by Peter Spokes
But still the wolf’s jaws continued to clamp and tug at the beast’s neck.
I stared fascinated as I saw the wolf’s jaws come together and the ghoul’s remaining blackened arm finally collapse to the floor – twitching.
Then, the infernal head turned slowly and the large red eyes stared at me for moments before it rolled several paces before coming to a gory halt.
I stared at it for a while thinking of the times Michael and I had spent together, before looking down again at the red and sticky side of my shirt and wondering what had happened, considering the fact that I had not actually participated in any of the conflict.
I looked over to Ryker. I knew he was dead; there was just too much blood.
Lucia was gone.
Then I heard a sound from outside the cabin.
Scene 3: Natalia
I looked around for the baseball bat but despite its short distance from me, I was just too tired.
Then Natalia appeared.
“Oh Doamne!” she whispered behind her hands as she looked at the carnage.
She carefully walked around the decapitated creature on the cabin floor.
Despite the bloody corpses of both Ryker and Dănuț, she moved swiftly over to the wolf. I couldn’t see what she was doing – other than removing her coat and oddly laying it over the beast – presumably dead.
Then she kissed its head before moving over to me. “I’m okay…” I said, “… but could you look at my friend, Ryker; I think he’s severely injured.”
Natalia looked at me and then around the cabin.
“Where is he?” she said.
“Just over…” I looked over to where he had lain.
He was gone. I smiled, relieved; clearly, he was not dead; but then I noticed that the area was also devoid of blood.
I was still pondering with some confusion when I heard a sound that was neither a growl nor a groan and yet both. I looked over to where the wolf lay.
I watched as Natalia’s coat moved as if something was shifting beneath it, before it fell from the wolf’s head.
I realised the extent of my confusion as I stared at long jaws receding and fangs reducing. Auburn hair appeared to relocate and the delicate face of Lucia appeared from the apparent lupine mask she had worn a moment earlier.
Clearly, the mental aberration I had once suffered was once more leading my cerebral understandings.
Natalia looked over at me, then the wolf-thing, clearly not seeing what I was – or strangely good with it.
She kneeled beside me and ripped apart my bloody shirt to reveal several gashes. I was still wondering how I had got them when she pressed some wadding against my side and wound some bandage about me to keep it in place.
Natalia stood up. “I need to get some… unguent… but you both be okay… for while.”
And with that she ran out through the door.
Scene 4: Ryker
I stared for the umpteenth time at the vacant – and oddly bloodless – space on the other side of the cabin where Ryker had landed; and then the creature’s head still gazing at me from the bloody floor, when I heard a whisper from Lucia.
“Are you okay?” she said.
It was too big a question, so I simply nodded, “You?”
She nodded.
“Poor Dănuț…” she said staring at the prone body of the big man; the red pool around him had almost reached my foot before it had finally stopped.
“He had looked after my family line for almost ninety years.”
I realised that Lucia’s blood loss must be affecting her mind; Dănuț could never have been more than fifty.
My next words were nonsense to my mind but as some sanity was clearly lacking in my present surroundings, I proceeded anyway.
“Are you a… a werewolf?”
The blind pale blue eyes stared at me for a while before she shook her head.
“No…” she said.
Despite all I had seen, I breathed a sigh of relief. Not everything in this world was falling apart after all. I could dismiss what I had seen earlier to stress, fatigue, a recurring mental aberration, blood loss; in fact, anything I damn well wanted so long as it fitted into the rational world – where I wanted to reside once again!
But then she spoilt it.
“… I’m a… the vârcolac…” she said.
I sighed. “Michael… the ghoul had said that there was… one… Isn’t that the same… thing?” I continued, my relief short-lived.
Lucia shook her head but suddenly smiled before wincing in pain.
“Not to a vârcolac. To you western and Hollywood-orientated people…” she began, “… a werewolf stands on its hind legs and is basically a hairy humanoid with big teeth and nails. It changes with the full moon unable to resist its urgings.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Benicio del Toro howling in the latest Hollywood incarnation.
Fair enough, I thought, nodding and finding myself smiling – and then suddenly wincing at the pain in my own side.
She continued, “A vârcolac is a kind of shape-shifter or changeling. In my case, a wolf, but it can take on the shape of a human. It is generally much stronger than a wolf – and more intelligent.”
I looked down at my bloody side. Of course – the blood loss. I too must be affected by it. That was why I was so confused and so my understanding and coherency was… lacking and therefore easily influenced by questionable external stimuli.
“Still,” I offered, “were you… the wolf with my tyre iron in your mouth… jaws? When my friend, Ryker, saved the young wolf from the trap?”
“I… I think so…” she said awkwardly.
“You think so?”
