While 2014 came and went and Christmas was celebrated, and then fading into a new year altogether, I had no idea what the year of 2015 would have in store. I wish I could relay the events that unfolded while I was in Edmonton as though they were important - in the first 3 months alone, I would track down and kill a total of 6 different U.A.P’s, of which I began to notice certain patterns relative to what I suspected to be 3 different breeding pairs, though couldn’t confirm. Meanwhile, somewhere on the west coast of British Columbia, a young man was dying horribly.

Tyler Hutton was a mauling victim of a U.A.P the year before, yet miraculously had survived despite severe traumatic injuries to his neck, face, and upper torso. So much in fact, that within the timespan of a month, he was back home being monitored by someone within the government’s need-to-know basis about this ordeal. In late January, after experiencing terrible aches in his muscles and bones, as well as uncontrollable fits of rage (that’s what I was told during a meeting in late Feburary, as you’ll come to understand later), he was taken back to the facility in British Columbia for observation. What happened in the span of 2 weeks must have been so painful, so scary, and so horrific, I cannot imagine the horror this young man went through in his final days, yet there was video proof.

Within a couple of days, he would have to be constantly sedated to be controlled at all. X-rays showed that his bones were shifting with great tension, and blood tests revealed what would end up being called Lycenthosis, though at the time nobody could figure out what the hell it was because all the white coats thought it must be something that had already been discovered. There was a desperate scramble for answers. A lot of false leads, and a lot of thinking inside the box. Meanwhile, Tyler Hutton only got worse. He died on the 15th day after being brought back. By then, he didn’t resemble the man he used to be at all. His skull had begun to elongate into a sort of muzzled shape, his hands had changed completely into a mess of pudgy rounded pads, his jaws had broken sharp teeth, where a visible canine was protruding through his upper lip, and worse yet, his tailbone and broken through skin. He died convolting and bled out all over the observation room he’d been locked in. The white coats, as I’d be told later in the year, had just watched it happen.

So, by the end of Feburary 2015, we knew that there was a species of unknown animals viciously killing people, and that their bite could pass a pathogen into the human body that would cause the host to die a horrible death slowly. Fun, right?

As far as anyone knew, any case prior to Tyler Hutton didn’t actually exist because, without a doubt, someone would have heard about it. The autopsy on Hutton’s body revealed his internal organs had been slightly repositioned by, what was to become an inaccurate theory, a bulging of the spine and realignment of the ribs. None of it made sense but his innards were essentially not where the guts of a human being should be. It was also discovered that his lungs were bigger, as well as his heart, though the exact details of that occurance were never specified in detail.

Flying back to Edmonton from Ottawa after the meeting, I fell into a deep sleep where what I’d seen in the video played for all of us attending replayed over and over. The young man bashing his head against the wall, biting himself, vomiting blood, crying out in pain. They were brief clips of footage and sound that still haunt me to this day.

By the end of March, more people had died, a couple new outbreaks in attacks had occured on the border of Manitoba and Ontario, and more trackers like myself were recruited albeit with a better briefing on what they were getting themselves into than I had experienced. The situation was changing though. Theories of where this disease had come from, and what it had potentially done to its hosts, which ultimately could very well effect other species. Hell, maybe it had been transferred to wolves naturally, and the end result was the animal we were now dealing with. It didn’t explain the tattoos, it didn’t explain the DNA mystery, and it didn’t explain how it was spreading to all regions of the country, including as far south in America as northern California. Fort McMurray would begin to experience another bout of attacks soon enough again, too.

My work continued through the spring, while both Canada and America put their top teams of biologists, doctors, specialists, you name it, into figuring out what the hell was going on. It was our country that recognized the Lycenthosis as a totally brand new disease and named it as such for its terrible transformative abilities to the human body. The Americans, though, were the ones that made the breakthrough of all breakthroughs during a string of attacks in Oregon. Two hitchhikers were brutally mauled, yet survived when a trucker saw the attack happening and, with his sidearm, shot and killed the U.A.P after unloading an entire magazine into it. Both victims were treated for their wounds and held for careful testing and observation. Their names were withheld from the information package sent to us, classified as T.S ( Top Secret). Myla Gohtz and Derek Blythe were held, and within 6 weeks, were no longer themselves as the same terrible effects of Lycenthosis took hold. Derek died, Myla did not. In May, I was once again called to a meeting with senior top officials in Ottawa after whispers and rumours that some big conference between top brass in Canada and the U.S had transpired in N.Y State. No one knew what we were in for.

