CHAPTER FORTY
Terry led his horse by the reins. Char was doing the same thing next to him. Young women with babies were riding. Behind them, horses were scattered among a long line of people ambling mindlessly forward. A couple hundred miles left to travel with the remnants of settlements, individual homesteads, and even some stragglers who left towns where other people were comfortable and didn’t want to come along.
Nearly one hundred of them and friendships were already forming as they got to know each other. They’d be walking for at least the next two weeks. Terry gauged their progress at twenty-five miles a day, a reasonable distance. People who survived the World’s Worst Day Ever were hearty souls. They did what had to be done and most of the time, did it without complaint.
“Anything?” Terry asked.
“Javelina, maybe a big boar up ahead,” Char replied. Terry apologized to the riders before helping them down. They were kind, appreciating any time they didn’t have to walk, and joined the others on foot.
Terry and Char mounted the horses and raced ahead. They circled to get downwind from their prey. Char rode in front, signaling Terry to enter an arroyo, a small cut into the waste. He went without hesitation because he could smell the pig. It had to be big to carry a stench like that.
Terry readied his rifle, just in case, but preferred to kill the creature with his knife. He was down to the last seven rounds for his rifle. After that, he’d have to use one of the AK-47s, a less capable weapon. He hoped it was a big boar, because they needed the meat, and that he could kill it the hard way.
He pushed his rifle back over his shoulder and pulled his knife. He slowed his mount to a walk. The horse started to get anxious, so he stopped and climbed down, turning the horse loose to leave the arroyo. Terry raised his head and sniffed the air.
Nothing but the pig.
He listened for Char, but heard nothing. He assumed his fighting stance and carefully moved toward the smell. He stepped silently, glancing down to help him avoid loose gravel or dry twigs.
Agonizingly slowly, he proceeded forward.
***
Char jumped from her horse while it was still running and ran to the far side of her impromptu ambush. Terry was approaching the beast on its best retreat route. Her plan was to spook it and send it running right into Terry where he would dispatch it quickly. They’d clean it and wait for the menagerie of people to show up. She knew that it would feed them all with some left over.
It would be a good day.
She topped a small rise and saw the massive boar digging in a small wet patch, probably eating the fungus or whatever else had been growing there.
“Ha!” she yelled. The boar didn’t hesitate. It bolted in the other direction at a speed of fear-driven raw strength. Char took a breath to yell at Terry that the boar was coming, but judging from his surprised cry, he had been right around the corner when the boar ran that way.
She jumped over the top of the rise, slid to the bottom, and ran after the animal.
Terry had been one step from the corner when he heard Char’s yell. One second later, five hundred pounds of wild pig ran into him. The boar’s tusks hit him in the calf, but he twisted just enough to keep them from tearing the skin. Terry rolled over top of the boar, sliding to one side enough to hook an arm around the boar’s leg.
His knife was somewhere in the dirt. Terry’s equipment slammed against him, including his rifle, now uselessly slapping him in the back.
The wild boar kicked Terry in the head with its other leg, but Terry didn’t let go.
What’s the plan, TH? he asked himself as he was getting dragged up the arroyo and kicked in the head with every other step. He tried to crawl forward to get his legs underneath him, but the boar’s front legs churned the dirt, continuing to drag its human anchor.
Char burst into the arroyo and ran the boar down, coming alongside. It slashed at her with its tusks, but she was too quick. Terry scrambled to stand without letting go of the back leg. The pig kicked and twisted wildly to free itself. Char jumped over the creature’s head, coming down on its back where she could wrap her arms around its throat.
As the boar tried to buck her off, she kicked Terry in the chest, then the arm. He decided on a different course of action.
He let go and pulled his silvered blade. The pig dashed away, Char clinging to its back while trying to choke the life from the thing. Terry raced after them both.
