Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  One of those sentries was Jack Hendricks. Unlike many of the residents stranded in Fort Dodge, Jack stayed in town because he was too stubborn to leave. He’d grown up there and wasn’t about to abandon it in the hopes of finding somewhere slightly better to hide. Jack didn’t like hiding, which was why he’d organized the Fort Dodge Street Watch. His hand had been first to hit the button for the sirens, and his voice was the first to shout through the walkie talkie on a channel used by the Street Watch central listening post.

  “We got a pack tearing through from the east,” Jack said. “Looks like a small one, but they’re moving fast.”

  Another voice chimed in on the same frequency. Jack didn’t recognize it. “I see some sparks along the river to the north. Lots of sparks!”

  “I want all watch posts to report in,” said a voice that Jack recognized immediately. It came from Street Watch Captain Carly Sprigh. She was doing a good job of keeping her calm, but Jack could hear her resolve straining at the seams.

  “Still the one pack here,” Jack said. “Already moving through.”

  “There’s more coming from the north,” a scout near the river said. “So many of them. Jesus!”

  “None here,” reported a scout from one of the posts in the most populated residential area. Since many families, including Jack’s, were huddled there he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Where are the gunners?” Carly asked.

  All five gunnery teams responded in clipped tones with a minimum of syllables to report that they were in position. Those who volunteered for gunnery duty were mostly ex-military and members of Fort Dodge’s police force. Some were active military on loan from the National Guard until they were needed elsewhere in the state.

  “Fire as soon as you have a target in range,” Carly said.

  Jack’s post was on the fifth floor of an office building that had been one of the first to be repurposed after the troubles started. Ironically enough, its main tenant had been a large insurance company. These days, high ground and open communication to accurate shooters were the best insurance anyone could have. He put his binoculars to his eyes and stared toward the residential section. So far, every house had followed procedure by switching off any lights when the sirens went off. They were supposed to get inside and cover their windows as well, but Jack couldn’t see well enough to know if that was being done. His interest was focused on a two-story house on a corner. From his vantage, he could only see the roof which he’d re-shingled with the help of his brother in-law a month before the world ended.

  “Come on you bastards,” he whispered as he panned his lenses back and forth to study the streets of his neighborhood. “Keep running through. Ain’t nothing to see here.”

  Fort Dodge hadn’t always been such a small town. Out of necessity, the residents had drawn in tighter around the city’s center and relocated to the most strategically viable locations available to them. Terminology like that had become commonplace since advisors from the Army and IRD were the ones to make the rounds and pass orders and instructions along to organizations like Fort Dodge’s Street Watch.

  Every now and then, Jack would turn his attention to the street directly below his window. Treated sheet metal was placed down there as well, intended to spark like tinder against the scraping of any Half Breed’s claws. The simple idea belonged to a former bank manager in Des Moines, and word of it was still spreading. Since he didn’t see any sparks, Jack shifted his binoculars back to the part of town where his family sought refuge.

  Gunshots cracked from one direction and then another. Jack knew which posts were doing the firing, but the houses he watched were still surrounded by calm. His stomach knotted as he waited for his next orders to arrive through the walkie.

  “Hit the water towers,” Carly said.

  Another innovation that had been passed around recently was the use of a mixture of ammonia and antifreeze to repel Half Breeds. Some cities had fire trucks equipped to spray the stuff wherever it was needed while smaller communities simply kept buckets of it at key intersections. Fort Dodge had half a dozen water towers scattered throughout their neighborhoods that were rigged to blow at the press of a button.

  Jack picked up the handheld radio and asked, “Which towers?”

  “All of them,” Carly replied with panic creeping into her voice. “Hit all of them. Do it now!”

  The duffel bag near Jack’s feet contained everything he needed to do his job or survive on his own for up to three days. One of the most vital pieces of equipment was a small box with two sets of switches. The detonator wasn’t much to look at, but the emergency warranting its use made it feel heavy in his hand. He toggled the safety switches to the off position and hit the main switches below them. Moments later, a muffled explosion thumped through the air as the water tower under Jack’s control was obliterated by a Claymore mine left behind by one of the first Army advisors to roll through Iowa.

  Almost immediately, howls filled the air in a disorganized cacophony. The haggard keening started down the street from where Jack was stationed. Soon, more Half Breeds cried out less than half a block away as the mixture’s stench hit their noses and ammonia burned their sinus passages. Before long, the wailing voices seemed to be coming from much closer.

  “What in the hell?”

  Jack twisted around so quickly to look toward the sound of those closest barks that he cracked his binoculars against the window pane. Every time he’d checked that direction before, he’d been looking for sparks. Even though he’d been too distracted to look directly at the sheet metal before checking his neighborhood again, he should have been able to see the flicker of claws against flint. The sheet metal was set down in strips all down the street. He still didn’t see any sparks, but he could see movement between two of the smaller buildings in that direction.