During this meeting, another video was played. For the next 40 minutes it went through the process of the two young Oregon hitchhikers god awful ordeal. It showed the moment Derek Blythe died - he had, for lack of a better term, gone completely mad and bit his tongue off, whether on purpose or by accident, nobody could tell because of the intense convulsing he was experiencing. Myla Gohtz, by the end of the 6th week of observation, went through “complete transformation” as the narrating official called it. There wasn’t one person in the room that didn’t gapsp when the video showed a closed room, three padded walls, one reinforced glass wall for observing, and inside that room, laying on the floor, panting desperately for air and seemingly exhausted, bloody, wet, and grey, was a U.A.P.

Defying all science, logic, biology, whatever you want to call it, everything began to make sense, all the while not making any sense at all, and the term ‘Werewolf’ started getting tossed around a LOT afterwards, for obvious reasons. Everyone sat quietly. The video stopped. Nobody in the room said a goddamn thing.

So that’s what we had by June, 2015. The brass urged us not to use the term ‘werewolf’, insisting we refer to them as U.A.P’s until further notice. In standard fashion, nobody was ever made aware of what happened to Myla Gohtz once she changed. I suspected the americans would run all kinds of tests on her (it?) and hopefully some of that information would works its way into our weekly email briefings on the situation. But now the stakes were even higher for us trackers. We were the ones expected to find these things and kill them, already at terrible risk to ourselves, but with the knowledge we had about what awaited if we were attacked and survived, either was we were as good as dead. Some trackers resigned.

I’d passed along my observations from the winter regarding the fact that the three pairs of animals I’d tracked down seemed to be in some kind of courtship akin to a breeding pair, which was passed along to all the other trackers as well as the top brass, and while I never heard anything more on the topic from Ottawa, other trackers, in secrecy, mentioned that they’d been noticing the same thing, and the increased danger it posed.

The number of killings began to sky rocket. Here we were, half way through 2015 and the nightmare only showed signs of getting worse. In July, 2015 I was taken out of the field, as the area in and around Edmonton had gone quiet. By now, in Alberta alone, there were more than 35 different hired guns tracking U.A.P's in places most of them had never heard of until this began. Across the country, I remember hearing the number of us being somewhere close to 250, but I can't confirm that. "Outbreaks" where popping up all over the place, then be tethered under control, only for another one to spring up somewhere else.

July and August I spent back home in Owen Sound, yet never fully at ease. I kept myself in the loop with the goings-on within 100km of home, carefully watching for any reported animal attacks, missing hikers, things of that nature. When a cottager walking his dog was mauled to death in late August on Manitoulin Island, a few hours north and a two hour ferry ride away from where I live, I took notice. Ultimately it proved to be a Black Bear attack, the bear was shot and killed after it stalked two Sunday morning joggers, but again, I couldn't seem to shut my mind off. How was this going on? How was the general public not aware? How could the number of killings be increasing? Most of all, how could this be going unnoticed in majer city centres?

By September, about a week before schools opened, I recieved orders to fly to Kenora, a town on the border of Ontario and Manitoba, and meet with Adrian Cuza. Adrain was born and raised in Kenora, moved with his mother and stepfather to Ohio, joined the Army Rangers after dropping out of college, and had served overseas, but it was his knowledge of the town that proved to be a major asset. Add to that the fact he'd killed 13 U.A.P's in that last 9 months alone, and had made some terrifying and incredible discoveries.

Adrian had been commissioned by the Canadian government just as I had, but feeling that field studies were useless based on the nature of the animals, he'd begun to study them himself. Frankly, he was obsessed. He'd even trapped one, drugged it at great risk to life and limb, and hauled the damn thing back to a hangar on his father's property. Adrian's biggest discovery had come a couple months before after he'd trapped a very large male, killing it, and then killing a female the very next night in the same area. He'd used old trapper methods and utilized large grip and hold traps, the kind one might use for bears. In any event, knowing the effects that a bite or scratch would have, he took his blood samples, photographs ( a huge no-no, if you remember my mentioning) and preformed full inspections. He found that the female was lactating.

Close by, he found the den, and inside of it, four hairless, groaning, disoriented pups - something that had never been documented until that exact moment. Another breakthrough, and he wasn't sharing it with anyone. There was no protocal as to what we were supposed to do in such a situation, so he made his own, and dispatched the young ones. As I entered the hangar a few hours after my arrival and introduction with Adrian, he led me to where their corpses were preserved, piece by piece, in large jars.

