Nomad Mortis

by Craig Martelle

  “What’s in it for us?” Gladys countered.

  “I asked just to be nice, but you’re already in my pack. Here’s what you’ll get. Good food and plenty of it. You’ll get a good home. And you’ll have companionship like you used to have in the before time.”

  Gladys nodded and shrugged in surrender.

  “Pack your shit and let’s go. I don’t think Gene left any food in your house, which will lighten your load,” Char apologized, tipping her head toward the Werebear.

  “What? I am growing boy!” Gene replied defensively, covering his face with a hairy arm as he tried to stop a belch that refused to be denied. He wiped his arm off on his shirt and apologized to Fu. She bowed respectfully and took his other arm in both hands.

  “Well now!” Gladys exclaimed. “If you can keep him fed, then we’ll be fine. I’ve never met a Werebear before, or Weretigers.”

  She scowled as she looked the figure clad in black leather. “I’ve met your type before on more than one unhappy occasion.”

  “He’s in the pack too, as odd as that sounds,” Char explained. “Joseph, say hello to Gladys. You two could be the same age.”

  Joseph studied the old Werewolf’s features as she studied his. She harrumphed once. “Guess we better pack,” she said simply and headed into the small house.

  Char and the others left them alone as they gathered their things. She looked around. “Where’s Cory?”

  “CORY!” Terry yelled, instantly feeling like crap. He’d been too preoccupied with the Were folk and had lost track of his own daughter. He started to run toward the pod.

  “Wait,” Char said, strolling toward him. “Here they come.”

  Terry assumed “they” meant Cory and Clovis. He was unprepared for the sight of his daughter walking casually with a young man, Clovis trotting along behind them just like a well-trained dog should.

  “Who the fuck approved this?” Terry stammered, looking back and forth between his wife and his daughter.

  Char was mildly amused by his antics.

  “It appears that I have more faith in our daughter than you do,” she said softly.

  “Goddammit!” he muttered under his breath. Char started to laugh.

  “She’s twenty-five, for Pete’s sake!” Char retorted in her daughter’s defense. “It was inevitable and amazing that it took this long.”

  “We don’t know anything. It’s all speculation. I’m sure she saved his life somehow, and now he’s smitten by the blue eyes. We’ll leave his dumbass here when we fly half a world away,” Terry suggested.

  “Who is speculating now?” Char looked at her husband as she watched the youngsters approach.

  “Mother, meet Ramses,” Cory said while looking skeptically at her father. She’d heard everything he said and wasn’t pleased. Char bit her lip to keep from laughing at the intentional slight.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ramses. What brings you this way?” Char asked pleasantly.

  “Ramses? Is that like the pharaoh or the condom?” Terry sniped. He had seldom used his pistol in recent decades, but found it provided him solace as it rested in its shoulder holster. He slid a hand upward.

  “Mother, make him stop!” Cory pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what a condom is…” Ramses said innocently. Char backhanded Terry across the arm while Cory glared. Terry felt like his head was going to explode. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the words.

  “He beat holy fuck out of bad guys, but here he melt like butter in sun,” Gene offered. Fu didn’t speak English, but she recognized the tone. She looked at him with disapproval. He mumbled an apology while the others snickered.

  Terry grumbled something unintelligible and retreated into the small house to help the new additions pack.

  “You’re here to see my parents?” Ramses asked. The members of the pack had been relaxed throughout, considering the exchange to be cheap entertainment.

  Terry was Cory’s father and would always consider himself to be her absolute protector. But the pack looked at her as the alpha’s pup, who needed to find her own way, but they would die to protect her because she was in the pack.

  None of them would let anything bad happen to Cordelia, but they would give her first shot at sorting things out. At present, she didn’t appear to need any help.

  “Your parents?” Char asked. She could sense that the young man wasn’t a Were. She was also sure that he was not enhanced, either. “But…”

  The thought trailed off.

