by Tony Bowman
The thunder continued. It didn’t come and go. It was constant.
The werewolves growled and then there were explosions.
The dumpster rocked sideways as something tore a hole the size of an orange in the metal above her head and blasted one the size of a grapefruit through the back as it exited.
The creatures outside were screaming, and then they went silent.
The lid raised and Rat blinked against the dim light that flooded the dumpster.
A boy no older than her stood above her. He was tall, at least six and a half feet and painfully skinny with ridiculous sideburns.
“Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a girl.” He was talking into a Bluetooth headset.
Rat looked at him, “I have bugs in my hair.”
He shook his head, “I’ll clean them out.” He leaned in and slid his long arms under her, lifting her away from the garbage.
“Monkey, haul ass!” a man’s voice called out over the thunder.
Rat looked toward the sound.
A huge semi, twice as big as anything she had ever seen sat at the entrance to the alley. A massive gun turret in the truck’s nose turned to the left and the machine gun fired again. Tracer rounds flashed within four feet of them.
“Hang on,” the boy cried and he was running with her toward the sand colored truck. She heard growling behind them, close. There were more werewolves.
She looked at the emblem on the semi’s wide grill and read the word VALKYRIE as they dashed past. Then he was climbing onto the back, carrying her in one arm as he climbed through a hatch into the darkened interior.
The hatch closed and the boy laid her down on a padded seat.
The truck roared and began to move.
She looked up at a man sitting in the driver’s seat.
He stared down at her, “Jesus, she’s just a kid.”
The boy was brushing her hair with his fingers, combing out the bugs.
She smiled at him, “What’s your name?”
“Aloysius Monk. They call me Monkey,” he said with a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Rat.”
“No, sweetie, it’s okay. There are no rats on you. I’ve almost got the bugs out of your hair,” Monkey said as he stomped the maggots on the floor.
Rat smiled and fell asleep.
You’ve read the short story, now read the novel, Valkyrie: The Road available through Amazon.com
Valkyrie is two-hundred thousand pounds of armor plate, a rolling fortress travelling the road from Chicago to New Orleans in a post-apocalyptic future. Trading goods between vampire controlled Chicago and a New Orleans dominated by Vodou, the human crew of Valkyrie face werewolves, ghouls, and cannibals in the ruins of the Midwest.
Hidden beneath the steel deck of the trailer is Valkyrie's true purpose: a desperate underground railroad ferrying the innocent to freedom.
The crew of Valkyrie have a plan.
But, the rulers of Chicago have a plan as well: a powerful vampire has been added to the crew...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011J894EE