Werewolves: So it Begins

Prequel to my graphic novel

 

The glow of the full moon barely registers in the well lit tangle of city streets. The boxy forms of buildings jut, black into the night. The fluorescent street lights sparkled off the gleaming steel of padlocks and bars. The streets were void of occupants and sound, nothing moved but the shadows. There were no windows in any of the buildings and the only lights were from the moon and the harsh glow of the streetlights. The city lay dead in the night.
Between the cold steel boxes a man in a long black trench coat and a low slung gun belt patrolled in the night trying to ignore the screams from within the buildings around him. The night moved around him unseeing and unseen but his eyes never stopped scanning around him.

Inside one of the windowless steel apartments a little girl sat in front of a television in her room as her family sat together in the living room. The cold remains of a TV dinner lie scattered in front of her on the floor. She sat uncomfortably slouched, collar cutting into her neck. A delicately worked solid silver chain attached at the back of her collar was strained to its limit as the girl tried to move closer to her family in the living room. Emily reached out towards the wall where she could hear her family on the other side. They were watching the same program as the one on her television, they tried to make nights as comfortable for her as they could the room was full of toys and candy and other presents for her like it always was. Emily had spent every night of her life in this room as long as she could remember. The walls were riddled with stains and scratches, and the only light in it came from the television on the far wall, sitting just out of her reach. The door gleamed with silver inlay and there was a silver design laid into the floor around the reach of her chain. The glow of the television caught these designs and filled them with an eerie twinkling in the semi-darkness.

Suddenly Emily felt a familiar itching behind her right ear. The itch spread throughout her body she could feel it flowing through her. She was forced to her feet as the itch filled her. Her skin began to change colors starting at the beds of her fingernails a deep, deadly blue raced across the pink of her flesh, eating it up hungrily. Her back arched as her bones began to re-arrange painfully her blue skin stretched and tore as she changed, her shoulders hunched and her fingernails grew into claws. Her collar cut into her increasingly muscular neck, the skin around the silver band sizzled and bled. Emily screamed and howled in pain as she changed, on the other side of the wall she could hear her family turning up the television.

            A few years passed but nothing much changed, children like Emily stayed hidden in the concrete prisons and people went about their daily lives. When the children reached the age of ten years they were herded like cattle into a large, metal building, as perfectly and mathematically  rectangular as the buildings around it. The only marked difference between it and the other structures were the thick black doors, engraved deeply with obscure silver designs. A small, bland sign spelled out “The Nursery” in large block letters.

Within this mysterious edifice, a frail seeming man in a pressed white lab coat held his clipboard at a precise angle as he strolled through the line of shivering children with silver leashes. The children shivered and clung together on the cold linoleum floor. As the scientist walked down the row he stopped to examine some children more closely, making notes and marking observations with his clipboard succinctly. As he finished walking through the line he turned and handed his clipboard to another scientist and said. “These ones have been deemed appropriate, kill the rest” As he walked towards the door one small girl lunged at his leg, He claws and fangs tore at him as she shifted instantaneously. Her back arched she strained at her collar as it burnt her neck. The scientist jumped back in horror. It was noon, the time of day when she had the least potential for shifting at all let alone a fully contaminate shift. The other children backed away from the beast as the scientists watched in fear as the beast tore at her neck where the collar was cutting and bleeding. As quickly as she had begun she shifted back to her form as a little girl. The bleeding scientist turned and ordered guards to take the girl to an observation room. The guards hurried and dragged the unconscious girl to a cold Plexiglas room. The scientist limped his wounded leg sizzling with acidic venom. He reached for a black phone on the wall he shook as he dialed and waited to hear someone pick up. “We may have a problem Sir”

On the other end of that nameless line sat a shadow of a man only referred to as Sir, He drummed his hands on his desk as the babbling scientist took forever to explain what should have been a simple situation. One of the subjects at the age of termination had evolved beyond the need for a catalyst such as the gravitational field of a full moon to shift. Of course the technicians had not been prepared to handle such an event, it had not occurred in nearly a century of the breeding program. One of the main scientists had been contaminated, he of course would have to be dealt with, it would be hell to replace hi but it must be done. The man took a pen and a tattered old file. His face looks near gleeful as he makes a few notations on the yellowing paper. Nearly one hundred years of this project and his vision is that much closer to being realized.