  The figures moved like a ghostly procession; slow and low to the ground. Even as several of the shapes lifted pointed snouts toward the sky, the group as a whole plodded along at a steady pace. Jack watched until he could see the first of them approach the office building. They were Half Breeds, but not the wild things he’d seen ripping through Fort Dodge so many times before. These quaked with anticipation without giving in to the urge to run. Saliva flowed from their mouths, lips curled back to reveal glistening fangs and they set their paws down so gently that they didn’t hit the sheet metal hard enough to create a spark. At the head of the pack was a smaller werewolf with a slender body and paws that flattened out into long fingers. When any of the Half Breeds behind it got overly anxious, the leader snarled a warning that got the pack members moving at a suitably slow pace.

  “God damn,” Jack breathed. Keying his walkie, he said, “Check your streets. Get a real good look. They’re moving slowly over the metal sheets to keep from sparking them.”

  “The ones I’m seeing are making plenty of sparks!” the unfamiliar scout said. “Some are even going crazy down there.”

  “What’s that mean?” Carly asked.

  Gunfire crackled from various points in the city. The shots took on a more surreal and terrifying quality when they were transmitted along with voices on the walkie. Some scouts were far enough away for the shots to sound like fireworks or thunder. Others were so close to the fighting that Jack found himself twitching with every pull of a trigger.

  The unfamiliar voice was a bit farther away from the shooting. “It means they’re going nuts out here,” he said. “Probably the mixture in the water tower I just blew open. Some of the snipers picked off a few of the pack leaders, so that’s probably whipping the others into a frenzy.”

  That didn’t make sense. Jack watched as the pack on the street below trudged forward like a disciplined force. Every muscle in his body tensed as that force drew closer to his office building. Even though he was several stories above street level, Jack kept as still as possible as he brought the radio up to his mouth and asked, “What are they doing, exactly?”

  “Some are just running around a
nd howling. Some are going back and forth on the sheet metal.”

  “Anyone else seeing that sort of thing?” Carly asked.

  The few other sentries who responded gave similar accounts to the first one.

  “What about you, Carly?” Jack said. “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m…not quite sure yet, but it’s not like what the rest of you are reporting.”

  “Are they walking slowly across the sheet metal?” Jack asked.

  There was a long pause, filled only by distant howls and gunfire. When the radio crackled in his hand, Jack felt it like a jab to his gut.

  “Yes,” Carly replied. “That’s exactly what I’m seeing. They’re being led by a strange creature I’ve never seen before. Kind of like the rest of the pack, but skinnier.”

  “I’ve got that here too, what do you think we should do?”

  Jack waited longer than normal without getting a reply.

  “Carly?”

  He looked through his window again. The werewolves were no longer creeping over the sheet metal. A few skulked down the street, but the rest were no longer in sight.

  “Carly? Do you hear me?”

  Still no response.

  Leaning forward until his forehead bumped against the glass, Jack looked down to find a writhing mass of fur moving at the lowest portion of his field of vision. Most of the windows in that building didn’t open, but the ones in the rooms used by Street Watch had been modified to do so. Jack cranked his window open and leaned out to gaze down at a group of werewolves scaling the outside of the building. They dug into cement with their claws, gripped onto ledges or imperfections in the structure, and pulled themselves upward using unnaturally thick muscles.

  “Carly!” one of the ex-military gunmen said through the radio. “They’re already downtown! We can’t hold them off! Tell everyone to fall back into the storm shelters!”

  Jack threw himself back and away from the window. He’d seen the werewolves tear through enough glass to know that closing the window wouldn’t make a difference at this point. There was an assault rifle nearby. Being a gift from a local gun store instead of the military, it was semi-automatic but still packed enough of a punch to buy himself some breathing room.

  Gripping the radio in one hand while scooping up his bag with the other, Jack said, “The ones making the sparks are a distraction! They’re drawing us away from the rest who are sneaking in to other parts of town!”

  “That’s crazy!” the unfamiliar sentry said. “These things are animals! They’re—” His voice cut off and Jack knew it would never be heard again.

  “I don’t know how it happened, but they’re smarter somehow,” Jack said. “Maybe it’s the leaders. I’ve got a pack climbing up my building. I’m evacuating now!”

  By this point, Jack was talking to keep his own thoughts straight. Human screams could now be heard outside. Gunshots were becoming louder and more frequent, clearly reflecting the panic with which they were fired.

  Jack took a moment to get his duffel bag strapped across his body and picked up the assault rifle. It was an M-16, or at least looked close enough to one to be attractive to a buyer. Firearms laws no longer applied in this new world, so all that mattered was that the rifle fired when it was supposed to. Jack had squeezed off some practice rounds a while ago and put the weapon through its paces again as soon as he saw a shaggy paw reach up to swat at the window. He fired two bursts, shattering glass and sending some fur flying.

  “Two of the watch posts are down,” one of the gunmen reported. Jack recognized him as an old Marine who’d lived in Fort Dodge for most his life. He’d always kept to himself and had stepped up in a big way when his community needed him. His voice was cold steel as he reported casualty numbers and enemy positions as if he was addressing a group of trained soldiers.

  Glass shattered in another room as Jack stepped into the hallway. “Can anyone hear me?” he said through the radio.

