Forged From Ash - Book #7 of the Skinners Series

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “I haven’t killed many of them things,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be doing most of the heavy lifting. Can you hold your own long enough to tell me if any of them are getting around behind me?”

  Linda nodded.

  “Now go get that AK of yours and something else with stopping power as backup. Something like a shotgun.”

  “We’ve got plenty of shotguns.”

  “Perfect,” Rico said. “If you’d rather travel a little lighter, grab a .45, and I’ll set you up with some ammo. Are you gonna be ok with coming along with me?”

  She was still nervous, but nodded anyway. “I guess. The rest won’t want to just stand back and do nothing, though.”

  “They don’t have to do nothing. Once I start doing my thing, the pack will scatter. I need your buddies to pick off however many of them they can from a distance. Go on and get ready. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Linda nodded and started turning around to do her part. Before she got too far, Rico called out, “Hey, Linn!”

  She stopped and turned.

  “Do me one more favor and make sure Haley stays put inside the store where she’s safe.”

  Linda nodded. “We’ve got a shelter in the old TV room.”

  Studying her with an intense glare, Rico asked, “You gonna hang in there for me?”

  “I should be all right. Won’t be the first time I’ve shot some of these things up close.”

  “All right, then.”

  She pointed to a section of the fence that was two posts down from where Rico had been sitting. “The spot those things like so much is right over there. It’s the part covered with them towels.”

  “Towels and tape patching the weak spot on your perimeter? Them IRD boys didn’t show you a damn thing.”

  She grinned widely. “There’s fence under there. Them towels are soaked in Ammonia and Kerosene. Makes them think twice about chewing on the chain link, and if they get too frisky, we can set the towels on fire real easy.”

  “Did the IRD guys show you that?”

  “Nope. Came up with that one myself.”

  Showing her a grin while pointing at her with a callused finger, Rico said, “See now? That’s why I want you standing with me out there. You got the goods, Linn.”

  “It’s Big Linn.”

  “Somethin’ tells me you earned that title with something other than the miles of sexy you’re packin’ under them coveralls.”

  “You’ll just have to find out for yourself, Skinner Man.”

  As Linda took off running, Rico watched her leave while wearing the widest grin he’d had for quite a while. Even wrapped up in greasy coveralls that left plenty to the imagination, Linda obviously had some major league curves going on. He’d admired her generous breasts as best he could without earning a smack across the mouth, and now that she was headed in the other direction, he gave himself free rein to watch her full, rounded hips move back and forth. He must have been staring a bit too hard because she spun around to catch him in the act. She wagged a finger at him, and Rico shrugged his shoulders as if to plead no contest. When she turned back around, so did he.

  Facing the fence, Rico gathered up his varnishing supplies and tucked them into an interior pocket of his jacket. He drew the Sig Sauer. As usual, it was loaded with a mix of standard .45 caliber rounds on top of the magazine and Snappers at the bottom so he could get to the good stuff by burning through the first batch of rounds. After popping out the regular bullets, Rico replaced them with enough Snappers to top off the load. He paused before sliding the magazine into the pistol and thought for a second. On a hunch, he removed the first two rounds and loaded a pair of plain bullets instead. He then slapped the magazine into the Sig and repeated the process with the spare ones in another pocket to make sure they were all ready to go.

  The itch in his palms was getting stronger, prompting him to slip the wooden knuckles back on while looking up and through the chain link fence. Beyond the perimeter, the tree-covered terrain sloped gently upward. Most everything had become covered with trees or tall weeds since the packs had taken over. Without anyone maintaining the grounds or rolling over them with a constant flow of tires and treads, nature crept back in just like all those television documentaries said it would. While that made for prettier views, it also made it tougher to spot small groups of Half Breeds from a distance.

  Some trees rustled a little over a hundred yards away. Some dust was kicked up from that same area. If the pack meant to charge straight at the truck stop, they would have been there already. Instead, they were hanging back. Half Breeds could hunt at any time they liked but preferred to feed at night. Rico looked at the sky to find dark purple and orange hues cast upon the clouds. The Half Breeds wouldn’t be hanging back for much longer. Even though he heard someone approaching him from behind, he kept his eyes pointed upward.

  “Taking in the scenery?” Gary asked in a biting tone.

  “These days, everyone should,” Rico replied. “Never know how soon it’ll be before you can’t see it any more.”

  “With all the orders you were giving to Big Linn, I thought you’d be doing a whole lot more than standing around with yer thumb up yer ass.”

  “Did you give her the backup weapon she asked for?”

  “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you, boy!”

  Rico wheeled around to show Gary a glare that made the smaller man reflexively back away. “Call me boy again and I’ll use this,” he said while holding up his fist to display a row of wooden spikes, “as the world’s worst catheter.”

  Whether he got the medical reference or not, Gary fully understood the lethal promise in the Skinner’s eyes. “Easy there, bud. All I’m sayin’ is that it ain’t right for you to come around spouting orders. We got a way of doin’ things around here.”

  “And if that way was a good one, you wouldn’t need any help with this pack you were crying to me about. You wanna be helpful? Hang back to snipe as many of those things as you can.”

