The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  After several rings the phone was answered from a supple sweet voice.

  Amy

  “Hello? who is this?” the voice quizzed, making it appear that a phone call was the last thing they were expecting.

  “Amy. it’s me! your idol, Claudia” She sat even further back in her chair, the bend at the bottom looking set to snap.

  “Oh my god! I thought you were dead!”

  “No way, not me! but you need to get over here and see me! I’m in my underground bunker it’s so perfect, it’s so me.”

  “Do you not know what is going on? My parents are dead, I’m barricaded up inside my house and the whole city is infested with killer wolves who shoot you and turn you into one of them!”

  “Oh I know, they are so intelligent they know to admire me, they follow me around and protect me as if I am their queen. it’s incredible!”

  “Oh you lie!” Her voice rose with excitement.

  “Oh I do not!” Claudia snapped, leaping forward in her seat almost smashing her knees against the hard aluminium table.

  The conversation went on like this for a time until Claudia jumped into a monologue full of great detail about her adventure barely leaving space in between for Amy to have her say. The story was true but exaggerated in many parts, one part in particular had Claudia jumping from a high platform while wielding a dagger and plunging it straight through the cannibal’s brain. Certain parts such eating food off the floor and vomiting all over herself were mentioned nowhere.

  As she was nearing the end of her story Amy interrupted, panic suddenly began to rise within her voice.

  “Oh my god I’ve been too loud! Someone is trying to break in” A series of loud bangs could be heard in the background.

  “Wait, I need to tell you the rest of my story” Claudia sighed, trying to remember where she was.

  “Claudia this is serious…” She was now whispering and the banging became quieter.

  “It will be okay I think they like attractive people that's why they love me. Maybe they will love you too? just go put on some make-up and let me finish my story”

  A loud sound like wood breaking echoed through the phone. Amy then spoke in a soft whisper while sniffling her nose;

  “I still remember the day when I first attended a cheerleader try-out Claudia, even though it was fifteen years ago I will never forget the way you insulted my dress sense and made me drink toilet water. It was slow progress but you made me into a better person by teaching me to always think myself as better than everyone else. I know I was the only person you truly changed this way and I’m so happy you chose me as that person to take under your wing. I was so weak until I found you.”

  Claudia also remembered that. Amy was just an experiment to see if Claudia could change someone from being a complete life failure into someone worthy but it was never a success. Claudia mainly kept her as a friend because the girl worshipped Claudia and loved listening to everything that came out of her mouth, truth or lie.

  She always wanted a friend like that. But she knew deep inside that it was just like all that others, that Amy was jealous of her and one day this would become an overwhelming emotion causing her to attempt to destroy Claudia. A bonus however was that she made Claudia look even more attractive so she was also the perfect wing woman, which is why Amy was one of her favourite people to go out with to get guys.

  “Yeah, I made you a slightly better person” Claudia concluded.

  Amy then let out a bellowing scream which caused Claudia to wince and place a hand to her ear. The scream was then mixed in with the sound of loud growling; the song of death yet again played its tune to Claudia’s ears. A tune she was becoming too familiar with.

  Claudia said nothing and placed the phone back on its holder and returned to viewing the monitors with a sinking disappointment that she will never get to recite the ending of her story.

  She walked towards her bedroom to sleep off the sadness.

  Outbreak: Day Five

  A Plan

  It was her first full day in the underground bunker and already Claudia had begun to feel lonely and wasted; across the other side of the world was the last country standing strong, full of hundreds of millions of people, and here she was in a dying country. No people to cherish her, no people for her to boss around, no one to listen to her stories.

  She had spent a small part of the day mainly playing arcade games, looking at social media and blogging websites. She had no idea why she ordered so many arcade machines as she never really enjoyed playing video games because she would usually lose at them; and losing was not something she called fun.

  Hilisky spent most of the time sitting on his Sofa watching Claudia. She fed him three times a day with generous meals and sat with him when she watched films. He was very soft to cuddle up to and really bought back memories of her times with her dad and her dog.

  The internet was what she spent most of her time and used the majority of her time reading all the glorious details she had missed while being away. The epidemic had started in St Petersburg’s harbour and quickly spread to neighbouring countries. It had reached Brazil via a plane from Japan which had a short connecting flight in St Petersburg, and then it spread to every other country in South America.

  It took only four days for the majority of the world to be consumed.

  She noted the date and time on a video that a person had taken at the start of it all and noticed it was around the time that she was on that horrid hell of an island.

