Nomad Mortis

by Craig Martelle

  “I’m not sure I have an answer for that, but you know TH and his affinity for beer. He brews two small batches every year. He’ll share a little, but that is his one selfish indulgence. I’ve tried it, and it’s okay if I never drink it again,” Aaron replied.

  He nodded, indicating he was ready to change form. He wouldn’t remember what he did as a Weretiger, but he knew that Yanmei would and when he turned back into a human, she’d be there with him.

  It provided him solace and made it easier for him to help the others. With their clothes bundled into the knot of a tree, they held hands as they changed into two magnificent tigers. Aaron curled a lip and snarled. Yanmei replied. They both sniffed the air before padding quickly into the dark of a German night.

  Flying in the pod toward San Francisco

  “Come from the ocean, low over the waves?” he asked Char. She pointed to a wooded and hilly area portrayed on the map on the computer’s screen.

  “Somewhere in there we’ll find a place to put down,” Terry said. He adjusted the controls and the ship stayed high as it flew over the California coast and fifteen miles out to sea. It dropped to the wave tops and picked up speed as it turned back toward land.

  The pod silently approached the coast at a high rate of speed. It rose above the rocky coastline and veered into the mountainous terrain. It slowed considerably as it sought a hidden valley in which to disappear.

  They found themselves in the middle of what used to be a national park. Char and Joseph both nodded. The mountainous terrain was devoid of human life.

  Terry worked the interface screen and the pod carefully descended into a clearing between tall pine trees. It touched down, then settled at an angle until its self-leveling jacks automatically kicked in.

  The ramp dropped and the platoon and tac team rolled out. Kim arrayed her platoon, two by two, in a perimeter around the pod. Terry told her to push it out to one hundred yards after reconfirming with Char that they were alone.

  “Once you have the perimeter established, detail a team to cover the pod with branches and a second group to dig a latrine. We’re going to be here a while,” Terry instructed. Kim saluted.

  “Don’t salute in the field,” he told her with a smile, grabbing her shoulder to pull her close to him. “I am damn proud of you, Kimber.”

  She smiled with a terse nod before hurrying away to take care of the thousand things the platoon sergeant was responsible for while the platoon was deployed.

  Char had the pack congregate on the pod’s ramp. “Listen up,” she said in a low voice, making eye contact with each of them—Sue, Timmons, Gene, Joseph, and Cory. Fu wrapped her arms halfway around Gene, hiding behind him.

  “We need to see without being seen. San Francisco is due north and that’s our target. We will spread out, heading northwest to north to northeast. As soon as you feel something, back off and report it to me.”

  Terry was on the outside of the pack looking in. He wanted them to report to him, but Char was the alpha while he was responsible for all of them. She would tell him what they found out.

  Most importantly, they couldn’t rush in. If Mr. Smith was as powerful as Terry expected, he wanted to fight him on his terms, away from Mr. Smith’s home turf. If nothing else, he wanted backup with plenty of silver weaponry to help even the odds.

  Even with Akio’s training, Terry was under no illusions regarding his ability to fight a Vampire. As he was taught in the Marine Corps, the only fair fight is the one you lose.

  He wanted the deck stacked in his favor and that meant planning. Better information led to better planning led to better execution.

  Terry talked himself into a circle. He wanted more information sooner. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down, but images of Kirkus flashed through his mind. A faceless Mr. Smith with a smooth voice appeared.

  The Forsaken.

  His enemy. He was there, over the hills in San Francisco. Terry wanted to get closer, inside the city limits, and look the people in the face. He wanted Char with him, but knew he couldn’t risk it.

  “I want to go into the city and I will take Cory with me,” he told them, his gazed fixed on his wife. Char bristled, but knew he would draw less attention with Cordelia than with a purple-eyed Werewolf. The Forsaken wouldn’t sense them as it would one of the Were.

  “Maybe one of the female warriors instead?” Timmons suggested. “A young couple won’t look too out of place, but if the wrong person gets a look at those ears, you’ll be found out, no disrespect intended, Cory.”

