The Preserve

by Patrick Lestewka

  A growl arose from somewhere close by. Zippo jerked his head back, half-convinced a slavering jaw was within an inch of his neck. Nothing was there. A smell wafted across the unbroken expanse to where they hunched: a scent of fevered hunger, insistent as death.

  Zippo snapped off a shot that kicked up a puff of snow. What good’s a clean sightline, he thought, if you can’t see what the fuck you’re shooting at? For the first time since ’Nam, Zippo was scared: that sickeningly familiar sensation of fire-ants crawling at the back of his throat…

  “There!” Answer said. His finger pointed to a shimmering shape near one of the booby traps. He said to Tripwire: “Hit it!”

  Tripwire jerked his arm up, hard, like a bodybuilder performing a biceps curl. The fishing line tightened across the ice in a seismic wave of crystallized snow, then went slack as the grenade pin pulled free. The clip made a dull metallic sound ricocheting off the tin’s insides.

  Oddy couldn’t tell which was louder: the grenade detonating or the lake’s surface shattering. The sounds were different—the concussive thunder of high-explosive versus the ear-splitting whipcrack of ice cracking down deep fault lines—but equally deafening. The frozen surface trembled and the clear ice beneath Zippo’s feet spiderwebbed and then went milky and opaque. Fist-sized shards of ice rained down and a swell of water surged over their boots. When the cordite cleared they could see a jagged-edged hole the size of a VW Minibus. Ringing the hole were chunks of meat clung with white fur.

  I got it, Tripwire thought savagely. I got one of the fuc—

  Howling with rage and pain, it charged. Though the explosion had torn its rear right leg off, it still moved with chilling speed. Its remaining limbs, girded with thick roping muscles, flexed with svelte animal power. Its ears were pinned back to a bullet-shaped head and its eyes glowed a hideous baleful red. Muzzle was black as coal, teeth long and sharp as ivory daggers. Slaver ran between them in long viscid runners. The men saw all this in the split-second it took to cover the twenty feet separating them.

  Then it was in their midst.

  Oddy swiveled with the H&K23 slung low. The werewolf lashed out with its foot. Razor-sharp claws cut deep into the back of Oddy’s hand, just below his knuckles, cleaving flesh and severing nerves. Blood sprayed from the wound to sheet his face. The machine-gun skittered along the ice and out of reach.

  The werewolf’s paw pistoned out towards Tripwire in a murderous upwards sweep. His fevered mind saw, in that fractured second, the battered watch around its wrist, the tiny TIMEX logo written in orange.

  Takes a licking, his mind raved and then a paw tipped with heavy claws ripped a scar-line into his armpit, continuing through the junction where shoulder met arm. Pain sung along the raw gash as Tripwire spun with the blow’s force. In the process his arm flailed upwards…fishing line arced across the ice…the faint tic of a pin detatching…

  BOOM and the ice tilted madly beneath them. Ice chips sprayed like smashed teeth. There was another gaping hole now, to the left of the first, with a three-foot ice bridge separating the two. Chunks of ice and slush pelted down; a sharp wedge struck Answer on the shoulder and his right arm went instantly numb. The smell of wet gunpowder mixed with the wet-dog odor of the werewolf.

  A buzz-saw of blood spurted through the vent in Tripwire’s parka and in his head things were exploding with dim popping noises, underwater fireworks. He fell down hard on his ass and the ice cracked beneath him. He felt as if he were sitting on a crust of spun sugar that could melt, or shatter, at any moment. Then the werewolf was towering above him, blood matting its jaws, canines like sharpened hooks, and all else was forgotten. He fought back the urge to bare his throat like a whipped mongrel.

  A combat boot came down on Tripwire’s hand. Biting back a scream, he craned his neck to see the boot belonged to Zippo, and that Zippo’s gun was drawn and pointed at…him.

  The werewolf’s head slammed into his chest and Zippo’s gun barked simultaneously. The bullet passed through the werewolf’s skull and exited from the underside of its chin, burrowing into the ice between Tripwire’s spread legs. The werewolf jerked as if stung but its jaws kept gnashing. Zippo’s lips were moving rapidly. He was counting off the bullets as he ran through the magazine.

  OnetwothreefourFIVE—

  The silver bullet spun from the cylinder to punch a neat hole just above the werewolf’s left eyebrow. It reared with a shocked howl. There was a gaping crater on the underside of its jaw. Tatters of fabric hung and swung from its jaws—the front of Tripwire’s parka looked as if it had been shoved through a wheat thresher.

