Nomad Redeemed

by Craig Martelle

  Char looked the smaller woman over. “If you only knew,” she replied as she grabbed the bear haunch and hoisted it over a shoulder, carrying it by herself toward the back door to the kitchen. Terry accepted the challenge and took the other, grunting under the weight as he staggered through Billy’s yard. Billy tied the horses to a fence post and asked Felicity to bring them water.

  The mayor joined Terry and Char. “Where in the fuck did that man-mountain come from?” he demanded, grabbing Char by the arm. She whirled so fast that Billy tripped trying to step back and fell, landing heavily on his ass.

  “Don’t touch me, ever again,” Char said in a low and dangerous voice. Billy held his hands up, before Terry helped the man to his feet.

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it,” he mumbled. “How many fucking people are traipsing around the goddamned mountains? It’s like a parade and how in the hell do they grow so big out there? Can either of you clownburgers explain any of this to me?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Billy. Thanks for backing us up out there. I expect that Marcus is probably the most dangerous man we have ever met. And you were right there with us, ready to wade into the middle of it. Damn, Billy, you are one tough ball-slapper!”

  Billy blinked twice at Terry before answering, “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be pleased by that or not,” he replied.

  Char looked at Terry. “You’re right about that. Marcus is a killer, orders of magnitude worse than that simpering fuckwit Sawyer Brown.” Char looked like she wanted to say more, but not with Billy there. He didn’t need to know the secret of the mountain travelers.

  Terry pulled out his knife, washed off the blade, and told the others to take care with the hide. He wanted it. Terry and Char worked methodically and butchered the bear in short order, without any conversation. Billy gave up and went outside to wash down the horses.

  Billy finally found a hobby he liked: riding horses. They didn’t give him grief when he talked and when he sat astride one, he could feel their power beneath him. He reveled in sharing that.

  The others rode for convenience’s sake. Not him.

  Terry and Char stuffed the processed bear into one of the Billy’s freezers. They washed up and headed outside, carrying a few steaks that they hoped Margie Rose would turn into a work of art. Char secreted a few pounds of flank steak that she’d eat later, raw as she preferred.

  They collected their horses, thanked Billy for washing and grooming them, and then rode off. Once out of earshot, they both tried to talk at the same time.

  Terry deferred, preferring to hear what Char had to say.

  “I need to leave or he’ll come back. Next time, he’ll kill you on his way to me. Don’t think your silver knife intimidated him,” she cautioned. Terry shook his head. He hadn’t thought that at all. His knife looked puny compared to the massive body of the alpha.

  “Maybe it’s time we took to the Wasteland, started looking for others. What will he do if you’re not here?” Terry asked.

  “Probably nothing. It’s me he wants. He doesn’t really care about humans.” She looked at the ground as she talked, replaying the earlier encounter in her head.

  “Look what he did to those two hunters. He has a taste for human flesh, and he’ll be back alright, but will the pack come with him?” Terry wondered.

  “The pack will only passively support him. No one is strong enough to challenge him alone. I need to leave, and it’ll probably be best if you go with me, if you want to live,” she suggested, reaching across the space between their horses to put a hand on Terry’s arm.

  Clyde yipped as the horses walked together, squeezing out from in between them. He ran ahead, turning into the brush when he caught sight of a rabbit. He started braying as he chased the terrified creature.

  “So, what do we tell Margie Rose? For a woman who rarely leaves the house, she always knows everything that’s going on, so we won’t be able to keep your ex-husband a secret for very long…”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marcus was furious. He shook with the anger that raged through his body. He needed to kill something, badly. “With me,” he roared at no one in particular. So they followed as he changed into Werewolf form and ran into the woods, faster and higher until he smelled the bull elk. He raced after him, wanting the creature to run.

  It did, as Marcus neared. It pounded the earth with its heavy hooves, leaping ravines and tearing through the brush with reckless abandon.

  He followed it, pacing himself faster than the fleeing bull. He ran it down from behind, leaping onto its back and biting deep into the creature’s neck, trying to drag it down so he could snap the spine or change his grip to the bull’s throat.

