Finally, he was at a safe altitude, which the soldiers likely realized, because they ceased firing.
But even at this height, E’iouy could see that the mercenaries were taking no steps to follow the werewolf. Even though numerous boats were docked nearby, the soldiers showed no interest. Instead, they gathered around the bag.
The leader stood, shouldered the bag and signaled the men to move off. They sprinted through the deserted streets back to the carriers, boarded them and roared away over the mud flats, heading north.
E’iouy felt a deep fatigue overtake him. The injured wing, the evasive maneuvers, the choking atmosphere had drained his energy. He fluttered down to land on the dock, its approach now shattered by the grenade. He scanned the ocean for any sign of the boat.
The werewolf was gone.
• • •
Hunched over in the passenger compartment of the wildly lurching armored carrier, Roberson punched the laptop computer’s power button to bring it to life. The next minute would tell him whether he had accomplished the mission and obtained the generator codes. Either he and his remaining men would be rich and powerful beyond their wildest dreams. Or they would be fugitives branded as traitors to their race when the Palliation failed.
The carrier lurched again, as it sped along the trackless mud flats, and Roberson clutched the computer to keep it steady. He had ordered that the two vehicles avoid the highway. That’s where their pursuers would look for them. And that’s where the warlords would expect them.
Four of his hardened veterans sat impassively in the passenger compartment, checking their weapons, reloading, and napping, even amid the roar and jerking of the carrier. They had been in these situations before. They knew how to survive, to fight their way out, to kill the enemy.
The computer screen showed icons indicating it was operational, and Roberson inserted the memory chip into its slot. He typed commands to access its contents. There was a pause, during which he contemplated the possibility that the werewolf had given them a bogus chip when he had flung the satchel at them on the dock. The treachery would mean turning back, finding the animal, obtaining the real chip, and killing him in the most painful way possible. Inconvenient.
He smiled, though, when an array of werewolf symbols scrolled down the screen. He’d been briefed on what the codes might look like, and these appeared to be valid.
He gave a triumphant nod and thumbs up to the other mercenaries, and one of them radioed the other vehicle that the codes were good. Next would come a takeover of the Pilgrim wormhole and piloting it to the Pilgrim colony.
There, he and his men would re-confirm the deal with the humans. Their families and those of their fallen comrades would be shepherded into safe havens. And, of course, they would divide up the Theran territories. They would become kings, emperors in their world.
He settled back for a nap himself. He would relieve the driver afterward. The jouncing continued for some half an hour.
He had settled into sleep when a massive thud shook the carrier, jolting him awake to grab his rifle in an automatic reflex.
Another thud, and the carrier careened to the left, slamming the soldiers against the bulkhead. As Roberson was stowing the bag containing the chip, one of the mercenaries kicked open the rear door. The three flipped their weapons off safety, aiming out. Above them, the soldier manning the machine gun triggered a series of rapid-fire bursts that reverberated through the carrier.
Then he screamed in agony, as a torrent of flaming oil cascaded down through the hatch into the interior to engulf it in searing flames.
Ryan wrestled with the wheel of the commandeered boat with his skinny elf arms, piloting it at the highest speed possible, skimming across the flat sea. Droplets of greenish elf sweat dotted his forehead, as he crouched behind the windshield. The others stood thankfully in the fetid breeze that flowed over their bodies, a welcome relief from the oppressive heat.
Vlad scanned the horizon ahead, with Sam beside him. Jack joined them and together they scoured the featureless expanse.
But they saw nothing ahead, not even the line of a horizon, which was obscured by the blanketing smog.
“We don’t know where we’re going, do we?” shouted Mike, from the deck.
“Neither does the werewolf,” Jack shouted back. “So, we’re betting he just heads south.”
“Yah . . . betting,” grumped the ogre, settling his bulk for the ride.
“Buildings ahead!” exclaimed Louisa, listening to the radio message from E’iouy, flying high above. “He says there are buildings ahead and to the left!”