  “None taken, Uncle Timmons,” Cory replied, brushing her hair behind her wolf ears so they stuck out.

  “Camilla?” Char suggested, understanding her husband’s dilemma. Despite appearing to be outgoing, Terry was an introvert. He let few people into his inner circle. He was quick to trust, but slow to share.

  Terry’s family held the leadership positions in the platoon. He wanted to think that he could reason it out and defend his choice to anyone, but with the enemy near, the clarity he’d had before evaporated.

  “Platoon Sergeant,” Terry said loud enough to be heard well into the forest. He waited and then called out a second time.

  Kimber appeared from around the front of the pod. “Yes, Colonel?”

  “I’m going into the city. To attract the least amount of attention, I’m taking a female warrior. Who do you suggest?”

  “Me,” she said flatly.

  “You have a platoon to manage and you are responsible for the security of everyone here. Someone else, please,” Terry directed.

  “I’d say Marcie, but if I detail her squad, they’ll need her. Private Camilla?” Kimber offered.

  Terry breathed a sigh of relief. At least Char hadn’t lost her clarity. He smiled at her in a way that only she understood.

  “Have her report to me immediately along with two scout teams,” Terry ordered.

  Kim bolted away.

  “AORs?” Terry asked Char.

  “Areas of responsibility,” Char clarified for the others. “Any Were or Forsaken, note where they are and get the hell out of there. Don’t let them see you for any longer than possible. Sue and Timmons, left flank. You go northwest and watch the coast. Look for traffic, logistics support for the city. Let’s get an idea what flows in and out of there. Joseph and I, right up the gut. We’re heading straight for the city. We’ll accompany Terry and Camilla as far as we can. Gene and Cory, northeast. The inner bay could be busy as hell. Same as Sue and Timmons. Figure out what kind of logistics supports this city and maybe total numbers of people. Questions?”

  “When do you want us back?” Timmons asked.

  “No later than tomorrow morning, earlier if you sense a Forsaken. In that case, use your comm device as soon as you’re clear to call me. I’ll pass the word to TH.”

  “And then we’ll go from there. Keep your comm devices near at hand. Close coordination will be how we outsmart them, get inside their OODA loop,” Terry said as he looked into the forest and listened to the platoon quietly going about their business.

  “OODA loop?” Sue wondered, turning to Timmons.

  “The Boyd Cycle,” Terry explained, going into military instructor mode. “Observe, orient, decide, act. The premise is that the one who can do this more quickly will win the engagement, all other things being equal. We will be smarter and faster. That will give us the edge. We don’t know if they have numerically superior forces or if they have better weapons. We don’t know any of that, but we’re going to find out and then they won’t be able to stand against us once we learn what we need to know about them.”

  Sue nodded, then shook her head. “Nice acronym, TH,” she said. “Those are like secret keys to the boys’ club.”

  Terry wanted to argue, but wasn’t sure she was wrong.

  Char didn’t want to admit that she knew what Terry was talking about, but she’d been living with the man for so long, he couldn’t put anything past her.

  “One addition,” Terry sai
d, holding his hand up to get their attention. “We’ll send scout teams with both groups. Two warriors. Put them in the best place to observe. They’ll have comm and will conduct the long-term reconnaissance. This is what they’ve trained for,” Terry told them.

  The two pairs of warriors appeared. Terry directed one team to join Sue and Timmons, and the other to join the Werebear and Cory.

  “Off you go,” Char told the pack, taking Cory’s hand in hers to look at her daughter before sending her on a mission.

  “Mother. I’ll be fine. I’m with Uncle Gene, for Pete’s sake,” Cory said, smiling and shrugging a shoulder.

  “True, but be careful anyway.” Char let go.

  Fu and Gene hugged to the point that Fu disappeared in his embrace. When Gene let go and headed for the woods, Fu looked lost.

  Fu’s English was challenged at best, but not her communication skills. She motioned to Char that she would start working on dinner for the platoon. She entered the pod and began to dig out supplies.

  Camilla appeared and reported smartly.

