Free High Moor by Graeme Reynolds Page A

ground. It snarled at the two men, and nursing a wound to its shoulder, fled into the darkness of the forest.
    Steven managed to find his feet and gripped the tree with leaden limbs.
    “Fucking hell. That was… that was…”
    “Yeah, that was a werewolf. A big one.”
    “A werewolf… a fucking werewolf? You could have told me, you bastard.”
    “Told you what? You'd have thought I was mad. Better to let you find out for yourself.”
    “Fucking hell,” he said again. “So, now what do we do?”
    “Well, Stevie, I don’t know about you, but the Lord God Almighty couldn’t make me get out of this tree until the sun comes up.”

Chapter 8

    25th April 1986. Mill Woods, High Moor. 05:47.
    The darkness in the sky gave way to a dismal, flat grey. Shadows receded and then faded away. Sporadic bird song broke the silence as the world came back to life.
    Steven had never been so glad to see the dawn. During the night, his mood had cycled between extremes of shock, terror, and misery. Carl had insisted on absolute silence to reduce the chance of another surprise attack. He hadn't even let Steven smoke, and the nicotine cravings had played across his already frayed nerves.
    He turned to Carl and whispered, “Do you think it’s safe to get down yet?”
    “Probably.”
    “You getting down?”
    “Nope.”
    “I thought you just said it was safe?” said Steven, a little too loudly. He winced at the sound of his voice.
    “I said it was probably safe. I don’t feel like testing the theory.”
    “I thought you were supposed to be some kind of expert on these fucking things?”
    Carl paused and scanned the forest, listening for any sounds that were out of place, then looked down at the younger man and chuckled. “Son, I’ve faced off with more than a few werewolves in my time. More than most people manage and live to tell about it, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t say I was an expert though. Not by any stretch of the imagination. What I am is the best you’ve got.”
    “Fuck this, I need a cigarette,” said Steven, and reached inside his jacket. When he retrieved a sodden mass of cardboard, paper, and tobacco, he threw the pack to the forest floor in disgust. “Bollocks. So when did you start?"
    "Start what?"
    Steven rolled his eyes. "Collecting stamps. What the fuck do you think I mean? When did you start hunting werewolves?"
    “That’s a long story.”
    “You got anything better to do?”
    The old man laughed. “OK, but it’ll cost you breakfast. Deal?”
    “Deal.”
    “It was October ’44. Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army were doing a pretty good job at tearing the Nazis a new asshole. Belgrade was surrounded, and my bosses figured that the Germans would lose control of it within two, maybe three weeks. There were rumours of a research facility forty or fifty clicks south of the Jasenovac concentration camp, and they didn’t want all that Nazi science falling into the hands of Mother Russia. So, they parachuted me and four of my buddies into occupied territory, with orders to grab anything interesting and then high tail it out of there before the Russkies turned up.
    “We were dropped in near the mountains and, once we got our shit together, we headed off towards our objective. Tino was our communications guy. He’d done a master's degree in physics before the war, so it was his job to try and identify the useful stuff when we hit the research station. Korky handled demolitions. Once we got what we needed, he was going to blow the place sky high. Harry was our close combat expert. Bad tempered son of a bitch, but I never saw anyone handle a blade the way he could.
    “Our Sergeant was a big New Yorker called Pete. He was one of the hardest men I ever knew. Then there was me. A snot-nosed, ex ranch boy from Idaho. I’d been shooting things ever since I was big enough to hold a rifle. I was the team’s sniper.
    “Things started going wrong on the second night. We were probably around