  Then the most amazing thing happened: silverish tendrils began to spread outwards from the wound. They opened out across the werewolf’s face, entering its mouth and snout and vulpine ears, before racing outwards across its limbs. This was accompanied by a sharp tinkling sound which Zippo associated with rapidly-freezing water. Within moments the creature was encased in a network of silver threads. Its front paws were raised above its head, teeth bared, hunched in pre-attack. Zippo shot it and the thing exploded like a tennis ball that had been immersed in liquid nitrogen and thrown at a brick wall.

  “Sorry,” Zippo said, taking his boot off Tripwire’s hand. “Didn’t want another grenade going off.”

  “S’okay.”

  “Get bit?”

  Tripwire looked down at his chest. He shook his head.

  “You got the devil’s luck, then—”

  “Over here!” Answer hollered.

  Two sleek shapes rushed out of the darkness at a dead heat. Tripwire saw that they were maybe thirty feet from a booby trap. He wasn’t sure the ice could withstand another explosion. But what choice did he have? Ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder, he jerked his arm across his neck in a throat-slitting gesture to detent another pin.

  The grenade went off just as the werewolves reached it, the force of the explosion propelled them high into the air. Answer steadied himself as the ice pan see-sawed beneath him. Tracking the airborne werewolves, their white bodies stark against the purple-black sky, he selected a target, raised his pistol, and started firing. The fifth slug punctured the lycanthrope’s sternum and silver tendrils burst instantly from the wound. It twisted midair, clawing its body, movement slowing as the threads unfurled. Then the motionless body was hurtling downwards at him. Answer fell back against the ice and it buckled inwards under his weight and icy water bubbled up through hairline cracks to soak his hair. He fired at the plummeting mass, which exploded like a pane of glass. Slivers of flash-frozen werewolf cut into his face and hands like razor blades.

  Zippo snapped off four shots at the second werewolf before it hit him square in the chest. Air whoofed out of him in a bloody-tasting gust as he was knocked to the ground. His skull hit the ice and he dropped his guns. The force of impact propelled them across the slippery plate of ice. The werewolf’s head was cocked at the predator’s deadly questing angle and it was all Zippo could do to keep its jaws from his throat. He got his thumb up and jammed it into the werewolf’s left eye. The retina popped like a bath bead and his thumb sunk in to the knuckle. The wolf’s jaws snapped in pain and rage, taking three of Zippo’s fingers.

  The ice pan tilted. Ice water surged over Zippo’s collar and down his back. Oddy watched them slide past. He couldn’t take a shot without the possibility he’d hit Zippo.

  They struggled for a moment longer, perched precariously at the ice’s edge, before toppling backwards into the freezing lake.

  Cold hit Zippo like a closed fist. It was near-paralyzing, and for a moment his heart stopped. They tumbled over and over in the dark water. His hands were snagged in the rough matted hair of the werewolf’s head and he could feel the heavy bone of its skull beneath. Gunmetal-tasting water surged into his mouth and nose, invading his ears in thin icepick streams. He twisted and struggled against the werewolf, matching its animal ferocity with his own will to survive. His legs kicked as his boots and pants grew heavy with water. His lungs bur
ned for air. His head thumped against something hard and he had no idea whether he’d hit the ice shelf above or the rocky lake bottom below.

  The werewolf’s paws raked his legs and suddenly the water was slightly warmer with his blood and his body slightly colder with its loss. Someone had thrown a flare into the water and greenish light spread in a mellow orbit above. The water’s surface shimmered. Zippo reached upwards. The stumps of his bitten-off fingers left a cloudy red wake. Blood flowed like cold mud through his veins. The werewolf slashed frantically, trying to free itself now. No way, José, Zippo thought grimly. No way I’m going down alone.

  A shape entered the water above them, swimming downwards with powerful strokes. Zippo’s oxygen-starved brain was shutting down. He felt something thick and muscled pass by his face. The werewolf’s head jerked back.

  The water trembled. A brief flash of light—muzzle flash—lit the werewolf’s destroyed face and, behind with his huge arm wrapped around its neck, Oddy. He pulled the Webley’s trigger and another slug tore through the werewolf’s head, exiting in a red haze, spinning away into the dark water. The creature’s paws continued to claw at Zippo, ripping deep into his flesh, severing muscles and tendons.

