They Built Werewolves in a Lab. Then the Pack Learned to Talk. | Salty Vixen

The night was dark and cold. North Carolina winters can be extreme. Snow fell from the heavens in dancing waves of white in the headlight beams of the car. Greg had the car heater turned up full blast, yet Shannon still found himself shivering. Neither had asked for this job, yet somehow it had come to rest upon their shoulders because they were the only ones still alive who knew the truth.

Greg had to fight hard to keep the car from sliding off the road as he drove up Ironduff Mountain. Shannon fumbled around in his shirt pocket and produced a cigarette. He lit up as he prayed that they weren’t already too late.

The sawed-off twelve-gauge that rested in his lap brought him little comfort. Noticing Shannon’s nervousness, Greg spoke up. “We’ve got to do this, Shannon. You know what’ll happen if we don’t. I, for one, don’t want any more blood on my hands.”

Shannon nodded, not knowing what to say. What could he say? Greg, Steven, and he had created the things, for God’s sake. They had spent five years of their lives at GENCO designing them. Shannon just wished with all his heart that they had known then the full extent of Steven’s plans for the project.

They were all animal lovers, caught up in their passions, trying to ensure the survival of a species as the modern world slowly forced it to the brink of extinction. The wolf had been dying out, and they were so desperate to save it that they had been blind to Steven’s subtle manipulations until the project was completed and seven specimens released into the wild.

Oh, Steven paid for his crimes, all right. He was the first person they killed. They tore him to shreds and scattered bits and pieces of him across the entire mountain. But he wasn’t the only person they had murdered. The death count was now in the dozens: campers, hikers, even a forest ranger. The local authorities had no idea what was going on or what had been unleashed in these hills.

Species X-37B, a new breed of super wolf, stronger, faster, and, for lack of a better word, evolving. Steven had made the creatures into perfect killing machines, the tools for nature to have her vengeance upon mankind. Their DNA had been intermingled with human genes, and they were superior to the human race in many ways. The threat they posed went far beyond a few deaths in the mountains of North Carolina. Their unstable genetic makeup defied Darwin’s laws of evolution as they changed and mutated even within the same generation. If they were allowed to grow, to breed, they could very well become the Earth’s new dominant life form.

They were designed against every kind of environmental hardship imaginable, and their cellular structure regenerated so quickly that even the most mortal wounds could be healed in a matter of hours. Soon the first generation would reach the biped stage and become the new werewolves of the 21st century. Not a product of myth, but of hard genetic science.

Greg stopped the car on the side of the road near the old monitoring station the team had used before the truth of Steven’s work had been realized. Neither Greg nor Shannon had been here since Steven’s death. It had taken weeks for them to work up the courage to face down the demons they had created.

Greg shut off the engine, reaching into the backseat for his rifle. “You ready?”

“As I will ever be,” Shannon shrugged.

The snow was dying down as they got out. The pale light of the moon overhead lit up the woods like the morning sun. In the distance, a howl broke the silence of the night. The creatures knew their creators had come to put them down.

In addition to their weapons, the two men carried handheld scanners that traced the locator chips embedded in each wolf of the first generation.

Shannon watched his own breath drift like smoke in the frigid mountain air as he heard Greg’s scanner bleep to life. He switched on his own scanner and clutched the twelve-gauge in his other hand tighter as he stood there trembling. Six of the wolves surrounded them. All within meters of their position, yet somehow managing to stay out of sight among the trees.

“Jesus,” Greg muttered. He dropped his scanner, pointing his rifle at the tree line.

“You come,” a feral and raspy voice spoke from the trees. “You come to kill your children.”

Shannon felt his heart skip a beat inside his chest. They had already developed speech! Greg stood there motionless, sweat glistening on his skin despite the cold, stunned and overwhelmed.

“Yes,” Shannon heard his own voice answer. “We were mistaken to give you life. You have committed murder, and now you will pay for what you have done.”

Laughter echoed all around the two men. “We shall see.”

