Chapter 9: The Wounded Warrior

"Humphrey!" Kate shouted.

As soon as he felt the excruciating pain in his side, Humphrey's jaw relaxed and the man crawled out from under him, cradling his injured arm. Humphrey staggered, but remained standing. His face showed an expression of surprise rather than pain.

He turned his head and looked at Kate who just stood in the cage, horrified by what she saw. They held each other's gaze for a moment and then Humphrey collapsed onto the ground.

"NO!"

Kenya heard the gunshot from inside the animal control car that she had been put in. As she watched her brother collapse into a heap on the ground, her eyes filled with rage and she crashed through the side car window.

She stood up and attacked the human with the gun, grabbing it by the barrel, taking it from the man's grip, and pulling him down to the ground. Kate got out of the cage and went to one of the pickup trucks to get Stinky and Claudette's cage off the back while Marcel and Paddy went to rescue Garth, Lilly, and Daria. It wasn't long before the humans got in their trucks and left.

As everyone caught their breath, they heard incredibly labored wheezing behind them. They turned around to see Humphrey laying on the ground, struggling to breathe.

"Kate," he said.

Kate ran over to him.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Kate laughed, fighting back tears. "Says the guy that got shot," she said, smiling.

Humphrey tried to get up but fell over as soon as he stood up.

"Humphrey," Kate said. "You're really hurt. Stop trying to be the tough guy."

The group stood around their injured friend, thinking about how to move him when Kenya suddenly had an idea.

"I've got an idea," she said. "Don't move, I'll be right back."

"Oh yeah, that's real funny," Humphrey said sarcastically as Kenya ran off.

About ten minutes later, Kenya returned with the logboard.

"What do plan to do with that?" Humphrey asked.

"We're going to push you on this," Kenya replied.

It didn't take too much time to get the wounded warrior onto the logboard, but it did take a lot of pain and effort. Humphrey laid down on his good side with the bullet wound facing up.

They moved along slowly, covering very little ground. In about an hour, they came across something very disturbing. They were only about a mile or so from the area where Humphrey had been shot, but all around them were dens. But these dens were caved in, broken, and utterly destroyed, no doubt by humans. This is what remained of Humphrey's pack.

Humphrey struggled to sit up on his stomach to look around, but immediately regretted it. Strewn about the ground, covered in moss, were the bones of dead wolves, still in their exact positions from when they died nearly twenty years ago. It was absolute carnage. A great struggle, no doubt took place here.

"Oh no," he said.

"What?" Kate asked. "What is it?"

"This was my pack," Humphrey explained.

"What happened here?" Lily asked.

"I don't know," he replied.

"We should keep moving," Garth said.

They slowly and carefully pushed the logboard around the dead wolves' remains until Humphrey suddenly asked them to stop. He sat up again to get a better look, and soon, everyone else saw what he was looking at.

Just ahead of where the logboard was sitting, were the skeletons of two wolves that were laying side-by-side, facing each other. Their bodies were a mirror image of one another in the way that they were positioned. Backs slightly arched, tails down, both back legs close to each other, one front leg pointing down, and heads tilted slightly downward toward the other. Their other front legs were also touching, one on top of the other, in the same manner as that of a human holding hands. One skull was smaller than the other, yet both spines were the same length, inferring that one wolf had been female, and the other male. One last thing Humphrey noticed was that the heads were very close together. This apparent husband and wife had, no doubt, been rubbing noses during their final moments. Humphrey had no idea that these were his parents.

It was a very heartbreaking sight to see and the group did remain for a short time to give a moment of silence to these two wolves who clearly loved each other. Kate even began to think that this might be Humphrey soon. And that reminded her to keep moving.

But when the group started to move on again, they stopped when they noticed that they were missing someone. Stinky was still standing in the middle of the destroyed dens, sniffing the ground near one of them.

"Stinky," Kate said. "Come on. The quest is over. There's no point in searching any longer."

"But I smell wolves," he protested.

"Yes, there were wolves here, but now they're gone."

"No, I smell tracks leading into the forest, that way," Stinky said, pointing into the woods.

"Wait," Humphrey said, sitting up immediately, but painfully. "You mean there's survivors?"

"Yes."

"Kate, please," Humphrey said. "We have to follow the trail."

Kate didn't respond right away, but then she said, "Alright. But if we don't find anything by tomorrow afternoon, we go home."

"Deal," Humphrey eagerly agreed.

The group turned the logboard and began following Stinky into the woods. They traveled very slowly, taking many hours to go a short distance. By the time evening started rolling around, they came to a sandstone cliff that had dens carved out in the side. This was where the survivors of Humphrey's pack had built their new dens.

"What do you smell, Stinky?" Kate asked.

"I smell a pack, Dad. Your pack," Stinky said.

"Do you smell any survivors?" Humphrey asked.

"I can't tell. Everything's all a jumbled mess of different scents," Stinky answered.

A feeling of disappointment and sadness passed over the whole group.

"Well then," Kate said. "I'm sorry Humphrey. There's nothing left for it. We should go home now."

