HYBRID KILLERS

by Will Decker

  “Yes, I’m absolutely sure. Now quit stalling”, she said playfully.

  “Well, don’t let it be said that I didn’t warn you.” I hesitated a moment for effect, before saying, “I believe that Fred and his wife are housing wolves in those huge equipment sheds by their cabin. And not just any wolves, but hybridized animals, bred for a distinct purpose.” I waited for her to argue with me. When she simply sat in silence, digesting my words, I slowly, almost hesitantly continued. “It’s my further belief that the whole purpose of these animals is to use them for the facilitation of murder. That’s why Fred felt conspicuous regarding his activities the morning he brought me up here. He was feeling guilty!”

  She looked at me, her eyes betraying her shock, not with my words, but because I was suggesting that, there were people in this world capable of such atrocities. She started to say something, and then stopped herself. Her innocence played on my heartstrings, and I suddenly wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her. But before I could, I had to tell her everything, all of my darkest suspicions.

  “The way the wolf pack searches from cabin to cabin for prey isn’t anymore coincidental than their obvious lack of fear toward people. They’ve been trained for the explicit purpose of killing people. And since their training is by people, they’ve lost that naturally occurring inbred fear of people that a wild creature is born with. It’s always been my understanding that the inbred fear comes from an evolution of survival instincts, one of many varied traits that the wolf has learned over the millennia.” I paused for a moment to catch my breath again before continuing. “I guess what I’m saying is that, when they attack people, they’ve learned that they usually come out on the short end of the stick, if you know what I mean.”

  Her voice betraying the shock she was feeling, she said, “I don’t understand why someone would train wolves to kill people. It doesn’t make any sense to me.” And then, in a softer tone, she asked, “Some more coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” I replied, watching her closely as she got up and headed toward the stove where the pot sat simmering.

  “Here you are,” she said, handing me a steaming mug brimming with coffee before settling herself back on the edge of the cot beside me with her own mug of coffee. “I still don’t understand what our landlords would have to gain by training vicious wolves to kill their tenants.”

  “I thought long and hard on that one too. But then I did the math,” I said smugly. “Of their own admission, they claim to lease ten cabins up here. It might be considerably more than that, and no one would be the wiser. But let’s assume that it’s just ten cabins. Based on that number, and a tenant lasting two months on average, but paying approximately ten thousand for the year in advance, why, they’re averaging sixty grand or more per year per cabin. That’s over a half million dollars per year. But as I said, I think there are more than just ten cabins. They could have cabins scattered all over this mountain and who would ever know about them. Look around”, I said, swinging my arm to encompass the interior of the cabin. “What would it take to whip up one of these one room buildings using all the natural materials at hand? What can’t be scrounged from the woods, they bring in with their snow tractor.”

  “You know,” she said meditatively, doing some thinking of her own, and coming up with conclusions that my theory suggested to her. “It’s also possible that there are more people involved in this than just Fred and his wife.” She chuckled softly before adding, “I’m sorry, but I think you’re giving them way too much credit if you think they’re capable of pulling this off on their own. There have to be others involved.”

  “Who else would gain by our deaths?”

  Without hesitation, she said, “The travel agents that set up the people to lease the cabins would have to be in on it too. Otherwise, they’d grow suspicious when their clients never returned from the sabbaticals they arranged.”

  “Yes, I hadn’t considered that. But you’re absolutely right,” I said complimentarily.

  She grew excited, eagerly delving into the theory process. For the moment, it took her mind off the seriousness of our situation, giving her something fresh with which to occupy her thoughts. Moreover, she literally beamed with pride at my compliment.

  Before she got too overly enthusiastic, I soberly reminded her that we didn’t have anything in the way of proof, only overactive imaginations. Yet, she’d grasped onto the theory, and she would continue working on it, even as my own eyes grew too weary.

  Despite the black coffee, because I was warm and relatively comfortable, sleep came easy to me. Tomorrow, when my feet were completely thawed, sleep wouldn’t come anywhere near as easy, if at all.

  It did my heart good to have taken Sandy’s mind off the situation immediately confronting us, even if it was for just a short while. The coming days wouldn’t afford us the luxury we’d shared this night.

  **10**

  I awoke with a start. My body was drenched in sweat. I was shaking uncontrollably from chills while simultaneously burning up with fever. Yet, this time was terribly different from all the other times in my recent past when I’d awakened covered in sweat; this was more than just the dregs of a nightmare. This time, the pain was real.

  Both of my feet were engulfed in searing agony. The pain was intense, eating its way up my legs, and culminating in a sharp throb within the flesh of my thighs. With each labored beat of my heart, I felt new pain wash through me, until even my balls ached. I had hoped, prayed actually, that my feet and their subsequent nerve endings would be beyond giving me pain in their dead, and soon to be decayed state. But I’d been wrong to think that I would get off so easily.

  Briefly, between heartbeats, when the pain momentarily subsided, I wondered if I was equally far off about my murdering wolf’s theory too.

