The First Ones Read online

  He dumped the practically headless body onto the road and said, “All hell is going to break loose, if and when somebody finds this thing.”

  “No, if you leave it there, they will claim the body,” the woman had initially responded cryptically, but when she looked at Jet something in his expression must have made the woman realize that she needed to elaborate. “They don’t want the secret of their existence becoming public knowledge just yet.”

  “They? Who?” Jet was surprised at how angry he had just sounded.

  “Would it not be better if we were to discuss such things while driving away from here?” she asked quietly.

  Jet let out a long sigh, and once again he wasn’t going to be able to argue with such simple logic. He walked around to his side of the vehicle and climbed back into the Driver’s seat. Shifting the Range Rover into drive, Jet quickly but carefully drove the car another hundred yards before forced into beginning the navigation of the first of a series of long, winding turns that would eventually lead them to the Interstate.

  Chapter 8: One with Everything

  The trio drove in silence for almost half an hour. The girl had fallen asleep in the woman’s arms before Jet broke the silence, and whispered quietly, so as not to awaken the child, “All right, let’s get to it.”

  The woman closed her eyes and smiled, “I assume you have some questions you’d like me to answer?”

  “Uh, well yeah,” Jet agreed sarcastically, “you could say that.”

  “Where would you like me to begin?” she inquired, with a small smile.

  “Maybe we should start with where we are going? I’ve been driving nearly half an hour, five minutes of which has been on the Interstate, yet I have absolutely no idea where I’m headed.”

  The woman chuckled, “If you would be so kind as to drive for Crescent City, there’s a small executive airport, and an airplane waiting for us. Once we leave, you may feel free to keep the vehicle, as a reward for your trouble, because we won’t be returning for it.”

  The offer made Jet feel very uneasy for two reasons. First, although it was true that despite the blood and brains that “Jackson-Pollack’d” the interior, the Range Rover was still worth more than he made in a year, which made what he had just been offered sound very much like a bribe, or at least a set-up of some sort. Secondly, something inside him was telling Jet that he desperately needed a lot of answers, or he would be plagued by what had happened tonight for the rest of his life.

  “Crescent City is over an hour away, we can talk about restitution for my troubles later.”

  The woman raised one eyebrow at Jet, “Of course.”

  “So, who are you people?” he asked.

  The woman nodded and turned to look out the window at the night sky.

  “My name is Ursula. But please believe me when I say that my name isn’t really important, as much as my…”

  Jet could hear the pain in her voice grow as her words trailed off and he decided to keep silent, letting her find the words that were eluding her at the moment. When Ursula spoke again her voice was completely devoid of the earlier emotion, “as much as what I am tasked to do.”

  And what would that be? Jet wondered to himself.

  “This safety of this child is of the utmost importance, and I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

  Jet remembered something the child had said back where he had first come upon the Range Rover.

  “Then I guess that makes you ‘The Guardian’?”

  Ursula whipped her head away from the night sky and looked at Jet fiercely, “How do you know that?!”

  Jet pretended not to notice that the Desert Eagle handgun had somehow managed to find its way back into Ursula’s hand, “The kid mentioned it when I first saw her. She didn’t name you specifically of course, but after what you just said it seemed logical.”

  Ursula seemed to relax at those words, pointed the weapon aside and turned back to the window.

  Jet pressed his lips together and gritted his teeth in an attempt to control his anger.

  “That’s the second time tonight I thought you might shoot me. Do not raise that gun to me again, and this is the only warning I’m going to give you.”

  Jet was almost certain Ursula was going to wheel her head around and press the barrel of the gun right into his temple. Instead she merely nodded her head and said, “You’re right, we owe you our lives and you deserve better than that.”

  There was a pause as Ursula gently shifted the sleeping child in her arms, “May I try again?”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Thank you. My name is Ursula, the girl is Aurora and we are in your debt.” Ursula held out one hand, the gun now mysteriously absent.

  Jet in turn took one hand off of the steering wheel, “Pleased to meet you ‘Ursula with no last name’, my name is Jet Carle.”

  Jet placed his hand in Ursula’s, gently pressing on her hand in a friendly manner, and the two smiled warmly at each other.

  “No, it isn’t,” came a response in the light, sleepy voice of Aurora, as she snuggled against Ursula.

  Jet was taken aback, “Not a pleasure?” he awkwardly stammered.

  Aurora yawned and said nonchalantly, “Not your name.”

  Jet was speechless. How could this strange child know something like that? He felt beads of sweat begin to form on his forehead, and for the first time tonight, Jet felt a lot like he wanted to escape. Not just run away. No, this was more akin to wanting to find a very deep hole, climb into it and seal the top above him forever.

  Ursula looked up questioningly from the girl to Jet.

  “I…” Jet hesitated, “I think we should both start from the beginning. Why don’t you tell me who you two are again, and I don’t just mean your current names, but please start by telling me everything you can about yourselves, and what you are doing here. Don’t leave out any of the details, even if it doesn’t seem important, and finish with who, what and why those things are after you.”

