Savage Beasts - 12. The Tower and the Whistle

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!” Christopher shouted. “Alcyoneus, Echion, Porphyrion, Eurymedon, Pelorus, go track down those boys. Each of you capture two and bring them back here.”

Five of the monsters began running down the trail in the direction where the boys had escaped, while the remaining three stood guard over the captured bears.

A half-mile away, the boys were just reaching the fire tower.

“Everybody start climbing to the top!” Bill said, “I have an idea.”

As eight of the cadets started running up the steps, Sean stayed next to Bill.

“What’s your idea?” Sean asked, panting heavily from the run.

“In every monster movie you’ve ever seen, what’s the one thing the monsters are afraid of and can hurt them?”

Sean thought for a second and then guessed, “Fire?”

“Fire,” Bill replied pulling his flint and steel and the tin of char cloth from his pocket.

The area all around the fire tower was filled with tall dry grass. Bill picked a spot about ten feet in front of the tower and grabbed a handful of the dry grass to make tinder. He laid a piece of char cloth in the middle and started striking his steel against the flint over top of it. He struck once, twice, and a third time without creating any sparks.

“Come on, Bill,” Sean said, “You’ve got this.”

Bill struck the steel against the flint one more time and a shower of sparks rained down on the square of cloth causing it to glow. Bill leaned down and blew on it gently, and soon the tinder and the grass surrounding it was on fire.

Bill ripped a handful of long, dry grass stalks out of the ground and caught the ends aflame.

“Sean! Get your ass up those stairs! I’ll be right behind you!”

As Sean started climbing the tower steps, Bill walked in a circle around the tower with his makeshift torch, catching the dry grass on fire as he went. When he was done, the tower was surrounded by a circle of flames that began to grow in height.

Bill dropped his handful of burned grass and quickly started up the steps. The rest of the boys were looking at him over the railing and Sean was nearly to the top.

“Everybody get inside and get down!” Bill shouted upwards. “Don’t let them see you!”

As Bill neared the top, he looked off in the direction from which they had run and saw five of the monsters running their way. He ran up the last few steps, and then they slammed the trapdoor in the floor shut and pushed the fire tower’s desk on top of it.

They watched the monsters run the rest of the way along the trail to the tower. They stopped, growling and snarling, faced with a wall of fire between them and their prey.

“Well, that will hold them off for now,” Sean replied. “But we’re kind of trapped up here. What do we do now?”

“Now, we hope that Gary or those other two guys have some kind of plan to get us out of here,” Bill said.

“Are we going to talk about how those two guys turned into grizzly bears before they started fighting the giant monsters?” one of the boys asked Bill.

“Nope,” Bill replied, and that was the end of the discussion.

****

Gunnar and Mike trudged through the woods with Thomas and Sam hoping to catch sight of the boys soon. Marcus and Rodney had not waited for them to arrive as instructed, but they fortunately found the troop of teenagers and Christopher’s werebear target a couple of hours ago deep in the woods, and the rest of the team was moving to intercept.

Rodney had discreetly called Joel after finding the campers, and it turned out that the werebear target was Christopher’s Cub and ex-mate.

Now, as they moved through the woods, they saw a thick plume of smoke rising to the north of their current position. Gunnar pulled out his phone and called Axel.

“Hey Hair Bear,” Gunnar said when Axel answered, “Are you seeing this smoke off to the North?”

“I see it, Yogi,” Axel replied. “I’m thinking that’s looking like a distress signal. You want to converge all teams on that location?”

“Let’s do it,” Gunnar said. “Call the other teams and we’ll meet you there.”

****

At the campsite, Gary saw the column of smoke rising and knew what his cadets must have done to protect themselves from the monsters following them.

“Attaboy, Bill,” he said quietly, and then winced as the creature standing behind him dug its claws into his shoulder and forced him to his knees.

“Yes, good job, Gary,” Christopher said, walking up to stand directly in front of him, “I was looking for a training exercise to prepare my children for the storming of my Papa’s house, and it looks like your cubs are rising to the challenge.”

