The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  “He will turn into wolfie soon?” questioned Studley as he looked down nervously at the ruined body.

  “Let’s get back to the house then sort it out” Lisa grabbed the officer's legs and they both continued their run back home.

  The Enjoyable Journey

  The flight lasted eight hours and the sky was gradually changing from navy to red as dawn approached the night.

  A compact, blue, Mercedes car waited for them at the small airstrip that they landed on. It was quite a squeeze for the three of them and their luggage but they had managed to all fit. Trimple showed absolutely no signs of delight.

  The village would be another day by car. Ming hoped that the journey was worth the distance and discomfort they have had to endure this far.

  Ming and Trimple took turns driving the car. The drive was going to be long and would require the team to sleep at a hotel along the way. The heat made everyone drowsy, they had no concept of time and the two not driving would constantly drift in and out of sleep, woken up periodically by their heads banging against the car windows. After a few hours they had left the main roads and gone into the back roads. The driving became extremely perilous and they had soon wished to be back in the messy, uncoordinated, savage main roads. One bright point for Trimple was that the ear piercing singing had ceased the moment the journey became less stable.

  Along the way they passed many small villages which had started off very friendly, offering the team food, water and directions, but the further they advanced into the wilderness they acted less and less hospitable. At their first night stay in a small rundown village, they slept in their sleeping bags in a small shed which had a pungent toilet small; it was so small that their three sleeping bags had taken up all of the available floor space. The only place to spread your waste was in a small hole just meters away from where they were sleeping.

  The girls hadn’t realised that there would be no internet in the wild lands of Brazil. They so desperately wanted to show off peace-sign selfies via social media to their millions of fans, but no signal was to be found.

  Ming had expected the work of a television celebrity to be much more glamorous; she assumed she would be walking on red carpets drinking overpriced champagne, not sleeping in small ghastly shacks in the middle of nowhere. She had wanted nothing more than to turn back but knew that Moo and Trimple were very determined and had their own reasons for being here. Ming had to repeatedly console herself, reminding herself that she would make it big and this was just a bump in the red carpet.

  When they arrived the villagers had all but ignored them until Moo had walked around fanning herself with large amounts of cash notes. It was a stupid thing to do, Ming thought, and she was terrified that she would receive a spear through her chest at any time. Sleep found it difficult to claim her that night, the noises of the forest, people talking, and a surprising amount of cars passing through, combined with thoughts of death were too much for her brain to relax.

  She decided to turn on the nearby radio, hoping to sleep to some mellow Brazilian tunes when the emergency broadcast frequency activated and boomed out of the radio, waking Trimple and Moo.

  “Emergency, emergency, this is not a drill; there has been a viral outbreak situation at San Paolo airport which is rapidly spreading in and around the city itself. We do not know how far it will travel before we can stop it, so we strongly recommend that all residents of Brazil please keep indoors at all times until the situation is resolved” The woman's voice repeated over and over.

  “How exciting!” beamed Moo “I wonder what has happened? I kind of wish we never left the city so soon.”

  “Im glady we left when we did! I would rather dealy with these unfriendly savages than dealy with a viral outbreak” Ming finally felt a bit more at ease being where she was.

  “Well ladies, we cannot stay out here forever so we will have to return eventually”

  “I look forward to it!” screamed Moo, letting out a maniacal laugh.

  They hadn’t realised that the broadcast had been repeating since soon after they had left the Sao Paolo airfield the day earlier.

  Despite this, they all slept surprisingly well.

  Sacrifice

  As they reached the pavement they turned, while still moving, to see Mike still fighting with the wolf on top of him. Studley wanted nothing more than to help the man but he knew in situations like this that he must always listen to Lisa and do exactly what she says as everything that was happening was far beyond his comprehension. When he concentrates really hard in moments like this, Studley can think like a normal rational person, but a lot of the time he fails to understand situations and makes bad judgements without realising the consequences. Most of those times he doesn’t realise he is doing it and the only thing his brain tells him to do right now is listen to Lisa.

  “Keep going, we can’t waste any time!” Lisa shouted, breathing heavier than she ever has before. She wanted nothing more than to just sit down and eat as soon as possible.

  They climbed back up the steps, Lisa slid through the open door back into the house, her protruding stomach making the action a few seconds slower as it got slightly stuck between the door and the doorframe. As she entered she dropped her part of the officers body, this made Studley instantly feel the entire weight of the corpse, it almost dragging him to the floor.

  The two dazed wolves climbed back onto their four spiked furry feet and jolted towards Studley. Lisa yelled at Studley to hurry up and get into the house and yanked at his shoulder.

  He backed into the house and she slammed the door shut as soon as his body was inside, forgetting about the body attached to him. The door slammed on the officer's body over and over as she relentlessly tried to close the door, hoping that it would magically happen. But all that it accomplished was crushing the man's ribs and chest bones, the snapping sound louder than the door itself.