  She had then remembered the first day she was on the cannibal island and recalls a large wolf statue breaking apart to reveal a large silver grey wolf; for the majority of the time afterwards she had assumed it was just an hallucination from such a traumatic experience, but now she was sure that was the start of this whole wolf apocalypse thing; but how and why did it awaken and choose her as it’s queen? Were the wolves all under its command? is their command simply just to keep her alive and kill everyone or transform them?

  Or was it all because they truly saw her as beautiful?

  As much as she loved being revered and protected by the mindless mutts, she loved more being worshipped by human beings.

  She had checked more websites but traffic had become less and less frequent, there are still people posting updates and surviving in places, even military outposts exist, but it is all looking grim as supplies are running out. Leaving to go out into the open usually ends in people being annihilated, and it appears that the wolves seem to learn how to tackle military armaments very efficiently.

  Claudia being outside though did not spell her demise. She needed to get to America and she can roam freely around the desolate world.

  She spent the majority of the evening planning how she was going to travel over 4000 miles across the world without flights, boats or trains.

  She had written down an elaborate plan which involved her driving a car through the broken streets and stealing a plane from the air base just outside of town. She had not long drifted off to sleep with these thoughts when a faint rumbling sound crept over the border from Belarus to Russia. Unmonitored Camera’s in various dead outposts noticed large amounts of variously sized transport helicopters and aeroplanes soaring across the skies.

  Inside these planes were soldiers heavily armed and very ready for combat.

  Outbreak: Day Six

  The American Dream

  The constantly growing rumbling sounds from all over the city quickly woke Claudia who rushed to the monitors.

  Early morning sunlight gleamed off the elite heavily armoured troops who had surrounded the building. Tanks were in the distance scanning the area with their long range dangerous weapons of mass destruction.

  Claudia sat in disbelief. This was it, they had come for her. The American army had somehow found out where she was and have come to take her to America. It must be like in the films, Claudia thought, where they have a list of the world's most important people and send out mass amounts of troops and reso
urces to find and rescue them.

  Four soldiers climbed the steps to the main door, while others were curiously scanning the ground, and begin breaking their way inside the building, while this happened Claudia noticed her own army of wolves making hasty movement towards the sounds the soldiers were making.

  “NO!” Claudia shouted towards the array of monitors showing wolves scurrying at an alarming speed from one screen to the next, Claudia’s eyes following along with their movement.

  Claudia pounced from her seat and sprinted for the large entrance door and pulled on the large bronze lever next to it; it made a sound like a floorboard would make when an obese person had placed their full weight on top of it.

  She tapped her foot impatiently as the door slowly slid open wide enough for her to slide through; at this moment it didn’t matter to her that she was wearing nothing more than a blue tank top and black tight leggings.

  She reached the elevator and pressed her eye against the scanner causing the elevator to spring into vibrant life, colouring the otherwise dark, cold hallway.

  Just before she stepped into the elevator a large explosion from behind and above shook the room she was in so violently that she fell against the wall almost cracking her skull against it if not for her fast hand movements to block the collision.

  She ran back into her bunker, the door now fully opened, and noticed a hole had formed in the ceiling above the door leading to the shower, large pieces of rubble and stone had landed just meters away from where she was sitting.

  Two small slick ropes drooped down through the hole ending just before reaching the floor. Two soldiers covered in large black metallic armour from head to toe followed instantly and landed with a large crashing sound as they unlatched themselves from the rope; the shockwaves from the landing made Claudia’s legs tremble.

  The men paused all movement and looked straight at Claudia, the bright flashlight on their round, undetailed helmet obscuring her vision. Claudia raised one arm in front of glow to help her sight.

  “Claudia Deblonge?” Said one of the men, his voice sounded like a robots, perfectly matching his look.

  “Who wants to know?” Claudia didn’t want to come across as too eager to be rescued.

  Claudia’s eyes glanced up at the gap they had made as sounds of gunfire came from above; the wolves must have found the soldiers

  “We are U.S military and we require that you come with us right now, this is not an option.” The two men took an intimidating step forward.

  “Why do you need me to go with you? I have everything I need right here.” Claudia’s unease caused her body to react by taking small steps backwards, like someone being pushed along the plank by a pirate jabbing a sword into them.

  “No more questions. We will take you by force if necessary” The men now began walking towards her, their bulky armour causing them to move slowly, the large amount of furniture in the room not making it any faster.

  That undiplomatic last line didn’t sound good to Claudia’s. She couldn’t think what to do next. If they wanted to shoot her then they would have done it by now.

  The walking armour reached for Claudia arm’s, grabbing it with a closed vice-like grip.

