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Four hours later they were sitting up in a small wooden box overlooking the north east section of the park. Ray, Jim and an army sniper named MacAllister who had said they could call him ‘Mac’, one of the two bits of information he’d volunteered without being asked a direct question since they’d met at the briefing. The other had been an observation that they should keep their water bottles after they were empty so they had something to piss in. Ray liked him. He had a baby face that made him look all of eighteen but eyes that were hard and grey and looked like they never missed a thing. When he combined that with an admission that yes, he’d been in Afghanistan and again yes, he’d hunted animals before, made him pure gold in Ray’s eyes. Because the hides were rather cramped and they definitely didn’t have a manpower shortage for this gig, Ray had also talked four extra detectives into bringing their own cars along and parking near the corners of the park to warn anybody out for a stroll in the moonlight away and to keep their eyes peeled in case they could spot something the guys in the hides couldn’t see.

  It was 9pm now and they’d just finished getting setup, which for Ray and Jim had involved lots of playing with the nifty night vision binoculars and headgear the army had supplied. Eventually they’d decided to leave the headgear on, with the night vision goggles swung up out of the way as they put an unpleasant amount of heat right on your eyeballs. They’d settled for the binoculars which were made with the same tech but didn’t tend to fry your eyeballs like a couple of eggs.

  MacAllister had the same NVGs on his head, also swung up out of the way so he could use the infrared scope on what had to be one of the biggest guns Ray had ever seen. When he’d drawn it out of the box he’d toted up into the hide and started to fit the scope and a silencer as long as your arm, Jim had given a low whistle and said “don’t know if you got the memo man, but we’re 90 percent sure that our perp is a dog, not an elephant.”

  Mac had given him a look much like the one Ray had bestowed on Jim earlier. “SR-25. Standard issue for Army snipers...in other words it’s this or nothing. Close cousin to the M4 your SOG guys use. 7.62mm match rounds which’ll put a hole the same diameter as the round going in and one as big as your fist coming out.” Then he went back to tinkering with his gun.

  Jim had simply raised an eyebrow at Ray and added “Don’t worry, if you wing him we’ll finish him off with our Glocks.”

  Mac actually managed to avoid the sarcasm in the statement somehow, or maybe it just washed right off him. “How you loaded? 9mm?” was his only response.

  It was Ray who replied. “Nope, we use the .40 S&W rounds, plus I don’t know about Jim here, but I use the Golden Saber JHP by Remington because if I have to shoot someone I damned well want him to stay down.” Mac looked up at that and blinked, which seemed to indicate that Ray at least had gone up one small notch in Mac’s usefulness scale, then went back to his rifle again.

  Jim had started to say something about “having a little something special in my magazine too” when Ray cut him off. “Let’s get back to looking for psycho dogs eh?”

  By 1am Ray had almost decided the night was going to be a bust. So far the most excitement they ‘d had was when Post 3, diagonally across the park from them had come on the radio to report. “I..ah...think we have a dog entering the park from the west side.”

  Ray was on the radio immediately. “Our dog?” There was a pause before Post 3 came back.

  “Nope, not a chance, looks like a Jack Russell. Just thought everyone should know.”

  Ray sighed in frustration. “Just keep an eye on him in case he manages to morph into Cujo or something 3.”

  He was just finishing ‘recycling’ some water into his first empty bottle when Jim said in a voice Ray had never heard him use before, “what the hell is that?” While he quickly zipped himself up and duck walked back to get his binoculars in position Mac had taken a quick look at where Jim’s binoculars were pointed and oriented his rifle in the same direction. As Ray lifted his own binoculars into place Mac let out a low whistle and said very quietly “I have no fucking idea man but I think we just found your dog.”

  Ray managed to get his binoculars pointed in the right direction and after a moment fiddling with the focus knob everything leapt into crystal, green tinted, clarity and he saw what the other two were talking about. Some...thing that looked like a cross between a dog, wolf and wild boar was crossing the park from their left heading slightly away from them at a range of about a hundred meters.

