“Jesus, that thing scared the shit out of me,” said Carl. “Where was I, oh yeah. We’d found the bodies and were on the verge of freaking out. The Sarge put a stop to that right away. Told us to get our heads back in the game. We moved out, weapons ready, back into the woods towards our objective. That was when the howling started.
“Now, I grew up on a ranch, and while wolves were pretty rare, I’d still come across one or two in my time. Loners that came down from the mountains, looking for food. Those howls didn’t sound like any wolf I ever heard. There were at least three of them, to the north, south, and east of our position. We headed west, never thinking that they were driving us that way.
“They took the Sarge out first. He was bringing up the rear when he was hit. He got a couple of rounds off before the thing bit his fucking head clean off. In the darkness, all we could see was a big black shadow tearing into him. Tino opened up on it, but he might as well have been firing blanks. The bastard just ignored him and carried on ripping the Sarge to ribbons. The moon came out then, and I got a good look at the thing. It looked like a wolf, but much bigger. The size of a fucking grizzly. That was when the others attacked. They came running at us through the trees. The guys rained bullets at them, but they didn’t even slow down. I’m ashamed to say that my nerve broke, and I ran. After a minute, the shooting stopped and the screaming started. After a while, the screaming stopped as well.
“I ran all night. I heard them howling, out there in the dark, but they never came too close. To this day, I have no idea why. All I know is that I came out of the forest into a village around midday; exhausted, dehydrated, and raving like a lunatic about monsters in the woods. Then I passed out, and the next thing I remember was waking up a couple of days later.”
The sporadic birdsong within the forest was now a chorus. The first weak rays of the sun filtered through the branches, banishing the pre-dawn chill in the air. Steven had never seen a more welcome sight.
“I reckon it’s safe to get down now,” said Carl.
Steven raised an eyebrow. “Probably.”
The two men laughed and clambered down to the forest floor, to the remains of their platform and the rest of their equipment. Carl sifted through the wreckage and swore as he retrieved his hunting rifle.
“The scope's got water in it, and the barrel's out of kilter. Ain't gonna be using this baby anytime soon. Damn, I really liked that gun.”
“Do you think we got it? Last night?”
“I think you hit it, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough left of us to fill a doggie bag. Whether it was enough to kill the bastard is another question.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Well, the rain has gotten rid of most of the tracks. After I get something to eat and take a shower, I’ll come back here and see if I can pick up a trail. Maybe we’ll get lucky. You should get onto the hospitals and see if anyone was admitted with a gunshot wound. You also need to think of a name for your goat.”
“My goat? I…” said Steven, looking across to where the goat was tethered.
The goat looked at Steven, bleated at him in an accusatory tone, and then started eating the bracken.
“So was that it? Back in ’44? You woke up in a village and it was all over?”
“Hell, no. I wish it was. Come on, I’ll tell you the rest on the way back to the car.”
The two men retrieved their equipment from the remains of the platform and untethered the goat.
“Like I was saying, I woke up in a bed in the village. I’d turned my ankle pretty bad that night, even though I hadn’t realised it at the time. It was swollen right up, and I struggled to put any weight on it. I’d lost my sniper kit, but I still had my sidearm and a full clip of ammunition, and I still had some of my standard issue field gear.
“The house belonged to a woman called Mirela. She was as beautiful a girl as I had ever seen. Dark, curly hair flowing down her back, curves in all the right places, and amber eyes that looked straight into your soul. To tell you the truth, I was surprised to see anyone of Romany origin in the area. Most of them had been rounded up by the Nazis and sent to the death camps at Jasenovac. She told me that her village had escaped the Nazis' attention because they kept to themselves. She wasn’t kidding.
“The village itself was in a clearing, smack in the middle of the forest. There were no roads leading in or out, just a couple of trails. They had no power, got their water from a stream, and lived off the land. There were probably around twenty houses: log cabins with hardened mud interior walls, spread in a circle, around an ancient oak in the centre of the clearing. There was a blacksmith by the stream, one of the families kept pigs and chickens, and that was about it.
