The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  “Oh don’t worry, this will all be over soon if you cooperate with me. Life will be very uncomfortable for you if you don’t”

  Claudia sat up in her chair and leaned over the table.

  “Do you know who I am? how dare you speak to me like that”

  “Inherit some property from daddy, run it into the ground with terrible business decisions and think you’re someone special?” The smugness of the man's voice irritated Claudia’s skin. “Sweetheart, you’re nothing, and I don’t have time for a princess with an ego”

  “I want to know how these wolves came to be and how you are connected to this disaster” His voice was quickly going from that of authority to that of impatience.

  Claudia now sat back coolly in the chair after quickly realizing how much this man needed her “I really have no idea what you’re talking about officer sir”.

  This young woman reminded him of a spoilt brat, a person who had their whole lives handed to them on a plate, and this person in particular is highly likely to be the cause of much devastation, and she is sitting right in front of him without a care in the world. This made anger build inside him, something he never usually shows in his professional life.

  “Listen girl, millions of people are dying every day and I know you are somehow connected. A small team of my men went to the small island where your phone was last located and saw all the chaos that went on there; The women chained to tables, the corpses of the large men that looked like they had been ripped apart by beasts, and all of the boats that had been plundered by these men” As the sentence ran on, his voice became softer and softer in an attempt to try a different approach “It must have been quite the ordeal”

  “I was simply on a weekend date with a young strapping rich man, then I went home and got attacked by your ugly crew” She added after a small pause “I must stress how ugly they are, Americans on TV are shown to be so attractive as well”

  There was a pause in the conversation for a few minutes, silence filled the empty room and she wondered what had happened, she just instantly assumed she had won the debate, then the door behind Claudia swung open wide, the hinges creaking as the door hid its maximum width.

  A man in armour, it looked to be twice as thick as the armour that was worn when her bunker was raided, pushed in a large trolley that had a large white drape around it, restricting Claudia from seeing what was beneath. The man clicked a small piece of metal with his foot under the trolley, making it stay in place, then quickly left the room.

  “Do you know what is under the covers?” He didn’t give time for an answer “It’s one of the beasts that has ravaged the world and is currently getting closer and closer to invading the last known free country on earth”

  Claudia said nothing but continued looking at the trolley, she wondered if this wolf would worship her like the others had, or did wolves from different countries each have different queens. She expected she would soon find out, but deep down she knew this wolf would be her ticket to escaping.

  “Let’s see how it reacts to your presence…”

  A small beeping sound was heard then the drape around the trolley began to expand as the frame below opened out, releasing the wolf from its imprisonment.

  The wolf shuffled its way under the drape which had landed on top of it. To Claudia it looked like someone was crawling under there with 50 knives sticking out of their back.

  The large wolf head slowly emerged its head out of its white silky cape. First, it’s long ruffled ears popped out, then it’s dry furiously sniffing nose, followed by its dark mirror eyes. Then as it slowly revealed its face and neck Claudia’s heart skipped a beat as she immediately noticed the red spiked collar around the neck of the wolf.

  Hilisky.

  The wolf walked up to the seated woman and without any warning, snapped his large jaws around the handcuffs that bound her hand, releasing her, then sat down tall besides her.

  “Good boy” whispered Claudia “Now shoot some of your spikes into that mirror” She repeatedly pointed towards the double sided mirror.

  The beast seemed to understand every word and action she presented to it as it reared up its back and flung countless spikes into the mirror; They were shot at such a velocity that they managed to stick into the glass, penetrating it about half way.

  After 20 seconds of this, Claudia grew impatient, picked up her chair and slammed it against spikes that were wedged into the glass, smashing the chair in the process but making no further progress.

  “So it seems you are one with the wolves, how interesting, and it appears there is no way you will cooperate with us, so be it. Release the gas”

  Claudia flipped around as the room began to turn a dark shade of yellow and before she could even shout obscenities at the voice behind the mirror, she was feeling extremely tired and heavy like a dark force was pulling her head down. She tried to fight it but ultimately after a small thirty seconds of exposure the room turned a complete shade of yellow, Claudia nothing but a faint black silhouette beneath the acidic glow, then she was asleep on the cold grey floor. The wolf joined her thirty seconds later, his assault of spikes slowing each second the cloudy glass entered his mind.

  The Human Trials

  Claudia awoke. Her arms, neck and legs feeling tight, her vision glued looking at the ceiling above and no matter how hard she tried she could not move her head.

  Jessica entered the large, extremely illuminated room, it was almost blinding to her the moment she entered; The hallway behind her was as bright as a good summers day. She saw the young red haired woman tied down to the table, her long hair spilling out from either side of her hanging over the sides of the chair she was bound to. She looked exactly like the photograph on the computer database. She was fighting with her restraints and desperately trying to look around the room.