Shannon looked down at his scanner to see the dots that represented the wolves scattering, darting away in separate directions. Were they running, or merely luring their prey in for the kill?

“Greg!” Shannon shouted, snapping his partner out of the shock that had overtaken him. Both knew better than to separate and ran together after the wolf that had been closest on their right flank. Then they saw it, bouncing through the woods, twice the size of a normal wolf, with fur so thick that it could pass for armor. It turned its head to glance over its shoulder at them as it fled, its red eyes burning in the night.

Greg paused and raised his rifle for a shot as Shannon ran on past him in pursuit. Greg’s rifle thundered, spitting death. The bullet struck the wolf in the side and sent it rolling sideways across the snow as Shannon caught up with it. Shannon pressed the barrel of his twelve-gauge to the wolf’s heart. It tried to get up as he pulled the trigger, and its chest exploded inward. Shannon pumped another round into the chamber and fired again as a puddle of red grew underneath the wolf’s thrashing form.

Greg rushed to Shannon’s side. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Only six more to go.”

Shannon frowned. “What’s up there?” he asked, pointing up the ridge ahead of them.

Greg squinted through the falling snow. “Looks like a cave of some sort.”

“A den, maybe?”

“We should check it out to be safe.”

“Nothing shows on the scanner, but second-generation pups wouldn’t,” Shannon added as Greg climbed up the rocks. “Let’s hope it hasn’t gone that far.”

Greg made his way up to the cave’s mouth as Shannon watched from below.

“Toss me a light!”

Shannon shrugged off his backpack, digging through it. He tossed Greg a heavy flashlight.

Even from below, Shannon blinked as Greg flipped it on.

“God!” Greg shouted, losing his footing. He slid down to rest at Shannon’s feet. “Oh God, what have we done?” Greg muttered.

“What is it?” Shannon barked, jerking Greg up.

“There’s babies in there, Shannon. They look like us! Like humans! Only they’re covered in fur. They’re crawling around eating a dead rabbit or something. There’s blood everywhere!”

Shannon felt tears welling up in his eyes.

“What do we do?” Greg pleaded.

Shannon knelt onto the snow, digging in his pack again. He pulled out a stick of dynamite. Greg watched in horror as Shannon lit the fuse and tossed it into the cave. Both men scurried to find cover. Neither one of them saw it coming, and the scanner Shannon still carried gave no warning.

As the explosion blew the ridge apart, a large black wolf came bounding from out of nowhere and hurled itself at Greg with a fierce snarl. The pair toppled to the forest floor. Greg struggled to get his arm between his neck and its snapping teeth. The wolf knocked his arm aside, biting into the flesh of his throat. Greg’s blood seemed to steam as it spurted and poured onto the icy snow.

A large gaping wound bled on the wolf’s shoulder; it had gnawed out its locator chip to sneak up on the men. Shannon leveled his twelve-gauge at the monster and squeezed the trigger. The left side of the wolf’s face was blown off as its body twitched and thrashed atop Greg’s corpse. Shannon fired again and again until the weapon clicked empty before realizing he was alone now. Alone with five more of its kind waiting to fill their hunger on the blood of the “God” that had given them life.

Shannon whirled and ran as fast as he could for the car as he listened to the howls screaming in the night all around him. He broke from the tree line onto the road, only to find them waiting for him. The whole pack staring at him with their glowing, accusing eyes.

The largest one seemed more to crouch like a human than sit upon the car’s hood as the others sat on their hindquarters staring at Shannon.

“We are the Gods now,” the largest roared, “and it is you who shall pay!”

Shannon threw aside his empty shotgun, reaching for the .45 auto that hung in a holster on his belt as they charged him. He yanked it free just as they reached him, but they were too fast. They knocked him from his feet as the first set of teeth tore into his flesh. He howled in pain as he felt them gnawing on his body, tearing into him with their yellow fangs. As the final darkness fell, he came to know firsthand the fury of the Hell he had helped create as his blood washed away the snow beneath him.