“I tried to talk to Mirela about what I’d seen in the forest, but she told me that some things were better left alone. I’d seen Lon Chaney Junior in The Wolf Man on my last leave though, and I had a pretty good idea of what I’d seen. When my ankle was strong enough for me to walk, I took my silver crucifix, melted it down, and replaced the lead bullet in one of my pistol rounds with a crude silver one. I had no idea if it would work on those things or even if it would fire, but I sure felt better having it.
“I stayed in the village for a couple of weeks. The others living there gave me a wide berth, and that suited me just fine. No one else except Mirela spoke English, and I sure as hell couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I just waited for my ankle to heal so that I could get out of that god-forsaken country and back to the States.
“It happened one night. Mirela was away somewhere, and I went outside to take a leak. I’d just finished putting my guy away, when I heard a sound from the undergrowth behind her house. I pulled out my pistol just as one of those creatures emerged from the trees, carrying a rabbit in its mouth.
“For a second, neither of us did anything. I stood there, staring down this huge black wolf with amber eyes. I don’t think it had expected to find me there and seemed to be unsure of what to do next. Then it dropped the rabbit, and I fired.
“The thing yelped and fell to the ground. All I wanted to do was run back to Mirela’s house and barricade myself inside, but my legs wouldn’t work. I stood there and watched the hair recede and the creature’s body flow back into the shape of a person. Mirela, bleeding from a chest wound.
“The realisation hit me like a hammer. Mirela was a werewolf. Most likely, every single man, woman and child in the goddamn village was one too. A whole fucking pack of them. I could hear doors opening around the village, and raised voices. I didn’t hang around to try and explain things. I took one of their horses and got the hell out of there. The next morning, I was picked up by a Nazi patrol and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.”
“Jesus. So, after that, you started hunting them down?”
“Hell no, not straight away. When the war was over, I went back to my folks' ranch in Idaho. I stayed there for a few years, but got restless and headed to Africa to hunt big game. Didn’t hear about another werewolf for maybe ten years.”
“Fucking hell. I’m surprised you wanted anything to do with it. I'd have run a bloody mile.”
“Believe me, I thought about it. But, if I didn’t do anything to help, then no one else was gonna. Sometimes you just have to do what’s right. Anyway, changing the subject, you come up with a name for your goat yet?”
Steven smiled. “Yeah, I think I’m going to call it Lucky.”
Carl laughed. “That it is, Steve, that it is. Come on then, I believe you owe me a breakfast.”
***
25th April 1986. Traveller Camp, High Moor. 08:00.
Joseph lifted the pan of boiling water from the fire and carried it to his caravan. Despite the bright sunshine outside, the curtains were drawn, and the only light inside was provided by candles that flickered in the breeze as he opened the door. He placed the pan on a small table beside the bed and opened a leather pouch containing a set of surgical tools. He took the implements out, one at a time, and plac
ed them into the hot water.
“Has there been any change?”
The dark-haired woman who knelt beside the bed looked up at him. “She’s getting worse, Joseph. She’s running a fever, and the wound won’t stop bleeding.” She placed a cold cloth onto the forehead of the semi-conscious old woman.
Joseph moved her to one side and leaned over. “Let me see, Yolanda." He removed the dressing from the woman’s shoulder. Fresh blood welled up from the ragged wound and trickled down her arm. Joseph threw the blood-soaked cloth into the waste bin and applied a fresh dressing. Flowers of blood blossomed across the surface of the white fabric.
Yolanda put her hand on Joseph's arm. “Perhaps it's better this way. Better for all of us.”
“She’s my mother. I won’t let her die. Not when there is a chance to save her.”
“She’s moonstruck, Joseph. Mirela has no control over herself anymore, and she is getting worse. She puts us all at risk.”
Joseph ignored his wife, removed a set of tweezers from the hot water, then peeled back the dressing. “Hold her down. I need to get the bullet out.”
