The first sound wasn't a howl. It was clicking. Soft at first, like fingernails on glass. Then faster, hopping fence to fence, finding corners.
"Lights low," Michael said. "Masks on."
They dimmed the big lamps and left the small ones burning dull. Snow threw the weak light back at them. The trees felt closer.
The clicking slid along the cage like water. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. It bounced, changed pitch, came back thinner. They weren't calling to each other. They were seeing.
The wolves stepped out of the dark.
They were wrong the way clickers are wrong. Their faces weren't faces anymore just layered plates of fungus splitting the muzzle like a cracked flower. No eyes, only seams. Pale threads hung from their gums like whiskers. Every breath came with a little puff of dust. When they snapped their jaws, the plates vibrated and made that clicking sound, fast and neat, like they were drawing a map in the air.
They tested the metal with their bodies. They tested it with sound. Plates touched mesh. Click. Pause. Click-click. You could feel them listening.
Hawkeye bead took the first hit. A gray blur hit the back wall hard enough to make the stove rattle. A second slid along the fence low as a snake, clicking quick, measuring ties, finding the spot where last night's bear had pushed a post crooked.
A runner from Sparrow heard the bell and tried to sprint the last stretch. The clicks spun toward him like a wheel. Three shapes came in quiet. He swung his bat once and caught fur. The second swing hit snow. By the time the tower fired, they were dragging him by the sleeves, plates brushing his coat, dust rising in little puffs that glowed in the light. No howl. No bark. Just the steady click-click-click of mouths working.
"Shields. Spears. Stay behind the fence," Michael said, keeping his voice low.
They had spear slots now gaps in the mesh at knee height. Rebar shafts slid out and locked. When a wolf rushed, metal met meat and pushed it back. It didn't scream. It coughed, and the cough threw dust.
One tried the rat tunnel. It moved the way water finds a crack, belly to boards, claws scuffing, plates scraping the wire roof. The kid on duty froze. The wolf did not. Michael jammed a spear crossways through the tunnel and wedged it. The animal hit the angle and stuck, plates ringing on mesh. It clicked in a hard rattle. Tommy dropped one shot in through the roof of the mouth. The click cut off like a switch.
"Sand these floors," Michael said, breathing hard. "Raise the bottom rail."
It bought them a minute. The pack used it better.
They circled the second bead, clicking slower now, counting posts, counting breaths. The biggest wolf had a scar tearing across the plates; the fungus had grown around it like bark around wire. It put its face to the ground and clicked in a slow sweep, feeling the room, feeling the people inside.
Then it went for the same low spot the bear had loosened.
Snow had drifted there. Chain-link they'd buried was a thin skin under powder. The wolf slid, bit the wire, and shook. The wire held. Kyle hit the gap with a bent shield like a man slamming a door. Alice drove a rebar stake through the mesh and into frozen dirt. The wolf coughed dust rolled out and pushed harder. Its plates flared and shivered with the sound.
Lena didn't run. She stabbed under the jaw and leaned her whole weight on the shaft. The wolf climbed up the spear like it meant to eat the hands at the end of it. Tommy waited, waited, then took the shot when the mouth lined up. The body twitched and went slack. The plates kept clicking for a breath or two, like a toy winding down.
The pack didn't break. They started circling faster, clicking tight around the bead. They were timing the towers. They were finding reloads.
"Flares," Tommy called.
Three orange blooms went into the trees. Fire bothered them. It didn't scare them. Two drifted back a few steps and kept clicking. One darted in, snapped at a flare like it was prey, and shook its head hard enough to spray ash.
"Noise lure," Michael said, quiet.
The horn at the next bead bleated twice downwind. Three wolves peeled off and chased the sound. Two stayed. The big scarred one shoved its plated face right up to the mesh and clicked in a slow sweep, feeling the bell, the stove, the human heartbeats behind both. Then it tried the low gap again because learning is just trying until something gives.
This time nothing gave.
The buried wire caught its chest. Stakes held. Kyle and Alice pinned the plates with rebar like they were tacking down a bad roof. Michael slid the spear under the jaw once more. The mouth opened, dust rolled, and Tommy ended it clean.
The last wolf ran. The towers tracked it by sound more than shape and took it at the treeline. The forest swallowed the body like it was pulling a curtain.
Silence hit wrong and heavy. The kind that rings inside your mask.
They counted. One from Sparrow gone in the snow. One from Hawkeye, found near the lanterns with his mask ripped and his eyes open to the night. The kid at the tunnel shaking, alive. Lena's wrists swelling. Kyle's shield bent. Alice's eyes wet behind fogged plastic.
They didn't talk about bravery. They fixed things.
Sand in every tunnel. Bottom rails raised a hand's width. Chain-link skirts buried a foot deep along all the fences. More little chimes on the upwind side so breath would sing before bodies showed. Extra bolts on the roof ribs. More short spear slots at knee height where the lunges come.
Morning was gray when they walked the line. Four wolves lay near the beads and the S-curve. Two more had bled out by the creek where the horn had dragged them. They burned the bodies where they fell. The plates curled in the heat. The dust lifted and drifted away.
At the table they wrote what mattered in big letters:
They're blind. They click to see.
They go for tunnels and low rails first.
Fire bothers them, doesn't stop them.
Soft spots: mouth, under jaw, behind front legs.
They cough dust. Masks stay on.
Noise lure works for now. Don't trust it tomorrow.
"No one walks alone after dark," Michael said. "Ever."
He didn't dress it up. People nodded because simple rules stick when your heart is loud.
That night the chimes on the upwind faces talked to each other in little metal voices while the wind moved. No clicks. No howls. Just the long hush of a valley trying to decide who it belonged to.
They weren't safe. But the wolves had felt the wire, and the wire had held. And everyone who still had a heartbeat had learned something they could use.