by Red, Lynn
Jill hit the ground, hard. The transceiver bounced across the forest floor to Claire’s feet, and Jill booted the wolf off her chest. The creature stood for a split-second, then slumped over as the silver in its stomach and its leg began to dissolve the flesh.
“Good shot,” Jill said, breathing hard, but standing on her own power. “Shots.”
Trembling, Claire dropped the revolver into the spongy mess of leaves and sticks and earth at her feet. “I just,” she swallowed hard. “What did I—did I kill that thing?”
“Saved my life,” Jill said. “Although you almost ended it too.” It was a joke meant to relieve some of the tension she knew Claire was feeling – she’d felt the same thing, that horrible realization of having ended a life, even if it was a threat – not so long ago.
“I’m sorry,” the younger woman stammered. “I’m... I’ve never...”
“No, no,” Jill grabbed her shoulder and fetched the pistol from the ground, along with the radio. “We’re fine,” she said, holding down the push to talk button. “Claire here just bagged her first Lupine.”
“Jesus Christmas,” Jacques said, throwing out one of his adorably countrified semi-swears. “You sure you’re okay? No scratches? Wouldn’t want to have to amputate anythi—”
“Not now, Jacques.” She turned to Claire. “He’s joking. Jacques, say you’re joking and you’re sorry.”
“I’m joking, and I’m sorry,” the radio said. “We don’t have much time for coming around to comfort though. If you two are together, I think I also have a bead on the bears. They’re moving too, but not very fast. She said she don’t know what happened to ‘em?”
Claire grabbed the handset when Jill offered it. “No,” she said, the poor thing’s voice still shaking from the shock and the apparently subsiding asthma. “I was... well, Fury and Stone and I got attacked in the woods by some Imperial Storm Trooper looking guys, and then there were two other bears, and...”
“Calm down there, sugar,” Jacques said. He was better at this than Jill knew. “Everythin’ fine. You’re fine, Miss Jilly’s fine. Thanks to you,” he added quickly. “She’s fine. Now slowly – tell me what happenin’ with the bears?”
Claire swallowed hard, gathering her courage, and then recounting all she remembered about the events leading up to her blacking out, and then waking up alone in the woods with a bunch of wolves around her.
“The werewolves got plenty of numbers,” Jacques said, when he sensed she was upset about the shots she’d fired. “But we only got one Jilly. Right, so, I think I have a bead on the bears, but they movin’ slow. Movin’ to the east, south-east, but like I said, real slow. I think you can catch ‘em if you get a move on.”
The radio went silent for a moment. Jill gathered herself, reloaded Claire’s gun and handed it back. “Safety’s on the handle. Push it in until you need to kill something else.” The smile Jill cocked finally had the effect she wanted – Claire cracked half a grin, and her shoulders sagged slightly in relaxation.
“I’m gonna circle,” Jacques said over the radio. “Gonna guide you to ‘em, got it?”
“Yeah, gotcha Jacques,” Jill said. “How far away are they?”
“Mmm,” the Cajun always made that noise when he was deep in thought. “Lookin’ like about a mile from where you standin’. Actually I got a better idea – come to the clearin’ where I dropped you. After Lupines frenzy, they don’t rest for long. Over and out.”
The radio went dead. She’d instinctively wanted to argue about getting back in the air without her bears, but she knew it was for the best. For a moment, the two women watched one another, Jill and Claire both studying each other for the first time. Claire was shorter and heavier than Jill, but looked strong – she had wider shoulders, rounder hips, and bigger arms.
“Claire?” Jill asked, as the other woman averted her eyes and started turning the .38 over in her hand. “You okay?”
“They said... they said they wouldn’t let anything hurt me.” The younger woman was starting to understandably shake again. “When we first got out of that building, they said they’d keep me safe, that no matter what, they’d—”
Jill cut her off. “If there’s one thing I know about bears, it’s that they don’t lie. And trust me,” Jill cracked another smile, leading Claire in the direction Jacques had indicated, with a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me. I know a thing or two about bears. Come on, we got a chopper to catch.”
-12-
“Just point at what you want to kill and pull the trigger? Really, that’s your advice?”
-Claire
“They wouldn’t lie,” Claire said. Her will was beginning to waiver slightly, not that Jill blamed her. “They told me they’d—shit.”
As the chopper swooped low again, casting a shadow against the moonlight that drank in the tops of the pines, Jill figured the look of nausea on her new friend’s face was telling her the story. But the girl chewing her lip nervously said there was something else.
“What day is it?”
The question caught Jill slightly off guard. “November?”
“That’s a month.”
Jacques laughed his rounded, warm laugh. The few seconds of levity were desperately needed, judging from the wave of it that swept through everyone.
“Uh,” Jill checked her phone. “Wednesday, and turns out, it’s December, so I’m wrong all the way around.”
With a heavy sigh, Claire fished her miraculously still-working phone out of her back pocket and fiddled with the screen. After a moment, she realized Jill had her head cocked, watching her. “What?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just... you’ve been out here almost a week, how the hell is that thing still charged? Idle curiosity in the face of extreme danger is sorta my thing.”
