Moonweavers (4 page)

“
Aw, shit!”  Rob yells at the screen.  “I think he broke a leg.  Now I will have to change all my plans.  Dammit!  It’s okay though, I can use the another one.  He almost got three in the last halo form.  I still have time.  Scott, since you are in this with me, you can have your pick of any wolf you want.  I will show you each and every one.”

The whole glass wall turns into miniature screens of each of the thirteen wolves.  A devils dozen.  Rob says,
“All but this one and of course the one with the broken leg.”

“
That’s weird.  Check it out, Rob.  They are all moving the same way as they stalk deer.  Why is that?”

“
They are all inner-linked,.  They have the same DNA.  I am kind of limited up here.  I had to make it myself.  There just wasn’t enough time to get all unique.  In a way, they are basically the same inside, totally.  They have the same diet habits and seem that they think together in some sort of telepathic instinct, I think, but they all followed that big one there.  We could always ditch them if they cause us any trouble after we hit earth.  But it would have been nice to have back up if we needed it down there.  It’s to risky to use human forms and I just didn’t want to chance it.  Results of making humans up here, well, I don’t have to tell you what freaks came out of that.  Somehow that dark matter gets in them.  I cant figure it out.  If I could break that hold, I think we could be human.  But I just ain’t got enough time, you know, Scott?”

“
Yea, me neither,”  Scott replied.

“
That’s why I wanted to use the leader.  Maybe if I got in that brain of his, they would follow me just because they are use to it.  It’s all they know.”

“
Yea, that would have been nice.  Why don’t you just fix the leg?”

“
It’s organic, Scott, I can’t.  It has to heal on its own.”

“
Well then, Rob, what are you buying here?  I mean think about it.  You are gonna go down there and cause all that havoc for what?  Another seventy years maybe if you are lucky.”

“
Seventy more than we got, buddy.” 

Scott couldn
’t argue with that, knowing that his time was up soon too. 

“
I shouldn’t have let him hunt.”  Rob said. 

“
Its okay, Rob.  Like you said, we will probably end up ditching them anyway.  Look, I will be back by here so we can get this shit over with alright?”

“
Alright,Scott.”

Zoth kept a  good eye on the glass as he limped around faking his injury.  He never took his eye off the little twinkling light at the corner of the glass that he saw Scott enter into.  Suddenly, he sees Scott appear out of the wall towards the door and out, vanishing completely through a wall it looked like.  He knew that was the little mans companion that had gone out the door.  He limped some more back down the hill, putting on the fake limp until he was back in his cryogenic frozen state after all the tests were through.  But Zoth couldn
’t help but smile this night as Rob went to freeze him by the hit of a button.  Rob would say the same thing every night before he froze Zoth.  Zoth knew it was coming this night as well but he couldn’t help but think it hilarious just the same.  As Rob goes to push down the button and says “Have a nice freeze, bitch.”  Then everything stands still in his cryogenic freeze.  Zoth can’t think, can’t move.  He is totally suspended until the unfreezing comes.  He didn’t know how long he could live with it.  The pain was so intense every time he came out.  It was the worst pain he ever had and he has done it so many times.  Zoth really never had a concept of numbers and time, but he knew it was a lot. 

The next morning, Scott enters Robs laboratory.  Robs all set.  Everything is ready to go.  The countdowns about to begin.  Scott is getting into position after a briefing from Rob on the secluded coordinates.  Locking in all the information onto the tags, they are now ready to go.  Zoth and twelve more appear out of there cryogenic frozen slumber.  Zoth and the others sense the uneasiness in the room.  They start to form a pact together in the middle of the room, forming a perfect circle to protect from the enemies from any area of the room.  Zoth is in the middle of the circle, standing straight up and yells, on my Q!”in a deep,  low growling voice.  The moment the light appeared in the room, engulfing it instantly before Rob could even turn his head to Scott, their lightened down.  Zipping down the light beam to its  coordinanc
e
on earth.  Scott and Rob are experienced on dropping down through beams of light, now merge with their chosen wolves as they descend.  The tags communicate the proper light  transfer and slip into the wolves bodies.  Scott was pretty scared about not getting this done right.  Far behind the crowd.  Now slowing down his speed telepathically and lands in a nice slow trod like he didn’t even miss a beat and rises from the front of his paws onto his back to hind legs and observes all the damage.  Trees knocked over, branches everywhere, wolves lying on the ground.  Practically none of them moving too fast, not knowing how to slow the light down and manipulate it to their will.  Rob slowly approaches Scott.  Rob says, “Smooth landing for some of us.”  Before he could get out a deep gurgling laugh, he is thrown to the ground.  Zoth and Rob fly into the nearest tree.  Zoth rips at the fur of Robs mane with razor sharp teeth.  Rob gives out a high pitched yip.  If Robs eyelids had teeth, he would have surely bit himself from the pain of the flesh on his shoulder blade.  Opening his eyes wide enough just to bite down again on him, he sees a hairy foot paw coming straight toward his head.  Starting to dodge it, but not fast enough, he is knocked into unconsciousness.  Then Zoth turns his head toward Scott.  He jumps back on his two feet and walks towards Scott.  More wolves come out of the brush.  To the left of him, two gray ones.  To the right of him, three more.  One black, one patchy.  Two more appear from behind him as he slowly backs up.  Zoth screams, “Back !”  The circle opens up for his entrance into it.  He looks Scott straight in the eye and says “What should I do about you?”   “Hey man, I was just trying to buy some time.  I never even knew you existed until a week ago.  Please don’t kill me.” 

