Nomad Supreme

by Craig Martelle

  “I can neither confirm nor deny…” Terry started and then let it linger.

  “Let me guess, a macho Marine effort to do it better than running with the bulls, because that wasn’t manly enough,” Char suggested.

  They’d been together for over two years and Terry hadn’t narrated his life story to her. There was a great deal she didn’t know about him, as he didn’t know about her. Much of their lives from the before time didn’t matter, experiences helped them become the people they were. The future was in front of them, not behind.

  Terry wasn’t surprised that she’d guessed one of his many secrets, almost as if she was in his head.

  She was always on his mind, as he thought about it, so the idea of her opening the curtains of his brain and taking a peek inside wasn’t alarming. She said she couldn’t read minds, but then again, she knew things that she shouldn’t have. He’d continue to have his suspicions, but in the end, it didn’t matter. If she asked, he would tell her everything.

  That was how partnerships worked.

  “Those fuckers are faster than they look,” Terry said in a low voice, angled away from Kae so the boy wouldn’t hear.

  Char snorted. “What if he does something like that?” Char tipped her head toward the boy.

  “The cold water of reality suggests that the stuff I didn’t tell my parents was in their best interest.”

  “Any other death-defying moron moments you care to share?”

  “Well, you need to sit down, this will take a while, but hey, look at that,” Terry said, picking Kaeden up and standing. “Mark has us heading out for one more leg on today’s hike. That means we’ll get there tomorrow or first thing the next day.”

  “What if we can’t get in?” Char asked, dampening his glory moment.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Timmons didn’t wake up for two days. During that time, the humans were amazed at how his legs were healing, but then everything stopped. They carried him to the lake and washed his wounds twice a day. Even Ted found comfort in the lake’s waters and his skin had barely been touched.

  Ted and Timmons both lost their shoes to the toxic waste. In a world nearly twenty-three years after the fall, footwear was a considerable concern. Once you had shoes that fit, you took good care of them.

  The group outlined the Werewolves’ human feet on paper and each person—James, Lacy, Gerry, and Kiwi—carried that template with them to size footwear they ran across in their seemingly never-ending search of the base.

  On the third day, Timmons woke up and was ravenously hungry. Ted had told them to expect that, so they were ready. James and Lacy had traveled half a day away to find game as the wolf pack widened and expanded their hunting grounds.

  The roe deer provided a good meal for Timmons. He ate all the meat and then changed into Were form so he could crack the bones and clean them out, too. Lacy and Kiwi made themselves scarce for when he changed back to human form.

  He changed back and put on the clothes they’d found for him. The healing process started again, more rapidly this time. He thanked them all for their help and called for Kiwi.

  When she arrived, he took a deep breath. “You haven’t known me long, but for those who have, I don’t apologize, because I do what I want to do, within the loose guidance that the alpha has given me. But this time, Kiwidinok, I am sorry that I didn’t listen to you. Tell me more about how you knew, because my Were senses couldn’t detect danger. I’m in charge and that means that I have to make decisions that are best for all of us. Better information means better decisions. You have earned my full trust, all of you, and that’s something I do not readily give.”

  The others nodded. Kiwi stepped closer to Timmons and took a seat on the floor, cross-legged so she could talk with him about Mother Earth. She started with one of her favorite sayings.

  “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. That’s a quote from Chief Seattle. I don’t know which tribe, but that doesn’t matter. We are all children of Mother Earth, each of us a single thread…” Kiwi looked older than her sixteen years as Timmons listened intently.

  The others would have liked to stay, but Ted led them out because there was an endless list of things they needed to do in preparation for the arrival of the people from New Boulder.

  “Time to get to work,” Ted said happily, back to his old self. They watched as he headed toward the small power plant, not surprised that he was on his own mission without giving them any guidance.

  James was ready, as usual. “Family billeting for us.” He pointed to Lacy. “We’ll need what, a hundred units ready by the time people get here? And Gerry, you keep working the barracks for singles.”

  “A question, Corporal,” Gerry said, raising a hand. James nodded. “When is this going to suck less?’

  Lacy chuckled, and James smiled. “I’m with you. Cleaning out these shit-holes isn’t my idea of FDG work but that’s what the colonel left us here for. We clear two units a day, then we’ll be ready in two months. Every sixth day we take a day off. I’ll run it by Timmons.”

  “To the salt mines!” Gerry called as he turned and walked toward the barracks he’d been working in.

  “You ever work in a salt mine?” James asked.

  “I don’t know what one is, but that’s something the colonel always said when we started doing grunt work,” Geronimo answered over his shoulder, continuing his hike to the barracks.

  The salt mines called.

  ***

  According to Terry’s mental map, they were four miles short of Cheyenne Mountain when they stopped. The men were holding up, but tiring. They couldn’t have kept that pace much longer, but it gave him little hope for twenty-five miles a day for those who weren’t as well-conditioned as the FDG.

  The Werewolves seemed unaffected, shrugging off the hike as if it were a day in the park.

  The natural growth in the area suggested that radiation was no longer toxic, at least not at that distance.

