The back end of this building was the main source of the fire; what had been a small mess area was completely burned out and fallen in; something had burned under there although whether it had been man or wolf it was too far gone to tell without a closer look than I was going to give it. On the other side of the main corridor was the billet, three rows of twin beds, all empty but with enough blood splashed around to show it hadn’t always been that way. The wolves killed messily, but it appeared they tidied up after themselves, hauling their meals away for the feasting. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes for us to make sure there was no one here to save.
The cap turned to Davies.
“You and Wilko get Watkins in here; get him to look through the offices, see if there’s anything worth salvaging. We’ll head out back and check the outbuildings and meet back here in ten. If we’re not back, come look for us.”
The sheriff, cap and I walked around the collapsed debris of the mess and out the back to the rear. I guessed this was where the science happened; four squat cabins, all with the now tell-tale busted in doors and broken windows; the wolf pack hadn’t done anything by halves. Three of the four buildings were much the same as the scenes in the main building; plenty of blood and mayhem but still no bodies, only here there were smashed phials and retorts, bloodied equipment and overturned tables and several more laptops in various states of brokenness. The fourth building overlooked a large penned area with an electric fence that had been toppled over in several places where, I guessed again, the pack had made their bid for freedom. I saw more buildings up the slope inside the pen that were probably kennels but for now my attention was on the fourth, unsearched, building. The door was still intact in this one, as were the windows, as if it had been deliberately left alone. If there were survivors, this was the only place left where we’d find them.
I approached the door gingerly. I felt rather than saw the cap and the sheriff stiffen and fix their concentration at my back. I turned the handle and pushed gently. The door swung open smoothly without a creak and I stepped inside as soon as I was sure nobody was in there ready to shoot at me.
I was in a mostly empty room save for two trestle-tables and a couple of chairs. There were bits and pieces of stuff on the tables, but that wasn’t what got my concentration. Three sides of the room were the same basic cabin walls I expected, but it was the fourth that got my adrenaline going. Where there should be wood there was metal, a lot of it, and a large vault door that would have been more at home in a bank than out here in the wilds of the Yukon. I was glad it was shut for I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was on the other side.
The cap and the sheriff came in behind me.
“What are we into now, Cap?” I said.
The captain took one look at the door, then at the stuff on the tables. He sucked at his teeth and swore under his breath. He lifted something off the table and showed it to me.
“Look familiar?”
It was a primitive bone flute; the last time I’d seen anything like it was back in Siberia, and it hadn’t belonged to a wolf.
“We need Watkins up here, right now,” the cap said.
As if in reply, the sound of a truck horn pierced the air, insistent and frantic.
- 10 -
Gunfire joined the sound of the horn before we reached the cabin door. We headed at a run for the forecourt and arrived just as Wilko and Davies put down a big gray wolf that had been sitting on the hood of the truck trying to get in at Watkins. There were plenty for all of us; the pack had made its way back from town; all of them by the look of things, and they were all focussed on the young privates as they stood at the doorway of the main building. Watkins sat up high in the cab of the first truck, his face pale, his eyes wide. I had enough time to notice that Jennings was nowhere to be seen, then we were in the middle of a frenzied battle and there was little time for thought.
They attacked as a single unit, pushed forward by a howling roar that came from somewhere outside the perimeter; if the big one Watkins had mentioned was around, it wasn’t joining the fight, but we had more than enough to occupy us as it was. The air filled with the sound of gunfire; I hadn’t put my plugs in and the roar turned to a deafening ringing as if huge bells were going off in my head. I kept aiming, kept pulling the trigger.
Five of us firing volley-fire laid down a wall of death that the wolves ran into as if unaware of the consequences of doing so. They fell before us, but as each one tumbled away the one behind managed to get closer to us and we were forced to retreat, slow step by slow step, even after putting half a dozen of them down. They were close enough for me to smell their fetid breath as they roared flecks of bloody spittle in our faces. A gray shadow came over the mound of bodies having leapt like a show horse over the top. I put two rounds in its belly but its momentum kept it coming and its weight took both young Davies and the cap down to the ground and momentarily out of the fight. That reduction in our firepower gave the pack an opening. There was maybe a dozen of them left, and they surged forward, a wall of howling rage, their bloodlust in full flow.
I had to throw myself backward. Jaws closed on my left foot and I was, not for the first time, thankful for the stout boots. I kicked out with my right even as I was turning to aim. My right boot caught the wolf’s snout, it raised its head and snarled and I put three rounds between its eyes, feeling hot bits of bone and brain and blood spatter all across my upper body and face.
“Stay down,” the cap shouted somewhere behind me, his call coming faintly above the ringing. I didn’t know if it was directed at me but I stayed down anyway, rolling onto my belly, feeling cold seep into me even as I aimed and fired, aimed and fired while more shots whistled over my head.
The mound of bodies steamed, we kept firing, the wolves kept dying, then, as if distantly in a wind, I heard the howling turn to a bark and as quickly as they had come the pack melted away. I counted six of them as they left; the rest lay dead in a pile at the front of the building.
The cap wasted no time.
“I saw some gas canisters out back earlier,” he said to me, having to shout for me to hear him. “Fetch them round. The brass said ‘sanitise’. It’s time we got started. Let’s burn these fuckers.”
Wilko came with me and by the time we returned, each lugging two ten-litre cans of gas, the cap and the sheriff had moved the dead wolves to the far end of the forecourt away from the buildings. Watkins stood with Davies while the private watched for any fresh attack. They’d got our kit out of the trucks and it was piled on the ground at Jennings’ feet; the corporal was still not with us, lost in a thousand-mile stare that wasn’t seeing much of anything. He had his rifle slung over his shoulder but it was going to be as much use to us as a wet match in the Glasgow rain.
We burned the wolves, everything going up in a conflagration that even despite the cold had us standing back as far as the fire trucks to avoid it. The remaining wolves kept away although we heard them as soon as the smoke plume went up from their dead brethren, the same high, choral wail echoing across the hillside.
“Is that it?” Watkins asked expectantly. He was already inching towards the closest fire truck door. The cap blocked his path.
“Nope. That’s far from ‘it’,” he said. “We’re going to play a wee game of show and tell. I’m going to show you something, you’re going to tell me everything you know.”
“And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t, you’re going to be the next fucker I set on fire.”
Five minutes later we were all back inside the cabin, all of us looking at the vault door. The cap had made us bring the kit… and Jennings. Davies had led him across the site as if helping a sleepy kid to bed and once we were in the room the corporal retreated into a corner and just stood there, still staring blindly ahead. Watkins too was staring, at the huge steel vault door on the other side of the room.