Chapter Five

~ Vanya ~

Tired didn"t even begin to explain how I felt. Hudson and I had been out hunting for the last two days. We had caught enough game to fill our freezers once it was smoked and cured so it was a good two days, but I was really glad to finally be heading back to the cabins.

We just had a little bit of a trek to get there.

"You think we got enough?" Hudson asked.

"For now," I replied. "We might need to do a little fishing here and there to supplement it."

"As long as I don"t have to set foot inside a town, I don"t care."

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Going back to town was the last thing I wanted to do. People in general were the last thing I wanted to deal with. Neither of us did. We"d had enough of people fighting in a stupid war we never should have been involved with in the first place.

I hadn"t told my family yet that I was back in the states or that I had gotten out of the service. I would, but I needed some time first. Hudson needed time, too.

We had come up with a harebrain scheme to spend the next six months at my family"s cabins up in the mountains. We were two months into that timeline, but we had used those two months constructively.

Two of the cabins had been upgraded, one for me and one for Hudson. Maybe somewhere down the line we would upgrade the others in case my baby brother wanted to come visit.

For now, we were just concentrating on us.

"Once we get back to the cabins, we can hang this deer carcass in the smoke hut until tomorrow. It"s too dark to do anything with it right now."

Luckily, we had already gutted it and left the insides for the wild scavengers in the woods. Why shouldn"t they get a meal, too?

"Do you think any of the others are going to come up?"

I shrugged because I really didn"t know. "We have the space if they choose to accept the invite, but no one is getting my cabin."

Hudson snorted. "Mine either."

My mind briefly went over what had sent us up here, thoughts I didn"t want to have. They only made me second guess myself, my command, and the choices I had made.

Choices that had cost good men their lives.

Right or wrong, men had died on my watch and under my command. In refusing an order, men had died, but if I hadn"t refused, more would have died, a lot of more. Hundreds of men, women, and children.

I couldn"t have that on my conscience, but I didn"t want the deaths of my men on my conscience either. Either way I looked at it, people would have died.

When I was encouraged to resign and take an honorable discharge versus facing a court martial for decking a superior officer, it was an easy decision to make. Not because of the guilt, but because I refuse to put myself into another position where I commanded people and they could die.

I also didn"t want to deal with idiot pencil pusher Lieutenant Colonel's who thought they knew more than I did about running a mission when they had never seen a day of combat in their lives. The ones that didn"t care about the civilian lives affected by our actions really pissed me off.

Out of a twelve man unit, there were five of us left. Every damn one of them had resigned right along with me.

"They"ll come if they need to." I had made the offer to each of the men. Jude Hudson had taken me up on it immediately. Luis Beck said he"d be up before the first snow fell. Abdul Chilton and Hoss Miller said they had some things to do. If the outside world got to be too hard, they would join us.

That was good enough for me.

"It"s getting darker," I said. "We should pick up the pace."

I didn"t exactly want to be wandering about the woods in the middle of the night, but we had had to go farther up the mountian than expected to find a herd of deer.

"Yeah, yeah," Hudson grumbled.

I let out a small chuckle.

Poor Hudson. Despite his military training, the great outdoors were not his favorite place to be. He was more of a "lounging on the beach" type of guy. Born in Ventura, California, it was kind of expected. He had the blond hair and blue eyes to go with that beach vibe. It didn"t do him a damn bit of good in the hellholes we had been sent to around the world.

"What is that?"

"Huh?" I glanced back at Hudson, but he was looking up into the night sky. I turned to look, and then frowned. "What is that?"

My first thought was missile or a satellite falling from the sky, but neither of those explained the green glow to whatever was falling to the earth.

"Do you think we"re under attack?"

I shook my head even though Hudson wasn"t looking at me. "Have you ever heard of a glowing green missile?"

I actually couldn"t think of anything glowy and green that would fall out of the sky. "Meteor maybe?"

"I don"t think so."

I felt my grip on the branch we had tied the deer carcass to waver. "Hudson." I stumbled back, fear starting to blossom in my chest. That green glow was headed straight for us. "Run!"

I dropped the deer and took off.

The green object exploded in a bright stream of color that obscured my eyesight until all I saw was green. I screamed as I was thrown forward by the blast, slamming onto the ground.

As the world around me started to dim into darkness, I absently noted something green and sparkling fall from the sky, landing on the ground and the trees. It landed on my skin and then it felt as if it ate away at me like acid.

Another scream was pulled from me when my body began to twist and contort, ripping through my inside until I wanted to die. I felt as if my very skin was being stripped from my bones.

