Nomad Supreme

by Craig Martelle

  They needed a truck, but there were no trucks, not that they knew of, and no fuel. They had horses, which meant a horse-drawn cart or a wagon, since the roadways were in decent shape. Dead cars were scattered throughout, but at some point someone had driven a bulldozer down the road and plowed the vehicles to the side.

  Timmons silently thanked whoever had done that and hoped to find that heavy equipment someday. He knew that he could make a biodiesel substitute if he could only generate a small amount of electricity first.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mark, Jim, Boris, and Blackbeard stood to the side of the formation.

  After Mark pummeled Boris into submission, he’d been far more accepting of orders. Mark didn’t trust him, not fully, but Boris was both a good leader and a gifted fighter. Mark needed him to help train the others in hand-to-hand combat.

  The colonel always told them that it was the leader’s responsibility to carry the unit to the goal; that once the order was given, it was to be carried out with fanatical dedication. It had been the way of the Marine Corps and would be embraced by the Force de Guerre.

  That was Mark’s interpretation of what the colonel had said based on what Mark could remember, but the colonel and major had been gone for a long time. They’d been in New Boulder for maybe a month total out of the last year.

  The colonel’s words were starting to fade.

  And Mark was starting to lose faith. He put on a positive and supportive front every single minute when he was in front of the others, but the anxiety he carried within was starting to burn a hole in his stomach. It ate away at him because he didn’t want to fail.

  But he didn’t have enough tools to guarantee success.

  He could sympathize with Billy Spires and why he would run away. Colonel Walton set a standard that your average person couldn’t hope to meet. The colonel didn’t demand that of those in his charge, but the good people he’d taken under his wing didn’t want to let him down.

  Like Mark. He’d been trusted with the security of the town and to prepare the town’s people for a two-thousand-mile trip.

  All he could see was the disappointment on Terry’s and Char’s faces when they returned.

  And the weight on his shoulders seemed heavier with each day. He felt it as they walked, felt it crushing him into the pavement.

  ***

  “Where?” Terry asked. Kaeden looked questioningly at the two adults. He had no idea what they were talking about, but his story with Dobby had gotten interrupted and they seemed upset.

  “Right where we want to go fishing,” Char answered in disgust.

  Terry took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and slowly shook his head. “I think we should go say hi, and let them know we’re back.”

  Char pointed with her elbow at the small boy. Terry understood.

  “Can you do something for us, Kaeden?” Terry asked. The boy looked at him and shrugged. “Can you hold our horses while we go talk with some people? It could be dangerous and we want you to be safe. We can best protect you by keeping you away from it.”

  “Protect me from who? I don’t see anybody,” the boy said in his small voice.

  “Char is special. She can sense things that you and I cannot. Right over there—” Terry pointed to a row of houses. “—is a nice green park and a stream filled with fish. There’s also eleven people and eighteen longhorn steers. They weren’t very friendly the last time we passed through here, so there may be a bit of a scuffle. We’ll need to talk with them alone,” Terry explained.

  “No!” Kaeden yelled in an ear-splitting scream. Terry clapped his hand over the boy’s mouth and got bitten for his trouble. Kae yelled, “Don’t leave me!”

  “We won’t leave you. We won’t leave you,” Terry chanted, trying to calm the boy. Terry rolled his eyes at Char.

  “New plan,” she said.

  ***

  Sue’s duties had deteriorated into the distribution of food, but that was the entirety of the logistics effort besides telling people what they couldn’t bring. She told Billy that was his job. She refused to be the nope-master, delivering the word ‘no’ like snowflakes in a blizzard.

  Adams and Xandrie spent days at a time in the mountains hunting. The deer were getting scarce, having gone to higher and higher elevations. Elk were already above ten thousand feet.

  So that was where they went, higher and deeper into the Rocky Mountains. Days to get there. Days to get back. They’d deliver the game, turn around, and head right back into the mountains. They stopped shooting deer as a waste of ammunition. They needed the bigger elk to feed the populace.

