Ways of Darkness (Wolves of the Apocalypse Book 2)

by LC Champlin

  “What the fuck, Serebus?” a woman’s familiar voice cut through the chatter. The DHS minions turned to allow one of their own through. Though the top of her head came only to most of their shoulders, the Latina stormed up with more don’t-mess-with-me attitude than a honey badger. And she most assuredly did care.

  “Officer Rodriguez.” Nathan grinned, half from pleasure and half because it annoyed her. “Fancy seeing—”

  “Swear to God, I can’t get out of babysitting you.” She glared up at him, irritation darkening her face. “Shut up and get your collective asses back to your quarters before you make a bigger idiot of yourself.”

  “We are endeavoring to do just that, Officer,” Albin assured her.

  Josephine nodded. “It was just the confusion around here.”

  “Go.” With a last glare, Roddy stalked off, muttering, “Fucking pains in my ass.”

  The convoy resumed its trek. Nathan kept his eyes forward as footage of the non-cannibal played on his mind’s screen. Each repeat degraded it, like an image after multiple copies.

  The light, the meds, the confusion . . . the psychological trauma? No, Nathan Serebus rode his demons now, not the other way around. I am the amarok. I hunt the hunters. He didn’t have mental breakdowns anymore. No longer did the shadows of the wolves who had hunted him as a teen on that disastrous night on the Aleutian Islands oppress him. They hunted beside him now. God had chosen him as His weapon to execute judgment on the human beasts who rampaged through the city.

  The squad crossed the parking lot to Belle Air Elementary, the government’s ad hoc incident command center for the area. They navigated the halls to drop Marvin and Josephine off at their respective rooms. A guard remained at each door. When they arrived at Nathan and Albin’s quarters, if you called an office with two cots “quarters,” two guards detached from the squad.

  Nathan paused. Albin didn’t seem in any hurry to enter either.

  The officer nearest the door knob opened it and nodded for them to stop screwing off. “Inside.”

  “I need to use the restroom, officer.” It worked for Davie when the almost-four-year-old wanted to stave off bedtime. “All that IV fluid.” He brandished his arm with its hospital bracelet and gauze-covered IV puncture.

  “And I believe we require more bottled water,” Albin added.

  Their protectors exchanged glances.

  “We were permitted to come and go before,” the attorney pressed as Nathan opened his mouth to announce his intention to go whether they liked it or not.

  “Fine. But be back here in five minutes.”

  Nathan took a step down the hall, then turned back. “You’re welcome to escort us if you’re worried we’ll disappear.”

  “Go.”

  Ah, the small victories.

  Around the corner, Nathan slowed. “Where’s the emergency intake area where Jim . . . saved my life.” He patted the dressing on his side. A few hours ago, a chest tube had protruded from between his ribs.

  Albin halted. “Why?”

  “Secondhand memories are dangerous.” If the Versed worked as well as he thought, he shouldn’t have any repressed memories. The drug supposedly made it impossible for the brain to record events as they occurred. “I need to see the room.”

  “Is this related to your episode in the garage?” Interrogation Mode, Albin’s default status when digging for the truth during negotiations.

  “You make it sound like a seizure.”

  “Perhaps it was.”

  “What a reassuring thought.” Nathan splinted his ribs with his right arm. “I can trust the void in my memories as long as I know it’s true.”

  “I understand.”

  The adviser led the way down halls and around corners, ending in front of double doors. Nathan squinted through their windows. Beyond the reinforced glass opened a nausea-green assembly hall. Privacy screens jutted from the perimeter to form stalls. Medical staff hustled to fetch and carry, wheel carts, transport patients.

  His incision ached, drawing a growl from him, but no flashbacks or memories.

  Albin joined him. “Is all to your satisfaction, sir?”

  “Completely.”

  As he stepped back, the medical staff at the rear of the room paused to stare at another set of double doors. A yell, barely audible. Then the doors in question burst open as several people in scrubs charged out. Nathan pressed against the glass for a wider field of view. “What in the—” Nurses didn’t run from anything.

