The First Ones Page 17

  Jet smiled, as he saw the machine fly off the roof before Kaylanna could reach it, and he turned back to the pile of werewolves, thinking to help Benjamin, as the giant fought to free himself.

  Kaylanna let out another avian screech and launched herself into the air while rapidly beating her bat-like wings. Jet’s heart dropped as the Ancient increased her speed and gained on the helicopter. Jet looked around for a gun he could use to shoot at the winged beast in a hope to slow her pursuit, but found only empty roof around himself. Helplessly he watched as Kaylanna closed on the helicopter with every beat of her wings.

  Benjamin forced his way out of the pile and fought to gain some distance between himself and the remaining werewolves. Benjamin was still in a half-man, half bear form, but he dropped down to all fours even as blood flowed from multiple bites and several laceration wounds that now covered his body. His movements were ragged and choppy as he backed away from the dozen werewolves that still lived and pressed their attack against him. Too late Benjamin realized how the beasts had driven him to the edge of the building and, sensing their opportunity, the werewolves all jumped forward.

  Benjamin just smacked the first aside, sending it over the edge, but the next few latched their jaws onto whatever purchase they could manage and drove his body off balance. Benjamin roared with pain as more heavy bodies comprised of dense muscle, bone and sinew all slammed into him in a suicide gambit that would drive the Spirit Bear and themselves, over the edge. Ben reached out with one clawed hand, tried to grasp the edge of the roof as he fell and roared when his hand met only empty air as gravity took him. Jet’s ears were filled with the sound of Benjamin’s roar and the wolf’s screams until their voices were cut off by the multiple impacts with the street below.

  Jet started to run for the edge to see if the fall was truly enough to kill Benjamin, but in the quiet following the Benjamin’s fall a strange sound came from the helicopter. Jet turned just in time to see Kaylanna’s bat-like form disappear into the still open bay doors of the helicopter and he wanted to scream when he watched the helicopter sway momentarily, then right itself and fly off into the horizon, leaving him alone on the roof.

  Chapter 26: Aftermath

  Once the helicopter had disappeared from view Jet went to peer over the edge of the building and saw the jumble of dead werewolves where they had come to lay in pools of their own blood on the concrete of the parking lot. He stared down to watch the beast’s bodies underwent the final change as their fur, skin and flesh began melting into bubbly stew as whatever magic had been within them was released in death. Jet watched as their outer forms turned to an ugly ooze, which in death then sloughed off of pale white human skin. Apparently, the beasts reverted back into human form when they died. Jet snorted in disgust at the sight, knowing that later, when the authorities arrived, the changed bodies would simply be grouped in with other human victims killed in the attack on the hospital. The truth and strangeness of the evening would be ignored or given some ridiculous, yet plausible explanation.

  It was in that moment of frustration and revulsion that Jet’s eyes locked onto Benjamin’s form lying motionless on the concrete, lifeless as all the other beasts who lay around him.

  Jet headed for the stairwell and had to maneuver his way around more bodies of rapidly decomposing werewolves strewn about the rooftop. The smell was minimal, perhaps due to the rapid pace at which the process was happening, but once he descended the roof’s access stairs and returned to the top floor, the sheer mass of werewolf corpses was overwhelming, and he practically had to wade through the slurry of organic soup covering the floor to get to the stairwell.

  With his clothes tattered and covered in... whatever, Jet made his way back down the stairwell toward the main floor, thinking all the while about what he was going to say to anyone who accosted him, but as he arrived on the main floor all he found were bodies. Human bodies this time, and all in various states of dismemberment or some disgustingly graphic evisceration. The werewolves hadn’t spared anyone as they cleared their way to the roof and, although instinct made Jet desperately want to search the floor, he knew looking for survivors would be a fruitless effort.

  The werewolves hadn’t been regular beasts driven by instinct. They were thinking, intelligent creatures, and had planned in their attack on the Hospital to kill everyone inside.