  The elk twisted as it fell and its neck broke, almost too easily. Marcus jumped aside deftly, staying clear of the horns when the elk hit the ground. He waited to make sure it was dead before ripping the flesh apart, feasting on the great beast.

  He called the rest of the pack to him, and they each dug in.

  * * *

  Margie Rose wasn’t convinced by their story about the stranger, but they wouldn’t tell her more. She let it go, because it cast a storm cloud over her home. They’d already finished their dinner, but Margie Rose added a freshly baked biscuit that she covered with a gracious helping of jam. Terry and Char looked forward to their dessert, but Clyde had different ideas.

  He tripped Margie Rose and when the biscuits flew across the living room, he gobbled them one by one, until he was ushered outside, none too kindly, at the end of Margie Rose’s broom. They wouldn’t let her make any more, although she insisted. It had been a long day, so they packed it in.

  Terry lay awake, his mind running a hundred miles an hour. A Werewolf invasion. Holy shit. Marcus was a mountain of flesh, and Terry didn’t have a way to fight him.

  The doorknob slowly turned and Char stepped through, closing the door quietly behind her. Wearing nothing but panties, she walked to the side of the bed and stood for there for a second. Terry slid over and she crawled in next to him. She curled into the crook of his arm, putting her head on his chest and listening to the beating of his heart. It sped up, then slowed back to its rhythmic pace.

  “What’s this, are you afraid of him?” Terry finally asked.

  “You’d be a fool not to be afraid. You saw what he’s capable of. But I’m not afraid for myself. My life was forfeit the second I walked away from him. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to protect you,” she whispered.

  Terry was taken aback. He understood that he needed her protection when the fight came. Marcus would kill him and eat his heart. The thought twisted his stomach into a knot.

  Terry threw the covers off as the heat in the bed increased dramatically. He’d already started to sweat. Lying next to a Werewolf was worse than having Clyde sleep on him. “Hey! It’s cold in here,” Char complained. He pulled the covers over her and caressed her hair as she drifted off. Clyde was howling outside, leaving Terry no choice.

  He carefully tucked a pillow under Char’s head and tiptoed from the room, downstairs, and to the front door. When he opened it, Clyde sprinted through. “Keep it down, Clyde!” Terry snagged a piece of cooked bear for the dog, but he couldn’t be sure Clyde even tasted it as he gulped it down.

  Terry tried climbing the stairs quietly, but Clyde was all toenails and sliding. When he opened the door, he saw the bed was empty, the covers neatly pulled up to the pillows. He sighed, happy in one way and sad in another, confused in both.

  Clyde took two steps and leapt over the footboard and into the middle of the bed where he curled up. “No you don’t, you flea-bitten mongrel!” Terry jumped on the bed beside Clyde, bouncing him into the air. When he landed, Terry expertly moved him to the side and wriggled under the covers.

  The door opened and Char walked back in. She closed the door behind her and made her way to the bed, pointing for Terry to move over. He looked at Clyde who had rolled onto his side and was stretching out his long legs.
/>   Terry held up his hands in surrender.

  Char nodded then grabbed the mattress and pulled it up, shaking the whole thing once. Clyde hit the floor first, followed closely by Terry. Char shook the mattress back into place and crawled in.

  When Terry stood up, he thought turnabout was fair play. He grabbed the mattress, but without opening her eyes, Char waved a finger at him. “Don’t even think about it, TH.” Clyde leapt past him and that was all the incentive Terry needed. He scrambled under the covers, kicking and pushing Clyde until the dog resigned himself with sleeping at the foot of the bed.

  “We need to figure out how to beat him. I can’t do it alone, not yet anyway, and you can’t stand up to him on your best day, with your best weapons at hand,” she sighed.

  “When I believe I can’t beat him, then I will have already lost. There’s always a way to win. I just need to find it,” Terry whispered. “And I will find it, because we’re not here to protect ourselves. We’re here to protect everyone else, the engineer, the mechanic, even Billy and Felicity.”

