Each time, another wolf took their place.
Carruthers dropped the shotgun and picked up the SA80. Should have picked up some grenades. Thirty rounds; make them count.
6
Knowles ran into the observation booth, ignoring the guard outside. Claire looked up and smiled. She started to write in the pad again, sipping her coffee as she wrote.
“We need to go. Now,” Knowles said. She was so calm, so unaware of the trouble brewing a scant ten metres away. Through the observation window, Jack was pacing the room, his brow creased. “How long has he been doing that?”
“Five minutes or so,” she said. “What’s up?”
“We have about a hundred wolves bearing down on us, right now. We have to get out of here. Are you armed?”
“What?”
“Are you armed?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Wolves.”
Jack started banging on the one way. Knowles nodded.
“We need to go.”
She stood up, spilling the coffee. She started to gather the papers from the desk. Knowles grabbed her arm.
“Leave them, it’s not important.”
“All my notes.”
“We don’t have time, Claire. We need to go. Now.”
Jack was still banging on the window, shouting.
“What about him?” Claire asked.
“He comes with us.”
He opened the door to the short corridor. For the first time, the young soldier didn’t salute him.
“It’s Salmon, isn’t it?” Knowles asked.
“Adam, sir,” The soldier tried to hide his surprise but failed.
“Outside that door,” Knowles pointed at the security door to the outside, “is a pack of hungry wolves. They want what we have in that room. They will not get him and we are all there is to stop that happening. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.” Salmon stood a little taller in his uniform. Good man.
“You fired your weapon in action?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m a sergeant, mate, try to remember that. You can call me Knowles.” Knowles smiled at him. “You will today. Remember your training.” Knowles opened the door to Jack’s room with a swipe of his card. Never guarantee they will live.
Jack came to the door as soon as it opened.
“They’re here.”
“No shit, Jack,” Knowles said. “There’s a lot of them. How many of your kind are there?”
“I don’t know,” Jack moaned. “I don’t know anything. Three months ago, my kind read the Guardian.”
“Fuck,” Knowles said. “Why do they want you?”
“I don’t know,” Jack shouted. “I just want to go home!”
He sounded like a petulant teenager. Knowles turned back to the door. Claire was watching them. In her hand was a Browning.
“How many bullets have you got?”
“Thirty,” she said.
“When was the last time you fired that?”
“In Ghanners. On the range.”
Knowles nodded. When they’d talked about her service, he’d assumed she’d been in the field. Great. Two soldiers with no active service to speak of and a civvy. We’re really in the shit. He opened the gun cupboard in the corridor and took out one of the dart guns. It was preloaded with ten tranquiliser darts. Better than nothing.
“Ok, we’re going to open that door, and cross the courtyard to the meeting room. Major Smith and Captain Starky are in there. If anything with more legs than us gets in the way we are going to put it down. Everybody ready?”
In turn, they each nodded. Knowles was quietly grateful that Jack hadn’t asked for a gun. He walked to the end of the corridor and looked back over his shoulder. He mouthed one, two, three.
On three, he opened the door.
7
The door opened and a voice shouted, “In here, now!”
Carruthers fired a burst into the courtyard, but didn’t stop to check if any more wolves had been killed. He scooped up the rifles and leapt through the open door. Jones slammed it shut behind Carruthers. A soldier had his gun trained on them.
“Point that elsewhere,” Carruthers growled. “We need to barricade this door.”
“What about Knowles?”
Carruthers shook his head. “There’s too many of them. He won’t be able to get to us.”
Jones turned even paler. Not Knowles too. Shit.
Something thumped into the door. The three soldiers backed away quickly, even though the door held firm. They continued edging backwards until they reached the meeting room.
“We need to barricade the door,” Smith said.
“Yes sir!” Jones said. He and Carruthers upended a table and pushed it back into the corridor, resting it against the door frame. They put another on its side and pushed it into the open doorway, legs into the room. Then they knelt up against the table, an SA80 each trained down the hallway.
Smith nodded, satisfied with their work. He was holding the 12-bore whilst Starky had his Browning. The young soldier had his rifle and was standing to the side of the room.
“What’s your name private?” Smith asked. He hadn’t paid any attention to the rank throughout this whole operation. They were beneath him, but now his life was in the hands of someone barely old enough to shave. For the first time, he regretted ordering the reduction to skeleton staff.
“Private Wallace, sir, 422 -”
“Well, Wallace, your job is to back up those two. If either of them falls, you are to take their place. If they have a stoppage or run low on ammo you are to give up your own.”
“Yes sir.”
“Stick with us, son, and we’ll get you through this alive.”
Jones and Carruthers exchanged glances, but neither said anything. They returned their gazes to the door. Another loud bang.
“How long till they figure out it’s reinforced steel?” Jones muttered.
“Not long,” Carruthers said.
He was right.
8
Steve looked around the courtyard with amazement. Some of the pack were dragging the dead away, piling the bodies in the middle of the space. Many of the wolves were now back in human form. The naked ones were smeared in blood: that of their colleagues and the dead humans. There hadn’t been many soldiers, which judging by the number of dead was a good thing. Far too many of us dead to get this far.
