by Jan Stryvant
"Jon, there's hundreds of them!" Brandt said, looking at him in disbelief.
"Listen, do you want to be the one to go back and tell Claudia we got Sean killed?"
Even in the darkness, Jon could see Brandt pale.
"Right, counterattack! Lead the way!"
"What's going on up there?" Art asked Jace and pointed towards what looked like flashes that were over on the other side of the ridge.
"Hell if I know. Keith," Jace asked the driver, "What's going on?"
"Damned if I know! But that definitely looks like gunfire!"
"Everybody!" Art yelled, "Gear up! Hogue, call the second bus, tell them to gear up as well! Non-combatants, stay in the buses when we get out!"
Art looked back at Jace who was on his phone and talking.
"Yeah! We're almost there now! Tell them not to shoot at us; we're coming in from the east! Got it!"
Jace looked at Art, "They're being attacked by a large force. They're coming from the west."
"Thank goodness we're coming from the other side!" The driver said.
"How close can you get us?" Art asked him.
"How close do you want to be?" Keith, the driver had floored the bus and the ride over the unimproved road was getting a lot more violent.
"As close as you can get!" Art said and dropping into his seat he grabbed his gear and started to pull it on as fast as he could.
"Holy shit! Lookout!" Jace yelled a minute later as they came over the ridgeline and suddenly there was a small group of men sitting on quads wearing armor and talking on radios. From the look of it, they were directing some of the fighters. As Jace looked over Keith's shoulder one of the men looked up and his mouth opened wide as he pointed at the bus. Keith, the driver cried out and fell out of the driver's seat onto the floor, curled up in a tight ball, but it was too late for the group of men and the bus plowed right into the middle of them as Jace leapt over the partition and grabbed the steering wheel as the bus bounced over the men and the quads with the sounds of screams and grinding metal everywhere.
"Well, this must be our stop!" Hogue said laughing and opening the door he jumped out of the still moving bus as the rest of his squad followed him.
Pulling himself into the front seat, Jace could hear the gunfire from Hogue's men as they finished off the survivors and Jace hit the brakes to stop the bus in a cloud of dust as it slid around to the side, rocking.
"We'll take it from here, Jace," Art said and he joined the stream of fighters as they piled out of the bus. Cursing, Jace looked at his phone, which no longer had any signal and with a shake of his head, he followed the last of them off the bus, after checking on Keith to make sure he was still alive.
"Okay! Listen up!" Art growled in a low voice as he shifted into his werewolf form. "Everyone with the silver protection amulet will go in first with me. We'll form up a skirmish line and move forward at a jog. The rest of you, stay behind us and provide covering fire.
"Jace, you bring up the rear, if anyone gets hit with a silver bullet, you can use your amulet to cure 'em before they die. Any questions?"
"When do we open fire?" Jester asked.
"When I do, unless they figure out we're not on their side and start shooting first. Now, form up, teams string out behind your leaders!
"Time's a wastin', move out!"
Art led his people off at a fast jog. Interestingly enough, no one in front of them seemed at all concerned. The only thing Art could think of was that the mages they'd hit with the bus hadn't had time to warn their forces about what was happening.
That was always the problem with firefights, you couldn't hear shit. Not even a big ass diesel greyhound bus.
Art grinned, well, not until it was too late at least.
Hogue came running up then.
"They're all dead boss," Hogue grinned.
"How many?"
"Five, three of them needed a little help," Hogue laughed and patted his rifle.
Art just nodded; they were catching up with the back of the attacking forces. A few had looked over their shoulders, but just seeing werewolves coming from where their mages had been positioned, they went right back to fighting.
"Walking pace! Ready arms!" Art called out and putting his rifle to his shoulder as everyone else did the same.
"Fire!"
Art started picking off attackers immediately, starting at the rear of the line and working forward. He'd killed a dozen before the ones further up suddenly heard the panicked screams of pain coming from the rear. By then Art figured they'd probably killed at least fifty of the attackers.
"Everyone but the front line, down!" Art yelled as the attacking forces suddenly turned to start engaging Art and his people. He heard one of his own people cry out as they got hit. Jace yelled, "I got 'em!" So Art didn't pay it any mind.
Art was impressed that the amulets worked just as advertised. He was shot twice almost immediately, and while it hurt, it wasn't silver.
"I'm taking fire here," Hogue growled.
"Stand tall, that's an order!" Art growled loudly at the rest of the line as he changed magazines.
"What's the point?" Jester asked.
"Watch and learn," Art laughed and continued to shoot the enemy, one at a time, taking his time and picking his targets. He was getting shot at constantly now and quite a few of the bullets were hitting him, damn did it hurt! But some of the bullets were starting to splatter on the shield, or get deflected.
And the enemy noticed. Art and his men were dropping them left and right, but Art and his men weren't falling, they weren't even taking cover.
"Surrender or Die!" Art howled loudly, and the others besides him took up the cry.
As Art watched, one of them threw down their gun and dropped to the ground, hands on their head. Someone pointed their gun at the surrendering soldier, so Art picked them off.
Another one dropped, then sudden they were all dropping their guns and surrendering.