  Jessica had been ordered to examine the girl and do whatever it takes to find out her connection to the wolves. She had never performed any kinds of tests or experiments on humans and never did she want to, this woman on the table who looked around the same age was she was, appeared scared and lost, dragged away from her home and family just like Jessica was.

  But then Jessica thought of the situation and fought back the strong emotions she was feeling, ceasing the sound of her heart; this girl could have all of the answers that she seeks, and all it might take it a sample of blood to figure this out. She wasn’t used to lying to herself. This girl could also be innocent.

  She approached Claudia, picking up a needle as she circled the chair.

  “This will sting just a little, please remain still” Jessica spoke in a gentle voice as if she was speaking to her daughter just before nursing a wound on her leg.

  “Get away from me you psycho bitch” Claudia tilted her head slightly and attempted to spit at Jessica with dry lips but nothing came out as she had been given no liquids since her capture.

  Jessica noticed the momentary defeat in Claudia’s face and swiftly jabbed the small needle into her arm, pushing the plastic top down as far as it would go.

  Claudia felt a small stabbing pain as it penetrated her soft skin, she had always had skin that was easy to damage, she would constantly be cutting herself as a child on nearly every household object.

  The needle slowly syphoned blood until the syringe was completely crammed full. She delicately released the metallic spike from Claudia’s arm and walked away from the chair.

  Jessica checked the sample of blood on the computer, the computer that is so advanced that it could never be wrong in its calculation. The results came as expected; the DNA was a one hundred percent match to the two wolves that she had operated on.

  Jessica had hoped they wouldn’t be a match but she knew the outcome was inevitable. She now wondered what she would try next. She tried a futile approach.

  “Please tell me what you know about your connection with the wolves, I really do not want to go any further with this” Jessica placed her face directly over Claudia’s, her
eyes genuine with concern for the Russians welfare.

  “All I know is that they will save me, I am their queen” Claudia really believed what she was saying, the wolves had saved her life countless times since they had begun worshipping her and she had no doubt that they needed her alive for some important reason.

  “I didn’t want to do this” Jessica moved her head away from Claudia’s, put on a sturdy pair of gloves and walked to a plastic bag on a nearby table. She pulled out a large spike, about 5 inches long and 3 inches thick that had belonged to one of the wolves. She handled it carefully not wanting to risk stabbing herself with the poisonous blade.

  Claudia listened to movements and wondered what was happening next, what other tests could they perform on her? She felt helpless, she felt like she did when the cannibal had his entire body weight on her, almost crushing her. She hated feeling helpless. She is always in control. One thing she would never do is beg.

  Jessica, without warning, stabbed the large, thick spike directly into the bicep of Claudia. Claudia squirmed in her restraints, the sharp pain resembling that of a burning pain, but much longer and deeper. The air in the room grew thicker as she found her breath harder to catch.

  Jessica felt instant remorse for her actions, she felt like she was torturing this woman, she had to constantly remind herself why she was doing it every step of the way, sometimes even out loud.

  While Claudia was distracted with the pain in her right arm, Jessica jabbed a cable that was connected to a small machine which displayed a monitor with many different values, into Claudia’s left arm. This was to read any immediate changes in her body composition. Jessica made to reach into her pocket for a cloth to wipe the mounting sweat from the woman's forehead, but stopped herself from doing so.

  Jessica studied the device closely yet nothing was changing; Claudia’s body was not reacting to the spike at all besides the initial insertion pain increase.

  Claudia felt calmer that the pain was over for now, her arms just felt numb and sore but she never wanted to feel such pain again. She wanted to shout abuse at this woman that was destroying her body, but felt too weak to do so, so she occupied her mind with thoughts of how she was doing to get her revenge. Stabbing her in the face with this very spike, then ramming two of her fingers far into her eye sockets until blood crawled out of the sides, then she would grab her by the hair and slam it multiple times into the side of a sharp table until her head was as dented as a fence after a car had crashed into it at a speed far over the limit. In reality she knew she would just let the wolves rip her apart, leaving her to admire the view, but the thoughts caused the pain to further subside.

  The next stage Jessica was not looking forward to in the least. The next step was to extract bone marrow from Claudia’s hips. She was well aware this was an extremely painful procedure as her now deceased son had to receive transplants on a yearly basis; the pain he went through was described as horrific and often wished himself to be where he was now.

  Jessica left the spike dug into Claudia’s arm, she felt that the girl would feel a lot more pain once the thing was removed and leaving it in was the kindest thing she could do for her.

  Claudia’s sweet thoughts of revenge were overshadowed by the sound of a high-powered drill coming ever closer to her heart raced faster with each inch it edged towards her numbing body, growing ever louder. She hated the fear that she felt. She felt weak. She wasn’t used to this feeling. Not even when the filthy cannibals were after her body.

