Nomad Mortis

by Craig Martelle

  The two took the opportunity to eat the fresh venison while still in Were form. When sated, they changed back. Standing there naked, they looked at each other.

  “Now what?” Skippy asked.

  Butch looked at the mangled corpse, realizing that they’d have to butcher it before bringing it back to Claire’s Diner for final processing, preparation, and delivery as part of dinner.

  “Do you have a knife?” Butch asked.

  Skippy pointed to his groin and smiled. “All I have is the fleshy dagger, and we’re not using that to clean this thing.”

  “We’re not using that for anything!” Butch quipped. “I guess we carry it back to our clothes. You remember where we left them?”

  Skippy didn’t.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Germany

  It was midday and boredom was setting in. The platoon was resting, but they didn’t need as much sleep as they were being offered, so Boris and Lacy changed the stand-to schedule to two-on and one-off to better manage the personnel and force them to sleep when they weren’t on watch.

  Akio and Yuko were on the computer working with Eve. The EI was uncomfortable being left behind in Japan, as one of her primary tasks was to guard Yuko.

  She pressed the issue to the point that Akio acceded to her demand to join them in Germany.

  “It will not hurt to have a second pod, Akio-chan,” Yuko said supportively.

  Akio only nodded. They would lose some capability by remotely accessing their main systems. Akio had not considered the New Schwabenland to be a significant threat. He had assumed that they would find them quickly and resolve the problem.

  His plan had always been to join Terry Henry in San Francisco before the colonel and his people engaged the Forsaken known as Mr. Smith.

  Akio knew that Terry and the FDG would take their time to conduct a full reconnaissance, because that was what Terry said they were going to do.

  But not being able to find the Forsaken in this part of Germany had thrown him for a loop. Even though they’d only been at it for two days, he had expected to have found them by now.

  “With a second pod, we can cover more ground, search from the sky,” Akio suggested. “We will fly on cloudy nights, map the population of all Europe if we have to, so we can find where the Forsaken will see the best variety of human stock from which to choose.”

  Akio swallowed as if saying the words left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “Then that will be better.” Yuko smiled. “You keep the Weretigers with you, and Eve and I will work from the second pod.”

  Akio agreed.

  As he started to nod, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he sensed approaching Forsaken.

  San Francisco

  Terry stood before a tall, sleek building. The front of it stuck well past the wall, away from the guards’ prying eyes. Its door and the first two stories had been blocked off.

  “Here’s our way inside,” Terry whispered confidently. Camilla leaned close to the wall. In the darkness, she could see nothing but a sheer surface.

  “I don’t see it, sir,” she said in a low voice.

  “No problem.” Terry leaned against the wall as he removed his boots, tied the laces together, and wrapped them on his pack. “Wait here.”

  Camilla had no intention of going anywhere. She watched in fascination as Terry found toe and finger holds in what looked to be a solid wall of heavy glass and steel. He crabbed upward and soon disappeared into the darkness. She heard and saw nothing after that. The darkness started to press in on her.

  Her eyes deceived her, telling her that there was light when there was not, that there was movement when all was still.

  She jumped when the end of a rope slapped her in the head and slipped to the ground. Camilla covered her mouth, wondering how loudly she had gasped.

  She realized instantly that if anyone came to investigate, it would be best if she wasn’t there.

  Camilla grabbed the rope in two hands and tried to walk up the wall, but without tension on the bottom end, she couldn’t hold herself perpendicular to the glass.

  The old-fashioned way, she told herself as she hooked the rope between her feet and pulled herself up, half an arm’s length at a time. Then she started moving upward quickly as the rope was being pulled with her clinging to it. She stopped trying to climb and hung on.

  Her head popped over the top wall and all she saw was the colonel’s white teeth as he smiled at her in the darkness.

  “I thought it best not to leave the rope down there, just in case anyone stopped by,” he told her.

  “Prudent, Colonel,” she replied.

  “Dad. Call me Dad,” he ordered.

  “You know how hard that is?” she countered.

  “I really don’t give a flying goat fuck how hard that is. It’s the little things that could mean the difference between life and death. If I get shot, chances are I’ll survive. You? Not so much, so you better start calling me Dad. That’s an order, daughter mine!” Terry whispered loudly, leaning close to let her see that he was serious.

  Camilla rocked back as if punched. She gathered her wits about her and pushed Terry with both hands. “Fuck off, Dad!” she said, thrusting her chin forward. “On a completely different note, you climbed the side of a fucking building!”

  Terry started to laugh. He offered her the flask as he recoiled the rope and put it into his backpack. They both drank and ate as they sat outside the open roof door.

  Terry wasn’t concerned that someone would surprise them. He expected he’d both hear and see them before they knew they had intruders.

  Terry reasoned that the guard force probably used the roof during the day as an observation post, but if they didn’t have any way to communicate, then it wouldn’t be much help.

  The colonel’s combat skills were honed to a sharper edge than they’d ever been before. His only job was to find the Forsaken. He could smell their influence, feel it in his gut. They would continue to avoid the humans. He had no stomach for killing the misguided.