  She nodded, rolled to her side, and was soon asleep. Clyde started to snore. And Terry laid there, the foot under Clyde was sweating and he thought he was getting a heat rash on his left side because of Char. The Marine Corps way was to embrace the pain, drive it to its apex, let it know that it couldn’t defeat you.

  He wrapped an arm around the Werewolf and pulled himself close, closed his eyes, and started to sweat. He finally surrendered and pushed himself away. He balanced himself on a sliver of the bed as far away as possible from the Werewolf and the dog.

  The cool of his precarious position was a welcome respite and sleep embraced him.

  When the morning came, Char sat up, stretched, and got out of bed.

  “That was the best sleep I’ve had in long time, TH. You are a dynamo in the rack!” she teased. “Come on, Clyde. Let’s see what the new day has to offer while we let Mr. Late Sleeper get his beauty rest. Heaven knows he needs it.” Char opened the door to find Margie Rose shuffling past.

  Margie Rose stopped, looked at the barely dressed young woman, then pulled her into a matronly hug. She peeked past her into the bedroom where the covers were thrown about and Terry lay with his arm over his head, looking at her with one eye open. She waggled her fingers at him. Terry closed his eye and wished for more sleep.

  “Get some clothes on, young lady! I will make you the best breakfast you’ve ever had. I’m sure you need to get your energy back,” Margie Rose said, giggling, followed by smacking her wooden spoon on the scantily clad Char’s perfectly rounded butt. “Now get dressed!”

  * * *

  “Get your lousy asses out of the rack!” Devlin yelled at the newcomers. It had been three days and all they’d done was every type of physical fitness activity that Mark, Devlin, Jim, and Ivan could think of.

  The new recruits were breaking down. They couldn’t seem to do anything right, were reactive all the time, and were late to everything.

  Exactly like they were supposed to be. When Terry and Char arrived, the FDG formed in two ranks. The first had the original four members and the second rank had the newcomers. Terry wasn’t pleased with that. He wasn’t happy with himself for spending so much time away from his recruits. Even the old ones were new and needed to learn.

  He waved them into a circle around him.

  “Here’s what’s going on,” Terry started, looking to Char then back to the group. “There’s a new man, who’s watching us right now from the mountains.” Terry hesitated, not sure how much to share. He knew that he couldn’t tell them the truth.

  “It’s Char’s ex-husband and this man is bigger than any human being you’ve ever seen before.” Terry hung his head. “That means Char is his target. Tactically, we can’t have a battle here. Our job is to protect this town, and if, by our presence, we create a greater risk, then it follows that we need to move. Here’s what we are going to do…”

  Terry moved the small group to a dirt patch beside the barracks’ yard. He drew New Boulder, Denver, south to New Mexico and east through the worst of the Wastelands to Kansas.

  “It looks like it’s not going to be cold enough to get a good snow, but it will be cool enough to travel east. So, we’re going to take four of you north, find the South Platte River and follow it, see if there are any settlements, see if we can find people. If that doesn’t bear fruit, we’ll head south, cross the Wastelands until we find the Arkansas River, and then we’ll follow it back to Pueblo, and look for the stash on our way back through Colorado Springs and home.” He looked from face to face. Char stood behind the group, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

  The stash of arms and equipment was his white whale. Char was right. He couldn’t let it go. He was building an army and needed to be the biggest and baddest. He couldn’t do that with bows and arrows. He couldn’t stand up to Werewolves or worse, the Forsaken, with just rifles. Terry needed C4. He needed flamethrowers and grenade launchers. He needed anything and everything the U.S. Military might have stashed at one time and never come back for.

  Had he been active duty during the World’s Worst Day Ever, he would have moved much of the armory to a secondary location, secure in its anonymity. He expected his brothers-in-arms would think the same way.

  And then he hoped that those alternate locations hadn’t been found.

