by S A Ison
“Look, no one knows, except you now. The agency doesn’t know, but there are a few of our kind working there. We have a special skill set that allows us to be very functional in our chosen field,” Xander said. He moved the truck around several abandoned cars and saw the dealership ahead about a half mile.
“Yeah, we like ta kill, so our inner beasts get their chance,” Zahara said and grinned. Xander noticed that her teeth were still a bit long and sharp. He thought she was doing it to screw with Ethan since he’d come to retire her.
“Look, there are lots of werewolves out there in the world, we just don’t advertise it. Or at least most of us don’t advertise it,” he said pointedly at Zahara. He pulled into the car dealership and pulled up to the showroom double doors. There were zombies wandering around in between shiny new vehicles.
Ethan felt the heat of both Wilder and Demir. Werewolves? Could that even be possible? Really? Had he really seen the diminutive woman begin to grow and change? Had her eyes really become two orbs of glowing gold?
“Put your suppressors on, so if we kill, we don’t draw more of those things,” Ethan said as he scooted out of the truck. He eyed Zahara and felt a subterranean shiver. Werewolf? First zombies and now werewolves. It was like he fell through some kind of dimensional shift or something. His world had shifted entirely in a matter of minutes. The zombies were bad enough, but werewolves? Fuck me, he thought. And if he’d shot Agent Zed, would she have died? Or would she have torn him apart? And Xander, he’d never let on in all the time he’d known the man and worked with him. Even in Djibouti, Wilder hadn’t let anything slip and they’d nearly been killed. He shook his head as he followed the agents.
They tested doors and knocked on windows but no one was there.
“Maybe break a window and just get the keys,” Zahara said. Ethan watched as she shifted from foot to foot. She was a small woman but she’d stretched when she’d started turning in the storage area. All three turned when they heard a screaming sound and watched as a Piper Cherokee airplane came hurling toward the dealership.
“What in the hell?” Xander said and all three ran toward the back of the large building and watched as the small six-seater slammed into the Humvees. Of course, the plane hit the very vehicles we wanted. Why not? I’m in a fucking nightmare, Ethan thought dully. He began to walk forward when an explosion knocked him backwards. The fire from the explosion and crash began to spread and then vehicles near the crash site began to explode. Vehicles were launched into the air and crashed down like rain around them.
“We gotta get out of here before we lose the truck,” Xander said and yanked Ethan’s sleeve. He started running after the other two when something hit him and he fell to the ground and his head bounced off the pavement. For a moment he was stunned and looked up into the gaping jaws of one of those things. He scrambled back on his hands and kicked out at the creature. To his horror, the thing bit down on his shoe like a dog and began to shake his head. Then the zombie’s head jerked back and the thing fell to the ground beside him. He stared at it and then felt Zahara grabbing his arm.
“Move your ass lover boy or I’m gonna leave you to these things,” she hissed in his ear and he looked up into her emerald eyes and he saw something deep within them, something very deadly. He nodded and managed to get to his feet and run. There were more explosions and heavy acrid smoke was choking him as he staggered toward the truck.
“We got to go back to my vehicle. I really need to get my equipment and I’ve got a bag of ammo. I think we’re gonna need it,” Ethan said as he scrambled into the truck. Zahara was sitting in the middle and he slammed the door. The truck shook with an explosion near it and the windows of the showroom were blasted out. Ethan looked around and saw more zombies moving through the heavy smoke. They needed to get the hell out of there. Xander pulled the truck around and ran right into a large group of zombies and their hands were banging on the hood of the old truck. Xander was snarling something and Ethan looked at him, wondering if the man was going to change into an animal before his eyes. They tried to go around but there was little room with the other vehicles.
“I’m gonna plow through ‘em,” Xander snarled and hunched forward. The truck picked up speed and for once, Ethan was glad there weren’t airbags in the vehicle as the bodies bounced off the front. The Chevy had some power behind it and it bounced off the bodies beneath it. A bloody hand smacked the window and there was a loud crack. Ethan looked over and saw the spiderweb begin to grow on the window. If that window shattered, Xander would have hands all over him.
