by Terry Yates
“But you are, Kyler! That’s the real bitch of it! You’re here and you’re a part of it, just like I am!”
“But you love all of this!” Kyler retorted, waving his good hand around.
“No, I don’t love all of this, Kyler.”
“But you thrive on it, Colonel!”
“Being good at something and loving it are two different things.”
“We were responsible for Dustin…and Heather for that matter.”
“Yes, we were.”
“We should’ve left them in Florida.”
“Yes, we should’ve.”
“That’s all you can say?”
“What do you want me to do…fall on the ground and curl up in a ball? We rolled the dice and we lost!”
“That’s how you see it…as a roll of the dice?”
“Shit Kyler, I don’t know if there’s a god or if it’s destiny, or it’s just a fuckin’ coincidence, but my ass landed here and so did yours…now, deal with it!”
“Deal with shooting people in the head?”
“Look Kyler…”
Before Potts could speak, the wind began to kick up, gently at first, and then suddenly hard…and cold. The temperature must’ve dropped twenty degrees in less than ten seconds. Both men ducked their heads to the strong wind and began to rub their arms. It was summer and neither was wearing a jacket. The strong gale blew for no more than ten seconds before everything returned to normal once again.
“Just like that sandstorm yesterday morning,” Kyler said, shaking like a leaf.
“Was that yesterday?” Potts asked, still rubbing his arms. “I bet the scientists, weathermen, and ultra-geeks are having a shitfit about now, trying to figure all of this moon and weather shit out.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Kyler, I don’t have time to worry about things I can’t do anything about. There are always more pressing matters.”
Kyler couldn’t say anything, not because he didn’t have anything to say, but because he was spent. He was wasted and tired. He could’ve fallen in the long, now dewy grass and slept for twenty-one years. That’d be one up on old Rip Van Winkle. But like Potts said…we’re here whether we like it or not.
“What happened here, Kyler?” Potts asked, looking around as if expecting another blast of cold wind to kick up.
As the two men walked across the meadow and into the woods toward the rest of the group, Kyler told Potts about having looked off into the darkness and seen one of the trucks’ red taillights down in the meadow. It, and the overhead light, almost lit up the entire area. When FranAnne stopped the truck, Kyler jumped out and stood on the highway, looking down into the darkness. He couldn’t see and didn’t have time for Sam to hand him his trusty flashlight. Kyler figured that it was just a hill, so he stepped off into the darkness. He misjudged the depth of the hill, which was steeper than he had expected. When he set his foot out into the darkness, there was nothing there, and he fell forward, black bag and all. He somersaulted down the hill in the darkness, losing his bag along the way. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he found himself lying on his face. After making it down the hill without incident, FranAnne and Zack helped him to his feet and gave him his medical bag.
The ambulance truck had been lying on its side, having obviously rolled down the hill several times. They pulled out the bodies of five patients and the driver. They would discover another two bodies that had been ejected when the sun rose. Another soldier had also been ejected, but was still alive. A patient, a young man in his twenties, was also alive, but unconscious. Kyler’d had to stop the bleeding from his stomach, and attempted to suture a large gash in his forehead, but he couldn’t stop the blood flow, leading Kyler to believe that the young man was possibly a hemophiliac.
The group had been doing what they could to help Kyler, when the first werewolves arrived. He’d been on one knee adjusting the oxygen mask on the soldier, when he felt a hand placed gently on his shoulder. The body that belonged to the hand bent down next to him, and he’d heard a soft voice from over his shoulder. It was Zack.
“Doctor,” he whispered, “look.”
Understanding Zack’s demeanor, Kyler looked slowly up toward the backwoods. The moon was high and the stars lit up the sky, making it easy for him to see a thick grove of trees at the back of the meadow. And in that grove of trees, Kyler saw two pair of those familiar yellow, angry eyes. They’d been making so much noise, they hadn’t even heard them approaching, much less thought of keeping a lookout.
“FranAnne?” Kyler had asked, still looking at the eyes.