“Ultra power-saving mode. Turns the screen black and white. It’ll last three weeks on a charge,” the younger woman, hair dirty, face lined and hard despite her obviously young age, had her eyes crinkled up.
The lines in the corners were from laughing, but as Jill watched, she knew there was more to this innocent-seeming person. There was something back there, something in the background that she had been hiding for a long, long time.
“Is everything okay?” Jill asked, in a voice purposefully calm and low in tone. “I know you’ve been through a lot in the past few days but—”
“Murder!” the woman shouted. “I’m going to be a murder suspect! I probably already am! Jesus shit, you’re asking me what’s wrong, like it isn’t the most obvious thing in the world, I,” she trailed off, apparently forgetting her own worry as the chopper swooped again, and the woman’s stomach looked like it lurched into her throat.
For a moment, no one said anything. The only sounds were the wind blowing through the vents in the helicopter, and the steady pulsating thump of the blades above them. Every now and then, Claire thought she heard a howl – to be fair, she almost certainly did – but that seemed so absurd that she could hardly stand the thought.
“They ain’t gonna come for you,” Jacques offered.
Claire stared at the dark fringe of the man’s hair that poked out from under the big headphones he wore. His voice resonated in her head, through her own headset. For a moment she let herself think about the incredible clarity of his voice, and wonder what sort of high-dollar earphones she must be wearing.
“That’s what they said,” she finally responded. “But... how? Someone died!”
Claire, still watching the pilot, caught a glimpse of him flicking his eyes up to Jill. “She a part of ‘dis now, Jilly.”
The two of them kept watching one another, the tension between them palpable and slightly uncomfortable. “What is it?” Claire asked, when she couldn’t take anymore staring and glancing and sidelong looks. “Is there some massive conspiracy? I read all that crap about GlasCorp and it’s so stupid. I never saw—”
“You were part of a three person escape from a pharmaceutical company that involved you and two...” J
ill trailed off, obviously intending for Claire to finish. “Two...?”
Claire heaved a heavy sigh. Two astonishingly hot men that I can’t stop thinking about even though I’m apparently running for my life. And I wish this goddamn birthmark would stop twitching and tingling.
“You’re looking for me to say two shape-shifting bear men, right?”
Jacques chuckled. “’Dis one catch on fast.”
“I’m not going to say one way or another,” Jill said, carefully biding her words. “Because all I know is what I’ve seen. But I went into the woods six months ago to study some weird bears in the Appalachians. A week into my trip I had killed a werewolf and had a three-way with the two bears who saved your two.”
“Must be nice,” Claire said under her breath, looking down at her toes. “I can’t stop thinking about them in exactly that way. I can’t think about anything else it’s so ridiculous that with everything else going on, all I can think of is their beauty, their muscles, their...”
A buffet of wind struck the side of the chopper, sending it careening to the left, dangerously close to the treetops, just as Jill took hold of Claire’s shoulder, sensing that the woman needed steadiness and calm. The thumb on Jill’s left hand slipped just below the dirty, slightly stretched collar of Claire’s shirt, brushing along the top of the birthmark.
Electricity tickled the back of Claire’s throat, out of nowhere. She started, surprised at the sensation and then found herself clutching Jill’s hand. Jill’s normally hard, focused eyes softened slightly. Jacques had control of the chopper again, and the thumping of blades was once again the only sound in the world.
“Do you have a... a birthmark? Right there?” Jill’s voice was soft and coaxing. “One that kinda—”
“Tingles?” Claire pulled her shirt down, baring her shoulder. The faint light in the helicopter’s cabin illuminated a purple-blue mark. Jill ran her fingertip along the top of the mark. “I had no idea what was going on,” Claire breathed. “I’d always had this thing. All of a sudden, when I went to work one night, it started to kinda vibrate, or warm, or... I dunno, it’s hard to explain.”
“The closer you got?”
Claire cocked her head, a confused look on her lips.
“To them, I mean. To where they were being held?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it,” she lied for some reason. “It just seemed weird is all.”
Without another word, Jill pulled her striped tee low enough that Claire could see hers. “Does this help? Or... is it just weirder now? I’m guessing weirder.”
Claire’s mouth drooped, her jaw falling open just a little. “I,” she swallowed. “You know, if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen in the past few days, I would be a whole lot more amazed at meeting someone with the same weird birthmark I have.”
Jill snorted a laugh. “GlasCorp is capturing werebears from a particular clan. They’re experimenting on them and trying to figure out a way to use their strength, their essence, whatever you want to call it, to make an army.”
“Holy. Shit.”
“You’re part of this,” Jill’s voice was hard, but gentle enough to not frighten the newcomer. “Because you were chosen... by someone, something, whatever, to be part of it.”
Suddenly, another buffet of wind struck the chopper. Jacques let out another loud semi-curse that involved prairie dogs and stew. He grunted and slumped to the side. “Ain’t... ain’t wind,” he gasped. “Something hit...”
Without a moment’s pause, Jill darted to the front of the chopper and grabbed her friend’s shoulder, feeling sticky warmth on her palm. There was no hole in the windshield, no sign of any kind of bullet or anything else, but there was plenty of evidence that Jacques was bleeding. He still had his hand locked on the controls, but the grimace on his face told the whole story. “Claire! Come up here! Here, help him into the other seat.”
