SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

“As I said before, there’s a spot ten miles down through the woods. If you reach that spot before we can kill you, you’re free. If we get to you first, you’re dead.” He made a point of looking at each of them, but Cullie felt the eyes on him for the longest span.

“John has a map. It’s accurate.” He nodded and the freak they’d watched change earlier handed the map to George. “There are five possible trails you can take, gentlemen, each has its own risks and advantages.” He shrugged. “You can decide amongst yourselves how you want to handle all of this.” The man looked at his thick left wrist and tapped his watch. “You have one hour, starting…now.”

Without another word, the strangers all climbed back into the van and drove away.

Cullie watched the taillights as they faded.

“Get over here, Cullie. We need to get to work.” George didn’t even look at him as he spoke. He just unfolded the map and started looking it over. When Cullie got a look at it, he groaned: it was a topographer’s map, clearly showing the elevation for the surrounding area. There was a small red arrow marked on one of the roads, and another red mark, shaped like a cross, almost a foot away.

They each looked at the map and studied it as carefully as they could, painfully aware of the time that was passing.

While the other two were looking at distances and topography, Cullie made up his mind. “Okay. I’m going this way. You guys do your own thing.”

Mark looked at him sharply. George shook his head and got an I-knew-it look on his face.

“What the hell are you talking about, Cullie?” Mark stared hard at him.

“I mean it’s better if we split up. At least one of us might make it that way. Good luck.”

Before either of them could try to talk him out of it, he started moving. Cullie had been hunting with his father since he was a child, and he knew how to move through the woods. Part of his reason for separating from them was exactly the reason he claimed. The other part was simply that he knew he could move faster without them.

Neither of them tried to stop him as he left. Part of him wished they would have.

* * *

The rain started about five minutes after Cullie left. By then George and Mark were both on their way. Much as they hated to agree with Cullie, it seemed best to break up. Mark said it best. “Either they’re going to kill us or they aren’t. Not really a lot we can do to defend ourselves with or without each other as back up. If we split up, maybe they will too.”

He wished George the best of luck and then ran, sliding down into the lower woods on the side of the road and heading for the most direct path through the forest. He knew there were risks. The path showed the least obstacles and the most direct route, but he had to hope that meant he could get more of the ten miles covered faster. He was athletic enough that he thought he could make the full distance if he concentrated and kept a steady pace.

The path that was marked on the map was fairly easy to see, right up until the time the rain started coming down. It wasn’t exactly a torrential downpour, but it was fast and heavy enough to run into his eyes and blur everything ahead of him.

The chill seeped into his clothing, ran through the layers of fabric in no time and then into his skin. Mark did his best to ignore the sensations as he started to run, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, just like Coach Walker had taught him back when he was a runner.

In a very short time he’d developed a good rhythm and a better pace. All he had to do now was make sure he didn’t fall and break his fool neck as he moved through the woods. Even with a path, there were a lot of obstacles.

Off behind him and to the right, he heard the sound of George jogging along. Like Mark, he’d apparently decided the best way to live was to cover some serious distance. Unlike Mark, he was wearing a thinner coat that was waterproof. “Lucky bastard.”

It happened sooner than he expected. In what seemed like only minutes, he heard the howl of the things in hot pursuit. When Mark looked back he realized the road was long gone from his view, hidden by the trees and the shape of the land, but he knew where the howls came from.

They were long and low and mournful, the sounds he’d heard far more often in movies than he ever had in real life, and they froze him in his tracks.

It was beginning now and he had no point of reference, no idea how far he’d run. He could only pray it was far enough.

* * *

His name was Roland Weilland, and he was a werewolf. Roland had led the local pack for a long time, both in light of his command abilities and because he was still the fastest and meanest of them.

He folded his clothes neatly, placing them inside the police wagon. When he was completely stripped, he placed his books on the clothes to weigh them down.  The air was just above freezing and getting colder by the second as the storm moved deeper into the area, but he barely noticed it as he stood and looked down at the woods below.