  In a rapid motion she bent down and flung the mangled body into the house and banged the door shut, barricading it for good measure.

  As they saw the door shut the wolves stopped their advance and looked towards Mike; three wolves would soon become four.

  “Please get him off me!” Studley squealed. Lisa was forever surprised by Studleys constant range of emotions, he had just gone from fighting off two deadly wolves to now being extremely close to breaking out in hysterics over a dead man attached to his arm.

  Lisa instructed Studley to follow her into the kitchen, and he obliged. The room was dark; the light in the room had broken so the only light that was emitted was the light from the hallway and through the small cracks in the large barricaded window. Lisa made a beeline for a draw in the corner of the room and pulled the draw completely out of its hole, causing the entirety of the cutlery to swarm onto the floor. She bent down and pulled out a large kitchen knife from the pile of silverware; the knife edge was blurred from how rapidly her hand was shaking.

  Studley dragged the body to the centre of the room, a trail of dark blood following the corpse wherever it was pulled, and they both placed it on the large rectangle table; the body fit the width and height perfectly, as if made for this occasion.

  Lisa had the knife in two hands to ease the shaking yet the blade was still not steady, she had never done anything like this before, even the sight of the man’s mangled, beaten body was making her want to run to her bedroom, eat some ice cream and hide under the covers. Her entire body was covered in sweat. Her usually bright pink t-shirt was now a completely different, darker shade.

  Studley stood in silence as she pulled the man’s sleeve up to reveal his fleshy arm. It had turned a pale white already due to the incredible amount of blood that the withering body had expelled.

  She took deep breaths to calm herself followed by placing one hand on the man’s wrist whilst raising the knife in the air.

  Thump...thump.

  A pulse.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Lisa dropped the knife in disbelief. Sawing off a dead man�
�s arm was one thing but not when he was alive, his body feeling every single chop of the knife. She backed away, turned, and stood over the sink, sweat dripping into the half-filled bowl. She took deeper breaths to calm her nerves; if she was any older she would have had at least five strokes by now.

  “Lisa!!” A rattling sound came from behind her.

  She swiftly turned to see the man’s body beginning to convulse on the table. He was going to transform into one of the furry fiends.

  “We need to get him outside!” Lisa announced.

  She rushed to the table, ordering Studley to stand next to her; she still felt that she could not strike the blows that would tear this man’s arms from his body so she had to think fast.

  She offered the shaking knife to Studley.

  “I-I’ve never hurt anyone before” Studley looked in shock at the spasming body.

  But this wasn’t true. Lisa remembered the many times he would lash out at school and deal devastating attacks to his bully peers, leaving them most of the time with large black eyes and missing teeth, all with just one outraged blow. The head teacher at the school would always take pity on him and let him remain in the school no matter the amount of times it happened.

  “Listen, if this man transforms he will kill both of us, do you really think that this man who has served our motherland all this time would want to slaughter two young people?”

  She used his admiration of the military to take advantage of the situation.

  Studley said nothing and reached for the knife from Lisa, her eyes filled to the brim with tears. The guilt of passing this task onto her brother will forever haunt her dreams. She stepped back, both hands held against her chest.

  The man’s body began to go through the changing process as his limbs began to snap and change. The pain now causing him to scream; his voice was extremely hoarse from the wounds to his neck.

  Studley raised his arm and let out his trademark scream and slashed the knife at his own wrist, stunning Lisa into absolute stillness.

  He chopped and chopped while his battle cry became higher and higher in pitch. As he pierced the skin the noise changed to a deeper, grounded sound as the knife reached the bone, beginning to work its way through the solid mass. The screams of both Studley and the man, accompanied by Lisa’s loud murmuring sounded like a symphony of death.

  He missed his attacks several times causing deep wounds to appear all over his forearm like a suicidal teenager. Eventually after what seemed to them both like hours, his arm was only connected to his hand by a few strands of bone, which he used the other arm to pull apart, causing an even worse sound that caused Lisa recoil, cringe and vomit all over her pink shirt. His now free hand hung from the Kitchen table, dropping of blood, bone hanging freely from the large gaping wound.

  Lisa, unable to comprehend what Studley had just done to himself, ran to the table and grabbed the man by his legs, one was still human while the other was changing shape while in her hands, getting hairier by the second. She looked up at Studley assuming he would instantly grab the man's arms but he just stood there, his now handless arm dripping of blood.

  She shouted to him multiple times but no reaction at all was to be found. She knew she had to act now so she ran to the kitchen door and opened it. This door was never barricaded because it was made of thick metal and had no glass in it.

