HYBRID KILLERS

by Will Decker

The lead animal came swiftly through the opening in the trees. It was the same wolf that I’d tricked before, and he was hot on our scent. Without breaking its stride to investigate the decoy stick people, he charged straight at me, his teeth snapping furiously, the fur raised on the back of his neck. Raising the axe above my left shoulder, I braced myself against the tree for balance, and readied myself to swing in the fashion of a baseball player. Unlike the typical ballplayer that was hoping to land one over the fence, though, lives were depending on my hit; I desperately needed a homerun!

  With only ten feet separating us, the beast launched itself at me, its fangs hungry for my throat. There was no more time to think; only actions could save me now. With all of my remaining strength, I swung the axe.

  The sharp yellow fangs, dripping with saliva, blurred and faded into the surrounding scenery. Only his yellow, balefire eyes stood out against the darker, blood red backdrop. The heat of his sour breath washed over my face, mixing with his vile intent and my own fear, settling like dank sewage in the back of my throat.

  The axe struck the side of the malevolent animal’s head amidst a wet plopping sound, crashing through the creature’s skull, and penetrating its brain cavity. Death was instantaneous. The head of the axe, connecting just below the animal’s right ear, had only stopped when it met the resistance of the handle against flesh and bone.

  While the creature’s momentum carried it forward, the force of my swing through me off balance, and I staggered to my right, simultaneously driving the beast to my left. The tree was suddenly in my path, blocking my progress, and then striking me sharply in the face and chest. But I remained upright and alert. Turning, I saw the bashed wolf with the axe handle protruding awkwardly from the side of its head. Without thinking, I leaned over and grabbed it, jerking furiously to tear it loose.

  It was wedged solidly, and wouldn’t budge. Acutely aware that more danger was rapidly approaching, I leaned against the axe handle, and using the stability of the tree to steady myself, pushed off. Pivoting on my left foot, I worked the handle around and back toward my left. The head rocked on its axis within the cavity of the wound, but it wouldn’t come free.

  The rest of the pack was in the clearing, and a second wolf was closing in, approaching from my left. The scent of fresh blood was thick in the air, further driving the bloodlust of the pack, stirring them into a thoughtless frenzy. With no thought for its own safety, it charged my exposed side, sensing an easy kill.

  Hearing its breath and the clicking of its snapping teeth, I frantically ripped the axe free and spun around, swinging the axe as I turned. Too late to stop or turn aside, the attacking beast recognized the danger. With deadly force, the blunt side of the axe skidded across the top of its head, catching the rise of its cranium, and coming to an abrupt stop with a dull thud. The wolf let out a high-pitched yip before falling unconscious at my feet, and a third came in low and fast.

  He was coming too fast. There wasn’t time to raise the heavy axe for another blow before the oncoming wolf would be on me. Without thinking, but acting on an impulse born out of a need to survive, I pointed the gun at it and squeezed the trigger.

  The wolf dropped in its tracks, the bullet tearing a deep, bloody furrow along the top of its head. The fur along the top of its skull was split like a fresh plowed furrow in a cornfield. The bullet followed the curvature of the animal’s skull, starting at a point midway between its eyes, and continuing until reaching the top of its head, before sailing off into space. The poor creature wasn’t dead, but it was out of the action, and no longer a threat. It would be quite a while before it regained consciousness, and then it would have one hell of a headache.

  My breath was coming in ragged gasps as I raised the axe in anticipation of another attack. I was both startled and relieved when I looked up and didn’t see any directly in front of me. But my relief quickly turned to dread, as I caught movement out of the right hand corner of my eye. One of the wolves was on top of Sandy, pinning her to the snow-covered ground with its powerful front paws, while trying to jerk her arm off with the tremendous strength of its jaws. Her left arm was clamped in its jaws and I could see the stuffing, stained with her blood, as it flew away from the shredded sleeve of the snowsuit. With each shake of its massive head, more bloodstained stuffing and nylon littered the surrounding snow. I couldn’t let it continue!