As they all dropped down to the ground and the gunfire directed at them suddenly stopped, Art noticed that the body of enemy troops to the west were all starting to notice just what was going on. There was pointing and what he guessed was yelling, he could see that a second force was coming up from the base of the hill, where a helicopter was taking off after having dumped a bunch of troops.
Then, just like a flock of birds will suddenly turn, the remaining enemy all broke as one and ran off to the northwest about as fast as they could go.
And that was it. The shooting all stopped, and it was over.
After the Battle
As soon as the sounds of shooting stopped Roxy began to gather all of her people in closer to the house and started to reestablish the perimeter, as well as assigning people to deal with the wounded and to find out just how much of their defenses had been destroyed.
"Maitland!" She called when he saw him, and waved him over.
"Yes, Roxy?"
"We've got two groups of people outside who are on our side. I think one is Claudia's, as they got dropped off by a helicopter according to one of ours. I want you to go get them and bring them up here. I'll go deal with the other group."
"Shouldn't Sean be with them, if they're from Claudia?"
Roxy shook her head, "As far as I know, there's only the one helicopter. I'm guessing he's still with the rest of the troops at the Vesti's. In either case, I'm going to go talk to the other group; I think they're the ones from Sacramento."
Maitland nodded, "I'll go get them, and then walk the perimeter to see what our problems are."
"Thanks," Roxy sighed and then flagged down Oak, who had been in charge of one of the rifle groups that had been setting up a last ditch defense of the house.
"Yes, Roxy?"
"How's everyone inside the house?"
They're fine, though a couple of the windows got shot out. Jason tells me that several of the sensors and cameras got destroyed too, so I'm going to put out some extra guards to keep an eye on things."
Roxy nodded, "Good. Find out what the hell is on fire over there and get some people to work on putting it out."
"Will do," Oak said and trotted back towards his men and started giving orders.
Slinging her rifle, Roxy looked around and shook her head. It would be quite a while to clean up this mess, there were a lot of dead bodies lying around, and she had no idea just how many of them were theirs. She wasn't looking forward to finding out just who on their side they'd lost as she started walking down the hill.
Roxy caught up with the wolves from Sacramento as they were rounding up all the prisoners that had surrendered when the tide of the attack had turned.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked walking up to a couple of werewolves that seemed to be ordering the others around.
"That would be me," Art said looking at the rather cute looking cheetah lycan that had just walked up to him. "I'm Art. You are?"
"Roxy, Sean's senior wife and the one in charge when he's not here. Are you the guys that Chad was liberating?"
"Chad?" Art said, looking at her, "Jace is the guy who came down and freed us."
"Chad's his new alpha," Roxy said looking around at the others, "looks like we're gonna need a lot of necklaces. How many are you?"
"Eighty-six," Art told her. "You have more of these?" he asked while fingering his own collar and tag.
"Not right now, but Sean can make more."
Art nodded slowly, "Okay, and Sean is?"
"My husband," Roxy said locking eyes suddenly with Art, "he's the one in charge here, he's a lion, and if you've never met one, the stories are pretty much true." Roxy looked around again, trying to get a count on the prisoners.
"How many men do you need to keep them under control?"
Art shrugged, "Twenty should do it. We've disarmed them, taken their armor. They're all pretty demoralized right now."
"Okay, I want to borrow about ten to go over and talk to that group that's dug in over there. Then I want you to detail another group to carry all the silver ammo up to the compound so we have something effective in case of another attack. After that, send a couple of squads out to help secure the perimeter. Just be careful not to shoot any of our people."
Art blinked and looked down at Roxy, which wasn't all that easy as she was pretty tall.
"And just who do you think you are?" Art asked her.
"Your boss," Roxy growled and leaned forward bringing her nose closer to his. "You're here now, and you belong to me until we get this mess settled, and I can find my husband. You know, the eight-foot tall and mean as spit lion husband who will be very upset if you don't listen to his wife after he had his friend send people down to Sac-town to free your asses."
Art blinked, he might be bigger than her, but right now he didn't think he wanted to go messing with this girl, he got the feeling it wasn't the lion he should be worried about.
"Jester!" Art called.
"Yeah, Art?"
"Grab your squad and go with Roxy here. She's in charge! Piper!"
"Yes?"
"Take your squad and Dawn's and set up a patrol, check in with the locals up on the hill first. Pete!"
"Yes, Art?"
"Grab a couple of hands and gather up all the silver ammo and weapons and bring them up to the compound!"
"Yessir!"
Art looked back at Roxy, "Better?" he said with his best smile.
Roxy nodded, "Much. You might want to start converting all their pellets," Roxy motioned towards the prisoners, "before their former owners kill them all."
"I think we killed them already," Art said and jerked a thumb over his shoulder back towards the buses a couple hundred yards back and the pile of mangled ATV's behind them.
"Great, but better safe than sorry. See what intelligence you can get out of them while you're doing that," Roxy said and then turned towards Jester.
"Come with me, Jester. I'm Roxy, and if you keep looking at my butt like that my husband will kill you."
Jester looked back at Art with a shocked expression as Roxy walked off.
