“If there were as many people as there were when this first started…yeah. From now onward…not so much.”
For a few seconds, the only sound to be heard was the crunch of their feet against the dirty street. A couple seconds later, in a voice that was steady and pure, Haley said, “Then we’ll have to kill a lot more than that.”
Rico sighed, recognizing unflappable determination when he heard it. “I guess we can travel together for a while, but you’ll have to do more than talking to earn your keep.”
“How do you plan on getting to Colorado?” she asked.
“Haven’t figured that out yet. My other car crapped out on me outside of town.”
“Would another car help?”
Rico stopped and turned around. “You know where to find a car that’s in good enough shape to get us across the country?”
“The guy I was talking about before has one. Well…had one.”
“You mean the dick?”
Haley nodded slowly, her chin ending up much lower than it had when she’d started. Closing her eyes, her shoulders slumped and her chest froze in mid-breath. Now that things had calmed down and her heartbeat was something less than a primal drumbeat against her ribs, the weight of that death was making itself known. “Yes,” she whispered. “His name was Weston.”
Now Rico felt like the jerk. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes it was refreshing to give in to that role. This was not one of them. “It was wrong of me to just stomp away from your shop like that. Guess I kinda got caught up in everything. We should go back and bury Weston. It’s only proper.”
Half a weak smile appeared on Haley’s face. “Proper? You don’t seem like the kind of guy who uses words like that.”
“Now that you mention it, that could be a first for that word comin’ outta my mouth. Either way, no one deserves to be left behind like that. Especially after he put a roof over yer head for a while.”
“No,” Haley said. “Leave him.”
“Look…even if he was a—”
“It’s not that,” she interrupted. “It’s just…he was all about that tattoo shop. It was his whole life. He’d want to stay there now that…” She sniffed once, wiped her eyes with the back of a hand and steeled herself with a deep breath. “He’d want to be right where he is. Plus, it’s not smart to be so close to a werewolf den…even if it is burnt to a crisp.”
“All right, then. What about this car you mentioned? I haven’t seen any around here that weren’t turned into a scratching post or a werewolf’s urinal since I walked into this town.”
“I call that one.”
“Huh?”
“Oh,” she said with a tired laugh. “I meant I call that for a band name. Werewolf Urinal. It’s a game me and my brother used to play.”
“Nice. What are you thinking with that one? Light jazz? Power ballads?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of those groups with two girls with long hair, flowy clothes and thick glasses who play acoustic guitars in coffee shops. Remember those?”
“Yeah,” Rico grunted. “That’s the kind of shit that makes the apocalypse seem like it wasn’t such a bad idea.”
They laughed for a while before Haley pointed to a charred building across the street. “The car’s in there. We can gas up at a station about a mile down the road.”
“Why didn’t you mention the car before?”
“Because I had to make sure you were ok.”
“I won you over, huh?” he asked.
She held out her hand and waggled it in the universal gesture for so-so.
Rico nodded. “As far as first impressions, that’s a home run for me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wyoming
Fuel wasn’t as rare as Cole was expecting it to be after most of the world had ground to a halt. Fortunately, it also wasn’t one of those things that fell into the category of modern mysteries like the internet still being mostly functional and power still flowing through electrical wires. Gas was just one of those things that survival nuts had been hording before they knew exactly how mankind would be dealt its biggest blow since the black plague. Along with bottled water, ammunition and medical supplies, gasoline was a staple in every bomb shelter. It was also one of the most valuable forms of currency.
Cole was a Skinner, which meant he was one of the ultimate survival nuts. He’d stashed away his share of fuel but had also taken it as payment for the services he’d provided in Cody. Because of that, he had more than enough to make it down Highway 16 toward Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains.
He drove an old Ford pickup painted a shade of green that one of the old ladies in Cody had called Sea Foam. Since he wasn’t an expert in such things, Cole took her word for it. There were torn fragments of decals from the Park Ranger service on the doors and tailgate as well as a large orange plastic dome on the roof that housed a rotating light. If not for the fact that a light like that would draw Half Breeds quicker than a buffet of slaughtered chickens, he might have left it in place. Instead, Cole’s first order of business after acquiring the truck had been tearing the light off, installing some floods on a reinforced bumper and building enough compartments in the cab to hold a small arsenal. These days he preferred big arsenals but made do with what he had.
Keeping his left hand on the wheel, Cole flexed the fingers on his right. Doing so got the blood flowing while also aggravating the scars on his palm. Both hands were scarred almost evenly, but he seemed to feel the most pain in his right hand when he tapped into the psychic element of the Nymar fragments still entwined around his spinal cord. He didn’t need x-rays or a doctor’s opinion to know they were there. He could feel them every now and then, wriggling inside of him like a wet itch on his bones.
