EPILOGUE
“Company, Ah-Ten-Shun!” Terry ordered. The four platoons snapped to the position of attention, frozen in place.
“Warriors to be retired, front and center, march!” Terry commanded.
A small formation in the back of the company ordered a right face, forward march, column left, and proceeded marching until they were standing in front of Colonel Walton.
Captain Mark ordered a hand salute. Blackbeard and Lacy mirrored his motions.
“Ready, two.” And they dropped their salutes.
“At ease,” Terry ordered loud enough for all to hear.
He was ready to deliver a speech, but couldn’t find the words. He waved the group behind him to join him. Jim, James, Gerry, and Kiwi rushed forward.
Ayashe started shaking her head as she watched her parents add to the complete breakdown in discipline. Char joined her husband. They held hands as the groups converged. The platoons remained in formation until their platoon sergeants called them to attention and dismissed them.
Mayra had promised the best feast ever. One steer and two hogs were turning on three different spits. There was even a barbecue sauce made from sugar beets that the older people said rivaled anything from the before time.
Char’s pack squeezed in around her. Another one short, leaving them with only six. She knew there were three more in Kentucky and now they had a pod for their own use. She knew what she wanted to do with it. All she had to do was convince TH.
Cory, Marcie, Kae, Kim, Auburn, and the grandchildren watched from the side, talking among themselves as siblings would.
Joseph leaned more deeply into the shadows. It had turned into a very sunny day. He was feeling sated after being allowed to drain the cow’s blood before it was slaughtered. He would enjoy the celebration by spending time with his friend, Terry Henry Walton.
But first, there had to be a few words around the fire for those who had died--two privates, Adams, and Billy Spires.
Felicity wore a black armband in honor of her dead husband.
Terry worked his way away from the retirees to stand alone, watching those who had risked all to free him. He still didn’t think he had earned that, although he was happy that they’d come. Beneath the surface of his smiling persona, the fire burned.
His eyes glowed red briefly, extinguished through his force of will. Kirkus didn’t know what he unleashed. The war with the Forsaken had only just begun.
The End of Nomad Avenged
Terry Henry Walton will return in Nomad Mortis, June 2017
Don’t stop now! Keep turning the pages as both Craig & Michael talk about their thoughts on this book and the overall project called the Terry Henry Walton Chronicles. And artwork! There’s a picture of something hiding back there that you must see.
Nomad Mortis
A special look ahead – Chapter 1
Los Angeles, in old California, WWDE + 50
“Cut him off! Cut him off!” Char yelled into her communication device.
Lieutenant Boris triggered his device to confirm the order while yelling at the first platoon to haul ass to their secondary location.
Terry Henry Walton slapped Char’s butt as he ran past. She took off after him. He had to slow down to let her catch him. Terry became inordinately happy when the guillotine blade was ready to fall on the next Forsaken.
Terry had become obsessed with removing the Forsaken threat from planet earth. He didn’t want anyone to go through what he’d gone through, survive what the oldsters in Cheyenne Mountain had survived.
He had declared the Forsaken to be a blight to be wiped out. Terry’s moral compass wavered, but he was convinced he was right. He insisted that Joseph be by his side for one final vetting before condemning the Vampires to death.
Akio approved.
Not that last part, just the first bit where the Forsaken as a whole were meant to be wiped out.
Akio and Joseph were not friends. They tolerated each other.
Terry and Char ran like the wind as they gained on the Forsaken. When he emerged from a tunnel, he found himself facing first platoon, lined up to bring the maximum amount of firepower to bear.
Boris barked the order. “Snipers!” And five shots rang out. The Forsaken bounced on his feet from the impact, gasping and wincing as each silver-tipped round slammed through his body.
“Cease fire, we’re coming out of the tunnel,” Terry yelled into his comm device as he and Char continued to run. Joseph was struggling in the rear. He heard Boris call for the cease-fire.
