Mark saluted and headed out to move the small crate of grenades, set the watch, inspect weapons, and do what he did as the platoon sergeant.
***
“Whoa! Why are you ganging up on me?” Aaron cried, looking at the stern expressions on the human faces of the four Werewolves.
“What are you?” Char demanded. “Don’t make me ask you again. It’ll be easier to rip you to shreds so we don’t have to watch our backs.”
“What does it matter?” he asked. Char grabbed his collar and yanked his face to her level.
“My mate and I have sworn to protect these people. Period. You are a threat. Change into your Were form now or die,” she growled.
He held up his hands in surrender. Sue, Shonna, and Merrit were on the balls of their feet, ready to fight. Their clothes were unbuttoned and loose. Clyde wagged his tail slowly, curious as to why his pack was upset.
Without stripping, the man shimmered for a millisecond before his clothes covered a hairy creature underneath. A Weretiger shrugged out of the clothes. Char looked at the cat, understanding why he didn’t want to change before a bunch of wolves.
And a dog. Clyde went nuts with a great cat two feet in front of his face. His hackles were up as he barked and lunged. Aaron retreated a step, then stood on his back legs to put his paws on Char’s shoulders.
“Aren’t you a tall kitty?” she said, relieved as she didn’t get any sense that Aaron would attack.
Clyde, on the other hand, saw the opportunity and darted for the Weretiger’s exposed private parts. At Were speed, the cat slapped Clyde in the head with his big paw. Clyde yipped and backed away, continuing to bark furiously. Aaron changed into human form, then dressed quickly while blushing.
“Was that okay?” he asked.
Sue was on one knee, checking the small scratches on Clyde’s head from the Were’s claws. “You hurt my dog,” she snarled.
“I did? I’m so sorry. You see, I can’t seem to remember anything that happens when I’m in the tiger’s form,” Aaron apologized.
“There are no tigers native to North America?” Shonna asked.
“China. I was there teaching English when I encountered the, you know, the conversion process,” he answered sheepishly.
“Thanks. Welcome to America. Here we are, cats and dogs and all that. Welcome to the pack.” Char held out a hand and Aaron tentatively shook it.
“What is the world coming to?” Char mumbled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Kiwi said, holding up a moldy old phone book. Gerry and Kiwi had checked the area and scavenged while they were waiting for the venison to cook. The wolves lounged around, having fed well from two deer they were able to run down
Ted and Timmons jumped up, startling the wolves. They reverently took the phone book from Kiwi’s hands.
“Where’d you find this?” Timmons wondered as they carefully set the book on the ground and flipped it open.
“Balancing a table with a short leg,” she replied.
“Railroad. Look at that. See Museum.” They slowly and gingerly rolled the old pages until they got to the M section. “Museum, Railroad. Where’s Union? Up front are maps. Careful, careful! There you are. Now, where are we?” Ted said, talking more to himself than anyone watching.
“There’s O’Hare.” Timmons stabbed a finger at the map. “We came west for what, twenty miles? All we need to do is find this road, then turn here. Maybe we can call them, see what they have?” Timmons laughed at his own joke.
“But the phones don’t work?” Ted replied.
“That’s why we’re going there, Ted, because we can’t call them. They have to have something we can use. Think about this, Ted. The museum of our past will deliver the way to our future!”
“Yes. I like that.”
With fresh attitudes, they inhaled their meals, roused the wolves, and set off at a brisk pace to reach the railway museum that day. They had twenty miles to go and the afternoon to get there.
***
If they lost one more truck, some people would have to walk. There was no space unoccupied. It was dangerous at higher speeds, so they slowed down, which drove Terry crazy.
They were through North Dakota, and the worst of the ruined lands. In his mind, they were traveling downhill. They stopped well short of Minneapolis, because Terry wanted to run straight through the city. Someday they could come back and try to rescue survivors.
His plan to use the town elders—Antioch, Claire, Mrs. Grimes, Margie Rose, Pepe, and Maria—to meet with people they passed fell flat. Char had no idea where they went, but the groups were no longer where they’d seen them last.
Margie Rose was always so courteous at each stop, checking in on Char and Kaeden. Once she found out that Char was pregnant, Terry fell out of the picture.
She’d walk past him on her way to hug the beautiful woman with the purple eyes.
He took it in stride and appreciated the extra attention so he could focus on the nit-noid details to keep people moving in one direction.
There’d been no knock down, drag out fights, but the peacekeepers, the elders, kept tempers in check.
Humanity was coming home to a civilization they had yet to rebuild.
Over four hundred people total. There were barely a hundred when Margie Rose showed him that common decency still existed. It brought Terry Henry Walton back to the world, not in a trickle but in a tidal wave.
He saw how far they’d come, but most importantly, how far he’d come since the dark days. “Melissa, wherever you are, I know that all the good in my life has come because you’ve forgiven me,” Terry whispered with his eyes closed.
When he opened them, he found Kaeden standing at his feet.
“Who’s Melissa?” the little boy asked.