Truly ugly goddamn things, worse than the parents. I will not forget sitting around a resin foldout table, drinking a beer, me on one side, Adrian on the other. Him flooding my mind with all this knowledge of these things, so far beyond anything I'd been able to piece together so far on my own. In a dark corner of the hangar, Adrian had a lifesize replica mount of an adult U.A.P, customized to the exact scale of the biggest one he'd ever shot. On a cork board near a fridge, he had pictures of various victims who had been killed by them in Kenora and the surrounding areas.

"We don't get accurate reports for what's going on out there on the Reservation lands. They don't keep us in the loop. But we do hear through locals that people are going missing. That's as best as I can tell." he told me.

"Were you briefed on the effects a bite can have?" I asked.

"Sure, I saw the video, but suspected that might the case a few weeks prior to the brass confirming. I trapped one up near Rainy Lake, fuckin' thing was covered in tattooes. Great tattooes. Like, the kind someone who is so fuckin' into tattooes would get. The whole backside was nothing but tattooes under the fur. I started putting two and two together right about then." he said.

I slept that night, but awoke in the morning wondering. I wondered about alot, but mostly I wondered how long before the entire world knew what was going on.

The answer would come shortly.

Here's an exerpt from my notes:

"2014.11.02

Activity in the area has tapered out. No sighting, just dead dogs, cats, a couple of goats, and the 3 new attack victims in the vicinity around Borealis Park. After the three attacks, the thing seems to have disappeared entirely. New nightvision optics arrived this morning. Patrolling Park tonight. Plenty of snow on the ground now - should make tracking easier."

I can't express how boring things had become by now. Yes, three different people were killed. All in the span of about 8 hours, and all in the Borealis Park area of Fort McMurray. The park itself is beautiful (google it) but the victims themselves left people terrified. The news reported only one of the deaths as a bear mauling, and the other two weren't reported at all. The "crew" even went so far as to tranquilize a black bear, and release it near town so that the local authorities would find the culprit easily. Some time later, I'd learn that the autopsy revealed that the stomach contents included part of the "victims" clothing - none of which was true because I also later learned that the necropsy was done by one of the members OF the "crew".

Things were getting strange. How does a newly discovered, unnamed, highly aggressive killing maching just vanish? How does something that seemed almost inclined to prey on humans just stop? Yes, there's a lot of room to roam in the surrounding area, but with tendencies such as this, they're bound to resurface soon. On the other hand, I'd learned that the surviving attack victim from the previous month had made a full recovery, though his memory of the attack was blurry. He'd been quoted as saying that the attack happened so fast, that all he remembered was teeth. I found this particularly odd considering if I was attacked by something straight out of a horror film, and survived, I'd have a pretty vivid recollection of the whole thing.

For the majority of November, things on my end remained uneventful. There were online meetings with various others in the field across the country. Some places it was suspected that up to half a dozen U.A.P's were active - that was the Acronym given to these things, as nobody was ready to give this new species a name just yet, let alone go public about it. U.A.P stood for Unnamed Aggressive Predator. I learned I wasn't the only sharpshooter called back into service to hunt these things down, either. By Midnovember there were 14 different servicemen spread across the country, many with great tracking experience and a steady eye at long distances.

During this period there wasn't a whole lot of "discoveries" or "breakthroughs" going on. My first kill had been hauled off to a facility somewhere in British Columbia, where both American and Canadian scientists were, as I'd been told, working around the clock to figure out just what the hell these things were, where they may have come from, and how they were ending up with things like tattoos, piercings, and especially a glass eye at least one of them. Also, I wanted to note that for anyone who's interested in the finer details of my first kill, it was confirmed as a male.

Seeing as most of the activity, when it did occur, happened during the night or periods of low light ( dawn, dusk, severely cloudy days) I'd made a note that to me it seemed these animals were sensitive to high levels of light. Not light entirely, just very bright light. The day I had shot mine, it had been cloudy, unseasonably warm, and in late afternoon a fog had settled in. I had also been corresponding with two of the other trackers in the field - Marcus Humbolt and Neal Vandermeer. Neal and I had gone through basic together in Pettawawa, Ontario but had gone our separate ways afterwards. Marcus I didn't know, but had heard much about while overseas.

