by Chris Fox
“We barely have enough food as it is,” an older woman hissed. Mother maybe? “Besides, what if he’s been bitten by those things. We can’t take a chance.”
“I’m letting him in,” another man said, this one older. He rose and started walking towards the door. Blair did his best to look harmless as the man approached. He stopped at the door and turned the bolt, then heaved until the glass slid open. He peered out at Blair. “Get inside and be quick about it. Those things can show up at any moment.”
Blair ducked inside, waiting near the grocery carts while the man slid the door shut. He hurried back to the produce section, gesturing towards Blair to follow. The man led him to the back where the other three figures all squatted in darkness.
“I’m Miguel, this is Yvessa, her son Juan, and that's Carlos,” Miguel explained. He leaned forward, the moonlight illuminating the left side of this face. “Listen, you ain’t been bit, have you? By those things.”
“No, I haven’t,” Blair replied.
“How did you get past them then? They’re everywhere,” asked the woman Miguel had introduced as Yvessa.
“You wouldn’t believe me and it’s not that important. My friends and I are doing our best to clear the city, but like you said those things are everywhere,” he said, unsure how much he should reveal. He wished they’d discussed what to actually say before approaching survivors. Too late now.
“You’re one of those wolf things, aren’t you?” Juan said, a bit louder than the others in his excitement. “I told mom that I saw one of them fighting the zombies. She didn’t believe me, but it makes sense. Everyone just sort of forgot all the werewolves when the zombies came, but they’re still out there. A lot of them. They stopped killing us and started killing zombies. Guess they hate them even more than they hate us.”
“Yes, I’m one of them,” Blair admitted. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move, but they were going to find out soon enough. "Listen, I know the werewolves went crazy and a lot of people died. That’s over. Werewolves will kill the zombies and protect you.”
“You expect us to believe that? You eat people,” Yvessa screeched, voice echoing through the store.
Everyone froze. They waited for several long heartbeats, but there was nothing. Maybe the zombies hadn’t heard.
“I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, so judge me by my actions. There’s a church up on that hill with a tall gate around the grounds. We’ve already cleared the zombies there, and we’ve stockpiled guns and food. If we can get you inside, you should be safe,” Blair explained, praying they’d accept his help. “If you stay here, sooner or later they’ll get in. We can’t protect humans everywhere, so we’ve got to get you to where you can protect yourselves.”
Silence reigned for several moments as the people eyed each other in the darkness. No one seemed willing to make a decision until Miguel finally spoke. "My brother was killed by those werewolves. Hell, for all I know, it could have been you that killed him. I'm not going anywhere with you."
“So what do you suggest?” Juan asked, glaring up at Miguel. The little kid had spunk. "If we stay here, we're going to die. Besides, if he wants to kill us, what are you going to do about it?"
“He’s right,” the quiet one finally said. Carlos, that was his name. He stood, hefting a backpack and settling the straps over his shoulders. “There were six of us yesterday. Ten a week ago. We’ve got to do something or in a few days there won’t be anyone left. What’s your name, mister?”
“Blair. Blair Smith,” he said, offering Carlos a hand. The man had a firm grip. “My friends can be a little frightening, but I want to remind you that we’re here to protect you. Follow me.”
Blair moved confidently to the door, hoping that Liz wouldn’t reveal herself just yet. He’d just gotten through to them, but his control was tenuous. One sudden shock and these people would scatter like a flock of birds.
They made it into the parking lot, a dim expanse of cracked asphalt bordering a two-lane road that led back to the church. Getting there was going to be a lot harder on foot with refugees in tow. Blair turned to face his charges. “I’m going to start by introducing one of my friends. Her name is Liz. Don’t be startled when she appears. Liz?”
Liz shimmered into existence, stepping from the shadows. It helped that she’d remained in human form, a beautiful redhead in tight clothing was a lot less intimidating than a nine-foot werewolf. She gave their new friends a warm smile. “Hi there. Like he said, my name is Liz. I’m going to help you get to safety. Just stay between the two of us. Move quickly and quietly and we’ll all get through this.”
