by Mark Tufo
***
The werewolf was swinging his arm back and forth trying to dislodge the steel imbedded in him. Blood was spraying in great arcs as he did so. A kid, who I guess was trying to make a name for himself, came to my rescue. He had a pitchfork, a fucking pitchfork! It was like the Polish riding into battle on horseback against a German Panzer division. The kid saved my ass, but I’m sure in no fashion he had ever figured on.
The werewolf sheered half his face off. The young man’s left eye rolled upwards even as that half of his face fell away. I’d seen some inherently disgusting things in my long life, and at this very moment, that had the dubious award of being the worst. A deli meat slicer couldn’t have done it with any more precision. Facial muscles rippled wetly and glowed dully in the moonlight; damaged just enough that he couldn’t pull that side of himself into a scream. It looked like a doctor’s diorama, and that’s what I was going to go with no matter what my nightmares said to the contrary.
His weapon of choice was flung from his hands and to my feet…which I gladly picked up. The handle was slick with blood, and as far as I was concerned it was werewolf blood and not facial. Again, I’m entitled to dilute my horrors as best I see fit. I rolled and jammed at least three of the tines through the soft skin under the lupine’s chin, driving its muzzle to a closed position. The handle shuddered as I went further and then through the roof of its mouth and into its brain where the beast finally stilled.
The boy had fallen next to me, his one undamaged eye looking up, pleading with me for help or to help him end his misery. Neither thing could I do for him now as I yanked the pitchfork free. My sword was tantalizingly close; unfortunately, the next werewolf was even closer. I only had enough time to hold the handle up in a defensive posture, which it summarily bit in half.
“Not cool,” I said as I backed away.
His teeth were snapping faster than those stupid little chattering gag teeth we all thought were so cool when we were seven. Now, well…not so much. From the way I had pivoted, I could see that Tommy and Bailey were not going to be able to help anytime soon, and I saw no more wannabe heroes heading my way. I hurled the broken wooden half at the werewolf. He, she…it…shrugged it off. I had about a foot of handle attached to the end of my pitchfork. It was about as unwieldy a weapon as I’d ever held, and yet it was all that separated me from certain death.
The only thing I had going for me was that they were fairly predictable – forward it would come. But now it had the reach, if this was a prizefight, advantage went over to him. A claw raked across my chest, ripping through my heavy jacket, my burlap shirt, and across my chest, leaving a trail of blood and fire-lanced pain. I winced and stepped back before he could open the wound further. This was not going according to plan, although that’s a huge assumption. I mean the part about me having a plan to begin with.
I knew what I had to do, but just because you know you have to get a root canal doesn’t mean you want to. I had to take one for the team; I let my guard down just enough that the werewolf’s next swipe caught me flush on the top part of my arm. I’m not sure how it didn’t break, but I didn’t have too much time to think about it as my feet lifted from the ground. For two shining seconds I was Superman as I flew through the air. I sure as shit didn’t get as high as a tall building, though. I landed close to my sword and THAT was actually what I was hoping for. I may have lost a millisecond or two marveling that it had actually worked as I reached out and snagged it.
The werewolf was on me before I stopped rolling. This time, though, I had a weapon in each hand. With my right sword-clad hand I returned the favor to his mid-section; although I think I paid him back with some interest as I saw the thick muscle walls peel back. The slice was nearly a foot across and an inch or so deep. Might as well have shot him with a bb gun for all the ‘give-a-shit’ he gave.
“Well, if that didn’t get your attention…this will.” I jumped, driving the tines of the pitchfork into its open mouth. He tried to howl, but when your uvula is pinned in the back of your throat it can be somewhat of a bitch. I slit his throat to save him the trouble. As he dropped down, I grabbed my pitchfork and pulled it out. It was a crappy weapon for the most part, but I liked the comfort it afforded me. As much as I wanted to celebrate my small triumph, I did not have that luxury. I turned towards Azile. She was still lying on the ground in her crumpled form. A massive werewolf stood over her swiping furiously.
It looked to me, like he had horrible depth perception, because he was few inches short of his mark. He snarled when he saw me coming, but that did not deter him from his single-minded mission in the least. Fine with me. I pulled my arm all the way back before I swung. My blade bit deeply into his neck. I severed head from body as neatly as one can do something so grisly. His body fell forward, sliding down whatever barrier Azile had between herself and the outside world, blood smeared the clear cocoon.
