. “Why would he save Dave from that guy in the bow tie?”
“I don’t kno
w,” Willie said. “I’m following my instincts. It’s all I got and something doesn’t seem right about that Irish fella.”
“I think he’s telling the truth, Grandpa,” Dilly said.
“Look, Dilly, you’re smart, but I swear to you if we go with that guy nothing good is gonna come of it. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
The group continued on for ten minutes about the pros and cons, some pacing the room, some staying put, afraid to move. Things got heated, but just when they started to calm down, three things happened in rapid succession.
The first thing was Josie feeling as if something was deeply wrong. It’s the feeling she got sometimes when Dilly left the door open, only much stronger. One night in the house Dilly had come home after basketball practice and left the door open for an hour as snow poured in their front door, ruining part of their flooring. During that entire time when she was upstairs, she sensed something was wrong and couldn’t put her finger on it. The part of her brain that told her “the door is open” suddenly caught fire.
The second thing was Willie started changing. He gasped a very human, terrified gasp that ended in a growl. His arms started lengthening, then his legs in a transformation that was unlike any the group had ever seen. Instead of a smooth, all at once sort of process, Willie’s arms went first, then his legs, then his head in an uneven and awful sequence. His growl turned into a yelp and the White Wolf collapsed on the ground, whimpering in pain and unable to stand.
The third thing was the yelling. Three men in black tactical gear, complete with helmets, bulletproof vests and what looked like assault rifles, came tearing down the stairs ordering everyone on the ground. The sound of the guns being discharged filled the room, but they were not gunshots. They were darts shooting at the group and only the odd layout of the room and the limited space prevented anyone else from being hit.
When the first man came around the corner, Dave was struck by violent inspiration and kicked at the man’s knee as hard as he could. His heavy boot struck its target and the man went down, adding another layer of screams to the noise. He grabbed at the man’s gun but the man held on. Dave pulled on the weapon, the effect of which was to bring the intruder’s entire body up just in time to catch three darts in the back. The man screamed and Dave could hear the scream devolve into wet gurgling behind the visor.
Josie had grabbed Dilly, Ron had run to Dave’s side, and Carl and JoAnn were helping Willie, who was in rough shape. The men had taken up residence at the top of the stairs and started crafting their random yelling into instructions.
“GET OUT OF THERE,” one man yelled.
“Come up the stairs and we won’t make you transform,” another yelled in a slightly more reasoned but still hostile tone.
Dave threw the man he was holding down and dead weight hit the floor. The only entrance to the living room (aside from the entrance through the laundry room) was blocked by the man’s body. If the two men at the top tried to come down they would have to vault their fallen comrade, losing their tactical advantage. For the time being, there was a stalemate.
“You’re in my house,” Dave yelled. “Get out.”
“Your friend there,” one of the men yelled. “The furry one? He’s not long for this world. You gotta get him help or he’s going to die.” The man’s voice was gruff and he delivered the words like he meant them and had probably said them before.
Part of Dave thought “good” when they threatened Willie, but then he heard Dilly sniffle. He was now at his grandfather’s side as the White Wolf labored to breathe. Seeing Willie, or anyone in his condition, on the ground instead of on the hunt was odd in a specific way for Dave, especially since his father was a scrapper and fighter as a human and otherwise.
“You’ve got about half an hour before he’s dead,” the man upstairs yelled. The White Wolf’s eyes shot open.
“You’re just delaying it,” the man continued. “Get up here and we won’t make you transform. It’s your only option.”
The White Wolf growled.
Josie, who was now over by her son, looked at Dave, pleading with her eyes to make this end. JoAnn and Kenny were holding each other as she had started to sob, quietly, into Kenny’s skinny shoulder.
The White Wolf looked at Dave.
Dave gave a small nod.
“Quit stall …” the man began.
In a fraction of a second, the White Wolf moved to put his paws underneath him and launched himself up the narrow stairway and right into one of the men. The other recoiled backward out of surprise and panic, tripped over his own feet and fell, hard. Everyone heard him fall and Carl made a move as if to capitalize, but Dave made a motion to hold him back.
“Not yet,” Dave said. “Not until the screaming stops.”
