“You sure this is legal?”
James wasn’t sure his question was heard over the roar of the rotors, but the man next to him in the helicopter nodded.
“Yeah,” the man said, his shaggy beard wagging as he spoke, his words carrying a thick accent James couldn’t place. “Not much law around here.”
Looking out the open side door of the chopper at the barren Canadian tundra, James believed him. The rolling hills below them, empty save for the occasional patch of evergreens, looked as though no man had ever crossed them. There were no roads, no buildings, and it had been some time since James had seen even the thin ribbon of smoke rising from the last vestiges of civilization. Even if there was law in this no-man’s land, he thought, there was no one to enforce it.
“You say we won’t have any trouble finding them?” James yelled, checking his rifle.
James thought the bearded face stretched into a smile, but he couldn’t tell beneath the overgrown mass of black and gray hair.
“No trouble. Lots of wolves out here.”
James nodded and looked around inside the helicopter. A heavyset man in a leather jacket sat in the cockpit, his head bobbing to some tune being pumped into his headset at such volume that James, several feet away and barely able to hear his own thoughts above the thunder of the engines, could hear the bass beat. He guessed the pilot was nearly deaf or would be by the end of the flight.
Turning, James looked back at the other two men inside the helicopter. Both were large, wearing fatigues and clutching their rifles with a practiced ease that made James, unaccustomed to such weapons, jealous. The man closest to him smiled beneath his close-cropped red beard and nodded at James, as though encouraging him to keep his eyes focused outside where the wolves would be.
James turned back around and scanned the frozen ground below him. He was about to ask another question when he saw movement, just a flash of gray below him, but enough to make the question die in his throat.
The bearded man next to him saw the change in James’s expression. “Ah,” he said, following his gaze. “You see them?”
“Yeah,” James said. “I see them.”
He watched as flashes of gray and white appeared through the trees, staying beneath the cover of the pines. As much as he had mentally prepared for this moment, visualizing every step of the hunt, he marveled at the speed of the wolves as they fled the approaching helicopter. He could not tell their numbers through the gaps in the trees, but could tell just by the varied colors of fur flashing below that there were several.
Then, he could see them all. The trees ended abruptly and a dozen wolves pounded into the open plain. James was too awed by the sight of them, their sleek bodies sprinting through the scrub grass, to raise his rifle for a shot. Only the sound of the bearded man next to him snapped him out of his daze.
“You take a shot now?”
James pulled the rifle and looked through the sight. The wolves appeared for a moment as shaking blurs until he realized his hands were trembling.
Taking a deep breath, James steadied the weapon and looked again through the sight. The wolves looked close enough to touch through the telescopic lens. He picked one to follow, a large gray one in the middle of the pack, and pulled the trigger.
A puff of dust rose by the streaking wolf. It had changed direction at the last moment, the bullet sailing over it by inches.
James growled in frustration. As he leveled the rifle for another shot, he could still hear that growl, and it took him several seconds to realize that it was not coming from him.
James lowered his rifle and slowly turned his head in the direction of the guttural noise.
The bearded face of the man was gone, replaced by a canine visage, saliva dripping from its mouth and its dark eyes focused on James. At first, James thought he was imagining the change, but when he looked around the inside of the helicopter, he saw the two men in fatigues were gone, replaced by two massive wolves, one brown and one the same color red the man’s beard had been. Finally, he looked at the cockpit and saw the pilot, turned toward him now, a dripping wolf maw sticking out from above the leather jacket, the headphones still pumping their heavy bass against pointed, fur-covered ears.
He did not cry out. He did not scream. Instead, James simply fell, backing out through the open door of the helicopter and, even as he hurtled toward the ground through the cold, he never uttered a sound until he smashed into the hard tundra and the wind was knocked from his lungs in a violent sigh. He knew he was hurt, perhaps dying, but the pain seemed far away, the shock of seeing men turning into wolves serving as anesthesia against his massive injuries.
From where he lay on his side, he saw the helicopter disappear over a nearby patch of pines, the sound of the rotors fading. Not until it was nearly gone altogether did he hear the quiet approach, padded footfalls coming toward him from all sides, a familiar low growl rumbling in his ears. He watched some of the wolves approaching, led by the gray one he had almost killed.
Then, James closed his eyes and waited for the hunt to end.
__________________
©2010 Lee Smiley
Lee Smiley lives in northwest Tennessee with his wife and four children. He dedicates this story to Sarah Palin and all the other wackos who shoot animals from helicopters. You can find him at http://www.facebook.com/hooptedoodle or http://leesmiley.livejournal.com.
Tags: Lee Smiley
August 5th, 2010 at 11:57 am
OMG Daddy!!! This is an AMAZING story!!!
Love you!! XOXOXO
August 5th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Excellent!!! Love the combination of horror and poetic justice.