  Oddy chambered the silver bullet and jammed the barrel beneath the werewolf’s chin. The flattened slug detached a massive portion of its skull and silver threads spooled from the wound. Moments—hours? days?—later, Zippo felt its limbs snap away like driftwood. Then Oddy’s hand was hooked around his collar and dragging him up.

  They broke the water’s surface together. Oddy pulled Zippo to the ice’s edge as steam rose off their bodies in smoking eddies. Zippo sucked in great lungfuls of air and then, like a fratboy who’d drunk too much too fast, vomited a stream of blood and bile onto the ice.

  “Help him out,” Oddy told Answer.

  Answer laid flat on the ice, anchored himself as best he could, and offered Zippo his hand.

  “Easy,” he said. “Easy.”

  Zippo’s hand felt like cold slate. Answer pulled him out of the water and rolled him onto his back. His thighs were flayed open to the femurs. Blood spread in a red pool beneath him. His face was pale with shock and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.

  Answer retrieved a syrette of morphine from the med-pack. “You want?” he asked Zippo.

  “Y-y-yeah.”

  He jabbed the syrette in Zippo’s chest and depressed the plunger.

  “A-ano-another.”

  Answer did as asked.

  “A-ann-anno-another.”

  “It’ll kill you,” Answer said. He had no personal stake in the decision. “You want?”

  Zippo nodded…then, slowly, shook his head. “Not yet.”

  By this time Oddy had pulled himself onto the ice. He’d only paused to strip off his parka and boots before diving in after Zippo. Now he shrugged off his sopping sweater and pulled the parka on. His feet, which he was now certain were frostbitten, he shoved back into his boots. He picked up the Webley and worked the cocking mechanism. It was frozen stiff. He hurled it into the water.

  “We got another one,” Tripwire said. He pointed with weary desperation at a spot just beyond the final booby trap.

  “Hunker low,” Oddy said. “and blow it.”

  Tripwire jerked his arm back in a motion one might use to bring a leashed dog to heel. The final booby trap went off. A gaping fissure ripped the length of the ice, and a large plate broke away. When the smoke cleared the men were left on a floating crescent surrounded by deep black water. The only escape point was a narrow ice bridge that had somehow withstood the explosions.

  Their packs and spare clothes were soaked. Dried food packets floated on the water, tinfoil squares bobbing on the slight waves. Each of them was wounded. Each of them was bloody. Zippo dry-heaved helplessly. Blood streaked his teeth.

  “Look,” Tripwire said.

  A single werewolf was hunched on the ice bordering the water on the far side. Smaller than the others, but sleeker, like a ballistic torpedo. It crouched on lean haunches and regarded the men with baleful red eyes. It seemed content to sit and wait.

  They gathered around Zippo. Blood ran in sluggish rivulets from his legs and his front teeth had been knocked out. His hair was stuck to the ice in an uneven black fan. Tripwire reached two fingers into his mouth and scooped out pooling blood, afraid he’d choke on it.

  “I-I’m f-fuh-fucking d-duh-done, Sarge.”

  “Lay still, son.” Oddy felt for a pulse. There, but very weak. He asked Tripwire, “How’s that arm?”

  Tripwire gingerly parted the rip in his parka. Something winked back whitely from the wet redness. He had a sneaking suspicion it was bone. “Deep, but clean.”

  “You losing blood?”

  “A bit.”

  “My b-buh-belt,” Zippo said. “T-tor-tourniquet.”

  Tripwire said, “You sure?”

  “T-th-the fuh-fuck I nuh-need ih-ih-it for?”

  Oddy carefully stripped off Zippo’s belt, looping it around Tripwire’s shoulder and cinching it as tight as he dared. He looked at Answer. “How about you?”

  Answer’s face was a mess of long shallow scratches, some precariously close to his eyes. Blood trickled in torpid rivulets from the wounds, tracing the curve of his brow and collecting along the ridge of his upper lip. “I’ll be fine.”

  Oddy performed a brief self-inspection: left hand useless, the back of it shredded, tendons and sinews looking like frayed red yarn. Most of his toes, and perhaps his feet, would have to be amputated if and when he got home. The only way to survive was to keep moving. But that meant—

  “G-g-go.” Zippo grabbed Tripwire’s hand and squeezed. His grip was weak, like an old man, or an infant. “G-guh-get the fuh-fuck ow-out of hu-hu-here.”