After those psychic muscles had been flexed, Dressel had become very cooperative. Not quite zombie-esque but close enough to keep quiet as he decrypted the email that had been sent to him. Most of the email had been directions to a place called Tensleep Prison. That’s what Cole had been waiting for ever since he’d set up shop as an IISP. Being an Independent Internet Service Provider was one of the most boring jobs he’d ever had, which was saying a lot since he’d spent a year of his former life manning the phones at a customer service center for a major shopping website. Compared to establishing web connections all day long, looking up delivery dates for UPS packages had been a blast and a half. Finally, those days of sitting in a garage tapping on a keyboard in between small talk with people he didn’t bother getting close to were over. He’d waited long enough for the right person to come through his door, and he’d pushed hard enough to get the information he needed. Now, it was just a matter of putting that information to good use.
Cole tapped the steering wheel in time to a song in his head and focused on the road in front of him. He was looking for a specific turnoff marked by a steel post with no sign attached to it. According to the email that had been decrypted, it should be coming up anytime within the next mile or two. The seat beside him was piled high with tackle boxes, canvas backpacks, and any other bag that could zip shut around the guns, ammo and other assorted weapons he needed. Food and other non-lethal supplies were piled behind the passenger seat in a hollow space that he guessed had been meant for tools.
His stomach was giving him trouble. Had been ever since he’d closed up his shop and locked it to stay secure for however long he might be gone. There was always the possibility that he might not make it back to Cody again, but that wasn’t what bothered him. It didn’t take a therapist to get to the bottom of what made his gut clench into a tight ball. All he had to do was think about heading out on a hunt again for his insides to turn cold and his heart to strain.
“Suck it up,” he said to himself. “Had to happen sooner or later.”
There were plenty of reasons to be nervous. Just wandering too far from shelter could bring anyone’s life to a gruesome end, but there was something beneath the nerves that nagged at Co
le. The icy tension gnawing deep at his core was vaguely familiar, yet foreign enough to stay just out of his mind’s reach.
And then, the tension spiked in a way that made him clench so hard that he had to fight to keep from doubling over. It was more than nervousness or too much spicy food. When he was able to look up again, Cole was drawn to a spot in the trees along the side of the road where some of the branches were hanging down just a bit more than the others. Years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about the inconsistency. He might not have even noticed it at all. But after spending so much time stalking creatures through all kinds of terrain, his instincts had become attuned to random weirdness. Because of those instincts, his eyes were drawn to the right spot at the right time to pick up on a subtle hint of movement that shouldn’t have been there at all.
A tall portion of a tree several yards ahead shifted as though a section of bark decided to draw itself inward. If Cole hadn’t been paying such specific attention, he would have mistaken it as a flickering shadow or trick of the light. Instead, he could make out a vaguely humanoid shape standing in front of that tree while almost seamlessly blending in with it. He was approaching the tree quickly. Rather than pass by and lose whatever he’d spotted or slow down to take a leisurely look at something that could very well tear his face off, Cole steered directly toward the tree and adjusted his speed so he would make an impact without killing himself in the process. After all, he figured, why go through the trouble of reinforcing a truck’s bumpers if you don’t ram them into something every now and then? He smirked as the wall of trunks rushed at him, marveling at how easy it had become to justify crazy shit anymore.
The Ford rolled over a small mound of rubble along the side of the road, and when its front tires hit the dirt, Cole tapped the brakes to put the pickup into a somewhat controlled forward skid. He braced both hands on the wheel until the last possible second when he threw his body sideways to lay upon the bench seat. The bumper slammed into the tree and sent everything inside the cab rushing toward the floor. Cole went along for that ride, tucking his head in close and covering up with both arms as his ribs pounded against the bottom edge of the dash. Half a second later, something heavy pounded against the hood of the pickup. It felt as if the truck was rolling, but that was only because his head was spinning. Pushing through the dizziness, Cole reached out to push open the passenger door and crawl out.
As soon as he’d cleared the truck, Cole got his feet beneath him and reached over one shoulder for the wooden halberd harnessed to his back. The weapon came free, and he held it without gripping tight enough for the thorns to pierce his palms. He took a quick look at the front end of the pickup only to find the bumper wedged against the trunk of a tree and a large dent in the hood where a second impact had been made. Cole straightened up a bit but dropped down again as soon as he saw the claw marks that had been scraped into the truck’s hood leading away from the wide dent. Something had jumped up before impact, landed on the hood and crawled away.
Cole’s blood raced through his veins. Sweat broke out on his brow. He tightened his hold on the wooden stick that had been with him since the beginning of his training. Just having the familiar weapon in his grasp provided some comfort. The flat curved blade, forged from an alloy mixed with steel that could wound even the toughest shapeshifter, was close enough to his face that he could smell the oils used to prepare it for war. While he usually felt better once he’d finally thrown himself into a fight, Cole was still being hit by the cold pangs inside his stomach. In fact, as nearby branches rustled, the pain got worse.
Cole put his back against the side of the pickup and scooted toward the tailgate. His fingers slipped between the thorns on the weapon’s grip as he held it so the blade crossed his torso to protect as much of his body as possible. His other hand slipped into a shirt pocket to retrieve a small syringe. Having been in the game for so long, Cole’s body produced a good amount of the Skinner healing serum on its own. The crash knocked him around pretty good, so he injected more serum using the syringe just to make sure he’d be ready to move at peak performance when the need arose. He didn’t feel the sting of the needle as it pierced his shoulder near the base of his neck. The rush provided by the serum hardly registered but provided some bit of relief. After tucking the syringe away, he moved around the back of the pickup to get a better look at the trees.
