The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  The woman continued her chanting.

  “Do you even care?” Moo sighed.

  Moo ran to the small windows in the room. Outside they appeared to be surrounded by the beasts. Moo could not see many due to the darkness, but she could see then moving in and out of the shadows of the fire staffs.

  Spikes instantly shattered the glass into Moos face, cutting her skin whilst also adding another cut into the recently fresh cuts on her face; she hadn't seen them approach. The spikes velocity was so high that they managed to pierce straight through the ceiling and into whatever was above.

  Moo quickly backed away from the windows and armed herself with the woman’s gun. It was a heavy rifle that she had no idea how to use.

  The chanting. The howling, The scratching. The thumping. The sounds all became louder and more frequent. Moo felt like her sanity would eventually collapse on her.

  At this point she felt like she had gotten more than she had wished for from this adventure.

  Moo turned around to see the woman’s eyes glowing a bright white. She had drawn symbols on the floor. Her chanting rose to a rapid pace, words began merging together.

  The symbols turned to different colours at an incredible rate; from blue to red to orange to black to purple. Moo felt like she was going to endure an epileptic fit if she stared at them for too long.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bright blue portal appeared.

  Two wolves jumped through the windows behind Moo. Two more burst through the main door of the house.

  She looked back at them. She didn’t hesitate with her decision; She ran towards the portal. She would see Ming again.

  A voice boomed from the woman's possessed mouth; her voice deeper and darker than before

  “You must kill the red haired woman. She must die for all to return to the way it was once”

  Moo vanished into the pure blue portal as the woman was mauled by the gang of hungry wolves. Moo felt like she was being pulled through a dreamy beautiful blue ocean as the woman was washed in a river of her own dark thick blood.

  The hunt would soon begin for the red haired woman.

  Starvation

  Her face was dripping, almost melting, with perspiration.

  Food.

  Where was the food? She thought she had at least a month’s supply; how had it all gone in less than two days?

  Lisa could barely think as she grunted and growled while she ransacked the house not paying any attention to the noise she was making.

  She couldn’t tell if it was day or night time but she didn’t care. She needed food or she wouldn’t make it another day.

  She ran back to the bedroom and stared angrily at a bound Studley.

  “What have you done with all of the food?!” She held herself like a strict teacher. “

  Studley could not have answered through his gagged mouth even if he had wanted to.

  “I’ve put up with you as much as any human possibly could and I have loved you since the day I was born but this is too much” She kicked empty packets of food as she let out a howl.

  Lisa grabbed at the cloth that bound Studleys arms and legs and tore at them, slowly ripping them apart.

  Studley cried out as his increasingly infected stump was repeatedly bashed into Lisa’s large breasts.

  “Oh, behave” Grunted Lisa.

  She eventually tore him free of his shackles.

  “We are getting in that patrol tank outside and going to find some food.” She put her large, sweating face close to his. It looked like an evil grotesque witch in the low light. “Understood?”

  Studley nodded. All he understood was the word ‘food’.

  Lisa halted. She placed a finger to his mouth and listened towards the barricaded window.

  She could hear it. The chewing. Her full stomach growled.

  She ran downstairs, a candle in one hand and Studley’s stump in the other.

  She followed the sound of chewing into the living room. She scanned the room and homed in on the sound. It came from behind the television; she knew it had been some little rodent that had stolen all of her goodies.

  She smashed the television on to the ground and prepared to lung at whatever critter had taken her stock.

  It wasn’t a rodent and it wasn’t small.

  Multiple wolf heads were halfway into the room through the expanding gap in the wall. They were biting at the wooden frame of the house, rapidly making more room for their entire bodies to fit through.

  Outside of the house the wolves had heard the woman’s hungry rant and decided to sneakily chew at the wooden frames, hoping to silently enter for a surprise attack.

  They didn’t realise one of the residents residing inside had attuned hearing to the sound of eating.

  Lisa panicked and snapped out of her food induced frenzy. She dropped the candle in her panic; it quickly caught fire to the drapes obscuring the boarded windows.

  She ran for the kitchen. The basement would be the only way out. She grabbed the officer’s car keys from the table as she passed it.

  She looked behind. Studley was staring at the monsters as they entered through the hole into the glowing inferno.

  “Studley!” Lisa Cried. “This way!”

  He snapped back into the real world and jogged towards the sound of her voice.

  They ran down the stairs into the abyss.

  They raced through the basement tripping and kicking objects and shelves that tried to block their passage. Lisa was like a bull in a china shop as she charged through. Nothing was strong enough to stop the girl’s large destructive frame. She barged into the two steel doors that locked the basement away, easily smashing it open and emerging outside just as the last wolf entered through the chewed hole into the house.

