Timmons was living on borrowed time. He would be the first to die if Marcus found them.
“I can’t live my life in fear!” he howled at the old parade deck. Then began talking to himself as he strolled to find some venison to dine on. “We eat and then let’s find us a place to stay. It looks like it could take a while to explore here. I wonder if the old labs have anything worthwhile left. It’s been a while since I brewed anything fun.”
Timmons had been an engineer in the before time, but he liked playing with the chemicals, especially when they could make explosives. Merrit had been a chemist. Between the two of them, Timmons had high hopes they could make something that would be entertaining. Maybe it was time for the chapel’s spires to come down.
Or time to build something that could kill a Werewolf, because Timmons couldn’t beat Marcus all by himself. A little help in the form of the terrorist-favorite, homemade explosive TATP?
Well, shit. That could make all the difference.
* * *
After having a good dinner of beef and green beans, Terry gave Antioch and Claire the directions to New Boulder. Along with the others, Terry thanked the couple for the meal, gave his regards, and ordered the members of the FDG to mount up.
They waved goodbye in appreciation of a good, home-cooked meal, then headed east, following the river’s course.
Terry spurred his horse to a gallop and off they went.
“We need to make up some ground,” he said into the wind. Clyde lay across his lap, whining in discomfort.
“I know,” Char answered, leaning into the horse’s neck as it ran. For thirty minutes he let the horses run, then he slowed them to a walk, then another thirty minutes of running.
Geronimo puked during the second run, but he didn’t complain.
James wondered about the hurry. They had yet to do any training, and he wondered if they’d ever get to it.
Lacy kept her eye on James while Devlin just tried to stay upright in the saddle. It was a motley group, but the best one that Terry could cobble together. Each had their own skill, but he wondered if they’d get a chance to demonstrate what they were good at. Two mechanically-inclined, but there were no towns out here, no place to set a mechanical trap.
Terry had hoped they’d corner the great Werewolf and with a trap or two, hurt him badly enough that Char could finish him.
“We’re going to have to do it the hard way,” Terry said out loud during the short interval the horses were walking.
“I’m sorry, I must have missed the plan that wasn’t the hard way,” Char said humorlessly.
“It was a long shot, but I was hoping to sucker Marcus into a small town where we’d be able to trap him, injure him as much as possible. I have a couple bullets which have silver rubbed on them, my silvered knife, and now my bullwhip, but I don’t expect him to stand still while I take aim or run through my weapons. So I’m going to have to get real close and unload on him. I know that hope is a lousy plan, but I hope that distracts him enough for you to take him out,” Terry stated.
“TH, always so chivalrous. What if I don’t want your protection, my big, tough human?”
Terry looked at her sideways. “You have to be kidding! My goal is to survive, all of us live to see tomorrow. We fight him however we can. I just wanted to put our options on the table, that’s all. And I can’t think of anything else. No matter what, my mind keeps coming back to Marcus.”
“It’s supposed to. He’s the alpha, and that’s how alphas like it. He has you right where he wants you, afraid and running for your life,” Char told him.
“Maybe that’s what we’ve been doing wrong,” Terry started, his mind racing anew. “We could have trapped him in that first place we stopped outside of New Boulder. Why wouldn’t that have worked? Because I fixed in my mind that we needed to drag him way the hell out into this god-forsaken fucking waste of a land.”
“You told Billy Spires that you were going to look for people. You told Margie Rose that you wanted her to live in peace. Maybe you’re trying to do too much, keep your word to too many different people,” she offered.
What Char told him rang true. When he returned to humanity, he committed his entire being to saving them. Every minute of his day was spent in that pursuit. Sawyer Brown was an inconvenience that Terry was well-equipped to deal with. Marcus, on the other hand, represented the horrors of the WWDE, the helplessness of a world spinning out of control.
His inability to save his family.
So he took Char and ran, justifying it in his own mind as the right thing to do to save the people of New Boulder.
He stopped his horse, signaling to the others to halt. He nudged his horse next to Char’s so he could face her. “When did you know?” he asked.
“When did I know what?” she whispered.
“All of it,” he added cryptically.
“When you kicked Clyde off the bed to be closer to me.” She smiled at him, her purple eyes sparkling.
“What? Clyde? You based your perception of our relationship entirely on Clyde?” Terry turned his head sideways, not unlike the dog that pranced around the horses, happy for the respite.
“You love that dog.” She smiled.
Terry leaned close. “I do,” he answered softly, before leaning back and shouting. “Now, what do you say we go kill us a fucking alpha? Come on, Clyde!”
Terry spurred his horse forward, turned in a tight circle to face east, then waved his arm over his head. With her ears flattened against her head, Terry’s mare bolted forward, sending dust clouds into her wake as the others raced to catch up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mark and Boris rode north, past the power plant and into the ruins of suburb after suburb. They saw the charcoal mark on the ground where Terry and his people had turned toward Longmont. The two continued along the remains of that highway until it crossed the South Platte River.
Another mark on the ground pointed in a new direction.
Mark and Boris dismounted, tying their horses to an old light pole. They saw the hoof prints as the eight horses entered the dirt of the mostly dry river bed. That was only partly what Mark was looking for.
