He aimed his gun-light down to the mess that was all that remained of its head. Just behind that, where the neck met the shoulders, something blinked red. Wilko used his barrel to move the mane of hair aside and revealed an elaborate metal collar. Two LED lights blinked from a small black box that appeared to be attached… fused… to the dead beast’s spine.
“Fetch that along with us, Wilko,” I said. “Dig it out if you have to. The cap will want to see it.”
I covered him while he bent to the task, watching the front. Sheriff Sue had our backs, rifle raised. I had questions for her but they’d have to wait. The wind leeched the heat out of me; I felt it bite at my legs and I was starting to lose feeling in my feet.
“How’s it going, Wilko?” I shouted. “If we stay out here much longer my balls are going to drop off.”
“Mine already have,” Sheriff Sue shouted, just as Wilko stood with a bloody collar dripping red onto the snow.
“Got it, Sarge.”
Two minutes later we were back inside the station and my feet started to complain as heat replaced cold.
I lit a much needed smoke and accepted a coffee from the cap. He had the good grace to let me make inroads in both before expecting me to report. Not that there was much to say in any case; all I had to do was show him the blood-crusted collar, the twin LEDs still blinking.
He turned it over in his hands, made about as much sense of it as I had, then strode over to Watkins.
“So what the fuck is this then?” he said, dropping the still-dripping collar in the man’s lap. Watkins looked down at it but didn’t move to touch it.
“Behavioural modification,” he said. “I told you, Masterton was trying to teach them.”
“What, fetch, roll over, play fucking dead, that kind of thing?” I asked.
Watkins looked at me. There was no smile on his face.
“Hunting techniques, group cooperation and efficient means of catching prey, that kind of thing. The plan was to breed an army, not a petting zoo,” he said. He nodded to the collar. “They all had these…even the big male.”
“Big male?” the cap asked. “There’s a bigger one of these fuckers?”
“Of course there fucking is, Cap. There’s always a bigger one. We’re the S-Squad…that’s how this shite works, isn’t it?” I said, and this time Watkins did laugh.
“Just pray you never meet him; he’s a mean big bastard that one.”
I patted my rifle.
“I’ll see if he can play fetch with a few rounds from this.”
Watkins wasn’t smiling when he replied.
“You’re going to need a bigger gun.”
I caught up with Sheriff Sue when she finished another round of the townspeople. There had been no noise save that of the storm from outside since we returned and a stoical calm had descended on the folks gathered in the station.
“I’ve told them there’s a rescue coming,” she said. “That hope should keep panic at bay, for a while at least.”
“Speaking of panic,” I said, keeping my voice low so that her people wouldn’t hear me, “What was that about out there? You got yon beast’s attention right enough, but it nearly had me for supper. Why didn’t you shoot?”
“You ever had a dog, Sergeant?”
I nodded.
“Then you know why,” she said. It seemed she was more sentimental than I’d thought, and I wasn’t going to get any more of an answer for Jennings arrived just then with a face like thunder.
“I need a word with you,” he said. “And I need it right now.”
It had been coming for a while, we both knew that, but even as I took him aside to the farthest corner from the rest of the squad, I still didn’t know what I was going to say to him. I needn’t have worried overmuch about that, for he had plenty to say for himself first.
“I’m a good soldier,” he said. “You’d ken that if you bothered to read my sheet instead of strutting around with a pole up your arse. I’m your new corporal, like it or lump it, and I can’t have you showing me up in front of the privates. I won’t have it.”
“‘I won’t have it, Sergeant,’ is what you meant to say, isn’t it?” I said, leaning in close so that we were almost nose to nose. “If you want to be this squad’s corporal you need to fucking start acting like it. You can begin by stopping whining. I’m not here to wipe your arse and blow your nose for you. Away hame to your mammie if that’s what you’re after. Step up or step out.”
To his credit he didn’t back off, not at first.
“I just want some respect around here,” he said.
“Then fucking earn it. That’s how it works in this squad.”
“How am I to do that when you take the wee poof instead of me?”
I had his bollocks in my grip before he knew what was going on. He had his back to the room, so nobody saw; I didn’t want to humiliate him, just teach him a lesson. I squeezed, hard.
“You forget too quickly,” I said. “I’ve told you already about that mouth of yours. Respect works two ways. You don’t have mine and you’ve got a fuck of a long way to go if we’re to get there. Now fuck off out of my sight unless you want to be a eunuch.”
Thankfully he had enough smarts to fuck off when told for my blood was up and I can’t always trust myself in times like that. The cap caught my eye from across the room and raised an eyebrow. I showed him an okay sign and headed back over to the coffee machine for another smoke.
It was going to be a long night.
I found both privates, Wilko and Davies, working on the blooded collar. The red LEDs had stopped blinking, mainly because the wee black box was now in bits on the table the lads worked on.
“So what does it do?” I asked.
Wilko replied.
“Far as we can tell it works by radio. A broadcast sends a message that causes a wee electrical shock to run out and into the spine of the beasties.”
“Electro-shock therapy?”
“Exactly. Pain or reward depending on response I’d guess. Pretty simple stuff. I’d have expected something more high-tech.”
Davies laughed.
“Remember, this is British government boffins we’re talking about. Bodge-jobs-r-us.”
“So this broadcast? Where’s it coming from?”
“The research station, far as I can tell,” Wilko replied.
“Could we bypass it, tap in and send our own commands to the beasties? Tell them to fuck off?”
I only meant it half-seriously, but Wilko took me at my word.
“Davies and I will see what we can do, Sarge,” he replied.
- 7 -
I was right about the night being a long one.
Some bright spark had salvaged a wheen of boxes of frozen pizza, and the station had a wee microwave. The pizza itself tasted like warm plastic shite but it was fuel, and that was what I needed more than anything. While waiting for that new brick in my stomach to shift there was little to do but drink coffee and smoke. The wolves stayed away from the door, the storm continued to rage outside and Jennings sulked like a wee spoiled boy. Wilko and Davies continued to work on the collar, Watkins had fallen into a fitful sleep on his cot, and the cap, the sheriff and I hogged the coffee area while Sheriff Sue talked.
I’d been right about her military service.
“Two tours in Afghanistan,” she said. “Rough terrain, surly locals and too much dust and shit. You know the drill.”
That wasn’t a question and we didn’t need to answer. She didn’t say any more about that time. Instead she spoke quietly of her town, her people, and of the ones that had been lost in the panic of the original attack. Fresh tears glistened in the corners of her eyes but her voice was as hard as iron when she spoke of the wolves.
“They hunt as a pack. Back when everything first went to shit, I caught a glimpse of the big one; his eyes looked directly into mine as he stood which gives you an idea of the size of the bastard. He was gone like a fart in the wind as soon as I raised my weapon. But I’ve looked into his eyes now, and him into mine. I’ll be coming with you when you go after him. We’ve got a dance to finish.”