I kept screaming as my world went dark.

* * * *

It was pitch black when I opened my eyes, but I could see like it was daylight. I could see a woodpecker on a tree clear as day, and yet I judged it to be half a mile away.

Scents overwhelmed me. The scent of the forest, of the dirt, of...I raised my face into the air and drew in a deep breath. Blood. I could smell blood, but it was a bit stale.

I slowly rolled over onto my stomach and glanced around. My eyes landed on a wolf mere feet from me. It seemed to be eating something.

I growled, the sound menacing even to myself. If this wolf didn"t move off, he would die. I could do it. I knew I could. I could feel the strength flowing through me like a tidal wave of power.

It was glorious, but only for a moment.

I growled low in my throat.

I smelled fresh meat.

I wanted it.

I had to have it.

When I took a step closer, the wolf froze. He gave out a low growl of his own as his eyes darted to me, a hunk of meat hanging from between his teeth.

I jumped toward him, snarling and snapping my teeth at him.

The wolf instantly dropped the meat and backed away.

I snapped at him once more and then moved in on the meat. It wasn"t as fresh as I would have liked, but I felt as if I was starving. My stomach was hollow, empty. I needed food before I passed out.

I ate and ate, filling myself near to bursting while keeping an eye on the wolf. Once I"d had enough, I gave him my full attention. I stared for a moment before nudging the carcass toward him and then backing away.

I hunched down on the ground and watched the wolf eat until it had its fill as well. When the wolf was done, it dropped down onto its hunches and crawled closer, whimpered before exposing its throat to me.

Some instinct buried deep inside of me told me what to do. I got up, went over to the wolf, and gently placed my jaw over the back of his neck, silently accepting his submission.

When I was done, I sat down and began to slowly lick the wolf clean. After a little while, I settled down into the dirt next to him, resting my head over the top of his neck.

I closed my eyes and let the night sounds take me away.

* * * *

"Fuck, what crawled into my mouth and died?"

"Shut up, Hudson," I said without opening my eyes. "It"s too early. Go back to sleep."

"It"s not early, not anymore," Hudson replied. "It looks like the sun is getting ready to set. Last I remember, it was dark out. I think early has come and gone."

I cracked an eye open and then blinked wildly at the blaring sunlight. My head felt as if it was mere moments from exploding. I went to lift my hand to my head when a pain shot down my arm.

I opened both eyes and looked down at my arm, searching for an injury. It took me a moment to realize I was staring at a whole lot of skin, too much skin.

A small breeze that suddenly blew through the area informed me that I was exposing skin in other areas, too. My jaw almost came unhinged when I sat up and looked down at myself and realized I was naked.

"What the fuck?" I shouted. "Where are my clothes?"

"I think they are hanging out with mine."

My eyes darted to Hudson only to see a whole lot more of him than I ever really wanted to see. "Why are we naked?"

The remains of our clothes were scattered on the ground around us, along with what was left of the deer carcass we had been carrying back to camp. It was clear to see that something had torn into it, which led me to question why whatever had eaten at it hadn"t eaten us.

"Man, I don"t feel so well."

I glanced at Hudson again. The man was looking a little green around the edges and was pressing his lips together as if he might hurl at any moment. I knew how he felt. My stomach was doing weird flips, too.

I bent my knees and then rested my elbows on them. As I went to lift my hand to my face, I noticed something I knew I had to be imagining. My arms looked just a little bit thicker, more muscular. So did my legs. They seemed longer, too.

I looked around for a moment, beyond confused. "What the hell happened?"

"Man, I have no fucking idea."

"What"s the last thing you remember?" I asked.

Hudson frowned. "A green light falling from the sky."

"You don"t remember anything after that?"

"No." Hudson glanced at me. "Do you?"

"Not really, but..." There was something there, hanging out just beyond the edges of my mind. I couldn"t quite grasp it.

"How are we going to get home?"

I let out a little snort. "Ever hear of streaking?" I asked because that was pretty much what we were going to be doing.

"Is that what is left of the deer we shot?"

I waited for my stomach to rebel when I looked at the mangled half eaten carcass. It didn"t. If anything, I was suddenly hungry, and that was just gross.

I heard a crackling of a branch and quickly glanced to my left. My brow furrowed as I squinted. There was another deer, a live one this time, but it wasn"t close. It had to be at least three hundred yards away.

How had I heard it?

How could I see it so clearly? I felt as if it was standing right in front of me. I could even see the small twitches of its ears. The way its nostrils flared as it sniffed the air. The flicker of its eyelashes.

Something was seriously wrong here.