by Terry Yates
“You won’t get away with this!” Zack screamed at the man. Sooner or later, someone will wonder what happened to us!”
“No, my young friend,” the man chuckled. “You people simply vanished into the hurricanes…washed out to see like the rest of the refuse from this place.
Kyler looked at Zora, who was looking at the woman…and damned if she wasn’t smiling again…and it wasn’t just one of those “I’ll laugh in the face of death” smiles. It was one of those “I’m gonna pull your colon out through your nostrils” smiles.
The man stepped back as the soldiers formed a line in front of him.
“On my ready!” he commanded, raising a hand. “Ready!”
The soldiers simultaneously pulled back the levers on their machine guns.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” screamed Potts, his hands in the “time out” position.
“What is it, Colonel?” the man asked, dropping his hand a few inches.
“Don’t we get any last words or anything?”
“Go ahead, Colonel,” the man told him, a little annoyed that he was going to have to wait a few extra seconds before killing them all.
“I’d just like to say that…I’m gonna kill you…you fuckin’ prick.”
The commander smiled at Potts’ temerity before raising his hand again.
Kyler felt Michael take his hand and grip it tightly. He saw FranAnne turn Lauren around and put her face and Kayla’s into her chest and covered the back of Lauren’s head with her hands, then put her own face over the top of her head. Sam was standing straight, arms at his side, looking stoic in the face of death. Zack looked nervous and white, but he also seemed resigned to his fate. His whole family, including his grandmother, would be completely wiped out in a span of four nights. Potts naturally glared at the man like a cat who was about to eat a six-foot three-inch, pock marked canary.
With Michael’s hand in his, Kyler tried to take Zora’s hand with the other one, but Zora pulled hers away. Ah good, she’s pissed again, he thought to himself. Women!
The man raised his hand again.
“Aim!”
As the man was about to lower his arm, a sudden burst of machinegun fire tore through the darkness. It was coming from the roof. Hawkins! With the exception of Potts, they had all forgotten about Hawkins. His machine gun fire quickly cut down two soldiers where they stood. Zora pushed Kyler aside, reached behind her back, and pulled her pistol. She had not dropped hers in surrender, but had tucked it into the back of her pants. She fired two shots hitting the lone woman soldier in the chest, knocking her hard to the ground.
The commander reached for his sidearm, but suddenly found Potts holding FranAnne’s gun under his chin. Kyler wanted to laugh out loud. That wily bastard had gotten himself punched to the ground…and hard…so that he could retrieve FranAnne’s weapon.
“Please just flinch one muscle,” he said, both jaws clamped tightly shut.
Potts cocked his pistol and jabbed it even harder under the man’s chin.
“Hold your fire!” the commander ordered loudly, no one sure if he was yelling at his troops or at Potts.
Everyone stopped shooting, even Hawkins who now stood up, gun aimed at the group. Zora and three of the soldiers were squared off, guns drawn and aimed.
“Easy now, Colonel Potts,” the man said. “You don’t want to do anything foolish.
“Oh but I do,” Potts came back, his voice raised a pitch. The bandage around his face made him look twice as mean as he ever had before. “I want to do something so foolish that a hundred years from now, people are going to say “Wow! That Potts! What an idiot. He put that baseball cap wearing worthless piece of shit’s pecker through a helicopter propeller blade before even asking him who he worked for or what was so important in that building that would make said worthless piece of shit murder a whole group of people, including an infant. Boy, that was foolish of him, wasn’t it?”
Potts quickly took his gun out from under the man’s chin and brought it down on the bridge of his nose, quickly followed by the sound of bones and cartilage breaking. Blood immediately shot out from his nostrils and from the gash on his nose. The man fell to the ground. Potts straddled him, bent down and began to pistol whip him, hitting him in the face again and again with the butt of the gun.
The soldiers weren’t sure what to do. The commander had told them to hold their fire. Zora and the three soldiers still continued to aim at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move.
A thunderous roar was heard and everyone turned to see the werewolf standing outside of the building.
“Oh shit!” One of the soldiers screamed as he raised his gun.
“What the fuck is that?” another screamed.
“That my friends is a werewolf, and if I were you, I’d run for my life…right now!” Kyler told them staring at the beast.
With this, everyone began to scatter except two soldiers who raised their guns at the creature. They began to fire as the werewolf began to move toward them. Bullet after bullet penetrated its already torn and ripped flesh, but the soldiers didn’t have any special cartridges, so they weren’t doing a lot of damage, only causing it to become more angry as it stomped its way through the hail of bullets.
The werewolf grabbed one of the soldiers under the arms, penetrating each armpit with its claws. He screamed in pain as the claws tore through flesh and muscle. The beast removed one talon, causing the soldier to scream even louder. It lifted the man’s head back, his baseball cap and night-vision goggles falling to the ground in the process. The monster opened its large, uneven mouth and bit through the man’s neck, almost severing his head. He tore away flesh and muscle and began to chew them hungrily. The other soldier continued shooting, but moved backwards as he did.
