FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Wolves in Winter

By Searska GreyRaven

The day he died, everything had been the same.

The same alarm went off at the same time, the same kiss and nuzzle goodbye, the same ghost of eggs and sausage in the air when the door clicked shut. She roused herself an hour after, following that ghost to the kitchen, adding to it the rich scent of black coffee and sweet cream. The same sun rose over the same trees, and the same mourning doves cooed from the same ragged pine tree outside her window.

And when he came home, they exchanged the same joyful kisses, the same frenzied bout of lovemaking, and curled around each other like kittens on the couch while they waited for the same pizza to arrive.

Only, it didn't.

He went to answer the door, like he always did, and instead of the low exchange of greetings and money, there was a bang, a yelp, the sound of something shattering.

She didn't know it yet, but the shattering was her heart.

She screamed, howled, raced down that same hallway that was now a maze of unfamiliar horrors, spattered with red, so much red, and found him lying on the door mat, the same door mat she'd told him needed to be replaced a hundred times and he never quite got around to it. She couldn't see the mat, nor the white tiles around it through the red.

She screamed his name, the same name she'd whispered when she fell asleep every night for two decades, the same name she'd cried out in pleasure and exasperation and joy for as long as she cared to remember.

Only it wasn't his voice that answered. It was a voice behind her, filled with cold, dry hate.

"Death to abominations."

Training took over where spirit once held sway. She was in motion before the words had even reached her ears, her claws out, her lips peeled from her teeth and her long ears flat against her skull. She lashed out with all her rage and grief, hurling the gun away and tearing out the throat of the monster who ended her life.

The sun set, a dove mourned, and nothing was the same anymore.

"Cara," he whispered with his last breath. "Cara, I love you, please, be good."

But there was nothing left to be good for.

***

"Take hope from a man, and you leave behind a wolf in winter."

The Augment Project was one of the darkest in military history. A blend of genetic engineering and vivisection, the intent was to give soldiers a super-human edge on the battle field. Eyes like a hawk, endurance like a wolf, the strength of a bear, these were the things they impressed upon their soldiers. These "augments" were neither human nor animal, but a chimeric blend of both. Natural born humans simply couldn't measure up to those who had been augmented. Any ground an augment unit trod became a killing field. Like the atom bomb before, they became a promise rather than a threat, and though the war ended, life for the augments went on. They were still soldiers, and had earned their way back to civilian life. Honorable discharge, retirement, and a pension.

Only that life no longer wanted them.

The world branded them as monsters, abominations, and thought they belonged in labs or zoos, not PTA meetings or community councils. The Law, of course, only applied to humans, not animals. It would be decades before the Law caught up with morality.

But Cara and Nathaniel were in love. Damn the law! they said, we'll go where no one can bother us, far away, and it'll be okay.

God, how she'd wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe it with all her shattered, aching heart. She wanted to believe there was a future for a thing like her, battered and broken by war and death and pain. For two decades, she wanted to believe. And for want of two decades more, she might even have begun to.

The world ended for her in a bang, taking with it all hope.

Snow fell softly all around her, but she barely noticed it. Thick fur insulated her, but it was the hate inside that kept the chill at bay. She was far colder inside than any winter wind.

They never found her. The papers and the newscasters all assumed she'd snapped, gone savage, killed both her husband and the pizza boy before fleeing into the night. A massive hunt converged, but she had left behind no trace of her whereabouts. And though a lynch mob still marched the streets a few nights each week, the beast in her was too canny, too clever to be caught flatfooted again. She'd trusted them, she'd even helped a few of them from time to time tracking lost sheep or chickens or children. And they turned on her without a second thought.

Damn them, she thought. Damn them all.

"Be good, Cara. Please, be good."

She shook her head and bared her fangs. There was nothing good in the world anymore. A single moment out of place had stolen it forever.