They gave her the deer-in-headlights look, all except Juan, who was just old enough to be ruled by hormones and therefore far more interested in Liz’s figure than the fact that she’d just stepped out of thin air. Blair found himself liking the kid.
“This way. Quickly,” Blair said, moving up the middle of the street. Juan filed after him immediately, the others a few moments later. Liz brought up the rear as they wound around a low squat building that looked like a school. The road grew steeper until they rounded a block of apartments and finally spotted the church.
Blair scanned the roof until he located Jordan. Line of sight was a limitation for his abilities, as was distance. This was within range, though. He concentrated, sending a thought towards the beefy soldier. We’re coming up the main thoroughfare. Send Bridget to meet us, but hang back with your rifle and pick anything off that gets too close.
Blair didn't wait for an answer. Jordan was having trouble adapting to his mental abilities, and hadn't learned to send responses yet. He kept moving, slowing a bit as the breathing behind him grew more labored. Sometimes he forgot how much being a werewolf had changed him. Blair had never been in great shape, but since the change things like this were effortless. He could sprint uphill for miles without growing winded. He glanced over his shoulder to see Juan helping Yvessa up the hill. Carlos and Miguel seemed to be faring better, the pair darting nervous glances into darkened apartments.
Something screeched in the distance, followed by the slap of bare feet on pavement. Blair leapt to the top of a neighboring street light, catching the metal with one hand and flipping on top of it. He scanned the dark park between them and the noise.
“Zombies,” Blair muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Why did it have to be zombies? The ancient enemy couldn’t have been lawn gnomes or something?”
A mob of pale figures was sprinting in their direction, far more quickly than any zombie he’d seen so far. Damn. A number of movies used fast zombies, but he’d hoped that was just enthusiastic storytelling and that the garden-variety slow walker was all they’d have to deal with.
“Incoming,” he called down to the group. Liz looked up to meet his gaze. “There are at least six of them, all coming this way.”
“I’ll intercept them,” Liz called, loping off in that direction. She paused behind a tree to strip off her clothing. Juan wasn’t the only one staring.
“Blair,” Yvessa screamed, pointing behind him. “There are more of them.”
He dropped from the street light, landing in a crouch. A dozen figures emerged from a shattered store front, these ones moving more slowly than those he’d seen in the distance. They were still a threat, though. Blair blurred, starting with a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt on the far left. He severed the spinal cord, then charged a desiccated woman wearing only a single sock. A quick swipe dropped her as he moved on to the next target. The work was swift but grisly.
Yvessa’s screams continued unabated, though he could hear Juan pleading with her to be quiet. More and more zombies emerged from buildings. Some drifted out from under the trees in the park. There had to be at least a hundred, maybe more.
Then the runners came into view, too-white bodies barreling through the park in their direction. Liz disappeared into the shadows, reappearing directly behind a runner in the back. She leapt on the pale creature, bearing it to the ground and cru
shing both skull and spine under her weight. Blair fell back to the group, watching in horror as the other five runners approached. They were so fast, too fast for him to take the time to shift into wolf form.
Liz leapt on top of a second one, bringing it down. There was no way she’d be able to stop them all. A gunshot cracked and a runner’s head exploded. Then another. Suddenly Bridget’s nine-foot silver form was there, dismembering another. The last one was almost upon them, but Blair glided forward to meet it. Its scarlet eyes glared hatefully at him, and its razored teeth sent a chill coursing down his spine.
Blair blurred, dodging to the right and then back to the left. The move caught the runner off guard, and he seized its head between his hands. A quick jerk snapped the neck and the thing dropped bonelessly to the ground.
“Nooo,” came a shriek from behind. Blair spun to see a group of walkers surrounding the refugees. Miguel stabbed a walker with a long knife that he'd pulled from somewhere, but he was too slow to reach Yvessa. One of the creatures had seized her arm. It bit down on her shoulder, clinging there like a bulldog as it gnawed her flesh. Her shrieks split the night around them.