  She ran back and grabbed the man's body and dragged it off of the table and noticed it was surprisingly getting much lighter; where was the extra weight going to? She pulled it past Studley and threw it through the door and into the garden, finishing with a loud grunt, and then slapped her hands together as if she had just thrown out a rowdy drunk from the pub.

  She shoulder barged the door shut then pushed her back against it. She slowly slid herself down the door while watching Studley; He was just standing there, blood oozing from his stump.

  Outbreak: Day Three

  Selfish

  Claudia opened her eyes. She wondered if they were really opened; she instantly assumed she had gone blind from the fall. Panic assaulted her as she could see nothing but darkness. She held her arms out fully attempting to reach out and feel for anything in her surroundings; she had half expected to feel the fur of a wolf on her finger tips, but all she felt was a wall.

  It was rough and felt like rocks on a mountain side. She had no idea where she was or any idea how to get out. She looked up, the direction she had entered from, and could see a faint blip of moonlight light from the hole she had fallen through. Relief is what she felt when she realised she wasn’t blind, but now it was a different kind of panic; a trapped like a rat in a trap kind of panic.

  She dragged her hands against the rough wall and followed it all the way around; she was in a small circular cave, or prison Claudia thought. She had taken herself out of one prison and placed herself in one even worse, one with cellmates who want to take advantage of you; darkness.

  She knelt down on the floor and spread her hands over it to feel for anything which may help her out of this circular lockup.

  She felt the broken wood from the door with the padlock still attached; Claudia gave a little smile at how determined that padlock was to do its job. She also felt small sharp pieces which were likely broken ornaments from the shack above.

  Delight soon entered her as she felt something very familiar; her mobile phone. She quickly grabbed it and picked it up. She tapped the screen, praying it would have some battery remaining, and it did.

  The screen lit up and Claudia’s face shined in the aura it reflected upon her. She had never felt such relief in her life as she did then. The remaining battery was now at a mere four percent, but it was enough for Claudia to turn the light on; she knew she would not have long so she had to act fast.

  She scanned the room with the light and what she saw was not very surprising, it looked exactly as it felt. She examined the floor and she saw nothing of use, but in the corner of her eye she noticed a small lower part of the room much darker than the rest and of different texture; it was a small hole in the wall.

  She did not wait a moment, she crouched down and peered inside and shined the light of her phone into the hole, but it was all pure blackness as far as she could see. She decided to not even waste time thinking about it; it was going to be a dirty ride but it was either that or starve to death in her own piss and shit like a prisoner. She turned off the phone and lay flat on her stomach, the dirt on her body making her feel unpleasant, and began to crawl through the gap. She could just about make it through; she felt the ceiling of the tunnel just above her, barely touching her hair, and her arms scraped the sides as she pulled her way through. She thought about how screwed she would have been if she had let herself go, like many of her old friends, and become an obese mess.

  Her friend Janine for example used to be her only rival for the affection of the males at university, she was Claudia’s only competition with the boys and she may have even gotten more stares than Claudia, although she would never admit it. But she had soon made the mistake of getting married to the first boy she fell for and a mere two years later she was six stone heavier and looked a disgusting fat mess; Claudia had no reason to socialise with her after that and the pair had never spoken since. There are just some things you do not have in your circle of friends, and that is one of them. Claudia had cringed many a times about how the girl must look now, 6 years later.

  Claudia crawled for what felt like hours, but was more like mere minutes; bugs and assorted little critters slithered over her body making it feel like a marathon rather than a short sprint.

  After a few more minutes of traversing the dark, silent tunnel she eventually began to hear whimpering; it was a woman’s voice. As she continued to crawl the crying got louder and louder and Claudia could see a faint light ahead of her; the exit was close.

  As she got closer to the light she noticed it had a netted appearance, from this distance Claudia thought nothing of it but as she closed in on it she noticed that
it was a small metal vent blocking her way out.

  An annoyance boiled deep inside her as she felt yet again that she had placed herself in yet another prison, this one not only with darkness to keep her company, but also all of gods disgusting critters. She punched the fence in a small fit of rage and to her happy surprise, the vent fell off the wall and made a clanging sound; it was not screwed into the wall, it was simply placed there.

  She emerged out of the tunnel, stood up and inspected her new, much brighter surroundings. Claudia was in a small corridor the walls were made of fine brickwork and was of high quality, but were aged. On the wall were torches that were lit and there was just enough spread out for the whole area to be lit without even a sprinkle of darkness; it felt more like a castle dungeon than an underground hideout. To her left the corridor went further down and took a right turn, down there she could hear murmuring which while faint, sounded like the murmurs of more of those retards.

  To her right was a room, inside was where the crying was coming from was.

  Claudia peered inside and noticed that it was a prison; there was a table and a chair in the centre, a large door directly opposite to Claudia, and on the right hand wall were three prison cells and inside one was a couple; a man and a woman.