'Lion' Art mouthed at Jester whose eyes got a little wider as he turned to follow the cute cheetah lycan with his squad.
"Come on! You heard the boss," Hogue said, "as well as Art! Get to work!"
Art sighed, "You're just crusin' for a bruisin' tonight, Hogue, aren't you?"
"Hey, Boss, we live in interesting times, very interesting times, gotta roll with the punches!"
Terry picked himself up off the ground as the firing quite suddenly stopped. The pain he had felt was gone and he was looking at the other guy.
"What the hell happened?"
"I don't know!" he said and just then the gal on the floor groaned.
Scrambling over to her, Terry could see she was in a bad way, but she was still alive!
"What the hell? I thought they popped her pellet?"
Terry heard the other guy swear then.
"What?" Terry asked.
"All our silver ammo isn't silver anymore!"
Terry worked the action on his rifle and picked up the bullet that had fallen out.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Terry swore the digging through his pockets he pulled out the small vial he had stashed there. Screwing the cap off he poured the contents into the injured female's mouth.
"Swallow that," he told her and then followed up with the water in his canteen as she coughed.
"What the hell was that?" she grumbled, panting.
"Minor healing potion," Terry grinned.
"And you gave it to me?" she said, looking rather shocked.
Terry shrugged, "I was saving it for myself, but," Terry looked around and sighed heavily, "from everything I saw today I'm not sure saving it was the best idea anymore. Now, eat some food and get your strength back."
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing but sit right here. I'm Terry."
"Clover," she said with a smile.
"I'm Rider," the other guy said.
"What group are you guys with?" Terry asked.
"Texas," Clover said with a smile, "You?"
"Boston," Terry sighed and shook his head, "I don't even know if any of us are left, one of my friends got hit with silver, another had her legs blown off and died."
"Why didn't you give her...?" Clover trailed off.
Terry sighed and shook his head, "I don't think it would have saved her, if I'd even gotten the chance. It was pretty bad."
The truth was, Terry had been a lot more worried about his own ass at the time, though honestly he wasn't sure it would have been enough to save Cara. Maybe if she'd lived a little while longer, he'd have tried it.
Clover nodded and didn't say anything else.
"What's going on out there?" Terry asked Rider.
Rider looked over the lip of the ditch they were in.
"Everyone is looking around. There's a group hightailing it back the way we came, but it doesn't look all that big. There's a lot of dead bodies out there now too." Rider visibly shuddered, "A lot of dead bodies."
"Well, at least we're not one of them," Clover said.
"Wait, I see a group of people heading over this way, they got their guns slung. I think they're the defenders, one of them is waving to us."
"Wonder what they're gonna do to us?" Terry wondered.
Clover laughed, "After saving my life, anything they damn well want to!"
"You think they saved you?" Terry asked, surprised.
"The rumors all say that they got something that gets rid of silver. Guess the rumors were right!"
Terry went 'huh' and thought about that. He hadn't heard any of those rumors, but then Boston was a lot farther away from here than Texas.
"Of course, you helped too," Clover said and put her hand on top of his.
Rider sighed, "Get a room, you two."
"Oh, I plan on it!"
Roxy walked up to the group of werewolves, most of them were in their human form, but a number of them were in their hybrid form as well. Probab
ly because their armor was shredded and it was cold out.
"Who is in charge here?" Roxy asked looking at the group, there were probably sixty of them, she'd get a head count later.
"Umm, I'm one of the squad leaders," a young man said.
Roxy noticed they were all looking at her now, "Is there anyone more senior than this man here?" she called out.
Everyone just looked around or shrugged. She could see that they were all still coming to terms with what had just happened.
"Okay," she yelled, "he's in charge." Lowering her voice she continued. "Gather your people up, take a headcount. I want all of their weapons and ammo stacked right over there," Roxy pointed to a flat spot. "I'll get someone down here in a few to bring you up to the compound and we'll see that you're all fed and given a place to sleep."
"Did he really take away our silver?" he asked her.
"What?" Roxy blinked.
"There was this lion, he came out of that helicopter, the one that crashed," he pointed towards the wreckage that several people were now putting out. "He said he was taking our silver, and then he kinda glowed and I think he blew up or something?"
Roxy felt the blood draining from her face.
"What happened to him?" she growled, grabbing his fatigues at the neck and pulling him close.
The guy's eyes widened and he looked real scared all of the sudden.
"I don't know! He just told us we were free and we all felt it when all of our ammo changed! We think he changed our pellets too! Then he sorta flashed and he wasn't there anymore!"
"I think I saw him go flying back," one of the others said, "and the guys he was with dragged him off?"
"Which way?" Roxy growled and dropped the guy she was holding.
"Over there, I think...."
Roxy didn't hear the rest of it; she was sprinting just as fast as she could in the direction they'd pointed.
She saw Maitland talking to one of them; it was Jon, the leader of Claudia's strike team! She didn't even stopped but just pounced on him driving him flat on the ground.
"WHERE IS SEAN!" she yelled in his face, "WHERE IS HE?"
Jon gasped as he got pounded flat to the ground, and one very angry werecheetah, that hadn't been there a second ago, was in his face and yelling at him.
