“Yes sir?”
“You have left a hell of a mess here, sergeant,” Colonel James said, his voice deep with each word clearly enunciated.
“Yes sir,” Knowles said, trying to stay calm.
The three officers looked at each other, but their expressions were too hard to read.
“Sir, permission to speak freely.”
“Granted, Knowles, you are not on trial here.”
Feels like it. “Sir, my report can be verified by my team. Corporal Meyers is covered with spider bites. You have the corpse of one of the spiders because Corporal Carruthers thought very quickly in a difficult situation. We were woefully unprepared. The spiders alone are an unprecedented find.”
The long drive back had let them all fill in the various events they had been involved in. Disbelief hadn’t been an option, as much as they might have wanted it. Carruthers’ knowledge of spiders and wolves would, under any other circumstances led to much piss-taking. Instead, it had been invaluable. The last thing he wanted now was to have grief from some Ruperts.
“You have Jack Stadler on base,” he continued. “He’s alive despite being shot over thirty times. Jonesey shot him at point blank range. Go to the house and look at the bodies. I understand things did not go smoothly, but it was pretty fucked up.” That earned him a glare from Smith.
“We have,” the unknown man said. “We have cleaned up the mess you left and have calmed the local police down. They are understandably upset that one of their own is missing. Everyone is, for now, buying the animal story. The true body count has been brought down. The dead wolves helped with the pack theory. We even arranged for the other car to be collected.”
“Who are you?” Knowles demanded.
“Knowles!” Smith said. The other man held up a hand.
“It’s ok, David. I am Captain Daniel Starky.” He stressed the rank and held Knowles’ gaze.
“Never heard of you.”
“Watch your tongue, Knowles,” Smith said.
Knowles nodded. Great, so why are you here?
“Wait a minute, you said wolf bodies.”
“Yes?”
“They were humans, well, like Stadler.”
“Do you have evidence for that?”
“No, but-”
“No, but what?”
“They stayed as wolves when they died. I thought-”
“Stop thinking Knowles. This would appear to be different to the stories.”
Knowles didn’t need to ask what stories.
“As far as the outside world goes, you were never in Devon,” Starky said.
Realisation began to dawn on Knowles.
“The truth of this matter must never come to light. You and your team are to tell no-one what happened to you.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You must ensure that this is fully understood. We will court martial anyone who talks of this.”
Knowles nodded more vigorously. James cleared his throat.
“We thank you and your team for your work in this matter Sergeant Knowles. You will be granted extra leave in a place of your choosing.”
“Sir,” Knowles paused. “One of my men died, sir. What do I tell his family?”
“Nothing.” James looked genuinely surprised. “Corporal Scarlet was back in Afghanistan on a top secret mission. He died serving his country. His family has already been informed.”
Knowles nodded again. So that was how it was going to be.
“You will need to fully debrief our team here,” Smith said. “You and your men have information that could be vital to the safety of this country. We have a team working on Stadler at the moment. Another team is analysing the bone fragments you retrieved from the cave. You will work closely with them for as long as it takes for us to understand the nature of our enemy.”
“Yes sir, but-”
“Dismissed, Sergeant.”
“Sir, Stadler is not our enemy. He has no idea what is happening to him.”
Starky had picked up his pen, but he put it down with a thud. “We intend to find out exactly what makes Mr Stadler tick.”
“I said dismissed!” Smith barked.
Knowles stood awkwardly and turned to open the door. Smith called out as he gripped the handle.
“Sergeant, I am sorry, but Harrison Meyers died this morning. The venom proved too powerful and he died due to multiple organ failure.”
2
Knowles drank from the bottle, relishing the taste of the cold beer as it slipped down his throat. He didn’t say a word until the bottle was empty and Carruthers passed him a new one.
“Meyers is dead.”
Carruthers and Jones didn’t say anything. They were sat in their barracks. Their food was brought by unspeaking soldiers and things cleared away by the same men. Mobile phones had been confiscated. They only had beer because Jones bribed one of the unspeaking men.
“To Meyers,” Knowles said, raising his bottle. They clinked glasses. “And Scarlet.”
“What did he die of?” Jones asked.
“If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t need to ask that,” Carruthers said. “Those spiders-” he didn’t finish the sentence, but shuddered instead.
“We are on a silence order,” Knowles said. “They’ve invented a story to cover Scarlet’s death and will now, I assume, do the same for Meyers. No-one is to know what we’ve been through.”
“My ex?” Jones asked.
“No-one.”
Carruthers shook his head. “The police were on their way to that house. They must have got there ten minutes max after we left. They’d have seen the bodies, the wolves.”
“The police will be told to shut up, evidence buried or explained. Remember, everyone thinks its wild animals down there. Body of a wolf found, case closed.”
“Yeah, but that’s a wolf that can turn into a human,” Jones said.
“They won’t ever get to examine that corpse though will they? The Ruperts will make sure of that.” Knowles drained his second bottle. He opened a third without pausing. “Also, those dead wolves stayed as wolves. They didn’t change back.”
