Chapter 1: WEREWOLVES AT THE GATE

From an aerial perspective, it was difficult to distinguish exactly where the forest ended and the grounds of Performance Paintball began. If you’d shown a picture of that view to anyone and asked them to guess where it was, no one would ever guess New Jersey. You could make pretty good drinking money on that bet; no one believes that New Jersey has woods and forest. Most refuse to believe it has even a single living tree.

From the county road that ran past the playing site, its location was obvious. Twin neon painted billboards proclaiming ‘PERFORMANCE PAINTBALL – HOME OF THE WORLD CHAMPION WEREWOLVES’, bracketed the entrance. Chevrons cataloging an impressive string of annual wins depended from the signs. There was a two-year gap between the present season and the most recently added chevron.

Driving past the entrance, one could catch a brief glimpse of the facility through the trees. A low-roofed building with numerous windows sat off to one side of the dirt track that led from the county road onto the playing site. Opposite the building was an open field dotted with colorful balloons of various shapes and sizes. Bright yellow caution tape snaked amongst the trees.

Now that it was finally getting into spring, the days were getting longer. It was about time, too. It was already a third of the way into the year’s tournament season and the team needed the extra practice time that the longer days would allow them to squeeze in. The past two seasons had been disappointing and this one hadn’t been going all that well either. If the Werewolves were going to have any chance of qualifying for this year’s championship, they were really going to need to pick up the pace. They were already on the brink of numerical elimination.

John had his back to the parking lot when he heard the crunch of tires on gravel. He didn’t bother to turn around; he was cleaning rental guns, getting ready for weekend play and he was already behind schedule. Anyone showing up on a Friday afternoon was a friend, a team player or a customer who was so early that they could afford to wait.

John reached out a gnarled hand and pulled another Tubman 68Special off the rack, unthreaded the barrel and pulled off the magazine, grunting with the effort. He dunked it repeatedly in the fifty gallon trashcan filled to the brim with his own special mixture of soapy water and spla that served as a cleaning bath, watching as the accumulated dirt, grit, oil and paintball-fill slowly loosened and dissolved into the grayish water. “One-hundred fifty one down, forty-nine to go” he said out loud.

“And then there’s still the hoppers to clean” said a voice from behind him.

John didn’t even bother to turn around. “Hey Dave. Practice?”

Dave leaned his elbows on the field house counter. “Damn you John, I’m never going to be able to sneak up on you, am I?”

John kept on cleaning. “Nope. Or maybe I’m just never going to let you know when you do. So what’s up?

“Oh, not much. We’re going to up the practice schedule a bit, get in a few late afternoons every week for a while if you don’t mind. Hey, have you seen those new tube harnesses from TJ Sports? Looks like they took our suggestions. Pretty sweet…”

John nodded his head towards one of the many tables scattered around the inside of the field house. “See that package over there? Just came in today. I think the return address says 'TJ Sports'.”

“Oh SWEET! Can I…?”

John smiled to himself. “Sure”

Dave walked around to the entrance of the field house, opened the door and stepped inside. He grabbed the package and commenced to rip it open, shedding bits of brown paper and gray filler all over the floor in his eagerness to get to the contents. Inside, heat-sealed in individual plastic bags were black strips of rugged cordura nylon and elastic.

Dave tore open a bag and began spreading the harness on a table.

John looked up. “I don’t think that one’s yours”, he said.

“Huh? What do you mean?

“Take another look. They’re supposed to be personalized.”

Dave looked down and inspected the harness more closely. He found a nametag sewn to one of the shoulder straps of the harness that had “Sparky” embroidered in black letters against an olive drab background on it. On the opposite shoulder strap was sewn a round embroidered patch bearing the Werewolves team logo, a stylized howling wolf silhouetted against a rising full moon. “Hey, they’ve got our patch on them!”

Dave’s hands plunged back into the package and quickly located the one labeled ‘Dancer’. He tore open the plastic and began putting the harness on.

“Man, it fits perfectly,” he said. “When did you do this?”, he asked John.

“Oh, it’s been in the works for a bit. I figured you guys could use a boost. By the way, TJ said they were going to renew your sponsorship for the rest of the season. I told them it was a mistake.”

“Hah! John, that sense of humor of yours is going to get us in trouble some day.”

John snorted. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. You guys’ sucked last year, you sucked the year before that and I don’t even know what word to use that appropriately describes your performance so far this season. Eighth place, fifth place, seventh place – you haven’t even made it into the finals once this season.”

Dave stopped admiring the new harness. John was being uncharacteristically serious. “What bugs gotten up your butt? I know we’re having a bad season but that’s never really bothered you before. Is something wrong?”

John heaved a deep sigh, peered out into the parking lot and then looked Dave straight in the eyes. “Look. Don’t tell the rest of the guys any of this, ok?”

Dave nodded acceptance of the conditions. John had confided in him in the past and he’d always respected that trust. It was one of the reasons they worked together so well, with John running the field and Dave managing the team.