  “No, I’m not like them, but I know what they are and the Unknown World. It doesn’t matter. It’s all of us together against the outside world, fighting drought and starvation, right? Wild animals aren’t a threat, not with my parents around. Usually that means good eating whenever something like a wild boar, coyote, or a raccoon shows up.”

  Ramses shuffled his feet and started playing with Clovis.

  Char liked that he was most comfortable with the dog. Cory had an innate love for dogs, probably inherited from her father. There was no way Ramses would be instantly comfortable with her mother and the pack, even knowing that they were from the Unknown World.

  Char wrapped an arm over his shoulder. “They’ve joined my pack, which probably means that you’re going with us, too. You are welcome to come with us, Ramses. We have a rapidly growing community with power, running water, sewage, food, and plenty of work. I think you’ll like it. I’m sure Cory can help you settle in,” Char said softly.

  Cordelia smiled shyly. No longer the center of attention, Clovis started to bark. Cory and Ramses each turned to settle the dog down.

  “Why don’t you go ahead to the pod. We’ll be right behind you,” Char told the group. Ramses had recovered his leather ball, showed it to Clovis, and hiked it back the way they’d come. Clovis took off after it.

  The humans followed, then the Werebear and Fu, then the Weretigers, and then Timmons and Sue.

  Merrit waited for Char and Terry Henry.

  When the group emerged from the house, they were loaded down with blankets overflowing with things.

  “Why so much stuff?” Char wondered.

  “We’ve been living here for forty years. You accumulate things. We might have been able to trim back a bit, but you gave us five minutes to uproot our lives without so much as a by-your-leave!” Gladys complained.

  Char looked at her sideways. “And your point?” Char said coldly.

  “We’re traveling heavy! That’s all. Are you going to be a mean alpha?” Gladys asked, eyebrows raised to show her sincerity.

  “Depends on who you ask,” Char conceded, watching Merrit shake his head and start to laugh.

  “Help them,” Char ordered. He nodded.

  “She cut Timmons’s hand off at one point,” Merrit said to the old Werewolf while relieving her of her load. “But only because he was acting like a total ass. He has been better ever since. Don’t cross the alpha, and you’ll keep your extremities intact.”

  Terry rolled his eyes as he split the load with Butch and Skippy. Terry waddled along with a bulky mound.

  “To the pod!” Char shouted.

  “Wait,” Terry said in a deep bass. “A hand if you don’t mind.”

  Char took two items off the load, and with one thing in each hand, she led the way toward their ship.

  Terry smiled behind his burden, knowing that the payback for this one was going to be fun. Maybe they’d head out to a cabin west of North Chicago for a couple days while the newcomers got settled. Then again, he needed to keep his eye on that young man, which soured Terry’s mood and dashed his plans for a lovers’ retreat.

  Joseph stepped in and shouldered much of Terry’s load. They struggled for a moment as Terry thought Joseph was taking too much.

  “Don’t even think about asking me to go with you on your perverted sexcapades,” Joseph whispered from under the brim of his hat.

  “Quit your mumbling back there!” Char commanded.

  “Fine
!” Terry answered, choosing not to say anything else as this had not been a shining day for Terry Henry rhetoric.

  The return to the pod was uneventful.

  Terry was relieved that there hadn’t been a fight and was also dismayed for the same reason.

  But he knew the Werewolves of Louisville weren’t the enemy. He needed to focus his energy on the Forsaken.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Japan

  Eve isolated a data stream from the noise and highlighted it for Akio.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he asked politely.

  “I can’t begin to imagine what you think it is, Akio-san, but it appears to be a signal that Forsaken have used in the past, using old encryption. Stand by.” Eve went to work in the digital world.

  To Akio, the EI stood quietly, unmoving. To Eve, there was a flurry of ongoing activity. Tendrils within tendrils attacking the signal from all angles, stripping away the encryption to reveal the clear message beneath.

