Beneath a Winter Moon (48 page)

They walked quietly, ignoring the awkwardness of their silence. What more could be said right now? The past night’s events…indeed the past days events were enough to silence anyone. Thomas found himself wondering what good could come of keeping the strange sack-like specimen. Would it help them prove they weren’t insane when it was time to tell this crazy story? Would it contain DNA that proved a half-man, half-beast could exist after all? How would they tell the story if they did manage to survive? What would happen when they did? What if the government had known all along that these creatures were real? Had they covered it up to avoid panic? Did they have some special werewolf team that tracked and killed the beasts…covering up the evidence along the way?

What about the supposed ‘Beast of Bray Road’ in
Wisconsin
? Had it once been real, only to have been found and killed, the evidence suppressed? What of the stories of old, especially those from
Europe
? Stories of werewolves stealing children or devouring entire villages, leaving no trace of its existence? Could there be a
worldwide
in this time of instant communication, instant cameras—instant everything? How could the existence of these creatures have been suppressed?

And what would they do? Would they walk into the Royal Canadian Police headquarters with Delmar, Thomas explaining that his friend was a werewolf, while Delmar stood and nodded expectantly? Would they hold up the plastic bag with its gory contents and declare that this was
werewolf placenta
? Thomas shook his head.

Delmar noticed the movement but said nothing.

A half an hour later they picked up their pace. The tracks had continued, but rarely did they change direction. Alastair’s tracks told the story of a man who was going at great lengths to protect his feet while he walked in the snow—choosing to step on anything that protruded from the icy ground. Thomas was surprised that the man had made it this far, but Delmar was not. Delmar was convinced that Alastair would somehow make it to shelter.

Delmar was vindicated when, after half an hour or so, the two men came upon a large, plastic trunk that had been pulled from a hiding place under a rock facing. Alastair’s tracks were all around the trunk. Inside the container were three large, thick, plastic bags and two empty water bottles. Next to the empty water bottles were leftover food and wrappers from an MRE. Alastair had ripped the heavy plastic open and taken out the main meal packets, throwing the rest back into the trunk.

Jack sniffed among the remains. His fur was almost completely white, now—the black patches covered by clumps of sticky snow. His muzzle was white, ice hanging from his whiskers He pawed through the remains of a flavor packet, then licked red powder from the opening.

Thomas could not help but smile, seeing the dog’s tongue turn an incredibly bright red. He turned to Delmar. “Clever bastard, with the caches,” he said.

“The son of a bitch
is
well-prepared. We can assume he has a weapon, now.”

Thomas nodded. “There were two rifles and a handgun in the cache near the cabin.” He wondered just how often the caches were needed. Did Alastair’s affliction leave him stranded in the snowy mountains on
every
cold morning? The moon had not mattered…there was no moon on the horizon last night…which meant that Alastair changed with or without it. Was it every night? Could the man control it at all? He shook his head, clearing away the thoughts.

“Well, this has just turned ugly.” Delmar groaned. “We’ve gone from hunting someone who should be dying of hypothermia—to hunting a well-clothed and potentially well-armed
bastard
.”

“And he has the high ground,” Thomas replied, noting that the tracks rose over a large, rocky hill to the West.

“We can’t go up that damned thing. The bastard could have a bead on us right now.” Delmar shook his head in agreement. “No…flank and hope he’s there when we come out on the other side.”

They stepped back into the wood line and began to cautiously trek around the base of the hill. Thomas breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the hill sloped down again on the opposite side. If it had continued upward, they would have likely met up with a cliff or steep wall of rocks, whereas Alastair would be on top, moving farther and farther away. The downward slope that they now faced was covered with large rocks and boulders. They moved slower—carefully and cautious and found Alastair’s tracks again, out in the open. The tracks were along the base of down-slope, in parallel. Delmar shrugged as if to say they had no choice but to expose themselves in the open, then walked over to the tracks and began stepping in their prints.

The snowfall increased and the wind picked up—but the tracks continued. Amazingly, so did the steep, rocky wall to their right. What had been a hill had changed into something resembling the strange natural slate walls found in the desert southwest of
America
. The two men had little choice but to walk on the rocks and boulders—the area they were in was inundated with them—and it was easy to catch a heel in a hidden gap between two snow-covered pieces of the stone slate. They hadn’t said much since they came into the open area, and now it took all their concentration to look for Alastair while trying not to break an ankle in the worsening landscape of slate. Jack had no problem navigating through all of the rocks and boulders, hopping elegantly among them even though still tethered to Thomas’s belt via the long leash and D-ring.

They believed that Alastair was likely far ahead of them, now. If the man knew this area, and was used to the boulders and slate, then he would undoubtedly have moved much faster through it all.