“I see them!” exclaimed Vlad, and Jack pointed at the undifferentiated bumps materializing from smog. The vague forms resolved into an archipelago of ruined skyscrapers jutting out of the waters.
“Pretty sure it’s what was called Jacksonville,” said James, consulting the map on the boat’s navigational computer screen.
“Anything?” Jack asked Louisa, who relayed the question to E’iouy.
The flooded buildings grew closer, now towering above the boat. Their ground floors awash, they were stained green with algae and black with mold. Many of the huge windows had been knocked out, the gaps looking like missing teeth.
“I would guess hurricanes did this,” said Jack, peering up at the broken windows.
“More likely gun battles,” said his father. “There were bad ones all over the country after the martial law, when the government was trying to keep order. Before the warlords took over. Now, there are only Pilgrims in authority.”
Occasionally, they would glimpse a lurking figure in a window far above them, but there was no sound except the faint slap of low waves against the scummy walls.
Ryan slowed the boat to lower the engine sound, and the group listened intently, all scrutinizing the waters around the buildings for any sign of the boat that had brought Flaktuckmetang and his captive Meri.
They passed a tattered band of people huddled on the window sill of what had once been a second floor. They stood beside a makeshift crane whose steel cable extended into the water. The people did not wave, but glared fearfully at the boat.
“Have you seen a boat carrying a monster?” shouted Jack. “And a girl?”
At the sight of the ogre, the people scrambled back into the darkened interior. But one remained, a tall, gaunt man, standing tentatively.
“Do you have a corpse?” he shouted. “We have shark to trade. If no corpse, go away!”
Jack turned to his father. “Corpses?” he asked.
James shook his head in disgust. “I didn’t want to tell about the fishing here. The only remaining food source are great white sharks. The people have nothing to attract them but . . .” his father paused and took a deep breath, “. . . corpses. They have shark traps that they bait with the dead. The sharks come, and if one takes the bait and enters the trap, they haul it up.”
Jack blew out a breath to rid himself of the grisly information. “Have you seen—” he began, but Louisa interrupted him, relaying a message from the fairy.
“He’s spotted the boat!” she exclaimed. “At the building with the pointed top. There!” She pointed at a glass-walled skyscraper two buildings beyond, and Ryan gunned the engine, throwing up a rooster tail of spray, heading for it.
Mike stirred his massive body to make room, as E’iouy fluttered down to land on the deck, slumping onto a bench, breathing heavily.
They drew closer, and Ryan began to circle around the building.
“There!” exclaimed Sam, as the boat came into sight, moored to the building.
The elf eased the boat up to a broken window, and Jack hitched a line to a metal rod jutting from the building. James, Louisa, and Geniato took up assault rifles. Figuring that close combat was possible, Jack chose an automatic pistol and extra ammunition clips.
They hauled themselves up through the shattered window and into the interior. E’iouy and Ryan remained aboard, the fairy to recover, and the elf to guard the b
oat.
The dank, dark interior of the ruined building smelled of rotten, organic decay and was strewn with the garbage of human occupation. A moldy, ripped couch sat beside the window, and blankets and stained mattresses occupied places around the walls, where people had been sleeping.
“We’ll never find him in this—” began Louisa walking into the room, but Vlad interrupted her.
“Over there,” he said, peering into a pitch black corner of the room. “Bodies.”
Jack switched on a light, to see two bodies, a young man and a young woman, lying on a blood-soaked blanket. Both had their throats torn out, and the man had large chunks of flesh missing from his arms and legs.
Retching, Louisa staggered across to the window, bent over trying to recover.
Jack struggled to maintain his composure, backing away from the horrific sight.
“We need to split up,” he declared coldly, taking a deep breath. He asked his father to fetch radios and flashlights from the boat, and directed three teams to begin searching the building: he went with Geniato; Mike, Sam, and James struck off together; and Vlad and Louisa joined to search.