As the group began to turn back around, away from the cliff, Humphrey felt a new sense of determination. He gathered up as much of his strength as he could, stood up, and slowly moved off of the logboard.

"Humphrey!" Kate asked. "What are you doing?"

Humphrey, for the third time, said nothing, but slowly continued back toward the cliff.

"Humphrey," Kate called, but to no avail. He just kept going.

Humphrey eventually reached the entrance of the biggest cave that was carved out into the sandstone cliff, but as soon as he reached the entrance, Humphrey collapsed onto the ground again.

A wolf appeared from inside the den. He had a pitch-black mane that was short and laid back smoothly against his head. He had a dark grey coat of fur and a wide, broad snout. His eyes were a deep, golden color, and he looked to be in his early thirties. But his most noticeable features were two scars in the shape of claw marks. There was a small one running down his left shoulder and an even bigger one on the left side of his neck that ran diagonally from the top left, all the way down across his neck to his chest. This scar was from a not-so recent wolf fight that took place around thirteen years before, but the fur still hadn't quite grown back.

He looked at Humphrey with surprise in his eyes as he recognized him immediately. Humphrey looked up at the wolf and noticed his scar. It was apparent that he had been through a lot. Humphrey then looked down at the side of his thigh. He couldn't see it because the fur had long since covered it up, but the scar was there. He had gotten it when him and Kenya were taken from their parents. And although he couldn't see them, Humphrey also thought about the many small scars on the back of his neck in the shape of a bite mark, which his unkempt mane of fur covered up very well. He had gotten those sometime during the two months he spent living in the woods by himself when he had an encounter with another animal. He also looked down at his tail, which didn't seem like it had been crushed by a tree and swung on twice by another wolf, but Humphrey knew the trauma his poor tail had endured, and it reminded him of all that he had also been through.

"I can't believe it," the wolf said. "I thought I'd never see you again."

Humphrey looked up at him with a look of confusion in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think I know you."

"I thought you were dead," the wolf told Humphrey.

"Yeah, well I might be anyway," Humphrey struggled to explain, growing weaker by the second, his body threatening to fail him. The wolf turned into the darkness of the cave and called out to another wolf.

"Get him inside."

A group of alphas appeared and carefully moved Humphrey into the cave with the others following. Once everyone was inside, the wolf that addressed Humphrey now addressed Kate and the group that had come in with her.

"Who are you?" he asked Kate.

"I'm Humphrey's wife," she answered. "But more importantly, who are you?"

"He married an alpha?" the wolf laughed, and then sighed. "I should've known. He always was the rebellious one." The wolf chuckled a little. "Well then, if you're his wife, I guess that makes me your brother-in-law."

"Wait a minute," Kate said. "You're his brother? He never told me he had a brother."

"He never told you he had sister, either," Garth said.

Humphrey said nothing, mainly because he simply was not strong enough to do so. But then, very slowly and with much effort, Humphrey answered her.

"Yes," he said. "I remember now. Adam, my alpha brother. He stayed behind for training with our grandparents the day our parents went missing."

"Humphrey," Adam said. "They didn't go missing."

"You mean they're alive?" Humphrey asked, excitedly.

Adam paused and looked around the cave. "Look Humphrey," he said. "You need to rest and then I'll tell all of you what happened in the morning."

Morning came and with it, the answers that everyone had been so desperately searching for. Everyone gathered around Humphrey and Adam to hear the last part of the great mystery they had all been chasing.

"The day began like any other," Adam began. "The sun rose, the birds were singing, everything seemed like it was going to be fine. About an hour after we were all up, Mom and Dad decided to take you and Kenya out for an early morning walk. I stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa for alpha training. It was around 45 minutes later when they came running back without you two."

"They told us that they were ambushed by humans and that they somehow, fell asleep after feeling a sharp pain in the side of their necks while the humans took you and Kenya. When they woke up, they saw a truck driving away with the two of you in cages in the back."

"Just as we heard all this, several human trucks came and with them, dozens of humans, too. They came out of the trucks with guns and began shooting everything, destroying the dens. We decided to have some of our alphas cover the omegas and pups as they escaped, while the rest of the alphas went with and protected them. But Mom and Dad insisted upon helping to cover the evacuation and distract the humans, even though they were omegas, too. Every den was destroyed and all of the alphas that stayed behind were killed," Adam paused, a look of sorrow in his eyes.

"Mom and Dad, too. I'm sorry, Humphrey."

Humphrey suddenly realized that the two skeletons they had stopped to look at, were none other than his own parents. He suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to breathe as the weight of this news began to crush his already weakened heart. Kate looked over at him and immediately rushed to his side.

"Humphrey!" she shouted. "Humphrey!"

Humphrey, finding it more and more difficult to stay awake, said nothing.

Kate laid down at her husband's side, tears soaking her fur.

"No. No, no, no, no," Kate cried. "No, Humphrey, please, don't do this to me. You can't do this. Don't leave me, please. You're all I have."

But the attempt was futile. Humphrey couldn't stay awake any longer, the weight of everything that had just happened, too much for his body to bear. As Kate laid there, tears streaming down her face and soaking his fur, Humphrey's mind slowly passed off into darkness and all became black as night.