It was like the universe stood back, looked at Terry Henry Walton, and said, “Hold my beer and watch this.”
Char caught him looking at her. “What’s up, horn dog?’
“What? I’m the two-year guy, remember?” he countered. She chuckled at how easily she could get his goat.
“Ten days,” she offered.
“Sounds about right. I expect that’s how long it will take before Gerry works up the courage to talk with her,” Terry said as he looked into the distance. The air was so much cooler than New Boulder, but was it cool out? He still didn’t have a thermometer and didn’t know, but everything was relative. A thermometer would measure the old standard. Was cool sixty-eight degrees or eighty-five?
“Ten days until we get to the north side of Chicago,” Char clarified.
“Yup,” Terry said noncommittally. “Do you sense anything?”
“Just us girls out on a Sunday evening stroll, that’s all. Why do you ask?” Terry always had reasons for his questions.
“I was hoping that there’d be big game nearby, the buffalo. We’re coming up on the moment of truth. Do we follow the interstate and make a run across the waste, or do we take the safe route and follow the river?” He continued to scan the horizon as they approached the abandoned town of Glendive. “Two days to the east. The map shows rivers and lakes. Four days if we go north. I’d like to take the shortcut.”
He looked to Char for an answer.
She studied the path ahead of them, lost in concentration for a moment. “Thanks for asking, but on this one, I don’t think I can be of any help.”
“Ok,” he looked around, “Let’s camp here for the rest of the day, fish, hunt, fill our bellies with water. Tomorrow before dawn, we head for North Dakota.”
“There’s something else?” Char asked, catching on that he had multiple concerns.
He nodded, “Are we going to run through an area that’s still glowing from the nukes? There used to be a lot of silos north of here, Minot. Maybe the shortcut keeps us far enough away, assuming the enemy missiles were accurate.”
“Who was the enemy, TH? The one who fired first or the one who fired last?” Char challenged.
“That’s a good question. You see where Akio came from. He preferred space, wanting nothing to do with countries haphazardly throwing around nukes. I can’t believe anyone thought a nuclear war was a viable option. As a ground pounder, I’m a fan of conflict that’s a little more in your face, up close and personal.” He squirmed in his seat. If only Terry had been in charge, none of this shit would have happened.
But he wasn’t. It did happen, and he survived. Finally, he was in charge of something and had the opportunity to make a difference.
“Akio,” Terry said aloud.
“What’s he have to do with anything, TH?” Char looked sideways at her husband. His mind always took twists and turns that she couldn’t follow, but she was studying him. She wondered if she’d ever figure him out, knowing that they had time. They had a lot of time.
“What are you smiling at?” Terry asked.
“My glistening hunk of man meat,” she said, licking her lips. “Now answer the question. What’s Akio got to do with anything?
“I couldn’t do anything last time, but as we rebuild, we have to make sure people can’t press a button and fight a war. Akio supports us and the Force. There will be one military here and eventually, only one for the entire planet. That’s what I see and how we can prevent the end of the world, round two.”
“Maybe we just make sure there is no button to push. No toys for the bad boys?”
“I couldn’t agree more, Char.” He pulled her close for a long kiss, then in a deep voice, he said, “Make it so, number one.”
***
“What’s with those two?” Kiwi asked Gerry as they stood in the ankle deep water and brushed the horses. The wolf pack wasn’t far away, frolicking or fishing, they couldn’t tell which.
“They saved our lives, all kinds of times. They’re married, but it’s not like that,” he tried to explain.
“If they’re married, how can it not be like they’re married?” she asked skeptically.
“It’s an equal partnership, like together, their two parts are more than what they are individually. I haven’t seen too many married couples in my life and none of them are like those two. I hope to love someone someday as much as they love each other,” Gerry said as he watched the way Terry looked at Char and her returned glances.
Kiwi grunted. Too much touchy-feely stuff for her. “When do we get to go fishing?”
Gerry waved her toward where Timmons was stalking the shallows. She finished brushing the horse and strolled down the riverbank and watched him until he offered her one of his spears. She slowly stepped back into the water and found a spot by a patch of river grass where she thought a fish may swim by. She said a prayer to Mother Earth, thanking her for the bounty of the land. When Kiwi opened her eyes, the fish was there and she trapped it in the V fork of her spear.
She tossed the wriggling fish ashore, splashed out of the water, and brained it on a rock. Timmons raised his spear in a salute.
Gerry watched as Kiwi walked away. Saw her spear a fish and dance ashore triumphantly.
She is magnificent, he thought.
***
Sue watched Felicity carefully, but couldn’t figure her out. She thought she was older than she looked, but couldn’t nail her down. Felicity never talked about her past.
Billy Spires was completely smitten once again. The adult talk snapped him out of his funk, and he was going one hundred miles an hour.
If Sue hadn’t been a Werewolf, she wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
When the Force conducted weapons training, they invited all the pack to attend, although they didn’t admit that they knew the beautiful people were Werewolves. Merrit and Shonna declined because they worked harder and harder to keep the power plant functioning and feared if they took their eyes off it for a moment, it would die. They didn’t want that burden on their shoulders. They only needed it to run for another month, they hoped, and then they could shut it down, seal it up, and walk away.
