Wolf Pack_Invasion and Conquest

by Rob Buckman

  The enemy rarely announces his intentions before they starts shooting, and even in the relative safety of the house, and the cold winter night outside, Decker didn't take any unnecessary risks. Going through the ritual of cleaning his weapons each night was also a moment of quiet contemplation for him, as he reviewed the day’s activities and what he planned for tomorrow, which in this case wasn’t much of either. His MP3 player still functioned, and he half listened to classical music softly playing in the background while he worked, thinking back to a time before the aliens arrived, a time when he now realized he was happy. Despite his chosen profession, he was good at what he did, and sad in a way he was giving it all up. His CO said this was his last mission, a breeze and something he could do in his sleep, never imagining it would turn into something like this. He smiled slightly and wondered what his CO would say about him forming his own SAS unit, all female and as tough as any number of guys that passed through ‘Selection’.

  The 276-mile hump from Tehachapi to Bridgeport through desert heat and dust storms, to freezing cold and blizzards put the ‘High Walk’ or ‘Fan Dance’ over Pen Y Fan, and the 40-mile ‘Endurance’ march over Brecon Beacons to shame. He smiled at the thought of taking these ‘ladies’ to England and having them enter ‘Selection’. Finishing up he checked Joann, seeing her curled up inside her sleeping bag, a sure sign she was cold. Decker took the extra blanket off his rack and gently spread it over her, wishing she'd obey him and find a proper bed to sleep in. Other than physical force, he couldn’t think of a way to stop her sleeping near him every night. How long she’d been doing this he didn’t know, not even realizing she was, until now. The next morning it was still snowing, but not as hard, and wearing their white ghillie suits, the girls stood outside the courthouse looking like sixty odd hairy polar bears as Decker walk down the front rank, all looking rather sheepish. Whatever went on during the night between the girls, he had to assume they’d sorted out their differences.

  “Alright, ladies! I see you are all here, so I must assume you still want to continue our little walk to ‘Norden’.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” They shouted.

  “Good. For today’s exercise, we are going to divide up into your respective teams and head over to the north part of town near the airport. It’s mostly housing over there and we might find a few useful items, canned food being high on the list, so empty rucks and remember, three person Teams at all time.”

  “We need a few um… feminine hygiene products, sir.” Decker’s lips twitched.

  “You ladies know what you need, so I’ll leave finding those up to you. Move out!”

  The one thing that worried Decker was the footprints in the new snow, and if that would be a giveaway to the aliens. The sky was still overcast with the promise of more snow and so far, they hadn’t seen any destroyers flying over. The damn things made little sound, but it was the star shaped drones that worried him more. They had to have better sensor equipment for phase two of this invasion, expecting them to be use in search and destroy missions, or in conjunction with their bio-mechs. Decker was betting they were waiting for spring to start, as the winter would kill off more humans and force the rest to huddle closer together in small towns and villages for protection and survival. That meant they'd concentrate their efforts on communities like this and that worried Decker. If they couldn’t move until spring when the passes cleared, they’d be in even greater danger of getting caught, yet moving the team up country closer to the next pass put them in danger of freezing to death if another blizzard hit.

  This winter was different from the one in the map-pad data base, as usually Bridgeport only got about two to three feet of snow in an average year. They were already at five feet with more on the way from the look of it. As a precaution against the Pack having to bug out in an emergency, Decker set up an emergency fall back cache in an abandoned mine several miles from town. Apart from the supplies, he left their spare weapons and extra ammo, courtesy of the local gun store that hadn’t been stripped, plus all of the carts. The extensive mine went right through the mountain and came out the other side overlooking a small valley, and ‘Twin Lakes’ road. This was perfect from Decker’s point of view as they could take off up 395 after a short hump. Not being much of an expert on mining, Decker had no idea what they mined here, gold maybe, silver or copper.