  “Can we pick him up,” Tripwire said. “Carry him?”

  “He’s dogmeat,” Answer said. “He knows it and we know it.”

  “Zip that fuckin’ lip, son.”

  Answer turned away.

  “Huh-he’s ruh-right. I-I’m duh-done.”

  They all knew it was true. But you just don’t say those things. Not to a fellow soldier. Not to a fellow human being.

  “Give him the rest of the morphine,” Oddy said.

  Tripwire uncapped the last two syrettes and curled them into Zippo’s palm. He positioned Zippo’s thumb over the plungers. “Just jab and push,” he whispered.

  The lone werewolf sat licking its chops. Answer said, “What are we going to do about that one?”

  “See any more?” Oddy said.

  “No.”

  “Is it going to attack?”

  “Not us and not now,” Answer said. “It’s waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For us to leave. Then it’ll take him.”

  Tripwire pulled the DeLisle’s clip and ejected all the bullets except one. He slotted the silver bullet in on top and slapped the clip home. “Here,” he placed the gun in Zippo’s free hand, “one shot for that thing, and one more…for whatever.”

  “W-wuh-whatever, huh?” Zippo said. Tripwire scooped more blood out of his mouth. It was cold, like jelly. “Tuh-take my g-guns.”

  Tripwire retrieved the Llamas as Oddy crouched beside Zippo. The hitman’s eyes were almost closed and lake water had frozen around his ears and nose and lips. Oddy breathed into his palm and pressed it to Zippo’s forehead.

  “Can you feel that, son?”

  “N-nuh-no.”

  Oddy breathed again, deeper this time, and reapplied his palm. Suddenly it was very important, suddenly it was crucial, that Zippo feel this warmth.

  “F-fuh-fucking a-ah-amazing, ih-ih-ih-isn’t i-i-it?” Zippo’s lips were sticking together from the blood. Oddy wet his thumb and wiped them clean. “V-vuh-vamp-p-pires and wuh-wuh-werewol…and…a-an…”

  “Last of the big game hunters,” Oddy said quietly. “That’s us.”

  Zippo smiled, a subtle upturn at the corners of his mouth. “It’s n-nuh-not so bu-bad
, Sarge.” He was thinking about Kazuhito Kawanami, the yakuza boss he’d killed. Thinking about how Kawanami had nodded, and sipped his drink, and accepted death with quiet dignity. “C-cu-cu-cold, b-b-buh-but o-o-o-okay…”

  “One hell of a life we chose for ourselves, son. Hell of a life.”

  “W-wu-wouldn’t h-huh-have it a-any other w-wu-way.”

  Oddy pressed his palm to Zippo’s forehead a final time. The hitman’s flesh was cold, rubbery. “We’ve got to go now, son. I’d’ve done anything to see this go down some other way.”

  Zippo’s eyes opened then, fully. Oddy was struck by the piercing blueness of them and, in that moment, he appeared almost childlike. “A-ah-anytime. A-a-anyw-wu-where. A-any-h-hu-how.”

  Then his eyes clouded over again, and closed. His chest rose and fell in shallow swells.

  The men gathered up what supplies they could. The ice splintered alarmingly beneath their feet. Oddy hefted the H&K23. His back screamed mercy and he dropped it. He still had one Webley and fifteen rounds. It would have to do.

  Tripwire stopped beside Zippo. Blood ringed the hitman’s body like a chalk outline around a corpse. His eyelids were fluttering. “Remember,” he said, “just jab and push. It’s that easy.”

  Zippo mumbled something unintelligible.

  The ice-bridge looked about as narrow as a gymnast’s beam, although it was more accurately the width of a city sidewalk. The ice was transected with hairline cracks. There was no way to tell how much weight it could withstand.

  “Put your snowshoes on,” Oddy said. “Disperse the weight.”

  Tripwire and Answer did as advised, though neither relished the prospect of trying to swim with them on.

  “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” Tripwire whispered, and set off.

  The ice cracked. The ice groaned. But the ice held. Tripwire made it across, then Answer, then Oddy. The werewolf had not moved. Why fight when patience will bring an easy meal, it was no doubt thinking.

  The forest resumed to the west. Dark shapes moved within the tall pines, watching, waiting.

  “Let’s get humping.”

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