  “Unhand me this instant!” Claudia demanded. She didn’t even try to pull free. This always worked on Russian police officers once they realised her monetary power.

  The man ignored her. He raised his other arm to his mouth and spoke into the inbuilt radio.

  “Acquired Subject.”

  “Subject?” Claudia spat. “Subject??” That word describing her made her feel appalled.

  She began to pull away from the man but his grip was iron tight. His body did not move once millimetre as Claudia supplied her full force. The other man began patrolling the room.

  “Do not make me break your arm” His emotionless robotic threat shivered through Claudia.

  Claudia felt the man begin to turn his wrist the more she pulled.

  “You will bow down before me before the end of this day, you don’t know who you’re threatening!” She shouted, her face reddening.

  As the other man's exploration led into the food room the door slammed shut behind him. Hilisky was holding the handle of the door in his mouth.

  The man restraining Claudia pulled out a handgun and fired shots towards Hilisky who dodged the pellets with ease.

  “Stop that!” Claudia used her free hand to slap the gun in his hand, impeding his aim.

  During this distraction Hilisky had managed to make ground. The man stumbled slightly as the wolf’s tail smashed into his helmet. Claudia felt the pure force of the attack shockwave through his body.

  The wolf moved around him too quickly. He couldn’t turn fast enough, Claudia’s struggling making it even harder.

  He released his hold of Claudia, then, using parsley any force, knocked her away. The magnitude of the blow sent her feet hobbling back into the hallway she came from.

  Wolf and man began their duel. Punches were dodged and spikes were deflected. Blows were endured from both sides; the wolf coming off worse each time.

  Claudia stood watching the event, eager to see her furry friend end the life of this man.

  The food room door burst open as the other soldier emerged from the dust.

  A spike shot immediately from the wolf into the wall next to Claudia.

  ‘Run’ is the message it sent.

  The man saw this, noticing the open elevator behind his prised subject; this capture would for sure guarantee his promotion.

  Claudia turned, ran, pounced into the elevator and punched on the button.

  As the door closed the last thing she saw were the two gigantic robotic-like men surrounding the loyal beast.

  A Fight For The Future

  The elevator ride felt longer than the last time. Claudia felt a pain inside of her; a faint, old inner familiar pain which she promptly locked away just as the doors slid open.

  She was back in the room she thought she would never be in again. She looked out of the large window, curious as to what was happening.

  Outside, the explosion had called hordes of wolves to its location. They descended onto the outer premises in no time and the fight with the army commenced.

  The wolves shot their spikes, chomped their teeth and slammed their tails into the armour of the soldiers as they manically jumped around, managing only to achieve causing minor dents in the metallic shell; like the damage a car would receive after smashing into a small child at just over the speed limit.

  The soldiers retaliated with gunfire from their small machine guns. Wolves fell by the dozens as the rounds penetrated their lightly naturally armoured coats, sinking into the skin beneath.

  As one wolf fell, another would almost instantly take its place; to the soldiers it was like shovelling water out of a sinking ship.

  Claudia witnessed the swarming from her office window; it looked like ants crawling over small pieces of sweet food that had been left outside for too long.

  She did not have time to observe who was winning the fight as a large black figure obscured her view from the outside; it was a helicopter. On the side was an armoured man with a large gatling gun aimed in her direction.

  “Holy shit” she muttered as she slowly backed up, weighing up her options but ultimately not having enough time to make it to either elevator.

  The gatling gun began to spin into bullet hailing life as streams of needles quickly appeared from both sides of the outside of the room, bombarding the helicopter with countless pressure; it looked like two large thickening pieces of wood had attached from the building to the helicopter.

  A large pack of wolves were a few floors beneath Claudia; she was not the target.

  The helicopter began to spiral out of control as the once fully black metallic bird was now completely brown on one side.

  Claudia did not make the choice of not staying around to see the explosion, because she would have loved nothing more than to have seen it fall t
o the ground in a fiery eruption for seemingly trying to take her life; the helicopter’s descent was aimed in the direction of her office and was going to make itself at home very shortly. She ran and jumped as if she was performing the triple jump towards the elevator, the now detached blades from the helicopter just missing her supple hair.

  The flying behemoth barely reached half way into her office. She did not see this and never will, as she was inside the elevator before it could even stop moving.

  She punched in floor four on the elevator. She knew of a fire escape ladder on this floor which would lead her into the back alley of the building, a place where homeless scum would like to sleep sometimes, relishing the heat given off by the buildings constant blazing central heating, that was until she hired bodyguards to purely patrol that area at night; putting a stop to this happening.