Chapter 1

I landed at Worcester Airport at a godawful hour, 2:27 AM. It was at least on time, but that didn’t take away any of the inconvenience. I was flying at my own expense, so I had hunted up the cheapest flight I could find to get me to New England. Sure, I know, Massachusetts is not a large state, but nobody is going to walk very far in it if she has good sense, and I claimed to have a modicum of good sense.

My name is Hannah Marker, and I was finally getting some leave time from an extra long deployment in Libya. No, I am not going to tell you what I did in Libya, but the bigwigs in Washington seemed to think that it was important. I am permitted to say that my major employment in Libya was in working with my hands, but that is all that I can say.

I was headed home to Fitchburg to visit my parents whom I had not seen for over a year. They knew that I was coming to visit and had offered to meet me at the Worcester Airport, but I figured that there was no need for them to drive that far at that time of night at their ages. There had just recently been opened a car rental operation at the airport that offered special deals to military people.

Anyway, I could pick up a car in Worcester and drive to Fitchburg where I could turn the car in. That was the option I chose. I cleared the airport about 3:20 AM and headed north on I-190. I-190 ended in Leominster, and there would only be about eight more miles of driving to get me to my folks triple-decker in time for an early breakfast before Dad headed off to work.

I was tooling along fine with no other traffic on the road when there was suddenly a funny noise coming from under the car’s hood. I was going around a gentle curve like you normally find on an interstate highway when the motor quit and I lost the power steering. The steering locked up to the point that I could not straighten out the car’s direction and, without power brakes, I was at the mercy of fate.

Since this was a divided highway, I did not have to worry about traffic coming from the opposite direction as the car continued to move to the left as the road straightened back out. I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t steer, so I was bordering on panic by the time the car had slowed to around 20 MPH (Miles per Hour). Uh-oh, I came upon a cut through a hill and found the car aiming directly for a side-swiping hit on a solid rock cliff-face.

Well, needless to say, I hit! Fortunately for me, the air bags functioned as designed, and I was not injured, but I was figuratively scared shitless! The whole left side of the car was mangled beyond recognition, but there was no fire. The pop-out windshield had worked as designed, and I was able to wiggle out of the car through that wonderfully open space. The car body was so warped by the impact with that rock wall that I never would have been able to get any of the doors open.

My only luggage had been a canvas tote bag that I was able to drag out of the car with me. Along with my cellphone, I had a combat knife that I never went anywhere without and a change of clothes in the tote bag.

Why did I have that combat knife with me on a vacation trip home? That knife had saved my life so many times, especially in Libya, that I considered it an extension of my hand. That I was on vacation in my home country headed for my home town was the reason it was in the bag instead of on my belt.

Nevertheless, I took the knife from the bag and slid the sheath onto my belt. Now I felt ready to meet any sort of problem. The next thing I did was to fire up my cell phone and dial 911. I got the immediate answer I was expecting and explained my problem. That was when I got my next shock!

“Lt. Marker, are you inside or outside of your car?”

“I’m standing in front of it. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, my God. Climb back inside if you possibly can. Otherwise, crawl under the car until armed help arrives. Do you have a weapon?”

“I have my issue combat knife. I am very skilled with it. In fact, I teach a course in knife combat.”

“Okay, you are better off than most people who are stuck on the side of the road after midnight, but you still are skating on thin ice without a gun with iron bullets. I suggest that you get the tire-iron from the car trunk to use as a secondary weapon, provided that you can get the trunk lid open.”

“Okay, I’ll do that, but what am I defending myself against?”

“A pack of large wolves has been roving through the area on both sides of I-190, and there is a rumor that they are werewolves. There have been four fatalities along I-190 in the past three weeks from animal attacks. The attacks have the earmarks of wolf attacks. Haven’t you seen the warning signs?”

“No, I haven’t seen the signs. I guess that I was not paying enough attention. I have driven this road so many times in the past that I didn’t think that I needed any signs. How long has this been going on?”

“Uh-oh, I have to go now. There is another call, and I am alone tonight.”

“Okay, I’ll follow your advice, but I find it hard to believe that wolves are a problem in Massachusetts. Thanks and goodbye.”

I pitched my tote bag back through the opening where the windshield had been and went to the rear of the car to try to get the tire-iron. The trunk opened after a minimum of tugging, and I was able to pick up an iron bar about two feet long and half an inch in diameter. I never did find the tire-iron.

I headed back to the front of the car where I could crawl in through the windshield opening. Just as I was about to climb in, I got a most disturbing feeling of imminent danger behind me. This feeling had saved my life several times already in combat situations, so I reacted to it instead of ignoring it.

The 911 operator had sounded concerned enough so that I had paid attention to what he said. I had my knife in my right hand and the steel bar in my left. I swung around without any idea of what the threat might be, but I had no doubt that something was too close for comfort.

As I turned, a massive dog leaped at me with its mouth open ready to bite, and those teeth looked like very potent weapons. Automatically, I raised the steel bar so that it was held horizontally about even with where I thought those teeth would be in a fraction of a second. I pointed my combat knife at the animal at where I expected its belly to be when it got within reach. Thank God, I was right on both counts!

The full weight of the dog hit me around shoulder-height and knocked me back against the side of the fender on the right side of the car. The metal bar was gripped so tightly by the teeth of the dog that my arm was carried back with it behind my shoulder by the strength of the impact. Somehow, I am not quite sure, I managed to the wrench the bar from the animal’s mouth and strike it across the back of the neck with the bar so hard that I heard the bones in the neck crack from the force of the blow.

Meanwhile, the knife blade entered the dogs abdomen just below the rib cage and traveled down toward its pelvis in a single continuous motion. The medical examiner was said to have commented that she wanted me to sharpen all of her instrument blades because of the way the knife blade cut without a single snag.

Once I was sure that the dog was dead, I climbed back through the opening where the windshield had been and sat on the front passenger seat. I figured that in that position I could keep any more dogs from entering the car. I heard some noises from outside the car for about half an hour, but it was too dark for me to see anything. I guess I was lucky to be let alone.

About 10 minutes after I had taken my seat inside the car, I got a call from the 911 operator asking me what had happened since he last talked to me. He also said that the regular service crew was tied up with a multiple-car accident closer to Worcester, and it might not get to me until daylight. I said that I thought that I could hold out that long because I had been in situations where I had been forced to stay awake for 30 or more hours. In Libya I had once been forced to stay awake for 43 hours and to fight a battle at the end of that time, so I figured that I could defend myself against an enemy that did not have a gun.

The sun was well up by the time the emergency crew got to me, and we were all shocked at what we found where I had fought my battle the previous night. There was a naked man’s dead body lying next to the car’s left front wheel. His mouth and jaw were badly damaged as if he had been struck by a hammer in the face. The medical examiner later noted that his neck bones had been shattered by the impact of a blunt instrument.

Furthermore, his gut was cut open from his rib cage to his hip on his left side as if by an expertly wielded knife. Every organ on that side of his body had been at least clipped by the knife blade, and several organs had been destroyed in the process of cutting him. Of course, his intestine was severed in several places by the passage of the knife. The man’s other injuries were serious, but the fatal wound had probably been the cut by the knife.