Alpha watched as Luna groggily gained her feet. He could feel the flames doing their destructive dance in the distance behind him. The danger had returned. He was lucky to have been so restless this night, spotting the monsters as they set fire to their new home.
He jumped as the clear skies barked out thunder. One of the pack’s oldest hunters was frozen in a partial rise before she fell back into the earth, a patch of red spreading through her snow-colored fur.
Every moment was an eternity as the pack struggled to gain their feet. More than a few of them returning into an eternal rest as the thunder struck out from behind a shield of flames.
The thunder wasn’t coming from the sky, Alpha realized in shocked horror, it was coming from the monsters setting fire to their lives. As several lifetimes passed, and several lives ended, the pack fled the flames, away from the monsters that had made the pack their prey.
Alpha’s ears were assaulted by a horrifying—and familiar—growling purr. He saw one of the creatures with glowing eyes racing toward him. He could see two of the parasites inside the impossibly fast creature—a creature which had parts he could see right through. The parasites were making whooping sounds that reminded him of the excited yips and howls the pack made when hunting prey.
The creature passed by him in a flash of red. The lifeless bodies of his fallen pack mates appeared to hold little interest to the monsters as they sailed past—and sometimes over—the dead. Alpha turned away in horror as one of the large creatures trampled over Beta’s head. There was a sound of something being squeezed and then a loud popping sound marked the passing of his friend, then the creature finished passing over the wolf, leaving a flattened, unrecognizable mess of fur and red in the place where Beta’s head had been.
The paws of the creature that had killed his lifelong friend trailed continuous bloody footprints as it hunted on. Alpha’s terror grew as he realized they weren’t even being hunted for food. They were being slaughtered without purpose. No animal of the forest killed without reason. Killing for fun rather than for survival destroyed the balance. It wasn’t just his pack at risk, he now understood, it was the whole world.
He became lost in his terror like a drowning rat becomes forever lost beneath the surface of a black lake. The pack was being herded. Toward where? For what purpose?
When his pack herded, it was to move the weak away from the strong. The weakest would then become the prey. The predator strengthened the heard by feasting on their weak, ensuring that both pack and heard remained strong. Alpha only understood the balance. These monsters served chaos. Alpha had known nothing of chaos in his other life; the life that these monsters had stolen.
As Alpha risked several glances around him. Only a little more than half of his pack remained with him. The monsters left a bloody trail of carcasses staining the pure white with their blood. Blood that had been spilled without purpose.
The monsters’ appetite for killing seemed to be growing even stronger. The fearsome whooping noises, and the constant growling of the beasts they rode inside grew to a piercing crescendo as they pushed the pack closer to their end. The pack was already dead, Alpha knew, but they kept running.
Suddenly, the creatures split off, the strange growls of the large beasts, and the whoops of their parasitic riders faded into empty silence. Had their monstrous lust for death and destruction of these creatures finally been sated? Was it finally over? Alpha knew in his heart that something even more terrible was yet to come.
Thoomp, thoomp, thoomp. It sounded like it was coming from all around him, but Alpha couldn’t see anything other than the pack, and endless fields of snow. He thought it was the sound of a massive hummingbird. Alpha glanced up into the sky to see another parasite ridden beast hovering in the air. It looked like a giant bulbous insect without wings. That wasn’t quite right. It seemed to have wings on the very top, spinning so fast he could barely see them. This reminded him again of a hummingbird; but this hummingbird, he knew, was an apex predator. One that would share all the other monsters’ endless appetite for blood and death. This time the sound of thunder did come from the sky. The head of one of his precious young—one that had been playing carefree in the snow just a day before—exploded into a shower of blood, brain, and chunks of skull.
The pack ran on.
There was no getting away from the giant flying insect, however. Now Alpha understood why the monster had led them here. They had been led into an open killing field without a single blade of grass to hide behind. Thunder exploded from above and the world ended.
Alpha howled his denial. He refused this reality. The pack would survive, he would give his life; but his pack would survive. Another bolt of lightning tore his heart from his chest. He watched, helpless, as Luna—his love—fell. One of her legs vanished and the snow drank her blood greedily. Letting out only a whispered whimper, she pushed herself up. She would protect her young, and she began howling her warning at the thing in the sky.
Luna’s eyes burned with fire. She would rip all of the monsters, and the parasites inside them, to pieces. Luna and Alpha would die here today, yes, but the puppies would be safe.
Thunder roared again, and a hole appeared in Luna’s side. Alpha shrieked out a howl as light shone briefly through his beloved mate before she fell to the earth for one final time.
He exploded in fear and anger as he ran on. With every crash of thunder, another of the pack fell and did not rise again. All of his pups. His mate. His pack. Their lives spent; not for the balance of or even some greater purpose, but for pointless death.
He felt a bee drive its stinger into his flank, his eyes went blank, and he crashed into the earth. It would be good to die with his pack. He faded into the black and knew no more.