  But Terry couldn’t sense the Forsaken, so he’d have to find them the hard way. Terry pulled his whip and prepared to go through the door. Camilla was behind him with her combat knife in her hand.

  With a final look around to make sure they left nothing disturbed, Terry slowly opened the door and headed down.

  Germany

  “They’re in the blimp!” Akio called. “Fire on it, bring it down!” he shouted. Boris and Lacy echoed the orders and within seconds, the first carbines cracked, sending their supersonic rounds into the blimp as it slowly passed a thousand feet overhead.

  All the platoon’s rifles fired and the blimp lurched upward as someone firewalled the throttles, forcing the engines to scream in response.

  “Shoot the engines!” Boris ordered, careful as he walked in a crouch to stay below the barrels of the rifles aimed skyward.

  Lacy emerged from a small equipment pile, carrying one of the last man-portable surface-to-air missiles.

  She went through the steps to bring it to life and took aim. When it locked on the heat of the engine, she yelled, “Fire in the hole!”

  Less than a heartbeat later, the rocket popped from the tube, the engine activated, and it streaked toward the blimp. The smoke trail arced forward then straightened as it zeroed in. The missile exploded within three feet of the right engine, sending spiraling coils of shrapnel through the motor, housing, support structure, and even the blimp itself.

  The flaming engine broke free and started to fall.

  Akio started running, waving for the Weretigers to join him as he wanted to be there when the blimp hit the ground. He assumed that the Forsaken wouldn’t be killed by the impact. There were only two, but that was two more than they’d run across since they’d been in Germany.

  The war of extermination was underway, and Akio had found his first targets.

  The Weres tore off their clothes as they ran, ducking past the warriors who maintained a
high volume of fire at the blimp. It turned sharply to its left, being pulled by the remaining motor.

  It was starting to descend as it moved out of rifle range.

  “Cease fire! First Squad, follow me!” Boris shouted as he ran through the perimeter in the direction the blimp was headed. “I want to be there when that thing touches down.”

  Lacy remained behind with the platoon. “Reload and stand ready. The people have to know we’re here, and we could get company from any direction. Fill in the gaps in that line. Chop, chop!”

  She ran from one person to the next, directing them and conducting an ad hoc tally of remaining ammunition.

  The short barrage had burned through seventy-five percent of their rounds. In three minutes, they’d gone from fully loaded to dangerously low.

  The remaining engine coughed and spewed back smoke. It rattled, raced, then jerked to a stop. The blimp angled silently downward, increasing speed on its way to the ground.

  Boris ran through the woods where limited undergrowth made for firm footing. Carrying their rifles before them, the squad followed, unable to gain on the fleet-footed lieutenant.

  Akio and the Weretigers were well ahead of the squad, finding themselves nearly underneath the blimp that grew in size the closer it got to the ground. It picked up speed, and even at their pace, it was starting to leave them behind.

  The nose dipped and the blimp headed in. It hit the forest at thirty degrees down. The gondola and carriage slammed through the trees, metal screeching in protest as the rest of the blimp was yanked to a halt. The fabric of the blimp folded over the top and ruffled above the forest’s canopy.

  The Forsaken jumped from the gondola and started running in separate directions. Akio pointed for the Weretigers to go one way as he turned left and headed the other.

  San Francisco

  Terry followed the steps to the ground floor, happy that they didn’t come across anyone.

  The door on one side of the building was blocked with stone and concrete salvaged from San Francisco’s WWDE ruins. On the other side, the door was missing. Terry stopped and peeked out. There were more lights in this area, but few people. Although it was the middle of the night, sounds of music amid a throng of people wafted through the air.

  “Shall we, daughter?” Terry asked.

  “Nothing like a party, Dad,” Camilla answered.

  “This isn’t going to be like anything you’ve ever experienced before, assuming we get inside. I don’t know what they use for money,” Terry said.

  “We’ll find out,” she offered.

  They set caution aside and walked up the middle of the street on their way to the party. In Terry’s day, it started with discos that he never frequented. He wasn’t big on the dance-bar scene.

  The music he liked wasn’t made for couples dancing. He missed his Rush and Metallica, along with bands from the nineteen-seventies and eighties that wrote the score for his transition from youth to adult.

  The first people they encountered were drunk. A young couple staggered down the street.

  “Hey, dude! Party this way?” Terry asked, pointing with his thumb.

  The young man opened his mouth to answer and started puking. His friend laughed as she pushed him away from her, staggered, and fell down.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Terry sneered. He and Camilla kept walking.

  “Are they sick?” she asked.

  North Chicago sheltered their people because they had very little alcohol and most people never drank anything. Camilla had never seen anyone stupid drunk before.

  “Sick from too much partying,” Terry said over his shoulder. The lights and noise ahead called to them. “Actually, it helps us if they’re all drunk. They’ll never remember that we were here.”

  He dodged into the sparse shadows and quickened his pace. Past one final corner they turned and stopped to watch the scene before them. A cascade of neon lights sparkled and danced above a modern looking one-story building. People were stumbling out the front door under the careful eye of one who wore all black, covered head to toe, to include a wide-brimmed hat.