Adams and Xandrie took a day off hunting to work with the AK-47. It wasn’t their weapon of choice, but it’s what they had the most ammunition for.
The platoon dry-fired all morning as they usually did, then each member of the Force received five rounds. Everyone fired once, then checked their targets, reviewed their sight picture and sight alignment, and then went back for round two. Each shooter had their own personal target that they used to see their groupings.
Some were naturals and others were hard-pressed to keep their shots on the paper, let alone in a small grouping at center mass.
Adams and Xandrie fired, saw where their bullets hit, and immediately asked for the sight adjustment tool. They tweaked their front sight posts and prepared for round two. Mark gave each of them an extra bullet. Adams fired and yelled, “Ha!” Xandrie smoothly pulled her trigger, then looked up, smiling. Both shots were in the X ring, the exact center of the target.
Mark walked the Force through the steps, not letting anyone else change their sight posts until the second shot. He asked Adams and Xandrie to help those who were the worst shots to find the center of the paper, so they took four people aside and worked with them.
Left eye dominant trying to aim using the right eye. They helped them better position themselves behind the rifle. A flincher. They snapped and yelled at him until his only respite was pulling the trigger. Little things that added up to ruin a perfectly good shot.
When the four returned, they weren’t quite center mass, but they were at least within the inscribed circles. They pulled the four aside and dry-fired for two more hours before they let them use real ammunition again.
One of the four hit the bullseye, the X ring.
Progress, no matter how small, was still progress.
Sue was a good shot, but didn’t care to use the r
ifle. She handed it back and went on her way before the day at the range was completed. Mark thought about it, but then decided that the Force could use two snipers. He issued Adams and Xandrie AK-47s and told them to keep the rifles with them at all times. He also issued them two magazines and forty rounds each, to be used only in defense of New Boulder or as ordered by Colonel Walton or Major Charumati.
They had the hunting rifle that Billy had given them, and they’d continue to use that to provide meat for the townsfolk, but these were military rifles. “Does this mean we’ve been drafted?” Adams asked.
“It means welcome to the Force de Guerre, the FDG.” Mark held out his hand and they both shook it.
Mark ordered a wrap to the day’s range training, including policing the brass, which was picking up the spent rounds.
“You reload your ammunition?” Adams asked.
“We keep the brass just in case we ever get the ability to reload, but we don’t have any gunpowder,” Mark told them.
“As long as you have bullets and primers,” Adam replied, “I think we may be able to help with that.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The first day into the waste of North Dakota was uneventful. The highlight was when Terry said that he didn’t think it looked any different than before the fall. He was joking, of course, but none of the others had been in North Dakota before.
It was desolate. They ran across no people, but saw some buffalo, although they were too far off their track to hunt. The buildings were falling down, the elements of a harsh climate having taken a toll. Most of all, Terry looked for signs of radioactivity.
The buffalo were a relief. They wouldn’t be there if their grazing land had been irradiated.
The ponds contained frogs and fish. The wolf pack chased the frogs into the water. Terry yelled at them to stop, unsure if a wolf could eat a frog. “Aren’t they poisonous?” he asked the group. No one knew.
They tried fishing but nothing was big enough. They ate some of the dried meat they had left over. Ted confirmed that the wolves could go another couple days without eating, but things would be dicey after that.
“Explain dicey,” Terry said slowly.
“We look less like their masters and more like pork chops,” Ted replied.
“I was afraid of that. Then it’s settled! We don’t stop tomorrow until we can kill something or we are back at the Missouri River in Bismarck.”
Terry estimated it would be about one hundred miles they’d have to cover. At least the horses were eating well, grazing around the ponds.
Kiwi had taken to the horses right away. She didn’t find her job of taking care of them to be a job, like Gerry didn’t. They checked hooves and brushed them. Without their horses, the trip would stretch out for far too long, making it impossible for them to get back to New Boulder and travel in the relative cool of the winter.
“Are you plotting out distances for townsfolk traveling on foot?” Char asked as they sat around a small campfire they set up behind a concrete wall that blocked the wind. “Did you arrive at infinity for a timeframe?”
“No. Three months, maybe four,” he said, watching the fire snap and pop.
“Twenty to twenty-five miles a day? Margie Rose, Mrs. Grimes, the engineer, and people like that will walk twenty-five miles a day?” Char was beyond skeptical.
“I’ll be with you every step of the way, lover, and I don’t see it. Six months to a year and I’m not trying to be a wet blanket, just realistic. Some days, you may only make five miles.” She poked something in the fire with her stick. They all had sticks and poked at things in the fire, which was how they wound down from each day’s travels. “What if a sickness runs through the group? We may go nowhere for a week. I think you are going to learn a whole new level of frustration. The famous Terry Henry Walton’s lack of patience will get tested at the highest level!”
“You know me. I have the patience of Methuselah,” Terry snickered.
He had the patience of a two-year old whose mother was holding a piece of candy.
“Your job is to make sure that my head doesn’t explode,” he told her.