Callum stood in front of the hut that the soldier had disappeared into. He was surrounded by his pack. One of them was throwing himself at the door, but it wasn’t budging.
Steve sniffed the air. There were too many scents distracting him. The air was full of the stench of death and something else. The scent of the Original. He couldn’t pinpoint it; it appeared to be everywhere at once.
“Stop,” Callum commanded. The man throwing himself at the door turned to his leader. “We will not get them out that way. Search the other huts, find me some weapons.”
He strode towards Steve. “They are holding something important in that hut.”
“Yes,” Steve said. “Maybe in some of the other huts too.”
Callum nodded. “I will make them suffer for hurting our clan.”
Clan. Jesus. Is that what he thinks we are?
9
Knowles stared into the courtyard. Hundreds of people were looking at the hut opposite him. Some were dragging bodies into a pile in the centre of the courtyard. Many of them were naked and covered in blood. He shut the door, quietly but quickly and deadlocked it.
“Change of plan,” he said. “Back into Jack’s room. Quick.”
Had he been seen? He didn’t think so, but it paid to be careful. They entered Jack’s room and he closed the door, swiping his card to lock it.
“The courtyard is swamped. There’s hundreds of them,” he said. Don’t sugar coat it.
“What are we going to do?” Salmon asked.
“Not panic,” Knowles said. “The door is reinforced steel. The inner door is also r
einforced. They’re not getting in in a hurry. We just need to hole up and wait.”
“Wait?” Jack said. “For what?”
“You’re on an army base, Jack. People will notice what’s going on.”
“Then what?”
“They send the cavalry.”
“How long?”
“Jack, for fuck’s sake,” Knowles said, “just let me think.” And stop asking so many questions.
Claire caught his eye for a second. It was a long second, but it was enough. She knew he was bluffing, hoping for the best.
Bottom line, there are more wolves than we have bullets.
10
“Callum,” one of the wolves said. “There are two locked buildings.”
He gestured at the one that the soldier had disappeared into a few minutes before, and another that was roughly opposite it.
“The Original must be in one of them.”
“His name is Jack,” Steve said. Anton stood next to him. Almost like we’re equals now.
“Which one?” Anton said.
“Does it matter? They have lost. We will have the Original soon and they will all be dead.” Callum said. “Anything else?”
“We found some grenades.” The wolf smiled. “And a grenade launcher. I think it’s a 40 mm.”
Callum smiled for the first time that day.
11
Jones watched the door. The banging had stopped and silence hung heavy in the room. Like a tomb. The reinforced door was doing a good job of blocking out all the sound from outside.
“Do you think they’ve gone?”
Carruthers shook his head. “Not until they’ve got what they came for.”
“Well, that’s Jack. Fuck him, give him up I say.”
“Do you really think they’ll let us live after that?”
Jones shrugged. “It’s a chance I’ll take.”
“Can it, you two,” Smith barked. “Alarms will be going off at HQ now. The birds will be flying soon.”
Jones tried a few calculations. Depending on when the alarms went off, they could have support here in a few minutes… or hours. The wolves would find a way in soon. Got to hope that the alarm has already gone off.
Carruthers asked the question: “Is the alarm automatic?”
“Yes. A beacon sends a signal every 30 minutes. It has to be set by whoever is in the observation booth. If it isn’t set, a fire support team is dispatched from Salisbury immediately. We set it up in case Stadler proved to be a-”
The door exploded. It flew off its hinges, ricocheting down the corridor until it hit the table that Jones and Carruthers were hiding behind. Splinters from the other table flew through the air, like miniature daggers. Wallace caught several splinters in his face, falling back as blood poured out of the wounds. The ruined door smashed into the table pushing it, Jones and Carruthers back into the room.
Wolves poured in through the opening. One leapt and cleared the barricade, jumping between Jones and Carruthers. It bit into Wallace’s arm before Starky shot it in the side of the head. Wallace clutched his bleeding arm, screaming. Starky kicked the wolf carcass up against the wall and shot it again.
Carruthers had kept a vice like grip on his gun and he stood, opening up with the SA80. He roared as he did so, the sound combining with the gunfire and yelps to create a cacophony of noise.
Jones could see his gun lying just out of reach. Must have dropped it when the fucking door hit me. He rolled onto his knees and scooped up the gun. He held the gun against his shoulder and shot short controlled bursts into the mass of wolves.
No other wolf got close to the room. Bodies lay strewn along the corridor. Blood dripped from every conceivable surface. The lights had blown, so sunlight shone only halfway up the corridor. The room still had lights behind them, showing too much of the carnage for comfort.
Jones and Carruthers high fived. “Kicked their fucking arses again!” Jones shouted.
A grenade rolled into the room.
“Grenades! Out! Out! Out!” Smith roared. “Take cover!”