Char was having some effect, and the wild boar slowed. Terry caught up and dove, plunging his blade into the side of the creature’s neck. Char gasped in pain. The creature bucked again and Char flew into a dirt wall. Terry pushed forward, twisting the blade and yanking it, viciously ripping the neck of the great beast apart. It staggered away as its life blood spurted in broad arcs. Terry lay on the ground, breathing heavily from his efforts. His knees were scraped and bleeding and a bruise appeared on his cheek and over his eye.
Char lay in a pile, gently cradling her arm. Terry forgot about himself or the boar and rushed to the Werewolf.
He kneeled by her side, caressing her hair as he looked at the ugly scar on her arm where his silvered blade had touched on its way into the wild boar’s neck.
“I am so sorry, Char. I never want to hurt you,” he whispered.
She winced and looked at him, her purple eyes sparkling. “Why won’t you make love to me?”
He continued to stroke her hair as he looked at her arm, then the scar on her face. He’d caused both of them. Terry wondered if he was building a scar on her heart.
The one on his was ugly and forever in the fore of his mind.
He looked down into her eyes, but looking into the distant path, “I carried a bag of chocolate chip cookies halfway around the planet for her even though I thought she detested me. Detested me because I was a Marine. Her name was Melissa…” he started.
***
“It’s been a long time since we lost a hunter,” Billy said to the man sitting across the table. Mark leaned back, wondering if he’d have to go after the hunter. All the other times they’d lost someone in the hills, Terry had gone. He and Char could track like bloodhounds.
“Since Terry left you in charge, I need you to go after him. Find my hunter and bring his stuff back to us. Hopefully, he’s just lost and you can bring him back, too,” the mayor said without conviction. Mark hoped he was up for the task.
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it,” Mark said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. Billy nodded abruptly and returned to looking through a mish-mash of paperwork on the table in front of him.
Twenty-two years after the fall and they still had paperwork. Inconceivable. Bureaucrats everywhere would have been proud.
Had they survived.
Billy didn’t do paperwork just to do paperwork. That was a big difference. He tracked crop yields for the current year and projections and needs for the coming year. He married the growing cycles with manpower in order to ensure that too much didn’t come ripe at the same time where they couldn’t harvest it all and process it to save for later, build the food bank, as it were.
The mayor’s job was thankless. When everything worked like it was supposed to, people accepted it without question. When it didn’t work, the people would grumble.
They had grown soft.
Or maybe he’d brought civilization back to a point where they had certain expectations regarding comfort.
And the grumbling wasn’t that bad. Billy would never forget how bad things were, living meal to meal, with great stretches of nothing in between. Too many people counted on him, so he became gruff and angry, held people at a distance.
The baby started crying when she woke from her nap. Billy had always thought that sound to be annoying, but not from his precious Marcie. It told him that she was alive and that she needed him, needed them both, her parents.
Felicity looked through a crack in the door before joining Billy. Marcie had been hungry, and Felicity was breastfeeding.
“I love
what having a baby did to your tits,” Billy said. Felicity sneered.
“Is that how you’re going to think of our daughter?” Felicity drawled. “A piece of ass…”
She let it linger. Billy was instantly angry, almost violently so, not at Felicity but at the first man who would touch his daughter far, far into the future.
“Fuck me,” he said. Felicity strolled next to Billy, turned so the baby couldn’t see, and then slapped him in the head. She started cooing again to Marcie as she walked casually away.
“Goddammit, bitch!” Billy said quietly, rubbing the side of his face.
“Three years I’ve been trying to teach you how to talk to a lady and still, that refuse comes out of your mouth.” She glared at him.
“I’m trying,” he finally conceded. She sauntered back to him, bouncing slightly to keep Marcie in motion.
Felicity leaned close and whispered in Billy’s ear, “Like fuck you are.” She bit his ear, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to let Billy know that she was not pleased.
He bit his tongue before more unwelcome words spewed forth. He expected she was saving a kick in the balls for one of his more heinous transgressions. He wanted to show her who was in charge, so he stood, protecting his privates by keeping the table close, and put his hands on his hips.
