The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  They flew in the evening when the light was beginning to fade.

  Ming and Moo fell quickly asleep after their long day of adventuring in new territory.

  Trimple found it hard to sleep, as he did most days.

  Dick

  Angela slowly opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry but she still felt the pain all over her body; however, it was much less intense. Once her vision focused she realised she was in the sewers still.

  She was lying on dirty old layers of cardboard with a filthy no longer white t-shirt covering her. The smell was overwhelming her senses.

  “Good to see you’re awake, I was worried you might never wake up” Said a mysterious, yet familiar voice

  Angela looked to her right to spot an old man sitting opposite her on a three legged stool. It was the same man as before.

  “Richards the name, but you can call me Dick.”

  “Where am I?” Questioned Angela

  “In the sewers. I was very surprised when I saw you fall down into here like that. At first I was confused why someone would do that but then I heard the commotion from above on the streets and it all made sense”

  Richard stood up and continued.

  “You were in a right state. I tried to tend to your wounds as well as I could but as you can see we don’t have much down here.”

  “Thank you…Oh my god how long have I been unconscious?!”

  Angela pushed herself out of the cardboard bed and onto her feet but the one that was injured by the motorbike gave way slightly making Angela scream out.

  “Whoa, whoa, calm down girl, you’re in no state to be jumping around like that just yet”

  “How long have I been unconscious?” Angela repeated in a frustrated manner. ”Please tell me”

  “About 12 hours. I think its 11pm. It’s really calmed down up there now.” The man’s face dropped. “There was a lot of screaming, shouting and gunshots for a long time”

  “NO!” Angela yelled. “I’m too late, I failed them…”

  “Failed who, girly?”

  “My children” Her eyes began to glimmer and shine “The city is infested with wolves and I was trying to get back home before the wolves arrived in my neighbourhood.”

  “Infested with wolves? ha-ha are you crazy?” chuckled Dick.

  “It’s true damn it” Angela shouted; Tears rolling down her face, dripping onto the cold slimy floor beneath her “That’s what all the screaming has been about”

  Dick remained silent, unsure what to think of what he was being told. He sees and hears a lot of things living in the sewers but this just seemed insane.

  “Listen, Dick, I really need to get back home, maybe my children are safe” Angela said in a much calmer, relaxed tone. “Thank you for all your help but I must go”

  Angela began to limp down the dark dank sewer when Dick shouted to her.

  “Well Girly, you won’t find them going that way, tell me where you live and I’ll take you the sewer route, it may be disgusting but it’s safe and I know some great shortcuts”

  Dick held his hand out to Angela.

  She limped back to him and grabbed his hand; he put her arm over his shoulder to assist her with her walking.

  “Thanks, Dick” Angela let out a small, forced smile.

  Angela explained where she lived and they made their way around the sewer tunnels. Everywhere looked the same; it would be very easy to get lost.

  Eventually after walking for what felt like hours and Angela feeling more and more agitated by the minute, they arrived under her street.

  “Just climb this ladder Girly and remove the lid, you’ll be in the middle of your street” Explained Dick.

  “Thank you for all your help, I won’t forget it” Said Angela, she felt slightly guilty for having those bad thoughts about him when she first saw him

  “No problem, good luck with your children. I would come but I belong down here”

  They shook hands and Angela grabbed the ladder with her hands; the bars were cold and rusty and the pain in her arm was making it a hard climb, but she made it to the top and paused.

  ‘This is it’

  She thought about what she might find when she exits this sewer. Part of her believed her kids were gone and she might be better off staying down here, but she couldn’t live with that uncertainty.

  All the people who have helped her along the way did it so she could save her children and there is hope they could be safely barricaded in their house.

  Angela let go of the ladder, pushed up the metal cover and began to climb onto the street.

  “Good luck” Shouted Dick.

  Family Reunion

  Angela arrived on the street she had lived on for the past 15 years. It had been where she gave birth to her two beautiful children. It was a nice, peaceful street. The houses were all detached, white and large with a garage on the side. In the sky was a helicopter patrolling, shining its spot light around the area. Angela stayed low, not wanting to be spotted or rescued until she had seen for herself if her children were at home. It would plague her for the rest of her life if she didn’t know.

  The street was quiet; too quiet. Angela limped across the street towards her house trying to make as little noise as possible in case any beasts were patrolling the area. She noticed a lot of the houses were boarded up with not an ounce of light appearing through the cracks. This gave her hope as it showed that people had managed to be notified in time to protect themselves from the approaching horde. She wondered if the babysitter was a fan of watching the news; it could decide the fate of her offspring.