  He shouldered through the doors. What he could do remained nebulous, but he could at least try to repay the staff’s service.

  “Get security,” one of the harried medics barked. Then, arms out, he blocked the flood of colleagues that bore down on him. “Don’t go in there!”

  From the left swept a man wearing Army fatigues under a surgical gown overcoat. Lieutenant Colonel James Wozniak, cardiothoracic surgeon, ate crises for elevensies. Taller than anyone else in the room and with a linebacker’s build, he dominated the scene. “What’s going on here?”

  “The patient—”

  Not waiting for the nurse to finish, Jim sidestepped him to kick through the doors. “Hold it open.”

  The patient no longer needed lifesaving. It half-crouched in front of the stretcher, black oil streaming from its mouth. The fluorescent lights bleached its blistered skin copy-paper white.

  Chapter 3

  Medical Intervention

  Whispers in My Head - Onlap

  A damned cannibal. In the heart of the government base.

  “Albin, call security.” Nathan turned, only to catch a last glimpse of Albin’s back as he slipped from the makeshift emergency room.

  Calm but wary, Jim retreated a few paces. “Everybody, stay back. Shut the doors.”

  The cannibal raised itself to its full height, threw back its head, and hissed: ssssaaaaahhh.

  That hideous sound, worse than a cougar’s roar or a bear’s growl. Nathan’s hair stood on end as his stomach tried to take cover behind his spine. Images flooded his mind: a parking lot full of the monsters reaching up for him as he hung from the edge of a bridge in mid-collapse.

  Flashbacks vanished behind the black-hole body of the amarok. Predators did not fear their prey.

  “Jim, think fast!” There, an IV pole on a nearby stretcher. Nathan tossed the weapon hook-end first.

  Jim caught it as the doors began to close on hydraulic assist. The cannibal fell forward, thrusting itself ahead with powerful legs. The pole flashed as Jim hurled it. A hit, square in the solar plexus.

  Off balance and impaled, the monster staggered backward. Oil oozed around the pole to join the blood from the other chest wound. The Dalit showed no pain, merely dropping its center of gravity to regain balance.

  The door clicked shut, sealing it in the anteroom. Medical staff milled behind Jim, whispering, unsure whether to help or hinder the officer who thought impaling a patient was medically necessary.

  Wait. The Dalit’s face looked familiar despite the corruption. The victim from the chopper, who attacked the medics and impersonated a cannibal. “It can’t be.” Blood turned to ice in Nathan’s veins as it slid from his heart to pool at his ankles.

  Move! He kicked the brake off a stretcher as Jim jumped to do the same on another bed. Nathan shoved his to the officer, who slammed both gurneys against the doors. The left door swung inward; the cannibal charged from the anteroom, only to have the stretcher catch it in the waist.

  “Not expecting that, were you?” Jim remarked. Retreating a step, he reached under his coat, behind his back.

  Behind Nathan, the double doors into the emergency room banged open and a team of MPs burst in, rifles panning.

  The cannibal hopped onto the stretchers, crouching like a frog. Its shoulders dropped as it prepared to lunge.

  A semi-auto handgun appeared from under Jim’s coat. BANG-BANG! The rounds struck beside the IV pole, which protruded fro
m the cannibal’s mid torso. The monster’s momentum, and its grip on the stretcher, meant the hit only rocked it back.

  Soldiers barked at the bystanders to stand clear, while medical staff yelled their own orders.

  Through the cacophony—Sssssaaaaaahhhh.

  The cannibal dropped forward to resume its attack.

  “Headshot!” Nathan roared, reaching for another IV pole.

  BANG! The cannibal’s head snapped back as oil and bone exploded from the rear of its skull. With a last spasm, it toppled backward.

  Jim held his stance as the MPs converged on the scene. When their leader nodded to him, he holstered his weapon and moved clear. “Get a hazmat team in here. Don’t touch any fluids.”

  Then he strode over to Nathan as Albin joined them. “We meet again.” The ginger-haired surgeon wore a grin, but his blue eyes sparked with intensity as he shook hands with Nathan.

  “Nice to see you putting a pipe in someone else’s chest for a change.” Nathan smirked as he patted the bandage on his side.

  Jim chuckled.

  Tearing attention from the MPs, who worked to cordon off the area, Albin shook his head. “It seems nowhere is truly safe.”

  “Thanks for the help, both of you.”

  One of the MPs detached from his fellows and approached Jim and the civilians. The Soldier snapped a salute to his superior. “Colonel, sir, we’ll need your statement regarding the incident.”

  “Of course. Take care, gentlemen.” Jim nodded to Nathan and Albin.

  The MP turned to them. “We’ll need both of yours also.”

  “The DHS is expecting us back at our quarters.” Nathan smiled, pained. “They’ll be interviewing us soon.”

  “And,” Albin added, “they are sticklers for protocol.”

  The Soldier gave a nod. “I’ll escort you.”

  As they headed back to their room, the adrenaline from the incident fell, leaving confusion in its wake. The man was a cannibal, then he wasn’t, then he was.

  “Sir?” Albin regarded Nathan with . . . suspicion? Interest? “It was the patient you believed to be a cannibal.”

  Nathan could only shake his head.

  “It was a trick of the light, combined with the factors we have already discussed.” Albin’s tone signaled the end of the discussion.

  The conversation might have ceased, but the thoughts grew. Maybe the Ativan fertilized them. They spread their roots, found the cracks in the foundation of sanity. Leaves unfurled: He’d intuited the future. He’d sensed the cannibal infection.

  God had chosen him to rule and judge. Would He not give His chosen weapon insight? He didn’t give cannibal-detection vision, but now and then perhaps He intervened.

  Intriguing ideas.

  Even if God had not called him—if he had survived without Divine intervention—restoring order here as much as possible during his two weeks of grounding made sense. He would carve out a headquarters, then expand his territory. The Bay Area needed security, stability, order. With the right strategy and tactics, he could help provide it. Developing the data that could supposedly control the cannibals acted as the capstone in the plan. As for the government, let them occupy the throne until he could step up to receive his reward for “stabilizing” the city. If the situation continued its current freefall, it would end with the government in a shattered heap at the bottom of the cliff. Then he would take the crown himself.

  What else did he have to do in the meantime? Clean his fingernails and twiddle his toes until the government deigned to book him on another C-130? If they expected him to hurry up and wait for two weeks, they would need to put him on a 24 / 7 IV drip of Ativan.

  If he could contact Doorway Pharmaceuticals’s management, he would arrange a meeting. At it, he would offer his services to “save” their data from the government by wiping their servers before the investigators confiscated the research. Not difficult, considering his company Arete Technologies had designed and installed the servers. They would bow to Low-Key the Trojan and Rag-Rock his data nuker and rerouter, just as he had crafted the system to do. Like using ransomware, but with more style. One copy of the data for him, one for Doorway—for a fee. From there, well, one bridge at a time.

  But God had called him. Ignoring the mandate from Heaven would invite wrath, not to mention forfeit blessings

  “I am on a mission from God.”

  “Excuse me?” Albin glanced at him as they rounded a corner.

  “What?”

  “You mumbled something about God.”

  He said it aloud? “Oh.”

  “Our emergency is not God’s.”

  Nathan smiled, mirthless. “God doesn’t have emergencies, Albin.”

  Chapter 4

  Mr. Serebus Goes to Washington

  Fragile Minds - Silent Theory

  Less than an hour since his first visit to the makeshift interrogation room at Belle Air Elementary, Nathan again found himself in the hot seat. Well, he always had appreciated seat warmers.

  This time, Director Washington waited for him, standing behind the empty table with arms crossed. Though in her thirties or forties—her girth filled out any wrinkles just as it filled out her black polo shirt, so exact dating proved challenging—she would give any black grandmother a run for her money. In place of the crown that she thought she deserved for her position at the DHS, she wore a bun that looked like a shrunken head.

  Beside her watched the camera from Nathan’s previous interrogation. As he approached, she switched it on. Its red light flashed.

  “Director Washington—”

  “Serebus. I’m tired of seeing your mangled face and hearing your smart mouth.”

  “I haven’t said anything yet.”

  “Sit.” She nodded to the chair before her.

  Sit, dog. He took his time, easing into a position in the folding chair that kept his injuries quiet.

  She began pacing. “You either have the best or worst luck.” She halted, propping her bulk on the table, elbows locked as she leaned toward her detainee. “What I want to know is how you knew this would happen.”

  Nathan stared. “Excuse me?”

  “In the Tavaral Police Station the night before last, you said the terrorists considered the airport a target, and now a C-130 explodes. It just happened to be the one you were slated to fly out on.”

  A bark of laughter escaped Nathan. “Yes, you found me out. I orchestrated getting blown off that roof by one of your choppers. I purposefully collapsed my lung so I couldn’t fly for two weeks.”

  “I could charge you with obstructing a DHS investigation by withholding the data you took from Doorway Pharmaceuticals.”

  And lose the ability to threaten him? “Director, I gave you the files. What more do you want?”

  “I want the truth. Why are the terrorists so interested in you? Why did they want to abduct you from the Hotel St. Regis? Unless I’m painfully mistaken, your only claim to fame is pedaling computer parts. Computer experts are a dime a dozen here.” She cocked her head. “You don’t even make the hardware, do you. Your employees think it up. You came here to sell servers and processors to your cronies at the technology summit. So, what do terrorists want with a jock in a suit, who got where he is through white privilege?”

  One, two, three, four. Rib pain diverted Nathan’s attention from forming a retort. Why the holy frick did she think he had a Master of Computer Science? To get a diploma for wall decor? He had built Arete Technologies with business acumen and technological innovation. Yes, creative use and sale of other companies’ data, which Arete hosted on their servers, greased the gears. The “file snooping,” as Albin called it in proper legal terminology and with proper legal disdain, played only a minor role in his success.

  A week or so ago, file snooping had given him Doorway Pharmaceutical’s data regarding neural regeneration. The research held the possibility of a cure for Janine’s ailing father. Neil Crevan’s degener
ative neural condition baffled the experts, but the files offered a chance. Not only would aiding Crevan, the holier-than-thou bastard, save Janine and Davie from the pain of losing him, it would make him beholden to his son-in-law the “villainous viper.”

  “Did it ever occur to you, Director, that Red Chief at St. Regis and the terrorist bastard Cheel at Doorway wanted a high-level hostage, in addition to the fact that Arete installed Doorway Pharmaceuticals’s servers?” A contract Arete Technologies had wrestled from the grip of Crevan’s company, ironically.

  “That aside, you seem to be in the middle of every disaster that happens, even the . . .” She trailed off, nose wrinkled in disgust, making her look even more like a bulldog. “The incident in the medical area. How did you know that man would turn into one of those things?”

  “I didn’t know. I only saw.” He met her glare. “Two minutes earlier, I thought the DHS officers were cannibals when they arrived to escort us. Director Washington, my mind’s not entirely reliable at this time. Only yesterday morning my people and I escaped a terrorist hostage situation. In addition, I’m on the tail end of a cornucopia of opiates. Ask Lieutenant Colonel Wozniak if you doubt me. “

  “You really expect me to believe this was all a coincidence?”

  No such things. “I don’t know, but the government needs to make a priority of investigating the data I rescued from Cheel. The Good Doctor Birk,” the traitorous little weasel, “said Cheel and his Istiqaamah fanatics wanted the files because with them they could control the spread of the cannibal outbreak. You need to cut the red tape.” Bureaucracy strangled efficiency like piano wire around a Sicilian’s throat.

  Washington folded her arms and drummed her fingers on her sausage arms. “Didn’t you accuse Birk of murder?”

  “Context.” He smiled. “You have my audio recording of Birk, not to mention Cheel’s jihad propaganda video I starred in. Considering the coordinated attacks on cities across America, and the growing threat of the cannibals, you should spend less time interrogating me and more time deciphering Doorway’s files.”