Powerful gusts of wind blew stinging snow into their faces and eyes, and both men cursed Alastair, vowing to kill the man. But, if the snow became any worse or if they did not find Alastair soon, they knew they would lose the man’s trail for good. Delmar stopped without giving warning, and Thomas almost fell as he slipped on a slick, snow and moss-covered slate—doing his best not to run into his friend. He hadn’t noticed how closely he followed the man.

Delmar held up a closed fist, then pointed his rifle toward a large opening in the side of the high rock facing. It was perhaps eight feet up the steep incline and easily large enough for a man to enter. Thomas immediately saw a vague set of tracks leading from the bottom of the slope, up through the boulders and rocks on the incline. The tracks would soon be invisible, covered by new snow.

Deluth stepped around Kaley and gestured to Alan. “Doctor Kaley, this is Alan Tucker. Alan, meet Doctor Kaley.”

Alan nodded, nervously. The man sure didn’t look like a doctor.

Kaley smiled and set the huge briefcase in a chair, opening it in such a way that Alan could not see the contents.

“Kaley is going to give you an injection.” He smiled. “Don’t be concerned, it’s to help with your condition. If you have any foreign matter in your blood, this will counter-act it,” he lied.

“You mean it can save me from…from…”

Deluth nodded. “It’s been known to do just that.”

“Who are you? I mean, who are you guys,
really
?” Alan asked.

“I promise you, son, that I am Captain Pierre Deluth of the special branch of the RCMP. And I promise you that this is Doctor Dane Kaley, of the same. We are here to help. Nothing more.”

Alan nodded just as he noticed the scar on
Kaley’s
face. He watched, nervously, as Kaley stuck the syringe into Alan’s I.V. He saw the scars on
Kaley’s
hand and cringed. Kaley noticed, and smiled at him.

“Desert Storm, 1991. I was a combat medic back then, before I finished college.”

“Oh,” Alan said, simply.

“The face, too,” Kaley lied once more. “Shrapnel hit me when I was riding on top of a M1 tank. I was an idiot.”

Deluth chuckled. Alan noticed, and frowned at him.

“Oh, I was just holding back a comment about the doctor’s confession that he had been an idiot.”

“At ease, Captain,” Kaley said, smiling. He removed the syringe and walked back to the briefcase.

Alan heard a clicking noise and then saw Kaley pulling something long and heavy from within. He began to lose focus. He squinted, trying to discern what Kaley held.
Are those…chains?
He wanted to protest—to cry out—but before he could, the world around him began to spin. Alan felt good, now.
Really
good, and was no longer worried about the chains. The room spun faster, and then stopped—and phased slowly to black.

The chains were very small in comparison to others with a tinsel strength of 40,000lbs. Most chains capable of withstanding that much weight were made from links half an inch thick and a loop size of three inches in diameter—yet the links of this chain were just over an eight of an inch thick, and the loop size was less than an inch. Twenty feet of this special chain amounted to only a few pounds, whereas a common steel chain would have weighed a hundred or more.

Kaley placed special cuffs around Alan’s wrists and feet, and unwrapped a wide Kevlar belt for the young man’s waist. As he carefully looped the chains around Alan’s body and through the cuffs and waistband, he said aloud, “He can’t turn yet. Not until the next full moon, you know. He’s a newbie, for sure.”

Deluth nodded. “I know, but I don’t think we need to take any chances, do you? It’s been seven years since our last encounter, and the only one before that was another seven years. It’s not like we can be absolutely sure of anything. The one thing that we do know for certain is that no two of them are the same—they are different in their strength, their stamina, their survivability, their intelligence…” He paused. “Wait a minute…don’t tell me you’ve gone soft.”

Kaley chuckled as he struggled to roll Alan over on his side. “Nah. Just
sayin
.”

“Hurry up, would you, doctor,” Deluth said. “We need to get moving.”

“Almost done.”

Deluth left the room to talk with Snow. He was pleased to find him outside the door, not having run away to his commanders to complain and moan about what was happening. Deluth didn’t give Snow a chance to start asking questions. “Follow me,” he ordered.

Snow obliged, and as Deluth led him down the corridor, he said, “Alright lieutenant. In a minute, Kaley is going to roll Alan Tucker out of the room. You are going to notice that the boy is chained from head to toe. There is a reason for that.” He stopped outside a room near the nurse’s station. “Here we are,” he said, stepping inside and tugging at a gurney. “This is what we need.”

“He’s chained?” Snow asked.

“And unconscious,” Deluth answered, swinging the gurney out into the hallway. “He’s chained and unconscious, and that is because I have no doubt at all that the man is infected. Now, he should not have the capability to change form until the next full moon, but that is an uncertainty. Of course, he can’t change at all until after dark, for reasons we do not know, so he cannot be a threat at all until then.”

“Wait,” Snow said, placing a hand firmly on
Deluth’s
right arm.

Deluth looked down at the arm, frowning, but stopped and did not voice any objection.

“When you say
change
and when you say
full moon
—am I to take it that you are talking about him changing into a werewolf? Are you crazy? Are you
all
crazy?”