Ravage

by MacCraw

  …

  Kirkley hadn’t the slightest idea of how long he’d been out, but for once he felt comfortable and secure. Every other time he’d slept, he had woken up to a wolf, gunfire, or a bandit; it was nice to actually wake up in a safe and friendly environment.

  “Hey, you’re awake”, the woman watching over him said in a gentle, calming tone.

  “Who are?” Kirkley asked before coughing violently, “…You?”

  “I’m Bridget”, she smiled. “Boy, you guys were lucky to have survived through that monstrous blizzard.”

  “No foolin’”, remarked Kirkley. “Anyways, thanks for reeling us in and bringing us inside, Bridget.”

  “Oh, no problem”, Bridget replied.

  “So you live out here, alone?”

  “No; I live with my husband, but he’s not feeling good”, Bridget concisely explained.

  “How do you make a living out here? These subzero conditions, strong winds, and wolves running amok would be enough to bring me and my lads down.”

  “People tend to come through here in a pretty bad condition”, said Bridget. “It’s kind of a tradeoff – I tend to the wounded or those in need of somewhere to rest, and in gratitude they give me some of their food.”

  “Sounds like a pretty good setup”, Kirkley commented.

  “I suppose so”, Bridget nodded. “So what brings you and your people out this way?”

  “We’re moving towards London”, said Kirkley. “We’ve discovered that the Italians are working on a special countermeasure against these beasts, and we’re trying to at least get out of the UK. We came through Glasgow recently, but it’s completely overrun. There was an infestation of bandits in that shitty city, and the dog soldiers came through and began butchering everything in the city. We built a car and drove out, but it ran out of gas and we were forced to walk to a gas station several miles away. The gas station was destroyed when our late party member Connor sacrificed himself to annihilate a pack of wolves.”

  “I’m… sorry for your loss, mate”, Bridget sighed.

  “Well, with his death he ensured the survival of the rest of us. And at least he took out some dogs. Some is a shitload better than none.”

  “Are any of your folks injured?” asked Bridget.

  “The majority of us have been injured in one way or another”, said Kirkley. “Me, the other guy and the girl with the scarf survived a helicopter crash, but were wounded upon landing. Hannah got shot in the rotator cuff, but she’s sort of recovering from that. That being said, she’s still in a really bad condition due to both the gunshot wound and the fact that she had fallen unconscious prior to arriving here.”

  “Well that’s a long way from good now, ain’t it?”

  “Indeed. Do you have anything that might help her?”

  “I’ll heat up some chicken soup”, Bridget smiled. “It’ll help her a little bit better, at least. That, and put some food in her.”

  “Sounds pretty good to me.”

  Kirkley gently tugged Hannah, who coughed as she woke up. Kirkley shed a tear because just from looking at his beloved Hannah, he could tell how bad she was doing. Her sickness may not have been fatal, but it was probably unbearable. With each violent, congested cough, Hannah’s head recoiled back like a rocket launcher, and she was jittering and shuddering around uncontrollably.

  “Hey, babe; you okay?”

  “What do you think, shit-for-brains?” Hannah lightly chuckled before viciously coughing once more.

  “At least your sarcasm isn’t ill”, Kirkley commented

  “No doubt about that”, Hannah smiled.

  “I’m gonna bundle you up under this blanket, alright?” Kirkley softly said as he carefully pulled a nearby blanket up and over his shivering girlfriend. “And Bridget’s gonna bring you some soup.”

  In about 10 or 15 minutes, Bridget returned with a thermos full of nice, warm chicken soup. Upon grabbing the thermos, Hannah immediately felt heated up. Hannah then proceeded to slowly consume the soup, feeling much better by the time the thermos was empty.

  “That was some good fucking soup”, Hannah remarked. “Hot, too.”

  “Hey, man”, Pack groaned as he came to, “I want some soup.”

  “Too late, mate”, Bridget chuckled, “This girl got the last of it.”

  “Oh, come on!” exclaimed Pack, “I fuckin’ hauled her unconscious ass over here!”

  “First come, first serve”, Kirkley shrugged. “Pack, here’s a can of mashed potatoes. Chow down, and don’t choke on your own stubbornness.”