  A voice boomed in the air which took Angela by surprise and she wondered if she had been seen.

  “Everyone please stay in your homes, it is not safe on the streets. I repeat. It is not safe on the streets. We will inform you when the issue is resolved. This is not a rescue.”

  It sounded like it was quite far away but still very clear and comprehensible.

  Angela, after slowly crouching near bushes, arrived at her house. Her heart sank when she noticed that it was not barricaded and the large front window had been smashed. Part of her wanted to turn back to the sewer. However, she pushed forward and entered the house; the door was unlocked.

  The living room was slightly lighted only by the street lights shining into the darkened room. She could tell that it had been trashed; the glass table had been smashed, the bookshelf was toppled over and there was blood over the floor of the living room. She wasn’t religious but she prayed it wasn’t her children’s. She decided to leave the light off to not attract any attention.

  She slowly limped through the room.

  “Argh” Angela quickly placed her hand over her mouth and shouted obscenities into her hand.

  She had stepped on a large shard of glass. The piece had pierced through the middle of her foot.

  Without even thinking, Angela tore the shard out of her foot and threw it against the wall, letting out an unwomanly grunt. Blood decorated the floor whenever her foot hovered.

  She entered the kitchen.

  It appeared untouched. The large table in the centre was still standing with its four wooden chairs surrounding it. Maybe they had caught her children in the living room and had no reason to go any further. Angela thought maybe she was wrong and the children were hiding upstairs.

  She went to the kitchen sink and placed her bloody hand on the tap and turned it. She panted as she pondered what to do next.

  Something then caught Angela’s eye outside through the small kitchen window; she noticed some clothes in the garden. She pushed through the door leading outside, ran down the small set of steps like a zombie and approached the clothes; her heart pounding and her eyes glistening.

  It was a large garden with a circular clothes line in the corner and various children’s toys scattered around the area. Around the border of the garden were large assorted flowers which decorated all the way around the edges of the garden.

  She knelt down and
examined the clothes; they were her children’s; both set of clothes were right next to each other. They must have been infected at the same time and both transformed besides each other she thought. They must have been playing outside together when the wolves attacked the area. She let out a loud scream and began slapping the floor.

  “Angela! Get away quick” Shouted a male voice.

  “Studley get back in here!” Shouted a female voice

  “But its Angela” Replied the male voice.

  “I don’t care!” Screamed the woman.

  It was a blonde haired, young slim man; he was standing in the doorway of the house next door; there was just a small waist high fence dividing the two gardens. He was wearing a yellow t-shirt with light blue jeans.

  Angela looked up to spot two wolves approaching her, but these weren’t like the wolves before; they were smaller; they were her children.

  Angela stood up and starred at them. Tears water-falling down her face. She walked towards them.

  “Angela!” Studley shouted.

  Angela paid no attention and walked towards her children “Please, take me with you, let me become one of you.” Angela held out her arms wide “Let us be together, forever.”

  Studley stepped further out of his house and bellowed “Angelaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

  The wolves ran towards Angela and pounced on her, forcing her to the floor

  “What are you doing!?”

  The adolescent beasts started to tear into Angela’s flesh

  She wondered why her children had decided to kill her. Was she such a terrible mother?

  Blood squirted everywhere as the wolves tore into her skin all over her body. They appeared to do it just for sport as they weren’t hitting any vital organs, as if by purpose.

  Angela did not even scream.

  “No!” Studley shouted.

  One of the wolves spotted Studley and fired a spike at him which caught him in his shoulder. He quickly ran back inside holding his arm.

  As Angela was eaten alive she pondered her failure as a mother; she had done everything she possibly could for her children…her vision ended with her remembering the birth of her children, then…darkness came.

  Angela was dead.

  “Oh my god, Studley I told you not to go outside!”

  Studley’s arm was now bleeding and blood was running down his arms, dripping onto the kitchen floor.

  “Lisa, Angela is dead!” Studley Whelped.

  Lisa was an overweight 18 year old girl with long dark hair. She had a pretty face. She was wearing a baggy hooded jacket and track suit bottoms.

  Lisa was rummaging through the kitchen cabinet for a cloth to tend to the wound, not listening to Studley.

  “I can’t live without Angela! Kill me!”

  Lisa stopped her search and turned around to Studley.

  “I can’t do that! How can you ask me to kill my own brother?” Lisa shouted passionately as her eyes sparkled.

  “Angelaaaa!!!”

  “I can’t do it Studley, I’m sorry.” Lisa said as she looked at the floor while wiping her arm across her eyes.