He didn’t find any human footprints, only those of massive paws which seemed bigger than the hoof prints.
“What do you make of these?” Mark asked. Boris looked closely, moving from one to the next. He jumped between them, trying to get an idea how big the animal was.
“This can’t be a dog. A bear, maybe?” Boris suggested
Mark shook his head. Bears had five toes and a pronounced claw at the tip of each. This was the paw of a canine. “I think it’s a wolf, but I’ve never seen anything this size before.” Mark stomped around, torn over what to do as indecision gripped him.
“Fucking whore!” Mark yelled.
Boris jumped, looking around as if they were getting ambushed. He looked down the sights of his rifle as he scanned the nearby buildings.
“Hey! What if that thing is nearby? Fuck, man! Don’t call down the thunder just ‘cause you’re pissed,” Boris said, one hand out trying to calm the corporal.
“We have to follow them, but we can’t. We have to go back, but we shouldn’t,” Mark argued with himself.
“If it helps, I don’t see any human footprints. We need to take that information back. That man is running around somewhere out here, but I don’t see where he’s following them,” Boris said, shining the light on what Mark was missing.
“Holy shit! We have to go back, but let’s run up the river for a while, see if he jumped in at a different spot, but then we have to tell Billy.” Mark ran up the riverbank, untied his horse, and jumped into the saddle. He navigated the riverbank while Boris was still trying to mount his ride.
He hurried after Mark, trying to look at every building window, behind every mound of dirt for the boogeyman who was out there somewhere. And then there was a massive beast, large as a horse and running after their people. But, it was Terry Henry Walton
on the other end of that chase.
Maybe you don’t want to catch up to them, Boris thought. He suddenly heard a noise and studied the landscape to try and figure out what the sound was and where it came from. Mark pushed forward, oblivious to everything else except the tracks.
Who’s hunting whom? Boris asked himself.
* * *
Marcus continued to run, feeling strong after eating the buffalo calf. His rage consumed him, and he ran, hard, taking few breaks to drink and cool down.
He sensed something far ahead. People and cattle, walking toward him. He’d prefer to just run past, but being seen as a Werewolf wasn’t something he wanted to do. There was only one thing he was afraid of–the Forsaken. They didn’t care about much of what he did, but revealing the existence of the Were world was taboo.
It would get the skin flayed off him. His pain and ultimate death would give the Forsaken much pleasure, but having to go after the tainted humans and kill them all? The Forsaken would find that a huge pain in the ass, so they’d make Marcus suffer all the more.
No. He wanted to, because he knew he was catching up to them. No horse could outrun him. They were too weak. After killing the humans and conquering his mate, he’d dine on one of their mounts, maybe kill them all out of spite. He relished the thought.
He changed into human form, put on his clothes, and jogged up the riverbed where the approaching group couldn’t see how fast he was running.
As he closed on them, he slowed, then jumped into the stream. Dripping wet, he staggered up the bank and threw himself onto the ground.
The group of people stopped and looked at him in shock.
“Where did you come from?” an old man asked, his wife at his side along with an array of children from five to twenty. A small herd of cows followed obediently.
“I’ve been following my wife, she has purple eyes, and an interloper, a family wrecker!” Marcus howled, pleading with the patriarch and matriarch of the family before him. The old lady hurried to him to help him up.
He stood, towering over the little old lady. She gasped and backed away. The old man fingered his rusty shotgun as he looked at the massive human being who stood before them. The younger children hid behind their parents. The only ones unimpressed were the cows, who continued ambling west.
Antioch remembered himself and did as Terry Henry Walton had asked.
“They are going east, following the river. You’ll see our place a ways back. Keeping going past that. You can’t miss their tracks. She’s with them, as you already know,” Antioch intoned, sounding as if he’d memorized the script.
Marcus reached out with his senses. Maybe, kind of, almost at the edge of what he could feel. Char and something else. He needed to get closer.
“Thank you, kind people. I’ll be on my way, if you don’t mind.” Marcus dismissed the group, assuming they’d die in the Wastelands before they could get wherever they were going. He looked longingly at the cows as he ran past, but he’d be dining on fresh horse meat before too long. Marcus ran ahead, checking back every now and then to see the group fade into the distance. When they could no longer see, he removed his clothes and changed into a Werewolf. He ran to the river, dunked his head, drank deeply, and raced back up the bank. The cows had obliterated the hoof prints he’d been following, but that didn’t matter. He could see where they’d gone and soon, he’d catch them.
There was nowhere to hide in the Wastelands.
Terry Henry Walton’s heart ripped from his chest, Marcus chewing it casually as the flies gathered around the dead man. Horseflesh, raw, blood still pumping, and his mate, cowering at his feet and licking the blood from his fur if that’s what he commanded her to do.
Soon, all would be right with his world.
Then he’d find those other traitorous fucks of his pack and make them lick their own blood from his paws.
* * *
Terry pushed the group hard as he searched for the right place. As nightfall approached on the day after leaving Antioch and Claire’s homestead, he wondered if they’d misjudged Marcus. He instantly learned that he hadn’t.