Just under a century before in the year 2237, The Superpowers of the United States of The Americas which included all of North and South America and The Allied Socialist Nations of Asia found themselves in a familiar dance of the Second Cold War. Once again the entire world was on  a hair trigger as the two main Nuclear powers in the world were poised to strike at one another at any time. Not a living soul knows who shot first but the world awakened one morning to discover that Asia was no longer there. All throughout the nations of Asia all that could be found was beaded glass. USTA forces sent in troops in anti-radiation armor to round up survivors.

In all of Asia only a handful of people survived most were mutants barely functioning or dying rapidly from radiation poisoning but there was one case that baffled scientists so completely that it was classified at the highest level so as to not spread panic in the world. That case consisted of a man named Jared Rollings, he was a missionary in the Chinese capital of the ASNA he was standing less than a quarter of a kilometer from where the first bomb hit and he was in the center of the most heavily attacked area in all of Asia. He not only survived, but he had no outward appearance of any mutation or reaction to the massive amounts of poisonous radiation he had endured. Scientists quarantined him immediately and performed every test known to mankind on the poor man. The only effect they found was a strange but dormant genetic anomaly. After years of research it was determined that this anomaly was in fact a genetic predisposition for rapid mutation. Essentially any child of his blood would have the ability to evolve at a superhuman rate. When scientists discovered this they immediately began development upon his bloodline, forcing hundreds of women to bear his children in secret via in vitro insemination. The children of these women were then rounded up and taken to a remote location deep within the decontaminated zone of Asia. The experiments conducted on these children were indescribably horrific, all the evolution of a normal human group in two thousand years was forced upon these children and their children within the space of one or two generations.

Rollings descendants lived a rather sheltered life that was little better than a prisoners, they were allowed to live as family units but they were separated between those that exhibited the mutations and those that merely carried the gene. A strict breeding program ensured that only the most desirable traits were preserved and all children were “sorted” at the age of ten. The ones who showed the most promise were taken to live directly in the labs while the rest were released into the secondary population that had begun to fill a small prison like city.

That day in the nursery when little Emily shifted in an attempt to defend herself from being terminated. She could have had no idea what evens she had set into motion. She was the first, and the strongest Super Soldier that the program had ever laid eyes upon. Her combination of Canine, Human and Feline DNA gave her balance, instincts and abilities that made her an unstoppable fighting machine. In fact the only safe measure that had ever been taken in the creation of her breed was an inbred allergy to silver. Inspired by the old myths of werewolves the scientists included this safety measure to contain them. The scientists could only pray it was enough as they formed the beginning of their army. With that small prayer and all the hope of a century of work a new branch of the military was born. The 113^th Werewolf Brigade.

Reviews

[Carole]

Wow--Bobbi, what an incredible imagination you have. Definitely held my attention all the way through so the imagery was excellent. There were a couple of typos which I would be hard pressed to find, but if you go back through it slowly, I'm sure you will catch them. Take out the comma in the sentence below. That is one fluid thought with no breaks. Other than that, I think it is a gripping story, and like I said, you have a wonderful imagination. You must watch a lot of science fiction. :)

The boxy forms of buildings jut, black into the night.

Thanks for sending it. I don't always get to stories right away, but I will eventually. They go into my library until I can read them. Hope you have a wondrous day. :)

[M. Amphet Salt]

Wow, the is Sci-Fily Horriffic. This is way cool, and good idea, but one question. Where is the rest of it?

[MarilynJay]

Whooooaaaaa. Wow that's amazing. I almost don't know what to say... I love it!! I especially liked the flow of the piece, how you started with the present, went back and explained, and then came back to what was happening. And it's a very interesting concept, what with the werewolves. Oh, and I loved that the survivor was a missionary :D. That was a clever add-in! :D Can't wait for more!

[Spirit <White Wolf&g..]

This is a very good story. I think u should add more to it. Make it into a book or something. Don't stop where u did keep going. Make this like a chapter. U got me hungering for more.

[Rich Lampani]

This is a very good twist on an old story. Very descriptive and vivid. Keep going with this. You probably were going to anyway, but now that I told you to you really should.