Mike, Sam, and James struck out for the lower floor; Vlad and Louisa began to explore the middle; and Jack and Geniato began the long hike to the top floors.
Jack and Geniato climbed the darkened stairs as quietly as they could, despite the grit crunching under their feet. They stopped periodically to contact the other groups and listen for any telltale animal sounds that might betray the werewolf’s position.
They reached the top floor, pushing through the metal fire door to find themselves looking out over the ruined city, with its flooded buildings and the distant pylons of a submerged bridge. Broken glass littered the floor, and almost all the windows were shattered.
“If he’s here, we’ll hear him,” whispered Jack, as they made their way from room to room.
But they heard nothing. No sound, no sign of the werewolf or Meri.
Jack saw that Geniato was trembling, and he clasped him gently on the shoulder in reassurance. “He would have kept her alive,” he said. “He knows he might need her.”
They moved quietly down to the next floor and searched along the hallway, ducking into rooms, finding nothing but more gutted interiors, more shattered glass.
But on the next floor down, a faint sound echoed down the hall. Indefinable, but not a natural sound. Something moving about far down the hallway.
A growl!
Jack and Geniato stepped quietly down a darkened hallway, illuminated only by pale light filtering through the open doorways of offices that had windows.
Now, they could hear more sounds, a growling, a shuffling.
A sob! It was Meri!
Geniato leaped ahead, grasping his assault rifle, with Jack unable to grab his arm to stop him. He ran down the hall, just reaching an open doorway, when a massive furry arm reached out, clutching him, and snatching him in.
He yelled, as Jack drew his pistol and sprinted to the doorway, rounding its corner. He saw Geniato lying in a crumpled, barely conscious heap, on the floor by the far wall.
As Jack entered the room, the werewolf, who had flattened himself against the wall by the doorway, tore the pistol from his hand and flung it out the open window.
Jack backed away, desperately seeking a weapon among the debris.
“You!” exclaimed the werewolf in shock. “I killed you!”
“Obviously not,” said Jack. “And now I am here to kill you.”
With an enraged roar, the werewolf slammed Jack against the wall, clamping his claw over Jack’s face and yanking his head back to reveal Jack’s throat. The claw was a suffocating shroud that reeked of animal musk.
“Now you will really die! Now, there is no beast to save you.”
Jack fought back, bringing up his fist to pound the werewolf’s face, slamming it to the side, briefly loosening the grip.
But that grip tightened again, wrenching Jack’s head back even more.
“You will taste so good,” said Flaktuckmetang.
Jack steeled himself for death, but abruptly the werewolf howled in pain, his body lurching away, careening around the room.
Jack realized that it was Meri clinging with one hand to the thick fur on the werewolf’s shoulder, stabbing him again and again with a shard of glass she had snatched from the littered floor. She hacked at his back again and again, oblivious to the blood streaming from her own hand from the shard’s razor-sharp edges. She barely held on, as the snarling werewolf twisted around, grasping at her, trying to dislodge her.
With a vicious bellow, the werewolf finally managed to tear the young girl’s grip loose, hauled her around and slammed her to the floor, standing over her, grinning.
“So, then, you shall go first.” He bent down and raised his claw to tear Meri’s throat open. She held up the glass shard, a feeble weapon against those claws.
But the werewolf abruptly stopped his attack and stood up, a puzzled, pained look on his face. He pawed at a long dagger of glass jutting out of the side of his neck, his eyes growing glassy. Black blood flowed down his shoulder onto his chest.
Jack had also found a shard of glass.
“What—” began the werewolf, but Jack didn’t allow him to finish. Grabbing another shard, he leaped at the werewolf, slashing at his body.
The glass found its target, and blood began to spurt from the werewolf’s arm. Weakening from pain and blood loss, the werewolf swung clumsily at Jack. But Jack ducked beneath that blow, quickly circling behind the creature, reaching up, and hacking as hard as he could at the beast.