“He is coming,” Char told the group as they attempted to make a fire in a ravine leading from the river.
“How long do we have?” Terry asked.
“A half-hour, maybe less. He is moving with a great deal of determination, it seems,” Char said calmly.
“Gerry, hide the horses up the river. James and Devlin, set up on the opposite riverbank. Lacy, down here with us. You’ll have the best angle to shoot, if we can get him to come down the river. Stoke that fire! We need something to draw him here and you need to be able to see your target,” Terry ordered, running downriver to find more driftwood to use as kindling. He returned with an armload as did the others. They lit it and stoked it to make one grand bonfire.
The light blazed into the dark of the early night. The heat was too much to stand close.
“Get in position now, hurry up,” Terry told them. He heard one of the horses whinny. “Farther away, Geronimo!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth to yell downriver.
“That’s it? Your plan is we draw him in here and then stand side by side as he kills us both?” Char said with a half-smile.
Clyde laid down by the fire, anxious at the activity and the emotions surging through the alpha and the others.
“No. I was going to stand over there, so I don’t get any of your blood on me. It would be so hard to get out of my uniform,” he quipped. She only shook her head as he moved away and double-checked the two silvered bullets in his rifle. He removed the sling and held the rifle free. He loosened his knife and wrapped his bullwhip around his forearm.
Then they waited.
Char moved aside, undressed, and changed into her Werewolf form. She stretched and snarled. Then she reared back and howled her challenge to the night sky.
A howl responded from the distance.
* * *
“We lost that man Marcus, Billy, and to add insult to injury, some beast is following the colonel. An hour’s ride down the river and its tracks were right there on top of the hoof prints.. We had to come back, let you know that the man didn’t follow them. We don’t know where he went,” Mark stated, trying not to look like he’d failed, although that was exactly what he felt.
“Isn’t that what you went out there for, to find out?” Billy asked as he leaned back in his chair. “So if that man comes back, we finish him, without talking. We’ll call Terry’s plan to lead him away a nice try, but we’ll take care of it ourselves, don’t you think, Mark?”
“That works for me. I’d like to go back out there, keep looking, if I may,” Mark asked.
“No.” Billy leaned forward, putting his forearms on the table. “You found out what you could, and now you need to set up the welcoming committee for when Marcus returns. No hesitation next time. We shoot to kill. Is that clear?” Mark nodded, pursing his lips. He looked to Billy for more, but there wasn’t anything else.
Boris had been silent the entire time. He didn’t have anything to add, and he definitely didn’t want to skyline himself with the mayor. Sometimes, anonymity was a good thing.
Mark stood up, waved Boris to follow, and walked out to inform the men. He needed to make a plan that was counter to the colonel’s last orders. He didn’t like it, but that was the position he filled.
“Boris, go get everyone and then we’ll build our trap. I wonder if Billy will let us put someone in his attic,” he said, thinking out loud as Boris ran off to find the rest of the guard.
* * *
“We stay here,” Timmons told them, trying to exert his authority as the new alpha, a position that he thought of for himself. The others had followed, only thinking Timmons the senior beta, not an all-powerful alpha.
“We stay because we like it here, not because of your order,” Sue countered, standing up straight, looking small compared to the males. The others nodded.
“Maybe it’s time we decide?�
�� Timmons pressed. Xandrie and Shonna leaned back as if they’d been punched. Sue sat down. She wasn’t the one to challenge for the leadership of the pack.
Ted and Adams avoided looking at Timmons. Merrit stood up, put his hand on his chin, raised one eyebrow, and looked very much like the thinking man.
“Why?” Merrit asked simply.
“Because, the pack needs a leader!” Timmons retorted, working his anger, feeding it as he readied himself for the physical fight for dominance. Merrit held up his hands and shook his head.
“No one is going to fight you today, Timmons. We’re staying. Is that not good enough? If you want to play alpha, more power to you, but what happens when Marcus returns? We will point to you and he will kill you, then we’ll assume our roles as good betas. If he’s convinced we don’t have a new alpha, then maybe we all survive.” Merrit talked while walking back and forth, reasoning out his argument.
“By leaving Marcus alive, we agreed that he was the alpha. A pack can’t have two, Timmons, no matter how much we’d like to see you in that role.” Merrit smiled as a way to solidify his point.
The others nodded.
“We should have killed him,” Timmons snarled.
“There is no value in such recriminations, my friend,” Merrit answered. “We have to live with our decisions. So, let’s make the best of it. We stay. There’s plenty of game. It’s comfortable here. For now, let’s call it home.”
The others nodded again in agreement. Timmons was angry that Merrit was right. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “Maybe we can dig something useful out of those labs. It’d be nice to blow shit up again. I miss that…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Terry moved to the other side of the small stream that trickled down the center of the riverbed. The South Platte had carried a great deal more water in the before time, but it had also run dry back then, too. At least there was some water and it wasn’t tainted.
And none of that mattered in their current situation. The alpha bore down on them from the bank to their left, the south side of the river. Char stood closest to that point. Terry aimed his rifle at the bank, waiting for the moment the great black Werewolf appeared.
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