SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

Naylor didn’t know. Some kind of animal, Garcia had been right about that much. A tiger maybe? He could think of nothing else with that combination and size and speed and predatory savagery.

“Just watch that fucking doorway,” Naylor said. “You see any movement, you light that fucker up, you hear me?”

“Copy that,” Lowe said through clenched teeth.

Naylor quickly padded the last few metres to where Miller still lay slumped against the wall. He was unconscious. As well as his broken leg he was bleeding from four parallel slashes across his chest. Naylor slapped him, hard. It barely roused him. He stared past Naylor with unfocussed eyes.

“Wake up, Miller, dammit,” Naylor said and slapped him again.

That seemed to work.

“Out! We’ve got to get out,” Miller said.

“No shit,” Naylor replied. “How many of those things are there?”

Miller grimaced as Naylor helped him onto his good leg. “Just one.”

“One!” Naylor thought of the bodies littering the upper levels. “You’re wrong. Ramirez must have had a goddamn zoo full of those things. No way one animal could do all this.”

Naylor hefted Miller onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, ignoring the man’s cries of pain.

“You don’t get it,” Miller said. “That’s no animal. We took out Ramirez’s guards, followed him down here when he ran. I... I saw him change. That thing is Ramirez.”

Delirious, Naylor thought. Stress and blood loss. They would have to get him back to the boat and stabilise him. Get some saline into him to get his pressure back up before they could get any real answers out of him.

“Jesus Christ, I saw him change!”

Naylor started back towards the stairwell feeling naked without the comforting weight of his MP5 in his hands.

“Contact!” Lowe shouted and fired a short burst down the corridor.

“Just keep it off our backs. We’re outta here,” Naylor replied, grunting with the effort of carrying Miller.

Suddenly Lowe was firing. The room lit up green from the light of the muzzle flash on full auto. Naylor saw movement: he caught a glimpse of something tall filling the doorway, walking on two legs like a man but the head and thick, powerful neck were anything but human. A second later something hit him from behind. It felt like he’d been hit by a truck. He fell into one of the shattered cabinets, felt an immense weight crushing the wind from him and grinding his face into the glass shards. He could feel its claws ripping, snagging in the tough webbing and pulling him left and right with immense, animal strength. Then suddenly the weight was gone and Miller’s screams were echoing down the hallway.

Naylor rose shakily to his feet. Miller was gone.

“It just took him,” Lowe said. “I emptied a full clip at it and it didn’t even slow.”

“Which way did it go?”

He didn’t need an answer. The creature’s deep, rattling roar rang out from somewhere behind them, chilling Naylor to the marrow.

He raised his weapon and stood back to back with Lowe. Let’s see you sneak up on us this time.

“We’re leaving,” Naylor said. “Stay together, keep it tight, all the way back to the boat and we’re gone.”

“Copy that.”

The roar sounded again, closer now.

“It’s picking us off, one by one,” Lowe said.

“So stay together. Don’t give it that chance.”

They stumbled through the debris-strewn room towards the stairwell. Naylor nearly tripped a couple of times but didn’t dare take his eyes from the holographic sight of his rifle and the arc he was scanning back down the hall.

He saw movement, a subtle shifting of the shadows. Whatever this thing was, it had a jaguar’s stealth. The shadows embraced it, pooling around it like a liquid cloak. He saw the gleam of yellow eyes and loosed a few rounds at it, drawing out another roar, a deep animal noise that plucked a bass note in his guts. Suddenly he became very aware of his place on the food chain and knew that it was not the top.

The old dance, predator and prey, but this time they were on the wrong side.

“We need to go faster,” Naylor said.

The creature rose onto its hind legs. This was no jaguar; this was like no animal Naylor had ever seen before. It had the head of a big cat complete with yellow eyes and snarling lips pulled back to reveal long, interlocking fangs. But the head and powerful, sinuous neck rested atop human shoulders and long, muscular arms. Naylor could see the muscles on the thing’s chest. It was built like a power lifter, but under the sleek, black fur the musculature was human. Only below the hips did the cat-like form reassert itself with long, seemingly double-jointed legs ending in huge paws.

It roared, jaws opening impossibly wide, fangs glistening.

Naylor fired; he flicked his MP5 onto full auto and mashed the trigger. The creature hardly seemed to notice. Lowe turned around and opened up; Naylor could see the creatures flesh rippling where the rounds struck it, but they were as ineffective as a handful of thrown pebbles.

It kept coming.