by Amira Rain
“Well, what were they shouting about?”
I said I didn’t know. “I was out here in the kitchen and couldn’t hear what they were saying very clearly. They didn’t know that I was home yet, and when I flew out to the door to see what was going on, they both shut up right away, both saying that they’d just been having a disagreement about how to best deal with the Creepers or something.”
Alicia frowned. “Well, it doesn’t seem like there should be much disagreement about that. I mean, at least as far as what I know from what Mark has told me, I think the plan is just to keep defending our community like usual. Keep reinforcing the walls and keep killing Creepers that gather around them until someday, with their slow rate of reproduction, their population will be reduced enough to not give us any significant problems. After all, with all of them just wandering around all the time and not really having any kind of a home base, it’s not like we can go on the offensive and launch an attack on them or something.”
I agreed with all Alicia had said, adding that I didn’t think that Eric and Ryan’s argument had really been about how to deal with the Creepers. “I just have a gut feeling that it was about something else.”
“Well, now that I’m thinking about it, Mark did make kind of a funny comment about Eric and Ryan the other day.”
“What was it?”
“Well, I don’t remember exactly, but it was just something about how he was hoping that he’d be sent off on a scouting patrol that day, well beyond the walls, because he just didn’t want to have to spend much time around Ryan and Eric. I asked why, and he said something like, ‘Oh, they’re just stressful to be around lately, always snipping and snapping at each other about the stupidest things.’ I thought, ‘Well, yeah, they’re probably just stressed about the Creepers and
having to be in charge of everything as alphas.’ It all sounded pretty normal to me. I didn’t even think to mention anything to you about it.”
Thinking, I asked Alicia if Mark had told her anything about how well the two packs were merging or weren’t, and she said yes.
“According to Mark, everything is completely fine on that front. There’s been a few ‘personality clashes,’ as he says, but nothing major; on the whole, the two packs seem to be merging together just fine. Eric’s men don’t seem to be having any trouble taking orders from Ryan and vice versa. So, if there’s some weird tension between Eric and Ryan these days, and it’s starting to seem like there is, I don’t think it has anything to do with their two packs not merging well or anything like that.”
“Well, what about how the two of them are adjusting to having a co-alpha? Do you think that could be the source of the tension?”
Setting down her cider mug, Alicia shrugged, with her expression indicating that she had no idea. “Your guess is as good as mine. On one hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was causing some friction, but then again, think about it this way. Eric is the one who willingly invited Ryan to be a co-alpha. I don’t think he would have done that if he thought that he’d have some big, huge problem with sharing power.
And as far as Ryan, he accepted the invitation to become co-alpha, which I don’t think he would have done if he thought he’d have a big, huge problem with the arrangement. So, unless the two of them all of a sudden have some kind of weird, unforeseen regret about the whole situation….” Alicia shrugged again. “I guess I just don’t know what else it could be. Unless….”
“‘Unless’ what?”
“Well…unless there could be some tension about the whole arrangement with you. Although, if this were the case, I’m sure you probably would have noticed it by now.”
This was my biggest fear - that whatever was going on between Ryan and Eric was somehow related to me. However, like Alicia had said, it only stood to reason that I would have picked up on a few tell-tale clues of that by this point, and I really hadn’t. I told Alicia this, adding that other than the argument earlier that day, Eric and Ryan had been acting pretty normally.
“So, neither of them has been getting weirdly possessive or anything?”
I thought about the question for a few moments before responding. “Well…I guess there have been a few things lately…maybe.”
“Things like what?”
“Well…the other day, in bed, Ryan was holding me, and he said, ‘You’re mine,’ or maybe it was even, ‘You’re all mine.’ I really don’t remember. At any rate, Eric, who I thought was sleeping, suddenly perked up and said something like, ‘Hey, don’t delude yourself over there, buddy. She’s mine too.’ I think Ryan was just like, ‘Oh, I’m well aware. Don’t get your panties in a wad, Eric,’ or something like that. Then, I think we all just soon went to sleep, and I didn’t think any more about it. The conversation just seemed like nothing more than a little joking-type banter at the time or something. Maybe just a little teasing.”
Frowning, Alicia set her fork down with a bite of cake still on it. “Well, what were their expressions at the time? Did they look like they were just teasing?”
I said I didn’t know. “The lights were off at the time.”
“Hm.”
Picking up her mug of cider, Alicia didn’t say anything else, and I asked her what “Hm” meant. “Do you think that there could really be something going on between Eric and Ryan because of me?”
Alicia sighed. “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that jealousy has come into play in a two-men-one-woman post-Chaos relationship, trust me. There are two guys from Ryan’s group…Kevin and Malcolm…and over the course of the past few weeks, they’ve had no fewer than three physical fights about their shared girlfriend, Marcy, with the third one being in wolf form.
Mark said they probably would have killed each other had he and Tom not broken it up. Later, he told me that Ryan is thinking about forcing Darcy to make a choice between the two men, and then that choice will be enforced by Ryan himself, on penalty of being permanently kicked out of the community if the man not chosen can’t come to terms with things.”