  Terry absentmindedly stroked the ever present communication device in his pocket. He doubted they’d be able to get inside without Akio’s help, assuming that General Reynolds had shared the information with the advanced computer system he knew as ADAM. Assuming the general had a code since he was a base commander at a different base in the area and that code hadn’t changed, which it probably did twenty times between the general’s departure and the WWDE.

  All of a sudden, Terry wasn’t so enamored of his plan.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck,” he said under his breath, eliciting raised eyebrows from his wife.

  “What if they changed the code?”

  “You are just now thinking of that? By all that’s holy, TH, you have got to be shitting me.” Char rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “The EI should be able to access it in any case, right?” Terry said hopefully.

  “What if Akio doesn’t want to talk to you?”

  “Then I shall embrace my most creative expletive-laden tirade ever!” Terry claimed, standing tall with his fists on his hips, chest puffed out. “It will be epic,”

  “Already planning that, are you? Planning for failure or are you holding out hope that you can get in?” Char challenged him. Kae was riding on Hank with Blackie keeping a close eye.

  “Hank seems to like the boy,” Terry said, pointing.

  “Oh no you don’t, mister. Hope is your plan, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” she pressed him.

  “There was a little bit of hope sprinkled on top, but I suspected ADAM would have the code, because he knows everything, or so I’ve heard.” Terry sat down. So close, yet if they couldn’t get the door open, there was no other way in.

  Despite what people watched on StarGate SG1, there wasn’t an air vent with a flimsy lock that hid a ladder into the bowels of the mountain. They had to go through a massive door covering the roadway in.

  When it
turned dark, the sergeant established the watch. Terry asked Blackbeard to watch Kaeden for a while. The boy was comfortable with Blackie and even curled up against the grizzly cub to sleep.

  Terry, Char, Adams, and Xandrie headed out for a quick run to the mountain, to get the lay of the land.

  Terry couldn’t wait until the morning. He had to know that evening whether the trip had been wasted, whether he’d been wrong to push the effort to find his white whale.

  It rushed to the front of his mind that it hadn’t turned out well for Ahab.

  They ran at a dangerous pace for Terry. The Werewolves could see better in the dark, so the other three changed into Were form. Terry ran with a backpack stuffed with the Weres’ clothes and boots, sprinting nearly the entire time. When he arrived, he stumbled into the clearing in front of the entrance, out of breath. They’d been running for less than fifteen minutes. The others were lounging as they waited for him. He always found their endurance disconcerting.

  He wasn’t a prude, but maybe he was. Seeing beautiful people naked should have been like walking through an art gallery.

  It wasn’t. They were just naked. “Here’s your clothes,” he managed to say as he removed the backpack, avoiding looking at Adams or Xandrie. Char laughed at his efforts as she flaunted her nakedness before him.

  “Come on now, clothes on. Places to go, people to see.” Terry clapped his hands. The sound echoed from the face of the mountain. The growth was all new, from within the past twenty years. No old trees stood in the area. Weeds cracked through the pavement as they fought for life. In another twenty years, the whole area would be overgrown and the entrance to the mountain hidden.

  Once changed, they walked through the tangle that had been a fence and found where the road disappeared under a pile of rubble. Part of the mountain had come down and filled the cave mouth.

  Terry walked from left to right, back left as he examined the landslide’s remnants. He looked up the mountain, but couldn’t see well enough to determine how much rock had been dislodged.

  He asked Char, but she couldn’t guess.

  Between two large boulders, Terry started pulling out rocks and throwing them to the rear as he cleared a path. The others joined him and soon, they’d carved a tunnel that led to open space beyond. He peered into the darkness but couldn’t see through the pitch black. Char led the way, holding his hand as she guided him through rubble that had been thrown into the tunnel’s mouth.

  “I see a light,” Terry said. A faint glow outlined a square on the wall. When they reached it, Char pulled it open. Adams and Xandrie leaned around to see what they found.

  A key pad that had power to it.

  ***

  With more than enough food and unlimited water, Timmons healed at an incredible rate. From an injury that had chemically burned him to the bone from his knees down, in addition to the stump of his arm, his skin and muscle had grown back.

  An odd thing happened as well—Timmons’s hand was growing back. He watched it in wonder. Ted seemed unsurprised.

  “The toxic waste dissolved the silver that barred the healing process. I didn’t care to test my theory out, but I’m pleased that it worked out for you,” Ted stated matter-of-factly.

  “I’m pleased, you say?” Timmons never could figure out Ted’s thought process. “This means that we’ll be able to get twice the amount of work done, my friend. Next up, the pipe. Let’s find us a pig to send through there, to drive any remaining fuel oil into that tank. Give us a working reserve until we can find that Mini Cooper.”

  A pig was the term used for a device sent through a pipe to clean it or flush it. Timmons wanted to send one through the end as far away from the plant as they could find, to drive any residual fuel oil to the plant. Ted had calculated a quantity in excess of a thousand gallons within the pipe that fed the plant.

  That would get it started and keep it running for a little while. With a little work, they could convert the burners to use biodiesel, but they needed the plant to run to set up the conversion process.

