Gatekeepers

by Sam Ferguson

  BOOM! BOOM!

  Dan’s rifle tore into the waning night. As the helicopter pitched to the side I was able to catch a glimpse of the fighting through the window to my left. Werewolves were climbing the side of the ship. Security personnel were standing their ground, blasting the monsters as best they could. I watched helplessly as one werewolf vaulted over the side of a lower deck’s railing and tore into the guard with his claws and teeth. The man’s chest was ripped open and then his body fell to the deck.

  “Reload!” Dan shouted into the headset.

  The helicopter leveled out once again for a moment before turning to put the right side toward the ship. Marcus went to work with his heavy gun. The belt fed machine ate up the bullets quickly, spitting out the empty shells like discarded bones at an all you can eat BBQ rib shack.

  “They’re coming in through the windows!” Alexi shouted. “We need more support! There’s too many of them!”

  “What side?” I shouted. “Tell me where to put the helicopter!” I ordered.

  KABOOM! CLICK-KA-CLICK… KABOOM!

  Alexi’s weapon barked so loudly that it blocked out our communication. I kept shouting at him, but he didn’t respond. Then, there was a terrible scream and Alexi’s gun went silent. Something picked up the phone, breathing heavily through its mouth.

  “I told you,” a deep, throaty voice said through the satellite phone. “I warned you,” the voice said. “I will subdue your wife before I tear out her throat.”

  “No, you’re dead!” I shouted. “You died in the fight with the other harbinger wolves and the alp!”

  Laughing came from the other end. “You killed only the alp. You slew illusions that only looked like us. They were his creations. My brothers and I remain, and we will make good on our oath.” A loud crunching sound was followed immediately by static.

  “NO!” I shouted.

  “What is it?” Dan asked as he looked to me. “Which way do we go?”

  “Down!” I shouted. “We have to get Susan and Tommy.”

  “I can’t set her down,” Flint called out. “The heli pad is only meant for life flights. It can’t handle this chopper.”

  “Then get me a rope!” I shouted.

  “Mills, your ankle is busted up, we have to stay up here,” Marcus yelled.

  “Blue team is gone,” Mack shouted. “I’m only getting three life signs from Red Team.”

  “What about Indyrith?” Flint shouted.

  “Can’t find him or his daughters,” Mack replied.

  The rage rose up inside me. I threw my headset off and unhitched my seatbelt.

  “Mills, we’re fifty meters above the ship,” Mack shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Drums pounded in my head. The throbbing in my ankle disappeared. The swelling went down to normal and the gauze fell off my leg.

  “Take your sword,” a voice called out to me. The roaring rotor overhead made it hard to recognize, but when the voice spoke again, I realized it was the same old man that had helped me before.

  “This isn’t a dream,” I said.

  “A dream walker can walk in both worlds,” the old man said. “Come, brother, your family needs you now.”

  I held my hand out. A flash of blue light erupted in the helicopter and my sword appeared in my hand.

  “Holy freakin sh—” Mack started as I pulled the blade free of its sheath. I smiled, knowing exactly what I needed to do. I strapped the sheath across my back by sliding my arm through the loop and then turned to Mack. “What cabin is my family in?”

  “Uh… 402…” Mack said. “Why?”

  “Where is that?”

  Mack punched in a few keys and his screen displayed a cross-section of the ship.

  “Flint, move this baby to the rear of the ship, close to deck four as you can,” I said.

  “Mills, what are you doing?” Dan called out. He then turned to see me standing on a healed leg and his mouth fell open. “Flint, do what he says,” Dan said.

  “Hang on to yer butts,” Flint said. The chinook looped around once more and came in lower. “I can’t get closer than that,” Flint shouted. “If you have to go down, get a rope, we’re still a good seventy feet up.”

  I shook my head as the drums pounded louder. These were war drums, and I was the dream walker. I didn’t need a rope. I ran to the cockpit and reached down to Flint’s hip. “I’ll bring it back!” I shouted.

  “Hey, you little—”

  I’m sure Flint had a few choice words for me when I stole his 1911, but I shook off my headset and was racing out the open door before he could finish the sentence. Dan started to reach out to stop me, but with the door being so wide, I easily sidestepped his sweeping hand and leapt out into the night air.

  The air enveloped me and tore at my face and clothes as I shouted on the way down. I landed on deck four and rolled to a stop near a bewildered werewolf that had just leapt over the railing himself. I stood on my feet and winked at the beast.

  “That’s right, I’m the dream walker,” I said. Its stupid expression was still on its face when I lopped its head off with my glowing sword. The body hit the deck and then I turned and jumped in through a hole in the glass of the cabin next to me. I was met with a ghastly scene, an elderly couple had been slain in their beds and their door had been ripped open from the inside. The number on the door was hanging by a single nail.

  434.

  Susan and Tommy wouldn’t be far from here.

  I rushed out through the open door and found another werewolf on my left, tearing at a door, trying to get into a different cabin. Part of the door had been ripped away, but I could see a coffee table through the hole propped up to barricade the opening. I lifted the 1911 with my left hand and fired twice. Two shots to the head put the beast down. I ran to it and hacked at the neck with the sword for good measure.

