Moonweavers (17 page)

“
Soon all these murmurs of worship will be gone, along with their individuality, until we are all one with each other.   And you three, are the first to arrive, the same as me, you will reap what I sow.  You will reap it all.  Just like me.  All you have to do is keep creating a bigger army, understand?”  Zoth asks.

The three wolves shake their heads in agreement, not even looking at each other. 

“Good.”

One of the wolves approaches a little closer and bends his front legs and puts his nose to the ground. 
“What are our plans for moonrise, sir?”  He then looks up at Zoth.

“
Same as always,”  Zoth replies.  “Search, seek, destroy.  Except you three.  You three will help me procreate.  We are going to slip a little farther into town tonight and maybe the next night if the moon permits.”

Zoth hears, one of the wolves on the left, thought before the wolf can even come out and say it.  Zoth remains quiet, looking directly at him and waits for the wolf to have the courage to speak it. 

“After these moon cycles are finished, will these humans still follow us?”

Zoth just laughs after finally hearing it with the wolfs voice and replies,
“You always have haven’t you?

“
Yes, sir.”

Zoth quickly recognizes the wolf all the way to the left and beads his eyes down a little bit. 
“Ahh, I remember you from the simulation back on the moon.”

The wolf on the left, gives a little gulp and cringes back a step with an uncontrollable shake as Zoth approaches him.  His tail quickly lowers even deeper toward his belly as he backs up even farther with shaky nervous steps.  He whimpers a cry that
’s barely understandable and he repeats, “Yes, sir.”, more deeper so that the others could understand. 

Zoth growls at the weakness of the wolf.  He
’s more irritated at that than anything.

“
Stand tall,”  Zoth says.

His tail quickly uncurls and he straightens up with his head forward, not looking at Zoth at all, but more behind him in the dark,  through him, scared to look directly into the eyes of his leader.

“Good,”  Zoth says.  “I don’t want you to show any weakness from here on out, you understand?”

“
Yes, sir.”  the wolf replies more firmly.

“
To even think about what you did, will be suicide, understand?”

“
Yes, sir.”  The wolf doesn’t dare shake even an inch of his body now.

“
I see you still have the scar on your lip,”  Zoth says calmly now.

The wolf quickly glances at Zoth, before glancing away again, almost like an answer in itself.

“You know why I let you live that day?”  Zoth asks.

The wolf looks directly at Zoth with shock.  He nervously replies,
“No, sir.”