  “Eat a dick, Kirkley”, Pack snarled, flipping Kirkley off before receiving the can opener and opening his dinner. As he scarfed down his food like a famished prisoner, Pack suddenly tilted his head upwards to see the outlines of at least three dog men standing within the trees, eyeballing the humans inside the vulnerable cottage. What scared Pack was the fact that they hadn’t made a move yet, which gave him suspicious feelings.

  “…Kirkley”, Pack lowly murmured, “Look up…”

  Reflexively, everybody minus Hannah grabbed their firearms, but at the last second they held their fire and narrowly avoided expending valuable bullets on a bunch of observant, seemingly-passive wolf soldiers.

  “…Why aren’t they attacking?” Kylie nervously asked.

  Pack went into an instinctual overdrive, and got right up into Bridget’s face. “Are you one of them, you witch?!” he angrily snarled, which caused Bridget to tumble backward and squeal in fear. Kirkley immediately intervened, and furiously shoved Pack off of the frightened woman.

  “Stand down, Pack!” Kirkley ordered.

  “She’s like a fuckin’ sleeper agent!” Pack insisted. “She’s in league with them somehow! That’s the only reason they’re not tearing us to ribbons right now!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa”, Bridget said as she regained her footing. “I don’t know why they’re stalking us like this! I haven’t seen the dog soldiers in over a year, but thanks to you guys, they know where to look for an additional meal.”

  “Alright, hit the brakes and grind it to a halt”, Kylie announced. “Nobody is to blame for what’s going on. We don’t know what’s going on, but we can at least work together to try and hold the line.”

  “You’re right, Kylie”, Pack remarked. “And the way we hold the line is to push the enemy back!”

  “Pack, wait-!”

  Without an ounce of discipline and control, Pack began to wildly fire into the dogs. Poet took aim with her rifle and shot one of the wolves in the head, causing it to drop to the snowy ground and scurry off into the forest. Surprisingly enough, it took little ammunition to send the dog soldiers into full retreat, and it left everybody even more mortified and paranoid. First, the bloodthirsty monsters refrained from attacking the humans when they were most vulnerable, and then they just suddenly fled the scene, which is something that they rarely, if ever, did.

  “Okay, that’s pretty spooky”, Kylie nervously stammered.

  “Hey, at least I got those motherfuckers to run like the dogs they are”, Pack grinned as he exchanged the depleted magazine for a full one.

  “But you wasted a bunch of your ammunition for no reason. They didn’t seem interested in attacking for some reason”, Kirkley said, “So they were essentially just like taunting you. Trying to trick you into wasting your ammo.”

  “I dunno; it looks like I blew their fucking brains out. Poet and I, that is.”

  “I’m still kind of skeptical about the whole nature of that encounter”, said Kylie, before turning to look around the perimeter of the living room. “Wait, where’d Bridget go?”

  …

  Unbeknownst to the frightened survivors, the seemingly passive woman Bridget had snuck away from them during the brief pandemonium. After going into the downstairs bedroom and closing all doors off, Bridget opened up the wardrobe, which had a false back panel that slid sideways to reveal a set of descending stairs into a hidden cellar. Bridget walked down into the ce
llar, where a deep growling noise began to make itself apparent as a wolf hiding down in the cellar. As Bridget got down deeper into the cellar, she attempted to rid her nostrils of a rather pungent scent; the scent of death and blood.

  “Hey, dear”, Bridget smiled as she stood before her wounded husband, “We have company over. So brush your teeth and comb your hair.”

  Bridget’s husband’s teeth were stained a thick crimson, and his black fur was scraggly and misplaced. He was about 7’4”, give or take, and he had a pretty unsettling wolfish grin that made his deep black eyes look even more horrifying. Bridget’s husband had a pretty odd sense of decoration, next to the pile of towels that he slept on top of, piles of bones and human skulls with small amounts of blood, flesh and sinew still stuck to them were littered about. Blood stains and claw marks formed a rather unique wallpaper, and the shattered racks of wine bottles gave the wolf’s larder that much more of a dangerous feel to it.