  Lifting the radio to his lips as he studied the animal he quietly announced to the rest of the team “we’ve got...something here. I have no idea what except that it looks like it could damned sure kill someone. About 100 meters to our front moving north to south.”

  After a moment the other stations came back that they couldn’t pick it up, except for 2 – the hut on the South East corner who confirmed “yep, we got it. Too far away to get much detail with our binocs but the army guy says it looks like a cross between a wolf and a damned lion.”

  Studying the creature as it made it’s way with a careful kind of slinking trot across the park Ray found himself both agreeing and disagreeing with the unknown snipers estimation. It had a head like a wolf, that much he was sure, but much wider in the muzzle. Also it’s hind legs looked lithe and powerful, built for speed. But the forequarters seemed much to heavily muscled to go with the rest of it and made it look out of proportion and...unnatural...yes that was just the word. Looking at it through the distorted reality of night vision goggles he couldn’t see its eyes but some part of him knew, instinctively knew that they would be golden. That came from the part of him that was also telling him to run and hide as fast as he could because what he was looking at wasn’t part of the natural world.

  The more rational part of his mind crushed that voice down. “Mac” he said in a voice that was much calmer than he felt “you got it lined up?” “Yep.” He was just about to give the order to shoot as the thing (he couldn’t think of any other way to describe it) passed directly in front of them, now at about 125 meters out, when it just stopped dead in its tracks, raised its nose in the air and after a moment swivelled its head around to look straight at them.

  “What the hell?” he heard himself ask. “It can’t...it can’t see us can it?”

  Mac let out a quiet expletive. “Nope, but I’ll bet he can smell us. Didn’t think about it before except for how it’d affect a shot but the winds behind us.”

  Through the binoculars Ray could have sworn he saw the animal’s mouth draw back in a snarl that he was too far away to hear, and in a moment it was coming straight toward the hide, bounding along quicker than he would have thought possible.

  There was absolutely no hesitation now, simply a primal kind of fear that he felt deep in his stomach and allowed to creep into his voice. “Kill it Mac! Take the shot!” Just after him Jim half shouted “Shoot it!” A moment later there was a cough that sounded much too small for such a big gun, and the wolf or dog or whatever it was tumbled on the ground. I forgot about the silencer was all he had time to think before he watched in amazement as the creature simply got back up and resumed running toward them again, jinking from side to side. Holy shit, it knows we’re shooting at it.

  Another expletive from Mac, followed by three more emphatic coughs from his rifle. Ray watch in fascination as two of the rounds puffed up dust behind it and one clearly hit it in the shoulder, throwing it off course but not stopping it. Ray heard a voice...surely it couldn’t be his that sounded so panicked, screaming into the radio “if anyone has a shot take it!”

  His answer was another trio of dust kicked up from around the beast as the army sniper at Post 2 who had opened fire. And still it came on.

  “Dammit!” Mac suddenly shouted, wrenching the sight off his rifle, flicking the iron sights up and putting his NVGs in place. “It’ll be on us in a second, get your asses ready!” Ray and Jim snapped out of the frozen state they’d be
en in, ripping their weapons from holsters and trying to put the goggles in place. Ray had trouble with his and was only just getting them into place when there was a longer burst from Mac’s rifle and the boom of Jim’s glock – shockingly loud in the confined space of the hide.

  Another few seconds and there was a crack and the hide creaked and leaned alarmingly to one side. Must’ve hit one of the wooden beams holding this thing up his dazed mind thought. Those things were about three inches thick on each side. Then the hide gave out a sickening, tortured groan and collapsed. Never built to last it burst open like a ripe fruit when it hit the ground, spilling the three of them out through the busted roof. Everything looked ghost-like and surreal through his NVGs which had somehow remained in place, if knocked a little askew by the fall. He felt the comforting weight of the Glock in his hand as Mac pulled him to his feet. There was a horrible snarling close by that he seemed to feel in his chest as much as hear and he whirled around to see the thing charging at him. He raised his glock as Mac raised his rifle and tried to aim down the sights through the NVGs. Without realising it fully he started squeezing the trigger, the roar of the handgun drowning out the more polite cough of the rifle.