  Being out in the wilderness offered them the opportunity to hunt in Were form. They stopped reporting their ammunition usage to Billy. He suspected they were hunting as Werewolves, but hadn’t asked. The town needed the food as they stocked supplies for the trip. Billy didn’t care how they brought it in.

  ***

  Terry, Char, and Kaeden led the two horses toward the park. With the boy’s outburst, it was obvious the family knew that someone was coming. They had arrayed themselves in a line between the cattle and the visitors.

  Terry leaned as he rounded the corner to be the first to see the group. Kaeden looked at the children and waved. They didn’t wave back. When Char reached the corner, the men focused on her.

  Eli stood behind the cattle, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “Kill him. Take the girl,” Eli ordered.

  The men moved forward, brandishing their staffs.

  “Isn’t this cute?” Char asked, handing the reins of her horse to Terry. He took them and leaned down so he could talk with Kaeden. The boy had started to shiver as if a cold wind was blowing.

  Terry put a hand on his small back. “Watch carefully, son. Char is better than all of them put together and on their best day.” Terry lifted his chin and called out, “Tell me when you’re done, honey, so I can start dinner.”

  Eli fumed in the back. His three sons and two daughters marched forward, trying to spread out to surround Terry, not expecting that Char would block their way.

  “Move, woman,” one of the men ordered.

  “Whip, please,” Char asked, holding a hand out but not taking her eyes off the five siblings.

  Terry scooped the boy into one arm and pulled his whip with the other. He ran forward the five steps, put the snakeskin-wrapped handle against her palm, and jogged backwards to re-grab the horses’ reins.

  Char tested the whip a couple times, snapping it in front of the strangers.

  “Remember that we didn’t start this, you creepy fucks, but as with every fight we’ve ever been in, we will finish it,” Char snarled, baring her teeth and flexing her legs as she prepared to call down the thunder.

  The siblings must have been used to bravado, because they didn’t flinch.

  Char waded into the middle of their half-circle, assessing which of the five needed to go first. The one directly in front of her leered while slapping his staff into the palm of his off hand. The others were dancing back and forth, as if getting ready to charge.

  She couldn’t have that, so Char went first. With a kick of Werewolf speed, she launched at the man in the middle, jumping and twisting to increase the speed as she drove her fist toward his face.

  He started to lean backwards, started to raise his staff, started to lift a hand to block the punch. He started a lot of things, but ended none of them before the power of Char’s blow exploded his face.

  The man dropped to the ground and flopped uncontrollably in his death throes. The closest looked at their brother in disbelief, before screaming in rage and charging.

  Char ran to her right, body-blocking the closest person, the woman called Cassandra. Char drove her backwards into her brother and knocked both of them to the ground, but that stopped her momentum.

  She danced away and used the whip to hold the other two off. She inched in and kicked the prone man in the head as he was struggling to his feet. He toppled and was still.

 
Cassandra snarled as she fought her way from under her brother. “I’m going to rip out your throat, bitch!”

  “Why do you have to use such hurtful words?” Char asked pleasantly.

  The other two hesitated. The man pointed his staff at Terry and took two steps toward him.

  “Come on over here, meat. I got a big bucket of ‘blow me” with your name on it,” Terry said with a smile, stepping in front of Kaeden and holding one hand backwards as he had no intention of letting go of the boy’s hand. If the man approached, Terry had every intention of killing him with one arm held behind his back.

  Cassandra screamed as she threw herself at her enemy. Char’s eyes glowed purple as she let the rage quicken her actions. With a step forward, she caught the woman by the throat and lifted her into the air, shaking her until the woman stopped kicking.

  Char threw the body to the side. The man on the ground made the mistake of grabbing her leg. She jumped straight in the air and spun, ripping her foot from his grasp and kicking him in the face with the other, shattering his cheekbone. He grunted and rolled to his back, holding his face in his hands.

