by S. L. Hess
Devan didn’t reply because he knew Brett was right. He had vacillated at the time whether to inform Brett, but his absorption with Laney had made him decide to wait. Devan hadn’t wanted Brett to jump to any conclusions that would involve leaving.
“You said the wolf came through the window expressly trying to reach you?” Brett inquired.
“That’s what it appeared like to me.” Brett’s question reminded Devan of the additional information he needed to appraise Brett of.
“There’s something else.” Devan’s comment caused Brett to turn in trepidation of what else there could possibly be. “I’ve noticed in the last couple days that these same wolves have been circling around our property; shadowing my route through the woods. I think the only reason they haven’t found their way to the house is because my scent is all over the perimeter of the property, which has probably caused them to run in circles unable to find the trail leading in.”
Brett stopped and there was panic in his expression, but also a certain amount of confusion.
“You’ve been keeping a lot of information to yourself.” Brett remarked.
Devan knew this wasn’t going to sit well with him.
“I didn’t think anything of the wolves hanging around our property until they visited the school. I thought they were shadowing my trail in the forest because they were agitated by my smell and by my presence in their territory. It’s a bit extreme but they could be after me because they think I pose a threat to them. When they attacked me at the school I at first convinced myself they were having an intense reaction to my scent, but taking in their larger physiques and malformed facial feature, and…well…there theft tonight; I’m beginning to suspect it might be more.”
Sam’s expression sharpened. “Malformed facial features?”
Devan grimaced realizing he’d left out another significant fact, and also recognized that in a way he’d blinded himself to the problem they were facing because of his fixation with Laney. “Yes…well their features were somewhat broader than a normal gray.”
“We need to get our hands on that carcass.” Brett stated worriedly.
“That was something I came to notify you of.” Devan had been hesitant of Brett’s reaction to what he was going to propose, but Brett’s determined tone and worried expression told Devan of his desperation.
“I discovered the trail leading into the forest. They couldn’t have dragged it too far, so I want to go out and follow the trail, find it and bring it back. I have the samples I obtained this afternoon at the house, but I feel the animal’s body might provide us with more information.”
Brett sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead so hard it was possible he was trying to reach his brain. “I don’t know; you still have your injured arm to contend with.”
“Not so much.” Devan lifted his arm and then rotated it around in a circle. Brett’s expression perked up.
“Show me,” he commanded excitedly, the scientist bursting forth.
Pulling up the one side of his shirt Devan unwound the bandage from his arm. It came off easily with all the antibiotic cream he’d put on it earlier. In the few hours since replacing the bandage the damaged tissue had improved even further. The stitches had allowed the epidermis layer of the skin to heal together completely; although the skin was still red as it continued to finish the job in the dermis and subcutaneous layers. Brett prodded it gently and only small stabs of discomfort pricked his arm.
“Extraordinary,” Brett breathed.
Yes, it was extra-ordinary, what Devan’s body was able to do. He guessed there was really little he could complain about in regards to his genes as it did speed up the healing of wounds.
“You’re to be extra vigilant out there,” Brett commanded. “Don’t act hastily and don’t spend all night looking for it. We need to make some decisions regarding this information, and soon, there might not be much time. Remember to keep your phone on. I’ll go back to the house and further examine the samples you obtained.”
With the assigned tasks established they vacated the building together; Brett to his truck and Devan to his jeep. While Brett followed the road out of town, Devan pulled into the hardware store two buildings down from the Vet’s house. The establishment was closed and all the lights shut off for the night.
It was a little past eight and the evening had reached full darkness. Devan’s pupils enlarged to full capacity as he scanned the vicinity and examined the black depths of the adjacent windows for any individuals who might be peering outside, possibly curious at the sound of his engine. Devan could hear sounds from the interior of the neighboring houses; televisions and humming conversations testifying that individuals were present, but fortunately no one appeared to have heard his vehicle or they just weren’t interested.
Grabbing his gloves out of the center compartment and a knife from under the seat Devan jumped from the jeep sprinting for the woods, and under its concealment made his way over to the vet’s expanse of forest. He stayed a good distance from the house just in case the vet was on the alert. No need to spook her any further.
The packs trail was easy to locate and follow. It would have been for any experienced tracker—the paw prints and drag marks left in the earth were clearly identifiable. With the combination of scent and physical markings Devan was able to follow the trail effortlessly.
As he tracked them he noticed that their objective seemed to center on getting as deep into the forest as possible. Their route was a straight perpendicular line proportional to the town.
Devan was actually enjoying his run having been confined most of the day when about two miles into the search he caught the scent of rotting meat. Gazing ahead into the forest he spotted the shredded remains of an animal carcass. It was difficult to discern what type of animal it had been, and it wasn’t because he was a half mile from its location, but because the animal had been ripped apart so completely that there was hardly anything left of it. From the nature of the fur scattered everywhere and its bearing Devan knew that it had to be the left over remains of his dead wolf.
