Howling Dead

by M. H. Bonham

  Yeah, bullet through the brain. Wolves, if you believe the rumor...

  “Shit,” Spaz said and ripped off the interface. His neurons screamed from the sudden unplugging but he didn’t care. Danni dead? It seemed impossible. Tom had disappeared. Randy had sold out. Who else was there besides himself?

  Spaz didn’t like the answer. He stood up and stretched slowly, feeling each of his joints pop. It never used to be this way, he reminded himself. He was getting old and the stress was beginning to take its toll. Already his forefinger and thumb were numb again. The carpal tunnel was coming back.

  The room was dark, save for the flicker of computer screens. He liked being surrounded by darkness; it comforted him and made him feel alone. That was something he missed when he worked day jobs. There was too much light and not enough darkness. In the dark, he could concentrate.

  There wasn’t really much to the room he rented. The Garcia family who had rented it to him in north Denver were Hispanic and spoke little English. They were hardly there—probably holding down two or three jobs to make ends meet. For all its cow-town-like attitude, Denver was expensive, and those who lived there had to hustle or move out. Spaz had chosen this rental because it wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen. Cash only and week-to-week, his landlords didn’t ask questions and didn’t care. He suspected they were what was euphemistically called “undocumented workers”—people who had most likely entered the country illegally, and didn’t want to call attention to themselves.

  That suited Spaz just fine. As long as they all behaved, everyone’s secrets would remain secrets and nobody was the worse for wear.

  He put the interface back on and called up Gregorian chants. The solemn strains of Preces Deus Miserere began and the monks’ voices reverberated in his brain. He envisioned a wall of flames shooting up twelve feet around him and shut off the links into the Enchanted Forest and the Internet. The firewall was quite effective and he knew he would need some quiet privacy to think about what to do next.

  The wolves were dangerous. They’d always been, but now Spaz worried that they had taken their predatory behavior to the real world. He could deal with their attack programs, Trojan horses, worms, and viruses, but bullets were another thing entirely.

  He felt another presence as he sat and pondered his predicament. A door opened in the wall of flames and a small red gnome-like creature walked through the door and shut it. Its face was expressionless and all business-like as it waited for him. It carried a mailbag that it had slung across its red body. It had red horns and a pointed tail, but in a strange way looked almost childlike.

  Impish, Spaz thought. Maybe I should make it look like a dog. It was the sendmail daemon and it carried a few emails. He stared for a few moments at the Imp and concentrated, opening up the C code that programmed it. All he had to do was change it to another animated gif.

  The Imp changed to a blue dog with floppy ears carrying letters in its mouth and wagging its tail furiously. Spaz looked at his surroundings. The firewall was good, but a trifle ominous. He began opening the programs and modifying them. As he did, the fire turned gray and solidified. The grassy ground beneath his feet became stone and then carpet. A chair grew out of the floor and he sat in it as he put in the finishing touches: bookshelves and a nice sturdy desk on the other side of the room. He floated a few rendering light sources above so that his cyber-eyes had some natural light. Unlike a normal room, this one had no door.

  “There we go, much more friendly,” Spaz said. And just as secure. Only his daemons could get in. He glanced at the first email; it was from Kira —that could wait. The next message was from Lizard.

  Spaz Boy—

  Murphy is looking for you. GTG

  —Lizard

  Spaz shivered at the news. Did Murphy already know Spaz was in Denver? If he did, it could get touchy. Murphy was one of the wolves. Although technically Murphy had no criminal record, it was common knowledge he had killed at least one man—maybe more. He was no angel, unless it was the fallen type associated with hell.

  He closed his eyes. Read the rest, he told the dog.

  The dog’s voice was tinny as it began to read the email. It was one of those attempts at trying for a humanistic voice but the flatness and lack of expression made it sound even more alien.

  Return-Path:

  Skip header, Spaz ordered.

  The dog continued speaking without hesitation.

  Spaz –

  I know you’re in Denver. It’s a matter of time. You can see me or I can find you.