They're case was strange in of itself. They'd been sent to Edmonton - a major city with a population of roughly 900 000 people living in it. But sure enough, there had been attacks in the industrial park area. Two confirmed dead in just over 24 hours apart of one another. They'd been outfitted with a tactical vehicle disguised as a local police SUV, given state of the art night optics, and set loose to hunt the U.A.P down. Except now they had confided through email that based on what they were seeing, there might be more than one. As much as they could tell, the U.A.P(s) were using the network of commercial railway lines to travel to and from hunting grounds. By the time the guys showed up, the U.A.P(s) were gone, and the victims had been picked clean.

At the end of November, the story of the smaller U.A.P that had seemingly vanished came to an end. By then I'd also been cast into a disguise role as a Ministry Of Natural Resourses Technician there to study seasonal trends of animal-vehicle collisions. Any police responding to animal collisions had to call me immediately, and as per the job title, I was required to respond. On November 27, 2014 I responded to a call about a vehicle collision on Range Road at the southern end of Fort McMurray. The animal, though killed, was unidentifiable by the responding officer.

I arrived and though I didn't say anything about it, I could tell based on the remains that this was the second U.A.P that I'd been searching for. The carcass was about as smashed to smithereens as any animal being hit by a Dodge Ram could be. I identified it as a Grey Wolf and so the officer filled out his report, while I loaded the remains into the bed of my truck and called the clean up "crew". The woman on the other end of the phone asked my location, where the animal was now, and when I told her I had put the remains in the bed of my truck, she went off. In a stern tone, she firmly said that under no circumstances am I to touch the U.A.P's, and then ran me through a checklist of questions. Did I wear gloves while touching the remains (no), if I had any open wounds on my arms or hands (no), if I was able to immediately wash and sanitize my hands (thanks to the officer, yes). It was my own fault. This was, as far as I knew, a brand new species and there was no telling what kind of nasty shit might be hiding in its blood.

This small U.A.P measured from nose to tail at 3'11"though based on the condition of the carcass, I couldn't get an accurate measurement of girth,but it was definitely a female based on the pronounced nipples - 6 in total as far as I could tell. Her canines measured 3.1" in length, but I doubted that getting an accurate weight would be next to impossible. The clean up crew showed up just as the officer and owner of the vehicle left, and took the remains, asked me a few questions, and that was that. I didn't even have time to take any photos ( which, in case I failed to mention, was a big no-no. It had been stressed during the original briefing and again when we'd been assigned our specific A.O (Area of Operation) that we were, under no circumstances, to photograph any of the U.A.P's we found and killed. All documentation was left to the clean up crews.

November faded into December and seeing as how both of the U.A.P's were now dead, and no further activity had been documented, I figured that was it, and I'd be home in Ontario well before christmas. I contacted my superior for further tasks, and was told to hang tight. Keeping up with what was going on with Neal and Marcus, they'd sent various emails keeping me posted. December 1st, Marcus had tracked one U.A.P down and killed it in an abandoned factory, where it had been living in the lowest level of the building - they'd begun to refer to places such as this as "dens". The one Marcus shot was massive, measuring almost 5ft exactly, 4" canines, and almost 200lbs. They suspected it was a male, and found that it had 6 different tattoos on its back, shoulder, and forelegs, though they didn't mention any details regarding the tattoos themselves.

Despite Marcus' success, more attacks occurred in the industrial park area of Edmonton. One railway maintnance worker was killed on December 4th 2014, another on the 5th. Both were dragged away from the kill site and eaten, yet not as cleanly as before, which indicated to both Neal and Marcus that they were only dealing with one remaining animal. They'd been able to track the last one through the (unnauthorized) use of trail cameras, and hoped to do the same with the second.

Around this time, I thought about requesting to be transferred to their A.O. I figured at the very least, based on what I had seen here in Fort McMurray, I'd be able to lend a hand. But unfortunately it wasn't to be. On December 12 2014, I recieved an email from Neal, after not hearing from him for a couple days. I learned that they had figured out that the last remaining U.A.P had been "denning" in the Maple Ridge industrial area. They'd gone in to locate it during the day, and were ambushed by not one, but two different U.A.Ps. Both animals were shot and killed, but in the process, Marcus had been killed, too. He was 36.

