Operation: Yukon

- 3 -

Five minutes later I was by her side in the doorway ready to move out.

“Take the new lad and Wilko,” the cap said. “I’ll stay here and watch over the flock, give Davies a hand where I can.”

She hadn’t asked for volunteers from her charges; not that any of them were armed in any case. But between the four of us, our army issue weapons and her hunting rifle, I figured we were tooled up enough to face almost anything that might be waiting for us.

I turned to the sheriff as she reached for the door.

“We’re following your lead, ma’am,” I said. “As you said, it’s your town.”

She nodded.

“And you can cut the ‘ma’am’ shit,” she said. “I’m Sheriff if you’re offering to buy me a coffee, Sue if you want to buy me a beer.”

“Sue it is then. Lead on.”

She led us out into the teeth of what was now a full blown storm. I was glad she was leading for I had no fucking clue of even which direction we were facing, never mind where we were going. I got surprised a few minutes later when the shape of our black SUV loomed up out of the snow ahead of us; I thought we were going the other way. The snow was already piling up around the wheel arches; the vehicle wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I thought the sheriff might want a look at the bodies in the supermarket but it appeared that the living were more to the fore in her mind for we passed the smashed windows with barely a glance. I tried to peer across the road at the ruin of the gas station but the snow blocked my view completely and we walked on, heads down against the wind, snow pattering like grapeshot against the hood of my parka.

Ten paces or so past the supermarket she took us on a sharp right turn into a narrow alleyway. All at once we were in a pocket of calm air out of the storm. She turned, addressing me.

“There’s ten houses out through the back here. If there’s anyone left, they’ll probably be hunkered down in one of them. We’re going to search them all, attic to basement. Capiche?”

I capiched and followed her as she moved out again.

The houses were all set apart from each other in their own patches of land and snow was piled up in the pathways, around garage doors and along the road verges. We had to wade through a two-foot deep, six-foot wide drift and there were no other footsteps but our own on the approach to the first dwelling. The sheriff didn’t stand on ceremony. She strode up to the door, rapped three times and when there was no answer, she put her shoulder to it hard. It fell in easily and we all piled in behind her into a dark hallway that suddenly became too bright when she flicked a switch by the door.

“Come on out if you’re here. It’s the sheriff,” she shouted.

As we entered, I noticed that the wind that blew around us wasn’t coming from our backs, but was in our faces, coming from the rear of the house. The sheriff spotted it too, and moved quickly ahead of me through the hall into a kitchen that looked like a set from a horror movie. Blood spatter had been thrown everywhere across floors, surfaces and ceiling. There was no sign of any bodies but the back door was hanging open off its hinges and a foot-wide red smear led out onto a wide wooden deck. That’s where we found the bodies, what was left of them. Something hadn’t just killed the man and woman that lay there; they had been feasted upon, and violently at that. Even in the howling wind and biting snow the smell seemed to hang over everything, pish and shite and blood all mingled, threatening to bring up the coffee that lay cold in my stomach.

The sheriff looked down at the carnage, spat into the wind and turned on her heels without a word. Jennings had gone pale again and I thought I might have to wait for him to spill his guts but he followed readily enough when I motioned that we should hurry after the woman.

“What the fuck is going on here, Sarge?” Jennings said as we went back through the hall.

“As usual, we’ll ken when we ken. Welcome to the squad, lad. Buckle up. Things are likely to get hairy.”

We searched four more houses, expecting to find more bloody slaughter in each but finding nothing of note. That didn’t relax the sheriff any, and she was visibly shaken when we climbed over a small rise and looked down to the next house, or rather, where it had been, for like the gas station in town this was only a burned out shell. That wasn’t the most notable thing though; the area between us and the house was a charnel pit of dead people and four dead wolves all mingled together, some of both burned, others torn to bits, and several of the wolves showing signs that they’d been blasted at close range by high velocity rounds.

The sheriff made for one particular body, a big man whose head had almost been torn from his neck. She turned him over; he was already mostly frozen to the ground. I saw tears glisten in her eyes as she dropped the body and turned back to me.

“That’s Fred Jacobs. Looks like he got everybody here to make a stand,” she said, having to shout to make herself heard in the wind.

“At least he took some of them with him,” Jennings replied.

“Yeah,” she replied, not hiding the sarcasm. “That’s a big comfort to me.”

I wasn’t speaking; I’d got a close look at one of the dead wolves and it was like looking into my memory; the same gray mane, the same steely eyes and the long muscular flanks. I had seen this thing’s brother, a few years and a few thousand miles away in Siberia.

If Jennings asked me his question now, I was beginning to think I’d be able to give him an answer.

It didn’t take us long to go through the last few houses which was fine by me for the storm had ramped up another few notches and it was getting hard to make headway against the wind. The sheriff seemed to be right in her appraisal; her fireman friend had gathered everybody he could in one place but it hadn’t been enough to save them. If my own reading of the scene was right and this was a pack of the things I’d faced in Siberia, I wasn’t sure even the four of us with our weapons would have helped overmuch.

I was starting to feel exposed out here in the night at the edge of town but it was still the sheriff’s call to make. I can’t say I wasn’t a wee bit relieved when she motioned that we should start to make our way back to the fire station.

And the way back was made easier by the fact that the wind was now at our backs. We were making good time despite the fact that the snow was now nearly up to our knees so I was surprised when the sheriff stopped us again, back in the same alley that led to the main drag. She leaned in close and shouted in my ear.

“Do you hear it?”

At first, all I heard was the wind whistling in the street beyond the alley, then I heard it; a high whine of an engine being run at high speed.

“Motorbike?”

“Skidoo,” she answered. “Somebody’s still alive.”

The sound got louder as we stepped out into the street. Then we saw the single headlight, coming in from the north end at speed with a hunched figure in the seat swaddled in heavy layers of what looked like bed-sheets. It was almost on us before we noticed the three huge wolves loping along behind, snapping at the rear of the vehicle as if trying to hobble it.

The sheriff had her weapon up taking aim before I could even give an order.

“Take them down, lads,” I shouted, then there was no time to think.

Gunfire roared in my ears as I took aim. The sheriff took a shot and raised a gouge along the flank of one of the beasts. My own burst of three rounds almost took the head off the one next to it. A second shot from the sheriff took out the one she was after.

Jennings and Wilko were after the last one but the corporal was in Wilko’s line of fire, and his own shots were too hurried and went somewhere far and wide. The beast barrelled towards them. I was still swinging my weapon round when Wilko roughly shoved Jennings to one side, toppling him into the snow. The wolf came on but Wilko stood his ground and as I had done with the other, put three almost down its throat. The beast was dead and down before it knew what had hit it.

Wilko turned and put out a hand to help Jennings to his feet.

“Not bad for a wee poof, eh?” he said. “And you’re welcome by the way.”

The skidoo had come to a halt sometime during the action and toppled over, pinning its rider beneath it. I motioned for Jennings and Wilko to take watch and went to help the sheriff right it. It was a heavy bugger and took both of us to get it shifted. The driver was a man, pale face showing white even against the snow, and he was out cold.

“This is blown,” the sheriff said, kicking the skidoo. “We’ll have to carry him.”

And before I could agree she’d thrust her rifle at me, bent and lifted the man over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift that looked practised.

“Watch my back,” she shouted. “I’m a bit busy here.”

We made our way up the street. There was no sign of any more of the beasts and the sheriff carried the man all the way back to the station, in heavy snow, and didn’t once ask for help.

I was starting to develop more than a wee bit of respect for Sheriff Sue.