“You don’t want to be here,” he said.
“Tell me about it,” I answered. “But seeing as how we came all this way, why don’t you open it up and show us what you keep in there?”
My hearing was only now beginning to recover from the pounding it had taken and I didn’t quite catch what he said next and had to get him to repeat it, although I feared I’d already guessed.
“You already know,” he said. “You were in Siberia. You already know.”
He lifted the same bone flute that the cap had lifted earlier, put it to his lips and blew.
Somewhere below us a bellow rose in reply. It didn’t sound wolf-like, it didn’t sound musical. I knew exactly what it sounded like.
It was an Alma in a rage.
“How many?” the cap asked grimly.
“Three,” Watkins replied. “Two males and a female, all nearly full grown.”
“How can that be?” I asked.
“Tell me,” the cap added.
Watkins sighed and seemed to come to a decision.
“Okay… I’ll tell you what I know. Can I barter it for coffee and a smoke? It’s going to take a while.”
While Wilko got out the stove and got a brew going, I went to check on Jennings. He was still in the corner, still almost catatonic. I’d seen it before of course, any soldier who’s been in more than one firefight has probably seen it at least once. Part of me wanted to chew him out for deserting the squad when we needed him and another part of me felt nothing but sadness and pity for the mess that must be going round in the lad’s head. Getting him sorted out was going to take time. That, and peace and quiet, and I had a feeling we were going to be short of all three for a wee while longer yet. I left him where he stood and went to join the others round the table when the smell of fresh coffee could no longer be ignored.
Watkins took another of my smokes and started up almost straight away.
“Yes they’re Alma, and yes, we got the embryos from Siberia at the same time we got the wolves. I didn’t tell you earlier because I thought you had enough on your plate with the pack.”
“And you thought we’d let you fuck off in the chopper with the townsfolk and you wouldn’t have to deal with it,” I said.
I got a thin smile in return and a nod of the head in confirmation.
“I thought, hoped, that you wouldn’t find them, that the vault would stay shut and they’d just starve and rot away down there in the cells. It’s probably the safest way to deal with them, even now. Leave it locked and walk away.”
“No can do,” the cap said. “It wouldn’t look good on my report. And so far, you’ve told us nothing. Come on…”
Watkins took a lungful of smoke then continued.
“As I said, we had the embryos. We grew them,” he said. “Same way we grew the wolves, and with the help of the growth hormones and modified DNA strands they came to near maturity very rapidly. I believe the guys in Whitehall were hoping for some kind of programmable super-soldiers. But where we were able to train the wolves at least to some extent with the implants, the Alma proved to be intractable. For one thing, they’re almost always angry.”
“Angry? If it was me, I’d be fucking furious,” I said but had to go quiet when the cap gave me one of those looks. Watkins continued.
“At first we had them in big pens up the back at the edge of the woods, but it soon became clear we’d need more secure accommodation for them and, besides, they seem to prefer being in the deep dark; a race memory of cave dwelling was the prevalent theory.
“As with the wolves, I had nothing to do with the day-to-day maintenance of the beasts…out of sight, out of mind for the most part. But there were rumors, of keepers being mauled and of ritualistic, almost cult-like practices being performed by the beasts themselves.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. Cannibalism?”
Watkins nodded.
“There used to be six of them. After that they were kept segregated but it was already too late. The female had been with the males when they reached puberty.”
“She’s pregnant?” the sheriff said, understanding the import of the remark before any of the rest of us.
Watkins nodded again.
“And due any day now. For God’s sake, do as I ask. Leave that door shut and just walk away.”
“You know I can’t do that,” the cap answered. “Ultimately we both answer to the same people, and they’ve called for full sanitation. I’m going to have to go down there. I need you to open this door.”
Watkins shook his head.
“I can’t do that.”
“It wasn’t a question,” the cap said.
“No, I mean I can’t. It’s secured. I don’t know the code.”
I went over with the cap to study the door. It had one of yon standard numeric keypad entry locks fitted to one side of the big metal wheel.
“Davies, Wilko, you lads figured out that radio business sweetly enough. Can you do anything with this?”
“It might take an hour?” Wilko said, and I saw he wasn’t fully confident.
“Do what you can, lads,” the cap added. “Unless anybody’s got an oxyacetylene unit handy you are our only chance.”
As the lads got to work the sheriff went to the cabin door, opened it and looked out over the still-burning remains outside. I joined her for a smoke.
“I don’t know what I expected to find up here,” she said. “But I didn’t expect it to be quite so banal. It’s almost factory-like.”
“It’s British,” I replied. “There’s a lot of this kind of shite about. But something’s got you thinking, hasn’t it? Come on, out with it. It might be important.”
“That it might,” she said quietly. “But at the time I thought it was just the ramblings of a drunk. Old Tommy Goldfarb has been coming out this way to hunt and drink… mostly the latter… for near on fifty years. He’s always been one for stories, bogles in the woods, fairy-folk in the hills, you know the kind of stuff. One night last year I got called out to the local dive for a disturbance and found Tommy had got into a fight with some young-uns… and it was over one of his stories.
“I got it out of him over a pot of strong coffee back at the station. To cut a long, and surely embellished story short, he was adamant that he’d had a close encounter, not with an alien, but with a Bigfoot. Said he was close enough to see the white of its eyes, and admitted that he’d shat himself in fright, a detail I didn’t really need to have heard. Of course I put it down to the drink at the time but now, knowing about the wolf pack and this place, I’m wondering…”
“Wonder whether the wolves weren’t the only things that have escaped?”
“Exactly. Do you trust that man Watkins to be telling us the truth?”
“You already ken the answer to that one.”
“I suppose I do. Is your captain a man to leave a job half-done?”
“You’ve seen enough of him to know the answer to that one too.”
“I suppose I have. I need this place and everything they’ve birthed here… what’s the word you use… sanitised. I can’t have people coming back to town if there’s still any danger.”
“We’re all on the same page here… well apart from Watkins… and our man Jennings. He’s on another fucking planet.”
“Poor fella. Had a friend went like that in the Afghan Foothills. We had to ship him home… ten years ago now and he’s still in a sanitorium.”
I could only nod in reply. I’d been harboring hopes that my corporal would just snap out of it and come back to us but with every passing minute it looked less likely.