  Still holding the butcher knife in her right hand, she was trying vainly to stab the beast in the side. Even while I stood by, too shocked to move, another wolf had sensed an easy kill and was closing in to assist the first. The smell of blood was thick in the cold morning air, driving the remainder of the pack into a mindless frenzy.

  Two wolves were busy attacking and shredding the stick people that Sandy had made, despite the fact that they were only blankets and branches. Leaning back against the tree to steady myself, I took control of my breathing, taking deep, calming breaths. Raising the gun until the wolf’s head was lined up behind the front sight, I gently pulled back on the trigger.

  But the creature was moving too fast and erratically. Although, I wanted to shoot it in the head, guaranteeing a quick kill, I couldn’t risk missing it, and possibly even hitting Sandy. With time quickly running out, I lowered the sight until I could see the heaving, fur-covered chest. Relaxing, getting my arm in rhythm with the wolf’s movements, I finally squeezed the trigger.

  The beast dropped straight down on top of Sandy with all the finesse of someone imploding a building, effectively pinning her to the bloodstained ground by its sheer weight.

  The second wolf, startled by the sudden immobility of the first wolf and the echoing blast of the magnum, stopped in its tracks. Sensing that there was something seriously wrong with its comrade and not sure what it should do, it turned and ran. With its tail tucked between its legs, it bolted headlong out of the clearing and across the mountain meadow, back in the direction from which they had come.

  Their sense of danger and fear suddenly overriding their bloodlust, the two remaining wolves in the clearing raised their noses to the air and sniffed. They were undecided about what they should do. The smell of blood was thick in the air, and they hadn’t whetted their appetites yet. Would they join their retreating comrade, or would they continue their frenzied hunt for flesh?

  Not waiting for them to decide, I swung the axe downward, cleanly severing the front paw from the unconscious wolf. It was unconscious, oblivious of its surroundings, and if I lived through the next few minutes, I would make certain that it never woke again. Being careful not to throw myself off balance, I flung the bloodied paw at the two decoys.

  They jumped back a foot, but quickly regained their bravado, and then stepped forward to sniff the fresh blood. For only a moment, they were even more confused than before. But, after smelling the blood intermingled with the indigenous scent of their brother, a primal fear of self-preservation took control. Turning, they quickly gave chase to their other comrade, who was already almost half way across the meadow and showing no signs of slowing down.

  As I watched them running through the deep snow, I realized that I still couldn’t see the snow tractor, even though the sound of the diesel seemed to be drawing nearer. Looking toward Sandy, I saw with relief that she was sitting half upright, though she still had a leg pinned beneath the carcass of the wolf. She was also holding her left arm tight against her chest with her right hand, as she planted her left leg against the side of the wolf, struggling to drag her right leg out from under it. Even from this distance, I could see a lot of blood soaking the remnants of the snowsuit’s left arm, turning the dark blue nylon black, and the white interior lining, a bright red.

  I was immediately torn between running to her aid, and standing my ground. But the sound of the snow tractor made me believe that it would be entering the clearing at any moment. If the driver saw me before I got back behind the tree, our trap was sure to fail.

  Raising the axe, I quickly brained the two unconscious wolves. Satisfied that they
were dead and no longer a threat to us, I staggered around the side of the tree, using it for support. When I was out of sight from the opening to our little clearing, I anxiously looked over toward Sandy. To my immense relief, she was standing. Although she looked pale and rumpled, seeing her standing gave me new hope. It also reassured me that she didn’t have any other injuries beside the obvious one.

  Leaning back against the tree for support, I raised my hand to her, smiling encouragement. She nodded in acknowledgment, even forcing a slight smile in return. I wanted to do more for her, but the roar of the diesel engine in the snow tractor suddenly drew my attention. It sounded angrier and hungrier than any pack of wolves ever could.