Carruthers and Jones leapt the barrier of the door and table. Something crunched under Carruthers boot, but he didn’t stop to look. Jones slipped on the blood and fell to his knees. He put his hand out to stop the fall and it went straight into the ruined chest of a wolf. He looked at his hand in disgust and screamed.
“Come on Jonesey!” Carruthers pulled him up as Smith and Starky jumped the barricade. Wallace watched them go. Starky paused, looking back at him.
“Move!”
Wallace fell forwards, covering the grenade with his body. Another grenade popped past their heads and landed next to him. Starky swore and ran on, leaving Smith behind. The grenade under Wallace exploded first, igniting the one next to it. Bits of Wallace showered the walls and ceiling. The blast lifted Smith off his feet and carried him into Starky. Both men fell forward into the courtyard.
Carruthers and Jones were standing still, arms above their heads. Blood ran down Jones’ arm making his shirt appear black. He looked on the verge of vomiting. Their guns were being picked up by two naked men. A huge man was grinning at them. In his hands was a grenade launcher. Behind them, more men were running into the building. Carruthers recognised the two men who picked up the SA80’s, and knew they were in trouble.
12
Steve liked the weight of the gun in his hands. This will help later.
“Where is the Original?” Callum asked.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” The man had an accent straight out of a world war two RAF film. He stood up, dusting himself off.
“You in charge?”
“Yes. Major Smith, British Army. Who are you?”
Callum grinned and laughed, a false sound echoing around the courtyard. “I am Callum.”
“Are you in charge?” Smith said in the same clipped tones. If he was scared, he was hiding it well.
“Yes,” Callum said. No-one argued, despite there being several other alphas within earshot. Steve smirked to himself. Does having a grenade launcher make you the boss?
“I suggest you take your men-” Smith caught sight of the female wolves, “-uh, people and leave whilst you can.”
“Why?” That same humourless laugh.
“Our support teams are en-route. When they arrive, you will be executed with extreme prejudice.”
“We overran your base easily enough. We fear nobody.”
“Then you will die here,” Smith said. “I could help you survive this.”
“You? Help me?” For the first time, Callum’s laugh was genuine. “Give me the Original.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Callum moved so quickly that it was a blur. His head became a wolf’s and his arm turned into a big paw. He swiped Carruthers across the face, drawing blood. Carruthers instinctively turned his head from the blow and Callum pounced on his exposed neck. He bit deep, tearing out Carruthers’ muscles and arteries. Blood spurted from the sudden wound, coating both Callum and Jones with gore. Carruthers had enough time to cry out before he fell to the floor, a pool of blood spreading around him like oil on water.
Callum stepped back in front of Smith. His head and arm returned to normal. “Any ideas now?”
13
Smith blanched. Starky sank to his knees and started moaning. “God help me, please, oh God. Please don’t kill me.”
Pathetic. Jones was not going down without a fight. He leapt forward, drawing his fist back with a shout.
Steve stepped in and caught Jones’ arm as it came forward, stopping the punch in its tracks. He twisted the soldier’s arm, hearing it snap before kicking his legs away. Jones fell to the floor, screaming and clutching his arm.
“Don’t,” he said, deliberately making eye contact.
Jones looked at Steve and felt his will to fight disappear. There were just too many of them. If he carried on, then he would be dead next. Red hot lances of agony coursed up his arm, making him fe
el sick. Carruthers’ corpse lay next to him. His eyes were open, looking at Jones without seeing. Jones remembered the times they had spent together, the battles they’d fought, the laughs they’d shared.
You will pay for this. Somehow. You will fucking pay.
14
Knowles had switched on the external cameras in the observation booth. He saw Carruthers die and impotent rage filled him. Scarlet. Meyers. Carruthers. Jesus Christ, they will kill us all. Jones was clearly in agony, with his arm hanging at an angle that was just plain wrong, and they were laughing at him. Smith stood to one side with grim expressions on his face, whilst Starky was kneeling on the ground, clearly sobbing.
He watched as Smith pointed at the building they were in. The big man looked straight at the camera and waved. Knowles couldn’t blame the Major for giving them up: it was carnage out there. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything worse. Afghanistan, with guys missing limbs or worse, even that didn’t seem so bad now. For the first time, Knowles wished he was back there, rather than here. What the hell do we do now? Knowles switched the camera off and went back into Jack’s room.
Salmon was watching everything, but not talking at all. Good. Knowles didn’t have the time to deal with frightened, green soldiers. Claire was talking to Jack, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“We’re about to have company,” he said.
“A company of wolves,” Jack said, without humour. Knowles glared at him.
Claire checked her weapon, again, and nodded at Knowles. “Numbers?”
“Not sure yet, but they’ve got Smith, Starky and Jonesey in the courtyard.”
“What about Carruthers?” she asked.
He shook his head. She swore. Then: “You okay?”
Knowles shook his head again. He had to get a grip. Friends and colleagues had died before: it was a fact of life he had become very used to on his tours, but this was different. Nobody is supposed to die on home soil. What now? Think, for God’s sake, or we will all die today.
The Original's Return (Book 1) Page 25