  Twenty years was a long time, but after the first one or so, the scavenging had drawn down. People settled in to just survive, hunting and gathering like humans had done centuries past. The advanced world tried to destroy everything it had built, but humanity had survived. Technology survived. The people just needed to clean it up and put it back into place.

  Infrastructure. They needed factories, facilities to make microchips, raw materials to send to the factories. It was a monumental undertaking.

  Terry gave himself one hundred years. As long as he didn’t get his head cut off or maimed so badly that the nanocytes couldn’t do their thing, he’d see his new world take shape.

  To do that, he needed to eliminate the threats to peace.

  Like Marcus.

  Terry clenched his jaw and growled. They’d leave, train on the road, prepare themselves to fight a Werewolf, then they’d return.

  The Force members looked at Terry uncomfortably as he’d turned silent and showed a wide range of emotions through his facial expressions.

  It was time to turn the Force into a real military organization. He’d thrown out some ranks and such, but they never used the titles or embraced the concept of chain of command. As the Force grew, he needed that discipline and structure to be part of their very souls.

  No time like the present.

  “Okay, my pretties,” he said in his best drill instructor voice. “Here’s how it’s going to be. If you don’t like it, then you can spar with me. We’ll decide the issue through hand-to-hand combat. Do you understand me?”

  A hearty chorus of “yes, sir” greeted him in response as they jumped to their feet.

  “You snot-gobbling, slack-jawed, jelly-bellied, tiny-dicked…” Char waved at him mid-sentence. He looked at her angrily as she pointed to one of the newcomers. Lacy leaned out so TH could see her.

  “I’m a chick, sir,” she said. He hesitated for half a heartbeat before continuing.

  “…no-dicked pieces of gutter slime. You will refer to me as Colonel Walton or sir. My executive officer is Charumati. You will call her Major. I know, she was a private last week, but that was last week. I need her as my XO. James and Mark are my corporals and your squad leaders. Mark will be responsible for the security of New Boulder in our absence. You will have Jim, Ivan, Boris, David, Charlie, and Blackbeard to help you. See that they are armed at all times. You will need to provide twenty-four hour security for the mayor. That is your primary mission. Secondary is the security of the power plant and the greenhouses.

  “James and his squad--Devlin, Lacy, and Geronimo--will accompany Char and me. Any questions?”

 
The men shifted uncomfortably. Terry stood and stabbed a finger into Mark’s chest. “Out with it!”

  He looked at the others before speaking. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’d like to go too, probably all of us,” he said weakly. Terry grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, smiling at the corporal.

  “There’s a big nasty out there. He’s coming after Char so we are taking her away from here. That doesn’t mean he won’t come back to New Boulder. I don’t think he’ll be as great a threat, but if he comes back, you will be fighting for your lives, the hardest fight you’ll ever have. I can’t leave the town unprotected. And you, Mark, are the best person to honcho that effort. You get good people to help, but you need to train them at the same time they’re pulling guard duty. I know you haven’t gotten that much training yourself, but of all the people here, you’re the one who can pull it off,” Terry said, never taking his hand from Mark’s shoulder.

  “Maybe you can stay here, and Char…” Terry cut him off.

  “The major,” Terry corrected.

  “…the major can take the others out,” Mark added hopefully.

  “This is what I need. I want everyone to feel comfortable enough to speak their minds. There will be times when we can’t have a conversation, and you’ll know when those are. That time is not today, so we’ll talk, make sure that we decide what’s best for everyone.” Terry looked at the map he’d drawn, thinking how to shape his argument on why he needed to be with Char that wouldn’t look self-serving.

  Char stepped beside Terry and looked at the group. “What the colonel seems hesitant to tell you is that I will have to fight my ex-husband myself. If I’m to win, I need to get better at hand-to-hand and that’s why wherever I go, the colonel must go, too. I am in training from this moment forward with the singular goal of defeating, in unarmed combat, a man twice my bodyweight with longer reach and vastly greater strength. I need to become the deadliest fighter ever. And then I need to win that contest, protect all of you from hell incarnate.”