  Terry thought he looked like Joseph, then tamped down his thoughts, focusing on the mundane, like what the people were wearing, how they were talking, what they were doing.

  He approached casually and mixed in with the drunks as he angled away from the one he assumed was a Forsaken.

  “What is this place?” he asked a young woman whose pupils were dilated and her mouth open.

  She shrugged one shoulder and continued on her way.

  Terry went from one to another and never received a single coherent response.

  To him, they looked drugged or the alcohol was poisoned, but with the Forsaken checking them on the way out, he assumed it was drugs.

  Terry Henry Walton stopped in the middle of the street until the wave of humanity passed him. The doors to the establishment closed with the last ones out. The Forsaken turned and locked its eyes on the colonel and the young woman at his side.

  The creature pointed, thrusting his arm forward to emphasize the ones he wanted. “Take them,” he ordered. A small group walked from behind the small stage where the Forsaken stood looking down on the crowd. The four spread out as they approached.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Germany

  Aaron and Yanmei ran side by side, splitting up as they closed on their prey. They ran alongside the Forsaken for a few steps before diving in and dragging the creature down.

  The Vampire rolled away to avoid the Weretigers’ jaws. He came up with a knife in each hand and jumped to the side to put a tree trunk at his back. He bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited. He could sense the other Vampire moving farther away.

  He smiled darkly. There were only the two Weretigers. He decided that he would dispatch them quickly and escape before the other came for him.

  The Forsaken lunged forward, exposing his right side. Aaron dashed in, pulled up short, and slashed. The Forsaken was caught halfway between the counterattack that followed his feint. The Weretiger’s claws raked down his arm.

  He dropped the knife from his right hand and jumped back to the tree, leaning against it as he waved his one remaining knife back and forth in front of him.

  Yanmei padded to the side until the Forsaken was between her and Aaron. She surged forward in short hops, keeping her back legs beneath her for a full leap if an opening presented itself. Aaron jumped into the air and came down an arm’s length from the creature, tearing his claws through the flesh of the side and back of his prey.

  The Forsaken gasped, twisted toward Yanmei, and turned to face Aaron. Yanmei leaped, slapping her front paws against the creature’s chest and back, driving her claws deep as she took his neck in her jaws. He tried to run to throw her off, but Aaron was there, plowing into the Forsaken’s knee.

  It collapsed under the weight of two Weretigers, unable to use its knife with its arm pinned. Aaron slashed the abdomen and continued working his way up. The Forsaken gurgled an anguished cry as it realized that it had lost the fight.

  Yanmei started to rend the creature’s flesh when it went limp beneath her. Aaron joined her in tearing the Forsaken asunder, ending its existence. They stood for a few moments to gather their wits. Yanmei changed back into human form, naked and elegant. Aaron followed her out of Were form.

  He blinked as he looked at their dead enemy. He checked himself and then Yanmei. They were uninjured.

  “We killed a Forsaken and didn’t get hurt?” he asked.

  “Not a scratch,” Yanmei purred as she dipped her head to look from under her perfect brows at Aaron. He reached for her and pulled her into a long and erotic hug. They were alone and their senses told them that no one was near.

  San Francisco

  Terry keyed his communication device. “They know we’re here. Forsaken in sight. All hands on deck!” he yelled before his attention was pulled toward the three men and one woman.

  He heard Char talking loude
r and louder, but none of the words registered. It was background noise. He zeroed in on the toughs. Two were his size and two smaller. They were normal humans.

  “Sucks to be you,” he growled. The two in front smirked.

  “I think you have that backward, nutjob,” the first man laughed.

  Terry reached over his shoulder and pulled his Mameluke from its scabbard.

  Forgotten was Camilla, who had no intention of cowering behind the colonel. She stepped to the side with her combat knife at the ready.

  “I’ll take the girlie,” the rough-looking woman said. Camilla spun the knife to hold the blade along her forearm and raised her hands in a boxer’s pose.

  Terry stepped aside to give her room. The three men facing him raised batons that looked to be made of steel. Terry didn’t care.

  He flexed and started swirling his sword in a figure-eight around his body. With one lunge, he was on the first tough guy before the man could move. The Mameluke sliced deeply through his abs, nearly cutting the man in half.

  Terry started high and swung low, taking the next man just above both his knees. The man toppled to the ground screaming. The third man was just starting to raise his baton when Terry’s overhead chop split his head all the way to his breast bone.

  Terry ran over the body, heading straight for the Forsaken. The creature did a backflip from the platform where he stood and hit the ground running.

  Guitars screaming heavy metal sounded through the walls of the closed club as Terry ran past.

  ***

  Camilla’s lip curled of its own accord. Her opponent was big, brutish.

  “Nice hair,” Camilla taunted, referring to the bear-like growth over most of the woman’s body.

  She didn’t take the bait. She swung her baton in a wide roundhouse, putting her weight behind the blow. Camilla dodged backward and lunged forward, slashing at the woman’s shoulder, but the brute’s momentum carried her out of reach before Camilla could do any real damage.