Chapter 14: Wolf

The phone woke her up. Claire sighed, another night of sleep cut short. She picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. "Hello."

"Dr. Thompson, it's Colonel Jeffers. We've got an inbound lycanthrope for you."

"Oh really? Haven't seen one of those in a while," Claire said. "Okay, I'll meet you there." Of course real werewolves bear little resemblance to the popular Hollywoodized version of the lore (and vampire lore was even more inaccurate). The cryptid shape-shifting gene had somehow attached itself to a retrovirus, and then it managed to pick up a large portion of the genome of a predatory animal. The wolf, naturally, but in other areas of the world the process had duplicated itself with a few big cats, giving rise to African legends of werepanthers and the like.

Now, certainly wolves are nocturnal predators, but the full moon has no bearing on anything, just like bats and other bloodsucking fauna aren't harmed by sunlight and show up in mirrors perfectly well. Werewolfism usually manifests itself in an infected individual as a sort of sleep disorder. Rather than a human sleep walking, they would become the beast, go out prowling, and wake up in the morning remembering almost nothing, like a dream. More rarely it worked on an emotional trigger, similar to the Incredible Hulk of comic book fame. Extreme agitation, anger, fear or pain could bring on the transformation. The Institute scientists had wondered if a man afflicted long enough could ever attain conscious control over his wolf side, but no example of this had yet been found. Once they developed a treatment to block the virus and the military trackers figured out what signs to look for in media and police reports for an active werewolf, none ever lasted long enough to even attempt that sort of control.

A new werewolf popped up on their radar every now and then, so a supply of the counteragent was kept ready to go in cold storage in the Institute lab. One injection and the wolfman would be "cured", although procedure was to keep them overnight for observation before sending them home with a warning to never talk about what happened to them with anybody, save the government-provided counselor. The treatment had to be re administered every six months to keep the virus in check, something that was strictly overseen by the military. The afflicted also could never donate blood, though fortunately the virus was not sexually transmitted nor passed to offspring, and saliva-borne only while in wolf form.

Claire had stopped in the lab to prepare the syringe of counteragent while Jeffers and his men delivered their gurney to Containment Room 2. Suddenly she heard shots being fired and a loud roar. Shit. Those idiots, she thought they'd learned their lesson about giving an extra dose of tranquilizer to the ones that look like they could rip your head off. Now they'd fucked it up royally. If they were lucky, they would manage to pump the creature full of enough bullets to bring it down before it got loose in the building, and she would have a corpse to deal with rather than a catch and release. Failing that, her best chance to survive intact was to get to the armory and gear up as soon as the injection was ready.

She emerged from the lab into the hallway and made a dash for the gun supply. She stopped short as the werewolf leapt out from around the corner at the end of the hall and turned to face her. Claire's scent must have led it straight to her. Bloodthirsty eyes stared at her over a furry snout. Wolfmen stand erect like the human they turn from, but the legs are restructured in a way that greatly enhances running speed. Outrunning a werewolf is not an option.

"Shit!" Claire hissed, then started slowly backing away. The werewolf followed, walking towards her. Claire started moving faster, then turned and started running, and the wolf followed suit. The end of the hallway she was running towards had a security door though. There wasn't time to get through it, it may as well have been a dead end. She realized she was going to die. She held up her arms to brace her sudden stop against the door, then spun around and dropped to the floor, arms still up in an instinctual protective position even though they weren't going to do any good. The werewolf was right in front of her now, she saw it pounce, leaping into the air with sharp claws forwards and its mouth, full of sharper teeth, wide open. She shut her eyes and cringed in preparation for the jaws that were about to clamp down into her flesh.

A second went by. Then another. She should be screaming in pain by now. She opened her eyes. The deadly jaws snapped at nothing but air mere inches away from her, while the wolf snarled in frustration at being denied its prey. She realized it couldn't reach her for some reason. Her eyes looked to the side and saw a familiar tentacle wrapped around the wolf's furry wrist, pulling its arm back. In fact both arms and both legs were restrained by tentacles. Another tentacle circled the monster's midsection, pulled tight, and plucked it off the ground into the air. "Gruthsorik!" she called out in grateful surprise, finally having processed why she wasn't dead.