“It was me with the tyre iron but it was you that rescued Shunkaha… the whelp… and you were alone.”
“No, you are mistaken,” I said shaking my head. “Ryker was with me. It was he that saved the wolf by opening the trap with the iron.”
Lucia shook her head looking confused.
“You were alone… it was you that opened the jaws of the trap; do you not remember?”
“I do remember!” I said with some assertion.
The pale blue eyes stared beyond me, and she continued, “I heard Shunkaha’s howls but when I found her, I couldn’t help her – even in human form I couldn’t open the trap. We were close to a road and so I put several rocks across it.
Fortunately, it was only twenty minutes later that your car stopped.
I listened to you talking to yourself about your pet wolf – Lucia. I listened more as its name was as mine,” she said quietly.
“Talking to myself?” I said laughing a little maniacally hearing echoes of James Stewart talking to his invisible six-foot white rabbit in the 1950s film Harvey.
“Ryker was leaning against the car… you couldn’t miss him!” I said with some impatience.
“No one was leaning against your car,” she said. “I took your tyre iron and led you to Shunkaha …”
“And Ryker… Ryker followed you too!”
“No. There was just you… and you forced open the trap and set Shunkaha free.”
I decided enough was enough. I may be suffering blood loss but then so was Lucia. She was confused – about Ryker, the vârcolac, the whole thing…
“Ryker has spent much time with me… and others…” I said finding myself oddly defensive.
“Not at that time,” she said quietly; Lucia’s eyes were beginning to close. “Who else did he speak to?” she whispered and then, “I’m growing so weak and tired and so I’m going to… wolf-kind… do not… be… afraid.”
Strange question… and statement, I thought, but then realised what she meant and the direction we were going. “He spoke to me all the time…” I said before realising it was only reinforcing an extremely unpleasant line
of reasoning.
I was injured – and confused as I watched Natalia’s coat move as if snakes were writhing beneath.
Then the coat fell from Lucia and I saw the bloody pelt of the wolf.
My head began to spin as – suddenly in my mind – I saw an image of another bloody wolf.
And it howled.
Scene 5: The Howl 2
I was transported back to my army days before my breakdown; it was as if I could only pick up a nuance or feeling of it, not the lucidity, but just then I experienced an epiphany as my mental clouds suddenly parted… and I saw a bloody wolf and Captain Guzzman.
And I knew they were both connected, in some way to Ryker.
When I joined the army, I… excelled at training. I was… put forward for… advanced training?
Jesus! I thought as I remembered being initiated into the SAS. A cold, wet and unbelievably hard day on the Brecon Beacons in South Wales came to mind.
So, both Ryker and myself were in the SAS – Michael had said that I had been.
A sudden insidious intuition crept towards the rational part of my brain and I knew it was all down to my breakdown… and Captain Guzzman.
Then, it was as if the stage curtains had drawn aside and I was looking for the first time at the feature and the participant players.
I was in Afghanistan and I winced as once again I watched my SAS colleagues firing on civilians. The villagers held knives and machetes; they were apparently a clear and present danger – according to my captain.
Normally we would have ignored them but a congressman’s son was in the area and things had turned bad.
Despite our training, we were jumpy as it had been made very clear to us that we would be held responsible if harm came to him.
But we were killing people.
Everywhere I looked I saw – with frightening clarity – bloody people; these were not terrorists or insurgents; they were villagers frightened by the sudden arrival of a small but deadly team armed to the teeth.
Then we were removing the ‘package’ – the congressman’s son – from the location to a place of safety.
Though I tried, I couldn’t be blind to the deaths that occurred to procure that escape.
The corpses mounted.
Was it me or was I the only one questioning the necessity to eradicate or otherwise murder so many brothers, sons, and fathers? I thought.
Sure, we would be achieving our objectives, but just what the hell were we leaving behind?
Was the collateral worth it?
Clearly it was to the congressman.
If the congressman’s son had listened to his advisors, he would never have been visiting a potentially volatile area, and all those now dead… would not be.
In a dreamlike state, I watched the Gazelle landing – its rotors did not slow; it had no intention of stopping long.
Then, as we headed towards it, I saw a large wolf appear from the woods, presumably frightened by the chopper’s noise and downdraft.
It ran towards us.
The captain’s M16 spat for a moment, before he continued towards the Gazelle.
The wolf howled just the once, but it was enough for it to stay with me.
Scene 6: Collateral
I slowed to a halt and looked down at the dead and bloody creature; the surrounding grass was splattered red.
Even animals were not to be saved; not deserving of death, but getting it anyway. So much death handed out with little or no gravity or respect. Was life really so unimportant to some people? Could a life really be regarded as so… unnecessary?
I was aware that my heart seemed to be beating much too fast.