  No witnesses.

  The thought had occurred to Jet that perhaps an alarm of some kind might have alerted the police or…someone? Jet moved to the reception desk to check a phone, but there was no dial tone, not even the sound of static. The lines were cut... the phones totally dead, as was everything else in and around the hospital.

  Even though his body had recovered, Jet’s mind started shutting down as a result of the horrific events and guilt of having failed... not to mention the fact that the world was about to end. His mind was basically short-circuiting and Jet felt himself moving through the carnage without any real idea where he was headed until he eventually found himself outside the hospital and breathing in the night air.

  He looked back toward the horizon in the direction that the helicopter had taken when it finally disappeared, but of course there was nothing. Instinct made him walk to the spot where Benjamin had struck the pavement and, to his surprise, he found only the decomposing bodies of the werewolves, now in their human forms. There was no sign of Benjamin in the pile, but Jet was so drained that he couldn’t think of why it mattered anymore.

  He hadn’t heard the siren, but the flashing lights of an ambulance heading into the ER partially woke him from his daze. He didn’t want to answer any questions, after all, what could he possibly say? He had no intention of being restrained by well-intentioned paramedics or suspicious policemen, so he jogged over to Benjamin’s pickup truck, found the keys where he had stashed them in case they needed to make a hasty getaway, and drove from the scene.

  Jet was stoic as he drove the pickup along the highway toward his grandfather’s house. There was nothing remotely close to what might be considered a lucid thought in his brain, and the need to get to his grandfather’s house was more of a simple default response than an actual plan.

  Grandpa George understands what is happening, he thought. He’ll know what to do. Jet repeated this over and over again like a mindless chant as he made the journey back to his grandfather’s cabin.

  Eventually the sun rose and when he had arrived at the Ferry landing he nearly went out of his mind having to sit and wait for the first Ferry of the day.

  As he waited, Jet tried to think of whatever else he might have been able to do in order to change the outcome of the previous evening. The memory of the helicopter disappearing into the dark night sky while he had just stood there and watched it go was particularly painful to endure, yet that vision replayed itself over and over in his head.

  He didn’t remember boarding the ferry or the ride back to Vancouver nor did he remember having driven off the boat and continuing his trek back to his Grandfather’s home until he reached the turnoff. The sight of the familiar sign raised his spirits ever so slightly and, as he traveled under the canopy of trees that lined the dirt road to his grandfather’s cabin, Jet had convinced himself that he would rejoin the fight alongside Grandpa George and whatever it was he had planned.

  Then everything went from horrible to much worse as Jet saw the awful, and so familiar, red and blue flashes from the roof mounted lights of the police and emergency vehicle’s around the perimeter of his grandfather’s cabin.

  Police cars blocked the dirt road, but Jet could see several more around the cabin as he killed the engine of the pickup truck and jumped from the vehicle. Multiple eyes from various law enforcement personnel turned in his direction as he ran for the cabin and two police officers on guard by the road pulled their weapons. The officers immediately lowered their guns upon seeing the expression on Jet’s face, and quickly holstered their firearms as they caught him before he could get past their police line. They weren’t tr
ying to hurt him, Jet knew that, but they still forced him to the ground, pinning his arms behind his back.

  “Grandpa!!” Jet screamed, “Grandpa George!!”

  The police officers looked at each other as they held Jet down, their faces determined, but not unsympathetic, and one of them whispered words of comfort quietly into Jet’s ear, and he stopped resisting, as a few more officers hustled over.

  “Grandpa!!” Jet moaned again, as a man in a tie, as opposed to a uniform looked down on him.

  “When he calms down,” the man said softly to the officers, “secure him in a vehicle, I’ll need to ask him some questions.”

  The words registered in Jet’s mind, so he stopped struggling and just set the side of his face on the ground as he cried.