  Before I could start doubting myself though, the pain quickly reaffirmed its grip on my attention. Lying on my back, my teeth clenched against the unbearable pain that racked my body, I stared at the ceiling. In the back of my mind, I knew there was more to come. The pain was going to get worse before it got any better. If I believed otherwise, I was only deceiving myself. I’d seen my feet and their unholy condition! I knew the circumstances of our situation up here on the mountain! Whom did I think I was kidding?

  Shaking, the sound of my teeth chattering loudly within my mouth, I unsteadily sat up on the edge of the cot, and took another look at my bare feet. For some morbid reason, I felt compelled to reaffirm to myself what the odds really were.

  Although my feet looked bad the night before, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

  The swelling hadn’t gone down with the thawing. Instead, they’d ballooned up to a fourth again the size of what they’d been. The skin stretched tautly over the dead flesh beneath it like a wet t-shirt, only several sizes too small.

  As I stared in horror, I could literally see movement just beneath the discolored skin as bubbles of carbon dioxide were being released by the thawed and decaying blood and tissue. Within a day or so, the rotting gelatinous liquid beneath will start to work its way outward. When the pressure becomes too great for the dead and decaying skin to contain it any longer, it will explode, and emit all manner of foul smells and juices. By then, all the flesh and tissue within my feet will have broken down into a thick, foul-smelling, gooey liquid.

  It will only take a single one of those innocent looking little bubbles to reach my heart or brain, and I will never know what hit me. In a way, that might be considered a blessing, for both Sandy and me.

  Just as I was reprimanding myself for thinking such thoughts, I was suddenly startled by a gasp from Sandy. With a blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders to ward off the chill that had developed in the cabin from cutting back on our wood consumption, she’d come around the end of the cot and, upon seeing my feet, had emitted an involuntary little gasp as the sight took her breath away. I wasn’t aware that she was awake, and now I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I should have kept the sight of th
em from her. Immediately, I pulled the fallen blanket back over my legs, suddenly embarrassed by what she’d seen, and angry with myself for my inconsideration.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said quietly.

  “It’s all right, really,” she said hurriedly. “I just wasn’t prepared, is all. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect once they’d thawed. I’ll be all right. Would you like some coffee?” she ended, getting up too quickly and going toward the stove.

  “I’d love some,” I answered to her retreating back, speaking as calmly as the pain would allow. Sandy was proving to be a tough girl, but the sight of my feet had really shaken her. “Just by chance, you didn’t find a first aid kit here when you moved in? I’m feeling a real need for drugs.”

  “No, there wasn’t,” she answered tightly from in front of the cookstove where she was busying herself with stoking up the fire and getting a pot of coffee set up.

  She had her back to me, and although I couldn’t see her face, I knew she was taking longer than necessary to make a simple pot of coffee. She was stalling until she could effectively mask the look of concern and worry on her face that the sight of my feet had brought on.

  After a brief pause, and several backhanded wipes at her eyes, she continued, “At the time, I thought it was strange for a cabin that was supposed to be completely stocked and furnished didn’t come with at least a basic first aid kit. When I mentioned it to Fred, he said the last tenant must have taken it with when they moved out. He said that he would make a point of bringing me a new one the following month. But he never did, which, now that I consider your theory, doesn’t surprise me in the least. After all”, she continued, her voice sounding unusually flat and void of emotion, “when you think on it, what would be the purpose in making it easier to survive an injury, when that goes against your overall plan?”

  “I’m sure none of the cabins ever had first aid kits, or at least not since they started their murderous scheme,” I commented, making an effort to hide my concern for her well-being. “I swear, I’m going to live through this, if for no other reason than to see everyone involved in it behind bars,” I said with an air of determination that was meant more to hide my pain from her, than to actually imply any determination.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t intend to go on living, because I did, especially since meeting Sandy. But I’d become too much of a realist since losing Amy to believe that life just goes on forever. The realist in me was telling me without mincing words that my chances of surviving this were pretty damn slim. Yet, I still had my determination, and I wasn’t about to give up on myself just yet, or Sandy either.

  “You don’t happen to have any liqueur on hand, by chance?” I asked on the off chance that she might have brought some along with her for medicinal purposes.

  “No,” she answered a bit too slowly, her gaze drifting to the calendar on the wall, and then quickly turning away. Her eyes flitted nervously to mine, almost as if she were looking to see if I’d noticed, and afraid that I may have. “I don’t drink, anymore,” she said hurriedly, almost angrily, before getting up and going to check the stove, even though it didn’t need checking.

  “I’m sorry,” I said gently, turning to follow her with my eyes. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s all right. You couldn’t have known about my problems. It’s not as if we’ve known each other all that long.”

  She let out a small, forced-sounding laugh, before slowly making her way back to the edge of the cot. Slowly, she lowered herself down beside me. I reached out for her, gently taking her hand in mine. She squeezed my hand in response to my own light pressure on hers, and then let out a sigh, saying, “You noticed the two dates marked by ‘X’s on the calendar, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, they were a little too difficult to miss,” I said noncommittally, not wanting to make her feel pressured into discussing anything that she didn’t feel comfortable discussing with me. As much as I wanted to know everything there was to know about her, both the good and the bad, I only wanted it to come from her at the rate that she felt comfortable telling me.

