The group had walked for what felt like several hours, taking occasional breaks to rest and eat, before continuing on their way. Tyler's equipment wasn't too bad, but after a while he started to feel it dragging him down, he struggled to keep up with the athletic anthro wolves, even at walking pace. Athena offered to carry the tent bag for the human, which it in itself was lagging the boy down like nothing else, even the burgeon was somewhat lightweight thanks to it's design, but that didn't matter much when the human stuffed absolutely everything he could into it.
Suddenly, Denahi stopped in his tracks, everyone stopped behind him. He walked to a tree where he reached to a branch at about his height, pulling it down, he revealed it to be a black beret, a gold emblem hung loosely on it by the thin threads of the hat. Denahi called Tyler who made his way over.
"This was hanging in the tree, does this look like something you recognize?" Denahi said to the human, who took the black beret from the wolves giant paw and inspected it, coming to the small plastic looking emblem, his heart sank a little when he saw it, Denahi could literally see and feel the emotion drop in the human. Said human reached into his coat and pulled out a similar looking beret, but in much better condition, he put both the hats side by side as the other wolves came in for a closer look.
"It's a cadet beret, this is the emblem of the Norfolk Artillery Company, of which I'm a member off, this thing belonged to someone who came from our unit, the same unit that got-" Tyler stopped, he hesitated for a moment, "the same unit that attacked a few nights ago".
Denahi patted him on the shoulder, being careful not to be to hard, "I'm sorry".
"Don't worry kid, we'll find them" Sam said, coming up from the back of of group, he gave the kid a reassuring pat on the head, the human smiled up at both wolves, readjusting his boonie hat. The human put the torn up beret into his left breast pocket before the gang continued on their way.
Before long, the sun had reached into the top of the sky, shinning right on top of the group, meaning that it was now about midday, or what the human thought it was. The long trek through the woodland was proving to be a bit difficult, the fresh snow mixed in with the melted snow had turned the once smooth and dusty ground, into a soupy mess of ice and sludge. The anthro wolves had no problem whatsoever traversing the rough terrain, there powerful legs trudged through the ground with hardly any effort at all. Denahi took the lead, Athena walked close to him with the human right behind them, the other wolves were to the rear.
While the human had walked many miles through the British countryside and farmland back home, the land of America was starting to show just how rough it was compared to the relatively flat land of England, at least where Tyler had been to in the ACF. He travelled across many acres, spent days training in the field, bad weather, animals and all the interesting things that could make your trip a miserable experience, but this was proving to be a whole different ball game to the young human, at least he was warm enough, and protected.
Denahi lifted his head up, glancing at the sky. Tyler did too, the sun was now out of sight, and the forest had started to get much darker than before, the snow had started falling again as well, small flakes fell onto the wolves nose's and the humans hat as they travelled through the wood.
How far have we walked?
Tyler wondered.
Suddenly, Denahi stopped in his tracks, raising his nose in the air, sniffing intensely. The other wolves halted, waiting for something to happen, Tyler kept his finger close to the trigger, not taking any chances after what happened the other day. Denahi turned to the human and motioned for him to come over, the young human walked over slowly, still scanning the trees and the bushes for any kind of threat.
"What is it?" He said as he stood next to the big wolf, Denahi knelt down to the boy's height.
"I smell something" Denahi said.
"Smell what?" The boy answered.
"Blood" Denahi said.
Immediately, the hairs on Tyler's neck rose, his trigger finger etched ever so closer to the trigger, his thumb on the safety. The other wolves were on edge too, there heads turning in every direction, keeping ever vigilant for any beasts.
Then, Tyler heard the big wolf say something he didn't want to hear.
"It's human blood, a few days old perhaps" Denahi said, keeping his voice low as he stared deep into the forest, the human looked to where he was staring, a mist had settled making the forest more darker than it already was, the trees was close together and were surrounded by large bushes, creating perfect places to hide in for any animal. The tall trees resembled big monsters themselves, giants that could crush a man under their large feet. Despite his new wolf friends being right behind him, Tyler suddenly didn't feel safe, his mind was shouting at him to run and flee, or get the hell out of there, his hands were so shaky he could almost let off a round by accident.
"Now, we're going to spread out and move in slowly, I want to be right beside me okay?" Denahi said, pulling out a large bowie knife from it's sheath. He turned and gave a hand signal to the pack, who began to take positions, spreading out and readying their own weapons, Tyler pulled the charging handle back and checked inside his rifle, making sure there was a round in the chamber.
After a minute of silence, Denahi raised one of his paws and swung it down, giving the signal to move. The pack walked stealthily between the trees and through the fog, the human tried to keep close to Denahi whilst staring out into the forestry abyss in front of him. As he moved, he saw that they were getting close to exiting the woods, he could barely make out a large clearing in the distance, the fog hindered his view, though he doubted the wolves to the left and right of him even noticed there was any fog.
they trudged their way through the wood, the only sounds the boy could hear was the wind passing through the trees, the crunching of snow under his boots and both his and Denahi's breathing.
After a few minutes of this, the pack finally left the confines of the forest and went into the open, but, there in the middle of the clearing, was what caused the human to stand still, his breath caught in his throat. Denahi stood by him as he looked at it as well.
It was the remains of the camp.
Beneath the snow, Tyler could see the torn up tents and the fireplace, a few tents still stood proudly, the growing piles of snow atop them threatened to collapse them at any minute.
"My god, It's my unit's camp" Tyler said quietly, struggling to get the words out of his mouth.
"That's your camp?" Denahi said, crouching down to Tyler's level, the boy turned to him, pulling down his scarf from his face with a gloved hand.
"Yeah, the same one I was in when we were attacked that night" The boy murmured as he looked out at the graveyard of what was once a pretty good campsite, before the beasts of the night came and tore it all up.
"Do you want to look around, or do want move on?" Denahi said, placing a paw on the boy's shoulder, the wolves came over, standing beside the boy as the thought of what to do, the boy turned to them, they all looked at him with sympathy in their eyes, he had only known them for at least a day or so, but they reminded him of his best buddies, who would look out for each other and had each other's backs, but now for all he knew, his friends were gone and he wouldn't see them again, ever.
a ever so small trickle fell from one of Tyler's eye's, landing on his chin and falling onto his coat. He looked to the wolf beside him:
"I'm going to look around, see if I can find anything useful"
Denahi nodded, the boy turned and began to make his way towards the camp, the wolves following him close behind.