“I must still turn you on, Christopher,” Gary said with a smirk leaning his head toward Christopher’s groin and inhaling his scent. “I can smell that you beat off not too long ago. Probably when you were hiding there in my tent, right? Soaking up my scent must get you really hot and bothered.”

Gary sniffed around Christopher some more and laughed.

“If I’m not mistaken, I think you have my underwear in your pocket, you dirty bear!” Gary taunted, and Christopher’s face grew red with rage.

“Planning on keeping those as a souvenir to sniff whenever you can’t get it up for your mangy children?”

“Shut your whore mouth!” Christopher raged, and the creature with its claws in Gary’s shoulder growled and worked them in a little deeper into his flesh.

“Sure, Papa,” Gary replied, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “You’re the boss and I’m the Cub after all.”

****

“Hey Bill,” one of the boys said, tapping him on the shoulder. “The fire on the back side is starting to die down a little.”

“Shit,” Bill said looking at the spot his classmate pointed out. “Somebody has to have seen our smoke by now. If they don’t get here fast, we’re going to be fucked, as Gary would say.”

The monsters were quick to take advantage in the break in the wall of flames and they crowded around to the weak side of the fire, gathering their primitive courage. The first monster let out a bellow and leaped over the flames, landing safely on the other side, and then howled to its brothers to follow before starting its ascent of the tower. The other monsters quickly followed it over the flames, and they too began to climb. The stairs were too small and narrow for their massive bodies, so they scaled the tower’s structural supports instead.

The boys started to panic, but Bill kept his head.

“Look, the top of the tower overhangs the structural supports by several feet all the way around. They’ll have to come in through the trapdoor in the floor. Everybody sit on the desk barricading it for extra weight!”

They all piled on top of the desk that was blocking the trapdoor. Within a few seconds, there was a tremendous pounding on the floor underneath them. The desk heaved and shook, but the boys held on.

Finally, they heard a loud screeching bellow just beneath their feet, and the trapdoor exploded upward, knocking the desk over and scattering the boys all over the room.

From the hole in the floor, a horrible visage slowly rose, like a bear that had been mutilated and beaten as a cub and had never healed properly.

The creature’s face was less than a foot from the spot where Bill had landed when he fell off the desk, and the two looked into each other’s eyes for a few brief seconds that seemed to stretch on forever.

The monster growled and leaned forward to grab at Bill. Bill had nothing left to defend himself and out of desperation he grabbed the whistle hanging around his neck and blew it right in the creature’s face.

The piercing noise hit the creature’s sensitive ears, and it howled and ducked its head below the hole again backing against its brothers who were trying to push forward at the same time.

“That’s it!” Bill cried out to the other cadets, “They can’t stand the sound! Everybody blow your whistles now!”

All ten boys grabbed the whistles around their necks and began to blow them as loudly as they could. The monsters howled and let go of the tower supports to cover their ears from the high-pitched noise causing them pain. With their clawed hands over their ears, there was no way to hold on, and all five beasts fell from the tower, bouncing off of the support beams on the way down until they each landed on the ground with a thud.

“Don’t stop!” Bill shouted to the others over their whistles, “Keep blowing! We need to drive them off!”

Bill climbed down through the hole in the floor, and began to descend the steps, continuing to blow his whistle as the other boys lined up behind him blowing theirs as well.

The monsters whined and howled at the continued noise and stumbled away from the base of the tower. Three of them stumbled directly through the fires still burning in the grass, and they howled and ran, rolling on the ground to put out their singed fur and burned skin.

The boys continued their descent just as a large group of men approached the tower.

“Keep blowing!” Bill cried out to the rest, as he ran down the final steps and ran over to the huge crowd of bearded men.

“I hope you’re the good guys,” Bill said as he ran up to the seven-foot man at the front of the group.

“We’re as good as you’re going to get,” Axel replied. “How are you keeping those monsters from attacking?”

“It’s the whistles,” Bill explained, “The monsters can’t stand the sound. It’s driving them away.