Terry and Char slowed when they reached the end of the tunnel so Terry could announce their arrival. “Colonel and Major coming out!”
They walked into the open. The Forsaken was still standing, but he had his hands on his knees and gulped for air. They waited at the entrance for Joseph to arrive, before approaching their enemy.
“Good morning,” Char said in a light voice.
“I’m not sure it’s so good for him,” Terry added.
Char shrugged one shoulder.
“Maybe we should tell you, may all your mornings suck worse than this one, but then again, you probably aren’t going to have any more mornings, so say your peace. Out with it, so we can get on with the business of killing you,” Terry said matter-of-factly, watching for the creature to start squirming.
“Come on, TH, enough with being an asshole. Just kill it,” Char grumbled.
Joseph walked past them, approached the Forsaken, and put a hand on his shoulder as if they were old friends.
“He will kill you, you know,” Joseph stated. The injured Vampire struggled to stand upright. Joseph helped steady him.
“Why? I wasn’t bothering anyone,” the creature stuttered.
“Au contraire, asswipe. You’ve been feeding on humans, and that’s a big no-no,” Terry answered as he drew his short cavalry blade.
Despite Terry and Char’s concerns, Aaron and Yanmei had gone back into Mammoth Cave and recovered Terry’s gear. They understood the symbolism of returning Terry in one piece, triumphantly.
They’d done exactly that. When the four pods landed in Mayor’s Park, the rescuers and the rescued alike walked out with pride.
Terry couldn’t express his appreciation enough to those who risked it all to help him escape. He didn’t want to put them in that position again, so to him, the answer was simple.
No Forsaken equaled no unwanted guests kidnapping people.
The logic was irrefutable in Terry’s mind.
Joseph stayed between Terry and the other Forsaken. “I’m Joseph. What’s your name?”
The Forsaken snarled and growled at Joseph, clamping his jaws shut as a final act of defiance.
“As you wish,” Joseph replied and stepped away.
Terry’s eyes flashed red while Char’s started to glow a soft purple. The Forsaken lunged.
The cavalry blade flashed, and Terry stepped aside to let the headless body stumble and fall to the ground where Terry had been standing.
He looked to Char. She closed her eyes briefly, ventured into the etheric. “All clear.” She opened her eyes to look at her husband.
Terry put a hand in the air and twirled it. “Mount up!” he yelled.
Joseph looked at the corpse, mumbled a few words under his breath, and walked away.
Terry cleaned his sword on the Forsaken’s clothes and put it back in its scabbard. He took Char’s hand in his. “Shall we?” he asked.
“Yes we shall,” Char agreed, and without looking at the shriveling body, they turned and headed toward the pod. Terry started to whistle.
“You know that hurts my ears,” Char claimed, pointing to the silver streak of hair framing one side of her face.
“I’m sorry,” Terry apologized. “Char, I could believe that the dog whistle hurts, but you’re as human as I am.”
Terry raised an eyebrow as he expected an outburst and a quick wrestling match.
“That cuts me deep, Terry Henry. If I had known tha
t you were prejudice against Werewolves, I would have never spent all these years with you. You shame me, sir!”
Terry smiled, but he was past the friendly banter. He turned serious. “Kirkus fired the first shot. Fuck him and his kind. We’ll respond with broadsides until they keep their ugly heads out of sight, and then we’ll root them out and watch the sun burn them alive.”
“Whatever you feel you have to do,” Char replied cautiously. “As long as it doesn’t detract from the community. We have people there who are counting on us.”
Terry gripped her hand tightly and chewed on the inside of his lip.
“I can’t get it out of my head. Getting ripped apart while in chains, getting pummeled. I know it’s just pain, but it was the feeling of helplessness.” Terry stopped walking and looked down at the ground. His hand hung limply in Char’s.
