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It's always here and now, my friend [Saturday Morning.] Keith Lewis was flying a Piper Cub on pontoons over the US-Canadian border looking for his wolves - not an easy task. With him was Lt Frank Espinosa. They both worked for Washington Parks and Wildlife, and both were involved in the "werewolf" case. Keith had studied wolves seriously since High School and had earned his BS and Masters studying them - it had been his only concern as a state specialist since then. Espinosa, on the other hand, was barely associated with the wolves, focusing on forestry, fires, tourists, and politics. Keith resented Espinosa's presence in the little plane, not liking someone watching over his shoulder while he tried to figure out something he didn't understand and didn't like. The problem was a sudden unnatural migration of three packs of wolves which Keith had been observing for a couple of years now. It seemed they were all headed NW like they were in a hurry to get there. Now wolves covered a lot of territory, tended to roam, and moved rapidly - that part was normal. What wasn't right was that several completely separate packs were all exhibiting identical abnormalities in their movement:
Today - once they found them - they would see what one pack of these wolves would do when this strange migration took them into populated areas. The pack was a fairly large one, having seven male and nine female adults, as well as 4 younger wolves all about a year old. Keith knew what the wolves should do - they would avoid all humans, skirt areas where buildings were, and stop short of fence lines. Unfortunately, wolves were doing some unusual things lately, including attacking humans inside tents and cabins, and had killed a lot of people in the "werewolf" case. Also, Keith had captured, examined, and finally killed the six wolves which had survived the massacre on Mt. Logan - those wolves had somewhat unnerved him. The Mt. Logan wolves had been flat insane. Everything he had reported to the police had been largely ignored except for the guilt of the wolves and their destruction. What nobody had heard or understood was part of the real uniqueness of the case - maneaters - lions, tigers, wolves, whatever - were always misfits, but these wolves were crazed. They wouldn't eat anything and wouldn't stop trying to attack anyone who came close, also, Keith was convinced that these wolves had migrated all the way from the first kills in Spokane. The probable migration of the Mt. Logan wolves didn't speak well for these other packs with their unaccountable migrations... - - - - Brian drove the small cargo van the short mile from "Red Nails" to the 'company' warehouse and backed up to the single loading dock. He unlocked and threw up the bay door and opened up the back of the van. He rolled in a single box the size of a file cabinet then closed and relocked the bay door. When Brian had shut the van doors he went back into the warehouse, locking the walk-thru door behind him. He wheeled the box to a room at the rear, which he had to unlock from his own keys. The room had a sharp metallic odor, mixed in with an unwholesome hospital smell. A sealed drum in the corner had biohazard labels on it, but the room was dominated by a low rectangular table beside a covered steel tank with a motor and some copper tubing at one end. The tank was labeled "ultrasonic cleaner" and there were bottles of cleaning fluid on the shelves, but it had been a long time since it had been used for that purpose. Brian unlocked the tank's cover from both sides and propped it against the wall, then he put the unmarked cardboard box on the table and cut off the bandings. He took off the top. Sometimes the carton would hold a prostitute or a girl he'd picked up at some club, other times it might be someone he'd been assigned to take care of. This time it was a girl he'd met on campus at WASU. He straightened the nude corpse a little and looked at her, she still looked good. He traced his fingers through her hair and over the patch on the side of her neck and then gave the corpse lingering passionate kiss. He removed the patch on her neck and gently kissed the ragged torn skin where he'd bitten through to the juggler vein. He was no immortal undead spirit creature, but he was a real vampire; he'd lived three days off her blood before he let her bleed out so he could get rid of her. Brian lifted her into his tank, then threw in her clothes, bag, shoes. He put his kissed fingers to her lips, covered the tank, and locked it back up. He turned on the pumps. The acid would do the rest, when he got back from the job there wouldn't even be bones or teeth left. He locked back out, carried the box and dolly back to the front of the warehouse, tossing the box into a crush bin. Then he locked out of the warehouse, checked the locks on the bay door, and went home. - - - - [Afternoon] Kim had just left another message for her dad, and was nervous as a cat. She was suddenly married and about to leave town and couldn't even let her father know. Plus, banks wierded her out anyway. She got out of the white Mercedes, walked over to