  Eve played the conversation.

  “I’m surprised to hear from you,” a man sounding like he’d been a chain smoker for a hundred years said.

  “I can’t imagine why,” the other voice, with a slight Chinese accent, replied. “Our return was inevitable when the ship righted itself and needed a captain to guide her.”

  “Of course, that, but we thought you were dead,” the chain smoker offered in a softer tone.

  “I’m not.” The second voice turned to ice.

  “My apologies, Mister Smith. What do you ask of me?” the chain smoker deferred.

  “I need you to build your group. How many of you are there?” the second voice demanded.

  “We have three.” The answer was barely above the channel’s static.

  “I want three hundred!” Mr. Smith insisted loudly.

  There was a long hesitation before the reply. “But that’s impossible.”

  “It’s only impossible because you think it’s impossible. You have ten years to accomplish this task. At the end of that time, I expect you to be well-rested and ready, with your people trained to fight, walking on the razor’s edge. Do you understand me?” Mr. Smith growled.

  “I understand. We will begin immediately, Mister Smith,” the chain smoker said. Static filled the closed channel.

  “I am unconvinced of that individual’s commitment to Mister Smith’s goal,” Eve said in Japanese.

  “I am convinced that he will try,” Akio replied, not arguing. Any increase in Forsaken was not in Bethany Anne’s best interest, which meant that Akio needed to deal with it before it became an issue. “Were you able to locate signals’ origins?”

  “One was in San Francisco and the other was in Europe, somewhere in Germany,” Eve replied.

  The New Schwabenland had originated in Germany and then established a secret base in Antarctica. Once Akio saw the pod that the Forsaken called Kirkus had used, he knew for certain that it was from the New Schwabenland.

  Until the European group exploited the Kurtherian technology to build their own version of the pod. Far less capable, but still greater than anything humankind had developed.

  That was before the fall. Before the time humanity tried to eliminate all technology and with it, all life on the planet. Fifty years after the WWDE, civilization was returning.

  And Akio couldn’t let the Forsaken regain a foothold.

  “This Mister Smith sounds familiar. I need to think of where I have heard his voice before,” Akio said as he looked at the sky. “I will review this again and try to understand if this one infestation only has three, or if that applies to the entire region. And then I will talk with Terry-san. We cannot allow the New Schwabenland to grow to three hundred.”

  Akio clenched his teeth uncharacteristically until he forced himself to relax. Three Forsaken could remain hidden, but three hundred could not. Thirty could not, and probably not even ten. They could hide, but Akio would find them. Terry Henry Walton’s Force de Guerre would remove the minions and destroy the lairs.

  In the end, none of them would be left standing.

  Akio couldn’t be everywhere at once. The only way he could extend his reach was to train Terry, Char, and the pack to the Queen Bitch’s standard.

  Plan first, execute later. Akio leaned back, closed his eyes, and started thinking through the steps needed to smoke out the rats.

  And eliminate them.

  North Chicago

  Terry looked miserable even though Char was holding his hand. His expression suggested he was somewhere between confused and constipated.

  Cory, Clovis, and Ramses were walking through Mayor’s Park. Aaron and Yanmei were doing the same thing, watching the children play. Aaron was hoping to resume some of his classes, although Terry had warned him that training and deployments would be unpredictable and probably keep him from returning to teaching full-time.

  Aaron was torn between his love of teaching and his duty to the pack. “I want back in the classroom,” he said while looking down and meandering.

  Yanmei stopped and faced Aaron. “You’ve known me for two months now, and how much time have we spent apart?” she asked out of the blue.

  Aaron smiled. “None,” he replied in Chinese. It was her turn to smile. She continued in her native language.

  “We’ve had the conversation on duty and desire, but you need to reconcile yourself with the fact that we’re different, and if anyone is to fight the Forsaken, it must be us. I’ve spent the last fifty years of my life with a Vampire. You don’t know how many times I wanted to die, but now, the only thing I want is to live, thanks to you, thanks to Terry Henry Walton, and thanks to everyone in the pack. I feel welcome here.” She looked at a group of children being shepherded by an older woman.