  The other two charged, taking aim and swinging their staffs to hit her at the same time. She dropped the whip and caught one staff in each hand. She pulled the people forward, using their momentum against them.

  Char let go of the staffs and stepped into the blows as she used her arms like baseball bats, hitting both of her attackers mid-chest. They doubled over backwards and fell to the ground.

  The man with the shattered face reached for one of the dropped staffs.

  Char pulled a pistol and calmly shot him in the head.

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  The old man fumed, gasping for air as he contemplated the deaths of his children. One of the older kids ran at Char. She caught him and spun around, lifting the teenager and throwing him at Eli. The human projectile hit the old man in the chest and both tumbled to the ground. The young man scrambled to his feet and ran into the stream, across it, and kept going.

  The old man gasped more and more, unable to get enough air to pull himself to his feet. Char casually approached him, stopped, and placed one foot on his chest. She put more and more weight on it until Eli started to turn blue. The old man panicked, flailing with his aged and weak arms, unable to move Char’s foot from his chest.

  He jerked a few more times as his eyes finally glazed over and the wheezing stopped after the old man had taken his last breath.

  The two adult survivors sat on the ground, rubbing their chests where Char’s single sledgehammer blows had taken them down. The fire behind their eyes was gone and they degenerated into two sad-looking people.

  “Take the kids and the cattle and leave the park to us. When we next come this way, you can join us. Your cattle would be most welcome and you too, if you can act like decent human beings. If not? Well, then you can fuck off,” Char told them. The remaining four children started to cry. The two adults stood tentatively, carefully picking up their walking sticks and working their way behind the cattle.

  Terry moved the horses away from the egress where the cattle’s impressive horns wouldn’t be such a threat as they passed.

  With a great deal of mooing and shuffling, the group finally departed, leaving behind four dead bodies and cow pies that covered nearly every square inch of the park.

  Terry removed the horses’ saddles and packs, then turned them loose. “Do you know how to fish?” he asked Kaeden.

  ***

  Three horses with four riders left in the early morning fog that had rolled in from the lake. Thick as pea soup, they used to say. No one said anything anymore. They were happy not to be roasting alive, the life they had been condemned to on the border of the Wastelands, the Fallen Lands.

  Ten wolves loped in front of the group, setting a slow pace as they hunted small game.

  James and Lacy doubled up while Ted and Timmons each rode alone. Gerry and Kiwi stayed behind, ostensibly to watch over the plant. The loss of one horse held them back.

  And that made scoring a wagon even more important. Sometimes you just needed to haul a lot of stuff, which was what Timmons cared about, but to James, keeping the group together when exploring strange areas was more important.

  The ride to Great Lakes was uneventful as it took a sum total of eleven minutes and when they had made it, they found that they weren’t the only ones who considered the military base to be a refuge.

  It looked like the military had put up a staunch defense, erecting barriers in front of the fences, but that it hadn’t survived the onslaught.

  What gave Timmons hope was seeing signs that the military had used heavy equipment and that the naval station had remained functional well after the people panicked, which meant that it was operational after the WWDE and the EMP that had wrought devastation with the precision of a supernova.

  It wasn’t difficult to find a way in because the bulldozer that had been used to clear the roadway had been used to plow a route through the main gate.

  “I want that dozer!” Timmons told them.

  “What for?” Ted asked.

  Timmons couldn’t articulate why, so he gave Ted the finger. It had more impact since Timmons only had one hand. Ted bristled and replied with a two-handed ‘up yours,’ New York style.

  James and Lacy watched, unsure of what was going on. Neither could visualize a bulldozer since they’d never seen one.

  Timmons stopped, looked around, and nodded. “Nobody within miles of us. There’s some animal life, but nothing to worry about. There is a dog pack nearby. I expect our shaggy friends will remedy that situation.”

  Ted nodded and called the pack to talk with them. After a few moments, the old alpha led them in the direction that Ted indicated. The injured wolf was limping along happily in the middle of the others, head and tail held high.

  “Where do we start?” James asked.

