Wolfteam

The Advent of Wolf Team

Omnes angeli, boni et Mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra.

"All angels, good and bad, have the power to transmute our bodies."

I’d heard that once, back in Catholic Sunday school, what seems like lifetimes ago. It comes back to me now as I run, drifting through my mind like a miasma. The forest’s sparse this time of year, but thick with a low, cloying fog. My bestial snarls of exertion are echoed by the distant shouts of men barking orders. Getting closer.

Every breath tears like a saw at my chest, my blood is acid. Soon I’ll falter; my lunging gait will pitch and I’ll stumble, plunge into a scratchy cushion of late autumn leaves. They’ll catch me.

Lights up ahead, glimpsed between the bobbing trees at the forest’s edge. I slow, knowing this body has reached its limit. I have only minutes now, if I’m lucky. I stagger, step by agonizing step – and something surprising happens. My shoulders disengage and ease back. My ribs, which feel swollen beyond my chest, seem to retract.

Crashing out of the forest behind me, the soldiers reach the town a moment later. They scan the crowd, but it’s too late: I’ve already blended in with the citizens out for their nightly strolls.

1. DISTURBANCE

In 1991, I was re-assigned to the 31st Ranger Battalion following a freak injury. Right around when it all started. Of course, back then, we didn’t know what ‘it’ was. But we each had our theories. Soldiers talk.

Reports claimed livestock had been slain with surprising savagery by unseen things in the night. When the first people turned up dead, mutilated beyond recognition, our investigations turned up caches of animal carcasses in the foothills… but no sign of whatever was responsible.

It was strange from the start: why call the military for a municipal (albeit gruesome) issue? We were all versed in the usual folklore – Area 51, Roswell, and the like – and though we should’ve known better, our imaginations got the best of us. Teams either came back with nothing to report, or didn’t come back at all. Just when my anxiety neared a climax, I received a summons from General Garrick.

2. THE WOLF TEAM

They were calling it Wolf Team. That’s all I knew.

I was brought to a facility thirty miles away, my wrist sore from signing the stack of waivers and NDA’s they’d dropped in my lap. They escorted me to a briefing room filled with other brawny, tattooed soldiers like myself. The General said we were to become the vanguard in a new line of military research; a specialized team to neutralize this cryptic threat.

We crammed into a service elevator and descended. Below, white plaster halls branched out like an ant colony. We passed heavily-armed sentinels. Laboratories. Smock-clad men and women swarming around high-tech equipment. We all must’ve had the same questions, but we also had the same lumps stuck in our throats. The General led us to a surgical theater. That was where I first saw one: muscular torso, hair as coarse as fur, limbs straining against iron restraints; protracted jaw like a muzzle; huge, gnashing teeth dripping strings of saliva. It was seven feet tall if it was a foot.

It suddenly clicked: not every soldier who’d vanished had met a gruesome end. Some must’ve been routed here, under strict orders of silence. Pawns in some sick game.

3. PRIDE

The General was vague about the nature of the mutation. That it was a mutation was all we were given. Though vicious, rabid, and unfathomably strong, they’d finally taken one alive. Now, our task was to contain the rest of them and preempt widespread panic.

It was to be an extinction. We were the reapers; the ones who’d introduce them to their cruel maker. The training was suitably intense. Every night I’d curl up, nursing tender skin, trying to suppress what I’d experienced. They were trying to elicit some reaction from us, though I didn’t know exactly what. Some progressed faster than others and we