“
You see”, Zoth says in his deep scratchy voice, “Weak.  Without their moon god, they are weak.  We will test the humans to see how strong they are .  Until our numbers grow, I will not kill you.  But little man must die.  Little man hurt Zoth.  Little man must die.” 

Scott says,
“But Rob created you.  If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t even be alive.”

“
No, he tortured us. He put us in cold sleep.  Little man must die.”

“
Aren’t you some kind of dog?  Aren’t you supposed to be loyal or something?”

At that time a wolf knees Scott right in the groin.  Then thrushes his head down into the dirt.  Scott bounces back up and stares at the wolf.  The wolf growls.  He quickly raises his arm and the wolf punches him down in a chuckle.  The other wolves around him make an eerily groggily roar of laughter that turns into a rhythm like drums, like natives around a camp fire.  Then simultaneously, all the wolves raise their heads and howl at the moon in sync like they are all using the same brain.  But Scott and Rob don
’t have that part of the brain.  They don’t have the hunting instinct being too many generations away from the part of their existence, if it was even there to begin with.  Now the wolves yell, “Hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt!”  Zoth says, “Secure the prisoners!”  One lone wolf runs up a tree, climbing limberly to the top.  He cuts a giant vine with one of his claws.  The vine falls.  Others take it and tie down the prisoners.  Then they were all gone to hunt and explore this new world.  As they run through the woods together in unison, they find a ranger shack, small in size with only two windows and a door.  Circling the shack just like a police raid, slowly coming in, checking all the windows and door, gathering at the door and one at each window.  Zoth gives the command.  All at once they all move in.  They survey the shack.  No one was in there.  They sniff everything.  Without even speaking they all burst out the door and windows on the scent of the ranger.  Ranger Randy was relieving himself on a tree just about at his truck from the long hike to the shelter to make sure no animals got into the food or just to see if anyone was there that needed help.  He was hauling ass after the strange noises from earlier, thinking if there was going to be an earthquake, he doesn’t want to be out there when it happens.  People might need his help.  Not having time to even zip his pants, when he heard the wolves approach.  Knowing the truck is right up the hill, Randy runs as fast as possible up the hill.  He reaches the passenger side door of the ranger truck.  As he jumps in, one of the wolves grab his leg and yanks him back out, clawing his whole left leg.   From the top of his thigh down to his shoe to his middle toe was a deep claw marks.  Randy digs his hands into the dirt, pulling and pulling towards the truck, dragging his useless leg, desperately trying to reach the truck to get his shotgun and get out of there.  He can see it.  The dome light is on in the truck.  The shotgun is sticking straight out off the floor board on the passenger side.  Almost angelically sitting there as the light gleams off the barrel.  Randy gets roughly pulled down to the arms of his captor.  As he turns around to finally see, all the wolves stare at him.  Then simultaneously attack at once, ripping and tearing their jaws into Randy’s flesh, as they pull apart their tasty morsels to enjoy.  One is licking his missing arm, another clumsily picks up the shotgun out of the truck, yanking it out and, pulling the trigger.  The wolfs head explodes off and  through the roof of the truck instantly and totally submerging the windshield with blood.  The other wolves turn at the sound of the gun, looking and laugh all at once like a drum in perfect rhythm.  Why their brains are so interweaved with one another, they do not know.  But the cloning process must have made them identical thought processes.  Zoth ponders and all the other ones instantly know what his thought was and shake their heads  in agreement.  Zoth being the most dominant makes him leader.  Zoth says, “Now we go back to the prisoners and higher ground.”  With that,  in unison two by two, they calmly march, a steady trot  toward Rob and Scott.  Scott is gnawing with his fangs at the vine rope that secures him and Scott to the tree.  Ripping and tearing and pulling with his fangs at the vine like a ravaged dog, Scott finally loosens the top of the vine enough to get his shoulder to wiggle and pull his arm out.  Now with the power of his claws, he rips through the vine with ease, ripping it off him and Scott.  Scott watches as Robs body slowly heals itself right in front of his eyes as the moonlight slowly drifts over and shines on his body.  They hear an eerie sound of a drumbeat almost at the same time.  Rob and Scott haul ass in the opposite direction, down into the valley, as far away from the wolves as their paws can take them, knowing that their lives depended on it.  Scott always has to slow down for Rob.  The woods were dark and the moonlight could not penetrate to heal him more than what he already was.  As Scott stops to catch his breath and wait for Rob one more time, he sees a cave on a steep embankment to the left of the bluff.  it’s a long shot, Scott thinks to himself.  As Rob approaches, they make for the caves entrance.  Scott enters and immediately eliminates the mountain lion that was the caves inhabitant, by attacking its throat, making as little noise as possible.  Scott thinks,
“shit, I didn’t even think about that.  How could I kill such a big animal and not even know I did it until its dead and on my tongue.  Must be what that hunter instinct feels like in the wolves.” 
Rob lays shivering in the corner of the cave.  Scott drags the carcass of the mountain lion over to Rob to see if he wants a piece of this morsel that he has just found.  Scott chomps and chomps on the carcass.  The taste of the animals blood almost calms Scott’s urge to hunt and the anger or is it just from being organic that he has these feelings.  If humans have these feelings too, how can they raise families.  They must be able to control it easier than a wolf.  I don’t want to live like this. 