All under the umbrella of the word ‘collateral’.
‘Acceptable damage to property or life to achieve a goal’, I remembered the captain telling us.
I jumped suddenly as I heard shouts.
“Lowell! Get your ass here now… we are leaving…!”
I reached the Gazelle as it was lifting.
“Nice of you to join us!” said a fat man not wearing fatigues.
I guess I was just too tired to acquiesce to conduct. I could feel my hands tightening on my own M16, lying across my lap.
“There are dead back there…” I growled. “That’s because of you, you fat bastard!” I said staring at him.
“Lowell!” said the captain sharply.
Once the squad were airborne, I looked at the others. They were tired but smiling – the job done.
“… So many dead…” I mumbled still seeing the bloody flesh.
The wolf was still howling in my head.
“You okay?” Captain Guzzman said looking oddly at me as we rose higher. “The mission’s done; the package is safe – all else is collateral,” he said smiling – clearly content with the current status quo.
And there was that word again, I thought.
There were several moments of silence as I sat staring at the Gazelle’s muddy metallic floor… and trying to piece together the last hour of so many lives… terminated.
I didn’t feel well.
My head hurt.
Were all those deaths… necessary? … And the wolf…? I asked myself again.
I could hear laughter from the captain and the congressman’s son as they exchanged somewhat raucous banter on the latest Yankees baseball hopes.
How could they be happy!
“Wow!” I shouted suddenly looking up at my captain.
He looked over at me.
I wasn’t sure if he was concerned or worried.
“How can you change to a sycophant so quickly?” I asked.
He continued to stare at me.
“… Why the wolf?…” I whispered, still troubled and still looking at the floor.
The captain said nothing before turning back to the ‘package’ and continuing with his conversation.
“Why… the wolf?” I said again, a lot louder. I did not like to be ignored.
He broke off again and looked over at me.
“What’s your problem, Lowell?” he said looking directly at me.
I continued to stare at him.
“Why… the fuckin’… wolf… Captain?” I said slowly.
He shook his head. “It was in my way, but it was only a fuckin’ wolf – so grow some, soldier!”
Still staring at him I continued, “It was not in your way: like the villagers, it was alarmed and frightened.”
I continued to stare at him. I could still feel my heart beating much too fast.
“If you are ever in my way…” I said quietly.
“Is that a threat? You’re out of line, soldier… get professional!” he began.
The diatribe ended abruptly, for it was then that I delivered the blow that apparently took out my captain for several minutes and began the proceedings for my court martial.
Scene 7: Captain Guzzman
Under military arrest for several weeks, I was finally allowed to see a copy of my psych report.
‘Not fit for duty…’ it said. ‘… Lacking commitment to the task in hand due to an overly sensitive emotional standpoint not conducive for career in Special Air Services’ it had said. Then, ‘psychological and emotional breakdown’.
Fuck ’em I had thought, before I was whisked off to a military sanatorium.
It was sometime later that – to my surprise – I was visited by none other than Captain Guzzman himself. He appeared to hold no grudges, even if I still did.
For a while he simply sat and said nothing.
I reciprocated.
“You’re a good soldier…” he started finally and it was clear he was having some trouble finding his words.
I was ready for – and relished – the opportunity to tell the captain just what I thought of the bastard.
I simply stared at him waiting for the argument to commence.
But he appeared not to be drawn in and paused awhile before;
“We have a hard job to do… and it’s not for everybody… but we have orders and we need to obey them however… wrong… they may appear.”
I regarded his voice as white noise – an irritating background sound of no interest.
He took a deep breath and started again.
“The only way that many of us can cope is to have… two sides… the combat side, and the ‘at home with the wife and kids’ side,” he said. “It’s the only way some of us get through it…” he finished.
I was not interested. I had built up several months of disdain and a serious lack of respect for Captain Guzzman.
“So why kill the wolf? Despite what you have said, it wasn’t in your way. I was there – remember?” I said still staring.
“The wolf? So that’s it,” he said looking strangely; “not the civilians so much as… the wolf…?”
I paused, uncertain, for not only was I looking for some coherence and a desire for him to understand, but the captain was different; he seemed suddenly world weary and not the same man I had knocked out.
“I know a little about wolves…” I started. “They are not guilty of anything. They are simply animals that are true to their kind. They don’t screw you over for a percentage or kill so that some overpaid fucker in congress can have his spoilt brat returned home safe and well!”
“Clearly,” I continued, “you have never been blessed to enjoy the love and respect of a pet,” I continued, still seething.
“Actually…” he replied – pausing again, “… I have two dogs of my own but the man that shot that wolf on that day was not the one that takes Fencer and Jasper for their walks at the park; and certainly, not the one that takes my grandchild shopping at Thanksgiving.”