  “Well, the one date is pretty obvious, it’s the date our supplies are due.”

  With a quick, sly remark, I cut her off short, “You mean that mark isn’t up there to signify the day we met? I’m really hurt now.”

  “I guess that one does fall on the same day that we met,” she said with a smile, her voice sounding brighter. Then she paused, the seriousness returning to her face, and she gazed down at the cold coffee in the bottom of her cup. “That other mark signifies the anniversary of the day that I quit drinking.”

  “That’s a day to be proud of,” I said, fully expecting her to agree, and quickly grew baffled by her continuing depression and sad countenance. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to,” I quickly added when she didn’t respond to my question.

  “No, I want you to know the whole truth.” Her gaze met mine as she added, “I’d like to tell you, even though it isn’t easy to speak of. But I think that I may be developing feelings for you.” She blushed, and then added, “My God, I hope you don’t think I’m always this forward. But under the circumstances, I feel a bond with you that I’ve never felt with anyone else. It’s only right that I should tell you everything about me so that you know who and what I am, and aren’t surprised and disappointed later. No secrets, okay?”

  “I don’t think that I could ever be disappointed by anything that might come up later, not about you. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m feeling the same feelings your feeling. And to be honest with you, they scare the hell out of me. If only we could have met somewhere and sometime before ending up here.”

  “We may have, John. We may have met in the grocery store while selecting vegetables, or at the Laundromat, trying to get soap out of the dispenser. We could have passed each other a million times on the street going in opposite directions, but until now, we weren’t ready for each other,” she said softly as she turned toward me. We held each other tight, hoping that the moment would never end. Yet, at the same time glad that the moment came to be.

  She cried softly against my shoulder as I caressed her back, and then she whispered through her tears, telling me the horror of her life. It was eight fifteen in the morning, a typical workday by anyone’s standards. She’d already drank the hair of the dog to ward off the hangover that was chasing her from the night before. She followed this with a liquid breakfast of vodka and orange juice. She never knew what happened until the police arrived at her office with an arrest warrant for ‘Felony Hit and Run’.

  They took her in handcuffs to the precinct. Several hours later, when the buzz had worn off, they booked her. Only then, did they explain why she’d been arrested. On her way to work that morning, she’d hit two small children in a cross walk on their way to school. She’d been so drunk at eight fifteen in the morning that she wasn’t even aware of what she’d done. If the judge had sentenced her to death, she wouldn’t have appealed his ruling. But because she was a first offender, she was sentenced to therapy, lost her license for a year, and put on probation.

  “I wonder how easily I would have gotten off with a good lawyer,” she said flatly, pulling her head away from my shoulder, and wiping at her tear streaked face with the back of her hand. “It isn’t right. They should have punished me more severely!”

  “I think you have created your own personal form of punishment, Sandy. I don’t think your letting yourself off easy enough. What happened to the kids in the cross walk, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Fortunately, neither of them was hurt very seriously. The little girl got some scrapes and abrasions on her legs from falling against the curb, and the little boy’s arm was broken from where the door handle clipped him. The worst part was the fact that I was so drunk, I didn’t even know that I’d almost killed two small children,” she said with obvious anger and contempt for herself. And then, in a faraway vo
ice, she added, “I didn’t even know what I’d done.”

  Pulling her back into my arms, I told her that it was all right, and that we all make mistakes while going through this journey called life. No one is perfect, and no one is judging her anymore, least of all me.

  I wasn’t sure if she was listening to me or not until she gently pulled away and, after making a feeble attempt at drying her eyes with the back of her hand, forced a smile for me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said relieved. “Would you care for some more coffee, it’s the one supply that I made sure I wouldn’t run short of?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I replied as I looked down at my exposed feet and felt the pull of reality even stronger than before.

  She handed me my mug and followed my eyes down to my feet before asking, “What do we do now?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest with you. But I have a feeling that we need to disinfect my feet and extract or eradicate the dead tissue before it can become gangrenous. It’s not going to be easy, but that’s why I asked earlier if you had any liquor. We need something to use for a disinfectant as well as an anesthetic.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I’d misunderstood your intention earlier; I didn’t know that’s what you’d meant.” Smiling, she hurriedly rose and went to the shelves on the wall next to the stove. After studying the supplies set along the varied rows, she reached out and grabbed a single brown bottle. Returning to the cot, she handed it to me, saying, “I have something that will work for a disinfectant, but I don’t think you’d want to drink it.”

  Taking the proffered bottle, I turned it so that I could read the label. She’d handed me a squeeze bottle of anti-bacterial soap. Elated, I said, “This’ll make a good antiseptic. We can boil water and sterilize sheets for bandages.” I paused for a moment to study her face. “I don’t want to sound mushy or anything, but I’m glad that of all the people to be stuck in a cabin on the mountain with, it happened to be you.”