“See ‘em,” he heard FranAnne say softly from close by.
“Me too,” Sam said. Kyler heard the sound of a rifle being cocked.
The melee had begun when a third werewolf had attacked them from the side while they were aimed straight ahead. They’d been suckered by the creatures again. Before anyone could react, the werewolf grabbed one of the dead bodies thinking that it was alive, and absconding with it, while taking a swipe at FranAnne as it did. She ducked, getting off a round from her revolver as she fell backwards. The bullet hit the beast in the forearm, causing it to drop the body, and fall sideways. It quickly regained its balance and continued to run back toward the woods, holding its forearm. As soon as Sam and Zack turned to fire at the silhouette of that werewolf, the two in the woods howled, then ran out of the woods toward them. In the dark it was hard to judge their distance. It became even harder when they jumped into the air. They tried to follow the eyes, but they must’ve been twenty feet in the air and coming at them at a high rate of speed. Zack raised his pistol and fired several quick shots just under the yellow eyes. All they heard was a quick, loud yelp, then a sudden thud. He’d hit it, and it had dropped straight down, a silver bullet lodged in its throat. The other one landed just in front of Sam, the force of impact knocking him backwards, which was lucky, because the werewolf took a swing at him, its huge claws missing him by inches as he hit the ground. FranAnne, who had gotten up, raised her rifle and shot the monster in the side, knocking it sideways and to the ground. Sam got up off of the ground, walked over to the barely conscious monster, and then shot it in the head, hoping to God, it wasn’t a kid.
They heard more howls coming from the woods. The new werewolves seemed to all be heading in their direction. Every time they tried to get the wounded up the hill, a lone, or several werewolves would show up and attack, never getting too close before FranAnne, Sam, and Zack would repel them. Kyler had got caught in a crossfire between FranAnne and Zack, who were both shooting at a lone werewolf that was standing dangerously close to him. He’d lain over the wounded soldier, attempting to shield him from the gunfire. He remembered opening his eyes and seeing a werewolf foot no more than five feet away. Kyler was afraid that the two were going to shoot each other. He watched as the foot went onto its tiptoe and jumped away, his guess, back toward the woods.
As he continued to lie across the soldier, Kyler heard a pat-pat-pat coming toward him from the road. Oh great, Oliver Dixon was back for the fourth and final time in his life, and was going to finish the job this time. But as the pat-pat-pat reached him, it went up and over him. He looked up to see Joe headed toward the fight. He’d decided that Lauren and Heather were good on their own now, and wanted a bit of scrappin’.
“Joe!” he heard Lauren scream, running down the hill.
“Lauren!” Kyler screamed, trying to keep his face over his patient, with bullets whizzing through the air, and now he had Lauren running toward the fight.
Lauren jumped over Kyler and landed just over his head. As she tried to take another step, Kyler reached his left arm out as far back as it would go, and swatted at her left ankle…and connected. He smacked her anklebone so hard that it caused her left foot to hit the back of her right leg, sending her face-first into the ground. She landed hard, a stifled “oof” escaping her lips. He reached out, grabbed her right ankle, and held on. Shit, now he’d hurt Lauren. The area
was starting to become thick with the silver smoke. The guys sure were connecting with their targets.
With the bullets still flying all around them, he’d had to make a decision…the same decision any doctor would under the circumstances. He had to leave the young man whose body he was covering, and move to Lauren, which he did, putting as much of his reedy body over her that he could. Her face was turned to the side, and he could see blood seeping from one nostril. He’d just have to ask for forgiveness later.
“Where’d the civilians come from?” Potts asked them as they reached the first clearing, the sun completely up and giving him an even better look at the bedlam from the previous evening.
“About an hour later,” Kyler answered as they walked toward the road, Kyler unconsciously looking around for any signs of life. “They were from Harmonville and had managed to escape together…saw us, and came to the rescue.”
“They came back?” Potts asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be damned. Never thought much of Okies before.”
“Fought hard…did a lot of damage…just got too close.”
“Well shit.”