“Please sirs, our teacher and two other men are still at our campsite with more monsters and a bad man who says that the monsters are his children. We have to help them now. The two men turned into bears and fought two of the monsters just long enough so that we could get away.”

“Okay, kid,” Axel replied. “Gather your friends into a group, but whatever you do, don’t stop blowing those whistles. You stop blowing them and we’re all dead, got it?”

Bill nodded and resumed blowing his whistle.

Axel gave the rest of his group a hand-signal and they all started stripping off their clothes.

“Look kid,” Axel said, leaning in to speak with Bill, “In a few seconds, all of us big guys are going to turn into bears too. A few of our friends here are going to put each of you onto the back of a bear. You’re going to ride us like horses and blow those whistles to drive the monsters off, and we’ll run to the campsite to save your teacher and our other two friends. Are you okay with that?”

Bill gave the big man a thumbs up, and then ran back to his classmates to tell them what was going to happen.

As the boys continued to blow their whistles which kept the monsters pacing and howling at a safe distance, the big men started to shift into grizzly bears, black bears and polar bears. A few unchanged men ran over to the group and began picking up the boys one-by-one, placing each of them onto the back of a bear.

“Hold on and keep blowing those whistles!” the men shouted to the boys.

Bill watched a naked, blond, blue-eyed man turn into a blond furred grizzly, and in a moment he was whisked in the air and placed on the animal’s back.

Rule 9: No petting the wildlife, Bill thought to himself, but he didn’t have time to think about it long. The bears began to run toward the monsters as a group, and as the boys continued blowing their whistles, the beasts covered their ears again and began running back up the trail toward the camp.

****

At the camp, Rodney and Marcus still laid on the ground, their battle wounds slowly healing, and Gary kneeled on the ground with a set of claws buried in this shoulder.

“Do you hear that?” Christopher said, looking Gary in the eyes, “I hear the sounds of my children, running back with their prey. It sounds like your cubs are blowing their distress whistles in their panic, hoping that someone will come to their rescue. How adorable.”

A minute ticked by, and the sound of the whistles grew louder. Gary noted that there were many more footsteps coming their way than just the five monsters sent to capture his cadets. The whistle sounds grew so loud that the three monsters in the campsite whined and covered their ears, and even the one holding Gary released his shoulder to try to block out the horrible noise growing closer.

Christopher turned away from Gary just in time to see his five children come running empty-handed into the campsite, howling pitifully. They were chased by twenty-five werebears in their bear forms, ten of which carried a boy on their backs, blowing their whistles at an ear-piercing volume.

Christopher noticed that three of his children seemed to be severely burned, but at that moment, Enceladus picked him up in his arms and all of his children began running from the bears and the noisy, whistling boys in terror.

“No! Stop!” Christopher tried to command his monsters as they carried him away in a panicked retreat, “Go back and kill them! Kill them all!”

But the monsters could not comply. They had to escape the terrible sound and the only way to do that was to run. Run far, far away so that the small weak creatures could not find them and inflict the pain on their sensitive ears any longer.

****

With the monsters running away, the bears came to a halt and knelt down on the ground so that the boys could slide off their backs. The cadets all ran over to Gary and gathered around him in a big group hug.

Gary looked up at the bears as they began to shift back to their human forms.

“Thank you,” Gary said to the assembled men. “Thank you for saving my cadets.”

“Your cadets saved themselves,” Axel replied. “We followed their signal fire, and by the time we got there, they’d already figured out the monsters’ weakness and had driven them off. We just gave them a ride back to camp so that they could save you too.”

“What?” Gary began, “How?”

“It was Bill,” Sean said proudly, hugging Bill to his side. “He’s the one who started the circle of fire all around the tower which held them off for a little while, and then when they finally got past the burning grass and broke into the room at the top of the tower, he was the one who figured out that the sound of the whistles hurt their ears.

“You should have seen it, Gary. We blew our whistles and all five monsters just fell out of the tower like sandbags, ‘thump!’ right to the ground!”