  After some static, the Marine replied, “Affirmative.”

  “I forgot your name.”

  “Millhouse. Are you Jack Hendricks?”

  “That’s right. I’m not getting responses from anyone else.”

  “We’re all supposed to be on the same frequency, Jack. The others must have their hands full.” A loud series of gunshots ripped through the air on Millhouse’s end of the conversation. He barely seemed phased by the interruption when he returned to ask, “What’s your location?”

  The glass that had been shattered in the next room was now being crunched beneath heavy feet. Jack couldn’t bring himself to make a sound as he heard more steps fall in with the first set within one of the nearby rooms. Jack moved quickly and quietly down the hall toward a stairwell that would take him to the pickup truck parked in a loading zone outside. The sign for the stairs was in sight, but salvation was well out of his reach when a door exploded behind him and heavy paws thumped against the floor behind him.

  Jack didn’t bother looking back there since that would only waste valuable fractions of a second. All he needed to do was get to the stairwell, and he could put a nice, solid metal door between him and the gnashing teeth that wanted to tear meat from his bones.

  His legs pumped furiously to carry him faster than he thought possible, but the legs behind him were even stronger. As the rumbling in the floor became more powerful and his pursuers grew closer, Jack knew he wasn’t going to make it to the stairwell with enough time to open the door, step through and close it again before the werewolves got to him. Cursing loudly, he spun around while firing the M-16.

  There were fewer Half Breeds behind him than he’d imagined but more than enough to bring him down. One of the closest creatures had its mouth open wide in preparation to take a bite out of him when part of Jack’s three-round burst chopped into it. Teeth and blood flew in a spray as the werewolf yelped and turned reflexively to one side. Other members of its pack showed as much mercy for the wounded creature as they would for their prey and ruthlessly knocked it aside.

  The Half Breeds came at him in a tidal wave of teeth and claws, snapping at the air and panting excitedly. Chunks of floor and wall were torn apart in their haste to get to him despite the M-16 which spat at the pack again and again. Some rounds knocked werewolves aside while others were merely enraged by fresh sources of pain to wrack their already ravaged bodies. Although he was thankful for every second of life he could squeeze out before it was brought to a horrible end, Jack wondered why the encroaching pack hadn’t overtaken him yet. That’s when his back hit the door that he’d been so anxious to reach.

  He continued to fire until his rifle ran dry. After that, he fell back on tactics that had been drilled so many times by every member of Street Watch that they came to him as pure muscle memory. Jack dropped down with his knees bent and his rifle held sideways in front of him to protect as much of his head and chest as possible. It was a desperate move intended to help him hold out until one of his teammates could draw an attacking werewolf away from him.

  But there were no teammates to provide a single shot of covering fire, and he faced several werewolves that were ready to chew apart anything they had to in order to get to him.

  Jack closed his eyes and let out a gut-wrenching scream that filled his ears and echoed down the hallway until there was no more breath to push from his lungs.

  His heartbeat ripped through his entire body. Sweat poured from his skin and flowed down his face.

  He could feel his muscles burning, but there was no real pain. As his wits slowly came back to him, Jack heard a churning, rasping wind flowing back and forth around him. Was that the oblivion awaiting everyone when their lives came to an end? Slowly, he opened his eyes to find out.

  The first thing he saw was a single white dot on a field of oily black, which he quickly realized was the side of the M-16 and a mark near the safety mechanism. Jack lowered his arms to find several pairs of wild, clouded eyes staring back at him. The churning sound he heard wasn’t wind, but th
e combined heaving breaths of all the werewolves that had stopped dead in their tracks to glare hungrily down at him. Every so often, bits of glass were crunched beneath the paws of another creature emerging from one of the nearby rooms.

  Jack looked around at the Half Breeds, wondering how long they would make him wait before tearing into him. All of their faces were broken in different ways. Now that he had a chance to see several of them up close when they weren’t flailing or twisted in the throes of death, he could make out individuality among members of the pack. Some had higher cheekbones and others had wider jaws, which surely reflected the people they’d been before they were turned. All of them were now shattered. The bone structure was still present but only the way a road was still present after an earthquake had cracked every inch of cement. Those faces were devoid of emotion, eyes trembling within their sockets as if standing still hurt every bit as much as running full speed upon legs that had been snapped by the change from human to monster.

  The one face that stood out from the pack belonged to a creature that was smaller than the rest. Jack had caught sight of it scaling the outside of the building and nearly forgotten about it in his haste to get the hell out of there. With escape no longer an option, he took a moment to study the thing more carefully.

  Its body was narrow and covered in greasy fur that was slicked down into a glistening coat. Flat paws more closely resembling deformed hands with long fingers sprouted curved claws that scraped lightly against the floor as the creature approached him. Muscles moved like water beneath its skin when it lifted its front end to stand upon its hind legs and loom over him. The thing’s body wasn’t made to be vertical. Reacting to this, it shifted into something shorter and wider. Its face, however, remained a mockery of both man and beast, pulled down toward the tip of its black nose as well as back to the bump in its egg-shaped skull.