  — Cathal

  CHAPTER 18

  Spaz stared at Cathal Murphy’s letter. How in the fuck had he found out Spaz was in Denver? Spaz could feel the sweat running down his face as he stared at the ridiculous blue dog that still wagged its tail furiously at him.

  Read sent-to address, Spaz said.

  Sent-to spaz@axioms.com

  Shit.

  Excuse me? The dog’s tail wagged more furiously.

  Not you, he snapped. Go away.

  The blue daemon faded away. Spaz began to pace. Cathal knew where he worked, which was bad. Spaz wasn’t done with his work at Axioms, but he couldn’t afford to show up there again. He needed to get out and get out soon. He called up Travelocity and entered the Bahamas as his next destination. He’d feel better on a sandy beach, drinking a Mai Tai and sunbathing.

  He had just finished his travel plans when the blue dog appeared again, this time carrying another email.

  Who’s it from? he asked.

  Excuse me? The dog wagged its tail furiously.

  Spaz smiled in chagrin. He forgot that sometimes he still had to give it commands. Alias “read send-to” with “who’s it from”

  Okay, the daemon said.

  Now, who’s it from?

  kwalker@gmail.com, the daemon replied.

  Read it to me, Spaz said. He turned pale as he listened to Kira’s message.

  K

  Kira hadn’t expected a quick answer from Spaz when she sent the email off, but by the time she cleaned up the spilt coffee the best she could—unlikely to get her damage deposit back at this rate—and poured another cup, the new message light was already blinking on the monitor.

  Shit. What have you gotten yourself into? Use the phone and call me at 303-758-8896.

  – S

  Kira noted that the message was from one of Spaz’s throwaway accounts listed on the card. Odd, she thought. It was almost as if Spaz was scared. Spaz wasn’t scared of anyone. She checked the phone number and dialed.

  “Kira?” came Spaz’s voice over the computer. “Damn it, girl! I said use the phone! Get your ass outside in a half hour. See you in a few.”

  The line went dead before Kira had a chance to speak. She stared at the Sun in puzzlement. She always used Voice-Over-IP but she hadn’t thought anyone would track it. Why was Spaz tracking the origins of phone calls?

  Kira changed into clothes that weren’t coffee stained and left the apartment. This was all very strange. When she walked out of her front door, Spaz was already there.

  “What’s going on? Do you know Murphy?” Kira asked.

  Spaz’s dark eyebrows drew together and he chewed his lips. He glanced around suspiciously. “Not here,” he said. “Let’s walk.”

  “Where to?” Kira glanced around. “What’s this all about?”

  “Let’s walk, first,” Spaz said. He took off briskly, and for the first time, Kira had trouble catching up.

  They walked for a while, until Kira noticed they were heading toward Commons Park. They walked across the bridge to the bright green grass and walked down the concrete walkways dotted with trees and old fashioned street lamps. Some people were playing Frisbee on the grass and Kira could see some bicyclists riding away from them down the path. “What’s this all about?” Kira demanded.

  Spaz wheeled around on her. “What do you know about the Enchanted Forest?”
<
br />   “The what?” Kira began to laugh. “You mean with Elves and stuff? Or are we talking Disneyland here?”

  “No, no, cyberspace-wise,” Spaz said. “Surely you’ve heard something.”

  Kira hesitated. “Wasn’t it something that you mentioned in that old graduate paper you did at MIT?” She noticed Spaz was watching her closely. “Something about a net within the Net.”

  “Good girl, you do read my stuff,” he said. “You check out Slash Dot or Wired recently?”

  “Haven’t really had the time. Look, the cyber culture is passé. I’ve got more important things to do.”

  “More important than knowing who is hacking your networks?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Kira, Kira, you are such a stik.”

  “Watch your mouth, asshole, or I’ll send a denial of service to your machine so fast you won’t have time to catch up,” Kira snorted.