Terry picked him up as he headed into the camp. “Let me tell you about her…”
***
Adams sniffed the fresh air blowing off the Bighorn Mountains. The seven people they found and their longhorns were in the road. The Weathers family herd didn’t seem to care about the massive horns of their fellow bovines. They intermingled to create a great herd of cattle mooing and shuffling.
Boris and his squad rode with the cattle as they pushed through the ruins of the city.
Four carts loaded with people and food followed the herd. Adams walked up front with Lousy State and EssCee. He knew that their given names were Louisiana State and South Carolina, but he called them how they referred to themselves.
“Terry said to stay south of the next river we come to and then to stay south of the Missouri River. I agree. Getting the cattle across bridges is a huge pain in my ass,” Adams confided.
“He said ass!” Lousy State laughed.
Adams shook his head. It was going to be a hellaciously long walk to Chicago.
“We used to live out there, you know,” S.C. offered. “It was bad, real bad. This is fine, like paradise. There’s grass for the cattle, water, food for us. Plenty of everything, but you know what we could really use?”
“What?” Adams bit.
“Girls,” S.C. replied. Lousy State pursed his lips and nodded.
Adams’s face darkened. “My partner, Xandrie, died not long ago, in the fight inside Cheyenne Mountain. I miss her every hour of every day, because when you have the right girl, you realize how much you were missing when you were going it alone. I have high hopes for you both. There’s nothing like finding the right person.”
Yes, it was going to be a long walk.
***
Ted jumped up and down like a little kid. The wolves shied away from him. All they wanted to do was lay down and sleep. They’d gorged on deer, then been forced to run twenty miles.
Gerry and Kiwi were brushing the horses down. They were in a field alongside the Illinois Railway Museum, where Ted and Timmons had broken into the massive steam shop.
Toledo and Detroit Railroad #16 sat inside where someone had lovingly take
n care of it after the WWDE. It looked pristine. The shop hadn’t even been looted. It only took two minutes to figure out why.
The volunteers from the railway museum had defended it. The last to die was still in a cot to the side of the small office, his rifle in bed with him. There was even ammunition for it.
“They must have stayed well past the evacuation, the plagues, all of it,” Timmons said, before realizing that Ted wasn’t with him.
Ted was on the engine, checking it over. Grease had been lathered on most parts to keep the rust from taking hold. Oil had dripped from somewhere, leaving a large puddle below the engine.
“All we need is coal and we’ll be driving out of here tomorrow!” Ted proclaimed triumphantly.
“Coal? Try wood, Ted,” Timmons called as he checked the rifle, then they moved to the cases of tools.
“No, we can use the coal they have stored here,” Ted answered. Timmons looked up. In one of the bays, there were two coal cars half-filled with coal. “After the fall, they wouldn’t have needed to run the boilers. Coal, by its very nature, is long-lasting. Twenty years or twenty millennia, it should still burn as long as it is in its natural state.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Timmons said as he abandoned the rifle and the tools to join his friend.
“I wouldn’t kid about something like this, Timmons.” Ted’s yellow eyes sparkled as he looked at his new best friend, the old-fashioned steam locomotive that would haul his other best friend, a nuclear reactor, anywhere they wanted to take it.
The irony of steam hauling a nuke whose sole purpose was to create more steam wasn’t lost on Timmons.
***
The run through Minneapolis went without a hitch. The city dwellers were far more interested in the vehicle convoy than the country people, Terry observed with mild interest. He was afraid to stop because he didn’t want to lose a vehicle. Early on, breakdowns had happened, but now, as long as they could get the vehicles running, they were fine. Shutting them down seemed to cause the oldsters the problems.
Terry’s easy answer was to not shut the trucks down. “Next stop Chicago!” he yelled as he carefully cruised alongside the line of vehicles. He waved to the people and kept yelling as he passed.
Char and Kae both looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
He turned serious. “They need to know that we’re pushing on for a reason. We can’t lose anyone now. Would you have ever thought that when we planned this, we wouldn’t lose a single person?”
Char didn’t bother answering. Her Knight of the Roundtable was consistent in putting other people first. Although he was prepared to lose people to the rigors of the road, the only sacrifices they’d made were in the trucks left along the side of the road.
The convoy continued at a steady thirty-five miles an hour because Terry wanted to get there before nightfall. A couple of the trucks were belching black smoke and running roughly. The drivers did what they needed to do to keep the trucks rolling.
With the barrels of extra fuel and the loss of trucks, they had plenty of diesel remaining in the tanker, which meant that they could keep a small fleet of vehicles running after they arrived.
Terry liked the hell out of that. He had expected to show up and then be limited to horseback or on foot, leather personnel carriers, as he used to call his boots.
They had to slow down when they passed Milwaukee so the semi could push the jumble of cars out of the way. Terry could no longer lead in the dune buggy, so they pulled it to the side of the road. Terry hopped out and ran after the semi, catching up and jumping on the running board to yell the final directions to First Sergeant Blevin.
Char ran around the vehicle and hopped in the driver’s seat, buckling Kae in before she drove off and caught up to the semi. She knew why he was hanging on the outside of the truck. There were six people squeezed into the cab.