Blair finally shifted, destroying his clothes as he grew taller and stronger. Fur erupted from his skin as his snout elongated. Then he leapt forward, decapitating the zombie with one blow. He barreled into the next and the next, a single second stretching as he blurred through a sea of zombies. Then it was over, the refugees left amidst islands of bodies, with Bridget, Blair and Liz standing in a protective triangle.
“We all know what happens next,” Miguel said, gesturing at Yvessa. “She’s going to become one of those things.”
“Not like this,” Yvessa moaned, sinking to her knees. She cradled her mangled arm in her lap. “It can’t end like this. There must be something we can do…”
“Don’t look,” Liz said, gathering Juan and moving him away from the group.
The boy began to struggle, straining to reach his mother. “No, there has to be something we can do. There has—”
Liz’s hand clamped around his shoulder, pulling his face into her chest. “Shhh.”
Blair knew what he had to do, and it had to be done while Liz was comforting the boy. He stepped forward and snapped Yvessa’s neck before she was even aware he was moving. It came more easily than he’d expected, the first time he’d ever had to kill a defenseless person. Was that the beast’s influence, or had he changed more than just physically?
Juan spun away from Liz, giving a shriek as he dropped to his knees next to his mother’s corpse. Blair hated himself, but what choice was there?
None, Ka-Dun. His beast rumbled, somber and subdued. It didn’t speak often these days, not since they had truly joined.
They’d been gone from the Ark too long and they needed to get back.
5
Nameless
The shambling corpse had lost his name. It hovered just out of reach, as distant as the stars. It bothered him, this lack of a name. Bothered him a great deal. Almost as much as his imprisonment, an unwilling passenger in a body that seemed to have its own agenda. That body shambled forward, weaving through the deserted street. It passed unfamiliar houses, odd structures set atop two-foot stilts. They were different than the houses the nameless corpse knew, with thinner walls and thatched roofs. It would have been interesting to inspect them more closely, but his body shambled forward with no regard for his orders.
It staggered, tripping over a shape in the darkness. His body looked down at the obstruction. A corpse, or what remained of one. The flesh had been meticulously stripped clean. The bones cracked, already drained of marrow. The tide of hunger rose, threatening to overwhelm him as it had so many times over the last week. It never abated unless he was feeding, resuming the very instant he stopped chewing.
His body turned its gaze back to the town, studying the line of houses. The flickering light of a candle came from a window four houses down on the left. The darkness obscured any differences, making the house identical to its neighbors. His body shambled towards it, slow and awkward. That frustrated him too, though he didn’t know any other way of walking. It felt…wrong.
His leg shook violently as he raised a foot, but he avoided toppling as his body set it on the first step. The worn wood creaked loudly under his weight, but it held. He attempted the second. Then the third. A fourth step carried him to the door, faintly illuminated by the glow in the living room window. A gasp came from inside. The light winked out.
He listened. Breathing came from behind the door. There were heartbeats. Two of them. Both rapid. Should he be able to hear heartbeats? No, he was positive that was wrong. Different. New.
His body raised a trembling hand to the door handle, wrapping a weak grip around it. It turned with a click, the door creaking open with a little urging. Shouldn’t they have locked the door? Or at least blocked it with a dresser or bed?
His body staggered inside, gaze sweeping the room. It was gathered in darkness, except for the patch of bamboo planks in the pool of moonlight. The heartbeats were more frantic now, thundering from the corner of the room. He could just barely make out a pair of shapes huddled against the wall. One taller, sheltering the smaller one. A woman and child. Horror bloomed, giving way to panic. Every fiber of his being yearned to warn them, to scream that they should run. All that emerged was a low wail, the first time that he’d been able to force his body to do anything.