  The kids were running circles around her, but when she clapped her hands, they stopped and came to her. The children mostly stood still while the old woman gave them instructions about their next task.

  “To keep these people free, we have to use our gifts,” Yanmei continued in a whisper. “Maybe that choice was taken from us when we were enhanced, but that’s neither here nor there. It simply is, Aaron. It is our life, and together we’ll do what we must, because in the end, that will keep us free, too.”

  “We can’t live a simple life? Teach and enjoy each day without having to think about what’s out there? Terry Henry and Char will take care of it. They always do.” Aaron leaned close to Yanmei, resting his forehead on hers and closing his eyes to fight back the tears, but they escaped anyway and trailed slowly down his face.

  “Terry told me that since we have the capability to act, we have the responsibility. I agree. Our path has been chosen for us, but now we’re not alone, in the den of the wolves or the cave of the Forsaken. We can help shape this world, Aaron! Think of that and when we’ve won, you can return to teaching, but you’ll have had the best seat in the house as you helped make history unfold. You will teach them what you yourself made happen. Think of the result, then do those things that will give us the result we desire. You will teach not about the horror, but what the results were, what we brought to all humanity.”

  Yanmei turned as Cory and Ramses approached. Clovis barked at the Weretigers and ran off.

  Aaron looked at the young couple through puffy, red eyes. Cory took his hands in hers. She let go, nodded, took Ramses’s hand, and walked away.

  Aaron looked at Yanmei, then dropped to one knee. “You are right in all things. We must do what we must do to keep humanity free, but we can still live for today. And starting today, I ask, humbly, will you marry me?”

  Yanmei looked confused. “What is marriage?” she answered his question with a question. “I had never been with a man before I met you. I was a one-hundred-year old virgin.”

  She chuckled as Aaron remained on one knee, listening intently.

  “That was something I did not take lightly, or decide quickly. I am with you and you with me. What more do we need than that?”

  “I guess I’m
old-fashioned,” Aaron replied.

  “If you want that, then I’ll say yes, but it changes nothing, my love,” she whispered.

  “Maybe nothing for you or the way we feel, but it still means something to me.” Aaron finally stood up, looking around quickly to find that he had an audience. The older woman and the children, Terry, Char, and most of the pack, too. “Nuts.”

  ***

  “What the hell is going on over there? Did Valentine’s Day sneak up on us? Too much bromide in the air? It’s a total shmoopfest out there and Cory is right in the middle of it! I think she’s projecting like Akio,” Terry snapped. He tried to pull away, but Char wouldn’t let him.

  “By all that’s holy, would you settle down!” she shot back.

  “My little girl,” he whispered, still glaring at Ramses.

  “Our little girl is just fine, for fuck’s sake. Let’s take the boat out, make love on the lake, take a swim, get some sun, maybe catch dinner that we can grill on the beach. We can invite our new son-in-law and the happy Weretiger couple. We’ll make it a picnic, but first, there’s much naked in our future.”

  “You’re using sex to manipulate me,” he whispered, his expression softening. “What do you mean, son-in-law?”

  “Kidding about that, but if that’s what happens, it’s all good, TH.” Char pulled him off the steps of the mayor’s building and toward the marina where the small sailboat was docked. “I’m getting hungry for my piece of man candy.”

  “Duty calls,” he stated proudly as he wrapped an arm around Char’s waist.

  ***

  “I’m needed at the plant,” Ted countered, looking around uncomfortably and impatiently. “I don’t know why I’ve been called here.”

  Felicity looked at him, strolling past his chair to close the doors to the mayor’s office. She returned to lean casually against the front of her desk.

  “I didn’t know any other way to get you here, Ted,” she replied silkily.