  Another week went by, but at least they'd stopped bitching at each other and started bitching about Decker. Each day he'd lead a party of girls to a different part of town and load up with food and supply for their across country trek, and to sweep the surrounding area for game and unwanted visitors. Game they found, but if there were any, the local assholes didn't venture out in the dead of winter. After bringing down a second large deer with a crossbow, half the party moved out into the clearing to dress the carcass, and ran into a surprise.

  "What the hell!" The point held up a clenched fist and went to a kneeling position. The rest of the party followed suit, except Decker who ran at a crouch to the point's position.

  "I'll be go to hell." A deep-throated growl sounded by his elbow, and without looking he reached out and stroked Max big head. "Easy boy. Let's not get into a fight right now."

  "Those wolves must be the ones hanging around town."

  "Yeah, I know. With the humans gone I should have anticipated we'd run into the local wolf pack sooner or later."

  "Looks like they are going to give us an argument about whose kill it is."

  "I'm more worried about Max and Goldie getting into a knock down drag out fight with this pack." Decker put his hand on Max head and scratched him behind the ear. The first time he'd done that he'd almost lost his hand.

  "Easy Max. Let's see if we can work this out."

  Slinging his rifle, Decker pulled his thigh knife and carefully moved towards the deer carcass, Max pacing alongside with Goldie off to his side, eye to eye with the alpha female. Both Alpha males had their hackles raised, growling, while behind them the rest of the small pack lined up, ready to plunge into battle. At 105 pounds, Max wasn’t something Decker wanted to tangle with, and looking at the alpha wolf, Max outweighed him by about 20 pounds. The lean looking pack leader stood on the other side of the deer carcass, snarling at him and baring his teeth, ready to dispute ownership of the kill. Decker crouched low and shuffled slowly forward through the knee-deep snow toward the deer, speaking softly.

  “Okay big guy. Let’s not get into a fight over this. There’s enough for everyone.”

  “Should we just shoot them?” Krista asked in a soft voice.

  “No, no need for that. They are just trying to survive like we are.”

  “If you say so, boss man.” Despite the growling from the pack, Decker heard the ‘snick’ as Krista took her weapon off safety.

  As he sidled up to the carcass, the alpha wolf made several lunges at him, snarling louder, but he backed off a little more each time, showing it was more a bluff than anything, and switched his intense gaze between him and Max. Finally, Max had had enough and before Decker could stop him, he attacked, just as the alpha wolf made another lunge at Decker. If his mate thought she could get in on the fight, she never got the chance as Goldie leapt over the carcass and took the fight to her.

  “Shit!” Decker muttered and backed off, drawing his sidearm.

  Several of the younger males made motions to interfere until a couple of shots kicked snow and dirt into their faces. Between that and the sound, they backed off and let the two alpha males fight it out. The difference in age and weight was against the old wolf, and it wasn’t long before Max had him by the throat and choked the life out of him. Goldie on the other hand got into a biting, snarling contest with the alpha female, and bitten on her foreleg as they rolled around in the snow. That only made her angry and she went for the snout, locking on and sinking her teeth in. The alpha female squealed in pain, blood started pumping from her nose, as sure sign she was done for.

  “Jesus! That was the most amazing thing I’ve ev
er seen.” Krista breathed.

  Both alphas died within minutes of each other with Max and Goldie standing over their fallen victims, but it wasn’t over yet as a young male charged Max. He wasn’t having any of that and smashed into the younger male full force. That knocked the challenger down and Max stood over him, daring him to continue. Instead, the younger wolf rolled onto his back, a sign of submission as it exposed his belly and genitals to attack. Decker cut off a laugh as Max added insult to injury by pissing on the unfortunate loser. The other three males did the same as Max stalked over to them, growling softly, whereupon he pissed on them as well, marking them, and making him the alpha leader. The other four females went onto their bellies, crawling over to Max, and tried to lick his blood covered face. He growled and snapped at them, even nipping one on the ear, thereby establishing who was in charge.

  “Well, I guess they know whose boss now.” Krista chuckled.

  “Yeah, maybe I should nip all you ladies on the ear as well.”

  “Not if you want to keep your manhood you won’t.” Genie Clement laughed.