“What else did they say?”
“We’re to debrief the team looking into this. We are to offer them every assistance as they attempt to find out the nature of our enemy.” Knowles sighed. “We’re not leaving this base any time soon.”
He felt numb inside, though the beer was helping. Scarlet. Meyers. Jesus. Both had served with honour in Afghanistan and the Gulf. Both had been lifers. Scarlet in since sixteen, Meyers eighteen. Knowles had known them both for years. Fought alongside them in some pretty rough circumstances. How could an op in Devon – Devon! - go so wrong?
He had seen enough men die to know that it wasn’t his fault. He shouldn’t blame himself, but he couldn’t help it. We were unprepared. A jolly, that was what the op had felt like, one big jolly. Giant deadly spiders. People who could turn into wolves. All very fucked up.
He would not be unprepared next time he came face to face with the wolves.
3
Jack lay on his side staring at the same patch of wall he’d been looking at for a couple of hours. The paint was flaking slightly and it played tricks on his eyes. He kept seeing Katie or Josh or sometimes both.
No one answered his questions. They pushed food through a hatch in the door and ordered him to put the plates back on the other side of the hatch when he was done. He had a shower that was a basic nozzle and curtain – it reminded him of wet rooms that surfers often had in their houses. The toilet was clean, but that was all he could say about it.
One of the walls was dominated by a large mirror. Given the lack of privacy in the room, he surmised that the mirror was really a one way window. He had been in the room for nearly three days, or at least that was his best guess by counting meal times. He had stopped shouting after the first day.
Katie would be going apeshit.
His mind wouldn’t let him rest despite how exhausted he was. He
kept thinking of his family. Josh with his perfect face, thin mop of dark hair and the way he slept with his head tilted back at that unnatural angle that looked so painful. Katie with her thick dark hair. Sometimes he pictured her with hair up, other times down. Sometimes, and most worryingly, he couldn’t make out her features at all. Her smell would come to him, her favourite perfume overwhelming his senses, making him sob.
Mostly, he remembered her look of horror as he turned into that thing.
4
Knowles watched Stadler lying on his side. Tears were running down Stadler’s face, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. Four of them stood in the narrow hallway by the observation room. Carruthers and Jones were also there and the doctor made four. She was a small woman, pretty, but her body was well hidden by her fatigues. Pity.
“He hasn’t moved for hours,” she said. Her badge identified her as Claire Biddlestone.
“Has he-” Jones paused, “y’know.”
“No,” Claire smiled. “No change at all.”
“Has anyone spoken to him?” Knowles asked. He had Stadler’s file under his arm, complete with pictures of the baby. Josh. He thought about the miscarriage that had been the first nail in the coffin of his marriage. What would it be like to have a kid and not see it?
Claire shook her head. “Orders. He is to be in solitary.”
“Why?” Carruthers said.
“So he doesn’t fucking eat anyone?” Jones said.
“He’s not like that.” Knowles put the folder on the thin desk in front of him. He deliberately left it open on the pictures of Josh and Katie Stadler.
“Come on Pete, we saw him eat that woman.”
“It wasn’t him, it was the wolf.”
“But he is the wolf,” Carruthers said.
“We don’t know how much control he has. Look at him. Does he look like a killer?”
“West didn’t look like a killer, Knowles, or Brady. You know better than to go on looks.”
“Did you see the others?” Knowles said to Jones. “It was like they wanted him to like them. You seen dogs approach each other, right? The way they are submissive to each other?”
“Yeah, and then they take a right good sniff of each other’s arses.” Jones grinned at Claire. She didn’t return it.
“That’s exactly the way that woman was with him.”
“Until he bit her head off.”
Knowles shook his head and gave up. He’s different. The others enjoyed the killing. Stadler didn’t.
They watched Stadler for a few more moments. He stood up and walked over to the mirror. Claire made a note on a pad in front of her.
“We have to document every movement he makes,” she said.
“10:30 a.m., took a shit,” Jones said.
Stadler raised his nose and sniffed the air. He looked exactly like a dog getting a scent.
“Well, would you look at that,” Carruthers said. “Can he smell us?”
“I doubt it. This is a pretty thick wall.”
Carruthers didn’t look convinced.
“They have nearly finished the report on the dead woman,” Claire said. “Briefing is at 1500.”
“We’ll be there,” Knowles said. “When can I talk to Stadler?”
Claire shrugged. “When the CO says you can, until then he’s on his own.”
5
Jack stood and walked to the mirror. He could – what? He pressed his face up against the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes. He couldn’t see anything, obviously but he was sure they were there, watching him.
He knew the smell. Familiar smell. The man who had drugged Ginny and the other two. The ones who had put him in the boot of the car. Mixed in with that was another smell, another that he recognised, but it was impossible.
He turned away from the mirror and lay back on the bed. The same questions started bouncing around his head again.
Where am I?
Where’s Katie?
Who are these people?
Can I be cured?
He closed his eyes and started to cry again.