Felicity turned and showed him the baby’s face, nestled against her enlarged breast, sucking happily while slowly drifting off.
“I know, you’re the one who’s really in charge,” he said, before kissing Marcie gently on the forehead. “I think I’ll go with the men, help them find our lost hunter.”
Billy needed to regroup after having lost the battle so badly. Usually he was better, but he was off his game today. Riding into the mountains would help clear his head so he was better prepared for next time. Felicity smiled and waved, leaving the room as she headed for the stairs.
“We need to figure out what the next year is going to look like,” Billy said to the wall. “Don’t we, Terry Henry?”
***
After a short rest, Timmons called for the pack to start running anew. They changed into Werewolf form and ran, slower this time, at a pace that they could maintain until well past nightfall.
Werewolves owned the night, but not after they’d been running like Timmons and the pack had.
By midnight, they were done. The pack found a stone building outside what used to be Merida, Mexico, nearly two hundred miles from Cancun. They were exhausted, curling into a pile of Werewolves and sleeping as if born of the same litter.
They didn’t remember anything until the sun was well up and the heat made them thirsty. Finding a natural spring wasn’t easy. Too much of the water on the peninsula was tainted by the ocean, bad soil, or water from a foul source.
They moved more and more slowly as they searched and finally, Xandrie found a trickle of fresh water moving through the slime of a brackish swamp. They followed it to a small pool that bubbled out of an old well. The water within was clear and clean. They drank, slowly at first, then lapped noisily as they stood around the small pool, resting their sore front paws on the shaded, cool bricks.
They waited, then drank some more before heading out to find the road south that would lead them from the peninsula and then back north through Mexico. They’d retrace the path they’d taken to get to Cancun. Back then, it had taken them half a year to travel from Colorado Springs to Cancun, as they rested and hunted, then moved, but the return trip couldn’t take that long.
If the Forsaken was riding a sailing ship, then as soon as they could get inland and stay inland, the better they’d be. At least that was how Timmons reasoned it. Fear kept him from thinking through the problem all the way and collecting more information.
“We don’t stop until we reach Campeche. We have to stay ahead of the sailing ship.”
“Do you have any idea who that was?” Sue asked.
The others shook their head. They’d met Forsaken before, but in the old world, where there were plenty of distractions to keep the vampires occupied and there were threats to the Forsaken. Bethany Anne and, as far as the Werewolves knew, all of her people had left the planet. The Forsaken had no other predators.
They could move with impunity and do as they wish. There was no one to stop them.
Timmons sure as hell wasn’t going to try. He did not have a death wish, although his efforts to become the alpha could have been misconstrued. He was willing to risk it. It had been years since they heard from Marcus and with each passing day, Timmons thought it less and less likely that the alpha would return. Could it have been possible that Char bested him in a fight for dominance?
Maybe the human that she attached herself to had helped. Or, in his rage, he fell over a cliff and was crushed in a rockslide. That was probably the more likely scenario. Marcus had been the most ferocious Werewolf alive, as far as Timmons knew. There was no greater fighter in the Were world.
Timmons didn’t know any Were-bears. He knew Marcus, and that he was one mean bastard.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Terry lay with his head on Char’s chest as he finished the story of his life with Melissa and the abyss that he cast himself into afterwards.
She tipped his head up.
“It’s a whole new world, TH,” she purred. “You are one of King Arthur’s knights, honorable, fiercely loyal, and dedicated to a fault. Let me turn the table so you can be free to be yourself. Terry Henry Walton, will you be my husband?”
Terry pulled back. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one who asks that?”
“Then why don’t you? What’s keeping you from me, TH?”
“Twenty-two years is long enough, I guess,” he started.
“You guess?” Char interrupted. He put a finger to her lips, caressing them.