  “I can do more to help, you know. We all can. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “You will be helping,” Rico sighed. “Just do what I asked, and you’ll be doing plenty.”

  Shrugging, Gary backed away and walked over to have a word with the small group of locals who’d gathered behind him. Rico imagined there was plenty of tough talk and colorful language being whispered among them, but the bunch of ex-mechanics, cashiers and fry cooks quickly fell into line to take the positions Rico had requested. As soon as she emerged from the truck stop’s largest building, Linda was greeted by Gary who handed her a shotgun to go along with the AK-47 she was already carrying. After a brief conversation, Linda marched over to Rico.

  “Looks like we’re all with you,” she told him.

  “Gary too?” Rico asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  Linda shrugged. “Gary’s problem is that he doesn’t think too much before he says stuff. Even if he did…I doubt it would help much. He’s a big fan, though.”

  “Fan of what?”

  “Skinners,” Linda said. “Lots of us are. After everything that’s happened, you’re the closest thing to superheroes we got.”

  Rico chuckled and held up the fist encased in a weapon infused with almost as much blood as it had spilled. “That’s kind of stretching it, don’t ya think?”

  “Well…maybe. Still, you guys do a lot for the rest of us, and we’re grateful.”

  “Then how about handing over some free gas and supplies?”

  Linda chucked him on the shoulder with a good amount of power behind her fist. “You wouldn’t just up and leave, even if you know you could have taken whatever you wanted.”

  “We’ll just see about that. How’s the kid?”

  “Haley wasn’t happy when I told her to stay put, but she’s doing it. Had to leave her in the front of the store where she could watch what happened through the window. An
d she’s no kid. I imagine she likes being called that almost as much as you like being called boy.”

  Scowling, Rico looked at the truck stop’s main building to find the slender young woman standing behind some old painted lettering advertising a sale on wiper fluid. “She’s supposed to be somewhere safe,” he said. “She could get hit by anything standing there like that.”

  “It was either that or lock her up.”

  “Locking her up sounds fine, just so long as she’s out of the line of fire.”

  “You really think it’ll get that bad?” Linda asked.

  Rico turned toward the fence and looked beyond the perimeter. The trees stopped rustling and the dust had settled, but the burn in his palms was still there. “Probably not. It’s tough to say how these things go sometimes.”

  “They should be coming ‘round any time now,” she said. “Usually not long after the sun goes down.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figure.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “You and me get on the other side of this fence,” Rico told her. “I get up close and do the superhero thing while you play sidekick.”

  “I was just joking about the superhero crack,” she said.

  “Damn. I was digging through some old comics not too long ago and kind of liked the comparison.”

  Although he’d meant to put another smile on her face, it was getting too close to dark for the attempt to work. Linda looked up at the sky and shifted as if she was also feeling a physical reaction to being so close to the pack of Half Breeds. Her battered AK-47 was strapped over one shoulder, and a shotgun was in her left hand. It was a sawed-off double-barreled model that would serve her well if any of those creatures got up close. Judging by the scrapes and bite marks in the shotgun’s wooden stock, it had already seen plenty of action.

  “Is there another spot for us to get outside the fence, or do we have to use the main gate and walk all the way around?” he asked.

  “There’s a platform right there,” she said while pointing to one of the taller posts several yards in the opposite direction. “We can climb over.”

  “Screw that. I’d rather walk.”

  “Me too.”

  They moved straight through the truck stop, crossing the lot with the gas pumps and passing in front of the main building. Rico glanced over to Haley’s window and gave her a nod. She tried to look angry at him, but threw him a wave instead.

  “Once we’re out there, you just keep your back to the fence or something solid,” Rico said. “Shoot any of those things that get close to you, and let me know if anything gets too close to taking a bite outta me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You want there to be more?” he chuckled.

  “We tried standing against them outside the fence before, and they pushed us back,” Linda said. “Lost some people, too. We got close to turning the tide a few times, but that one…their leader…he saw to it that we didn’t finish the job.”

  “How many of your people were killed?”

  So far, no real casualty numbers had been mentioned by anyone at the truck stop. Rico found that sort of thing in lots of the civilian groups he spoke to. It was a foregone conclusion that friends and family had been lost. Speaking about it just fed the sorrow. The only reason Rico asked about it now was to get a handle on how big of a problem this pack truly was.

  “A couple dozen of us settled here when this place was first set up,” Linda said. “Some were killed when the first bunch of those dog things came through. We lost more when one or two packs staked their claim on this area. We killed a bunch of them with some fire bombs and thought we had a good handle on things, so we settled in and opened for business. Then, people started disappearing.”

  “Disappearing?” Rico asked. “Nobody mentioned that.”

  “That’s been happening for a while,” Linda said as she nodded up to the man in charge of opening the front gate. “Didn’t think it had to do with the packs.”

  “Did you find any bodies?”

  “One poor lady from Sioux Falls stayed here for a few days. She went missing and we eventually found her body, but it was pretty far gone. Looked like a dried up piece of rotten fruit.”