Leaping into the nearest tree he surveyed the surroundings. The forest was quiet apart from the normal nocturnal sounds of insects and small animals, and he saw nothing out of the ordinary for miles in all directions. Dropping out of the tree into a crouch Devan again paid attention to any change in the habitat that might alert him to danger, but all remained quiet.
Devan moved forward cautiously prepared to take evasive action if anything was to attack, but the forest held no surprises. Kneeling down he examined what was left of the animal. The skeleton looked to be all there but its structure had been utterly demolished, broken bones strewn everywhere. All of its organs, muscles, and tissue were gone—eaten most likely. And the head was crushed beyond recognition. If there had been a microchip of any kind embedded on the animal it was gone, eaten along with its innards.
He did a quick examination of what was left, just to be sure, but was unable to find anything. A look around revealed that there were additional tracks than the five from the school, the three additional wolves seemed to have returned.
Poking through the remains Devan was stupefied yet again at the packs behavior. That they had broken into a building with the expressed purpose of snatching their dead pack member was peculiar in the extreme, but to drag it deep into the forest just so they could tear it apart only added to the peculiarity. It was like they were trying to destroy evidence. But of what?
Devan stared in the direction the pack had gone and contemplated what to do next. Should he continue forward or go back? Brett would want him to go back, but the curiosity of what might lay ahead was a compulsion that was hard to resist. In the end he decided that to continue was impractical. There was little he would learn from finding the pack unless he were to kill another one and take it back to study, and he was ill prepared in accomplishing that task with only one knife on hand.
Even though Devan knew he had made the right decision he wasn’t at ea
se with it. In some way the thought of finding the pack and establish some logical explanation to their behavior seemed imperative so he could put this whole thing behind him. It was a hope though; a hope and desire for things to be normal so he could go forward with his life here. Those things undermined logic which was something that Devan lived his life around, even if it had been in short supply lately around Laney.
Her emergence into the forefront of his thoughts caused both a warmth and a coldness to invade his body; both of which he forcibly suppressed as he was unwilling to deal with either emotions. With a heavy heart Devan spun around and sprinted back the way he’d come, uncertainty warring in his mind.
Arriving back at the house Devan found Brett in his office examining the samples acquired from earlier. “You found it?” Brett asked maintain his microscopic inspection.
“Yes,” Devan answered gravely.
Brett appeared too preoccupied to notice Devan’s solemn tone. “Bring it in and put it on the desk, I made a space for it.”
Devan had observed the cleared desk covered in plastic. He deposited the several pieces of bones he’d carried back; a section of the jaw bone, a fibula, and sections of the vertebra.
The clunking of the bones seemed to invade Brett’s subconscious because he looked up. Walking up to the desk he picked up the nearly eviscerated fibula and raised his eyes questioningly.
“There wasn’t much left,” Devan explained dryly. “The wolves eradicated most of it.”
“Really,” he said, his eyes roaming over the other pieces. “They must have been really hungry.”
Devan gave an internal shake of his head at Brett’s comment. For how intelligent Brett was his continual lack of knowledge concerning animals and their behavior was comical. In some ways Devan wanted Brett to keep on thinking it was something natural, but to disregard the anomalous could be dangerous to all of them, Laney as well now that she was linked to them.
“It’s a very rare occurrence for wolves to eat a pack member,” Devan explained. “That they would break into a building just for the purpose of acquiring a convenient meal is statistically improbable.”
“What’s your assessment of the situation?” Brett inquired, setting the bones back down.
Devan bypassed that question for one of his own. “Have you been able to find anything of value?” He prevaricated, walking over to the microscope.
Brett followed. “Not from these samples; maybe if I had something to compare them to.”
“Since these are the only wolves seen in the area in decades that might be a problem, and I’m not sure we have the time to send away for some samples.”
“Yes, well, there’s the crux of the matter.” Brett sighed heavily, paused, and then continued. “I know we’re both thinking the same thing.”
Devan stiffened in denial, not wanting to accept that possibility. “That’s quite a theoretical leap,” he replied gruffly.
Brett walked up behind him laying a hand on his shoulder. “We have to acknowledge that it’s a possibility.”
Devan pulled away, uncomfortable with the tacit comfort, and finally acknowledged what he’d been trying to discount the entire afternoon. His shoulders slumped in acquiesce and everything that had taken place that day abruptly caught up with him. He walked over to the nearest chair and collapsed into it feeling immensely tired. Pulling off his bloody gloves he tossed them across the room into the trash can.
Brett gave him an extensive worried look before making his way over to the bones on the desk. He picked up the vertebra. “I might be able to get something of interest out of the marrow.” He mused distractedly.
Devan closed his eyes listening absent-mindedly to Brett’s mumblings as he shuffled around the small office; the clanking of instruments slowly faded into the background as exhaustion claimed mind and body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A faint light and flickering shadows on his eyelids was the next thing Devan became aware of; that and the unfamiliar arrangement of his body. He was in a vertical position when he normally slept horizontally. His head was tilted in a very uncomfortable angle that was causing an ache to settle in his trapezius muscle.