“Helpless? You killed eight of them before they subdued you. Then you killed one more while in captivity, and then you killed Kirkus himself. That doesn’t sound helpless to me, TH! And you knew that we’d be coming for you, too,” Char told him, purple eyes sparkling as she smiled.
“I know what this is about, TH,” Char said softly, frowning. “This is about your self-recrimination from when Melissa was killed. There, you were helpless. She was already dead. The only thing you had left was vengeance. With Kirkus? All you needed to do was buy time. It was completely different this time, my love. You have absolutely nothing to feel bad about.”
Char moved in front of him and straightened his eyebrows with one index finger, drawing it slowly over his eyes. “You’ve got a couple crazy hairs going on here. I’ll need to clip those when we get back.”
Terry wanted to laugh, but Melissa was on his mind. It had been forever since that time. He knew that he’d been forgiven because he forgave himself. Kirkus was still in his head, but he comforted himself by thinking of how he ripped the creature’s head off.
“One of your cleaner cuts, TH. I like the improved technique,” Char said as she trailed a finger down his face to gently caress his lips.
“I want a clean kill. Even the Forsaken shouldn’t have to suffer,” Terry replied as his blue eyes grew ice cold. “I guess I became judge and jury, too, and their sentence is a foregone conclusion. Their crime is their very existence, and I’m going to fucking kill them all.”
***
North Chicago
Felicity sat in the mayor’s office looking at the chalkboard with the columns and the numbers. Sue was there and had just updated the board after hearing the latest reports.
“What are those Weathers’ boys doing out there?” she asked.
The cattle herd was growing faster than the demands for meat.
“We need more people, or the Weathers clan is going to have to keep those bulls penned up,” Sue replied before pointing to a different column. “Fishing fleet is maintaining status quo.”
Felicity mumbled her agreement.
“I could use some sun. Join me?” Felicity got up from her desk and headed for the door. She didn’t have to ask Sue twice.
When they made it outside, Sue already had her shirt tied up, exposing her mid-section.
They found a spot on the grass and laid down.
“Tell me about Ted,” Felicity asked out of the blue.
“What?” Sue asked, rolling on her side to see if Felicity was joking.
Felicity played with the blades of grass. “I don’t want to outlive another man,” she whispered, looking ashamed for saying the words out loud.
Sue had not worried about that aspect since she only had two partners and they were both Werewolves. Normal humans never held any appeal as they were too fragile.
“Ted has one of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet, but he can be so infuriating. He doesn’t even know you exist ninety-nine percent of the time. That’s probably the worst of it. All you have to do is be inside the small window through which he is looking at that moment, and it’s good. Otherwise, you might as well be alone,” Sue advised.
“I already am alone, and I have been for some time already,” Felicity confided.
The wolf pack ran into Mayor’s Park followed closely by a braying coonhound pup. Cory was with them. Felicity had hoped Ted would be with them. Sue was glad that he was not.
***
The pod landed in the new landing zone, the LZ, on what used to be the naval station’s athletic fields. They’d become heavily overgrown over the past fifty years, but the warriors weren’t deterred. They’d hacked the growth away, and then lit a fire to burn the rest. The fire burned out of control briefly, but after a short period of panic and flailing, they stopped it from spreading.
The buildings beside the LZ were being recovered and rebuilt into a proper barracks to house the entirety of the Force de Guerre. The motor pool was on the other side along with the lake. That gave the FDG the most options for a quick response.
Especially since they had their own pod.
They wanted to build a hangar for it but were at a loss as to how to do that without heavy equipment. They had the steam engine and the train, but that wasn’t a crane or a bulldozer.
Ted looked at it as he walked past on his morning stroll to the power plant. He heard what the others were saying, but none of it made sense.
None of them were engineers, and they had yet to ask for engineering help. Ted couldn’t understand why.
“Just use the pod,” he said, shaking his head as he walked away.
Lieutenant Boris, Sergeant Allison and the newly promoted Corporal Ayashe looked at each other. They seemed to be happiest arguing about how to build the hangar. Once they had their answer, they felt stupid.