Meri pulled herself up, her expression one of maddened rage. She circled the werewolf, taking advantage of her small stature and quickness to inflict her own wounds on the lumbering creature.
Time after time, the werewolf swiped his huge claws at his attackers. Time after time, they evaded the lethal blows, inflicting more slashing wounds.
The werewolf staggered back near the open window, and Jack took advantage of the positioning. Leaping forward, he slammed into the werewolf’s chest, sending the beast vaulting out the window, plummeting down into the ocean far below.
Jack and Meri held onto one another, peering out the window to see the werewolf struggling to swim to the building, his blood flowing from his wounds into the waters around him. He had just reached the base of the building, stretching up with one claw to grasp its side, when the water around him erupted in a volcano of spray.
The werewolf’s massive body vaulted upward, clamped in the jaws of an even more massive great white shark. The werewolf’s arms and legs flailed lifelessly, his head lolling, his fanged mouth gaping open, as the shark bit down again and again on his body. The shark finally dragged the body down into the flat gray ocean. The waters continued to roil as the shark fed amid the black stain of blood and scattered floating body parts rendered buoyant by air trapped in their fur.
Jack pitched down the glass shard and quickly moved to check on Geniato, who was pulling himself up. Meri embraced him, and they both sobbed with relief. Jack managed to radio the others, telling them what had happened.
And as Geniato bound Jack’s and Meri’s wounds, all three sat recovering, gazing out at the dead ocean and down at the now-calm area of its surface where the hated werewolf had been torn to shreds.
Vlad manned the machine gun, with Sam beside him scanning the landscape, as the carrier sped along the desolate highway, back toward the Pilgrim colony.
Inside, Geniato embraced Meri, who rested her head on his chest, sleeping. She had been given water and food, and her wounds bandaged.
E’iouy rested, too, his injured wing temporarily mended; and Mike occupied the entire back of the passenger compartment, snoring loudly.
Jack and his parents huddled together at the front, making plans, as Ryan zig-zagged the carrier, avoiding the many abandoned wrecks and other obstacles on the highway.
“Can we get back through to the wormhole?” ask
ed Jack.
“It won’t be easy,” said his father. “We’ll have to keep them believing that we installed a self-destruct sequence. In any case, they can’t use the aperture, because I implemented an access code. So, we’re all right. They know that losing their wormhole would mean losing humanity’s last chance at survival. You’ve seen the conditions here. In a matter of years, Earth will be unsurvivable for humans.”
They had just begun to plot tactics, when Sam shouted from above, “Smoke! There’s smoke!”
Jack pulled himself up through the hatch beside her to see a tendril of smoke rising in the gray sky off the highway to the right.
“Two carriers burning, “said Vlad, peering intently at the scene.
“It’s the mercenaries,” Jack called down. “We need to find out what’s happened to them.”
“Is that wise?” James called up. “Remember the warlords.”
“We need to find out what happened,” Jack repeated emphatically. “Roberson has the generator codes.”
He instructed the elf to home in on the smoke plume, and shortly, Ryan brought the carrier slowly up to the two gutted vehicles.
The group exited the passenger compartment, to inspect them, finding a grisly sight. The interiors were burned-out ruins, holding the charred corpses of a dozen men. The acrid stench of burned flesh rolling out of the carrier caused them to gag.
But Jack climbed into the first carrier, making his way into the interior, searching for any sign of the satchel containing the code chip. He had just begun poking through the ash around the charred bodies when shouting and gunfire drew him back out.
He emerged to find the carriers surrounded by a ragtag mob of armed men and vehicles—battered cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Vlad shot the bolt of the machine gun, swiveling it around to aim at the thugs. They did not retreat.
Mike stalked back and forth before them, growling, baring his massive fangs. An impulsive young thug leaped toward him, thrusting a spear into his belly. The tip broke off.
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