Devan reached up and rubbed it as he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Brett asleep in his office chair, his head resting in the crook of his arm on the corner of the desk. He was surprisingly quiet. Normally his snores could be heard reverberating throughout the house.
Devan’s eyes lit on the clock, and the time of 8:04 a.m. displayed on its face caused him to straighten in shock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept past six in the morning. On the other hand, yesterday hadn’t been a normal day.
Unfolding his body from the chair Devan stretched relieving a multitude of cramped muscles. The ceiling was in the way of his reach so he had to arch backward to get the complete stretch he wanted. He noted that his injured arm exhibited no twinges or pain of any kind.
Lowering his arms Devan observed that Brett had made headway on the bones he’d brought in last night. With his customary silent tread Devan made his way over to the table and could see that all the bones had been meticulously drilled and shaved in an effort of finding any amount of marrow still available for examination.
The microscope had a slide positioned on the stage under the 1000x magnification lens.
Bending over Devan’s only thought was a profound desire for there to be nothing of interesting upon it.
Studying the sample Devan breathed out a deep sigh a relief at finding no anomalies on the slide. The wolf was a normal albeit deformed aberration. He’d been worried for nothing, they wouldn’t have to leave. The rush of joy he experienced made him almost lightheaded.
He moved the stage and his joy vanished bit by bit. This shaving of marrow, obtained from the vertebra he’d fetched, was brimming with eukaryotes. Which would seem like a good thing, but in this case it wasn’t. The quantity he was observing was disproportionate to what would normally be seen in this sample size—at least three times as much. There was also a dimension issue between the cells, half where of a normal size and the other half where a fraction larger.
Devan straightened in dismay but only slight shock. The wolf’s marrow displayed unmistakable signs of genetic manipulation. There was no other way to explain the proliferation and variances in the sizes of the red blood cells. He hadn’t seen it in the previous samples because when the cells traveled out of the bone marrow they had gone through the cycles of diffusion and osmosis equalizing the pressure of intercellular and interstitial fluids, which in turn had made all the eukaryotes uniformly equal in size.
Deep down Devan had been deceiving himself into thinking that the abnormalities in the wolves were just natural aberrations when everything about the wolves screamed transmutation: the way they had trotted onto the school grounds with no fear of the humans around them; their focus centered on the scent they had obviously been trained to hunt; jumping through glass windows just to get to that quarry; and then going back for their dead pack member and dragging it away so no one could examine or identify it. None of that was even close to normal wolf behavior.
That’s why they had been following his trail in the woods surrounding the house, and why they had headed straight for his jeep and the storage building at the school. It was likely that they were programmed to locate him.
Were they also programmed to kill him? The way the wolf had jumped through the window seemed like a definite indication of a kill agenda.
Brett had enlightened Devan about his initial experiments; how he had first begun manipulating the genetic material of certain animals to make them larger and stronger, and now it looked as if The Company had been able to duplicate those first initial experiments. Devan wonder how much more they’ve been able to replicate.
His gaze flickered to Brett who hadn’t moved from his slumped position in the chair. Devan could hardly believe Brett had fallen asleep after seeing this evidence. Devan would have expected Brett to have w
oken him up right away so they could make an immediate escape.
Devan had thought he had enough on his plate worrying about The Company searching for them, but now he had to contend with these wolves and whatever else was out there hunting them. Life just got more complicated when he’d thought it had been complicated enough.
Devan hesitated on waking Brett up. Brett would want to make plans to leave right away, and Devan could see his point in that assessment…but still he hesitated. The thought of leaving was causing a heavy knot to form in his stomach, just as it had done every other time he’d thought of leaving. There was really no choice though; their lives were at stake, as well as Laney’s if she was anywhere near him…which she seemed to be a lot of the time.
But she was safe at home now, and that was where he wanted her…safe. And if Devan had to leave to make sure she stayed that way, he would. No matter how painful the thought of leaving stabbed through him, the thought of her in danger was infinitely more painful.
Devan was hit with a shocking revelation…he cared deeply for her.
From the first moment he’d met her she had been working her way past his defenses. The genuine kindness that she displayed, the endearing stubbornness of her character, her unique scent that called to him, and the sensations he experienced each time her eyes locked onto his; all of it…everything about her…had penetrated the walls Devan had erected around himself.
He hadn’t seen it coming, and he wondered how he was going to function rationally with these feelings gnawing at him.
A sleepy snort from Brett’s hunched over form roused Devan from his stupor, and he headed for the kitchen—might as well get something to eat before Brett woke up and rushed them out.
Devan wasn’t sure if it was the noise from cooking, although he thought he’d been fairly quiet, or the smell of the food that woke Brett from sleep, but he heard the clearing his throat in the other room before he came into view rubbing at sleep lines left from his shirt sleeve.