Upstairs, the powerful jaws of the White Wolf had bit through the hard plastic and metal of the first man’s helmet, puncturing his head enough to cause bleeding, but not enough to do any major damage. Unfortunately for the man, he was unable to push the White Wolf off him as the beast was heavy but also hard to grab onto and it wasn’t long until the helmet finally stuck to one of the powerful incisors of the beast and came tumbling off. Before the killing bite, the wolf paused for just a moment to survey his prey. He had done this dozens and dozens of times in the woods. Creatures who are about to die fight and fight until the life leaves them and the White Wolf savored that last bit of fight before they went limp.
The man did not disappoint. In this case he screamed and thrashed and kicked his feet but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. The White Wolf got his entire jaws around the man’s head and bit, ripping the flesh and crushing the skull. The screaming continued and the White Wolf tasted all the blood he wanted, and then something more metallic and singular as the brain was exposed and gave way. A few bites later the fighting stopped, the kicking ceased and the White Wolf pulled up hard to see what had happened to the second man, and what he saw amused him, if such a thing was possible.
He was frozen in fear. The second man was still sitting, his hands desperately trying to load live ammunition in his gun, which was loaded with darts. The fear of the wolf was consuming him and the man’s hands weren’t working and he dropped bullets all over the floor. The man’s eyes were wide and his whole body was shaking.
The White Wolf, with a grunt, turned his body toward the other man. Instead of screaming, like the first one, this man started pleading.
“Oh Jesus,” the man said over and over again. “Please no, oh Jesus oh God no. I … I, no no NO!”
The man got louder the closer the White Wolf got, and in the end the great beast destroyed the man more to shut him up than anything. He would have liked to play around with him a bit, given the chance, but his whining was enough to annoy the White Wolf into granting a quick death. When he was done, having destroyed the second man in the same manner as the first, the wolf noticed the man had peed on the floor. Not your territory anymore, the wolf thought.
Slowly, the rest of the party emerged from the basement and were met with blood, bodies, and the smell of evacuated bowels. The White Wolf growled at them, but it was never in his mind to strike.
“What do we do now?” Ron asked.
As if to answer, the White Wolf collapsed again, the momentary blast of energy and vengeance having run out. The creature looked frail again as Dilly approached it.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dilly asked. “How do we make him better?”
“What do we do with the bodies?” Josie asked.
“Where the hell is Conall?” Kenny Kirk wondered aloud.
“I don’t know, the bodies aren’t going anywhere and Conall can take care of himself,” Dave said. “Ron, help me get Willie into your truck.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re heading to the woods.”
•••
Seven o’clock had come and gone and Stu sat, behind a tree, desperately wishing for something more substantial than sunflower seeds. He had picked up the habit wh
en he had first rolled in to Cherry, having discovered ranch-flavored sunflower seeds at a gas station about ten miles away. He had never seen anything but regular, salted seeds in the various gas stations throughout his life and was confronted with a whole new world. On the spot he had bought ranch-, dill pickle- and bacon-flavored and proceeded to chow down during the day, so much so that he often skipped lunch, having filled up on seeds. Turned out, he thought as he leaned against the bark of a big cottonwood, that plan didn’t work for dinner.
Still, there were worse ways to be spending an evening. The air was cool and pleasant, the air smelled wonderful, and the forest was blazing with fall colors. The yellows and reds of the season was something Stu had seen, but never been enveloped by. There was a girl on one of the dating sites that he had been messaging quite a bit and he decided, then and there, he was going to take the plunge and ask her to go for a hike with him through the woods.
Nah, he thought. That might seem a bit “murder-y.”
He had been listening for the crunch of tires on the nearby gravel and was hoping to spy on Mr. Stander a bit before revealing himself. The best-case scenario, Stu figured, was to overhear a conversation that would shed light on who the hell this stranger was and how he knew about the two murders. But, as the sun set and the colors of the forest faded, Stu started to feel stupid. With the feeling came pieces of his “curse,” and before long he was reliving dying children and remembering comments he would have been better not to have read.
“There goes my night,” Stu said out loud. A loud whoosh answered him.
Stu had been listening for car tracks on the crunchy gravel but instead of car tracks, he heard something else. It was a quick yet thick sound of something moving very fast in such a way he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He heard the sound three times, each time thinking it was coming from somewhere different.
Then the sound of crunching gravel filled his ears, and he stood up and peered around the corner of the tree. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening, but he caught snippets of conversation.
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