The werewolf dropped the dead soldier and roared in lustful delight. It didn’t seem to be feeling the soldier’s bullets at that moment. It crushed the dead man’s body with its massive foot and turned to the other soldier who had already started to run. The monster was on him in seconds, picking him up off of the ground and holding him up in the air, one hand digging into the man’s clothing, and the other clamped down on his scrotum. The man let out an agonizing scream as the werewolf began to walk toward the helicopter, which was still running, both sets of blades turning faster than the eye could see. When it reached the helicopter, it reared back both its arms and threw the man into the back blade. As the man shredded into pulp, the werewolf stood with its arms out and its mouth open, taking in all of the blood and flesh it could, making it resemble a kid who was standing in front of a broken fire-hydrant, enjoying the water that was splashing all over his hands and body.
Kyler and Zora ran into a large patch of weeds and ducked down, Zora with her pistol drawn.
“That was pretty clever…hiding your pistol,” Kyler told her smiling.
“Thanks,” she replied, not looking at him, but concentrating on the beast.
People were still running all over the place. They saw FranAnne, who was carrying the baby, duck behind some fallen trees, while Potts carried Lauren.
“Where’s Michael?” Kyler asked her, sticking his head up above the weeds. He just realized that he had taken off running without even thinking of grabbing Michael. “I don’t see him.”
“I saw Zack and Sam carrying him, but I didn’t see where they ran,” Zora answered, still watching the werewolf as it turned and began walking around the yard like the villain wrestler who struts around the ring alone, inviting anybody and everybody to come and take him on.
The beaten and bloodied commander reformed his troops, twelve of them now, and began to fire on the beast. As Kyler and Zora watched the gunfight, Zora noticed the woman that she had shot standing with the men and firing her machine gun at the werewolf.
“Look!” she said, “The woman! But I shot her twice in the chest!”
“Well, she’s still alive,” Kyler retorted.
“Bulletproof vest! That bitch is wearing a b
ulletproof vest!”
“They probably all are,” Kyler came back, strangely turned on by the way she said bitch. It came out like “beech”.
“I’m going down there!” she said, raising up out of the grass, her gun raised at eye level.
She started to take a step, but Kyler reached up and yanked her back down by the back of her pants, causing her to land hard on her butt.
“What are you doing!” she screamed furiously at him, trying to pull away.
“I’ve got to ask you something,” he replied, smiling.
“Not now!”
Zora stood up to run again, but again Kyler pulled her back down on the ground.
“You idiot! Let me go!”
“I told you that I had to ask you a question.”
“What! What is it! What question!”
Kyler could tell that she was cursing in her native tongue, but he was not to be dissuaded.
“What are you a scientist of?” he asked.
“What?” she answered stunned at the absurdity of his question.
“What are you a scientist of?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“When I met you, said that you were a scientist…inside the building. That very building right there.” Kyler said glibly as he pointed to the building.
“I…I…I study…”
She glared at Kyler who sat on the ground with his arms folded and smiling.
“You’re not a scientist at all, are you?” he said.
“What?”
“A scientist. You’re not one. You have something to do with the werewolf…now werewolves, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Let me see…when we first got to the building, you yelled at Gringo and distinctly said…now correct me if I’m wrong, but you said…”Don’t you know that a werewolf will…” and then you stopped right there…in mid sentence.
“I never said…”
“And then, when we found Wilbur Munn obviously ripped apart by the thing over there, you said, it was nothing that you hadn’t seen before.”
“I meant that I’d seen dead bodies before,” she answered back.
“No, I don’t think so. And by the way, where did you learn to put a sleeper hold on someone, especially someone who’s struggling against you. You looked like you’d known that little trick for years.”
“Anything else?” she asked, trying to leave, but not looking him in the eye.
“Yes. I noticed that when I asked you to take a stroll, you were way more interested in how Locklear O’Hearley was going to make the special bullets.”
“I was…I was…just interested,” Zora stammered. “We were, after all, going to fight the thing. Might as well know the weapons that you’re going to fight with.”
“And you really seemed adept with a pistol, too. The grouping on…what was his name…Martinez’ chest was phenomenal. Those bullet holes couldn’t have been more than a half-inch apart from one another.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh yes,” Kyler said sarcastically, putting his finger to his temple as if he were trying to remember something. “When we were about to get into the elevator, you said that Nicholas Klefka might be older and smarter than the one down stairs.”
“It’s true! He might!”
“I never once called him Nicholas.”
“Of course, you did! I heard you!”
“No you didn’t. I only referred to him once and I said “if we could only sting Klefka”. I remember it distinctly. You remember those kind of things when you get punched in the gut and your arm twisted behind your back.”
“No, you said his name,” Zora said, her eyes darting back and forth.
“No, I didn’t. Now, we can go round and round all night long if you’d like, but you’re not going out there until I get some answers.”
Kyler folded his arms even tighter. He felt that sitting there with his legs crossed and his arms folded, he was probably doing a darn near flawless impression of “I Dream of Jeannie”. Boy, did he wish that he could just nod his head, blink his, eyes, and be the hell out of there.