  Ursula took another look out the window, as though she was looking for her words in the stars, and then she turned back to Jet, lowering her eyes.

  “What I am going to tell you is going to seem…” Ursula thought about how she wanted to phrase the statement, “...well it’s going to be difficult for you to believe.”

  Jet laughed. “I suppose that might have been true, had I not nearly been killed by that…whatever it was. I think it’s safe to say that my mind is fairly open to the impossible right now.”

  A smile of relief spread across Ursula’s face as she looked at Jet, but before she could speak Jet said, “Just don’t tell me they are werewolves, or you’ll blow all the credibility that I am extending you.”

  Ursula’s smile quickly faded. “I thought you said your mind was open?”

  Jet rolled his eyes. “It is, but there’s no such thing as a werewolf, right?”

  Ursula slumped in her seat. She knew the impossibility of trying to convince someone that the “fake” movie monsters they had been watching since childhood were, in fact, very real.

  Then Jet added, “At least not in the modern understanding of them.”

  Ursula frowned questioningly at the qualification that Jet had just made, “What do you mean by ‘modern understanding?’”

  “I mean,” Jet took his eyes off of the road for a split second to look into Ursula’s, “that the whole ‘Curse of the Werewolf’ thing is bogus. Hollywood did a real number on the legend after someone read about the rampant plague of lycanthropy that extended throughout Europe in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds.”

  Jet managed to see the look of disapproval on Ursula’s face, “Don’t get me wrong lady, I’m open to the more metaphysical of explanations. Lord knows that thing whose brains I scrambled wasn’t exactly what I’d call a ‘creature of nature,’ but I am hoping that you have a more plausible fairy tale for me than one about werewolves.”

  Resigned, Ursula shook her head and said, “Never mind, this
isn’t something you are willing to believe, so why waste time with useless explanations?”

  “You weren’t actually going to say they were werewolves, were you?” he asked.

  “No, but the reality of what we are dealing with is even more fantastical to someone unprepared to believe in…”

  The child spoke up, gently interrupting what Ursula was saying, “What do you think it was?”

  The vehicle grew very silent as if both Ursula and Jet needed to recover themselves after hearing Aurora’s words.

  Finally, Jet found his voice, “Well, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud, but if any of the campfire stories my Grandfather ever told me were true, then I’d say that it was an Akhlut.”

  “What?!” Ursula nearly jumped out of her skin at the word, “how could you know about the Akhlut?”

  Unseen by Ursula or Jet, Aurora smiled triumphantly to herself as she snuggled back onto Ursula’s chest, falling promptly back to sleep.

  “As I said, my Grandfather told me stories that he said were my responsibility to learn and pass on.” Jet winced at the painful memories that had surfaced, but for some reason he couldn’t stop talking about them. “He once told me that he had pressured my father so intensely to memorize and understand the meaning behind those teachings, that eventually it began to wear away at their relationship. My father wasn’t much of a traditionalist, instead he wanted to assimilate himself into modern Canadian society. Not an easy task for a native person to do in Canada at the time and even more difficult for someone who was still living on the reservation. My Grandfather didn’t want to hear any part of that plan, instead, he just wanted my dad to,” Jet raised up two fingers on each hand, mimicking quotation marks in the air, “follow his destiny.”

  Ursula held up one hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but who was your grandfather?”

  “Is,” Jet elaborated, “he’s still alive, and living both on and off the reservation.”

  “But, which tribe?” Ursula asked with far more interest than Jet had ever usually encountered.

  “Tsleil-Waututh originally, but all of the Salish tribes of North America are part of the Squamish Nation now.”

  Ursula looked down at the sleeping child, “Did you know this?”

  Aurora responded with that adorable little moan only a toddler can make in its sleep.

  Jet furrowed his brow; confused by both Ursula’s reaction and the weird question she had asked the child in response.

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  Ursula seemed to catch herself, “No. It’s nothing, sorry. Please go on.”

  Jet couldn’t take his eyes off the road long enough to be able to read Ursula’s expression, but he had a feeling that Ursula was hiding, or at least not saying… something.

  “Anyway, once my father had reached legal age he simply left home and found work on a fishing boat out of Seattle. Four years later I was born in Seattle, a full-fledged American citizen, having been born on American soil, and four years after that a drunk driver crashed into our car and killed both of my parents.”

  Jet hadn’t intended to pause at that moment. It had been so long ago and he had been so young that his memories of the crash, and his parents in general, were few and far between. Apparently, despite his having not thought about them in so long, once he began to speak of his mother and father, the old pain of his loss still managed to stab his heart.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ursula said with real sympathy and care in her voice.

  Jet shook himself out of the fog of memory, “It’s all right. It was a very long time ago.”

  “Even so,” Ursula noted, “one can never completely mend after a wound of the heart as deep as the one that comes from the loss of one’s parents.”

  Jet nodded, “Sounds like you are speaking from a bit of experience yourself.”

  Ursula turned to the window, and Jet felt the wave of regret sweep over him.