  “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” Spaz laughed. “Okay, you’re not a stik, but baby, baby, what are you doing sniffing up Murphy’s butt? He’ll slap you down hard. He’s a big spider, Kira. He’s about the size of Shelob, and he’s a nasty one. “

  “Spiders can be squished.”

  “Not this one.” Spaz shook his head. “Net within a Net. I started doing something like it at MIT. So did the other spiders. We realized that things would get locked down tight with IP6 so we decided to take matters into our own hands. So, we began to build a network within the Net. We sent worms out to various machines to rewrite routing software where we could. A few went awry—like the worms you’d see in the news—but most were covert and went undetected. We knew we’d have to use the IP4 machines because IP6 didn’t let us spoof.”

  “Piggybacked onto IP4,” Kira said. “Shit.”

  “That’s when someone got the great idea to have IP6 and IP4. After all, there were lots of legacy machines. The network spread from Berkley to Boston and there were enough spiders looking to fix our basic problem: allowing us access into the Net without people knowing we were there. We’d add our subnets into the routers—usually with inside help. This net within the Net grew and grew. No one knew what to call it, but some jokester came up with the Enchanted Forest. Sometimes just the Forest or the Woods. Taking a walk in the Woods, as it were.”

  “So what does Murphy have to do with all this?”

  “Baby, he set up the Forest at the Evil Empire. It’s Murphy’s Law there.”

  “And they’ve got werewolves in the Forest,” muttered Kira.

  Spaz raised an eyebrow. “You know about them?”

  “I’m one of them.”

  Spaz looked at her oddly. “I thought you didn’t know about the Forest.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “Well anyway, the Denver Wolfpack, as they call themselves, are a bunch of tough spiders.”

  “They’re not spiders,” said Kira. “They’re werewolves.”

  “Whatever,” Spaz said dismissively. “Look, when you sent me the IP subnets, I knew you had probably stumbled onto the Forest, but I figured I’d just play dumb and act like I didn’t know. But when you mentioned Murphy, I knew something was on. What’dya do, Kira? Stumble on Murphy’s edge of the Forest?”

  Kira paused. “What do you know about werewolves?”

  “They send code to maraud the Forest. Usually tear up anyone in their path.”

  “No, I mean real werewolves,” Kira said. “Not cyberwolves.”

  Spaz laughed and Kira felt her face turn red. “You get knocked in the head, girl? Ain’t no such thing.”

  “No,” she said softly. “Just a wolf loose in Denver who killed Susan and a few others.”

  Spaz looked at her curiously. “You think someone is siccing real wolves on people?”

  “There’ve been four attacks,” Kira said. He doesn’t believe that werewolves are real. “So, is there a way for me to get into the Forest?”

  “Yeah,” said Spaz. “Just follow the yellow brick road.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Snoop around,” Kira said, crossing her arms. “Why?”

  “You asked about Murphy.”

  “So?”

  “Murphy is bad news, Kira,” Spaz said. “Don’t cross him or you’ll be dead.”

  “I’m just snooping a bit, that’s all,” she said. “What do you care?”

  Spaz shook his head. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “Too late,” she said. “What do you mean by the yellow brick road?”

  He shook his head. “Go to Oz, Kira. But be really careful. These people are rough.” The PDA at his side beeped and he flipped it open. “Crap, got to run—work calls. Later?” He snapped it shut. “Wait a sec.” He fished out a headset from his pocket and pressed it into her hands. “You’ll need this when you get there. Call me. Don’t talk about the Forest and don’t show anyone the headset.” He turned and left her standing in the middle of Commons Park, puzzled and even more confused.

  CHAPTER 19

  Follow the yellow brick road,” said the munchkin.

  “Follow the yellow brick road,” Spaz had said.

  “Follow, follow, follow, follow...”

  “I’m afraid we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Kira said to herself as she walked out of Commons Park. Not unless Kansas had werewolves, too.