Neal didn't go into further detail regarding the events, but wanted to point out that the second U.A.P didn't seemed to be deterred by the gunfire when they had dispatched the first. The time between each attack was, Neal figure, no more than 5 minutes apart, and during the first, Neal had been bitten on the left forearm twice, and Xrays confirmed his arm was shattered. He expressed that the jaw pressure was startling. He wasn't sure about how well his arm would heal, but he hoped for a full recovery.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. These were two highly trained, highly regarded servicemen who'd had a long history being badasses. One was potentially crippled and the other dead. I thought about Marcus and what his family was going to be told. He had three children with his ex-wife. Neal was, no doubt, being taken out of the field and heading home after a long, painful debrief.

The next day, I recieved confirmation of what I began to expect while laying in bed the night before - that I was Edmonton bound. It would not be the last time I saw Fort McMurray.

I arrived in Edmonton December 16th, the same day Chandra Kelly was killed while walking home from work. I hadn't even unpacked my vehicle. Her body was found down a back alley behind some dilapitated houses deep within the city center of Edmonton. An elderly woman walking a dog found Chandra Kelly's foot in the alley, having been chewed off and discarded. I wasn't sure how this was going to be kept under the radar from the public and press. When I arrived, there were 6 cruisers, all with lights flashing, and a crowd of people had gathered. I was still under the guise of an official with the Ministry of Natural Resources, so I suspected I might not be let into the crime scene, but to my surprised, I was ushered right in.

By now you know the drill. The clean up "crew" was called, they came, took the remains under a guise of their own, and that was that. Not so much as a word was reported on the subject when I watched the news that night.

Things stayed quiet for a few days. The next attack took place on December 21st, at exactly 9:33pm at the employee smoking area behind an energy plant in the Industrial area. It was snowing heavily that evening and Roy Arseneault simply vanished while alone on his smoke break. I found his body in a drainage ditch along the railway tracks about 150 yards away from the smoking area. Searching the area, the building had several security cameras along its perimeter. Securing that footage might be a huge breakthrough if any of them captured the attack on film, and so I requested the footage. At this time, I was also given option to take on the identity as a detective with the city of Edmonton if I felt it would help speed my own investigation along, and so I left the world of fake Wildlife tech behind for the exciting world of fake detective.

The first one I ever shot was two weeks into my stay at Fort Mackay.

Shit, I even remember the exact date - Tuesday, October 19th, 2014 at exactly 4:43pm along the shore of the Athabasca River. As far as I’d been able to tell up until then, there were two separate animals doing the killing. I’d been learning a lot about them over the last two weeks. They were virtually non existent during daylight hours, but once dusk came around, they’d almost always be out. It didn’t need to be night, just low light. The smaller one seemed to be making its way along the river, attacking and killing, then completely disappearing. I’d still yet to actually get a visual on it.

The big one was much harder to track consistently. It seemed to show up further north, go on a killing spree, then vanish. I’d only been lucky enough to actually catch a glimpse of it in the middle of the road one night on my way back from McClelland Lake after investigating a potential attack (turned out to be a black bear). I could see a dead animal on the shoulder of the road, a moose I think. Then, as if out of a horror scene, it slowly crept ontop of the carcass, blood stained teeth shining in the headlights. Both my rifle and shotgun were locked up in gun cases in the backseat and unreachable.

I was about to get a lesson in just how aggressive these fucking things are.

The distance from the front of my truck to where the animal was located on the shoulder of the road, was roughly 60 yards or so. In the time it took me to grab my camera to get a photo, the animal had almost completely covered that distance and was viciously attacking the front of my truck. Stunned, I couldn’t comprehend what the fuck was happening. It seemed to focus on the noise of the engine, trying to bite through the hood at several different angles, jolting the vehicle. I threw the truck in drive and got the hell out of there, not stopping once until I got back to my motel room in Fort McMurray, south of the Fort Mackay area. The front of the truck was all kinds of fucked up. Hell, there was so much blood and fur from where the animal attacked, I’d have been surprised if it hasn’t killed itself in the process.

I made a note of exactly where the encounter took place, notified my superior, who was overseeing my operations and acting as public relations officer in case anything became aware to the public, and planned to sit over the moose carcass the next evening, suspecting that one animal couldn’t possibly clean up an entire moose in one night, and would almost certainly come back again to feed on what was left.