She sat under a tree and field-stripped her weapon, cleaning the sniper rifle with the same methodical care that had seen her through the war. She shouldered it, dropped to all fours, and raised her muzzle to the wind.

Somewhere, a mourning dove sobbed.

There were still two of them out there. Two left in this little piss-hole of a village, and she could move on.

They called themselves the Pure. God had separated Man from Beast, they said, and bringing them together was an act of utter blasphemy. These augments should be executed, they claimed, put to death for merely daring to exist!

I didn't ask for this life, she thought. I asked to serve and protect, and the only way I can do that now is to make sure you monsters can't hurt anyone else ever again.

The mourning dove sobbed again, and she saw it perched in the tree above, as grey as the winter sky, save for a single blood-red spot on its breast.

Be good.

"This is the only good left in me," she whispered.

The dove cried like its heart had broken, but refused to fly off.

She turned her back and fled into the forest. The sun had set, like it always would, and she had work to do.

They met every night, out in the forest and far from the prying eyes of the village snoops. There had been more than a dozen of these Pure, but after six months of careful stalking and execution, there were only two left.

After I'd taken your friends, you'd think they'd be more cautious, she thought. But no, they still believed they were masters of nature, that God would protect them and shield them from harm.

There is no God here, only Hell.

"Please. Be good."

Good got you killed.

"Please."

Everything good in me died with you.

Her ears perked, canine hearing picking up a conversation.

"This can't continue. You know they're talking about making us leave town? Leave! And go into hiding! Over a filthy animal!"

"She's more than an animal, Dave, she's a trained sniper. Maybe we should--"

"No. Out of the question! I won't have some abomination chase me out of the home my family has lived in for four generations!"

"What was that?"

She froze, and the three spun around, searching. They couldn't have seen her, not from this distance, not with those weak human eyes nor heard her with their deaf human ears. After a moment, they settled down again. Slowly, methodically, she began the process of aiming. It was a still night, but she knew the havoc a stray zypher could cause.

She could hear them again, this time more faintly. They'd lowered their voices.

"...still part human. It was murder! He didn't even touch her, and now, we're paying the price. We have to confess--

"We confess to nothing. The Law has no place here. We are above the Law! We act as instruments of God. And that thing has killed far more people than we have! It needs to be put down!"

"She was in the War! A soldier! For the country you claim you're protecting by trying to murder her--"

"You know they're talking of allowing that augmentation to be performed on civilians? You have a daughter, do you not? How would you feel knowing a pig's heart was in her chest instead of her own?"

"I'd feel grateful that she was alive! It's one thing to fight against this augmentation being used in war, but killing innocent people--"

She adjusted her aim, slightly. The wind picked up, then slowed, and she adjusted again.

"There are no innocents when it comes to those things. Either you are with God, or you are against Him. He was sleeping with a beast, an abomination before Our Lord. The only fitting punishment was death."

She growled silently, her clawed finger tight against the trigger but she didn't pull it, not yet. Patience, she thought. Patience. The shot wasn't right. Sooner or later, one of them would move and she would strike, but not yet. Not yet.

The snow fell harder, mantling her in white. She didn't move, barely breathed. She filled her mouth with snow to hide her breath, and waited.

Finally, her prey moved and the moment was right. The trigger clicked, her gun roared, and the mourning dove moaned in the tree above.

There is nothing more purely red than fresh blood upon snow, and for just a moment, she reveled in the sight through her scope. But she couldn't stay here. Someone would have heard the shot, they'd trace it back to this spot, and she needed to be long gone before then.

One left.

And the mourning dove sobbed.

***

Nights were always the hardest. Nights reminded her of how utterly alone she was, how there was nothing between her and the black hate of the world. The first few nights after it happened, she howled and howled and howled until her throat broke, until she coughed up blood she swore was from her broken heart and found she no longer had the soul to care.

