Snow had started falling when we stopped the truck. We hadn't gone very far from the caves held by Grandpa. The road was at an end, and the pack stood sniffing the smell of cold death.
"What is this place?" I asked, noticing we had found a large, fenced compound. It was growing dark and there were guard towers with lights facing inward.
"Grandpa has skeletons in the closet." Halo told everyone. "This looks like the same as the government-controlled quarantine camps they've started putting people into."
"What are you talking about?" Bruna asked him.
"Ask Doctor Imbrium. Tell them about these places. The pack spends all their time underground, they don't know what is going on out here in the real world." Halo gestured towards Doctor Imbrium.
"It's true: there are camps, where National Security takes anyone who isn't immunized or that doesn't support The Cabinet, are taken from their homes." Doctor Imbrium sniffed.
"The Cabinet are Grandpa?" Abbot deducted.
"Their political party, yes. They have effectively seized power." Doctor Imbrium explained.
"I told you about this, how we were on the wrong side all-along." Halo said to Lieutenant Colonel Rose.
The lieutenant colonel sighed and said: "Seems I owe you an apology."
"Save it. I've waited too long for a chance to sink my fangs into the National Security thugs. There's only room enough in the night for proper monsters. They are just petty kidnappers and creeps. I'd like to put them in their place." Halo said. The pack murmured and nodded in agreement. We could all smell the death and suffering inflicted on those in the quarantine camp.
"Why don't we crash this party?" Treach pumped his shotgun, which ejected a spent shell and chambered a slug.
"We don't have much time. General Stone will report what happened to Grandpa and they will prepare a pursuit." Lieutenant Colonel Rose looked at the ghostly camp behind the barbed wire.
"What's our plan then? We just run until they catch us, or we hit them where it hurts? Freeing everyone in this place would undermine their power. This is a secret location, near their research. If we attack, we will expose what The Cabinet is doing here." Halo pointed out.
"We will surround the camp and destroy the National Security forces. The prisoners can be loaded onto our truck and taken to safety. We'll make our way on foot into those hills. That's the plan." Lieutenant Colonel Rose decided.
I looked around at the pack and saw the shimmering eyes of the wolves and monsters. They'd had a taste of blood, and it only made them thirsty for more. I shuddered at what we might find, and also at the monsters I was with.
Carrying my rifle I marched with the pack toward the quarantine camp. The thick snowing clouds hid the moon, but I could feel its pull. Bruna took me and Frosty with her to the furthest guard tower.
The smell of something frozen and rotten greeted me. It was then that I saw what National Security had done with those who had died in the camp. They had a kind of elongated pit and they simply threw the dead into it until they had formed a pile of corpses.
"It's a mass grave." I gasped in horror, choking on the stench and shocked by the atrocity.
"Don't worry, love. We'll put an end to this place this very night." Bruna stared at the grave with anger in her eyes. "They are going to pay for this."
I felt my hands clutching the rifle. My teeth chattered from the cold and from some kind of deep rage at the monstrous National Security enforcers who guarded the camp. There was one in the tower, his back to us, a thick blanket keeping him warm where he sat between a spotlight and a mounted machine gun. My sights were on the back of his head.
We heard the distant howl of Lieutenant Colonel Rose from the other side of the camp. From each position the howl of the rest of the pack joined in, predatory and ready. I squeezed the trigger before my prey could react, and watched his head flop to one side as he fell forward and plummeted to the frozen ground below from the top of the tower.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Frosty, tear out the fence and take the tower." Bruna ordered.
The hulking yeti lumbered forward and with unimaginable strength he grabbed a fence post and tore it with a loud cracking sound from the brittle soil. He twisted it free and used the concrete end to smash through the unsupported segment of the barbed wire fence. Frosty was growling with menace, sensing the National Security were aligned with those who had murdered his tribe. He trampled the barbed wire and began climbing the tower.
There were more gunshots all around the camp as the simultaneous assault on the guard towers commenced. Several enforcers came running out of the barracks near us and looked around. Frosty was in the tower and had pulled the mounted machine gun from its cradle. He bellowed his yeti war cry for the first time and as the guards looked up, he opened fire on them from the tower. As they fell, he kept shooting them until he was out of ammunition.