I am a skilled marksman, effective with a scoped rifle ( preferrably my .308) inside of 700 yards. Bearing this in mind, I was feeling confident I could set up a safe distance away from the carcass, maybe in a tree stand or something, ... something to keep me the hell off the ground, and still accurately hit the target. The next afternoon I returned and set up a comfortable 350 yards away from the dead moose. There was little traffic at all down this road, which paralleled the Athabasca River, so I also felt comfortable there would be little risk at all of any accidents, and except for one vehicle that passed the moose carcass very slowly, but kept going, I didn’t see another soul while in the stand. Nor did the animal come back that evening, too. The night was still, and pleasant and by nightfall I was back in the truck, tired, and hungry. Before leaving, I placed a trail camera overlooking the dead moose, just in case the animal came back. If it did, I’d know exactly what time to expect it and would make a move based on that information.

Tuesday, I went back to inspect the contents of the SD card and found that while two black bears, a wolf, six different coyotes, as well as ravens, magpies, and a whole list of smaller wildlife had visited the carcass, my intented prey had not returned, which felt strange to me and I made a point of making a note about it in my notebook I’d started when I’d taken on this job. The moose must have been close to 800lbs, not massive, but not exactly small either. For the animal to have just killed it, fed once, then abandoned the rest made little sense, at least to me.

It was warmer that day, and as early evening approached, a light fog descended on the lower areas. At this point I remember being so goddamn frustrated. “Go kill this highly aggressive murder machine that lives in such sparse numbers that we don’t know a damn thing about it, let alone accurately pattern them” I thought to myself. In my gut I knew I’d blown my chance to kill the damn thing the night before. What was worse was that I wasn’t even looking for it - the encounter happened by chance. I still didn’t know where the smaller one was, or where it was going....hell, I hadn’t even seen it yet.Things weren't going well.

Rounding a bend, I saw the black VW Jetta pulled off to the shoulder of the road. The drivers side door was open, the passenger side window smashed out, and the four ways on. Nobody was around as I pulled up behind it. I removed my shotgun from its case, loaded two shells with 00 Buckshot, and one with a Sabot Slug - my standard issue bear stopper. Approaching the passengers side of the car, I realized the side of the door was caked in blood, a blood trail leading up over the side of the ditch, and to what remained of Mrs Tanya Hargraves (27). It was exactly the same scene as the photos I'd been shown in the briefing - half eaten, faced mauled horribly, paw prints all around. She'd been dragged all of about 20 feet from the car before the fucking thing began to make a meal out of her.

I pushed the safety on my shotgun off and walked slowly to the opposite side of the road. It was there that the scene of another attack unfolded and where Mr Jordan Hargraves (31) had met his end. Based on the bloody paw prints crossing thr asphalt from where Mrs Hargraves was found, my best guess was that it had killed her quickly, then chased a stunned Mr Hargraves down and killed him as well. I found his jacket stripped into ribbons on some rocks opposite the car, and then blood. Then more blood, and then more, for about 110 yards up the ditch heading towards a creek that passed under the road. In the creek, and despite the impaired visibility, I could hear something moving in the shallow water. If my memory serves me, the creek wasn't more than 15 ft wide. I suspected that the animal was down there in the creek consuming Mr Hargraves almost immediately based on the blood trail, and not wanting to give it any indication of my presence, as well as being completely prepared, I did two things.

1. I went back to my truck, got my sidearm and holster, as well as my .308. Dailed the scope back, and chambered a round. I figured based on what I DID know of the aggressive nature of these things, three guns are better than one, and if by some chance this thing got on top of me, I could unload an entire magazine from my Berreta into it.

2. I took my Tac Boots off, and approached in sock feet. The boots are heavy, and gravel on the road tends to grind underneath them. They're not meant for stealth, and seeing as how the need to be extremely stealthy was of the utmost importance, sock feet were the best bet to accomplish this.

I approached the creek again, this time from the right hand side of the road - the same side that Mrs Hargraves' body was located, whereas the suspected animal was on the leftside. When I reached the creek, I listened for a moment and sure enough I could still hear movement. Sometimes it was subtle, but other times it was violent thrashing and splashing. I crept slowly until I could see down into the creek bed. From the road, my position was elevated so that I was roughly 20ft above the creek. Peering down, I could instantly see the shape on the animal. It was 40 yards upstream, and as I suspected, feeding on what remained of Mr Hargraves. I layed down slowly into a prone position, slightly increased the power on my scope, and centered the crosshairs on the animal, which seemed inaware of my presence, just as I'd hoped. There was no breeze at all, as far as I could tell, so the possibility of this thing catching my scent was low.