“Look at all this!” Kyler exclaimed, looking at the meadow, which was littered with at least twenty-five bodies, including the dead hospital patients. It was hard to figure out what was morning fog and what was silver smoke, both beginning to cover the ground. He felt like he was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.
“I see it.”
“Where are YOUR trucks?” Kyler asked
“We got ambushed by a couple of the bastards. They wrecked two of the trucks. One, we left back at the house.”
“House?”
“Tell ya’ later. We lost the sheriff’s friend in the ambush.”
“Jesus.”
“Sheriff seems pretty worked up about it.”
“Probably known him all of his life.”
“Yeah.”
The two men walked across the meadow in silence, both doing their damndest to sidestep both bodies, body parts, and blood all the way up to the road where everyone was gathered. By this time, Mary Sue and Williams had caught up, and were helping with the wounded and the dead.
By the time they reached the truck, the two surviving men, both still unconscious, were loaded into the back where Heather was still unconscious from Kyler’s sedatives. They’d tried to cover the dead as best they could, but there just wasn’t anything to cover them with, and none of them had any real desire to be picking up loose body parts. It didn’t seem to bother Potts much, though. They watched as he pitched an arm and a leg on top of a pile of other arms, legs, and pieces that were just unrecognizable, as if he were throwing kindling on a fire. They also saw him pick something off of the ground, wipe what they were guessing was blood off of it, and wrap it around his waist. It was a leather belt complete with hatchet and leather hatchet-holster
The large truck suddenly became a tight fit. With three unconscious and prone bodies in the back, fitting the other eleven in had been a tad trying. FranAnne drove, with Lauren, Mary Sue, Joe, and Kyler crammed into the front seat. Other than FranAnne, the others didn’t take up much room. In the back of the truck, sat Potts, Sam, Zack, Williams, Jefferson, and Jordan, who because of the three patients, were all sitting on the benches, their knees drawn up to their chins. At least, they had the other truck at the cabin. Potts could tell that the others didn’t not want to go back toward Harmonville, but they had to pick up Denny and Rhonda, and he’d promised Mary Sue a chance to go back…which she refused. She had no immediate family left in Harmonville, and if she went back, she had a feeling that she was going to have to do the same thing that Potts did, and that was to kill the bite victims. It wasn’t that hard for the Colonel…he didn’t know any of them, but Mary Sue could not fathom putting a bullet in the heads of people that she’d known all her life, plus Rex was dead, so there wasn’t any real reason to stay. She’d just tag along with this bunch, and see what was down the road. She supposed that if she had to travel with strangers into a new and dangerous world, she’d just as soon be with this group of misfits. If anyone knew how to fight werewolves, it was them, and if she had to fight werewolves, the colonel, the doctor, the soldiers, and the dog, was just the company that she wanted to be in.
CHAPTER 68
It was a little after eight, and Denny Lusk had started to become nervous. He’d expected the colonel, the sheriff, and the soldiers, to come back for him and Mrs. Weaver a little after dawn, but they hadn’t shown yet. Rhonda was still asleep in the small bedroom. He’d tried to stay awake all night, but found himself waking up on the couch about seven-thirty. He’d had enough sleep to remember the previous two days clearly. His friends were dead and his family was missing, and that was about it. He’d eaten some BB-Q chips and a cup of some kind of pudding from some of the food that Col. Potts had left them.
Just as he stepped outside, Denny heard the sound of truck gears grinding from down the highway. His heart raced, but quickly dropped when he saw a car drive by. After it passed, he could still hear the truck grinding, until the putrid green, not khaki, Army truck, drove into the yard. Denny was ecstatic. The grownups had not let him down, and had come back for him. He jumped off of the porch and out into the yard. There was only one truck, but he didn’t care, because his heart was racing. Denny pulled up before he got to the truck. It’d be WAY too uncool to pretend that he was so happy to see them, and that he wanted to cry and do a triple back-somersault. Instead, he just watched as FranAnne came to a stop next to the truck they’d left behind. He saw Mary Sue smile at him weekly from the front seat, so Denny knew that the one group had found the other.