“Geez.” With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I took a sip of my cider before setting the mug down. “Well, as poorly as Marcy’s trio relationship is working out, there are still a lot of them that are working out well, right? I mean, just look at Jessie, Terry, and Alex. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a married couple so happy. Or…well, a married trio, as the case may be.”
Alicia conceded that that was true. “I don’t think there are many problems in that relationship, if any. And, to be fair, there are a lot of trio relationships in our community that seem to be working out extremely well. With so few of us women left on planet earth now, most of the men just seem thrilled to be in any kind of a relationship with a woman at all, even if they have to ‘share’ her with another man or even two other men, like in the case of Kayla, Dominic, Pat, and Jim.
I think the lack of us women helps to keep a lot of the men ‘in line’ too. They know that if they blow things, like Kevin and Malcolm seem about ready to do, they may not get the chance to be in a relationship with another woman again, or at least not for a very long while. For one thing, when it comes to single, available women, there’s simply next-to-none of them around, and for another thing, once someone screws up a trio relationship, then everyone knows that the screwer- upper has jealousy problems or whatever; so, then no one ever wants to get involved with them again.
The whole subject just makes me glad that I’m with Mark and Mark only, no matter how appealing the idea of a threesome sort of thing might seem to me sometimes. See, I long ago realized that fantasies are one thing, and real life is another, and since I’m not usually one to take risky chances, I think it’s just going to be me and Mark forever.”
It had become crystal clear to Jessie and me that Alicia was highly interested in the possibility of a trio relationship, at least on a sexual level. However, she obviously couldn’t let herself explore the possibility of being in one herself, and maybe she was right to do so, I fi
gured. After all, she and Mark had been married before the Chaos, so things were a little different for them than a lot of other couples.
It seemed like one thing to enter a relationship with two men at the same time, but another thing entirely to add another man to an already-established marriage. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it either. One part of me did feel kind of bad, though, that Alicia would never get to experience the joys of having two men in her bed at the same time.
By the time she left that evening, I’d become nearly convinced that the tension between Eric and Ryan was related to me, and I resolved to just come right out and ask them if this was the case, and if so, if this had been what their argument had been about. However, I was already asleep when they both arrived home that evening. The following morning, they both left around dawn, long before I was fully awake and alert enough to have a serious discussion.
That afternoon, it snowed for the first time that autumn, coating the ground with a very light dusting of powder even though it was only the first week of November. Having always enjoyed the first snow of the season, even if it was only a light dusting, I bundled up and headed outside for a walk through the community, wishing only that snow had any kind of an effect on Creepers.
If it had, everyone could at least look forward to having several months free from their constant attacks. Instead, though, snow and cold temperatures just seemed to have the effect of making Creepers even a bit faster and stronger than they normally were, as if maybe wherever they’d come from had been extremely cold and they were used to it, or maybe even specifically built for it. At any rate, luckily for our community, cold and snow had no effect on our wolf shifters, who, with their thick, silvery coats, could fight off Creepers just as well as they did during any other season.
Waving to a few neighbors, I’d only been walking for a minute or so when I heard a calamitous boom come from somewhere to the north. Sounding fairly distant yet still extremely loud, the noise reminded me of a bomb going off or something. Immediately startled, I whipped my face in that direction but didn’t see any smoke or flying debris or anything. Not to mention that a bomb going off seemed highly unlikely, unless one of the marauder groups that sometimes troubled our community had the know-how and materials to make one.
A woman named Claire, who was one of my neighbors, had been standing in her yard, watching her five-year-old daughter, Mandy, run all around, trying to catch snow flurries on her tongue. With a look of clear anxiety and surprise on her face, Claire now looked from the direction of the loud boom to me. “What was that?”
I said I had no idea. “Better get Mandy inside the house, though, because who knows.”
Claire grabbed Mandy’s hand and began dashing up to the house with her, and I began dashing off to the north, intent on finding out what had caused the boom. Part of me, maybe the part that possessed my common sense, felt like maybe I should just head inside, like Claire and other neighbors that were scurrying inside their houses. However, another part of me felt that because I was an orb-thrower, unlike my neighbors, it wasn’t quite so critical for me to get to safety if a situation with Creepers or marauders was happening. After all, I was able to defend myself and could maybe help my community and the men I loved. I almost felt like I even had a duty to run toward any danger if some dangerous element was threatening the community.
After jogging a few hundred yards through rows of houses, I immediately saw that the community was indeed under attack. The Creepers had somehow managed to knock down a massive steel piling that connected two sections of wall, and this had apparently been the source of the boom. The piling, which had to at least weigh a ton, maybe even a few, was now on the snow-dusted ground, with Creepers clambering over it as they streamed in through the newly-made breach in the wall.
The only good thing about this disastrous situation was that because the breach wasn’t very wide, maybe just two feet, if that, they were having to come through it single-file, which meant that there was a good chance they could be contained before causing any more damage to the wall and before too many of them got inside. The breach would have to be closed quickly, though, because the Creepers were moving extremely fast, making strange groaning and hissing noises that they sometimes did. As it was, at least a few dozen of them had already gotten inside.