David and shrugged. David laughed it off, took her hand and kissed her new wedding band. The ring was as beautiful as it was unique. It was a broad gold band painted with a black enamel stripe around the center and set with a platinum rose with ruby petals, emerald leaves, and sapphire thorns. The effect was like having a tiny museum piece rose tied around your finger. Kim was carrying a black aluminum case with the necklace in it. As soon as they walked into the lobby a tall lady in a gray suit walked up to them. She was an older lady with short blond hair and a quiet, friendly, busy personality. "Welcome, Mrs. Artus, David, I'm Elaine and I'll be your agent, Kim - you can call me for anything", handing her a card. She led them to a desk around the left side of the building near a large vault door. After very little small talk and a rush of signatures through papers all folded to her red X, Kim was given a leather satchel with all kinds of papers to "look over at her leisure and call with any questions at all". She was also given a check book and card with a $20,000 balance and an unlimited credit line American Express. Then they walked over to the vault. Elaine selected three keys from a little locker, handed one to Kim, and they walked through the vault doors into a large room lined with safety deposit boxes, like post office boxes the sizes varied from tiny to unusually large. Kim's was the size of a dresser drawer, number 3703, she put the necklace in and David told her to leave it open. Elaine took her hand and led her a few steps away, up to a medical scale that was in the room. She carefully weighed Kim while David watched silently. "One hundred twenty pounds, exactly." She was punching at a palmed calculator, "Today, my dear your value is expressed in gold, at today's fix of $288.14/troy ounce, 120 pounds of gold is worth exactly $345,768 dollars." David was beside her, "It is traditional for the dowry to be a gift from the husband to his wife, of whatever amount is set by her father. I have given you a queen's ransom, it is a token of my love, and of my commitment to you." Then David opened a large door on floor level and carried out 5 25lb packs. He opened one, filled with serialized gold ingots, took a stack of 50 out which he returned to his box and relocked. David placed them behind her necklace and she locked her door. - - - - [Saturday Night] "Neal this is Bill Sperry, glad I caught you - I didn't leave a message earlier - Hey look we got a jump on our werewolf case, but it's wierding me out a little ... remember the wolves they caught after the cabin slaughter? Well there's wolves from all over the place all running West like their tails are on fire and all of them heading to the same place, our wolf guy's tracking them - but guess where they're all going? That dead kid I was going to interview - his people, a whole community of Russian Chinese that settled in Canada 2 years ago and just moved inland about 3 months ago, they are the vector-sum-bullseye of all these wolves." "Yeah, me, Steve, and a few others are going - we're supposed to be supported by some kind of SWAT team and some forestry guys when we get there, but Jennifer's been talking to Keith, ...yeah, the wolf expert, and she says there's a good chance that we could be looking at 60 or more wolves as crazy as the ones they caught last time." "No, I didn't forget about the werewolf, thanks, but I don't think our werewolf buddy is counting on us knowing he's coming and meeting him with Canada's finest - we'll all be in full vests and sporting full auto M-16's, yeah it'll be a rough night, but we're pretty well supported." "No, I'm leaving first early, taking a red-eye, so we'll be there for breakfast, but hey I found this out for you too - David Artus, he's empty, but the club, "Red Nails", we lost a guy investigating the place in conjunction with some drug trade and turned up nothing, but it's a hangout for somebody based outside the US. But listen to this: the joint is leased from one Brian Malory of the Parker & Cisco group - that's right, Parker & Cisco. No, nothing else, but wait till I get back - I got something else that I got to check - I don't want to say, I'll call when I'm stateside again - should be by Tuesday or Wednesday." - - - - [Sunday Morning] Kim was alone on the "Sea Wolf". She was somewhere close to 200 miles due West of the Vancouver Island coast, longitude, latitude, and minutes still didn't make sense to her, but she could look them up. It was 8:00am and she had been up since 4:00. David had not slept as far as she knew, but had woke her at 4:00 to go over everything again: She was to keep the boat in the same location a wait, David should be back within 52 hours, but she was to wait as long as a week before returning without him. She was all set up for whale tracking and was running logs, satellite, and radar so that when she crossed back into Canadian or US waters she could answer any questions, he also had her studying a few books about the whales in the area. At 6:00 a twin engine plane on pontoons had landed and David had left in it. Kim had finished breakfast, couldn't sleep so she drank some more