Again, it wasn’t a question, and again neither the cap nor I saw fit to answer. I’d seen her in action and she wasn’t about to fold on us. If she wanted to tag along that was fine by me. And besides, I knew better than to quiz her any further about her hesitation out in the storm earlier; I’ve met enough strong women in my time to have learnt when to keep my mouth shut around them.
Keeping my mouth shut didn’t apply when it came to the men of course, but Jennings was sulking, keeping his distance. That was also fine by me. The hall had fallen quiet, with some of the locals electing to try to catch some sleep when the chance was available. There was no repeat of any scratching at the door or outside the walls. I was about to take a chair and see if I could maybe nod off for forty winks when Davies called me over to where they’d continued to work on the collar I’d brought in.
“I think we might be getting somewhere, Sarge,” he said. “Between us we’ve figured out a rudimentary broadcast system. We can send a signal that will be picked up by the wolves’ implants. Trouble is, what the fuck do we send? I doubt they’ll respond to a Scotsman telling them to sit or fetch.”
“I ken a man who might know,” I answered, and went to wake up Watkins.
He came out of sleep and into an immediate grump at having been woken. His mood didn’t improve when I told him why.
“I’m a geneticist,” he said. “I told you already. I know very little about the behavioural side.”
“And yet, that very little is still more than any of the rest of us know, so give it your best guess; what could we do that will give us an edge in a firefight against them?”
To his credit he gave it some thought while I got smokes lit for the two of us and passed him one.
“I suppose a single, high intensity broadcast to all of them at once might give them cause; at least confuse them enough to give you an opening. But you haven’t really seen these beasts in action yet; they’re not going down easy. And the big mean one…”
“Is big and mean, aye, you told me that already.”
“You weren’t really listening though,” he said quietly. “It’s a mistake to even think about leaving this place. They’ll have us for breakfast.”
“Aye? Well, they’ll find me tough and chewy if they try.”
He had nothing else to say. I took his answer back to Davies and Wilko.
“Can it be done?”
Wilko nodded.
“We up the gain to the max and when we need to, we hit the button. But there’s no way to test it. Either it’ll work, or it won’t. We might only succeed in pissing them off.”
“Aye? Well that’ll be a result in itself. Get to it lads. The night’s wasting.”
It was wasting faster than I’d thought. The cap took a call on the sat phone ten minutes later and once he was finished called the sheriff and me together with him.
“We’ve got rescue choppers inbound. Rendezvous in an hour. But there’s a problem. We need an open space for them to come down to our position. I’m thinking that’ll have to be the supermarket car park. Can we defend it for long enough to get the people away to safety?”
The sheriff spoke first.
“There’s two fire trucks out the back here,” she said. “We moved them out to make enough room for the people. But we can load just about everybody in them.”
“And Wilko and Davies have a plan,” I added, and told them about the collars and the broadcast. “Then we’ve just got the weather to worry about.”
Even as I said it, I noticed that the wind wasn’t howling with the same intensity as before beyond the door.
“It’s blowing itself out,” Sheriff Sue said. “We can do this.”
I was starting to think she was right.
Getting the townspeople awake, on their feet, and willing to move out was a job in itself, but the sheriff went at it full tilt and it was obvious that the locals would all follow her lead. In ten minutes they were all ready, swaddled in whatever clothes or coverings they could muster. We even got Watkins on his feet although he grumbled mightily.
“That’s okay,” I said, dropping him back onto the cot after his first moan of discontent. “We’ll just leave you here, shall we? Close the door at our back. Wouldn’t want anything to get in, would you?”
He complied quickly enough after that.
The next step was more difficult; the trucks were out back in a car park. On our last foray outside I hadn’t even seen them through the snow, but Sheriff Sue insisted they were there, and her word was getting to be good enough for me.
“I should go first,” she said. “I’ll fetch one truck over as close to the door as we can get it where we can load up safely.” She turned to the captain. “Can I have a couple of your lads for backup?”
I put a hand up before the cap spoke.
“I’ll go.”
I looked over to Jennings.
“You’re with me, lad,” I said. He looked surprised, but came at the call. “Rule one. Don’t fuck up.”
“Rule two, don’t shoot me,” Sheriff Sue added.
She led us out into the night.
The wind had dropped considerably and the snow, rather than coming at us horizontally, fell in big soft flakes the size of my thumb. The fire trucks were less than ten yards away, clearly visible now that range of vision had improved.
“Watch my back,” the sheriff shouted and without waiting for an answer headed off in a run for the nearest truck.
I held my breath until she reached the door but nothing came out of the snow and seconds later the roar of the engine came loud above the wind and we were almost blinded as the huge staring headlights came on full beam. Seconds after that she’d brought the truck round, side on to the door so that loading could begin in back.
That first loading went smooth and fast. We got half the townsfolk in, an older chap took on the driving duties and I sent Davies and Wilko with him up front to ride shotgun. Wilko handed me a wee black box that had been wrapped almost totally in duct tape apart from a big red button on top,
“Even you can’t fuck that one up, Sarge,” Davies said with a smile. “If there’s bother, hit the panic button. Hopefully it’ll give them a wee fright and pause for thought. If it disnae work, at least you’ll have something else to chuck at them.”
The sheriff spoke to the elderly driver.
“Just take her slow round the front to the main doors,” she said. “I’ll be bringing the other truck up behind you soon as we’re loaded.”
The truck drove off slowly to my right and once again I had to watch the sheriff scuttle off into the snow, this time heading for the second truck.
The wolf arrived just as she reached the truck door, loping out of the gloom to stand between me and her, equidistant from either of us.
- 8 -
I was still getting my rifle aimed when the wolf turned its back on me. I saw its muscles tense and bunch, saw clearly that it was most definitely a male, then even as I let off a shot it leaped. My aim was off; I couldn’t chance hitting the sheriff and my shot went off and away uselessly into the storm. Everything seemed to slow down. The beast sailed through the air with an exaggerated hang like a long jumper in slow-mo. The sheriff was still trying to get her own weapon raised but was going to be too late and I’d already broken into a run that I knew was going to be no bloody use at all in helping her.
I ran anyway, my weapon raised, hoping for a shot. I was three paces in when I remembered the wee black box, five paces in before I managed to get it out of my jacket pocket. The beast landed paws first on the sheriff’s chest, knocking her back against the grille of the fire truck. She got her rifle up double handed in front of her and the wolf bit down hard on the stock; if it had been her arm, she would have lost a hand at the wrist.