Yolanda frowned, but complied with her husband’s wishes. “You are not listening to me, Joseph. She has already killed a child, and now someone got close enough to shoot at her. How long before they track us here?”
Joseph’s brow furrowed in concentration as he inserted the tweezers into the bullet hole. The old woman cried out in pain and shuddered on the bed. Her skin moved in waves. Thick white hairs sprouted and then retreated back into her flesh.
“Most of the bullet passed straight through, but it fragmented when it clipped her collarbone. I can feel it…there…got it,” he said, drawing out a lump of bloodstained metal.
Yolanda looked at the remains of the bullet and put her hand to her mouth. “Joseph. It’s silver. They know. We need to get away from here. Far away, where they will never find us again.”
“We can’t move her. Not yet. The silver will take time to leave her system. Later, when she is better, we’ll leave.”
She turned away from her husband, bitter tears running across her face. “You doom us all, Joseph. You doom us all.” Then she opened the door and stormed out of the caravan.
Joseph removed a needle-and-thread from his pouch and sewed the wound closed. The old woman writhed on the bed and then was still. Joseph put his tools away. He was about to leave his mother to rest when her arm shot out and grasped his wrist.
"Joseph. Please, I beg you. Let me die."
He smoothed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "Mother, it's alright. Soon the sickness will pass, and you'll feel better."
"You're not listening to me, Joseph. I know that sometimes I am…elsewhere, but right at this moment I am here, and you will heed me. My heart cannot bear the pain any longer. I am responsible for the death of that child, and it destroys me. It eats away at me, even as my mind wanders. If you love me, you will let me die."
Joseph ran his hand across his mother's face. "You sleep, Mother. We'll talk more when you feel stronger." He blew out the candles and left the caravan, leaving Mirela to weep alone in the darkness.
***
25th April 1986. John’s House, High Moor. 10.30.
“John? Michael, and Marie are here,” yelled John’s mother from the bottom of the stairs.
“OK, Mam,” he shouted from his bedroom. He got up from his desk and ran downstairs to meet his friends, jumping the last three stairs to land with a thud on the hallway floor.
Mrs Simpson put her hands on her hips. Her face creased into a frown. “John! How many times do I have to tell you not to jump down those stairs? You’ll go through the floor one of these days.”
Michael and Marie stood by the back door, trying hard to keep their grins under control.
John rolled his eyes and gestured to his friends. “Come on upstairs, guys, before I do something else wrong."
“Do you want anything to drink?” said his Mother as the children filed past.
“No thanks, Mam, maybe later on,” said John. Then the children left the kitchen and ran up the wooden staircase.
“For God’s sake, you lot, you sound like a herd of elephants,” said Mrs Simpson as the children stampeded through the house. Three muted apologies rang down from the top of the staircase. Mrs Simpson shook her head in mock exasperation and went back to preparing lunch.
John closed his bedroom door and moved a stack of comics from his bed to allow Michael and Marie to sit down. John sat on a swivel chair by his desk.
“You two look funny,” said Marie, “like two giant pandas or something.”
Michael made a face at his sister and winced at the movement. Both boys’ faces were covered in dark purple bruises and small scratches. Michael’s right eye was swollen almost shut, and John’s nose was slightly crooked.
Michael punched his sister's arm. “At least we’ll get better, you'll always look funny.”
Marie giggled and stuck her tongue out at him.
“How was your dad last night?” said Michael, “I thought he was going to go mental when the police called him to the hospital to pick us up.”
“He wasn’t too happy with your dad. I think he might have hit him, if he’d been there. Did they ask you who beat us up?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna grass. You heard what they said they’d do if we told.”
“So, what are we going to do about them?” said Marie, “We can’t let them get away with what they did to you.”
John shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re older than us and there’s more of them. We try anything, and they’ll just give us another kicking.”
Michael picked up one of John's comics and flicked through the pages. “We could get hold of them, one at a time, and beat them up for a change?”
“That’s fine, but then they’ll just gang up on us again and do worse next time. We need to find a way to get them off our backs for good.”