“
Rob you bastard.”  Scott said.   “ I mean really what were you thinking?  Wolves?  Don’t ya think it would be better to be the most dominant species, not trying to trump one up on it?  Dumb ass.“

Rob says nothing.  Scott looks harder at him.  He notices he
’s not shaking anymore.  He comes a little closer.  He can smell the death on the animal.  Robs life force has finally ended. 

“
Well it might have been a strange way to do it, but you did get us off that damn  L .station.  Now if I can just maintain my existence after the sun rises, we will know everything.  With the tag, time will tell.”

Scott trots to the entrance to the cave, looking down at the way he came up to make sure there
’s no movement out there.  He slowly sticks his head a little farther out to look up at the sky.  Behind him he sees the first rays of sunlight leaking out over the ridge almost strong enough to cast a small shadow.  Scott gets a bad pain in his ribs, like his whole body is imploding, shrinking down.  His arms grow shorter and straighter.  Same with his back legs.  He can feel his body shrinking down and turning and manipulating into something entirely different, but yet, shifting to a more normal wolf like identity.  He bites down hard as his snout shrinks smaller and his ears grow shorter to resemble a timber wolf.  Completely black with one spot of gray on the tip of his tail and florescent green eyes that seem to glow like fireflies at night.  The pain subsides.  Scott realizing he’s became totally wolf, he seems more limber and right.  Not stronger, but more flexible and built for speed than power.  Rob must have actually died half way through his transition because he didn’t look the same.  He looked more distorted and out of sync.  Scott takes his new wolf form back down the ridge toward the valley hoping that the wolves might have changed too.  Or not he could be faster if they didn’t, but if they did, maybe they could stop killing humans for awhile, knowing that’s their soul mission in life.  He speeds down the mountains edge into the valley.  Scott finds a creek and has a refreshing drink of water while surveying the area with eyes, nose and ears.  Now being closer to the ground and the earth, subtle smells and tastes, Scott is growing fond of his new organic form of existence.  The sun rises more pronounced when Scott finds the old dirt road that the lumberjacks used to haul out that part of the forest.  Scott knew he was getting closer and closer to humans.  He could smell their rotting filth from the landfills just beyond the hill.  He could hear the zipping of semi trucks and cars from the highway connecting it to the bottom edge of the mountains valley as Scott slowly progresses down the hill.  The other wolves could be anywhere.  Scott ponders as he takes another slow scan of the woods from left to right and back from right to left, keeping particular interest in all the dark shadows of the woods for hidden traps from the wolf pack, knowing that they very well could be anywhere.  Scott didn’t have a real plan, but he did follow the road for a considerable distance.  Slow and watchful as he crept along side the road, scanning for signs of life not knowing what this new planet had to offer and this new vulnerable organic body he know possessed.  Knowing he could be killed so easily and so quickly, he felt vulnerable more than before in his safe cubicle on the moon.  Like a pregnant mother in a womb, now finally released into a new world.  Just like a newborn baby .