Zora sighed and sat back.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “I’m not a scientist.”
“Well…duh. Is your name even Zora LeMarque?”
“Yes, that’s not a name you make up.”
“So why are you on No Name Island?”
Kyler watched as Zora searched for the right way to word things.
“I’m a Knight of Kravania,” she finally said after a long pause.”
“You’re a Knight of Kravania?” he asked perplexed.
“You sound as if you’ve heard of them,” Zora said, looking perplexed herself now.
“I have. Klefka told me about them…and he also told me that they disbanded over five centuries ago.”
“Well, they didn’t. A few surviving men kept it going after all of the Klefka brothers became werewolves.”
“Why?”
“Originally, it was to hunt the brothers themselves down and anyone who they might’ve turned into werewolves.”
“To kill them?”
“Yes. The few surviving members loved the brothers, but knew that if they weren’t contained, all of Russia would either turn into werewolves or be killed by them. And if the werewolves multiplied and ate everyone else in Russia, what do you think that they would do next?”
“The same things most animals do when their food runs low,” Kyler answered. “Move somewhere else.”
“That’s right…and if there was no more food in Russia, then they would move to Poland and begin again.”
“The whole time multiplying in numbers,” Kyler said dumbstruck.
“Yes, there would be millions of them and once the food in Poland ran out, what then?”
“Peoria?”
“Then you get my point. Anyway, to make a long story short, the order survived and grew into a secret worldwide organization.”
“How worldwide?” Kyler asked.
“Every country has one…and there are tens of thousands of us.”
“Tens of…”
“Yes.”
“How did you become one?”
“My ancestor was one of the original members.”
“I thought you were from Belgium.”
“I am,” she answered annoyed. “Are all of your ancestors from America?”
“Of course not. They originally came from…”
“Then you know that people move to other countries, correct?”
Kyler nodded his head. “So how…”
“Look,” Zora interrupted tersely as she watched the werewolf rip another soldier almost in two. “The bottom line is, is that I’m a werewolf tracker.”
“A werewolf track…”
“Yes! Will you just listen? For the last four hundred years, the Knights of Kravania have made it their mission to kill…if not kill…than at least contain all werewolves and well…other things…”
“Other things?”
“Just listen! Yes, other things I don’t have time to talk about right now. If they can’t kill them, then they contain them. The world is too large to find them all. There are too many places for them to hide, so the Order tries to at least keep them away from populated areas. If they do hear of a werewolf being spotted somewhere, they send a werewolf tracker, like me, to find them and kill them. Understand?”
“So, you came here to track down Nicholas Klefka, huh?” Kyler asked, feeling like he was starting to understand at least a little bit of what Zora was saying.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Nicholas Klefka was in that jet crash. Remember?”
“So, you were after someone else on the island?” he asked, his eyes wide, hardly comprehending what she was saying.
“Yes, I was after someone else. Klefka’s plane crashing was just a coincidence. I was already here when it happened.”
“Who were you a
fter then?”
Before she could answer, they heard the sound of glass breaking. They looked up to see a werewolf…a different werewolf…flying through a second story window and landing feet first in the yard.
“Shit!” Zora yelled.
Without another word, she stood up and ran toward the yard, leaving Kyler wondering what kind of degree a werewolf tracker needed. Before Zora had even made it twenty feet, Kyler saw movement coming from the front of the building. Oh hell, it was the werewolf clan that had once been the Dixon’s…all three of them! He guessed that the one that jumped through the window must be Samantha Gould.
“Five werewolves at once,” he muttered under his breath.
He watched as the four werewolves joined the werewolf that was Nicholas Klefka in the yard, and began to slowly spread out in an attempt to surround the commander and his men. Kyler normally would’ve just left the man to his fate, but Zora, Potts, FranAnne, Sam, and even Zack were now were fighting the beasts, and Hawkins was firing from the roof again. Who had who surrounded here?
Kyler glimpsed something moving out of the high grass opposite the yard from him. It was Lauren, carrying Kayla, and trying to run toward the grove of trees.
“No. No. No,” Kyler said to himself. “Stay down, Lauren! Just stay down! Don’t take the baby! Shit!”
Kyler jumped up and began to run across the yard. Bullets were flying all around him and he could hear roars and screams on all sides of him. He was trying hard not to look anywhere but straight ahead, but that changed when he heard someone scream and watched as a body was thrown into his path shortly before a werewolf…his guess, Shelly Dixon…jumped on top of it and began to feed. He sidestepped the werewolf, who took no notice of him, but continued sucking and chewing on the man’s throat.
Kyler caught Lauren on the other side of the yard. She yelped as she felt him grab her shoulder and stop her, thinking that he was a werewolf, coming to take its baby back. He moved around in front of her, took Kayla, and then pulled Lauren down with him into another patch of weeds.
“Stay down!” he told her as the two of them turned around and began to watch the carnage unfold in front of them.