Confused, the younger woman grunted as the pilot slumped against her. The transition from his holding the controls to Jill was smooth, although there was some pitching and lurching. Claire getting him into the seat was slightly less graceful. He groaned, uttered a real curse this time, and clapped his hand over the wound opening in his shoulder. “What’n the hell happened? God awmighty this hurts like hell, burns, stings.”
“What hit him?” Claire hissed, ripping part of her shirt and stuffing it against the wound on the man’s chest. His blood was seeping through, but the pressure slowed it enough to give her hope that maybe he wouldn’t bleed out right here. “Whatever, we need to get him to the hospital. This wound seems like it’s getting bigger? How the hell is this possible?”
The helicopter yawed, pitched, and began to creak under the neophyte’s inexperienced steering. Jill hardened her eyes, staring dead on at the instrument panel, and checking everything as Jacques had told her. She was suddenly very glad she paid such close attention way back when. She never thought she’d need to know this stuff – especially not like this.
“The thing about helicopters that are supposed to go unseen is that there are a whole lot less lights than there normally are,” she grunted. “Is he breathing? Check his pulse.”
Claire did as instructed and reported the results – he was, but shallow, and his pulse was there, but weakening. “What is going on?” she demanded. “Tell me something!”
Jill gripped the yoke and pulled to the right, fighting another gust of wind and pulling the chopper higher up away from the treetops. “I don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth, “but every single instrument just went dead. You holding on?”
Before she could answer, Claire felt herself pitch to the side. Her hand shot out and she clutched the seatbelt she’d just clicked onto the wounded pilot. Her heart pounded so hard that she could feel the thump in her temples. “I am now,” she said, faking a laugh. “But he really needs a doctor. This wound is getting bigger somehow, he—”
As though to emphasize her point, Jacques sputtered, howled with pain, and clutched the wad of rags to his chest. “Spreading,” he croaked. “It’s... it’s spreading me open, I—”
His chin fell to his chest. “Shit!” Claire yelped. “Still breathing, still got a pulse,” she said. “But something’s happening to him. His neck is swelling, he’s not gonna last.”
She looked back at Jill, who clenched her eyes shut for a moment, obviously trying to steel her nerves. “We have to leave them,” she said with soft resolve. “We’ll come back, but right now he needs us worse than they do.”
Claire nodded, a tear misting up in the corner of her eye. “Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“They’ll be okay before he is,” she said, flicking her head to the side, indicating Jacques. I’ve seen them fight. So have you. I don’t know if they’ll be okay, but they’ve got a better chance than him.”
The helicopter swept down again before lifting higher into the sky. Clutching both the side of the chair, and the seatbelt as the chopper churned, Claire closed her eyes, trying to sense her bears the way she had before. She felt nothing – no tingle, no warmth.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s do it.”
*
“The hell do you think this is going to do? Turning us against each other? There are only a handful of us left anyway!”
Rogue snarled at the figure in front of him, who had been pumping some kind of drug into the two bears they’d rescued for the past hour, maybe two. It was hard to tell without any sun or moon crawling across the sky. He looked left, then right, at the cold, soulless industrial installation.
The room was large and open, with doorways and alcoves dotting the entire expanse. The gas-masked figure was breathing slowly, or at least making some sort of noise meant to sound like breathing.
“You can talk, can’t you?” Rogue hissed.
King had a lump the size of a baseball on the side of his head that was red, swollen, and obviously painful. Stone and Fury were strapped onto cruciform hospital beds with thick, c
hain-like belts. Every time one of the lab coats approached and injected one of them, they’d both howl and snarl and growl, thrashing from side to side helplessly.
“Yes.” The voice was cold, static and impossibly even. “I can speak.”
The same figure had been standing in front of the two Broken Pine alphas since they’d been deposited in this place. This place, which could have been anything. Memories of the last half-day were fuzzy. Rogue remembered a burning sensation in his chest. He remembered the smell of copper and iron in his nose, and then he remembered absolutely nothing. He looked over at King again, who was lolling his head from side to side, incoherent and babbling every so often.
“Then tell me what the hell is going on,” Rogue said.
“No.”
“There’s no point to arguing with you, is there?”
“No.”
Rogue’s shoulders slumped. The chains on his wrists rattled with every move he made, and every breath he took made what he assumed must be bruised ribs send tendrils of pain snaking up his back. “Can I at least have something to eat?”
The black-clad figure just stared. Its eyes were soulless, black circles underneath a set of goggles that covered most of the top of its head. A close-fitting hood covered the head, and then the gas mask – that haunting, bizarre gas mask that strummed something deep in Rogue’s soul that he couldn’t place.
“Are you a robot?”
The creature stared for a moment before static heralded some coming words. “No.”
“Can you say anything other than no?”
It made a clicking sound, then static before producing something that approached a chortle. “No.”
“Oh good, not only are you holding us down here, God only knows where and pumping God only knows what into our kin’s veins, you’re a comedian. Fantastic.”
The thing stared.
King groaned, Rogue massaged his bruised ribs.