  “Sorry,” Jet spoke just above a whisper, “I’m not usually so defensive.”

  Ursula quickly regained her composure and faced Jet, “No, no. You’re being very candid, and it would be improper for me not to do the same, but I’d really like it if you finished what you were saying before I start.”

  “Well, there’s not much more to tell really. I was sent to my Grandfather who raised me from that point on. He was a very, very kind man and a good parent for me. Honestly, I think he went easier on me than he had my father, given what had happened between them before I was born, but he still told me stories and I learned what he wanted me to learn. The funny thing was it was so effortless for me to learn what had apparently been so difficult for my father to comprehend. As soon as I heard a story I had it memorized and the native languages came to me as easily as had the simplest of arithmetic. Conversely, I tried to learn Spanish once and, despite how easy everyone says that language is to learn, I was miserable at it.”

  Jet turned to look at Ursula in a quick side-glance, and found her staring at him with wide-eyed shock.

  “What?” Jet laughed, “Why you looking at me like that?”

  “It’s just,” Ursula’s voice trailed off as she looked down at the girl asleep in her arms.

  Jet didn’t speak for fear of spoiling some great revelation that might have been forthcoming. When nothing came after a few minutes Jet thought better of trying to push the answers out of her and figured instead, that changing the subject might get the woman talking again.

  “Anyway,” he began again, “back to the Akhlut, which is why I brought up this whole history lesson in the first place. If Grandfather’s lessons are true, then they are something akin to half man, half dog offspring of a witch-woman and the ancient Red Dog. It’s basically an Inuit legend, if I am not mistaken.”

  Ursula couldn’t hide her amazement. “It’s interesting that you know the folklore of tribes extending beyond your own.”

  “Not really. Grandfather is an historian of not only the North and South American indigenous cultures, but their creation stories as well, and recently has become a professor at Vancouver University on that very subject. I sort of absorbed everything he had been working on while I lived with him. Native People’s mythology was one of my favorite subjects, and Grandfather was more than accommodating when it came to feeding my curiosity.”

  “And he still lives on the reservation?” she inquired.

  “Yes, but he also has an apartment and an office on the University’s campus. The teaching position is a fairly new one and his classes are not given year round. These days most of his time is spent assisting scientists and historians at various archeological digs throughout North America.” Jet felt that they were skirting away from the topic again, “But let’s get back to the Akhlut.”

  “Very well.” Ursula accommodated, “Please forgive the question, but how is it that you can believe in this fantastical and metaphysical tale of the Red Dogs and witches, but will not accept the same for the existence of werewolves? I’m afraid I don’t see the difference.”

  “Well, let me put it this way, if you were to tell me that we were dealing with werewolves and now we had to stock up on silver bullets and only be concerned on nights with a full moon, which is not the case for tonight by the way, then I’d say that you were a superstitious whack-job without any real grasp of what may or may not be going on. However, if you were to tell me that we were dealing with werewolves, and the Akhlut were what you meant when the term werewolf was used, then based strictly on what I saw tonight I’d have to be open to the idea, and be relieved that you might, in fact, have a clue as to what is happening and how we might be able to survive the night.”

  Jet could feel Ursula stare at him as he kept his eyes on the road. It took her a full minute to say anything, but as soon as she did it was as if the floodgates had opened, “I have to say that I absolutely cannot believe that the one person we ran into tonight has a complete grasp of just who, and what, we are facing. Seems like a pretty big coincidence, doesn’
t it?”

  “There are no coincidences,” Jet replied evenly as she relaxed.

  “Well, you are mostly right about them, being Akhlut I mean, but they’re actually the descendants of the original Akhlut. These abominations are actually hybrid creatures of the surviving Akhlut and a modern wolf, so for the purposes of this conversation, it might be easier to just call them werewolves. In any case they are just part of a bigger problem, and a far greater threat not just to us, but to the entire world.”

  Jet couldn’t help himself as he interrupted, “Why are they here? The Inuit people live much farther North…”

  “That is the location of their origin, from the Dawn of Days, and it is where we suspect the original creatures reside, but they have spread their offspring across the globe by now.” Ursula stopped to collect her thoughts before she spoke again, “If I may, it would be easier to give you a summary of the entire history, as I know it. There may be some redundancy at times, especially if you are as well learned as I suspect you are, but it will help me keep my thoughts organized. Would you mind?”

  “Of course not,” he admitted.

  Chapter 9: The Lesson Continues

  “All right, as you probably are aware, every culture in the world has some form of creation story, which for our purposes is the best place for us to begin. Let me ask you, what would you say is the most common factor about all of the creation stories you have ever heard?”

  Jet laughed, “Damn girl, I’d say that when you start at the beginning, you really start at the beginning!” Jet had a huge smile on his face as he turned to Ursula, but it quickly faded, as it was plainly evident that she was not amused. Jet turned back to the road and thought for a few seconds before answering, “I’d say that every story begins with a creator or creators that wish to bring about the world and life upon it.”