  The street was luckily brightly lit by the flames that licked and thrashed from their quickly devoured abode.

  The siblings quickly glanced at their family home for one last time before rushing into the patrol tank and driving off through streets of blood, corpses and destroyed homes.

  Outbreak: Day Four

  The Red Haired Angel

  The smell of death a beautiful aroma to his nose, the taste of flesh a five star delicacy to his taste buds, the sound of screams like a grand orchestral melody in his mind. All of these were the senses that the great silver wolf felt almost constantly since being freed from his stony tomb.

  He stamped through the towns, villages and cities passing judgement upon judgement on the residents. Weak, unhealthy, old and slow? Death. Food.

  Young, Strong, agile or intelligent? You are forcefully invited to join the pack.

  These discriminations were made almost instantly. Hardly any hesitations were permitted. The great silver spiked wolf knew his fur may be as tough as diamonds but it was certainly not impenetrable.

  The wolves that join the pack’s DNA is programmed like a computer AI, given algorithms on how to react in certain situations. These commands are transferred almost immediately when the penetration causing infection takes place.

  These humans. They lose all sense of their life; family, friends, likes, dislikes, fears; but their knowledge remains; it reveals itself to the great wolf when the time for it is required.

  His vision soared through darkness, thousands of duos of small white lights revealed to him what each and every follower was witnessing. He swiftly scanned the sockets. Two pregnant women arguing with a man. Kill. A village of old, decrepit people. Kill. The fat, ugly unhealthy woman and a mentally ill man in a heavily armoured travelling around all of the food shops they come across. The man’s immunity to the infection intrigued the great wolf. Observe. Do not kill; Yet.

  He continued scanning. Found her. The woman with shimmering long red hair. She must live; the wolf knew this, every wolf knew this, she is priority. Her death means death for all, but she was an anomaly. She could not be controlled. Her movements, her thoughts, her desires. This was all unknown to the wolf, he could not plan what she would do nex
t; he had to have a physical pair of eyes on her at all time.

  She is in a white boat soaring across the sea. Good; it appears she has begun to trust the wolves. She is safe where she is. For now.

  The great wolf’s vision returned to his own dark soulless eyes. Doing this left him vulnerable. This he knew was his great weakness, but to maintain and control the minds of thousands, soon millions of savage beasts, required great concentration.

  Below him by three hundred feet was a place where many humans like to gather and spend the earnings they work so hard for. They spend it on frivolous items then complain they cannot afford to live properly. This was what the knowledge he possessed told him, constantly growing every second.

  The silver wolf without any need for momentum leaped from the building, crashed through the glass ceiling and landed on the hard concrete floor; his sheer size and weight causing a tremor to emit itself from his landing location. One paw landed on the head of a large obese woman, crushing her head into hundreds of smaller pieces. No loss. Big meal later.

  Screams immediately began. No time for games. Two young children sat quivering by a bench. Young, agile. He instantly shot two speeding small needles into the chests of both.

  The pack now joined in, setting off on their pre-programmed journey to judge and control.

  A short, fat man with a face resembling a troll, tears sprinkling down his cratered face. Related to the new young recruits. The wolf swung his large razor sharp tail. The man now fell down; Headless; Rejected.

  This continued on for a long time. It had to be done. These humans were nothing but a tool in the grander scheme of things.

  The army in their green appearance approached. Guns firing. Not much of a threat; wolves knew the approximate amount of the average clip size. Wait. Dodge. Attack.

  An explosion. Many wolf casualties. Need to access situation.

  No concern for their own people. Buildings, lives and potential followers destroyed.

  The wolf jumped from wall to wall to obtain a vantage point.

  Large vehicle on tires like a conveyer belt. Large long dangerous weapon on the front. Yet to have witnessed such a thing.

  The wolf stared for a time while the tank continued thinning the packs population. He waited for one of the soldiers to be infected.

  It came to him like a syringe being slowly injected into his mind; the knowledge of its weakness; A small hatch at the rear of the machine; a small entrance to the inside sanctuary.

  The command was sent, and then quickly programmed into the DNA. These would no longer pose a threat.

  Shortly thereafter the tank ground to a halt. Lifeless. Defeated. The souls inside no more. The wolves pressed on into the rest of the city.

  The wolf knew that this place known as Paris would soon fall. Time to move on. The wolf army would grow. The time to take revenge on his people approaching ever closer.