coffee, and eventually found the button to pop up the deck plate. She got the wierd crowbar, found the latch and pulled it off. Inside were 4 green cases, all of them locked, and nothing else. She carefully lowered the decking back down and hit the button in the cabin. When she came out everything looked normal again. She put up the crowbar. Inside there was Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Strauss - but no real music. Kim put in Beethoven's 9th to see what all the fuss was about and wondered what she was going to do to keep from going stir crazy till David got back. She did find some more books, the only one that caught her interest was a large leather bound 1st ed print of "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. The inside cover had a paragraph in what looked like Russian in it, and there were also Russian notes in various places. She would read it later. She was also going to run around some and try to get used to handling the large sail boat. But first, Kim decided that now would be a great time to explore the wine rack on board. There was about 2 dozen bottles, fully half of which had the "special" emblem, she found 2 bottles of what she had been drinking and pulled one of those. She didn't want to know what David was doing, and right now she didn't want to think about it. - - - - Steve and Bill had met up with Keith and Frank at the airport, the wolves they had tracked for two days were all here - it was like they were having a wolf convention in the local forests. The "SWAT team and forestry guys" turned out to be a group of a dozen locals with deer rifles and spare time, and the local police consisted of 4 men, including John Chim who was Steve's contact and basically in charge. None of them spoke much English. And it was raining - had been raining, was raining, and was going to be raining - nice. The community was based around an inactive lumber company town. There was a fairly large lumber yard and processing mills, mostly all closed down and locked up, and on one side was a bedroom community built for the workers, and around the whole works were the dense woods. Living here were 30-odd families making up a population of 94 - all Chinese, all lately from Mother Russia. There was a twofold threat, the mass of wolves gathered from miles around in the surrounding woods, and the suspicion of a werewolf led attack on some part of the civilian populace. Keith had been among the wolves. Right now at least, the wolves were not behaving unusually, except they seemed tense, uncomfortably close to each other perhaps. Keith, Frank, Bill, and one of the locals would be manning blinds set up facing the probable forest route exits from the housing area. Steve, John, and the rest would be in the police building on alert. Everyone was wearing vests and sporting rifles and radios. - - - - Brain and his crew were in the woods already. They watched the blinds go up, watched the men climb up into them, marked them for an early death. Brian's job was, ironically, the same as the police in the blinds - to make the woods a death trap for anyone entering them. Slim Jim and Marcus had been on site longer than anyone, getting things ready, now they were inside an office in the lumber mill, a large aluminum case was on the table. Slim Jim opened the case and laid out two werewolf suits, "Well Marky, you ready to be a werewolf?" The heads were vicious and looked dangerous just setting on the table. The teeth were real weapons and the jaws were servo slaved to the wearer's jaw movements, so that the werewolf could bite, hold, chew - any action at all was naturally and effectively produced. The eyes were adjustable between two modes; one showing normal vision with an infrared overlay, the other being a night vision mode. Also integrated into the head was a VOX 2-way radio system and a 12 minute draeger breathing system. The hands were also technological nightmares. The claws were like knives and the hands themselves were servo slaved like the jaws, having vice-like gripping strength. Also, the fingers were made with heavy, hard steel "bones" - making a fist that could smash through a wooden door in seconds. The feet were basically steel-toed, kevlar soled, running shoes. The entire suit, which was head-to-toe Hollywood werewolf, was basically body armor. The chest, abdominal, and thigh sections would turn a rifle bullet. Arms, shins, and other areas were also shielded and the whole fabric was a bonded kevlar composite, functionally eliminating threats by knives, teeth, or even swords. Up to this point, the men had drilled in the suits some, but had not used them. Brian had been using the one Slim Jim would wear tonight. They were much better than a similar suit that Slim Jim had used in Belaruse, which had none of the electronics. Putting the suits on had an empowering effect on the mind as well, to wear the suit was to be the werewolf, to be invulnerable, destructive - an uninhibited force of raw vengence. Tonight, humanity was judged and found guilty, and tonight they would be swept away in total destruction.
- End of Chapter Five
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