  Chapter 27: Understanding

  Jet was taken to the closest police station where, once the shock, loss and grief had a chance to run its course, he answered what questions he could as best he was able. His grandfather was dead and, according to what little information the police could give him, it was being treated as some kind of animal attack. He wasn’t a suspect, but the police weren’t ruling out the possibility of a homicide, mostly because they knew there wasn’t an abundance of wolves, wild dogs or bears on Victoria Island. There was a particularly nasty theory being considered about someone using dogs as the murder weapons, but it wasn’t catching a lot of steam from the more sensible officers. The crime scene investigators found animal tracks around the house that resembled oversized wolf tracks, but they couldn’t identify the breed and had taken to their computers in search of a match.

  Of course, Jet knew the truth. Somehow Kaylanna had been tracking Ursula and Aurora and the trail led her to his grandfather’s house where her brood had killed the only blood relative he had left. Whether it was in the process of gathering information, or just out of spite, he didn’t know, but Grandpa George had known where they were going, which explained how Kaylanna had been able to organize her forces so quickly and been able to launch such a thorough attack at the hospital.

  He was released without charges filed against him, and Jet made no effort at hiding his intentions as he headed straight back to his grandfather’s house. The scene was still cordoned off with yellow police tape, but none of the officers or investigators remained. Jet didn’t even bother to see if anyone was watching as he ripped through the tape and pushed the front door open.

  The house was in a shamble, everything was torn, shattered or knocked askew, as he surveyed the place he had once called home. Irreplaceable antiques and artifacts Jet remembered from his childhood along with family pictures, furniture and fixtures were all in pieces. Absentmindedly, he righted some of the larger furniture in a half-minded attempt to straighten up, but then quickly quit when he realized how ridiculous the effort seemed. He had been raw with the guilt from having allowed Ursula and Aurora to be taken by the witch, now it compounded beyond measure with the knowledge that he had led Kaylanna to his grandfather as well.

  Jet awoke from the daydream to find that he was unconsciously clearing and cleaning the rubble. It was almost as if his body was just compelled to do it, so he just went with the impulse, stacking the ruins of the home on one side of the living room, while carefully collecting the remains of all the artifacts and spiritual relics his grandfather had collected over the years and organized them as best he could on the other side. It took hours, but Jet managed to fill a couple of large construction buckets with all the important or significant pieces of his grandfather’s collection, before taking them outside and setting them next to the fire pit.

  His body was on autopilot, his eyes registering what he was doing without his mind actively telling him what to do. It wasn’t unlike the experience he had with Aurora early on in the Range Rover, but it was far less overwhelming.

  Jet started a fire, and when the wood had burned to charcoals, Jet began slowly transferring the contents of the buckets, one at a time, onto the glowing logs. His modern mind felt that the pieces could be glued back together, but his native mind knew that these were spiritual objects, and once they had been as desecrated as they were, tradition demanded that they now had to be destroyed by fire.

  By the time the sun began to drop in the sky Jet had finished putting the last of the artifacts onto the coals, and he watched the smoke rise into the colored twilight of the cloudy sky. His eyes scanned the horizon and he felt the tears that streaked his cheeks cool in the night air as it wafted over his face. He felt like he was going to burst, as though a pressure had built up inside him, and it could only be relieved by shouting as loud as he could at the heavens. Jet took a deep breath and let it out, but the sound that came from him was more of a wail than anything else. A staccato of noise, rising and falling as his lungs wavered under his sadness. He didn’t realize just when the words had begun coming from his mouth, but he recognized the tribal song his grandfather had taught him, and it came as easily as though he had been singing it daily, every word rolling off his tongue with ease, gaining more and more volume with every passing moment.

  Jet could feel a vibration around him as he chanted, and the sensations enveloped him in a cocoon that soothed his grief and lifted his spirit ever. He looked away from the sunset and turned to the fire before him. It was then that he saw his grandfather’s medicine bag. It was a small bag, made in the messenger style, or perhaps a purse or satchel, made of buckskin with the flap that was secured by a button made from an antler rosette. Jet remembered how important the bag had always been to his grandfather, who had cared for the bag almost as though it were a part of his body. Jet didn’t realize he had set it aside, but thought he simply hadn’t had the heart to burn it with the rest of the remains.