“Faster, man. They break that window and you’ll get dragged out!” Ethan barked.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Xander snarled and looked over at him. Ethan jerked back as though he was punched when he saw the brilliant golden eyes that seemed to flame with rage. Ethan was normally an even-tempered operative and kept his cool during stressful situations, but finding out he was in the small truck cab with two werewolves was starting to affect him. Add in a zombie apocalypse and he was having a really shitty day. Beside him Zahara was laughing like a lunatic and he looked at her. He could only shake his head. That was his luck, to be trapped with a lunatic werewolf at the end of the world.
Zahara looked at Agent Vector and grinned. This was some wild shit and it was like life had turned in on itself and was just too crazy to be real. Part of her was absolutely enraged; the agency had sent Agent Vector to punch her ticket and why? She’d not left any evidence of her adventures across the interstates. Was it for some other transgression? Had they already found out about Vegas? Her target had been a werewolf. She would not kill a werewolf. Did Washington know that her target was a werewolf? Was that why they sent her? Or was he just a target who just happened to be a werewolf? It didn’t matter, because they’d called for her retirement. Washington pukes. Well, it was the end of the world now and it was open killing season. The animal within her was pressing on her skin, trying to get out. Her bones ached with the want for bloodshed. She fed her animal-side tidbits along the way, but smelling all this blood and seeing all the mayhem? That was like a drug to her. She felt she might jump out of her skin and she felt excitement roiling through her veins and felt the sizzle of the hunt.
She could tell that even Xander felt it as well. She could smell the heat off of him and the excitement and that made her more excited. All she wanted to do was jump out of the window and maul and attack these things. What fun! Wholesale slaughter and no one to stop her. She looked at Ethan and giggled. His eyes were wide and the smug killer wasn’t looking so certain of his world anymore. She sighed happily and soon the bodies of zombies were falling behind them as Xander maneuvered the truck down the road. She looked in the side mirror and watched the flames and smoke fill the dealership and the road. She settled into the seat and propped her feet on the dash. She checked her weapon and holstered it. No one spoke for a long time.
It was completely dark by the time Xander found a place to hole up. They had retrieved Ethan’s equipment and extra ammo. There was no one in the hotel lobby that he chose. They went to the desk and Zahara punched in the information to make keys for their rooms, which were located near an exit on the sixth floor. Thankfully, power was still on and before they went up, they swung by the hotel’s kitchen. Carrying their gear and bags of food and water to the rooms, Xander made sure to watch for any movement from the silent rooms around them. Here and there they heard groaning or movement, but nothing in the halls. There was more gunfire from outside in the distance. Someone was fighting zombies. If his guesses were correct, they’d never have enough ammunition to kill all those things. Anyone killed by a zombie would be turned into a zombie, he was sure. The more dead the more zombies.
He noticed that Zahara had only made two keys, adjoining rooms. Ethan took the room with the king and he and Zahara took the one with two double beds. He looked at her and she appeared too guileless for his liking. He wondered what she was about. He was tired, stressed and had no clue as to what
to do next. They checked the rooms and settled in. Ethan propped the door to the adjoining rooms open and he looked a little better than he had earlier. He’d looked positively gray before but now his natural color was coming back. Xander’s stomach growled and he opened the bag with food in it. There were pre-made sandwiches and chips. Bottles of water, fruit, soft drinks. He walked over to the small fridge in the room and opened it. There were small drinks and he grabbed two of the small bottles of vodka.
Sitting on the end of the bed he let his shoulders fall in exhaustion. He’d been riding on an adrenalin rush for the past couple of hours and he was almost sick with it. Zahara was almost maniacal, moving around the room like her namesake, Flea. It was as though she couldn’t settle. She was starting to get on his nerves. He couldn’t believe she showed her animal with Ethan there. It was no accident because it took effort to let the animal break out, not to mention painful.
“I’m taking a bath,” Zahara announced and he could only nod. She dug around in her bag and then disappeared into the bathroom. Ethan leaned against the adjoining doors staring at him.