  The creature was obviously a man once, but a fateful encounter with a ferocious wolf changed that in short order. Bridget had survived the attack, and hadn’t been scratched or bitten, but a little while later her canine husband became injured by a band of survivors; although he had butchered all of them, one of them had jabbed him with a sharpened piece of metal that became stuck between two bones. The rod would occasionally brush up against his internal organs, which would cause him immense pain with every breath. Due to his wounded state, he was not in a condition to prowl the Scottish wilderness and hunt like the primal monster he had become, and since Bridget knew that this creature was her husband, she took it upon herself to nurture and protect him. And part of the nurturing meant feeding him. Unwary human survivors in small groups or alone would do just fine.

  The husband wolf growled angrily upon sighting his wife, who he felt like he was being neglected and unfed by.

  “Easy, dear”, Bridget whispered, gently crouching down, “I know it’s been a while since we’ve had dinner, but I’ve got five big treats for you. These ones seem kind of… observant, so give me some time to prepare supper.”

  Although the husband was about ready to devour his wife due to at least a few weeks without a proper meal, he understood that if his caretaker were to die, then there would be nobody to bring him more food. He hissed in compliance, and gently rested his massive head back down on his bed and shut his eyes.

  Bridget slowly resurfaced as casually as possible, to avoid unnecessary suspicion from the already cautious survivors.

  “Ah, there you are, Bridget”, Kirkley sighed. “We got kind of scared when you disappeared when somebody went berserk with their gun.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Oh, I just heard the gunfire and shouting and hid in the bedroom”, Bridget fibbed.

  “Well wait a second”, Kylie pointed out, “The volley only lasted for 30 seconds; a minute at most. Why were you hiding in the bedroom for like 5 or more minutes?”

  “It’s basic cabin survival instinct, dear”, said Bridget. “You stay hidden until you feel certain that the threat has moved on.”

  “Well, yeah, I do suppose you’re right”, Kylie shrugged. “One time I went camping, and there was a bear outside the cabin’s bedroom window. Right before he spotted me I hid under the bed and made a small line of sight to ensure that he couldn’t see me but I could see him. After about 5 minutes he left, and I waited a little longer to make sure he wasn’t trying to trick me.”

  “Long story, but good logic”, Kirkley commented.

  “We should probably get some sleep”, yawned Pack. “I dunno about you lot, but I’m going ‘z’-hunting. Dibs on the-”

  Poet immediately pounced up and crashed onto the luxurious bed, before smirking at Pack and shutting her eyes with a smug look of satisfaction written across her face.

  “…Bed…”

  …

  After a brief quarrel, everybody bar Bridget had fallen asleep, and it just so happened that Hannah had been chosen to be the main course for Bridget’s hungry husband. Hannah was weakened considerably, and she was the only member of Kirkley’s party who was without a firearm.

  Hannah was out cold. Bridget knew this, and took full advantage of this. Bridget slid her slender but durable arms under Hannah and carefully lifted the sweet-but-sour girl up. Once the feast was in her arms, Bridget prepared to carry it down into the dark cellar for her famished husband with an appetite as ferocious as himself. But as luck would have it, Kirkley’s bond with Hannah was as strong as the bond of Bridget and her wolf man, and he just so happened to wake up slowly as Hannah was hauled down to what Bridget intended to be her death. Rage boiled in Kirkley’s eyes, and knowing that he would need his most impulsive friend’s aid, he firmly shook Pack, but kept his finger pressed to Pack’s lips.

  “What the fuck, man?” Pack whispered before looking towards the open wardrobe leading into the morgue of a cellar; “What the fuck is she doing to Hannah?!”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m going to kill Bridget and leave her down there.”

  “Should we wake the others?” Pack hesitantly asked.

  “Against my better judgment, no. There’s no time, and that’d cause too much commotion. Now come on.”

  Pack and Kirkley cautiously crept down after Bridget, making absolutely sure to avoid alerting Bridget. Once she was at the door leading into the cellar, however, she paused, which terrified the men. They froze in place, praying to Su that this minion of Sat wouldn’t turn around and catch them both. To their surprise, however, the inattentive Bridget didn’t look back, and she continued to march into the lair of the wolf. Kirkley and Pack nodded to each other before diving into the room with their guns raised, shouting aggressively as they quickly searched for the treacherous swine that abducted Hannah and deceived them all. As their weapon-mounted flashlights scanned the walls, they heard a light tapping from the doorway they came from. The men spun around to see the distinct ghastly silhouette of Bridget standing in the doorway, and before they could train their sights on her, Bridget slammed the door and locked it.