“Bill, come here,” Gary said, and Sean let go of his friend long enough so that he could step over to their instructor.

“Yes, Gary?” Bill said, looking at his hero in the eye. Gary took Bill by the shoulders and smiled at him with pride.

“I told you that you were a leader. You’ve figured that out now, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Bill said turning pink and looking at the ground.

Mike, who had carried Bill on his back for the trip from the tower to the campsite caught Gary’s attention. He touched his nose and glanced at Bill with his eyes.

Gary nodded back at Mike. He knew that Bill was kindred, and he had shown his true noble werebear nature today in defense of his fellow cadets.

“Ok, guys. When it comes to surviving in the wilderness, I’m giving all of you an ‘A’.”

The boys all cheered, and Sean pulled Bill into a big hug, much to Bill’s embarrassment.

“Now we’re going to talk about keeping important secrets.” Gary said. “The monsters who attacked us and these men who helped save us are a secret, okay? When we get back to the academy, all we’re going to say is that two men found us on our hike and warned us of a dangerous criminal in the woods and that we packed up and came back home. We’re not going to tell anybody about monsters, and we’re not going to say anything about men who turn into bears. Got it?”

“If we aren’t ever going to talk about it,” one boy said, “Can you at least tell us what we’re keeping the secret about? Who are all these naked guys who can turn into bears, anyway?”

“Take a knee, cadets,” Gary said, and they gathered around him, kneeling. “These men are called werebears. That’s sort of like werewolves from the movies, but they don’t need to have a full moon to turn into a bear, and they’re the good guys. Their jobs are to protect people from harm, and they’ve been doing it in secret for thousands of years. Now that they’ve helped you, you are part of the secret. Nobody can know that there are men who turn into bears that keep everyone safe, got it?”

“Got it,” the boys all said in unison.

Gary held his hand out flat in front of the group of boys.

“Put your hand on mine and promise that you’ll never tell another soul about what happened here today.”

The boys looked at Gary’s hand for a moment, and then Bill moved first to lay his hand on their instructor’s. One-by-one the other boys followed suit. Sean was the last one to lay his hand on top of the stack.

“If you promise to never speak about today with anyone else outside of our group, say ‘I swear’.”

“I swear,” the boys all repeated.

“Good job,” Gary said. “I’m really very proud of all of you. Now, let’s break down the camp and get packed up. We’re going to have to go back home tonight until we’re sure those monsters aren’t coming back.”

“Don’t worry,” Axel said, “We’re going to take care of those monsters once and for all within the next couple of days. It should be a lot easier now that we know their weakness. Plus, when we got here, we um… disabled their truck and trailer, so from now on they’re going to have to travel on foot.”

“Gary?” Bill began, as the boys worked on packing up their tents and getting their things back into their backpacks. “Do you think the werebears could do us one last favor?”

“I don’t know, Bill, you’ll have to ask them yourself.”

Gary waved over Axel, Mike, and Gunnar to gather around and hear Bill’s request.

“Um, sirs…” Bill said as the giant men looked down at him. “It’s been a really long day, and we’re pretty wiped out. Do you think… would it be okay…”

“Go ahead and spit it out, cub,” Mike said, kneeling down in front of him.

“Can we get a ride on your backs again back to the van? That was a lot of fun, and it will save us a ton of time if we don’t have to do the whole hike again!”

Mike laughed. “You got it, cub! Once you finish packing up here, your grizzly bear steeds will whisk you back to the parking lot in no time!”

“What about Gary?” Bill said. “Is there a bear big enough to give him a ride too?”

“Don’t worry about me, Bill. I’ll be able to keep up! You go and tell the others to hurry up and get packed and then we’ll let our bear escort team get us back to civilization in one piece.”

Bill grinned and ran over to tell the other guys the good news.

“That boy is going to make one hell of a werebear someday,” Gunnar said.

“I know,” Gary said with a touch of pride. “I’m going to give him a few more years to finish growing up, and then I’m going to give him the choice that Christopher never gave me. Something tells me he’s going to say ‘yes’.”