The crosshairs steadied, the animal turned broadside. I touched the trigger and the rifle buckled. Immediately chambering another round, I looked through the scope and saw that it had gone down hard. A twitch of the leg, a slight quiver of the body, but that was it. No fierce showdown, no climax, nothing. I shouldered the rifle, and grabbed the shotgun, not knowing if this thing was playing possum. As I approached, it was clear it was as dead as dead could be.

I had been instructed that when I did kill one, or if I came across any victims, to call a private number and that a crew would deal with the "clean up" process, and so I did. The woman's voice on the other line told me to hold tight, and the "crew" would be dispatched from Fort McMurray about an hour away. In the time it took them to get there, I photographed both Mr and Mrs Hargraves, measured the animals' body length and girth, as well as the length of the canines. It was coated in much more dark brown fur than the dead one during the briefing, which had been a dull grey colour. It's canines measured almost 3.5" in length - something that shocked me given that its body length was 4'9" from nose to tail.

It bore no markings. Its upright ears (think wolf or german sheppard) had Deer Ticks in them. The belly was almost completely without fur, muscular. It was the eyes that really caught my attention. One was flamey yellow orange, pupil almost round with sharp fingers flicking around it. The other was completely green and very human-like. It lacked something the other did not, which I fully realize is hard to explain, but this eye didn't seem to be sitting correctly in the eye socket. Not having a pair of gloves on me, I leaned down and with my pen, gently poked this eye.

To this day I will never forget the feeling of complete confusion I experienced when I realized that the animals' right eye was fake.

Over the next 6 years and countless dead ones later, I'd find all kinds of strange things like this. Mostly tattoos, but sometimes piercings, too. None would shock me later on, but that eye...the sound of plastic pen tapping against what I think may have been glass. There was no way to know exactly where this would lead to.

The crew eventually did show up. I gave them a debriefing on what had happened, how I'd responded, and eventually learned the identities of the victims, as you already know. The animal weighed in at roughly 144lbs, and I was relieved to learn that after that evening, there were no longer any attacks north of the fort.

South of the fort was a different story. The small one was still killing, and it seemed it was getting closer and closer to Fort McMurray as well. A week later it was less than 3 miles from town, had killed two fishermen, a gas station attendant, and had severely mauled a young man named Tyler Hutton. He survive his injuries, but would become a study case and horror story in his own rite.

That night I lay in my hotel bed, unable to sleep.

Call this a confession I guess.

The reality of how I’ve spent the last 6 years of my life,...the untold pay cheques per dead myth. The outbreaks, the lost causes, the close calls, relationships falling apart as secrecy creeps in like a cancer and tears them into pieces. Here I am today, a shell of my former self, having seen too many bodies torn to shreds, lives ripped into oblivion, you get the point - sort of.

In 2014 after a handful of years had passed since I’d returned from Afghanistan, I’d attended a meeting in Ottawa, Ontario - told by a senior official I’d worked with in the forces while in Kandahar. “Between you and me, whatever this is...it’s raising a lot of concern out west right now. Especially the area around the foothills in Alberta. We’re not sure what exactly “it” is, but I can tell you it’s highly classified. Even I haven’t been briefed on the situation. The Brass wanted someone who was experienced in tracking, so I dropped your name.”

Of course he did. When I’d gotten home from overseas, I took a guiding job with my uncles hunting operation in northern Quebec, where I’d track Caribou, Black Bear, and if we flew far enough north, and the client was willing to pay top dollar, Muskox. Just as I’d been in the forces hunting down the Taliban, I’d become proficient with tracking down big game animals without them ever knowing I was there. I can see you sitting here, reading this, wondering if while in the mountains on my own in Afghanistan, if I’d ever pulled the trigger on another human being.

Yes. And there is nothing more sobering for the soul than that. Nothing.

Let me save you the time and tell you the short version of the meeting. A lot of high ranking officials, two provincial Premiers, 4 biologists (you’ll understand later) and several other people of significant authority were in the room, some of which looked as though they hadn’t slept for days. I recognized one person in the room as Master Sargeant James (Big Jim) Keller Corbett, a renowned Sniper from the Patricia’s that I’d had the pleasure of accompanying on a handful of tasks while over there in the mountains. He seemed perplexed, taking notes, flipping slowly through a file folder.