  **17**

  I had barely ducked back behind the tree, when the snow tractor came into sight. Instead of coming across the mountain meadow as the wolves had done by following our trail, Fred had cut across the top of the ridge on the far side, and then turned to follow the tree line down the nearer side to us. It quickly explained why I had heard the machine for such a long time, but had been unable to locate it. All the while, he was running along the top of the ridge, the diesel engine had echoed out across the meadow.

  Even if he hadn’t seen the events unfold within our little clearing, he had to see the remaining three wolves racing out of the opening in the tree line with their tails tucked between their legs. But because he slowed down, turned the machine into the little clearing, and then followed the back trail of the retreating wolves, I could only assume that he didn’t suspect a trap, even if had seen what happened.

  Yet, I didn’t believe that. Nor did I believe that he had heard the report of the gun. If he had, despite the safety of the cab, he wouldn’t have been so brazen.

  Although, he couldn’t see me standing behind the fir tree directly ahead of him, he must have seen two other things as he gunned the snow tractor. One of them was what was left of the two stick people the wolves had shredded, and the other was Sandy standing innocently off to his left. Whether he realized that the decoys were nothing more than sticks and blankets, or if he suspected they were human remains, mutilated by his wolf pack, I had no idea. Whatever was going through his mind, I had to judge by his actions that he didn’t suspect a trap.

  Entering the clearing, he immediately gunned the machine into high gear, obviously hoping to run over our decoys before they could move out of his way.

  Even as he charged over the broken sticks and torn blankets, further shredding them in the steel tracks, he glimpsed Sandy out of his peripheral vision. Without hesitation, he swung the snow tractor hard to his left, aiming to pin her between the heavy sheet metal cab and the tree that she had stepped out from behind.

  As the machine kicked up snow from the flailing treads, I suddenly worried that Sandy had put herself too far out in front of the tree to safely dodge behind it before the raging machine could reach her. Standing directly in front of it, she was making herself as tempting of a target as she possibly could.

  Fred drove the roaring snow tractor like a demon possessed, pushing the high revving diesel to even higher speeds, as the tracks bit into the frozen ground, kicking up a mixture of torn rags, powdery snow, and clods of frozen dirt. In the brief instant that it took the snow tractor to accelerate over the last few feet separating Sandy and the snow tractor, she had already begun to move. But instead of jumping to the right as we had planned, and drawing the snow tractor toward her, she dodged quickly to the left, away from the tree.

  But she moved too slowly, because of the clumsy bulk of her injured arm. Yet, I instinctively understood what she was doing. My speech regarding the impact force of the magnum versus a lighter caliber gun hadn’t been lost on her. She was setting herself up to give me a better shot, at the risk of the bullet glancing off the flat rear window. And she was taking away any opportunity for me to get near enough to the snow tractor to give the driver a chance to surrender!

  As he saw her dodge to the left, he did the predictable thing, and pulled hard on the controls, steering the snow tractor in a tight arc that kept Sandy directly in front of him.

  Suddenly, her foot slipped on the frozen snow, and she went down hard, landing flat on her back just feet from the crushing pads of the snow tractor’s treads. Without thinking, I immediately screamed out, futilely trying to draw the driver’s attention, though he couldn’t hear me over the roar of the racing engine.

  I was overcome with helplessness, as I looked on from across the small clearing, watching her try to squirm away from the rapidly approaching machine. The steel tracks were churning up an ugly mixture of dirt and snow in their haste to overtake her.

  The gun suddenly grew warm in my hand, and I realized that I had just one brief opportunity to save her. There was no time to relax, or to even breathe. With a shaking hand, I raised the magnum and jerked the trigger, hoping beyond hope that the bullet would penetrate the rear window of the cab and not glance off, killing the driver. All I needed was for the driver’s foot to relax on the clutch pedals and the machine would come to a sudden halt.

  But the gun went off in my shaking hand, even before I saw my target beyond the front peep sight. It was unintentional and unfortunate, and I probably wouldn’t get a second chance.

  The recoil rocked me backwards, and the gun ripped loose from my weak grasp, landing in the snow to my right. But I was unaware of my own plight, only that I had failed Sandy.

