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A SHORT STORY By Charles Moon Ling could smell them when they were still over a mile away. Four men carrying rifles and beer approached from the south, up the ravine where the highway ran between the mountains. They were tracking him, although at that moment they didn’t know who they were after. As far as Ling knew, it was not a crime in the human communities to make people uncomfortable, but here we was, deep in the Alaskan wilderness being hounded by a posse of drunk hunters. Loud laughter and the sharp snap of dry branches under their heavy boots echoed off the steep face of the ravine wall. They made no attempt to be stealthy as they crashed through the evergreen scrub brush that grew along the edge of the deep forest, but it was the pungent stench of human musk and Budweiser that kept Ling one step ahead of his pursuers. The pine forest was black at night. Even when the full moon would peek from behind its cloudy blanket, the silver beams never reached Ling under the canopy of dense needles. Occasionally he would catch the flicker of portable lanterns through the trunks of the trees as the hunting party continued to close the gap between them, but Ling needed no light to navigate easily though his familiar woodlands. When hunting season begins in earnest, the Alaskan territories can be a dangerous place. Ling had spent 20 years alluding these hunting parties and leading them in circles before he abandoned them only a few hundred yard from their own camps. Humans with guns, disturbing the natural balance of this wilderness every time the local government lifted the ban on hunting its residents, unsettled Ling. Men did not belong here, not even the dead ones. Yes, the woods could be a dangerous place, but it was not his own safety Ling was worried about. He too was Human and he wanted these men to return to the safety and comfort of their constructed dwellings before they would become one more story whispered around the hunting camps. Ling’s loyalties were divided between his own species and his protectors, who, for the past two decades, had interceded on his behalf when danger presented itself. He didn’t know why they protected him or why they refused to allow him to return to the society from which he had been separated for so long, but he had come to accept his position in this brotherhood. The wind shifted a few degrees to the west. “ Damn,” Ling thought. “They’ve split up.” Ling lifted his nose in the air to verify the locations of both pairs of hunters. He slowly turned full circle with his face pointed skyward. His own feet were silent on the soft forest floor. The only sounds other than those made by the intruders were the comforting whispers of the forest and the sigh from Ling’s own nostrils. “ Only one thing to do now,” he realized, if he was going to lead these men safely back to the highway. Ling walked to a small clearing in the forest where a two-hundred year old hemlock had crashed to the ground, leaving a moonlit corridor in the mass of the evergreen cover. He sat on the splintered stump and picked up a dried branch. Ling held the branch firmly in his hands and pressed up with his thumbs, curving the limb into an upward curve. He pressed harder. The peaceful rustling of the woods was shattered by a loud crack of a snapping branch. The hunters stopped moving. Ling put down the two pieces of the fractured limb and waited. “ Over there,” Ling heard one of the men call out. The footsteps began to get closer, converging on his location. A spider climbed up Ling’s hand, seeking the warm protection of his coat sleeve. He let it continue. The one thing he learned living in the forest was that killing only must be done when it is necessary. It might be necessary tonight. Ling was sitting on the stump, bent over with his palm flat on the ground, when the first hunter broke through the brush behind him into the clearing. Ling smelled the man’s odor so intently, he had to force himself to fight the gagging reflex in his throat and stay absolutely motionless. The second man soon followed. Two more stepped into the moonlight on his right. The hunters stopped at the edge of the clearing, surprised by the familiar shape of a fully-grown man seated in front of them. “ Hey you,” one of them called out. Ling said nothing. “ You, on the log. What the hell you doin’ here?” Ling sat up slowly. Even seated, his six and a half foot frame was intimidating. He did not turn around. Ling smelled fear. The men were beginning to get agitated. “Humans are so predictable,” Ling thought, his smile still hidden from the men who had joined together behind him. “ I’m talking to you,” The first man continued, trying to get Ling’s attention. “What are you doing here alone at night?” Ling stared into the blackness of the primeval forest in front of him. It was teeming with life – dangerous life. “ Go home.” Ling’s voice was low and coarse but there was such authority in his words that the hunters momentarily considered his suggestion. “ Who the hell are you?” one of the others cried out after the initial surprise faded and his machismo took over his better judgement. “ Go home,” Ling repeated. “Now.” “ Who does this dude think he is Larry?” The first man, now identified as Larry, lowered the barrel of his rifle and lifted an open can of beer to his mouth. He finished the can in three gulps, crushing the empty aluminum container in his trembling fist. “ Look buddy, we’re here tracking a dangerous animal that’s been raiding our livestock. Have you seen anything like that?” “ More dangerous than you know,” Ling said. “ Hey, Larry, maybe he’s hunting it, too. Maybe he’s trying to scare us off so he can keep the reward to himself.” Ling turned his head toward the man who said the ridiculous words. The cloud that had been softening the moon’s eerie light passed to the east on the faint autumn breezes and Ling’s pale white complexion glowed in the darkness of the forest like a haunting specter. Yellow eyes fixed on a man who now sprayed the woods with the pheromones of fear like a sprinkler on a golf course. “ No.” It was all Ling said. It was all he had to say. The man dropped his lantern. “ What the hell is he?” “ Some kind of albino freak, I think,” one of the others answered. “ Hey freak? Are you an albino?” “ Shut up, Drake,” Larry warned. Larry’s sense of self-preservation was telling him it might be a good idea to take Ling’s advice. Drake was the largest and most stupidly fearless of the group. It was Larry’s experience in the forest and vastly greater intelligence that kept him as leader, but when Drake became stubborn, it was impossible to prevent him from acting. Mitch and Perry followed whoever was in front. “ Asshole! I want an answer,” Drake insisted. He was contradicting his fear with false bravado in front of his comrades. He grabbed the crushed beer can from Larry and threw it at Ling. Ling anticipated its trajectory and leaned to the left, allowing it pass his head without contact. Ling knew it was about to get ugly. Ling could smell the others coming, too. Deep from the blackness of the evergreen cover they were slowly being encircled. A different musk crept across the decaying matter of the forest floor and there was no fear in it. Ling rose to his feet, a good three inches taller than Drake. He turned to face the four men, keeping his eyes lowered so they would not catch the reflection of the moon, again. “ No, I am not an albino.” Ling was pale, but it was not the paleness of the weak or from sickness. His nocturnal activities in the forest had kept him out of direct sunlight for so long that his color had reverted back to the chalky white skin of a coal miner, without the benefit of the black dust to accentuate his features. The contrast of the old navy blue pea coat he removed from the corpse of a crashed helicopter pilot, and now wore daily, didn’t help soften his appearance. “ Albino’s have yellow eyes. He’s got yellow eyes.” Mitch finally spoke after picking up his lantern. “ Show us your eyes, freak,” Drake commanded. “ I said SHUT-UP,” Larry said. He was feeling that Ling was trying hard to get them to leave before something happened. Larry was right, but Drake was unwilling to yield his ground until he forced Ling to submit to his will. “ Show me your eyes, god dammit!” Drake yelled in a shower of spit. His red face was invisible in the soft glow of four fading lanterns and the intermittent light from a transient moon. Ling could smell his rage and fear. He could smell the others – his family – getting closer, too. To punctuate his demand, Drake pulled back the bolt of his rifle and pointed it skyward. Ling cried out “NO!” at the instant the recoil of a .30 caliber tore open the peace of the forest. His eye’s grew wide and caught the beam of Drake’s lantern. They glowed yellow. A flurry of perforated leaves and splintered greenwood settled over Ling’s shoulders. He lowered his head and repeated softly, “no.” It was too late to stop it. They would not permit Ling to be threatened. Mitch was the first to hear the rustling of the underbrush accompanied by a deep undulating growl. It approached from behind where Ling now stood, hands at his sides and head lowered, waiting for the inevitable. “ What was that?” “ What was what?” “ I heard something. There’s something out there.” “ It’s this freak,” Drake accused, still reeling from the sudden flash of Ling’s yellow eyes. “ Let’s get the hell out of here.” Larry insisted. “We’re here to hunt wolves, not albinos.” “ Too late for that,” Ling muttered. “You aren’t the hunters anymore.” Drake pointed his lantern into the recesses of the forest and panned across the area behind Ling. There was a brief flash in the darkness as his light passed … a flash of yellow. Drake fixed his light on the flash. Two more yellow eyes, two feet off the forest floor, glowed back at him. “ There’s somebody else out there!” Drake screamed. “He’s got friends! And they’ve got us ambushed!” Drake pulled back the bolt on his rifle, expelling the empty shell casing onto the ground and quickly pushing a fresh cartridge into the breach of his gun. He lifted the barrel and aimed into the murky forest. “ I’ll show you what an ambush feels like.” Ling stood motionless. He uttered “no” one more time, but it was less a command for Drake to stop, which he knew Drake would never do, but at his own futile attempt to prevent the inevitable. There were two flashes. One was from the muzzle of Drake’s rifle as its projectile embedded itself into the hard flesh of a mature spruce. The other was the white gleam of teeth under a pair of yellow eyes. A large female wolf leapt from the shadows directly for Drake’s midsection. Ninety pounds of canine muscle, bone and teeth impacted Drake squarely in the chest, knocking him backwards onto the sharp thorns of a bramble bush. He lifted the stock of his rifle to try and deflect the charging animal but the wolf bitch had already clamped her fangs into the soft flesh of Drake’s neck. A bleeding pulp of skin and cartilage pulsated where Drake’s throat used to be. His last breath was blocked his own vomit bubbling out of the gaping wound. The wolf disappeared into the opposite side of the clearing. “ Oh my god!” Perry cried, his leg twitching from fear and a warm trickle of urine. He raised his gun and pointed in the direction the wolfbitch vanished. “ No! Don’t….” Screamed Larry, realizing that any aggressive action would be met with equally deadly results. It was too late. Before Perry could squeeze the trigger, two male wolves crossed from the darkness and clamped Perry’s forearm in their jaws. The sound of his bone snapping was drowned out by his screams. Six more pairs of eyes crept out of the darkness toward the two standing men, one writhing in pain on the ground, and the other in a lifeless heap. Ling closed his eyes. The screams of men faded into the soft whispers of the forest once again. He felt the familiar fur of his family brush past his hand. One by one the wolves passed by, rubbing their own scent on his legs, mingled with the scent of human blood. The last to pass was the female. She raised her nose and took the sleeve of Ling’s jacket in her teeth, still stained with the blood of Drake’s esophagus, and gently tugged, leading him away from the ravine and the highway. Ling followed, becoming another whisper in the night.
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