  “Piece of shit!” Pack snarled as he angrily slugged the door.

  “Shh, shh, shh!” Kirkley urged, getting Pack to simmer down so he could hear the low grumbling of the dog man in the cellar with them. Unfortunately, the wolf had already become aware of the presence of fresh meat, and roared as he lunged forward. With their backs against the wall, Pack and Kirkley opened fire with their weapons, brightening up the room with blinding muzzle flashes. Unlike the other wolves Kirkley and the others had battled, this one seemed more affected by the bullets and buckshot, and growled in pain as each agonizing shot connected. Finally, the creature could not take it anymore, and went bolting off into the darkness. In a short, impulsive burst, Pack loudly fired off another barrage from his MP5, which provided brief light and verified that their aggressor had left the scene, which had given them a small window of time to search for Hannah.

  “Hannah?!” Kirkley bellowed as he frantically scanned the room with his flashlight.

  “Over here, mate!” Pack yelled in response. “Found her!”

  Kirkley dashed over to Pack and dropped his weapon in favor of Hannah. “You alright, Hannah?” Kirkley asked as he gently ran his fingers through her hair.

  “I could swing for a glass of wine or two”, she smiled.

  “Are you combat-capable?” Pack said.

  “If I had a gun, yes.”

  Pack reached into his holster and gave Hannah his pistol, as well as the magazines for it. “If I run outta bullets in this gun, you owe me.”

  “Short, controlled bursts, mate”, Kirkley remarked.

  Once Hannah had been rescued, the trio were back in the predicament on how to escape the confines of the cellar; this situation was aggravated by a lack of visibility and being trapped in a cellar with a creature that could see in the dark and soak up bullets like an inhuman sponge.

  “Maybe we should’ve called for Kylie and Poet after all…” Pack groan
ed.

  If prayers existed in this dystopian world, then Pack’s were answered. The door flew open, and with a smirk, Poet stood seductively in the doorway with an enticing wink.

  “Oh, fuck yes! You actually did something useful for once!” Pack cheered, which annoyed Poet.

  “Knock it off, Hudson”, said Kirkley. “Anyways, thanks for the rescue, buddy.”

  Without hesitation the team filed out of the room and closed the door right behind them, just in case the husband wolf dwelling in the depths of the hidden cellar was hiding in the shadows and ready to bolt out the door. Upon walking up the stairs, however, they received a grim shock – Bridget stood atop the stairs with a gun pointed into Kylie’s ear, and her spare arm strangling Kylie to the point where the American could scarcely breathe.

  “Move a muscle and I’ll blow her head off.”

  Not willing to lose their friend, the team reluctantly complied.

  “Drop your guns. Put them down before I put her down!”

  “How are we supposed to stay still and drop our weapons at the same time?” Pack sarcastically asked before Bridget tightened her grip on Kylie.

  “Pack, seriously; ditch your MP5”, Kirkley insisted as he lowered his shotgun. Once everybody had set their guns down, Bridget began to walk down towards them, but then gave the next command in the ferocious game of Simon Says.

  “Open that door, and step in there. My husband’s not had a good meal in weeks.”

  Looks of horror were stamped onto the faces of the now-unarmed survivors, but they got a spark of hope when Kylie grinned and winked at them. Although they knew that she was about to bust a move and turn the tide of the standoff, they didn’t quite understand what it was that she had planned.

  As Bridget slowly marched Kylie and the others down towards the cellar, Kylie cartoonishly flung her legs forward as she simultaneously dove backwards; since Bridget’s arm was essentially tethered to Kylie, who was a bit bigger than Bridget, the latter was yanked down as well. With this brief but essential window of time, Hannah took aim with her pistol and began dumping bullets into Bridget’s right hand, causing her to release her pistol. With Kylie’s weight pinning her left arm and as consequence the body attached to it anchored to the floor, Hannah fired a trio of shots into Bridget’s knees, immobilizing her while Kylie got up and took the pistol from the hand of Bridget.