It shambled across the room, moving towards the doomed family. Why didn’t they run? They could probably make it past him. He was slow, ungainly. Yet they cowered there, praying he wouldn’t notice them. His body crossed the gap in three awkward steps, then lunged at the larger figure. An old woman with short white hair. She flinched, but made no attempt to run. Instead she shoved the smaller figure forward. “Antonio, corre!”
The little boy shot to his feet, bolting across the bamboo floor like a deer as he burst from the room into the night. The nameless corpse turned to watch the boy’s flight, then turned back to his prey. He seized the woman’s arm, biting savagely into her shoulder. His weight bore her to the wooden floor with a hollow thump as he began to feed. At first she screamed and thrashed, but that grew weaker as he tore loose mouthful after mouthful. The hunger faded for the first time in days. In its place came clarity. He remembered.
There had been a pyramid, surrounded by bright lights. Men with guns. Werewolves. That couldn’t be right, could it? There were no such things as werewolves.
6
The Ring
Blair scrubbed a hand through sweaty hair as he trudged towards his chamber, somewhere past exhausted.
“Blair,” Bridget called from behind him. He turned to find her hurrying down the passageway. She gave a dazzling smile when he stopped and waited for her. It brought back so many memories, most of them unwelcome. “I’m too keyed up to sleep after that mess in Cajamarca. I was thinking maybe we could do a little sparring.”
“You mean you’re looking for a punching bag,” Blair said. He returned the smile, focusing on one of the better memories. It was nice to relax, just a hair. He’d been on edge since the second wave hit—hell, since he’d first come to the Ark almost three months ago.
Being forced to leave behind survivors didn’t help. He knew no one was happy about that, but he’d been the one to argue for it. The Mother was right. They couldn’t get bogged down by a small group. They had to think big picture, as much as it killed him to do so. “I always get my ass handed to me. I’ve never been able to catch you with any of my tricks. Guess I’m not much of a Jedi.”
“You’ll never win with that attitude. I’ve never known you to give up. Isn’t your manhood at stake being beaten by a girl?” she teased, linking an arm through his as they strolled towards the sparring ring the Mother had none too subtly demanded that they practice in daily. He knew he should disengage, but damn if it didn’t feel good. He deserved a little gratification. She smelled heavenly, familiar and warm.
�
��Being beaten by a girl? You mean having my throat torn out by a nine-foot werewolf who can vanish at will?” Blair asked, shaking his head. “Trust me, my manhood is intact. It’s not a fair fight. Girl werewolves shouldn’t hit boys.”
Bridget laughed, jeans clinging to her like a second skin as she skipped ahead into the sparring ring at the center of a cavernous chamber. It was a fascinating invention. A glowing white ring bordered a wide black swathe of obsidian, raised about two inches above the surrounding room. The moment Bridget entered it the ring began to pulse in time with her heartbeat. She crouched at the far side, a predatory grin on her face. How stupid was he, doing this yet again?
Bridget pulled off her shirt and dropped it on the stone just outside the ring. The bra came a moment later, followed by the jeans. At least there were some perks to this. He pulled off his own shirt, adding garments until they both stood naked. That had been the most awkward part the first few days, especially when they all sparred together. Now he was used to the nakedness, no longer embarrassed. It was hard to be, after the werewolf virus had reshaped his body into something any gym rat would envy.
“All right, let’s get this over with,” he said, forcing himself to take the final step into the ring. It flared brightly, veins of light running inward towards the center of the ring. He shifted as he moved, the change like breathing now. In the span of three spaces he gained two feet of fur and muscle, the silver mirrored in Bridget's coat as she shifted too.
Then Blair was elsewhere. There was no ring, just a vast jungle. The Amazon this time. He hadn’t seen this level before, but he couldn’t waste time gawking. Bridget would already be studying the ring, learning the terrain. She’d find the best place to ambush him and then strike, when he least expected it. It always began this way. How could it not? He couldn’t hide from a female and she could effortlessly fool his senses. The only advantage he had was speed.