“What?” Xander asked.
“A friggen werewolf?”
“There is more in heaven and earth. So, the agency knew where my car was? What in the hell did they want me to come back for? And why were you to retire Zahara? Who gave the order?” He already knew the answer.
“O’Donnell and I don’t know why. I think the agency knows where we are most of the time. I think we fool ourselves into believing we’re under the radar. I won’t ask, but I figure you weren’t in Huntsville when this shit went down. Everything was fine, just a few canceled flights. Then things started heating up when I left the west coast, but then I started hearing about the virus on the news outlets. As I moved across the country, I began to see things weren’t right. More police out there along with roadblocks and such. Flights canceled with the pandemic,” Ethan said picking up a water.
“O’Donnell is a pencil pushing prick. Let’s see if anything’s on TV. I have a sneaking suspicion we’re out of work. At least I’m not going back,” Xander said as he picked up the remote and turned the TV on. He turned the volume down and clicked around. Some of the stations were nothing but snow and then he found the news station and flung the remote to the bed. The news anchor was talking and he read the banner across the bottom and saw that an attack had been perpetrated worldwide but there was little amplifying information. Ethan pulled a chair next to Xander and sat down. He reached over and dug a sandwich out of the bag. Both men looked to the bathroom door when they heard Zahara humming happily. Xander snorted and shook his head.
“At least someone is happy about this freaking mess,” Ethan said.
“Well, she’s had a stay of execution. Thanks for not blowing her head off,” Xander said, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Could I have even killed her?” Ethan asked, a dark eyebrow raised.
“Maybe, but if you’d missed the headshot, you’d have pissed her off really good,” Xander said, his mouth full and he spit out crumbs as he talked. He took one of the small bottles and opened it and drank down the vodka in two gulps and shivered. He belched out and took another bite of his sandwich.
“You think maybe the agency knew about her, you know, being a wolf?” Ethan asked.
“Doubt it, unless they caught her on camera while she was changing. Zahara might seem like a flake, but that’s just for show. She’s a serious stone-cold killer and a professional, though this apocalypse is bringing out her animal.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around all of this. Someone has weaponized this virus thing. It must have been an airborne virus or something. It spread too quickly,” Ethan said reaching for the remote. He changed channels but the same news was on the other channels.
“I’ve been off grid for over a month and when Zahara came to see me a week ago, she’d not seen any of this. So, this has all happened in the last week or week and a half. At the most, ten days.”
“I lost contact with Washington earlier today, but I’d not tried to contact them over the last couple of days. So, I don’t know. There may have been several launching platforms in different countries which would explain why this virus is so widespread.” Shrugging, Ethan got up and went to the window and pulled the curtain and looked out.
“So, while you’re a werewolf, do you think like you or are you more animal?”
“Not right now. I’m too tired to go into werewolf 101. Just know that there are werewolves in all walks of life. Most stay hidden for obvious reasons. And like most people, you have your good werewolves and your bad ones.” He took a drink and turned; from the bathroom they could hear Zahara singing.
“My balls are big and hairy; they swing from side to side. When I jump up and down, they slap upon my thighhhssss,” she belted out. She sighed happily, she had dodged a bullet, literally. She liked Ethan okay, he was a little anal retentive, but a good agent for all that. Other than today and the zombies, plane crash and near transformation, she thought he handled himself fairly well. She stretched her foot to the hot water knob and turned it on with her toes.
She didn’t know why she’d exposed herself today. She’d never done it before and she thought about the last words her mother spoke to her. She turned her head toward the toilet, but Zahara didn’t see that, instead, she saw the severed head of a werewolf lying beside her dying mother. She’d been five years old and her mother’s warm breath was panting, weakening, as she laid in her own blood.