“I can’t imagine a tomorrow where you aren’t at my side. We have waited long enough, and I am free, finally, thanks to you. I love you, Charumati, and I accept. I want nothing more than to be your husband.” Tears made Terry’s eyes glisten, but he blinked them back, refusing to let them run down his face.
He was an old man, for piss sake.
Char started pulling her clothes off and the rush was on. Terry stood up and started unfastening, unbuckling, unbuttoning, and unzipping everything on his person. It was tossed in an unceremonious pile as Char jumped on him, making him stagger as he held her tightly, her skin blazing hot against his.
And he didn’t care that he started to sweat. They’ll find my body shriveled with a big stupid smile on my face, Terry thought before giving himself completely.
***
“Why are we going back to Colorado?” Xandrie whined.
“We need to find out what happened to Marcus and Char,” Timmons stated firmly.
“Are we there yet?” Ted asked.
“Fucking walking all the way back. We should have made sure before we left,” Adams added.
“Fuck you, whiny bitches!” Timmons snarled, keeping his head down as he stumbled forward on the old, broken road.
“Who are you calling a bitch, bitch?” Shonna chimed in.
“Bitch!” Timmons shot back.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” Ted stated, looking around.
“Of fucking course we’re not fucking there yet, you stupid fuck!” Timmons had lost all patience. “We haven’t even left the Yucatan!”
“But we don’t tan,” Sue replied, suddenly confused.
“At least they had booze in Cancun. What the hell are we going to drink in Colorado?” Merrit wondered.
“Alcohol doesn’t affect us, you dumbass! Who cares if they had drinks?” Timmons stopped walking and stood with his fists raised. “I will beat the crap out of the next dumbass who opens his mouth.”
Sue turned to Xandrie. “I’m glad he wasn’t talking to us.”
“You, too, bitch!” Timmons clarified.
“Maybe you should change into a wolf so you can lick your own balls. That is what you want, isn’t it?�
�� Xandrie challenged.
She’d had enough, too.
Timmons sauntered toward her, pointing a finger at her and sneering. When he got close enough, she kicked him square in the groin.
“Who’s the bitch now, bitch?” she taunted as Timmons rolled on the ground, holding himself and making funny noises. “Shall we, ladies?” Xandrie held out her arms and the other two She-Wolves took them as they stepped past Timmons and strolled up the road. The Werewolves were all still naked in human form as they had yet to find any clothes. They’d changed in order to bathe so they could better hunt. As the women walked, they transformed into Werewolves, hairy and big. They started loping away, following the road, expecting that the men would catch up.
“Maybe we’ll get there tomorrow,” Ted said, licking a finger and holding it up to the wind.
“We’re not going to get there tomorrow, dumbass,” Timmons grumbled, still holding his violated man-parts as he struggled to his feet.
***
Mark knew his limitations. He couldn’t go into the mountains alone like the colonel or the major, but he didn’t have to. He was a sergeant now, in charge of those left behind to protect and defend New Boulder. His people were blending in with each other, thinking alike as they maneuvered through the incessant trials that the colonel and the major put them through.
The squads moved as one.
“Nightwatch!” Mark yelled at the barracks. “Form the platoon!”
The men stumbled out of the barracks half-dressed. It was early morning and still dark. They’d been sleeping. Ivan stayed up through the night to ensure that the barracks didn’t get any nasty surprises. He stood the night watch every night and the Force appreciated his contribution. They knew that he got the least sleep out of all of them.
But he didn’t complain. He soldiered on in the best interest of the Force de Guerre.
The men recovered quickly and stood tall in two ranks of seven each. James and his second squad were on the road with Colonel Walton and Major Charumati. That left Mark with first squad and Blackbeard with third squad. While Mark filled the role of platoon sergeant, he temporarily moved Jim into the squad leader position. The big man stood tall and proud at the front of the formation. He was a little slower to learn things than the others, but once he had something, he embraced it fully.
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