  The Enchanted Forest. It was the stuff of legends, among spiders and sysadmins alike. Kira had seen vague references to it over the years and had even tried to track it down, but nothing had ever come of it. There had been a lot of talk and speculation, but no one had actually seen the Enchanted Forest. The net within the Net. It was off the map.

  Here there be monsters, the old map makers wrote. Monsters indeed. Werewolves.

  And the cyber-community knew about them. Or thought they knew about them. So, rogue spiders were called werewolves? Or wolf spiders? she thought wryly. Regardless, there were werewolves in cyberspace and in real life. She might be hunting the same ones.

  She started humming the song from the Wizard of Oz as she walked back toward her apartment, ignoring the looks of passersby. At least she wasn’t skipping, she thought wryly.

  But what in the hell did Spaz mean when he said to go to Oz? And what was the headset? She looked at it. It wasn’t much—it just looked like something that you’d plug an iPod into. She put it on. Again, nothing. Taking it off again, she folded it and put it in her pocket. Was this some kind of a joke?

  The sun was already low enough to throw long shadows across the streets, sending the afternoon into premature twilight. The moon would be up again soon—Kira wondered if she would turn back into a werewolf or if she could control it. But then, last night had been the full moon—it wouldn’t be tonight, although she suspected that an almost full moon was nearly as powerful.

  She tried to think of what she had heard about werewolves. They could only be killed with a silver bullet through the heart. Megan had said silver weapons. Something about wolfsbane—didn’t it repel werewolves? And what else? She didn’t really know. It made almost as much sense as what Spaz said.

  Follow the yellow brick road.

  The words continued to nag her as she entered her apartment building and walked back to her second floor apartment. She opened the door, walked in, and stared at the computer screen. Was this an old spider term? She tried to think back to her MIT days. Usually anything called a “yellow brick road” was a path that anyone could see and follow. And Oz. What in the hell was that about?

  Kira pulled the headset out of her pocket and tossed it on the desk. The headset was worthless and she wondered why Spaz had bothered putting one in her hands.

  Kira sat down at the computer and pulled up Google. She quickly entered “Yellow Brick Road” and Oz. The lists of websites showed her references to The Wizard of Oz—both the book and the movie—and not much else. Kira sighed and shook her head. Did she really think she could find a secret entrance through Google? And
yet, sometimes the most obscure things were hidden in plain sight. She felt like she was missing something. Something important.

  She glanced at the clock on her Sun’s monitor. It was 6:30 already. She was hungry again. Kira surfed over to a local delivery pizzeria’s website, ordered pizza and opened a window to write some code. She stared at the blank screen for a while and then began to write C code.

  It was simple really. If Spaz wasn’t lying, her best bet was to start with the open nodes and go from there. But there were thousands, if not millions, of open nodes in the Internet. Where would she start?

  Go to Oz.

  Kira stared at the code. She wasn’t getting something—something important. She decided to write a threaded subroutine that would open ports in the routers, knock, and see what opened. As she did, she pulled off the current list of black hole routers. There were some in the US. But many were overseas.

  Oz...

  The intercom buzzed. Kira glanced at the time—it was 7:00. Damn. She walked over to the intercom. “Yeah?”

  “Pizza,” the voice said.

  “I’ll be right down.” She released the button and stared at the screen again. Kira knew there was something she was forgetting. As she fished the cash from her jeans, she stared again at the database in the separate window, glancing down the list of URLs. Several ended in .au.

  Aussies.

  Oz.

  Go to Oz. She began laughing. The Aussie regularly referred to the land downunder as Oz. Kira was elated as she bounded out the door, nearly forgetting her keys, before taking two steps at a time downstairs.

  How could she have forgotten that Australia was Oz? She chuckled as she opened the front door.

  “This yours?” said the delivery guy, holding out a pizza box and a bottle of Dr Pepper. Kira grinned at the teen, snatched up the food, and handed him a twenty, telling him to keep the change. She dashed upstairs and was in the apartment before she realized she hadn’t ordered the soda pop.