“Sounds like nothing will change since that’s my job now,” she quipped. “Kiwi! Tell us a little about yourself, we’re all family here.”
The young woman answered, “There’s not much to tell. Black Feather is my grandfather and he wanted to marry me off to the first brave he could. I ran away. Seven times. They made a game out of catching me. And then you came along. That’s all,” she said, not making eye contact with anyone. She was defiant and rebellious, but not arrogant or abrasive.
“That’s not what I meant. What do you like? What do you want to be?” Char urged the young woman.
“I like horses. I like the wild and the land, hunting and fishing. I love the wolves that you have,” she added.
“They run with us, but they aren’t our wolves,” Ted clarified. “At present, the relationship is mutually beneficial. They are proud creatures and they deserve to go their own way, but we kind of hijacked them after a brief scuffle. I hope they like where they are going so they can run free, hunt, live as wolves were meant to live.”
Everyone around the fire nodded, each applying their own understanding to Ted’s words. Ted excused himself to join the pack and sleep in the middle of them as he did every night. Kiwi asked if she could, too. Gerry joined her and Ted.
They could hear Ted talking to the wolves, introducing the humans as if they’d not been introduced before. Then they climbed into the middle of the pile. Ten shaggy wolves and three humans.
Timmons sat by the fire. “I’ll watch. You all go to sleep,” he suggested. They hadn’t manned a watch, but something felt different about this place. Terry was fine with the situation. He was between a concrete wall and a wolf pack, sleeping next to a Werewolf.
He wasn’t worried.
***
When they awoke in the morning, Timmons was nowhere to be found. Terry relieved himself and looked around, but didn’t see any sign of the man. Char reached out with her senses and could feel him, but he was a ways off. His clothes were neatly stacked on his saddle. They tied them down, saddled up, and headed his way.
“He’s running around out there naked?” Kiwi asked, confused.
“He doesn’t need clothes as a Werewolf,” Gerry replied.
“He’s one of the Werefolk!” she exclaimed.
“How do you know about them?”
“Legends of our people. The Werefolk are what we aspire to be. The great ones among our people come back in the next life as Werefolk, with the ability to take the form of an animal,” she said reverently. “He’s one of ours!”
Gerry pointed at Ted and nodded. “Him too, and the major.”
“Wow! I have been given the greatest gift to travel with such people. The wind carries me to wonderful places,” she said almost poetically.
They rode quickly to where they found Timmons. He was working with his one good hand to clean a small buffalo. He thrust both his arms in the air in triumph.
Lacy shook her head, while Kiwi spent too long looking at Timmons’s naked body. Gerry climbed down, untied the man’s clothes, and stood in front of him while he got dressed.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m looking forward to having buffalo that was killed by a Werewolf and cleaned by a naked man. How’d you carry that knife, by the way?” Terry asked. Timmons snapped his jaws a couple times, smiling.
Char jumped down and looked at the buffalo. A three-legged Werewolf had run it down and killed it. “Nicely done, Timmons.”
They finished cleaning it and shared with the pack, who demonstrated how hungry they’d gotten. They smoked as much as they could, spending most of the day cooking and preparing the meat. They finally loaded up in the mid-afternoon and headed out. In four hours, they figured they could cover thirty or forty miles, but the wolf pack was running slowly. They’d eaten too much, so Terry called a halt after ten miles so he could dismount and
give the wolves the hairy eyeball.
It would have been impressive if they hadn’t laid down to sleep the second they stopped. Ted was proud of his furry warriors. They’d already run over a thousand miles, an impressive feat, no matter who you were.
“Next stop, Chicago,” Terry called, looking into the distance. It still seemed a long ways away.
***
The townsfolk had a sense of purpose. No one was spared the rigors of packing and preparation. Margie Rose and Mrs. Grimes spearheaded the walking shoe repair program, using leather provided by the Weathers family.
The members of the Force helped people who weren’t used to walking to start getting into shape. Town PT, they called it. Hundreds of people walking in circles around the town, at a quick pace, at a slow pace, always carrying a backpack or bag of some sort. Practice how you play, they said.
Billy led the way during the morning and afternoon walks. No one was spared, even the small children walked, as far as they could before being carried or getting a ride in the dead body cart.
The Force called it that to give it a stigma. Anyone who fell out of the walk, unable to continue, was to be considered dead weight. The carts would be loaded with necessities so people wouldn’t be able to ride when they were on the road, walking to their new home.
Mark saw it as a twice daily party. The townsfolk had fun with it, which was for the best. On the real road for two thousand miles? No one would be happy then. And they’d lose people along the way. Of that, Mark was convinced.
There wasn’t anything that would demotivate someone faster than watching a person die.
Mark wondered who would be first.
***
The horses ran easily during the thirty minute run times. Terry was ready to be there, but driving the horses to exhaustion would not get them there any sooner. They ran for thirty and walked for thirty. The grazing was good along the interstate shortcut, then they continued due east from Bismarck to Fargo.
From Fargo they headed southeast as the road angled toward Minneapolis. The going was easy and they even met people along the way. Although they ran for cover when they saw the group on horses.
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