They pushed on, speeding up where they could, hitting some of the derelict vehicles faster than they should have.
Forward, always forward they traveled.
***
They only had to stop three times for Timmons to manually change the switches to get on the track they wanted. Ted took the position of conductor and let Timmons do everything else, from shoveling coal to switching the track. Ted watched the dials and adjusted them according to specifications he carried in his mind.
Timmons was okay with doing the grunt work. He understood the engine every bit as much as Ted, but for Timmons, it was just a tool. For Ted, it seemed like an extension of his body.
For Gerry, Kiwi, and the wolf pack, it was a loud squealing mess that they continuously ran after.
Ted had said the hard work would be moving the trains around to clear track in front of the one they wanted. It took a whole day of shifting back and forth before they were able to hook up to the twelve tankers and the Mini Cooper. They’d unhooked the line of tankers following the reactor to keep the weight down. Ted wanted to limit the stress on his baby, who was well over one hundred years old.
Toledo and Detroit #16 spun the big wheels once on the slick steel before they grabbed and the clangs and bangs of railcars pulling tight echoed behind it. Ted pulled on the steam whistle, which made the horses jump and the wolves bolt.
Ted only laughed as he brought up the power and the train moved slowly west. It left the railyard and took a long, slow turn around the airport before heading east to catch the track that took it directly to North Chicago. Timmons only had to run ahead twice to manually switch the tracks. It would have been impossible for a single human, but with a long pry bar and his Werewolf strength, he was able to make it happen.
***
Terry waved as the semi passed between the farms. He knew that Pepe and Maria would be all eyes as they saw the fertile fields. The people weren’t as shy as they had been before.
Terry wondered if Corporal James had been able to make contact. He’d find out soon enough.
The convoy limped off the exit and pulled into the parking area of the old power plant. The other vehicles pulled in behind, parking in order as they always did, side to side, so if a vehicle died in place, it wouldn’t hold up the others.
Terry wondered if they were inside, curious that he couldn’t hear anything. He realized that the main door was closed. When he got to it, there was a note scratched into the rust. “Home, 2 miles that way,” with an arrow.
Terry jogged back to the others. All the vehicles were shut down and people were staggering around, confused. Terry climbed into his dune buggy and stood on the driver’s chair. He clung to the roll cage that made up the roof of the vehicle.
“Listen up,” he projected, his voice echoing oddly off the old power plant. “This is the power plant that we will eventually bring online. But our people here left us a note. It says that our new home is one mile that way. I don’t know about you, but after that drive, I could use the walk. HOME!”
The people cheered weakly. Terry hoped to hell that they were ready for the influx of people they were going to get.
“Need us to fire the trucks up, boss? One last time,” Blevin asked.
“Let’s see where we’re going, First Sergeant, then we’ll move things intelligently, one time, to the best place for them. It would be nice if you could get these into a shop, wouldn’t it?”
The old man nodded, smiling.
“That it would, Colonel.”
The clop of hooves on the roadway alerted the town’s people.
James and Lacy waved from their horses on the roadway outside the old power plant. They negotiated the hill and rode in.
They saw the colonel and made a beeline, stopping and saluting in front of him.
“Damn good to see you two!” Terry told them.
“You made some great time, sir. We weren’t expecting you for quite some time,” James started, looking around at the mass of people surrounding them, many of them new.
“Report, Corporal,” Terry ordered.
“Great Lakes Naval Base i
s right there,” James reported, pointing. “It has a small power plant that Ted and Timmons have already been able to get running. We’re currently cleaning out multi-family homes and barracks for the good people of New Boulder!”
James yelled the last part for everyone to hear.
“Is there room to park our trucks?”
“As much as you need, sir, and would you look at that! Where in the hell did you find all of this? Who are these people? Where’s the rest of the platoon?” James asked rapidly.
Lacy shook her head. Billy and Felicity were happy to walk or drive the last mile. They just wanted to get to their new home.
Char laughed.
Terry smiled. “Later, once we have these people settled. Blevin! Fire up the trucks, we’re going home!”
Many opted to walk, while others climbed onto the vehicles. Three of the trucks wouldn’t start. At that point in time, no one cared. People adjusted and the other engines revved.
Terry led the way in his dune buggy, and the other vehicles followed along the cleared roadway. James galloped ahead while Lacy remained with the walkers.
They followed James through the main gate and into the base, turning and following the road past sports fields, past the parade deck, and behind the main administration buildings where the temporary housing units were located.
James directed the vehicles into the largest parking lot. Terry waved Billy to the front. He drove up and parked the dune buggy next to Terry’s beat-up ride. James started pointing as he told Billy about the available quarters that they’d already prepared. They only had half of what they needed, since they thought they’d have more time.
Billy told them not to worry. They had four hundred people to help and what would have taken two people months to do, the town’s people would accomplish in days.
Billy looked at the main building where admirals and naval captains would have once sat. “I see the mayor’s office, Felicity darling.”
“I do, too, Billy dear,” Felicity drawled.
Nomad Omnibus 02: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (A Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Omnibus) Page 21