  Studley gave an annoyed look, headed for the kitchen draw, grabbed a large kitchen blade and held it to his wrist

  “Studley, no!”

  Just as Studley went to slice his wrist he felt a weird sensation and fell to the floor, he starred at the ceiling as his vision entered a black void.

  Outbreak: Day Two

  Abandoned

  The first evening has gone fast; Claudia was exhausted from all of the loving, running, jumping and fighting she had endured. It had been more exercise than she had ever done in her life so she fell asleep easily on the rough wooden floor. The second day had gone slow because she had sat around the shack fully expecting someone to come and rescue her. Now, on her third day, Claudia started to think it was soon time to act. No one was coming for her.

  “10% battery left, great” sighed Claudia as she glanced at her mobile phone; it was a small pink touch screen phone with a symbol of a fox on the top; the screen was small yet sharp; the large symbol in the top right corner of the screen was flashing red with a ‘10%’ next to it.

  “Seven thousand Euros, Seven bloody thousand Euros and the bastard thing is already running out of battery!” Claudia shouted in a small tantrum, slamming the phone on the nearby table, causing the plates and other assorted objects to shake and shudder in the impact.

  Claudia had gotten the phone off of the internet; it had promised to be the best phone currently available with five hundred hours of battery life and was not set to be beat in at least the next five years.

  Claudia has always wanted to be the best and have the best things; when she heard a better phone was out she just had to have it, no matter the costs. Sometimes she is in such a panic to have the best things that she buys into scams and half-truths, the phone has in fact only lasted her 126 hours before it is warning her of low battery. Claudia had counted.

  Claudia was sick of being in this shack; it was cold, dark and lonely. She was running out of candles to light and her phone was bleeping. But what annoyed her most was her bobby orange, or body odour to most people. Bobby orange was the insult she and her gang of friends used against the poor, smelly kids at school. She had not been able to shower, nor change her clothes since she departed on her boat ride with the handsome, yet naive, Swedish guy and it was killing her.

  Suddenly, through the window of the shack came a lump of meat in the shape of a leg. Claudia approached the leg of meat without hesitation and picked it up and looked at it.

  It appeared to be yet another human leg; it had a shackle around the ankle which looked to have caused some considerable pain to the person the leg was formally attached to as it had dug deep into the skin; so deep in fact it would take a closer inspection to even notice it was even there.

  Claudia threw the leg into the corner of the room, which added onto the already existing pile of human limbs that were situated there. She has been in this shack for two days and refused to eat any of the human limbs that had been flung into the room by the wolves outside but she knew that soon she might have to if she wanted to live. She was lucky that the shack had a working tap that deposited seemingly clean water, which she had also used to wash the dirt and mud off of her skin.

  A group of howls came from outside of the shack, further attacking Claudia’s eardrums. Why did they howl so often and so loudly; what were they trying to tell Claudia? That they were still there and if she left the shack they would eat her alive? Why did they need to keep her here? They could have easily jumped through the window and ravaged her.

  Claudia wanted to desperately escape from here but she had tried pulling every book from the bookcase and no hidden passage emerged. Her new phone had neither reception nor internet connection and she sensed that no help would naturally arrive because most of the body parts that the wolves had thrown in had been around for a long time. Some however, she noticed were fairly recent and still dripping of blood; she could tell from the shape and build that those parts belonged to the women who were chained to the tabled with their legs spread in the shack not too far away.

  Insanity would soon overtake her with no social interaction or food to eat. There was no way she could eat the limbs of a fallen, especially those of inferior beings who were chained to tables and used as sex slaves to breed more of those hideous, freakish beings that chased her to this forsaken island. She had always been in a well-bred family and would not let such low income, easily abused scum infect her veins. This she was determined of, no matter the circumstances.

  The room was starting to smell of rotting flesh from the parts that had occupied the corner of the room. Claudia had tried throwing them back out of the windows but the wolves simply threw it back in, no matter the condition it was in. Soon the smell would be unbearable.

  Claudia questioned why they have kept her trapped here. They have insisted on not only refusing to attack her, but they also want to f
eed her. What purpose does she possess to the wolves? Why are they keeping her alive? She had asked these questions to herself a lot over the past days but there was never an answer to be found, just speculations.

  Rescue was looking bleak.

  Claudia had kept herself near the windows of the shack in the hopes that a young strapping man would pass by and see the beautiful damsel in distress and risk his life trying to save her from her confinement. But Claudia had come to the conclusion that this was now unlikely to happen.