“Azile?” I asked softly. She was unmoving.
I dropped the pitchfork. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get around the shield, but apparently it was not designed to stop vamps. I grabbed her around the waist and, as gently as I could, saddled her over my shoulder. She seemed so light, like maybe she had drained herself of substance. I didn’t know if that was possible. But I knew as much about witchcraft as I did about women in general, so not so much.
I stood up. I did not like what I was seeing; werewolves were pouring in and people were pulling back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard a shot, but now that I looked on the scene, I wasn’t hearing much of anything. I ran back to the final rally place, the Church of Bob – I’m not going to even go into that at this point. Let’s just call it the last sanctuary for the old and the young. There were men nervously patrolling the building that wasn’t much more than a log cabin. The walls were stout enough, but nothing short of a foot of concrete was going to stop the werewolves.
“Get her inside!” I needlessly yelled into the ear of the man closest to me. He heard me just fine. “She dies you die!” I shouted again. He blanched. I truly hadn’t meant it as a threat; I was merely implying that the only way they could get through to her was over his dead body. Whatever worked I supposed. If we didn’t stop the werewolves, nobody was going to be around to defend anything.
He nodded vigorously. “Ye-ye-yes, sir.”
“Where are the archers?” I asked, trying my best not to shout in his face. I saw how little I was succeeding by the amount of spittle I shot at him. He pointed towards my left. The archers were basically old men not capable of wielding anything heavier, although the bows at a seventy-five-pound draw, were no joke. It had been decided to use them as a last means of defense. I determined on the spot that, by that time, it would be too late.
“Let’s go!” I told them, motioning with my arm. There were eleven or so. “The arrows!” I said after more than a few left their baskets of projectiles behind. “You have got to be kidding me.”
The fight was waging all around us as I headed for the city gates. “Alright, we’re going to do this like the British,” I told them. They stared at me, probably wondering if the blood leaking from my ears was mixed with my brain matter.
“Six in front, here!” I pointed with my sword. “Five right behind them. When the front bowmen shoot, you will get down and nock an arrow. While you’re doing that, the back row will fire. We will keep doing that until you’re out of arrows or dead. Do you understand?”
“I’m hard of hearing,” one of the older men shouted back, “not stupid! Let me take Dellard’s place. He’ll never be able to squat and stand.”
“Fine, fine hurry up.”
Werewolves were attracted to a group this size. Maybe we wouldn’t be the tastiest morsels out there, but there were enough of us to make it worthwhile. A group of them were heading our way, knocking each other over in an attempt to get to the feast first.
“Fire!” I said needlessly as the front line loosed their first volley. Yelps of pain erupted from the th
rong coming our way. It was funny that, of all the things and noises going on, the one thing I heard distinctly were the pops and creaks of old knees doing things they were unaccustomed to as the men knelt.
“Fire!” I told the second group. Werewolves skidded to a halt with arrows protruding from their bodies.
A couple of men stayed on the ground and fired from there. I was surprised at the strength they exhibited to do that. One of them was laughing as if this were the funniest thing in the world. Or the craziest, I figured.
“Fire at will!” I shouted, not that they were listening anyway, they had figured the rhythm of it out easy enough. Shoot or die, pretty basic.
“Don’t shoot me!” I begged as I moved off to the side and slightly in front.
“Don’t get in the way,” one of them replied.
“Comforting,” I replied as I hacked at a werewolf coming. He had one arrow driven straight through his cheek and another lodged deep in his calf. It would not take a third to drop him as I struck his upper thigh, my arms shivering as the steel collided with femur. We were on the main thoroughfare, the buildings keeping our flanks relatively protected. The werewolves only had one avenue of approach, and I was going to use that to our maximum advantage.
The people who had been scrambling to get back to the Church of Bob now rallied to our position. I saw one of Bailey’s men torn in two as he ran towards us. His legs traveled another five feet before they realized they had nothing steering the ship. Thankfully, the upper half landed out of sight. I had yet to see Tommy or Bailey, but leaving this present location was not a possibility. We were keeping them at bay but barely.
“Are there more arrows?” I asked, taking note that we were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in that regard.
My laughing man began anew with riotous, raucous abandon.
“Don’t shoot me,” I said nearly a fraction of a second too late as I moved in front of the firing line.
“Don’t get in the damn way,” one of the crotchety bastards repeated to me.