  Then I heard a scream that nearly stopped my heart. It was Susan.

  I turned and raced down the corridor. The inner cabins were odd numbers, the outer cabins, those with windows facing the sea, were on my right. 428…426…424… I was running as quickly as I could, and then a door in front of me exploded as a security officer flew out and slammed into the opposite side of the hallway. He reached for a sidearm with a shaky hand, but a werewolf was already emerging from the cabin. It snarled and glowered hungrily at the man, licking its bloody lips.

  I fired twice more with the 1911. The werewolf’s head snapped back, giving the security guard just enough time to pull his sidearm.

  “Thanks mate,” the man offered as he unloaded four shots into the beast. “Give ‘em hell. Is Dan still on over watch?”

  He wasn’t security. He was one of us. Our teams had infiltrated the ship and were posing as ship’s security! I nodded and told him Dan had the skies covered as I ran past.

  “NOOOO!” Susan shrieked.

  I heard a terribly loud growl that shook me to my core as I ran toward my ex-wife’s cabin.

  418…416…414…

  “Get away!” Susan shouted.

  “Pretty thing!”

  My feet moved faster than I had ever run before. Her cabin door was open, but I refused to let my mind believe that anything had happened yet. I had to reach her in time. That was the only way I could see it. I turned and sprinted in. My heart leapt to my throat at first glance. The room was in shambles. Claw marks marred the walls, furniture was torn to shreds. A large werewolf stood angrily ripping at the bathroom door.

  Tommy was crying inside as Susan shouted at the monster trying to get in.

  I took courage at hearing his crying, for that meant he was still alive. I made it, and nothing was going to reach them now.

  “Get away from my family!” I shouted.

  The werewolf turned and snarled at me. I fired three rounds into the monster’s face and then the slide clicked open. The magazine was spent. The werewolf staggered backward, howling in rage and pain, but I didn’t stop. I threw the 1911 at it and then charge in with my sword.
It slashed up with its left paw, but I cut off the creature’s arm and then came down and stabbed into the monster’s chest. The werewolf tensed and yipped, and then went still. I ripped the blade free and then took the werewolf’s head.

  I then looked up as lightning flashed outside. I saw a massive head outside the cabin window. Great white teeth shining in the brief light as a snarl curled into a sly, evil grin. The harbinger wolf growled and the window shattered inward, just as it had when I was a child watching the scene unfold in my nightmares. Bits of glass cut my face and arms, but otherwise I was unharmed. The harbinger wolf was much larger than the other werewolves I had slain. He leapt through the window with the grace of an acrobat, but when he stood up fully erect his ears scraped the cabin ceiling.

  The harbinger wolf snarled and I found myself frozen with fear, just as I had many times in my childhood nightmares.

  “Now I will make you pay for your crimes,” the harbinger wolf said. He pulled a glowing, red sword from the air. Lightning and smoke popped and hissed around the blade as it materialized in the cabin. “I made a blood oath, and now I am here to collect on it.”

  I stumbled back two steps and thumped into the bathroom door. Susan gasped and Tommy started crying louder inside. Their fear shook me from my own, granting me courage and strength to move once more.

  “No,” I said. “Your oath dies here, now, with you, you ganky scum-licking mutt.”

  “If that is your attempt to scare me, you have failed,” the wolf snarled in its throaty voice.

  I smirked and shook my head. “That was an insult, one my mother told me to hurl at you in my nightmares when you scared me as a child. It’s funny because it means you are a crippled mutt that eats only putrid muck.”

  The harbinger wolf roared and advanced, but his spell of terror was completely dissolved now. I countered his sword with my own. Sparks showered the cabin as our blades connected. The wolf roared and I shouted back at it just before snapping up with a quick kick to its groin. The harbinger wolf recoiled and jumped back, doubling over just slightly.

  I advanced on it slowly, not wanting to underestimate it. I made a feint to the right and the wolf answered by dropping down on all fours and swiping out at me with its free paw while raising the sword up to block with the other. I managed to step just out of reach, but then the wolf jumped up and lunged toward me. I blocked one, two, then three swipes of the sword, and then the wolf snapped out with its gaping maw. I barely managed to duck out of range, but the bottom of the wolf’s snout struck my shoulder and knocked me back into the wall. Time seemed to slow and the drums in my head pounded louder and louder. The wolf roared and then came forward again. I was in no position to block effectively, as I was still leaning back against the wall and would not be able to regain my balance before it reached me. It seemed as though I was doomed to watch my death unfurl painfully slowly. For an instant, I wondered if this was when normal people would see their lives flash before their eyes, but then I remembered an activity I had gone to at church once as a teenager. A fencing bout came into my mind and I knew what I had to do.

  I let my feet slide out from under me and fell to my rear on the floor while thrusting up and out with my sword. The harbinger wolf, unable to stop mid-lunge, skewered himself on my blade. Lightning struck my blade from all around the room as the tip exploded out the back of the beast. