Next to the greenhouse that Terry chose was a healthy-sized field of barley and wheat. The farmers had planted it with the help of their cart horse and then did little with it besides getting rid of the weeds between the rows. Terry looked at the barley hungrily and was devising a plan to turn it into beer. He was still working on the farmers who didn’t want to part with too much of their precious grain. They wanted it all for bread.
Terry wanted it for liquid bread.
He expected that they would compromise and that was why he always worked at their greenhouse, building credits to call in with the fall harvest.
Terry had fans. The farmers across the board were more than pleased with the help he provided and the change that had come across Billy Spires.
Terry always smiled and more importantly, although he wasn’t a farmer, he seemed to be able to answer any of their questions regarding the history of the crops and optimal fertilization techniques. He had read a couple books on the processes way back when.
He recalled the charts that said when to add nitrogen, a little lime, or even horse manure. No one element was the golden egg. It was the balance that mattered.
The farmers were seeing more of their crops turning green and less dying. Terry was in good standing and he hoped to barter that for the opportunity to turn barley and wheat into mash as the first stage in brewing beer. He didn’t have hops and that wasn’t a bar to brewing. He accepted that his first stuff might not be great, but decided it would be the best that the world had to offer.
He was good with that.
In his head, he built a list of materials that he’d need for the brewing process, a large copper pot for boiling the wort and sparge water, those liquids that contained the sugars that would create the beer and then give it the alcoholic kick, a couple other vats for fermenting, some tubing, a screen for filtering out the hard bits, and then bottles to bottle the brew. He wondered if he could cap it or if he’d have to fashion soft wood into corks.
So much to do, but even a bad beer was better than no beer.
When he arrived at the house with his armload of vegetables, Char was waiting. She’d been lounging on the porch in a chair that had appeared during one of his absences. The Werewolf made a beeline for him, intercepting him while he was still in the street.
“What gives, big man?” She smiled, turning her head away just enough to highlight her perfect profile.
Let the flirt games begin, he thought, but he wasn’t a player. “What do you mean?” he asked, knowing full well what she meant.
“It’s like you’re deliberately avoiding me. You eat, do the dishes, and rush to your room, locking the door behind you. I’m not a stranger, anymore, am I, TH? Can’t we be friends?” she asked, tracing a single finger down his bare arm, then sliding it back up until she tickled the inside of his elbow.
He bristled at her use of TH. He reserved that for his friends and that was Margie Rose, who never used it.
Could it be that his only friend in this place was the Werewolf?
“Hell no,” he mumbled.
“I’m sorry, TH, I didn’t quite catch that,” she said, looking at him through narrowed eyes.
“I’m sorry, I said, let’s go. Let’s get these vegetables inside where Margie Rose can work her magic. I forget, is it my turn to cook tonight?” he asked, trying to divert her efforts at being his friend to matters of a more non-contentious nature.
She walked at his side, holding his arm as if he were her escort. He probably could have carried the vegetables in one arm, but chose to use both so she couldn’t find an excuse to hold his hand. She could probably smell his discomfort, the canine part of her reveling in the odd flavors coming from him.
She had to know that none of it was sexual attraction, which probably accounted for why she was trying so hard.
It was a game to her. As he was getting ready to bark at her to give him some room, Margie Rose appeared in the doorway with the kindest of smiles from the gentlest of souls.
How could he act angry in front of the old lady? He gave her his most winning smile.
“Margie Rose! What a sight to come home to. Look at what I’ve brought the lovely lady of this house.” She opened the door to let him in. He walked deliberately straight to the kitchen, so he could start preparing dinner. Margie Rose followed him in and then shooed him away. He tried to resist, but she was adamant.
Then he had a thought, probably not a good one, but it was all he had.
“Do you fight?” he asked Char. She looked at him oddly, all pretense of the game gone from her face.
“What do you mean?” she answered with her own question.
“Sparring, hand-to-hand, self-defense? As I take the boys out, I need to know that the people here can protect themselves and that means you. Margie Rose doesn’t have a single hostile bone in her body, but I have a feeling that you might have a few moves. Shall we?” He pointed to the door. She suggested he go first. He did, but sideways so he could keep his eye on her.
When they got into the yard, he unloaded the pistol and rifle and put them and all his gear to the side. He was loose from his walk, but stretched and flexed. She stood there, watching him disinterestedly.
He assumed his fighting stance, balls of his feet, knees flexed, left foot slightly forward, hands up but loose. He waved Char to him. At that moment, Margie Rose beat furiously on the window with a wooden spoon, wondering what was going on. When he took his eyes from Char, she struck. He caught a glimpse of an unnaturally fast fist coming toward his head in time to deflect some of the blow, but not enough to keep her from bowling him over.
It felt like his head had been hit by a freight train. He didn’t remember falling, but when his back hit the ground, he continued rolling backward, throwing his feet up over his head until they hit the ground and he was kneeling. He put his hands up, expecting a follow up attack.
Margie continue to pound on the window, but Terry ignored it. This had become deadly serious.
“I knew you had it in you, but you know what they say…” He stood up slowly, his head pounding, but his vision cleared and he was ready to resume the fight.
“No, TH, what do they say?” she asked sarcastically, hand on hip.
“You can’t keep a good man down,” he laughed. He moved toward her with short quick steps, one foot forward and then the other, never crossing his legs or feet, always keeping his body squared up to hers. She stood with her arms at her side, unconcerned. He moved within arm’s reach, yet she remained still. He jabbed at her face, not to hit, but to gauge her reaction. Her hands flew up to block the punch, then reached to grab his wrist, but he was already pulling it back as the real attack, the body blow, found its mark just above her waist.
As that punch landed, he dodged to the side. Her abdomen was almost as hard as a rock, like punching the flank on a horse. She darted forward into the space where he’d been. He let her get even as he followed with his left hand to the side of her head.
A blow that would have felled any of his men barely phased her. She turned and snarled as he danced backward, his face fixed as he looked for her next weakness. She’d been counting on her Werewolf speed to stop any of his attacks, but misjudged how fast he truly was.
She threw a handful of dirt toward his face but he dodged. She jumped high into the air and spun. She’d predicted his move, and the roundhouse almost hit home, but his hands were already up. He deflected her foot, guiding it past his head as he danced away, then resumed the attack. Margie Rose stopped pounding.
Only the two of them remained. Nothing else mattered. Char was focused like a laser beam on the surprising human. He’d caught her unaware once. There wouldn’t be a second time. She danced forward, left, right, left as she approached, keeping him centered in front of her.
Her hands were raised, and she was ready to deliver the beat down the arrogant human deserved. How dare you lay a hand on me, asswipe! she thought as she snarled, as the Werewolf part of her threatened to over
whelm her being.
She was faster and stronger than Terry, but she was inexperienced in hand-to-hand combat.
When Terry dropped his right hand as if readying a haymaker, she darted through the opening, going after his exposed face to claw the flesh from his skull.
With an open-handed grab, he had her arm and then he turned, too fast for the eye to follow, pulling her through her own punch to drag her off balance. He used her speed and strength against her as he hip-checked her on the way past, driving her feet off the ground. He continued pulling with his right hand, around and down toward the ground. He kept his head tucked in in case she clawed at him with her free hand, but once off-balance, she simply flailed.
He slammed her into the ground hard enough that if she had been human, she would have broken most of the bones in her back.
As it was, she lay stunned for a few moments. Margie Rose came running out in a huff, smacking Terry on the head with her wooden spoon as she ran past.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, both in surprise and pain. He’d just bested a Werewolf in hand-to-hand combat and then got schooled by an old woman with a wooden spoon.
Char jumped to her feet, fire in her eyes. Margie Rose slid as she tried to stop and fell against the young woman. She bounced off as if she’d run into a wall. Char closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. When she opened her eyes again, all anger gone from her face. She looked at Margie Rose and smiled. “You worried about me, Margie Rose? Don’t be.” She pointed to Terry. “That wasn’t anything. We were just playing.”
“Holy cow! Oh my God! He slammed you into the ground. Terry Henry Walton! I never took you for such a brute. March right into that house, mister, and you finish dinner. I have to make sure you didn’t hurt her!” Margie Rose snapped at him.
Terry held his hands up defensively, unsure of what to say, but as before, Char came to his rescue.
“That’s not necessary, Margie Rose. Terry was teaching me a valuable lesson. I was a little big for my breeches, and you know what, I think I am much more in tune with myself now. Why don’t you take care of dinner, I need to thank Mr. Walton for the lesson.” She patted the older woman on the back as she headed toward the house, scowling darkly at Terry.
He mouthed “what” at her and she pointed her spoon at him. He wanted to laugh, but wasn’t sure what Charumati had in mind for him. He stepped back defensively, remaining on the balls of his feet as the Werewolf sauntered toward him.
“Nicely done, Mr. Walton,” she said. “I concede. I believe there is much you can teach me and would like to begin training as soon as possible. Could I join your security force, please, or is that a boys-only club?”
His intent was to gauge her fighting skills, maybe smack her around a little to show he wasn’t prey. He didn’t expect to gain another recruit. If she practiced hand-to-hand with any of the others, she would probably kill them.
The little bit that Terry had taught those guys would not gain any of the men one extra second of life against the Werewolf. Which meant that next to him, she was the deadliest creature in town.
He shook his head. “God dammit.”
Char smirked and Margie Rose beat on the window with her spoon, waving them into the house. Char looked towards the house. “She’s going to break that window one of these days…”
CHAPTER TEN
Sawyer was as miserable as he expected to be. His seat felt like the soft spot in an old pumpkin, ready to give way at any moment. He finally stopped, got off the horse, and beat relentlessly on the lump with the butt of his pistol. When he climbed back onto the frightened animal, the lump was leveled, but he was still in pain. The others watched without amusement. He wondered…
“Which one of you fucks gave me the lumpy saddle? Come on, don’t be a pussy. One of you did it on purpose. I better not find out or there will be hell to pay. I bet it was that little fucker back at the ranch who gave me a half-empty jug of water. Yeah, that little bastard. He’ll get his when we get back.”
With a dark cloud over his head, he rode on, kicking his horse into a trot, then a gallop. He wanted to get there, intimidate somebody new, have something else to do besides ride that damn horse.
They’d been underway for three days and Sawyer Brown was angry that they weren’t there yet. He was ready to engage with this community, let them feel the heat of his ire.
Talking about heat, the scouts rode a quarter mile in front of the others. They waved and pointed. Sawyer continued riding ahead, squinting where they were pointing. A lean tendril of smoke drifted skyward from a small cabin. In the distance, he could see what looked like a streetlight. Sawyer checked the sun’s position. It was over the mountains to the west, but would soon disappear behind them. He wanted to sleep in a bed that night. Smoke meant humans.
They’d found the settlement.
“To that cabin. We go in fast. You two, inside as soon as we get there and pull out whoever you find. I want to talk with them.” He waved the others ahead and followed slowly. He had lackeys to do his bidding. Just in case the locals had weapons, his people would bear the brunt of any armed defense.
As it was, the people weren’t armed. When his two men stormed inside, they found a man and woman sitting at a dining room table, just finishing their dinner. The table was thrown aside as the man attempted to fight the intruders, but they were too much for him and in moments, they dragged him and the woman outside and threw them into the straggly grass of the front yard.
“Terry Henry is going to have your ass!” the man howled hysterically, the whites of his eyes showing his fear.
Sawyer rode close, kicking his horse until it bumped the man. Sawyer started to lean down to say something smart, but could not come up with anything, so he settled for kicking the man in the face. He went down like a sack of potatoes while the woman looked on, too terrified to scream.
The big man climbed down from his horse and approached the woman. He sniffed her and it made her skin crawl. He grabbed her arms and pulled her off her feet. She produced a knife and stabbed at his chest, but she didn’t have enough movement with her arms to do any damage. Sawyer looked down at the weapon.
“A fighter, huh. I like it when they fight,” he said. The man had regained his feet, unseen as Sawyer’s posse watched their boss zero in on his target. The man hit Sawyer Brown with a full body block, but Sawyer was a big man. He teetered, but didn’t go down. He grabbed the man and twisted him around in a circle. Sawyer wrapped a massive arm around the smaller man’s neck. He lifted and twisted, letting the man’s weight and gravity work in conjunction with his own physical power. The man’s neck snapped with a loud crack.
The woman screamed and turned her knife around and plunged it into her own throat. Sawyer Brown lunged, but it was too late. All he managed to do was get covered in blood as the woman’s carotid spurted her life in great red arcs. In fifteen seconds, she was down, and in less than a minute, she was dead.
“What the hell were you doing, dickless?” Sawyer yelled at the man who was supposed to be holding her. He grabbed him by his collar and dragged him forward, thrusting his face toward the woman’s dead body. “Look at that! Wasted because you couldn’t do your job. I ought to kill you! You ruined my evening,” Sawyer bellowed.
“I’m sorry, boss, it was all my fault. I’ll do better next time, honest!” the man cried and pleaded.
Sawyer threw him to the side. Clyde started licking the woman’s blood. Sawyer watched for second, then nudged the dog away. “Now, now, Clyde. I don’t want you to get a taste for humans. You sleep too close to me, buddy. Get away from there!” Sawyer yelled at the dog until he convinced the mutt to go inside with him.
There was still food warming on the side of a wood-burning stove. He sniffed it and took the whole pan to the table. He wiped off one of the used forks on his pants leg and dug in. Some kind of wild game in a stew with crisp vegetables. He hadn’t had a meal like that in a long time. Damn! The woman was dead. If she could cook like that then having her ar
ound would have been multifaceted. He’d threatened his boys to make sure nothing like that happened again.
It never occurred to Sawyer Brown that maybe the man was the cook. Sawyer had been raised a certain way, and it benefitted him to maintain that stereotype in his mind.
It made it easy to kill the men and comfortable to treat the women as property.
As he ate, he wondered who this Terry Henry was. He looked forward to meeting the man that the corpse put so much faith in. He didn’t save that man, and he wouldn’t save anyone else.
“Fuck ‘em,” Sawyer said as he sat back and belched. The padded chair felt good. He looked at the loft. He hated ladders, but there was a real bed up there. He’d be sleeping well tonight. “Sorry, Clyde. I’m not going to carry your ass up there. You’re sleeping down here tonight. At least they have a couch,” he said, trying to console his only friend.
Sawyer opened the back door, relieved himself without stepping outside, then closed the door behind him as he returned inside. He sniffed the air. The smell of stew and wildflowers filled the cabin. It was humble and clean, a place that people cared about. The dead out front had been those people.
He started digging through drawers and in the closet, determining quickly that they had nothing he wanted beside their bed.
Sawyer cracked the front door and saw his men, milling about, disorganized. “Hey, Jagoff! Set up security around this house, half on, half off, through the night. And for fuck’s sake, get rid of those bodies!” he bellowed. With eight men, he wanted four on watch at any time. He’d let the men sort it out. If he woke in the middle of the night, he’d go for a walk, find someone sleeping, and beat the hell out of them. Then he’d get a drink.
It was his way.
* * *
Margie Rose cooked a big breakfast for her two houseguests, who sat at the table, conspicuously not looking at each other. The old lady sat down heavily and rapped her wooden spoon on the table. Terry had his rifle, pistol, and bullwhip. Who was he to deny Margie Rose her weapon of choice?
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