  It took power to make power.

  Timmons didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to depend on a source of energy that was difficult to maintain with the limited manpower they had available. It would take a small army to ensure a continuous supply of biomass from which to brew the biodiesel.

  Ted watched Timmons flex his fledgling fingers as they stretched and grew.

  “Would you leave them alone?” Ted demanded.

  “Why? Will I go blind if I keep playing with them?” Timmons joked, before turning serious. “You don’t know what it was like, missing a hand. I had to fight to tie my own God damn shoes! Take it from me, Ted. You don’t ever want to lose a hand.”

  With his jaw set and a new determination, Timmons strode proudly to the plant. He felt like a new Werewolf. His alpha had a mission for him, and he didn’t want to let her down.

  ***

  “No!” Char insisted as Terry gripped his communication device, ready to activate it.

  “I want to see if they have the code. Isn’t that what we came for?” Terry asked, convinced he was right—that they should try the door right then and there.

  “If the door opens, you’ll go in and we won’t return to the platoon. They deserve to be here for the big moment, and if the door doesn’t open, it’s only four miles, we’ll be on the road home before noon. Either way, they should be here. Protocol. The officers shouldn’t go alone into new territory,” Char said, pursing her lips and nodding.

  “We always go ahead without the platoon,” Terry argued.

  “But we shouldn’t. Sorry, Colonel, overruling you on this one.” Char put her foot down. “Excuse me, Adams, Xandrie, if you could give us some privacy to discuss this, I’d appreciate it.”

  Terry was getting angry. He jammed the communication device in his pocket and watched the other two Werewolves fade away from the glow of the keypad as they left the tunnel.

  With her inhuman strength, Char picked Terry up and slammed him against the heavy door. With a grunt, he reached around her head and grabbed her hair, but she already had his neck in her teeth, rolling the flesh playfully, painfully.

  She let him slide down the door until he was standing. He winced and slapped a hand to his neck. He felt the sting and the wet. He was bleeding.

  “Your mate is hungry,” she teased.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ted stood in the open field that used to be a parade deck. It reminded him of the open area at the Air Force Academy where they’d found such fertile hunting ground. The wolf pack was running in circles around him, chasing each other and acting like puppies.

  His mood was carrying over to them. Things were starting to go right for the group. Timmons had his hand back and was his happy self from a long, long time ago. The plant was in good shape and with the last systems check, they figured they could have it running inside a month.

  The humans were systematically cleaning out rooms and houses, scavenging the things they needed to keep moving forward. Ted looked down at his combat boots, which had been hidden above a ceiling panel in the barracks. They had been stiff, but he rubbed a little animal fat into them and they softened up nicely.

  Timmons had a pair of old tennis shoes that were cracked, but they would cover his feet until the searchers found something else.

  They hunted every other day, simultaneously scrounging for any kind of vegetable or leafy green that could be eaten. The problem was that winter was coming. There were no greenhouses with a winter crop started like they had back in New Boulder.

  The group had high hopes that the colonel would return with the town’s people before next winter, so they could get things planted, start living, start growing.

  Timmons wanted the people to have power by then, unlimited power. He walked up behind Ted, but Weres weren’t surprised by things like that.

  “We need to go to that railroad yard, all of us, and look for the Mini Cooper,” Timmons said, sounding more
desperate than he intended. He felt hopeful. He wanted his luck to hold. He’d ask Kiwi to ride up front, to sense the things that the Werewolves could not.

  “I like these humans,” Timmons said in a low voice.

  “Of course, because they saved our lives, even though they could have left us to die, maybe they should have. They’ve never been anything but kind, but they fight like devils. No worse enemy, no greater friend. They remind me of the Marines.” Ted looked contemplative as he spoke. While in the Navy, his dealings with the Marines had always been professional.

  He’d recognized Terry as one the second they walked up on the fateful day the pack returned to find Char. Are we there yet, Ted had asked for the umpteenth time. And they weren’t until they were here, at Great Lakes. Ted finally felt at home. With a nuclear reactor to run?

  He would be home.

  Timmons had said something, but Ted was oblivious. He’d retreated into his own mind, so Timmons waited and then repeated himself.

  “We’ll talk with James and the others tonight, head out tomorrow, hunt on the way, find what we need to find. Do you think you and I can pull a train car twenty miles?” Timmons asked.

  “We have horses, too, you know,” Ted reminded him.

  “Indeed,” Timmons answered. “Indeed we do and things are looking up, Ted. Things are definitely looking up!” Timmons flexed the fingers of his regrown hand, reveling in its feel and savoring what that one hand was capable of when matched with its right-handed partner.

  Gerry and Kiwi were riding together on the horse. They slowed to a walk when they reached the parade deck.

  “Are they doing the mambo?” Timmons asked.

  Ted looked at him like he’d grown a third head.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter, but I think they are.”

  Ted called the pack to him and settled them down so they wouldn’t spook the horses.

  ***

  Adams and Xandrie got tired of waiting and returned to the platoon on their own. They stayed in human form and walked easily. As they approached the camp, Terry and Char caught up to them, out of breath and laughing.