  Carefully he lifted it and lovingly wiped most of the dirt from its surface. The dirty leather felt warm and soft in his hands and he reactively clenched his fists tightly to the leather, feeling that there were multiple objects still inside the pouch.

  Memory stirred and Jet closed his eyes to picture a time long ago when he had sat around a similar fire pit on the reservation. He opened his eyes to mere slits and stared past the fire to see a vision of his grandfather regarding him from the opposite side. The warm expression in his grandfather’s eyes made Jet smile and he felt himself a boy of nine years once more. He had no recollection of this moment up to now, but now as the vision played out before his eyes, he remembered…

  ***

  “Slow, deep breaths boy,” Grandpa George encouraged.

  Jet was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire as Grandpa George watched over and coached him from a short distance away.

  “Concentrate on the feeling in your legs and pretend that feeling is actually like a glow coming off your body. Got it?”

  Jet nodded.

  “Good. Now try to slowly push that glow coming off your legs into the ground where you can feel it in contact with you.”

  “Through my butt?” Jet said with a half-laugh.

  “No talking,” Grandpa George admonished, “but yes, through your butt, or wherever else you feel the ground touching you.”

  Jet did as he was told as best he could, but didn’t really understand what his grandfather was trying to teach him. Then he felt something strange. It was almost as if the ground around him had turned soft, too soft to support his weight, and he had begun sinking into it. In the back of his mind he understood that his body wasn’t dropping down into the ground, instead he was extending his mind, or at least his senses, into the earth. It was frightening at first and panic had begun to set in as Jet felt almost as though he might pass fully underground with no way to get out, but then the earth itself welcomed him and comforted him as if wrapping arms around him. Jet swooned in the embrace and it reminded him of a time when his mother had been alive.

  Somewhere in the back of his head he could hear his grandfather call out to him, but Jet pushed more and more of himself, his spirit, deeper into the earth and he could feel the earth reveal its secrets a
nd connected him to all the life in the soil. From the smallest insect to the roots of the tallest tree, he could feel as though he were a part of it and he reveled in it all.

  Jet could hear his grandfather again and now the sound was urgent and desperate. Jet could tell something was very wrong and, although he couldn’t imagine what it could be because everything seemed so wonderful and so right. He was reluctant to do so, but Jet reached out again, but this time he drove his consciousness into a dense weave that pulled in around himself, tighter and tighter, until his mind coalesced back into his body and he could once again feel the rise and fall of his own chest as he breathed.

  Reality came crashing in as he felt his grandfather shaking his body and shouting for him to wake up.

  Jet stirred and, upon seeing Jet’s confused eyes open, Grandpa George pulled him in for a tight hug. Jet could feel his grandfather’s uneven breathing as the elder cried into his small shoulder.

  Through his tears Grandpa George asked, “Where did you go boy?”

  Jet didn’t know the answers, but he did understand that what had only seemed like a couple of minutes to him had actually been several hours. Jet remembered the feeling of safety and comfort in the earth’s embrace, but now those feelings seemed deceptive, as if he had been lulled into something that was not as it had seemed. Fear flared through him and he started crying as he held onto his grandfather as tight as he could.

  ***

  The memory and vision faded leaving Jet standing alone in front of the fire pit staring down at the buckskin pouch he held in his hands. Curiosity drove him to gently unbutton the flap, allowing him to peek inside. Small bundles of powders and dried herbs were neatly separated inside, along with a pipe bowl and its carved stem, a sage bundle for smudging and a curiously long thin object wrapped in paper. Jet lifted the object, which was of such length that he had to work carefully, in order to get it out of the bag’s opening, and as he unwrapped the paper he revealed a large piece of knapped obsidian and it comfortably fell into his hand.