I started ripping arrows out of bodies and tossing them back towards where I had come. I think the main crotchety bastard understood what I was doing.
“Cover him!” he yelled.
I would have been safer on my own. As arrows whistled past me, I think I could have counted individual feathers if I stopped long enough to look. I turned to toss three arrows behind me, Laughing Man had tears rolling down his face he was enjoying himself so much. It was then I noted he was pointing in my general direction, and I was pretty sure his eyes weren’t even open.
“This sucks,” I said, moving to the side.
The arrow nicked my nose and thumped into the groin of a werewolf that had set its sights on me. The brute was in a great deal of pain as he stood up. I yanked the projectile free and slammed it into his midsection a few times for good measure. He fell over and was trampled by those coming up behind him. We were creating a decent-sized wall of dead, but these weren’t zombies, the impediment wasn’t going to stop them or even slow them in the slightest. The only thing they had in common with my former foe was that they cared as little about their fallen as the former. Which meant not at all. At least these fuckers screamed when they were coming at you. The eerie silence of a zombie attack was unsettling, although it wasn’t like this was worlds better.
We’d set up a sort of stalemate. However, once those arrows were gone, we were going to have to do a tactical withdrawal. I grabbed about a dozen men and women that looked the best suited for what I was proposing. Laughing Man was at the point where he was dry firing his bow.
“Get him out of here! All of you,” I said, referring to the bowmen, “go…get back to the church!”
“We’ve still got a few arrows.”
“We’ll need them later. Go while you can, we’ll watch your back. Where is the damned fire?” I asked of no one in particular.
We had filled in our shallow pit with pitch, the idea being that we would light it on fire and force the werewolves into the teeth of our defense. The damn thing should have been lit a friggin’ long time ago…had to figure that the person who was in charge of that ship’s had sailed.
We needed that fire. That was going to be the only thing that kept us from being completely surrounded; although that ship was getting ready to leave port as well. Stupid ships. I was hacking and slashing, trying to give the people behind me some sort of chance at regrouping. Werewolves were flooding the street. Some even taking to the rooftops and leaping from one to the next. I could see Bailey and Tommy off to my right. Both looked bloody and impossibly far away. I used the only tool available – my mind, and some might say that was severely lacking.
“The fire, Tommy.”
He didn’t actually reply back, but I could sense his chagrin. He and Bailey turned and were out of sight. We were screwed. I knew it, and the werewolves knew it. Well…probably not, they don’t really give a shit. We were going to cause them many casualties, not that their overlords were going to care. As far as the Lycan were concerned, we were two scourges wiping each other from the planet. Hadn’t seen one of those bastards yet. And why would they unnecessarily expose themselves? The werewolves were their drones and the Lycan were fighting remotely.
I didn’t realize it at first, but I had become completely cut off from the retreat. The only direction the werewolves weren’t coming from was below. My sword became a blur; to stop its momentum was death. If I lodged this thing in a spinal cord I wouldn’t have enough time to remove it and keep them away. I think the only thing I had going for me was that I wasn’t the primary target, but rather, an impediment to that goal. Even as some stopped to end my existence, others streamed past. In fairness, they probably couldn’t see me. And now that I thought of it, that was to become my strategy.
I went for maximum viscera as I struck at the soft bellies of the beasts, ropes of intestines flooding to the ground. Half-digested human remains spilled out with it as stomachs were sliced in two. I went down to one knee just as the werewolf I had devitalized fell over on top of me. As disgusting as this is to write, living it was magnitudes of revolting worse. Timing was crucial as I let his weight push me into the mass of detritus. I was embalmed in everything you can imagine would come from the insides of a cannibalistic werewolf. I may have added my own vomit to the mix, but that would have easily been the best thing in that human stew.
I was under two feet of fuck-fest. My nose was the only thing not submerged, occasionally the air would be pumped from my lungs as a werewolf or two bounded off the pile. Funny how I once thought zombies smelled bad. The only thing that may have kept my fragile mind from snapping was the smell of burning pitch. Tommy and Bailey had succeeded, the fires were lit. We had filled the entire shallow pit, and now that it burned, we had finally stopped their egress from the sides of the town. It had been long moments since I’d felt the tremble of the ground from footfalls. I sloughed off the brute on me. I looked like a B-movie prop gone completely over the top. I was coated from head to toe, I thought about stripping and doing the ‘naked savage’ thing, but time was of the essence, and it was slightly chilly out, there’d be some shrinkage. Yes, even in a fight to the death I was concerned for what people might think about my helmeted buddy.