Something rustled out there as a few steps were taken in the dry layers of fallen leaves. Every footfall was a little quieter than the one before. After a few more steps, the sounds faded away entirely. Shifting his hands so the thorns on the weapon’s handle pushed against his palms, Cole hurried away from the truck and planted his feet in a solid defensive stance.
Slowly, he tightened his grip until the thorns punctured his skin. Cole then pointed the bladed end of the halberd toward the trees and moved it back and forth to feel for any spikes in the reactions his scars had to his surroundings. Just crafting the wooden weapon made it sensitive to Nymar and most shapeshifters. As he’d encountered different species, Cole collected samples which he’d worked into the weapon’s fiber to expand the warnings he was given. Blood was carefully mixed into the varnish. Bits of fur were wound around the wooden portions to be absorbed after a certain amount of shifts in the weapon’s size and shape. Even some skin was melded with the grain of the wood in a process Cole was still working to perfect. Once the weapon had bonded with a species, it reacted in various ways to that species’ presence. As he swung the weapon toward a certain spot in the nearby tree line, he felt the cool tension in his gut rise and fall.
Stepping even farther away from the truck, Cole was confident enough to be certain that there were no Half Breeds in the vicinity. Nymar called Shadow Spore didn’t trip his early warning, so there wasn’t much to be done about that. He didn’t concern himself with them, however, since most Nymar stuck to places where they could hole up in solid structures and feel cement under their feet. Trees just weren’t their style, which didn’t help Cole very much as he struggled to narrow down the list of things that remained. The cold queasiness in his belly was vaguely familiar, but it had been too long since he’d felt it for him to pin down what had tripped the reaction.
He circled around the truck, waiting for the first hint of trouble. All he could hear was the wind and creaking branches. The only thing that stood out in the scenery was the rusty green truck jammed against a tree. Cole drew a long breath, sifting through the autumnal scents until he found one that didn’t quite belong with the others. Something about it was as familiar as the tension in his gut.
Cole narrowed down the list of candidates even further as he approached the trees. The thorns sunk deeper into his hands until he was able to will the weapon to take its true form. Both ends stretched out; the bottom extending into forked points capped by metal spikes and the top bearing the wide blade forged by Amriany hands. He walked on the balls of his feet, his eyes darting back and forth as his hands remained steady. Something moved beneath the leaves but was too small to be what he was hunting and too far away from the spot his instincts had singled out. Without any other leads to follow, Cole examined the trees one at a time.
Most of them had been scarred in one way or another, clawed by wolves or dented by careening vehicles throughout the years. One of the trees shifted ever so slightly as if by a wind that was too weak to reach Cole’s face. It wasn’t suspicious in itself, but the movement was the last piece he needed to put his finger on what had been eluding him all this time. He approached that tree, turned away from it, and then twisted sharply back again to swing his weapon in an arc that came all the way around with enough force to cleave completely through the trunk and anything standing behind it. Instead, the weapon was stopped a few inches away from what would have been its point of impact by a section of trunk that had peeled away at the last moment to wrap around the end of the weapon just beneath the large blade.
The oddly shaped branch separated even more from the tree while pushing t
he weapon back. Cole pulled the halberd as if to reclaim it only to snap the lower end out and send the forked points to snake out like a pair of tendrils toward a portion of the tree just below the section that had become so active. Now that he was closer, he could see other details on the side of the tree such as a portion that rose and fell in a breathing motion and a large, reptilian face looking down from a couple inches above Cole’s eye level. He willed the tendrils to cinch in beneath the face, which still had the texture and coloring perfectly matching the tree’s bark. Once the tines had a firm grip on the camouflaged reptile, he set the weapon’s blade against his hip and used his entire body to pull it away from the side of the tree. Now that the reptile was moving, its arms, legs, torso and head could more clearly be seen. Cole planted one boot next to its feet and swept its legs out from under it to bring the lizard man down.
It wasn’t easy, but years of practice in hand-to-hand combat allowed Cole to remain upright. He willed the tendrils at the end of his halberd to tighten until the lizard man’s skin began to lose the coloring that had been a near-perfect match to the tree.
For several seconds, the figure on the ground still looked like a large wedge of bark that had been peeled away from the trunk. Its rough texture and exquisitely detailed shades of brown and green faded to reveal scales layered upon every inch of a thickly muscled body laying at Cole’s feet.
The creature was humanoid, only with sharper reptilian edges. Its knees and elbows were pointed, and its fingers and toes appeared to be covered in a segmented exoskeleton. Long limbs and slender torso were covered in taut muscle. The front of its face extended slightly but not enough to be considered a snout. A few strips of canvas and leather were wrapped around its body to form distinctive pieces of clothing crafted by the lizard people known as Squamatosapiens. Cole knew this particular Squam by a name that was much easier to pronounce.
Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series Page 18