  “Yeah, there is that.” Decker smiled as Max came trotting back.

  “Well done, Max. Guess you have a few more ladies to look after.” He said petting the bloodstained head.

  “Wonder what Goldie will have to say about that.”

  “I don’t think Max has as much trouble with females as I do.” He muttered, carefully examining Max’s torn ear. Goldie came limping up on three legs with blood running down her front leg. “Hey there girl. Looks like the Doc will need to stitch you and your mate up a little.” From the look of it she was bitten pretty bad.

  “Cut the rear half of the deer off and leave the rest for the pack to eat. I’m going to carry Goldie back to base and get her stitched up.”

  “Ten-four boss man. We'll take care of things here.” As Krista started walking toward the deer carcass, the wolves started to growl until Max let out a bigger growl and they backed off.

  “That’s telling them big guy.” Max waited until the girls had the hind quarters cut off, loaded and on their way back to base before he ran to catch up with Decker, walking beside him and looking up at Goldie. She in turn licked Decker’s face as if to say thank you. Max of course objected to Doc stitching up his ear until Decker held his head and soothed him. Even so, he growled in displeasure each time the needle went in.

  “That’s it, you tell her tough guy.”

  “He’s as bad as you when it comes to stitching you up.” Doc Mason grumbled.

  “I did not growl at you.” Decker protested.

  “Right you didn’t, but you would if you could.” Goldie didn’t make such a fuss, as she seemed to understand what the Doc was doing. She did whine a bit and try to pull her paw away.

  “Tell me about your wife and daughter.” The doctor murmured as she worked. Decker’s jaw tightened and his gray eyes took on a dark look. For a second he thought to tell the Doc to go to hell, and then thought better of it.

  “Not much to tell. We met at the ‘Newmarket’ pub and started dating, but I told her I couldn’t make it a regular thing without telling her what I did. Not that it took her long to figure it out. We had a lot of fun between operations, doing all the things young people do in and out of bed.” Decker grinned.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Don’t forget I’m an army wife so I could say, been there and done that.”

  “And have the tee shirt to prove it I bet.”

  “No, just slutty lingerie.” She grinned. “And so?”

  “Told her that she could date other guys if she wanted to, and she said she would. Found out after I came back from my third operation that she stopped dating other blokes after our first date. She’d wait for me at the pub, or leave a message where to meet her when I got back.”

  “How long did you date?”

  “Two years before I popped the question.” Decker pulled his ear lobe and looked a little embarrassed. “Actually, she proposed to me.” Doc Mason laughed.

  “Too scared, huh?”

  “Yeah, you could say that. Without breaking the official secrets act I told her what I did, and gave all the reason for her not to marry me, you know, getting killed on an operation, wounded, tore up and all that.”

  “And she wouldn’t have it, right?”

  “Right. I told her about PTSD that a few of the lads got after they left the service, not that it affected me so much, but I did wonder what I’d do with myself after my time was up. She said it didn’t matter as long as I was doing what made me happy.”

  “And what was that?” Decker laughed.

  “After playing with all the neat toys we had at our disposal, it was going to be hard having a limp dick civilian telling me I couldn’t play with them anymore.”

  “I can see that. My husband felt the same way.”

  “Yeah, going from walking around with enough fire power to start a small war, to stacking shelves at the local supermarket seemed like a real let down.”

  “So, your solution?”

  “Save up and buy a decent size fishing boat for one, and moving to the Caribbean. I like the heat, so that felt like the best place to retire to.”

  “A bit quiet after all the excitement of being in the SAS.”

  “True, but after a while you get fed up with people shooting at you or trying to blow you up.”

  “I read stories about what you people did, much of it sounding like something out of an adventure story. If it wasn’t for my husband’s connections and reading redacted reports, I’d have said a lot of it was bullshit...” Decker chuckled as she cleaned Goldie’s wound and bandaged it, getting a face licking in thanks.