“Son of a bitch,” Allison whined before the others burst out laughing.
“Fucking engineers,” Boris added, but he knew Ted was right. “Let’s ask Timmons and Shonna when they come by, then we’ll go find what we need, stage it here, and get someone who can fly that thing to help us put this together. We’ll have to get clearance from the colonel. He looks at this thing like it’s his baby.”
Ayashe nodded knowingly. Because of her parents, she’d spent a great deal of time growing up with Terry, Char, and their children. Kim and Kae had been her babysitters too many times to count. Ayashe understood how the colonel felt about having his own transportation.
Being mobile had always been a goal of his, from horses to wheeled vehicles, to sailboats, to the pods.
They’d used the pod one time so far and the results, in Terry’s mind, were spectacular. He called his new strategy “search and destroy.” With Akio’s help, they located and mapped groups of people where Forsaken might be present. Then they would fly over an area late at night and let Joseph and the Were folk do their thing.
When they pinpointed a Forsaken, they did a quick reconnaissance using FDG assets that wouldn’t necessarily alert the Forsaken, and then they swooped in. The tac team made up exclusively of Weres surrounded the Forsaken. They had cornered it, and Terry had finished it off.
Ayashe wanted her chance but knew that she needed to train more, get stronger and faster. “When’s training?” she asked. Boris and Allison looked at her oddly.
“Maybe we’ll cancel it while we’re figuring out what we need for the hangar,” the new lieutenant replied.
The corporal was shocked. “We never cancel training!” she exclaimed. “Let me run it while you guys get into a circle jerk.”
“At ease, Corporal!” Allison ordered, frowning at the insubordination.
Boris started to laugh. “I guess you’re right. Leave it to us grunts to take all day doing something the engineers can do while they’re eating lunch. And we wouldn’t do it half as well. Allison, run the training. Five-mile run, followed by hand-to-hand combat training. Black-belt-level. ”
“Aye, aye, Sergeant!” Ayashe replied and ran for the new barracks where she’d stashed her training gear.
Author Notes - Craig Martelle
Written May 17, 2017
&
nbsp; Thank you for reading to this point. That is incredible – book 7 in the series and you’re still reading. You make this journey of ours worthwhile.
Nomad Avenged was shaped because of reader input. With the break between books 6 and 7, a number of you reached out to me, telling me what you liked and what you didn’t like. That was all great stuff! I have taken your input into account, so in essence, this book is written to answer your questions in a way that I hope makes sense.
Char is the alpha, make no mistake about that. Terry is a fierce warrior, even in captivity. He isn’t afraid of anything, the least of which are Forsaken, although they are formidable. Terry loves the challenge, both mental and physical when dealing with the creatures.
He’s always happy to see people he trained fight the Forsaken, dominating them, and showing that the big baddies may not be so bad, as long as you’ve honed your body into a weapon.
This book jumps twenty-five years into the future. Unfortunately, we don’t see a few of the characters from the previous books. Those folks, like Kiwi and Lacy need their own stories, short stories telling their tale. That’s something that I will do, every week, on Wednesday, publishing a new short story about a character within the Terry Henry Walton Chronicles. I will do this – put out short stories and compile them into a novella that we’ll make available on Amazon when we have enough words.
Most importantly, out of everything going on – my tractor is fixed! The ground v-belt idler wheel seized and that’s why it had issues. It took me calling on my neighbor for help. He is a certified mechanic, but the real trick was that it took two of us. I had to stand on the brakes which moved the armature into a position where he could get a socket and a 14” ratchet on it. Cracking it free was easy after that. I swapped out the wheel, hit it with some oil, and re-tightened everything. The tractor started right up and I drove it out of the garage and to the shed – drove like a champ. I even fired up the snowblower to make sure that baby would spin without making a sound and it did, very nicely.
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