  Jessica hesitated with the drill by Claudia’s hips, constantly looking back at the open book on the table next to her, informing her of how to perform the extraction. She had only ever seen it done and had never even thought of ever doing it on somebody else; her confidence in what she was doing was extremely low. She tightly grabbed at Claudia’s leg, briskly tearing a piece of her black tight leggings, being sure that no veins were present to kill the girl if they had an encounter with the small powerful orange drill that was almost causing her whole body to tremble.

  She aimed gently, praying the Russian woman would stay still. She broke the skin and in the drill went, the sound of the drill cracking and breaking the bone made Jessica release vomit from her body, the high sound of the drill making no sound be heard as it splattered on the floor below.

  Claudia felt huge pain in her hip. Pain, like no other. So painful she couldn’t even let out a scream. Her vision shifted and shook as she felt hot liquid running down her legs, she hoped it was blood but it felt so warm that it may have been urine; she let herself believe it was blood. Her body tensed so hard that she feared her limbs were going to tear apart from her body. Claudia never truly knew how long it lasted.

  The extraction was finished and Jessica swiftly removed the long drill needle from Claudia’s thigh. She never knew that such a small device could cause so much noise, and in this case, so much damage. Jessica released the drill head from the device and noticed what inside was not the bone marrow that she expecting: she had simply extracted bone that may not even further her studies. She kept this to herself; she was not drilling through this girl again.

  She gave herself a breather and cleaned the blood from Claudia’s leg, the wound was small but more than enough blood had expelled itself from her. As she wiped and bandaged the hole she noticed that the woman's leggings were wet around the crotch area; the girl had been in so much pain that her bladder had failed her.

  “Oh you poor thing.”

  The woman had also apparently fainted. Her blank face prompted Jessica to rush to feel for a pulse, questionably torturing someone was one thing but murder was a completely different matter.

  Jessica walked to the exit the room and pushed on the intercom:

  “This lady has had enough for today, take her back to her cell.” Jessica removed her gloves and lent over the sink, almost feeling sick again, ashamed to even look around at the handy work she had performed.

  She wasn’t able to relax long before the door slipped opened and an angry looking man stormed in.

  A Vicious Intervention

  “She’s had enough for one day you say?!” The man walked close to Jessica, so close he must surely smell her sickly breath.

  Jessica knew the voice, it was the first time seeing him in the flesh but the voice she had heard so many times since her time being here.

  Jessica, still leaning over the sink, turned slightly to face the man.

  “Yes. she’s been injected, stabbed and drilled. all without anaesthetic. Do you have something against pain relief, Mr. Badger?” Jessica hoped that using his name would gain a little bit more respect from the man, she had found it out by asking around once she was released from her lab. He is the man in charge of the security of the U.S.A. A man with a staggering amount of power. If he doesn’t like you he could wipe out your entire family, even if they were scattered across the globe.

  “And you women wonder why men rule the world and you lot always sit at home baking cakes.” He let out a huge sigh after his sexist comment and continued with his explanation.

  “We need the results from this specimen to be as accurate as possible and the use of any pain relief could tamper with any output we receive”

  Jessica scrunched her face up; the dislike for this man just went up to another level.

  “But sir, if she is dead then what results will you get? her blood will coagulate too rapidly for any meaningful results to be obtained”

  Badger slapped the back of his hand against Jessica’s face, pushing her over further into the sink.

  “Don’t talk to me like I am some idiot. You get some degree and think you’re someone special. You’re not. You’re here to do as I ask and so far you are being nothing but a disappointment. But we have no time to find someone else. Your file never said you were so pathetic.” Said the man with true disgust in his voice.

  “If you’re not happy with my work then what about getting Tom to do it? or what about Kathy? or I guess she is too busy laying in yo
ur bed?” Jessica pulled herself away from the sink and faced the man, standing tall but still around 7 inches smaller.

  “Tom is no longer with us, he was even more unsuitable than you. As for Kathy, she had her uses and performed them to an adequate level.”

  “What have you done with them?” Jessica spoke with a slight lisp now that her mouth was slightly on fire.

  “Oh shut up, woman, I’ll do it myself” He barked.

  Badger pushed past her, purposefully slamming his shoulder hard into her, sending her back directly into the hard edges of the sink.

  “It can’t be that hard can it? You were using this drill just before you stopped I assume” Said in such a confident manner.

  Jessica, her ribs aching from the shove, rushed to grab the drill from his hand, the two people of very different sizes were now locked in a back and forth tug of war with the drill. Jessica’s determination and guilt fighting equally with the strength and self-belief of badger.