  “There are a lot of stories that never made it into the press, just little things that we knew about and got a few laughs out of.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, at one time we had this little game we had to play where we were supposed to get as far away from Hereford as possible in forty-eight hours without being caught, but the CO put a stop to it when he got a call from Australia.”

  “Oh, my lord.” The doctor chuckled. “What else?”

  “Oh, nothing much. One time we got rousted out of bed late one Sunday night, still half in the bag after we’d been out on a weekend pass. They bundled us into trucks in whatever we were dressed in and took us to an airfield. They put us on an aircraft with parachutes, a map, and not much else and chucked us out after several hours flying just before dawn.”

  “Where did they drop you?”

  “That was the point. We didn’t know. We were just told we had to make it back to Hereford without getting caught.” Decker smiled. “They didn’t tell us that the police and local military had been informed of our landing.”

  “Where did you end up?”

  “Me and my mate landed in a field somewhere in Germany, but we didn’t find that out for a couple of days. Hell, we weren’t even on the map they’d given us.” Doc Mason nodded.

  “Escape and evasion training.”

  “Right, we had to consider they’d dropped us in enemy territory and I was still in my pajamas, great coat, and slippers.”

  “Not exactly survival gear. What did you do?”

  “Oh, nothing much. We wandered about for a few days until we’d worked out where we were, and at least got on the map. Thankfully, we ran into a bunch of Royal Engineers out on a bridge building exercise, 7 Independent Field Squadron if I remember, and they helped us out.”

  “Nice of them. Weren’t they supposed to ‘capture’ you?”

  “Yes, they were, but the Engineers are an independent bunch and we had a lot of respect for them. First in and last out as they say.”

  “As in?”

  “Before the tip of the spear can go in, the Royal Engineers clear a path through a mine field, build the bridge, or blow up an obstruction in the way. They are also the last out, laying mines or blowing bridges after the last troops cross. Over the years they paid a heavy price.”

&nb
sp; “They helped you out, and?”

  “We got back to base a few days later and a weekend pass out of it.” Goldie in the meantime insisted on limping over to Max and licking his bad ear, which made Max growl at her. She didn’t care and licked his face instead.

  “Oh, by the way. I forgot to tell you, Goldie is pregnant.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. We’ll have to take care of them when she drops.”

  “I’m sure the team will take good care of her pups.” Something made Max sit up, and he padded to the door and looked back at Decker.

  “Now what?” Decker opened the doors for him and to his surprise found the team of wolves standing under the bushes out of the snow. Max rushed over and reasserted his dominance before coming back and sitting down at Decker’s side.

  “I’ll be dammed.” He muttered scratching the back of his head. “Looks like we have a real pack of wolves with us now.”

  “Hope they stay friendly.”

  To answer that question, Decker walked over to the pack with Max beside him just to see what would happen. They backed off at first but after kneeling for a while, a few of the bolder ones came over and hesitantly sniffed him. He didn’t dare try touching any of them but he motioned Doctor Mason over while he stroked Max. The males padded around him nervously while the young females retreated under the tree and sat there watching them. Doc was a little nervous about coming as several of the wolves growled at her. Max put a stop to that by bounding over and grabbed the young male by the scruff of his neck. The male whined and went onto his back to expose his belly in a sign of submission. Max growled in his face before coming back and rubbing up against the Doctor, who in turn scratched him behind the ear and stroked his head. To Decker’s mind, that established that Max as the alpha male accepted the humans and they were not to be attacked. As reinforcement, Decker had the second hunting Team cut up the deer carcasses they’d brought in and distribute chunks of bloody meat to the pack. Wolves were smart and it didn’t take long for them to understand that hanging around humans meant free food. After that when Decker went out hunting with Max and Goldie, the wolf pack ghosted along on their flanks like gray and brown watchdogs. The winter deepened but the scavenging parties found enough canned food in the abandoned houses, markets, and big-rig supply trucks to keep them going. In the meantime, Jen managed to find a lot of what she needed to make the device, but making the segments had her baffled until Decker brought in a two-inch by twelve inch PVC pipe spool.