I wanted to go running through the gates and give the Lycans a little taste of their own medicine, but the real fight was now behind me and getting further away the longer I debated. I waited for a moment, hoping that Bailey and Tommy would come back around. I stayed as long as I dared and then ran to get back to the Church of Bob. The darkest part of the night had long since passed, but we were still a couple of hours from the moon finally taking a bow. Seemed the fat bitch wasn’t quite ready to yield her place on the stage yet. And the hundred or so werewolves that remained were going to make the most of their time left on earth.
I wanted to ask them to stop jumping around so I could get an accurate count, but they were worse than first graders mainlining on Halloween
candy. I came across the infirm werewolves first. The one I came upon had a gash that ran all the way from under her armpit to her calf. The skin had separated by as wide as three inches in some places, muscle and sinew rippled as she moved. How she was still standing eluded me; I figured I could solve that problem. My sword whistled as I sliced her deep on the small of her back. If she’d ever had a tramp stamp I would have surely marred it. Then I was left to wonder if that was one of those weirder fads that had died out with my time. I guess it gave the guy something to look at while he was getting busy, not sure the need though. I’d never felt any reason to be anything more than enamored with what was already going on. Call me crazy.
The werewolf must have already been out on its last legs. As it fell, it barely gave out an ‘oomph’ as it collided with the ground. The next had an arrow that had caught it in the shoulder. I was looking at the protruding barb as I approached. Blood pumped out of the wound with every tortured step it took. There were another half dozen in some sort of weakened fashion that I rid of all earthly troubles, one sword stroke at a time. Now I was to the meat of the fight, the werewolves I was now encountering were fighting each other to get into better position to kill. None, as of yet, had figured out the threat to the rear. That was about to change.
I must have looked like the walking dead as they turned, a vengeful, deathly spirit come to exact my toll. I’d like to think I’d struck some chord of fear in them, but that seemed like a lot of wishful thinking on my part. In the annals of history, this won’t go down as a particularly big battle, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in ferocity. Screams of anguish were intermingled with cries of triumph and punctuated with tears of tragedy. We just needed to hold on…that was it…just a little longer. That was the gist of the battle plan: hold the fuck on. I knew that if my arms were aching, then the people on the other side of this werewolf wall had to be flagging.
The only thing we seemingly had going for us was that whoever was left, was here. There were no werewolf reinforcements rounding the bend. I gritted my teeth; shoulders aching as I slashed again. Body parts littered the ground. It looked like a Civil War operating floor. I felt a rush of heat as a claw ripped through my side, I danced away as far as I could before it could sink deep. As it was, it would need tending even with my recuperative power.
A werewolf head rocked back as a bullet struck it in the side. I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was the one that had tried to take a chunk from me. Bailey was running towards me at a full tilt.
“You did not take that shot on the run?” I asked. Not that she could hear me, but the question needed to be posed.
“Last bullet,” she said as she joined the fray. She was as deadly with her eight-inch blade as I was with the sword, probably more so. She jammed the damn thing so far into the throat of the closest werewolf, it came out through its back. It struggled to put its hands up to the wound. She kicked it over before it had a chance.
“Tommy?” I asked.
She gave a curt shake of her head. Her lips pressed tight.
I knew that for the impossibility that it was. It was inconceivable that Tommy could die. Nobody lives for six hundred-plus years, and then ‘poof’…is just gone. I would not and – more importantly – could not accept that fact. If I lost one more tie to the past, I would be adrift in a sea of despair. Seconds became minutes as we fought. Ever-swirling, with Death as our partner; so close, he would sweep in and I’d swear I could smell the sodden earth of my burial pit.
Screw that. “If I die,” I yelled to Bailey, “tell Azile I want to go out like a Viking!”
“No idea what a Viking is,” Bailey replied almost effortlessly as if she were removing wax from a roll of cheese as opposed to fighting werewolves. “But you are not going to die.”
If Tommy, who was bigger, faster, and stronger than me could die, then all bets were off on my particular status. I could only hope that he would somehow find his way back to his sister. There would be more than enough time to mourn later. Now, all my effort went into fighting through the Lycan wannabes and defending Azile. I could only hope it wasn’t too late.