As I sat down, the same file folder was handed to me. A voice began to speak but I instantly zoned out while going through the physical copy in front of me. It struck me as odd that rather than an operational briefing, these looked more like case files from various horrific crime scenes. 11 in total, termed by the places they had happened in. Elk Lake, Ontario, Notre Dame, Quebec, Attawapiskat, Ontario, Norway House, Manitoba, places I'd either been to or had never heard of. It seemed that there were denser clusters of victims of whatever this was out west though. Though the photos were black and white, the gruesome nature of the remains in the photos, to me, indicated an animal predating on prey, while others looked to be vicious maulings and nothing more.

Midway through the briefing, it dawned on me that I'd been brought here to track and kill whatever was doing this. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd hunted down some seriously fucked up individuals during my 3 years in Afghanistan, men who would do ungodly things to other human beings, and never once did I bat an eye to the thought of it, but what I was seeing in these photos was something else entirely. At this point, a large stainless steel table was wheeled into the room with a lumpy shape under a grey sheet on it. The biologist folks got up at the same time and walked over to it, and all of us were asked to join them. Removing the sheet, the culprit of the various attacks was revealed as an unknown animal, certainly a predator, resembling some kind of cross between a wolf and a bear, but really neither. It was all business up front, with thick grey fur around the shoulders, neck, chest and back, which tapered out into almost bare skin towards the back end where a small hairless tail, maybe under a foot long. One of the men put a pair of gloves on and began to talk about what they knew of the animal, pushing the fur back on the left shoulder revealing a marking of some sort underneath.

I remember the voice of Big Jim asking what the hell it was, and the biologist replying that as far as they could tell, it was a tattoo. I leaned over the table as far as I could to get a better look, and sure enough, it looked an awful lot like one of those old pin-up girl tattoos, colourless, faded, but at some point someone had been close enough to whatever the hell this thing was, to get that tattoo onto it.

"Gentlemen, at this point in time we really don't have any idea what these things are, or where they came from. We do know that the reported attacks seem to happen only in smaller towns in northern area of provinces, often in clusters. Alberta, and B.C are reporting the most, but we've recieved confirmation that there have been attacks in two places in Washington State, and one in Montana. Currently the attacks are going unreported to the press until we can figure out just what it is we're dealing with. " said the man with medals pinned to his chest. He introduced one of the biologists, who would give us, i'd hoped, something a little more detailed in terms of information about the dead animal.

"Right now we don't know much. As you can see these animals feature several predatory traits; eyes at the front of the skull, immense canines, exceptionally muscular in the shoulders and forelegs, paws unusually spaced and elongated pads, the tail as far as we can tell serves absolutely no purpose in terms of stability. It should be said that the nature of these things as far as we can tell, is extremely aggressive, but they're skeletal structuring is remarkably frail. This specimen has been confirmed as a male, 170lbs roughly, though we're unable to confirm its age."

Nobody said a goddamn thing.

He continued, "You see, we can't really study them without putting our field biologists in immediate danger. What I can tell you is that if one is injured, it gets the others excited. They don't seem to be pack animals so to speak, but in areas with more than one, if it's confirmable, they do tend to hang out relatively close to one another. We're not sure if there is any kind of social structure to it. We don't know when they breed, or where. We can't get any DNA to back up the lineage of where they've come from because all tests have been contaminated with human DNA. We know they're extremely aggressive, often going out of their way once they spot another animal or person, to maul it or kill it. We don't know if they have territories but at this time it seems reasonable to assume they may."

A voice from the other end of the conference table: "What was the cause of death in regards to this particular specimen?"

He flipped through a notebook and replied "As I mentioned earlier, their skeletal system is relatively poorly built. This one was the culprit of the Elk Lake attacks as far as we know. A resident shot it with a .243 after it attacked their hunting camp. 4 people at the camp were killed before it was shot."

It didn't seem plausible in my mind that such a strong looking predator could be built so poorly, but the entry hole and exit told the tale of what a well placed shot was capable of.

A new folder was handed to me toward the end of the meeting. New attacks, seemingly out of the blue, in a place called Fort Mackay, Alberta. 3 people confirmed dead, another 4 missing and presumed dead. Again, the photos of the victims were horrendous. I still vividly remember the permanently horrified look on the female victim, 20 years of age who had been camping with her fiance. In truth, her face was the only thing that could tell you that she'd ever been a human being at all. I am haunted by that photo even to this day.

That's how this all started for me. That one phone call that led to that one meeting, would reshape my life for the next 6 years. Worst of all, and I wish I had of known then what I know now, but things were only going to get worse for those northern towns.