“Hurry!” Watkins shouted.
I didn’t need to be told twice. Something rustled the foliage no more than a few yards behind me. I threw myself down into the bowl and raced after Watkins as he opened a door I hadn’t seen on the side of the building and ran inside. I was at his back, made it in and the door slammed at my back followed by another slam as something heavy hit it from the outside. We heard a frustrated yelp from beyond the door, then we were alone in a suddenly quiet dark.
“Don’t move. There’s a light switch here somewhere,” Watkins said, and was as good as his word when several seconds later a fluorescent tube buzzed and stuttered into life overhead.
We were in a garage with bays for four Skidoos. There was only one machine left and signs that the other spaces had been vacated in somewhat of a hurry.
“This is where you left from the last time,” I said, and Watkins nodded.
“And there’s room for two on that one. We can get off and away clear if we’re sneaky.”
“And sneakily leave my mates up there on their own? You don’t ken much about loyalty, do you? No, lad, you’re coming back with me.”
A second later he had a spanner in his hand and took a swing at me. A second after that the butt of my rifle caught him hard on the temple and he went down like a sack of potatoes, the spanner falling with a clang on the floor. That brought another bark from outside. Something sniffed at the base of the door out there.
“Fucking great idea, Wiggo,” I muttered to myself. “Now what?”
I left the wanker on the floor and went over to study the Skidoo. I’d never driven one, but a quick going over of it convinced me it wasn’t unlike a motorbike; it had a throttle, brakes and handlebars… and the ignition key was already in place. How hard could it be?
I found gas canisters at the back of the garage, filled up the machine and started her up. She clanked and rattled like a shaken can of nails and the air suddenly tasted harsh and tar-like but she was running so I called that a result. Then I had a harder job, of figuring out how I was going to get Watkins back to the others without him falling off the back on the way. I finally strapped him none too gently into the back seat with some guy ropes I found alongside the gas canisters. He was going to loll around alarmingly but that couldn’t be helped; the sniffing outside had turned to scratching and the sound of digging. It wasn’t going to be too long before I had unwelcome company.
Another problem faced me immediately; the main garage doors were shut in front of me. If I opened them, chances were the wolves would get in before I got out. I was sitting in the driving position still pondering that when Watkins spoke behind me. He sounded groggy; a hit from a rifle butt wasn’t easily shaken off, but I heard him clear enough.
“There’s a remote, by your left hand.”
I found a switch, flicked it, and the garage door creaked, complained, then started to lift, showing the first foot of the snow outside. I released the brake and we began to move forward. I had one hand on the throttle, another holding my weapon up pointed at the opening space ahead as the chains kicked in and we roared forward with a lurch that nearly threw me off. The door was still rising as we reached it and I had to duck to avoid losing my head. There was a thud behind me; I realised Watkins hadn’t ducked enough, but couldn’t afford the time to turn to check the damage for we were already out and heading up the wall of the bowled clearing. Something came at me fast from the right. Instinct kicked in and I swung the rifle round and fired blind, holding my trigger down on six shots that almost deafened me even above the noise of the Skidoo.
Whatever had been coming, it wasn’t coming anymore. We hit the rim of the bowl at an arse-juddering speed that almost bounced me off the machine. I found, more by luck than judgement, another of the animal trails, wider than the one we’d fled on earlier, and within seconds the garage was lost somewhere behind us.
I had no plan other than to keep going uphill, on the basis that we’d been going down on our chase from the compound. I hit a curve, took it a bit sharp and almost tipped the bloody thing over when Watkins didn’t move with me into the turn. I slowed enough to let me take time to check on him. Blood poured from a wound on his temple, bone, and possible brain, showing where he’d cracked his skull against the garage door. I had nothing with me that would help him out here; my only hope was to get him back to the cabin and see what Davies could do for him. I pushed the throttle as far as I dared and hoped for a straight path.
- 12 -
I didn’t get my wish; the track twisted up the slope in a series of turns, some of them so sharp I was going at little faster than walking speed as I took them. I heard excited barking even above the rattle of the machine; the wolves were at my back and not too far off at that. I pushed the throttle a bit farther. We bounced and jarred our way along a track that I wasn’t sure was headed anywhere in dark shadow under overhanging pines. Light ahead got my hopes up but we emerged as if out of a bottle into another clearing in a dip. There were no buildings in this one, but there was something there; another wolf, larger by far than any I’d yet seen, grayer at the flanks, wider in the maw and somehow angrier in the eyes. It sat on its haunches, tensed, then launched into a leap straight at me. I threw the Skidoo sidewards, tried to get my weapon raised but I knew it was a lost hope. All I could do was tense, duck and wait for the beastie’s weight to drive me down into the snow.
It never reached me. There was a flurry of moving branches, falling snow and something else came out of the forest, a huge gray thing that stood upright on two legs but had a maw of teeth as big and impressive as the wolf’s. It grabbed the wolf by the tail while it was still in the air and swung it, like an athlete tossing a hammer, off and away to fly into the trees. The wolf came back just as quick, howling in rage. As I tugged the Skidoo round onto the straight line, the wolf, having forgotten us, was launching itself directly at the Alma which stood, bellowing rage in the center of the clearing as if spoiling for a battle. It looked like it was going to get one but by that time the Skidoo had got traction in the snow again and I wasn’t in the mood to hang around for the title fight. I left them in my wake, a rolling, roaring frenzy of limbs and teeth and talons. A red mist of blood flew in the clearing behind me but I was quickly lost under the trees again and couldn’t even guess at a possible victor.
Only a minute later we burst through and over a slight rise to look over the forecourt of the research center, and thirty seconds after that I brought the Skidoo to a halt by the door of the hut.
“We made it,” I shouted and turned to Watkins. He was never going to congratulate me; the man lay slumped in the rear seat and it didn’t take a doctor to tell me that he was dead.
Everyone else was gathered again in the main room of the cabin. The door to the vault lay open and the odor of the Alma below wafted upstairs but a smoke and a coffee did much for my wellbeing as I made my report to the cap.
“So the Alma and the wolves were fighting?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said, “and it wasn’t a friendly scrap. I don’t think we have to worry about them ganging up against us.”
“And you just saw the one Alma?”
I nodded.
“Any idea how many there are?”
The cap shook his head.
“Watkins hinted about ‘escapes’ but didn’t say how many. We have to assume there are more of these buggers out there.”
As for Watkins himself, we had him in a body bag stored in one of the other huts; he could stay there forever as far as I was concerned; the bastard had almost got me killed along with him and he’d buggered off before we could get the whole story out of him. Now we were here with caged Alma below us, more of their kind in the forests around us and the remains of a wolf pack out there with them. Our orders to ‘sanitise’ weren’t going to be simple to implement.