The Fall - Ch 4

         The fire was slowly dying down, with the grease that was covering the grate in the fireplace occasionally popping. Mike had just finished the last of the three venison steaks and baked potato that he had made. This was the last day that he would have steak. The wolf was just finishing off the scraps that Mike had thrown down his way.

         “I guess after all this time we should give you a name, huh?” Mike asked the wolf. For some reason the wolf hadn’t left the area of the cabin, regardless of where Mike went. “How about Tasisure?” he suggested, using the Sioux word for wolf. The wolf’s ear perked forward and he gave a barking grunt, which Mike took as his way of saying “Call me whatever you want.”

         “So, Tasisure it is then” he said reaching down to touch the wolf’s head with his fingertips, letting his fingers drift through the snow white fur on the very top of his head. The soft hairs separated when Mike’s fingers touched them and formed small grooves on the top of his head.

         From outside the cabin there came the muffled sound of metal clinking together and a muffled curse. Tasisure was on his feet so fast that Mike didn’t see the actual act of the wolf standing up. It was as if in the space of a heartbeat he went from lying peacefully to standing between Mike’s chair and the door, with the hair on his back and hackles slowly rising, as if pressed up by a hand running slowly the wrong way up the back of the wolf from a few inches above his tail to the back of his neck.

         Mike was somewhat slower in standing, but by the time he gained his feet the Desert Eagle was in his right hand. There was no longer a time in this strange new world that the gun was farther than a few feet away. Military training again took over as he realized that the best advantage that he had was that he knew the layout of the cabin and no one else did. With that in mind, Mike’s first act was to kill all the lights in the cabin.

         As the cabin dropped into darkness Mike was able to see a shadow pass over the window, cast by the moonlight. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike could see Tasisure was constantly repositioning himself between himself and the front door. The only problem that he could see was that the pale, white coat gave away the wolf’s position in the dimly lit room. Mike’s training told him that no one would approach the cabin as only one person once they had tripped the makeshift alarm.

         Mike could hear the doorknob on the cabin slowly start to move and realized that since he was going to need to go get the finished meat out of the smoking hut after they had finished eating he hadn’t locked the front door. The door started to swing open and Mike saw the hand that had opened the door pull quickly back. That ended any doubts that this could be someone who was lost and looking for other people. Anyone who was doing that would have knocked first, or at least would have called out once the door was opened. The next reason that Mike would have given was that the hand that reappeared had a gun in it.

         Tasisure growled deep in his throat, making a sound that would have had Mike running if it were directed at him. The gravelly quality of it quickly changed to a bark of sorts as the white wolf threw itself, like a guided missile, at the throat of the person that started to come through the door. The man, which Mike could tell it was from the shout he let out as the wolf launched, was knocked to the side and into the open door. The intruder’s gun went off as he and the wolf crashed to the floor, and the man’s shout ended abruptly as Mike saw Tasisure’s head twist to the side. There was a gurgling sound as the shout tried to continue through the ripped out voice-box of the thief.

         Another figure was running towards the open door of the cabin and Mike could see the intermittent flashes as they took unaimed shots at the pale shape of the wolf. Mike’s hands came up and took up a steady shooters stance with the Desert Eagle. He knew he was far enough in the shadows that the running figure never saw the movement. The heavy handgun bucked hard in his hands and a split second later the shape in the yard spun as the heavy fifty caliber bullet passed through its chest. The shape crumpled in the yard and did not move again, so Mike’s combat instincts took over and he forgot that target and moved on to looking for the next.

         There wasn’t long to wait as a shape ran in the front door and spun in Mike’s direction. As the man spun towards him, Mike centered the front sight on the middle of the shape and pulled the trigger. Again the Desert Eagle erupted in his hand just as the spinning shape took his shot. The intruder’s round missed high, but was close enough for Mike to hear the buzzing that sounded like an extremely upset bumble bee, go streaking past his left ear and hit the wooden wall right behind him.

         The intruder wasn’t so lucky. The heavy round entered just to the left of their spine in the small of their back and made them continue the spin, even while their legs gave out as the round passed through their spine and tore through vital organs before exiting through the right side by their hip.

         Mike ran over to the shape on the floor of the cabin. “How many are you?!” he yelled directly into the man’s face.

         “Ow… Fuck…You shot me, damnit… I can’t feel my damn legs…” the motionless man cried out.

         “And I’m gonna shoot you in stages starting with your fucking fingertips if you don’t answer my goddamn question. How many of you fuckers are there?!” Mike screamed into his face, the cords on his neck starting to strain and his speech pattern falling back into his military speak with all the shooting and death. Tasisure walked over at this point and put his nose almost into the man’s face and started baring his teeth and growling.

         “Ok! Call that fucking thing off! There were only 3 of us… ow… I can’t believe you shot me! And you killed Krystal!!”

         “Who the hell is Krystal?” Mike thought to himself. As he walked slowly into the front yard he realized that his first kill had not been a man at all, but was a middle aged woman. She had a striking resemblance to the man who lay dying in the cabin. His shot had taken her right over the heart, and Mike knew that there had been no pain. It was odd to Mike to feel pity for someone that had been a target, while at the same time he knew they would have had no issues with shooting him. This woman had been shooting at Tasisure and the man dying in his cabin had taken a shot at him.

         Mike knew that staying in this area was not likely to turn out well. First of all, the man he had shot finally bled out in the living room where he had fallen, and the man Tasisure had killed had left an enormous pool of blood from his torn throat. In the past months Tasisure had grown in strength, with Mike sharing food, and all 140 pounds of wolf had been used to shred the mans neck.

         The only one that Mike knew the name of was Krystal, and he had never known her in life. Just known he as someone that was a threat to him and Tasisure. Mike had done what was needed, and he still was. He placed the incendiary charge on top of the shortwave. Basically, if he was going to lose it, no one else was going to gain it.

         He finished packing the last of the dried venison in he frame backpack. From there he went and to the living room and put the rest of his canned foods in the pile in there. Once that was done, Mike pulled on his boots and laced them, put on his backpack, and strapped the Desert Eagle to his thigh in a military style drop down holster. Next he picked up his rifle and strapped it to the backpack.

         He took one last look around the cabin as he placed the incendiary grenade on top of the pile of cans. At the center of the pile was the last of the gasoline for the generator. He went to the shortwave and pulled the pin on the grenade there, then went to the pile of food and pulled that one. He then walked out of the cabin, getting about fifty feet when he heard a muffled pop, followed by another. Mike knew it would take a few seconds to burn through the pile of food, and then it came.

         There was a much louder explosion and the windows of the cabin blew out with an orange flash and sprinkled over the snow. The living room area of the cabin was burning completely now, and he could see that the bedroom area, where the shortwave was, had started to burn as well at this point.

         Mike walked to the back of the cabin and put another grenade on the block of the small generator, pulled the pin, and walked towards the shed. In the shed was the 4 wheeler that he has gassed up before moving the gas can to the living room. He climbed on and started the engine, pulling it out of the shed slowly, then quickly tossing 2 incendiary grenades into the interior of the shed and goosing the gas.

         There were tears in his eyes as he looked away from the cabin for the last time. He looked toward the deep rutted road and there at the head of it stood his white wolf.