  “I suggest we start by the lakeshore. That’s where the power plant was, if I remember correctly. It was a long time ago when I was here,” Ted stated, studying the buildings as he tried to get his bearings.

  “What the fuck?” Timmons exclaimed. “You were stationed here and never bothered to mention that before now? What the hell else aren’t you telling us, dickhead?”

  “I’m not telling you all kinds of things, but I’m not sure they’re all relevant. I went to Catholic elementary school in the Bronx, but that was an awful long time ago, I’m afraid. Sister Mary Anna Mae was an old battle-axe. She spanked me one time, not because I’d done anything wrong but she suspected I might, so she lined up four of us and wailed away. I have to say that I’m still a bit put out about that. And then…” Ted droned.

  “STOP!” Timmons howled. James and Lacy snickered. Ted took things literally and one had to be careful with the questions asked.

  Ted looked distraught.

  “I get it, Ted. Let me rephrase that. Is there anything relevant that you haven’t told us, very specifically as it relates to our dilemma here?” Timmons clarified.

  “I’m not sure what dilemma you’re talking about?” Ted’s ears perked up as the wolf pack expressed its displeasure with the dog pack. There was some barking and squealing. Ted expected that the pack would kill the males and fold the females into the pack, although he hadn’t ordered that.

  Sometimes one had to leave wolves to do what wolves did.

  “No power, Ted. We need power and we need electronics that haven’t been fried. That’s our dilemma. I want electricity, because I need that to make more electricity, bring the city back to life.”

  “Ahh,” Ted sighed, nodding. “To the lake!”

  “Hang on, fuckstick,” Timmons interrupted. “Split up. Ted and I will go to the lake. You two start checking these buildings, see what’s left. We’re looking for anything we’ll need to support the people of New Boulder. Plus, keep your eyes out for any electronics, heavy piping in good condition, and tools—you know, stuff like that. Meet back here at hi
gh noon.”

  James gave him the thumbs up, before turning the horse and riding toward an open field beyond the small museum by the entrance gate.

  Timmons motioned for Ted to take the lead and they headed into an area that had once been majestic.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kaeden didn’t have Terry’s enhanced vision, but once he understood how to position his shadow, he could see into the shallows of the stream. The boy’s eye-hand coordination needed work, but all that took was practice.

  Terry encouraged him to stick with it. After Kaeden speared his first, he claimed that he was tired. Terry wouldn’t let him stop, then the tears started, Char waded in and all three of them ended up fishing together.

  Terry was getting used to seeing the stink-eye. He’d been earning them at a cyclic rate of speed.

  “But we’re still newlyweds,” he blurted.

  “Come on, TH, what about our relationship would you ever consider normal?” Char prompted, putting her spear down while Kaeden continued to watch the water.

  “Nothing, but we’re responsible adults now,” Terry answered. “I thought I had two years to make up for.”

  More stink-eye.

  “I relieve you of that burden, because I can’t have my husband fixated on his dangling dino o’ doom,” Char taunted.

  To Terry, it didn’t sound like she was joking. He was sixty-five and should have stopped being fixated on sex decades ago.

  But look at her! he told himself. He must have been ogling more than normal, because Char had to wave her hands to get his attention.

  “We’re parents now, and you better start acting like one!”

  Kaeden started to squirm. For a boy raised in a time of conflict, of humanity fighting nature for survival, he didn’t like arguments. Whenever Terry and Char had a spirited debate, he’d crawl into a shell.

  “I’m sorry, Kaeden,” Terry started, then took a knee in the stream. The cool water bubbled and swirled where it struggled to get past the human dam. “I can’t describe how much I love her. I’m not good with those kinds of words, even though I’ve read plenty that I could quote. In my own words, though, I’ll say that I would readily die to save her life. And yours too, little man. That’s how important both of you are to me, so why don’t you go dry off. I’ll finish up here and we’ll have a good dinner, somewhere else, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit in cow shit, sorry, cow pies.”