  The bullet went wide of Fred’s head by several inches to the left, as the back of the machine was still swinging to the right. Because I was unprepared, I hadn’t compensated for the machine’s movement, and now my ineptitude had cost Sandy her life.

  Yet, the impact of the bullet took out the rear window, shattering inward and showering the driver with glass. But not all of the magnum’s velocity had been spent on the rear window, and the copper jacketed bullet, only slightly mushroomed, proceeded onward, through the front windshield, leaving a hole the size of a quarter on the far left side.

  The overall effect from the sheer un-expectancy of it was enough to make the driver flinch. Subconsciously ducking to the right, for the just the slightest fraction of a second, he jerked the control stick in the same direction. To Sandy’s good fortune, that fraction of a second was just enough for the snow tractor to line up directly with her prone body, as it proceeded to drive over the top of her.

  Reaching down to the snow, I was suddenly overcome with dizziness. The gun, just inches from my hand, suddenly swam out of focus, making it difficult to retrieve. But since I knew it was there, I closed my eyes and grasped for it. The warm steel filled my palm and I hurriedly straightened up. There wasn’t any time to relax and take a deep breath, or any of the other hundred things that I should do before taking my next shot. Yet, I waited for what seemed like all of eternity for my eyes to focus. In the background, I could hear the frustrated roar of the snow tractor as the driver worked frantically at the controls, trying desperately to turn it around.

  I was quickly running out of time. At any moment, the treads might inadvertently strike Sandy, accomplishing Fred’s first chore, and taking away my purpose for living. I didn’t have the time, so I reacted solely out of automatic motion, as I thumbed back the hammer in slow motion.

  My vision cleared, and I watched in horror as Sandy’s prone body disappeared beneath the heavy steel machine. Another part of my mind screamed in agony for her, while the part that controlled the gun suddenly grew cool and calm.

  With acute visual clarity, I raised the magnum and took careful aim, following the movement of the back of Fred’s head with the front sight of the gun. He was aware that there was more than just one rabbit in this hole, and he was looking frantically around the clearing while crazily shifting gears and directions to no avail.

  Then something strange happened, and Fred’s eyes found what they were looking for. Our gazes met, and we looked into each other’s eyes. While he saw a cold-blooded determination and anger, I saw fear. Each bead of sweat on his forehead an
d brow glistened in the early morning light. He was panicked, and trapped within the confines of the cab. He was staring dumbly down the barrel of the gun, and seeing the hate and anger in my eyes staring back at him.

  A lifetime passed before I felt the recoil of the magnum kick against the palm of my hand. His head jerked sideways, spinning his body around with the momentum. Blood splattered against the crystallized front windshield, and his head slumped out of sight, his body stretching out the length of the seat.

  Though the engine continued racing, the snow tractor lost its momentum, and slowly came to rest. It took only a moment to realize that I had just killed a man for naught. Because my first shot had missed, Sandy was mercilessly crushed beneath the steel tracks. I had failed her when she needed me.

  Dazed and sluggish, I slid the gun into the front pocket of the snowsuit, and stumbled away from the tree. It suddenly seemed terribly important for me to find her, to go to her, and apologize for letting her down. Every movement brought on new aches and pains, but I was immune to them. Until I found Sandy’s body, nothing else mattered. I was subtly aware that I was slipping into shock, but that too, would have to wait. Everything was piling up on me, and my strength was quickly fading. Feelings of loss, guilt, and horror were overwhelming me.

  Slowly and painfully, I worked my way toward the snow tractor, acutely aware of the racing engine, as it drowned out all other sound. Yet, as unlikely as it seemed, I was sure that I could hear voices. Although I knew it was impossible, I thought I could hear Sandy crying out to me for help. But as unlikely as that could be, I disregarded the wailing sounds as nothing more than the changing pitch and whine of the highly revving diesel.

  But her voice didn’t let up. And though, I was feeling extremely guilty for having let her down, I felt also that she was being unfair, and that she should give me back my piece of mind. After all, I had confronted the guilt and admitted to it.