“
Because I know you are hunting for the same thing as me.  You crave it and you need it, just like me.  Soon you all will.”  Zoth says in a shout that echoes throughout the cave.  All the humans and animals alike, stare in the direction of Zoth, a lot not knowing exactly where the sound came from, but all looking in the same direction.  Beyond the flicks of light, most see only darkness.  But all of them hear more from their new leader.  Zoth now draws his attention more toward the crowd and adds, “When true night falls, each word draws louder as Zoth gets more drunk with the power of the collective mind melt.  The murmurs stop in his head and then Zoth continues.  “Humankind will join us or parish.”  He then turns and walks into the smaller entrance way above the crowd up high to perch on the cliff within the big hall of the cave almost like the wolfs personal penthouse.  Before he emerges into the hole to another room, he turns and walks to the edge where just moments ago he gives his speech.  The big floodlights finally appear on the massive leader leaving even a bigger shadow behind him on the cliffs wall.  Now the whole room and all of his followers can see him and he knows it, he feels it inside.  Everything stops.  There is no sound at all in the room.  Not a footstep, just the trickle of water dripping off the wet caves ceiling into various puddles within the distance of the cave.  Then Zoth gives out a howl.  The other three wolves join in and continue on and off upon one another so that the sound is continuous and doesn’t stop.  All of the people are in awe and when the wolves finally do stop their continuous howl, a thunderous applause and cheers can be heard throughout the crowd and little squeaks from mice and taps of hoofs from deer and growls from wild mountain lions and a beaver pats its big tail on the ground with the audience and they cheer and they cheer until Zoth finally gets bored of it all and enters into the hole to the other chamber.  They all seem to cheer even louder at this hoping that it will draw their leader back out for one more glimpse, but then things stop as they finally realize that their fearless leader isn’t going to appear out of the hole once more.  The crowd slowly staggers off except for a few hangers that just stand in the massive room and look towards the bluff.  One of the lights are taken now as they need it for something else, but one floodlight stays on the little entrance permanently.  The people instantly start scavenging the cave for ways to make weapons to please the master for the attack tonight.  All they can think of are ways to be triumphant.  Nothing would please any of them more than to die in battle protecting their new masters.  Even the hangers slowly realize this and scavenge around the cave for some way to make a weapon.  A lot of them tore off there walking sticks on their way in and had various types of weapons already that they thought they might need when they were entering the woods.  Others brought kitchen knives and guns with them when they left their houses that night, but the few that brought nothing at all were the ones that really scavenged the cave.  Others just wanted something just in case they ran out of bullets or lost their knives.  Back up, if you will.  They were well aware of the rule because it was the only rule.  ‘Search, seek, destroy.’  Anything that the master wanted, the master got.  Zoth liked the cave a lot.  He can inspect his troops well upon the bluff of it throughout the darkness.  He would sneak around and they wouldn’t even know he was looking at them along the big dome of the cave through little trails that the rats had made within the walls.  He figured they took the same path for centuries.  It was so wore down that the big wolf could maneuver along it quite well.  The dumb asses still had the light way over there at the entrance that he left hours ago.  He liked the cave, but he knew he would soon outgrow it as his army grew.  He kind of was disappointed at that.  The secluded woods and mountain were good terrain for a wolf and he didn’t want to leave it, but he knew eventually he would have to go to the city and take it over as well, but damn, he is going to miss this cave, he thought as he looked over his flock.  He quickly looked down as Uno approached and laid down right next to the wolf and wrapped his little bald tail around the massive paw of the wolf.  Uno never uttered a sound laying there.  Zoth couldn’t even hear the little rat breathe.  In fact, he could just pick up his paw and smash it in one little swipe and flick him over the edge and almost did, but since it was the first one to change,  sympathy did appear.  It happened very rarely, but it was the rats lucky day, for sure.  Zoth well knowing that, if he wasn’t in such a pleasant mood, that little rat UNO  would have been a goner for sure.  He snickered at the thought.  But why do that.  He is such a good size to do recon on the enemy and his troops, if need be.  He sits and watches down as the humans slowly lose themselves completely, not really resembling their former selves at all with the dry blood and mud caked all over their bodies and not caring to even groom themselves anymore.  They have no more selfish needs.  All they have is him.  All they need is him.  His needs are their needs.  The wolves tried not to wound them too bad when they changed.  Some just mere scratches or bites.  Others though, weren’t so lucky, for the ones who fought back, had chunks out of their legs and arms, but not the neck.  Not so much to kill them, like the smaller animals in the woods.  It was hard for the wolves to control that part of them to not totally take them out in the heat of battle.  To have a killer instinct and not be able to use it was something that they were never taught.  But the fruits of their labor outweighed the urge.  Their new army will serve them well.  