  “We’re going to town to do some shopping,” he told her. “Drop your gear, leave your rifle, and bring your knife.”

  “You want us to blend in?” she asked, looking down at her military fatigues. Terry looked at his own. “We may have to purchase some new clothes as part of our recon.”

  He moved his shoulder holster under his shirt, keeping his whip and his sword held tightly behind his pack. In the pack, he carried extra ammunition, a length of rope, food, and water. Terry wouldn’t let Camilla carry a pack.

  “You’re playing the role of my daughter,” he told her. “We can’t fuck this up, because if we’re found out, it’ll be us against a whole city. That may be one step too many.”

  “Understood, sir,” she said confidently.

  “Dad,” he corrected.

  “Understood, Dad,” she clarified. Char rolled her eyes and hoped that they wouldn’t have to play their roles.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  San Francisco

  Char and Joseph watched Terry and Camilla stroll from the edge of the forest encroached ruins and into an area where people were making their homes. The Werewolf and the Forsaken had not yet sensed any others. The etheric was calm.

  They said their good-byes, and Terry and Camilla walked casually through the sparsely populated outskirts.

  The sounds of a busy city beckoned ahead. Vehicle engines, electricity, metal on stone. Terry was surprised at the normalcy of it all.

  This group of people seemed to have almost returned to the days of old. San Francisco was doing better than North Chicago, and it bruised Terry Henry’s ego. He wanted to see more, because he couldn’t believe it.

  In his mind, North Chicago was the epitome of a new and civilized society.

  Terry and Camilla kept to the shadows as they watched the people. They noticed that no one was armed, and their clothing was so disparate that Terry and Camilla’s fatigues wouldn’t stand out.

  Once they arrived at one of the main arteries feeding the city, they saw trucks, as well as horse-drawn carts, going into and out of the city. Japanese trucks and American wood carts. Nothing mechanical was running from the old United States.

  Terry loved free trade, the thing that North Chicago had very little of because it was off the beaten path. Free trade was the foundation for any civilization. San Francisco, even though it had been rearranged thanks to earthquakes over the past fifty years, still had the inner bays to protect ships during loading and offloading along with roads in and out of the city to service the farms, fields, and ranches.

  Terry wondered if the grape vines survived the WWDE. He wasn’t a wine drinker, but suspected his wife was. The fact that he didn’t know bothered him. He’d surprise her if they came across a bottle, in the hopes that he guessed right.

  Camilla grabbed Terry’s arm, pulling him out of his distraction. She pointed toward a barricade ahead and the armed men manning it, stopping every vehicle before it was allowed to enter the city.

  Old Schwabenland, Germany

  It was mid-morning and all the groups had returned. No one had seen or sensed anything, except Akio and Yuko and they received only the most remote impressions.

  “We are too far to the north and east,” Akio said. “We need to move the camp thirty miles to the southwest,” he said matter-of-factly. Boris and Lacy remained stone-faced. The platoon had done a great deal of work in a short amount of time to prepare the camp.

  That was irrelevant to the mission. They’d get the opportunity to break it down and do it again, and it was the company gunnery sergeant’s job to keep morale up during the transition.

  “We can be ready to go by nightfall,” Boris committed.

  “Make it so,” Akio said. The Weretigers found soft grass on which to rest, exhausted after a long night of running through the brush and trees. Yanmei described all that they’d seen and how far they’d gone. Aaron wasn’t surprised. He was tired, dog tired, as he liked to say.

  They fell asleep quickly while Boris and Lacy worked with the platoon to start breaking down the camp. Akio returned to the pod to check in with Eve. Yuko laid down on one of the jump seats to sleep.

  “I have nothing new, but I will keep looking,” Eve reported. Akio settled into the seat opposite Yuko, wondering how often they would sleep on the pod, how long he’d keep Yuko away from her home.

  ***

  The pod was loaded, and the platoon was ready to board. Akio, Yuko, Aaron, and Yanmei were as rested as they were going to be.