Chapter 21
1
“We have finished the autopsy of the dead woman,” Starky said, opening the folder in front of him. Everyone around the table opened identical manila folders. “I don’t think I need to elaborate on how she died.” There was nervous laughter around the table, from all except Knowles and his team. “There are several interesting things about her though.”
Knowles was flanked by Carruthers and Jones. Claire Biddlestone sat next to Jones, her hair pulled back into a bun, emphasising her cheekbones. Knowles forced himself to look at the photographs in the file. She had been a beautiful woman. What a way to go. He turned the page over and came face to face with Katie Stadler. Great.
Next to Claire sat a young soldier who was clearly there just to take minutes of the meeting. Starky was next to him and Smith sat at the head of the table. The colonel has gone then, nothing more to see. He could keep clear now until something significant happened and then come in and take the credit.
“Firstly,” Starky continued, “the amount of force to bite through the neck muscles and spinal column is immense. You would need something sharp to even begin to penetrate and the range of bite would be larger than just about every land animal alive today.” He looked at Knowles. “Certainly bigger than anything alive in Britain.”
“I saw it and so did Corporal Jones.” He sounded defensive, and hated himself for it. Jones was sitting next to him and he nodded. Both Jones and Carruthers were under orders not to speak. Knowles was only to answer for them. They were there to offer advice only. Bollocks, Jones had said and so far, Knowles had to agree with him. Knowles had insisted they attend, pointing out to Smith that they might remember different things.
“Well, certainly the skin damage around the neck wound is consistent with a bite. It also had begun necrotizing before the patient died.”
“Necrotizing?” Major Smith said.
“The skin dies, and it starts to destroy itself, like with a flesh eating bacteria.”
“Jesus,” Knowles said, earning himself a glare from the Major.
“You are quite right Sergeant Knowles,” Starky said. “The bacteria that can cause this condition are present in every human mouth, but it is still thankfully rare. It can be found in young men following a weekend. You see, they punch someone in the mouth, the uh, punchee’s teeth break the skin. If untended, it can become quite a problem.” Starky beamed at the group, an inane grin that made him look like an idiot. He seemed to realise this, and continued. “What is impressive here is the speed with which it acted. Necrotizing should take several hours, if not days as a minimum.”
Silence greeted his comments. Knowles swallowed hard. This is worse than we thought.
“The woman was also completely healthy in every other regard.”
“No diseases?”
“No sir.”
“So why did she change into a wolf? How could she do that?” Knowles was almost shouting.
“Enough Sergeant,” Smith said. “Captain Starky, please explain. This woman was a wolf thing, yes or no?”
“Our witnesses are reliable, sir,” Starky said, flashing his inane smile at Knowles and Jones.
Damn right we are, Knowles thought.
“Yes they are,” Smith said.
“I cannot explain it sir. There was nothing in her blood or tissue samples to explain how she could change.”
“Magic,” Jones muttered. Starky glared at him, then nodded agreement.
“You might be right there.” Silence descended again.
“Anything else?” Smith said.
“We have no idea who she is. There is no record of her anywhere in any of our medical records.”
“Have you tried international?”
Starky nodded. “We have been in touch with the usual agencies, but have heard nothing yet. I could hurry them up.”
“Do it.”
2
Smith cleared his throat and everyone fell silent. “Sergeant Knowles, perhaps you would like to tell us all what you and your team saw.”
“Sir, it is all in the report.”
“Indulge me, Sergeant.”
Knowles looked at the folder in front of him. Katie Stadler was still looking at him from the photograph. She was clutching Josh to her chest whilst looking straight at the camera. It was a weird shot, she should have been unaware that the photograph was being taken. Now, as he looked, her gaze became accusatory: you have my husband. This boy needs a father.
He ran through the op quickly, but without skipping any of the details of what had happened in Barnstaple. The complete scene of terror in Boutport Street; the dead, including the police; Jones and him emptying entire clips into the large wolf and bundling the corpse into their car.
“We realised Jack – uh, Stadler – was still alive on the journey back to Huntleigh.”
“Why did you think Stadler was alive?” Smith interrupted.
“He was banging on the boot of our car.”
“The woman was still dead?”
“She, uh, didn’t have a head, sir.”
He saw Starky suppress a grin. It wasn’t a good idea to laugh at a Major. Smith had a face like thunder.
“You said you and Corporal Jones emptied mags into the wolf. Your words, Sergeant. Did you miss?”
“No sir.”
“But he was alive?” Smith said. “I need to know what we’re up against here.”
“Sir, we believe that he healed and pushed the bullets back out of his body. We found bullets in the boot of our car.”
Jones was nodding.
“So why does one wolf die and the other doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Knowles spread his hands and again looked each person in the eye. They don’t know either.
The awkward silence descended again. Smith looked at Starky: “We need to know more. The patient has not changed since we have had him, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we need to know why. What triggers the change?”
“Well,” Starky said, “from the reports, we can rule out the full moon. The night of the first attack was a full moon, but there has not been one since. That part of this would appear to be legend.”
The Original's Return (Book 1) Page 17