“How about saving up our pocket money and paying some bigger boys to beat them up and act as our bodyguards?”
“Maybe, but do you know any older boys that'd do it and not just take our money?”
Michael thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No, all the older boys I know are arseholes.”
“So that’s it then. We might as well just stay inside all summer.”
Michael shrugged. “Looks like it. Got any new games for your Spectrum?”
“Yeah, got a couple. Bring a tape over later on and I’ll do a copy for you.”
“I can’t believe you two,” said Marie. “You can’t just give up like that. Malcolm Harrison and his little bum chums have to pay for messing your faces up.”
“And do what?” said Michael.
Marie grinned at the two boys. “I’ve got an idea. Now listen up. This is what we're going to do.”
Chapter 9
4th May 1986. Coronation Estate, High Moor. 14.22.
Malcolm scrawled his name on the glass window of the bus shelter with a black permanent marker. His ribs still hurt from the "discipline" that his stepfather had administered the night before, and he winced at every movement. Not that he'd ever admit his pain to the others. They'd be on him like a pack of hyenas. He needed something to take the edge off. Numb him until he could creep back into the house after his bastard stepfather had gone to bed. He finished his drawing and turned to his friends. “Billy, you got any smoke?”
Billy held up a black lump, wrapped in cling film. “Yeah, nicked this off my brother. There’s about a quarter, and it’s really good gear. Proper squidgy black hash. My brother’s been tearing his room apart trying to find it.”
“Give us a look,” said Malcolm, and took the lump from Billy. He unwrapped the cellophane and sniffed the lump of cannabis. “This is good stuff,” he said and broke the piece in half, put one in his pocket and passed the other back to Billy. “Better than that shit you got last week, Simon.”
Simon looked offended. “That was good soap bar, th
at.”
“It was a lump of dried dog shit. Are you telling me that you actually smoked it?”
“It wasn’t dog shit. I paid three weeks pocket money for it from Geoff.”
“It was definitely dog shit. It smelled of shit and looked like shit. Geoff was laughing about it after, up the park. And you put it in your mouth?”
“Piss off, Mal. I didn’t smoke dog crap. I would have been able to tell.”
“How? You know what dog shit tastes like? You been round to Pikey Mikey's for tea or something?”
Simon opened his mouth to respond when a milk bottle filled with yellow liquid arced through the air and shattered against the back of the bus shelter. Glass and stale urine rained down on the boys. They looked up and saw Marie sitting across the road on her push-bike. She smiled at them sweetly, then gave them the finger and pedalled off down the road as fast as she could.
Malcolm stood with his mouth open for a second, unable to comprehend what had just happened. When he spoke, his voice cracked with rage. “That little bitch. Get her. GET HER.”
The four furious, urine-soaked boys jumped onto their bikes and took off in pursuit.
***
Marie was terrified. She couldn't believe she'd suggested this. The boys had argued with her, but she'd dug her heels in and eventually they'd agreed to her plan. She was regretting her stubbornness.
Malcolm and his friends were gaining on her. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the four boys pedalling down the hill, shouting abuse. She needed to slow them down if she was to have any chance of getting to her destination.
The main road into town was at the bottom of the hill, and she would have to get across it to reach the school. If she stopped, even for a second, the boys would catch her.
Just like playing Frogger. I’m ace at it on the computer.
She tried not to think about what happened to the frog when she got it wrong and increased her speed, trying to spot a space between the cars.
Here goes nothing.
Marie hit the junction and weaved to the right, passing just behind an old brown car. She turned left and saw a motorbike heading straight for her. Adrenaline surged through her, and for a moment she froze, hands locked in place and the bike free-wheeling. Her speed carried her past the oncoming vehicle. She bounded over the kerb and turned left. A blaring of horns erupted from behind, and she grinned as she saw Malcolm being yelled at by an angry motorist. The four boys ignored the man and walked their bikes across the road. Marie pedalled away through the open school gates.
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