  Akio looked at the imagery of the area where he wanted to relocate. It was rougher terrain, and he was presented with numerous options in which to hide the pod and the platoon.

  He waved the warriors aboard and they filed in, filling the seats and all the free space. When Boris gave him the thumbs up, he closed the ramp and the pod took off, slowly, staying low as it flew.

  In no time, the EI bled off the forward momentum, adjusted the pod’s orientation, and descended into a gully between two hills at the base of a small mountain range bordering what used to be Switzerland. The Rhine River was nearby to provide supplemental food, Akio hoped, to keep the group well fed and occupied while they reconnoitered and isolated the New Schwabenland Forsaken.

  “I can see why they returned to Germany,” Yuko said, looking out the window. The nuclear exchanges had been catastrophic, but the earth survived and much of it recovered far more quickly than anyone would have imagined. Some areas were wastelands because of the climate shift, but not this part of Europe. From the sky, it looked lush and alive.

  When the pod landed, they found themselves in a dense forest nearly at the top of a mountain looking toward the Rhine and beyond it into Switzerland. The humans would see it come morning.

  Akio, Yuko, Aaron, and Yanmei were able to enjoy it then. The beauty of nature.

  Not far away, human communities were thriving and growing. Akio revised his opinion. The platoon would not be able to get to the river and fish unseen, but they could fish in the cool streams that crisscrossed the mountain on which they were going to make their new camp.

  The ramp dropped and the Force exited, establishing a perimeter. Akio motioned for Boris to join him.

  “We are less than a mile from a great number of people. We’ll need to be silent at all times. No one should come up here. If they do, we’ll need to convince them to go away, and then we’ll have to find a new place to camp,” Akio said.

  “Understand, Akio-sama,” Boris replied, adopting the term he’d heard the colonel use. He excused himself and started to quietly pass the word.

  Aaron and Yanmei looked ready to go. “Southeast for you, and don’t enter the town. Yuko and I will go southwest and follow the river back to the north. I expect we’ll complete our task well before dawn.”

  “We’ll see you back here,” Aaron said, bowing deeply. He and Yanmei left the pod, stopping Boris on their way.

  “Password?” Aaron asked.


  “Beer me, bitch,” Boris replied, smiling evilly.

  “Really? I taught you how to read and write, and this is how you repay me?” Aaron retorted.

  Boris reached up to slap the Weretiger on the shoulder. “Yup,” Boris answered before he returned to his duties settling the platoon in to secure the pod and establish their camp.

  “They weren’t such upstarts back then!” Aaron exclaimed in a whisper.

  “I’m sure they were much smaller back then, too,” Yanmei added, almond eyes looking up at her mate. “But they are still impressionable. I see TH’s influence in every one of them.”

  “There’s your culprit. ‘Beer me, bitch,’ indeed. Shall we, my beautiful Yanmei?” Aaron said as he started removing his shirt.

  Moments later, two Weretigers slinked through the underbrush.

  North Chicago

  “When will they be back?” Butch demanded, pounding on the mayor’s desk. Felicity rocked back in her chair and put her arms across her chest.

  “I don’t care how hard you beat on my desk,” Felicity drawled slowly. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. My daughter is out there, just like your son, so you be careful how you accuse me. I’ll be on edge until they return, just like you. Do you understand me?”

  Skippy grabbed Butch’s arm firmly. “It’s not her fault. The alpha should have left us with some kind of guidance.”

  “Why didn’t you say that?” Felicity asked, leaning forward and uncrossing her arms. “Find a way to contribute, whether fishing, hunting, ranching, farming, or working in our new steel mill. We could always use a couple extra strong backs.”

  Butch shook off Skippy’s hand. “Farming?” she wondered aloud. “What do you think we are?”

  “I know exactly what you are,” the mayor said coldly, narrowing her eyes as she glared at the Werewolf called Butch. “You’re in deep shit if you fuck off when you should be doing something. Charumati will not be amused. Every single one of the Werewolves works their asses off. That includes Char and Terry Henry Walton, so dig deep, find a clue, and get to work. Now, get the hell out of my office!”