Giving me a little hope that they could be contained quickly, at least a half-dozen shifters were already on the scene, maybe having known what the Creepers were trying to do after having been alerted by guards beyond the walls. These Silverbacks already on the scene would probably be needing help, though, until other ones could arrive, so I was glad I’d come running. I figured that if I could cut down Creepers coming through the breach in the wall, maybe I could give the Silverbacks more of a fighting chance.
Not wasting any time, I ran into the fray, already throwing glowing silver orbs even as I ran. Both to my right and left, wolves were already fighting with Creepers, snarling as they charged at them and pulled them down to the snowy ground.
Quickly beginning to perspire with exertion, even though the temperature was in the low thirties, I took down seven or eight Creepers within the first few minutes of arriving on the scene, temporarily stunning them and making them fall to the ground. This allowed the wolves to pounce on them, growling, without sustaining any injuries themselves.
It wasn’t long before they’d killed at least a dozen Creepers, and I even killed one myself, first immobilizing it with an orb and then getting a little closer to hurl several more directly at its face at close range. Eventually, when the Creeper had only a smoldering baseball-sized hole where its eyes had formerly been, I moved onto another, stunning him just as he was about to slash at a wolf with his razor-sharp claws while that particular wolf had his back turned. A short while later, this very same wolf saved me right back, tackling a Creeper who was charging my way, arms and claws extended.
Soon, additional wolves arrived and joined the fight, and I continued to help, hurling so many orbs that my shoulder began to ache. With Creepers still coming through the breach, though, I couldn’t stop, especially since the Creepers seemed to be coming in even a bit faster now. With so many Creepers already having come in, I hadn’t been able to focus exclusively on the breach, unfortunately; in fact, at this point, there were maybe more Creepers inside than there’d been when I’d first come running toward the boom.
Beginning to sweat profusely, I continued throwing orbs in the midst of the melee, overjoyed when a dozen or so additional wolves arrived, charging at the Creepers with loud snarls and growls. The “battlefield,” which was composed of half grassy area and half road, became a bit congested at this point, and I began to find it increasingly difficult to hit targets without being afraid that I would accidentally hit a wolf with “friendly fire.”
So, after maybe just another minute or so of fighting, I slowly began retreating from the fight. At the same time, I saw three wolves suddenly shift into their human forms and make a beeline for a pile of construction materials just twenty feet or so from the breach. One of these shifters was Ryan, and he reached the pile of materials first and hoisted up a large square of solid steel sheeting from the top of the pile, groaning with the effort.
This was certainly a display of the increased strength that wolf shifters possessed even while in their human forms, because I knew that normally, it would have taken probably four or five men to lift the heavy piece of steel that Ryan was currently dragging away singlehandedly, not even needing the help of the two wolves who had followed him.
While I moved further away from the fight, I saw him slam the piece of steel sheeting against the breach, probably knocking out a Creeper who’d been trying to come through at the time. Ryan then immediately pressed his back against the sheeting, appearing to be calling for others to do the same along the length of it.
This was where the tide really seemed to turn, with all wolves seeming to redouble the intensity of their efforts upon seeing what Ryan had done. Al
so, with no additional Creepers coming through the breach, they were finally able to really make a dent in the ones that had already gotten through.
A few minutes later, I was standing against a tree some distance away from the fight, still trying to fully catch my breath from the extreme exertion, when Tom came riding past me on a tractor, probably having had to run all the way to the farmland in the west while in wolf form to have gotten it so quickly. Driving it at top speed, even though that wasn’t very fast, he drove it up to the steel sheeting, which Ryan and others were still holding in place with their backs against it.
After letting the tractor idle for a few moments while he appeared to have a brief, shouted exchange of words with Ryan, Tom then drove the tractor forward while Ryan and the others dove out of the way just in time to avoid being hit. Obviously aware that the last thing he wanted to do was bring down a section of wall, Tom had slammed on the brakes just a few feet from the sheeting, making the tractor finally coast to a stop right against the sheeting, holding it in place like Ryan and the others had been doing.
By this point, only a dozen or so Creepers remained alive inside the wall, with some of them clearly badly injured, with blood pouring from wounds in their green, scaly skin. Knowing that the shifters present could easily deal with them all, I turned from the tree, thinking that I’d head back to the houses just to make sure everyone was okay, and also to make sure that no Creepers had managed to escape the fight or anything.
However, one had, as I found out the very moment that I turned around. Leering at me with his razor-sharp, pointy teeth bared, he was charging toward me, maybe only ten or fifteen feet away. Startled and horrified, I screamed, instinctively pulling my arm back to throw an orb. Strengthened by a fresh wave of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I hurled it with all my might, although this didn’t matter much. The orb I’d thrown was what I called a “dead” one, meaning barely visible, indicating that I was running out of power. It not only didn’t have the effect of knocking out the Creeper, but it barely had any effect on him, making him only slow to a stop, making a faint growl at what was probably only slight pain.