As Col. Potts and the rest piled out of the back, Denny noticed their mood was significantly different than it had been the previous evening. They were exhausted, spent, and bloody, no one really speaking much, except Mary Sue, who tussled his hair like he was a five-year-old, but he didn’t really mind much. As a matter of fact, it had been years since he had allowed anyone to tassel his hair.
Denny was smart enough to know that now wasn’t the time to ask them to relate werewolf battle stories. By the looks of everyone, he doubted if anyone wanted to relate war stories. The doctor that he’d seen earlier that day, tried his best to give Denny a nod, but the first thing he did when he got out of the truck, was run to the back.
When Lauren emerged for the truck, she smiled at Denny, then turned around and waited for Joe to hop out, who upon doing so, peed against the truck tire for a good twenty seconds.
Once inside the house, everyone found a place to sit except Kyler who stayed with the truck for a few minutes. They had started to bring the two patients and the sedated Heather into the house, but it was still early morning cool, and Potts had no plans on hanging around. They had to move, he wasn’t sure where. His job had been to go to Oklahoma and stop the werewolf infiltration, and he’d done his best, but failed. By rights, he should hang around Harmonville until every werewolf was dead, but he had patients to get out of there, plus he was still missing Peter Valkenberg, Ben Rollins, Meredith Bayfield, and Anthony. They too, were his responsibility. He’d already caused one kid’s death, not to mention how many of those werewolves he killed that might’ve been young people. Potts thought…he wasn’t sure…but he had spotted one of the other trucks going the same direction as Kyler’s group. It didn’t matter really, because Potts had decided to go that direction anyway.
On the way back, they had stopped at the place where the trucks had collided. Mary Sue had stayed in the truck. Potts and the soldiers were retrieving the hidden illegal weapons that Jefferson had hidden, while Kyler, FranAnne, Sam, and Zack managed to pull Rex Murphy’s body from the wreckage. They dragged the corpse into the woods. None of them had a shovel or spade, so they found a large tree with a large ditch in front of it that several large roots were poking through. They’d had nothing to wrap him in, so they laid him on his back. They had tried to remove his shirt and put it over his face, b
ut rigor had begun set in from the hot Oklahoma sun, and decomposition was soon forthcoming. They didn’t have any clothes or blankets to spare, because Peter Valkenberg had been driving the truck with all of their gear inside.
Zack picked up some brown leaves and began to drop them over Rex’s face. It had felt so strange to all of them to be burying a man they’d all been talking to the day before, but this group had all witnessed death to the nth degree. Kyler, FranAnne and Sam began to follow Zack’s lead, picking up leaves and piling them on top of Zack’s.
There hadn’t been enough leaves to cover the entire body, so they made sure they got his upper half, and then began to kick dirt down over it until it was completely buried, after which they all tamped the dirt down as much as they could. They found the largest stones they could find and piled them onto the grave, covering it completely, hoping to keep the wild animals off of him. The four of them stood back breathing heavy. Exhaustion was quickly setting in.
“Wish we could give him a headstone or something,” FranAnne spoke, breaking the silence. “Damn shame that a good man like this has to go unnoticed and unrecognized.”
“What was his name?” Zack asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “The lady cop knew him.”
“I don’t remember if I even met him. Maybe we should go ask her,” Kyler said, turning toward the road.
“Screw it,” Sam said, retrieving a large pocketknife from his pocket.
Kyler, FranAnne, and Zack, watched as Sam, back to them, spent several minutes carving on the tree. When he stepped back, they saw what he had written.
“Well said,” Kyler told him.
“Good enough, I guess,” FranAnne added.
The quartet had stood silent for a few moments, FranAnne and Sam having removed their caps. After a minute, FranAnne and Sam donned their caps, and the four of them walked back to the road, leaving Sam’s epitaph carved in the tree. It read simply and succinctly…HERO. Below the word was an arrow that pointed straight down.