  An Uncelebrated Homecoming

  She did not know how many hours it had taken for her to see land since her escape, but the sky had not been given the chance to cycle itself back into darkness again. The sky was currently in a state of being auroral; the dawn of a new day just approaching.

  A weak speedboat chugged hard as it approached the stony, boat riddled docks of Saint Petersburg. The place was solemn with silence, it was a majestic Saturday with a fine breeze in the air with the gleaming sun to accompany it’s inconsistent appearance. Any other day and the place would have been hustling and bustling with life and sound.

  But not this, nor any other day to come.

  The speedboat angrily pushed past the smaller boats it encountered on its ending voyage, swerving those it knew were too much a challenge; much like a cat knowing wisely which battles to fight or flee.

  The boat halted as close as possible to the old, rarely used rickety wooden pier; it was easier to navigate to as no boats would dock there out of fear of it collapsing.

  Claudia was literally starving; her stomach had been making grotesque noises through all of her journey back to land and this sound had distracted her every single time it clawed at her eardrums.

  The smell of her body shadowed this annoyance, it growing stronger and thrashing at her delicate senses every time the wind blew in another direction, or when she moved her thinning arms to a higher location.

  During her journey she had fully expected a ship full of men to spy her followed by them swiftly coming to her aid, showering her in food, sympathies and compliments; but this never happened. She then was confident that men working at docks would jump into the water to come and help her. But this has also not happened.

  She knew the reason for this and It made her think of how her life would be if she was one of the many peasants that plagued the world; always with a horrid stench or with stomachs growling like unruly beasts. It confirmed to her that her judgement was always correct in not affiliating herself with these kinds of people, and she finally understood why the suicide rate was so high.

  The large wolf was still with her, sat in absolute silence the whole of the journey, not making a sound, nor making a move except for the times it seemingly beamed wondrously at Claudia, sometimes for minutes at a time. Claudia did not object to this visual praising.

  She stepped onto the edge of the boat to give herself leverage to reach the dock edge above her and tumbled slightly; the wolf was quick to put his dry black nose under her raised back foot giving her the boost she needed to reach the platform. With the mighty force of the wolf in her heel, she was easily able to pull herself up and over.

  The great beast jumped effortlessly and stood next to Claudia. Its head reached up to her chest, it’s body was twice as thick as her.

  Food. She needed proper food. It had been four days since she had eaten a decent meal, not just mouldy scraps from an island infested with cannibals.

  As she hastily set off into the city she never questioned the silence all around her, nor the blood and torn clothes scattered densely around. She had no idea of the slaughter and carnage that had forsaken not only the city, but maybe even the entire world. It was not something that her brain could think possible; the only thing on her mind right now was herself.

  There was a small supermarket at the entrance to the docks. She made no delays in pushing through the automatic doors, and charging directly for the food isle...

  Only to find it was in an abysmal state; food packets were everywhere, torn apart into miniscule pieces. Even food cans were not spared this atrocity as they had apparently been torn open wildly with the food extracted.

  She crashed to her hands and knees, scanning the debris for any small pieces of food she could find to prevent her ravenous stomach from eating anymore of her wasting body to sustain itself.

  Her dirty blackening hands managed to find odd pieces of foods such as crisps, crackers, and bits of chocolate bars. Claudia did not delay in shoving the food into her mouth; food which was now stale from being left out of it’s packaging for days, but this did not bother her, for the moment.

  As the food slithered and pushed itself down her throat, most of it barely chewed, she instantly began to feel much more herself and was already beginning to feel disgusted at her actions; much like when experiencing an orgasm after having sexual intercourse with someone far below your standards. The self-disgust was almost unbearable for her.

  She swiftly got up from her scavenging position while brushing herself down. This made no difference as most of the filth was stuck to her clothes and had been that way far too long.

  Claudia looked around shyly expecting eyes to be gawping at her in shock at not only her actions but her unsightly appearance. But there was no one around. Not a sound could be heard. The supermarket was in a state of total devastation; the shelves were all knocked over and food, clothes and toiletries were all over the shop floor. The place looked like an earthquake had ravaged the foundations.

  As she mulled over this her wolf companion scanned the floor and gobbled up the remaining food. />
  Her first instinct was that a war had broken out and everyone had rushed to grab all of the food items; but this didn’t add up. It looked as if all of the food had been torn open and eaten straight away; none of it was taken. Another clue for Claudia was that the soft drink fridges had not been touched and were in perfect condition. This reminded her that she was still extremely thirsty.

  She quickly drank a bottle of water and took another for the journey ahead; but felt as if water was going to be one of the lesser issues of what was to come. She knew where she had to go. Her business needed her. She had not worked hard all of her life to lose it now.