“I’m losing the field. Those guys at Empire of Evil Paintball are really putting the squeeze on me. I don’t buy their paint, so they’re trying to run me out. You know how they set all those other fields up all around us and chopped the prices. Now they’ve hired some shyster to work the local zoning board and we’re going to lose the use of the property. They’re paying people off left and right and I just can’t compete with that.”

From outside, the sound of multiple tires crunching and skidding over gravel grew louder and louder. A caravan of cars, pickups and SUVs was heading up the drive towards the parking lot. Horns tooted, voices shouted happily from open car windows, the resultant din interrupting anything else John had been about to say.

“Well,” Dave said once the din had died away, “looks like the team is here. Let me go get practice started and then I’ll come back and we can talk about this some more. I won’t tell them, but you know they’re gonna find out. You know what paintball gossip is like. Don’t sweat it, we’ll figure something out.”

John shrugged off Dave’s hopeful tone. Talking about his problem had made him think about it and had depressed him all over again. “Yeah, sure. I guess I better get the fill station set up.” He slumped off to a corner of the field house and began busying himself with the field’s air compressor.

Dave watched him for a few minutes and then headed out to the parking lot to meet the team. ‘Jeez’, he thought to himself ‘crappy season and now this. How the heck am I gonna raise morale when I feel like shit?’

Out in the parking lot the Werewolves were unpacking their loads and starting to carry their gear bags up to the Wolves Den, the team’s personal and private clubhouse. Dave followed the train up the well-worn path.

Before entering the building, he made obeisance at the ‘Wolve’s shrine beside the entrance. A plastic skull and a pile of plastic bones, painted to appear as if they still had tendons and shreds of muscle and flesh left on them, sat below a sign that read “Yesterday’s Lunch”. The patches belonging to team’s they’d beaten were stapled to the sign. When the team held events at the field, someone would sprinkle sugar water on the pile so it would attract flies. Today the shrine seemed lifeless.

Dave stepped inside the clubhouse and threaded his way in and around the gear bags and piles of equipment to a spot at about the middle of the building. He sat down on a hand-made bench that had been painted with the team’s logo and had the names, nicknames and player numbers of the members of the team carved into it. He reached down between his legs and opened a locker built into the base of the bench, pulling out a clipboard, a pen and a file folder.

He opened the folder, folded back the cover and then slid it under the clip on the clipboard. The first page inside the folder was labeled ‘Roster’ and it had a list of names running down the left side and columns of dates across the top.

Starting at the top, he began running down the names, checking to see who was in attendance. Down at the end of the building was Phil ‘Tooch’ Ramatucci, looking like a favored son of La Cosa Nostra. Trying to collect last night’s poker winnings from him and laughing the whole time was Aden Samuelson, his curly red ‘afro’ wiggling and jiggling as he laughed.

Next to them and quietly loading paintballs into ten round tubes were the Mannijes twins – Ian and Steve. Completely identical, even if you could only see one of them you knew the other one was somewhere close by. Thin as rails, the only way you could tell the two apart was by counting fingers. Steve had two and a half more than Ian, the loss resulting from model rocketry ‘experiments’ that had gone wrong. Or right. It kind of depended on how you looked at it.

As usual, the corner next to the door and opposite the bench was occupied by the Imperial Guard – Ron Snark, Chris Harris and Pete Carpenter – the defensive specialists. Ron ‘Sparky’ Snark towered over the other two. At six ten and three hundred and twenty pounds, Sparky was the team enforcer – and he never had to raise his voice. Chris’s full beard, mustache and long hair concealed a face that, had it been bare, would have been the spitting image of Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes. The origin of his twin nicknames – ‘Sarge’ or ‘Schultz’, was obvious. Pete ‘Ghost’ Carpenter sat quietly cleaning his gun and listening to Chris and Ron trade banter. Just like on the field, Pete faded into the background, never seen but always seeing.

Ed ‘Old Man’ Pavarotti, a wizened, leathery, skinny, old looking man, sat with Ken Kreltch. Ken was nearly as large as Ron, but tighter and harder; he and Ed had been in the military and Ken still maintained his Navy SEAL and Army Rangers contacts. He’d catch too much ribbing from them if he let himself get out of shape. As usual, he was trading off-color jokes with Ed.

George and Mark Finch were just coming in the door. Older and younger brother respectively, they looked nothing alike. When it was their turn to catch a ribbing, the usual cliché raised was whether it was George or Mark who actually knew who their mother was. Mark was medium height, medium build and just beginning to bald. George was short and movie star handsome, blonde to Mark’s brunette. They’d joined the team together but had had to be put on different squads. Older brother Mark resented George’s status as the team’s poster boy.

Tony, Al, Rich and Greg were all clustered down at the far end of the shack, standing around the camp stove, where Tony had already started breaking out macaroni salad and heating up some soup. Tony had been a cook in the Marines and he looked like a Marine Corps cook. Al, his cousin, looked like a cook’s assistant from the Bronx, ‘eyetalian tough guy’ all the way through. Greg was the other redhead on the team, but unlike Aden, he was a true redhead, translucent skin, freckles, green eyes and all. Greg was the team’s ‘welt king’ because his tender Irish skin bruised so easily.