  Rounds hit the beast and seemed to stop it but only for a moment as it leapt for them with another gut churning snarl. He was fumbling to reload now, trying to slam a spare magazine in while Mac swore some more and tossed his rifle at the creature before drawing a knife from his boot. Then, suddenly there was the crash of gunfire close by. Seven shots, one after the other evenly spaced, not panic fire. The beast let out a snarling yelp at each one, the first sign of pain it had shown so far, and the seventh and final shot blew out the side of its head bringing it crashing to the ground. It slid to a stop no more than a meter from them, finally dead.

  Ray looked to his right in a daze and saw Jim about ten meters away on one knee, still in a shooting position with his gun held rock steady. “Is it dead?” he called. Ray looked back as Mac approached it, losing the knife and drawing his sidearm. He knelt by its side for a long moment, keeping the sidearm pressed to the creature’s skull before withdrawing and holstering his weapon. “Certainly is” he said, appearing to have recovered his equilibrium a lot quicker than Ray had. “That was some nice shooting Detective.”

  Jim got up, holstered his weapon and walked over to give Ray a hand up. As he stood he gave a shaky laugh and caught Jim in a rough hug. “Mighty fine shooting indeed partner, but what the hell took you so long?”

  Jim gave an embarrassed kind of shrug. “Hit my head kind of hard when we bounced out of that hut like a trio of cannonballs. Took me a few seconds to get myself back together and when I finally stopped seeing double you and ol’ Mac there were re-enacting one side of the gunfight at the OK Corral.”

  Mac walked over and extended a hand which Jim shook. Then he got a puzzled look on his face and asked “how come your bullets worked and ours didn’t?”

  Jim gave a weak laugh and simply popped the clip on his pistol, holding it out for them to see. Ray stared. In the light of the moon he could quite clearly see the regular copper casing of the first round, topped with a beautiful silver bullet that gleamed in the moonlight.

  He stared at Jim who laughed again. “Seemed like a good precaution to be prepared for anything. You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay the armourer at the range to have these rounds made, but I think it was worth it.”

  Ray’s brain finally managed to catch up. “Good God, it really was a werewolf?” They turned as one back to where the werewolf had finally been brought to ground. “What the hell?” Mac asked in a quiet voice. There wasn’t a werewolf, wolf, dog or any kind of animal lying there now, just a naked man who looked to be in his twenties with multiple bullet wounds and half his head missing.

  Ray could hear walkie-talkie chatter in the distance as the other teams ran toward their position. Turning to the other two he holstered his weapon, ensuring the safety was on and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “I have absolutely no idea,” he said “how anyone is going to explain this so it makes one lick of sense to someone who didn’t see it.”

  About the Author

  Matt Joyce works in the field of Information Technology as a Service Desk Manager, and writes short stories by night (in-between online gaming sessions and the occasional TV show). He lives in Brisbane, Australia with his wife Kathryn, daughters Alexandra and Ophelia, and two cats on an acre of barely tamed bushland. He will be releasing more short stories in the near future and is working on his first novel, The Third Son, a Viking saga.

  Other books by this author

  Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by Matt Joyce:

  Silverlight (short story) - Something is terrorizing a Sydney park. People are being killed. Is it a person? A dog? A…Werewolf? Two police detectives are about to find out that some legends are all too real.

  Apotropaia (short story) - After a messy breakup Paul is willing to do whatever it takes to win back Sarah, even to the point of answering a weird looking ad on the Internet that promises to solve any problem you have. But will he be able to pay the price?

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