“Never show…never show t…them who and w-what you are.” Blood bubbled from her mother’s lips with each word uttered. Zahara’s head and body had been on the floor, laying in the large puddle of her parents’ blood as she watched the lights go out of her mother’s eyes. She didn’t know how her parents had been killed since her mother had shoved her into a closet. She’d heard the screams outside and she’d wet herself as she cowered down in the back of the dark closet. When it was quiet, she’d crawled out and had found her parents. She had laid on the floor to look into her mother’s eyes. Her hand had reached out to hold the claws of her father’s massive paw. Zahara shook her head and dispelled the images of her murdered parents. It was funny because she didn’t remember a lot of her life before their deaths, but their bodies were etched clearly in her mind and all that had happened after.
She turned off the water and closed her eyes. She was officially retired and now in the middle of a zombie invasion. It didn’t bother her however, that wiener, O’Donnell and his ilk; she hoped they were dead and perhaps she’d pay them a visit in the future. Order her execution? No, she’d not let that one pass, and a savage grin spread across her features. The hit was ordered on U.S. soil, so it was off the books. It shouldn’t have been ordered. But for the fact her target was a werewolf, she’d have shot him and never thought another thing about it. For now, they’d have to figure out what to do in the immediate future. She already knew what she wanted to do, she wanted to go back to Xander’s cabin in the woods. There was game a plenty, she’d already sniffed that out. He had food and fishing and he had weapons of mass destruction in that basement of his.
She could hear the two agents talking in the other room and snorted. They were talking about maybe going to Washington. Fools. There was nothing there except death. If Huntsville was any indication of what was going on, then the rest of the country was delving into bedlam and death. The more people the more zombies. She just hoped for her sake that she could become nose deaf, because zombies stunk like hell. She also hoped that she wouldn’t turn into a zombie werewolf, but that prospect didn’t bother her too much. Reaching for the soap, she lathered herself up and let her mind drift.
Ž
Bobby and Avery woke as the birds were making themselves known. He squinted out the window of his bedroom and noted the pale light filtering through the curtains. Avery had made a bed on the floor near the door. He’d been afraid to sleep in one of the other rooms. Bobby mumbled and shook his head. H
is body ached and he shifted toward the edge of the bed. Going to the prison had been a bust, it was filled with those zombie creatures and Avery had nearly shit himself. Bobby padded his way to the bathroom, a string of farts following him. He scratched at his rump. They’d hit the gun store and had been disappointed since it had been ransacked. He did manage to find an AR15 and several boxes of ammo for it. With his own gun, a Glock 42 and ammo, he thought it was a start. He turned his head when he heard the distant pops of gunfire. It was becoming commonplace now.
He and Avery would have to hit up more gun shops. They would also have to recruit a few more people since watching out for zombies was going to be a full-time job. He thought about Reggie and some of the guys from the Klavern. He was a little unsure about asking any of them. He needed followers. Many from the Klavern had their own ideas and he’d tried to call a few, but none had picked up. He wondered if they’d been turned into zombies? Whoever he picked, he’d be able to offer food and shelter. He just needed to find a good place to hole up.
“Shit,” he cursed softly as he looked outside the bathroom window. There were dozens of zombies wandering out in the yard and street. There were roughly half a million souls in Huntsville and that was half a million zombies or would be at some point. He didn’t have enough ammo and more than likely never would. He had to have a plan. He moved into the kitchen and looked out that window. More of the damned things were milling around. He’d give his left nut for a flame thrower. He watched as they bumped into each other and just teetered around the yard and sidewalk. It was as though they knew he was there and he wondered at it. Were these creatures able to think? Could they be reasoned with? All the movies he’d seen had said no.
Opening the refrigerator, he pulled out a beer and opened it. He had a pounding headache and figured he’d help it go away. He thought about Redstone Arsenal Army Base but shook his head. They were more than likely locked down and he didn’t fancy getting his ass shot off. But maybe he could set up shop nearby. It would be nice to have the Army at his back. Maybe they’d swing by there and take a look-see. He scratched at his unshaven face and it made a rasping sound. He sipped his beer and watched several women zombies wander about and there were children as well. Made him glad he didn’t have rug-rats. He’d also swing by the dealership and pick up another Humvee for Avery and they’d begin picking up supplies once more. There was a lot to do and a lot to gather.