Rich Smith rounded out the group. He’d been named team captain by proclamation, as he was the only person on the team who looked tough enough to take everyone on and maybe win. Rich’s face looked like Rocky Balboa’s after a fight with Apollo Creed and Mr. T.

Other than John who was a sometime fill-in by virtue of his position as owner of the home field (and in honor of his planning skills – the team hadn’t nicknamed him John ‘Hannibal’ Smith for nothing) everyone was in attendance. Which was unusual these days, especially for a weekday practice.

Dave checked off the attendance space for everyone and flipped the page up so he could take a look at the Tasks Roster. While he was going over that list, he caught a bit of Rich’s conversation with Tony and the boys. “…lose the field. I figured I’d ask him about it later today.”

“Effin paintball rumor mill is faster than light speed” Dave muttered to himself. “Hey Rich! Can you come over here a minute?” he called across the room.

Rich sauntered over. “Yeah?”

Dave looked around to make sure no one was paying too close attention. No one seemed overly interested; it wasn’t unusual for the team captain and the team manager to be having a private conversation.

“I thought I heard you say something about the field…?”

“Yeah. I heard the town is going to re-zone the land and John’ll have to move it. I was going to ask him about it later to see if it was true. Why, you know something?”

“Cats out of the bag, I guess. John just told me earlier. Listen, can you get everyone together for a meeting while I go get John? He wanted me to keep it quiet, but there’s no point in that now.”

“Shit! It’ll take him a year to find someplace as good as this – and you know as well as I do that those other team’s hate us so much we’ll be paying a fortune to practice!” When Rich got mad, his face turned red and veins popped out of his forehead, which made a very scary face even scarier. Especially when in close proximity. Dave unconsciously slid down the bench, moving an extra couple of inches away from Rich.

“Yeah. Go get him. I’ll get the guys together.”

Dave put his clipboard down on the bench and headed on out of the clubhouse. As he passed by the knot of Imperial Guardsmen, he heard Chris’s deep rumbling laugh. “UFOs? Hahahaha. Are you sure it wasn’t moonlight reflected off of your farts? You know a lot of people mistake swamp gas for flying saucers. Knowing you, it must have been a huuuuge flying saucer, hahahah!”

Ron swatted at Chris’ head, his bear claw of a hand just barely ruffling Chris’ hair. “Stefu you moron! I just said I saw something. I didn’t say it was a flying saucer!”

Dave kept on going out the door, but he’d have to ask Sparky about it later; Dave was a big science fiction fan and, while ‘UFOs’ weren’t strictly science fictional, he did enjoy debunking them.

Dave walked on down to the field house, pulled John away from the compressor where he was working on a leaky air hose, explained that Rich had heard about the field situation, swore mightily that he hadn’t told Rich about it first and convinced John to meet with the team. On the way out he remembered to grab the package of new harnesses.

Once back at the clubhouse, they saw that Rich had gotten everyone together and reasonably under control.

“Listen guys,” said Dave, sitting back down at his Team Managers’ seat on the bench, “John’s got a problem and that means it’s our problem. Some of you have apparently already heard bits and pieces, but let’s get it straight from John, ok?” Dave nodded to John and gave him the floor.

John, in his clipped, matter-of-fact manner that always sounded as if it was going to end in a humorous comment so dry that it could suck water out of the Sahara, began relating his tale of woe. At the mention of the Empire of Evil Paintball Corporation, the clubhouse erupted in hisses, boos, a cacophony of curse words and multiple speculations on the probable ancestry of that company’s owners. None of them were flattering. It was a matter of team policy that the company’s name never be allowed mention without interruption.

As John was finishing, a voice called from outside the clubhouse: “Alloo! Allo!”

Dave turned to Aden who was closest to the door. “Aden, could you see what that is?”

Aden walked to the doorway and started to step outside but brought himself up short. “'What' was right. Guys, comere. You’ve all got to see this.”

The team crowded around the door and peered outside. Those who’d gotten there first began to snicker and twitter; the twins barked out a single, chopped off laugh and then covered their mouths to contain any further outbreaks.

Standing on the path between the field house and the clubhouse, arrayed four-square and shoulder to shoulder, were the strangest players Dave had ever seen.

Dressed in urban camouflage, their faces concealed by Dead Paintball Invasion goggles, they looked like nothing so much as a cartoonist’s caricature of an old-world French Canadian lumberjack.

They were squat and thick and gnomish. Thick dark hair spiked out from around their masks in complete disarray. Their arms were as thick as Ron’s thighs, their legs stumpy like an elephant’s and seemingly without knees. The three were even more identical than Ian and Steve, like they’d been stamped out of a French Canadian Lumberjack mold.

Dave wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if they asked for 'Canadian bacon, ‘ey’.