Chapter 16: Giant Wolves

As the echo of Bartley's HMG died down, the techs together with Mills cheered. "Hot damn! I need one of those myself!" Mills swapped out a new magazine for his partial emptied magazine from his rifle. "Hey techies, is that a giant wolf or what?" He asked the techie crouching next to him.

"Eh? I have no idea. We need to bring the corpse back to study. But it does look like a wolf, with horns." The techie replied excitedly, as he peered intently at the dead creature. "Huge too."

"No shit, Sherlock." Mills rolled his eyes. Damn nerds.

"Mills, it's not over yet." Bartley's calm voice cut into their conversation. "More incoming."

In the distance, sounds of something heavy crashing through the foliage could be heard. Snarls and growls seeming grew nearer and louder. A sudden howl heralded the arrival of four more giant wolves, each as huge as a car or minibus!

"Oh shit," Mills saw the group of wolves appear at the opposite side of the field. "Run!" He yelled at the techs. "Big Guy! Covering fire!" And opened up with his rifle.

Bartley opened fire with his weapon and backed off slowly. He directed the spray of tracers onto the nearest and largest wolf in the group. Sparks, smoke, shreds of meat and fur flew as the tracers come into contact. Seeing his target dropping, he swept his fire to the next closest wolf. Clumps of dirt and torn grass flew as the bullets wrought destruction in its path.

The wolf roared in agony and raised its front paws to protect its venerable face, as bullets slammed into its body. The other wolves quickly leapt into action and split off towards the left and right respectively to escape the storm of bullets from Bartley.

The heavy fire from Bartley managed to suppress and take down the two of the wolves but the other two wolves moved too fast for him to get a good lock on them.

For Mills, it was harder to hit the wolves. "Fuck! How can a dog shit like that move so fast?" Mills cursed. He tried to get a good aim on the closest wolf but it kept dodging his shots. "Damn it! You dog! Stay still!"

Bartley ceased his fire, turned and ran towards Mills. Upon reaching his side, he turned around and covered Mills's flank and fired at the other rapidly approaching wolf. He fired a short burst and waited after the wolf made a dodge by leaping to the side before he opened fire at where he estimated the wolf would land. The laser beam like tracers torn the area where the wolf landed into smoke and blood and even lit a small fire in the grass field.

Finally, Mills also managed to bring down his target, just barely ten meters away from him. The wolf crumpled down, dying of internal injuries. Even in its dying breath, the giant wolf let out a snarl and roar as it struggled to raise up and its limbs clawed desperately in its attempts to move its body. Slowly the hate in its eyes faded as Mills and Bartley watched it slowly stop moving.

"Any more?" Mills asked. He reloaded and crouched down keeping his rifle in a ready position.

"I don't see anything," Bartley replied. He lowered his weapon and checked his ammunition counter.

"Phew, thought that last one was gonna get me." He walked up and pokes the wolf carcass with his smoking rifle barrel. "These guys are tough! I'm using AP rounds!" He bent over and examined the wolf body before using his hands to pull something out from its fur.

"Holy shit." He held up a complete bullet, with the tungsten alloy core tip slightly flatten. "This shit is supposed to penetrate up to 14mm thick steel plates!"

Bartley took the bullet from Mills and examined it. Then he walked a full circle around the body and gauged. "Roughly five meters long, two point five meters tall." He tapped the horns growing out from the head of the wolf. "Solid ivory."

"Damn, we bagged a big one eh?" Mills grinned. "Think they allow us to mount its head up in the barracks?" He posed with one foot on top of the giant wolf like a big game hunter. "We can make big bucks with this."

Soon after, the rapid response team arrived with the group of techs. A mix of Marines and naval security details, both have their gear and uniform greatly different from each other. The naval security details are lesser armoured with black riot gear and dark naval grey jumpsuits and carried PDWs or shotguns.

They hurriedly bashed through the undergrowth and appeared out of the tree line and saw Mills leaning on top of a large rock while Bartley seemed like trying to put out some fire in the distance. "Took you guys long enough." Mills grinned. "And no thanks to you guys but the day is saved!

"Yeah yeah," Lcp Cooper from Section 1 rolled his eyeballs at Mills. "So what shit you got into this time, Mills?"

"Found ourselves the natives!" Mills pet the "rock" he was leaning on. "A freaking giant wolf." He gave a little bow as he presented the giant wolf to Cooper and his team.

Cooper looks over the giant wolf with the horns and whistles. "Damn this is a huge son of a bitch!" He gave the wolf carcass a kick. "Bloody solid too."

"We got another four more of this bad boy here." Mills jerked his head back towards the field. "And this is just one of the smaller ones." Bartley could be seen stomping around among the blue greyish rock-like carcass amidst the smoking grass.

"Four more?" Pvt Koing and the rest of the security detail looked on wild-eyed. "There's more of these things around?" The naval security details fingered their weapons and look around their surrounding nervously.

"I don't know, seriously." Mills shrugged. He watched as the techs excitedly started to collect samples, measure the bodies and snapped photos. "All I know is they are pretty bulletproof."

The group reported back to base asking for more support and help to transport the bodies back for analysis. Soon after over an hour, another group of people arrived with heavy lifters and strapped the bodies onto the lifters and they started the trek carrying the giant wolves back to base.

By the time they approached the base, everyone has heard about the incident and turned out to see the giant wolves. Mills happily basked in the glory of all the attention as he bragged about how he and Bartley heroically saved the survey team and how he killed the giant wolves.