The big room was massive, he figured he could hold another three hundred people in it easy if need be.  But there will be a lot more than that when he captures the town.  But here deep within the mountain, there is only one way in and one way out, except for his private corridor, of course.  That is so secure, no one would get through it.  He made sure of that.  He wondered why the tasty humans were never in the simulators back on the moon.  He found them to be the best and trickiest prey of all, but he guesses the quickness of the deer in the simulators was a good training for him and the other wolves.  They were more agile when it came to pursuits.  But the humans were tricky and smart.  He knew if he was going to beat them, he would have to learn their technologies.  The human slaves were paramount in that quest.  Once he turns the ones who created him, he will use them like they used him, but he will have to do it quick because there are many of them and there is merely a hundred or more of us.  He dreaded the thought of it, but he knew it would have to be done.  He knew he would have to question the humans down there and see what the best strategy would be after nightfall when they transform into the beasts.  He creeps back to his chamber slowly and silently with no one the wiser of it.  The other three wolves are still lined up the way they were before within the chamber.  He wants to know more about the attackers on the bluff as well but they never found them yet so he figured he gave them the slip completely.  They were dangerous and more transparent.  They couldn’t sink their teeth in those enemies.  They were like the ones that held him captive on the moon.  They had human forms, but they obviously weren’t.  ‘Are there more mooners down here
on earth?  Were they mooners?  Or something entirely different?’, he wondered.  Not knowing the surroundings was starting to appear to be extremely difficult.  After an hour or so of questioning, he knew less about the ghost than before.  It was one of the human ladies who coined the word ‘ghost’ to him.  She said, “If they didn’t have an organic form, they had to be ghosts.”  She believed in them, but never saw one.  He wondered how they could avoid detection for so long among their own people or how they could even regroup after they died, but their human weapons, the ones that attacked them beyond the bluff from a distance, he could definitely get hold of these weapons.  Maybe they could help, he thought.  Humans said that the best ones were at the army bases.  He really wanted to see this army base now.  He was pretty saddened when he found the closest one was quite a ways.  Then one of them suggested that he could drive a semi with them all packed in there if need be.  That’s when the wolf gave the most evil grin you ever saw.  It was big and white with sharp teeth running all through it.  He liked how organized they could be with their maps and weapons.  The truckers map was quite useful on the table, which really wasn’t a table at all.  It was more like a giant flat rock in the middle of the small dwellings floor.  But it was so perfectly flat, they used it for this purpose alone.  Zoth jumps on the table and looks down at the map to study it, questioning every line and word until he eventually figures out how to work the thing.  He now knew where the highway went that he constructed the accident on and the suburb in which he attacked and he could guess about how far from there the city would be.  The trucker pointed out where they could pick up weapons if they decided to go to the army base.  He said about ten years ago he had a contract and he was delivering there from one of the weapons factories.  He told Zoth of the planes and the tanks and the hangars just full of boxes of weapons.  He drew out his own map of which buildings were where within the facility of the army base.  He pointed then on the map where all the electrical grids were suggesting the best way to do it would be to knock out all the energy that the town had.  He said, “If you did this, it would be harder for them to call for help.  They would be blind from the darkness, making them a much easier prey.”  More and more of the victims come in to give Zoth information so dearly needed.  Even on the giant rock slab, Uno the rat, stays faithfully by his master side, Zoth notices when he looks at the map once more.  The other wolves are now in the corner, scavenging off a few of the carcasses, not able to control their hunting urges anymore.  Just wanting to sink their teeth into some more flesh.  A woman in scrubs, the bottoms were burgundy and the top had designs of little nurse and doctor teddy bears.  She had five long straight scars on the left side of her face that went to her forehead all the way down to the bottom of her neck just ending before the v-neck shape in the collar of the scrubs that she was wearing.  She pleads to the wolf to give her supplies so she can bandage up herself and the others so that they could serve Zoth better in their mission before they leave.  He complies to her wishes, stating that they could scrounge up whatever clothes or anything else that they brought with them to do the job and that if they needed more medical supplies, maybe she or the others could pick them up as well when they go into the city tonight.  The woman nods in agreement and leaves the chamber into the bigger room.  He tells them all to leave the little room.  The wolves drag off the carcass and the humans quickly descend into the bigger chamber back toward where the floodlight burns, that gave waves of heat in the cold dampness of the cave.  Amazingly, the little rat, Uno, doesn’t leave, but stays next to Zoth’s side.  Zoth becomes very angry at the defiance of the rat, but shakes it off.  He lies down on the slab of stone and the mouse quickly nuzzles in beside the wolf like a tired baby mouse would do with a mother, searching for comfort and warmth.  Then they both drift off to sleep.