  Rico tightened his fist around his wooden weapon until the thorns dug into his flesh.

  “Does that mean anything to you?” Linda asked.

  It did, but he shook his head and continued walking. Big Linn and the rest of them already had enough on their plates without having to deal with more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was a long walk around the outside of that fence. Rico could feel the pack slowly encroaching on human territory. He’d stood against them for years before the world knew about werewolves, and he’d waded through the thick of it now that war had been declared. Still, it was tough to leave the protection offered by familiar structures and solid walls. For Linda, he knew the walk must have seemed even longer.

  They talked about strategy on their way to the spot Rico chose, but most of that was unnecessary. Both of them knew what had to be done. In the short amount of time before the hammer dropped, they took comfort from hearing each other’s voice by telling a few stories about past fights and even swapping a few jokes. Fortunately, those couple of minutes as they waited for a pack of inhuman killers to arrive dragged on as well.

  “So,” Rico said. “How big is this pack? Six? Seven plus the leader?”

  “Right around there,” Linda replied shakily.

  The color of the sky shifted to shades of deep blue and streaks of black. Where time had seemed to drag before, it sped now. Rico heard a steady scraping, creaking sound coming from nearby. He traced it back to Linda’s hand as she tightened her grip around the AK-47, eased up and tightened again.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ve done this before, right?”

  “Yeah, but mostly with a bit more cover around me.”

  “Ah. I see. Guess I’m used to being on the shitty side of the fence.”

  She smiled uneasily at him. “That’s why it’s good to have Skinners around.”

  If those same words had come from Lieutenant Sayers back at Unit 7 of the Northeast Region, Rico would have wanted to punch him in the mouth. Coming from Big Linn, however, made him laugh. She was just starting to join in the good times when he said, “Look sharp. They’re coming.”

  Her trickle of laughter was immediately pinched off, and she brought the assault rifle to her shoulder. “They are? Where?”

  Rico caught his breath before saying, “Those trees right over there. See the shadows?”

  The shadows he referred to rolled in like inky fog, starting as a mass emerging from the foliage before quickly separating into several lean, powerful bodies.

  “I see them,” Linda said. “What should I do?”

  “Stick to the plan. You’ll be fine.”

  She backed up until her shoulders bumped against the fence. The rattle of chain link against two nearby posts could still be heard when Gary shouted from above and behind them.

  “We got a pack comin’! Same spot as before!”

  Rico moved his wooden knuckles to his right hand, drove the thorns into his palm and willed the weapon to shift into a gauntlet that would stretch down past his wrist. “Keep lookouts spread apart!” he shouted toward the truck stop. “Make sure none of those things try to get around to another spot!”

  “You heard him!” Gary hollered. “I want…”

  Although Gary continued to issue orders to the people still within the perimeter, Rico couldn’t hear the rest of what was said. The pack of Half Breeds was already closing in, and their churning, ragged breaths filled his ears.

  Rico had tucked the Sig Sauer beneath his belt after his last reload and drew it with his left hand less than two seconds before the first Half Breed got close enough to leap at him. It howled in a mixture of pain and fury as it left the ground, clawing at the air and spraying saliva from the corners of its mouth in anticipation of t
he blood it was about to draw. Rico dropped to one knee, swinging his right hand in a sharp uppercut that drove the spikes on his gauntlet’s knuckles into the werewolf’s neck just below its chin. He turned a hundred and eighty degrees which not only got him facing the opposite direction, but also twisted the spikes within the Half Breed’s throat. From there, Rico added some of his muscle to the creature’s momentum to toss it toward the fence. The werewolf landed in a flailing heap, clawing at the ground and wheezing through the gaping hole in its neck.

  “Look out!” Linda shouted as the AK-47 erupted in her hands. She sprayed a stream of bullets into the pack, hitting a few of the werewolves in their sides and legs before one of the creatures ran directly at her. Keeping her finger clamped down on the trigger, she chopped that Half Breed’s face and chest into mulch with the assault rifle’s barrage.

  Gunfire cracked from behind the fence as well. A few rifles fired from up high, sending bullets whipping down into the pack. Some of them hit but didn’t do much to slow the creatures. Having already lost two of its members, the pack scattered in multiple directions before turning back around to take another run at the fence. Rico stood his ground and was about to fire at one of the werewolves when a rifle shot beat him to the punch. He threw a grateful wave over his shoulder without turning around and picked his next target.

  The Half Breed that came at him this time had a long body and kept close to the ground as it rushed toward the Skinner with its tongue lolling out one side of its mouth. Rico swung at it with the gauntlet, connecting with a blow that sent its head snapping to one side. Because every bone in a Half Breed’s body was held together at multiple spots by knots of muscle, its head was able to bend all the way back until its snout slapped against its shoulder before springing back again. Another Half Breed leapt over the first and bit down onto the upper portion of Rico’s left arm. His jacket was stitched together from shapeshifter hide which was tough enough to absorb most of the bite. Like any hungry wolf, the Half Breed sank its teeth in as far as they would go while whipping its head back and forth to subdue its prey.