That was the first time she saw the dove, and it had followed her ever since, sobbing and sighing. There was an old Native legend about them, that they watched over the souls of those who had died of a broken heart. I haven't died yet, she thought at the dove.

It didn't reply. It merely regarded her with those fathomless eyes and preened one wing.

One left.

It would end tonight. She knew she should wait, should stalk and learn and pounce at the right moment, but she was tired. So tired. What was left of her fractured heart hung heavy in her chest, the pendulum of a broken clock. She wanted this to be over.

One left.

"I love you. Please--"

I am not good. Maybe I was never good. I can't be what I never was.

"--be good."

I'm not.

The last one wasn't at home. The lights were off and the car wasn't in the driveway, but she could see the faint outline of two people pacing the living room through the thermal lens of her scope. Her target wasn't at home.

She curled her lip. Of course, the last one would be difficult.

Should she leave, go hunting for the last one? Or should she stay here, and wait? He was bound to return to his family eventually. Wasn't he? She couldn't be sure. Someone so willing to tear apart one family might have no problem doing it to their own. The full moon poured silvered light upon the snow, and her mind was made up.

Hunt it was.

She moved through the night, a ghost walking among the living, so careful and quiet that the few people out at this hour didn't notice her. She had a lifetime of hiding among normal people under her belt. Gloves, a hood, and a thick scarf hid what skill alone could not.

He wasn't in any of the usual haunts. Not the bar, nor his best friend's house, nor the crossroads near the church. He wasn't in the meeting place in the forest, nor was he at the small police station.

On a whim, she turned and backtracked, and found him at the least likely place.

On her doorstep, at the place where it all began.

"Cara, Cara--"

"I know you're out there."

She paused. Her sniper rifle was still across her back. She still had a hand gun, but teeth and claws would also suffice. Oh yes, more than suffice. For this last one, she would prefer them. She knew where the rivers of blood flowed beneath the flesh, knew how to rend them and tear them and drain them. The fur along her spine rose, her fingers flexed and the world narrowed to a single sharpened point.

"I don't know if you can hear me. I don't even know if you care. But I'm going to say it anyway, for all the good it does. I'm sorry."

She should spring, should rip him apart for daring to sit where he fell, where her life ended and this new living hell began.

"I didn't pull the trigger, but I'm every bit as guilty. I should have stopped him. I should have gone after him when I found out Dave had given that delivery kid the gun and done, I don't know, something. _Anything,_except what I did. I went home, to my family, to my daughter, because I didn't think he'd really do it. I'm...I'm so sorry."

At first, she thought it was the mourning dove sobbing, but it came from...it came from--

"I know that doesn't even begin to help. I can't imagine what it was like. I don't want to. I couldn't live with it, if it were me. I can't even blame you for killing them. God knows, I'd probably do exactly what you're doing now, hunting them down like animals for it."

She listened, against her better judgment.

He continued. "I know I don't have a right to ask, but it ends with me, right? I'm the last one. I never wanted this. I never meant--I only wanted to stop that technology from being used to hurt people. More people." He took a deep breath, exhaled. "Weaponized genes. God, what a world we live in. What they did to you, what they used you for, it wasn't right. You deserved to be happy, and we took that from you. But it should end here, right? I'm here. Please, I'm begging you, leave my family out of this. Finish it, and may you find peace."

His...family? Did he really think I'd...that I'd...

Cara tilted her head back to howl, but it was silent. Her broken throat hadn't made a sound since Nathaniel was taken from her.

"Cara, I love you, please be good."

She pulled out her hand gun. It would have to be enough. She emerged from the hedge where she'd been hiding and approached her door step.

The last one stood, his eyes squinted shut and his lips moving in silent prayer. She leveled the gun between his eyes, the trigger a cold crescent against her finger.

"Cara, I love you."

I know.

"...please be good."

This is the only way I know how.

She turned the gun on herself, and pulled the trigger.

Somewhere, a mourning dove sobbed, and was finally answered by another.