I saw that Bruna was taking off her uniform and I dropped my weapon and did the same. As she started to transform, I felt the moonlight in a shaft, pouring the power of the night into me. Beside her I transformed as well, feeling the agony in my body as my bones snapped into new shapes and my blood vessels reversed direction. It felt like I was suffocating and that my guts were boiling inside me. Then, after a long and painful transformation, I stood up and greeted Bruna with a low growl.
She nipped at me and commanded me. When I was with her, I was conscious and obedient. I followed her into the camp. We found a man with trained guard dogs and Bruna's claws silenced him. She snarled at the dogs and used her wolf eyes to peer deep into theirs and they surrendered, running in terror.
We went deeper into the camp and an enforcer surprised us, firing two bullets that grazed my arm. I leaped upon him and bit into his face. With savagery, I shook him in my jaws until I heard a cracking sound in his neck and he went limp. Instead of dropping him, I dragged him along in the fresh snow, hanging from my jaws.
Treach and Seyfried were escorting a group of prisoners to safety past dead enforcers who lay in dark heaps on the white ground. I would have attacked them too, but Bruna stopped me, her claws splayed across my chest, halting me.
"Monster! We're under attack from monsters!" A panicked enforcer came running around the corner. Adam stepped out from between two of the quarantine buildings and lifted him by his neck. The man tried to say 'monsters' again but Adam squeezed and crushed his throat. He dropped the remains and followed the man's tracks to the guard post he had fled from. There he found Dreich satisfying his thirst on one of the guards.
The vampire looked up with glowing red eyes at Adam and pulled his fangs free from the guard's neck. "Tastes like chicken." Dreich said in a deep and hellish voice. Then he laughed like someone who has just enjoyed a very good meal.
As another enforcer fired upon him, Dreich moved like a blur of dark robes and shadows behind cover, somehow evading the bullets. The enforcer advanced, continuing to burst bullets into the flimsy wooden divider Dreich was hiding behind. "Die, monster!"
Suddenly the whole area was brightened by the guard bursting into flames. He screamed in pain and terror and tried to stop, drop and roll but it was no good. The ground around him caught fire. Flames were falling onto him, spurting from the ground and swirling in a rising conflagration that quickly enveloped the guard post. Other enforcers were trapped inside and screamed in terror and pain as they were burned alive, unable to escape. A jet of flames moved unnaturally to the nearby barracks and vanished inside. Seconds later the whole building exploded into gouts of orange destruction, quickly burning to the ground. Any enforcers who were still inside didn't even stand a chance.
McRaze stood at the center of it all, her hands stretched out to either side and candles in her eyes. She seemed ecstatic to unleash her pent-up powers, a disturbing grin on her face.
"Show off." Dreich complained, looking at the smoldering corpses of all the enforcers McRaze had killed with her pyrokinesis.
There were only a few National Security left and they were fleeing on foot from the camp. I dropped my chew toy from my slobbering jaws and howled at the thrill of hunting them. I ran after Bruna and we caught them, one by one, and tore them to pieces.
I don't recall the period of rest after the battle, but it was morning, and I wore a blanket of snow. Walking on the ice hurt my bare feet. I was shivering but the freezing cold air on my skin didn't harm me. I found Bruna in her uniform near where we had transformed. She was lacing up her boots. She glanced at me and said nothing.
"Post homicidal depression." Jack the Ripper said, leaning on the tower that Frosty had captured.
I lifted my uniform from the snow and began to get dressed, feeling Jack the Ripper watching me. Glancing up I met his gaze, seeing only his eyes from behind his featureless mask. I noticed he was picking at his gloved fingertips with a knife, and wondered if he should be allowed to carry any weapons at all.
"I don't feel depressed." I lied. I felt horrible, the memories of men being torn apart under my claws, burned alive by McRaze or shot to pieces by Frosty's machine gun flooded my mind. I felt sick, I wanted to go back and choose some other career.
"You shouldn't. All of the prisoners were freed and loaded onto our truck to escape. Those people we saved last night were innocent. We only murdered murderers. War doesn't get better than that." Jack the Ripper sounded oddly sympathetic. I wondered if he really meant it.
The pack began to gather, and Adam hefted the crate upon one shoulder. We had gathered up weapons and supplies wherever we could find them and had looted the camp. When we were ready, we followed Lieutenant Colonel Rose into the forests that rested in silence beneath the hills.
Behind us, a column of smoke drifted aimlessly skyward. I thought of the people who had thought they were going to die in the secret quarantine camp. Because of us, they were free.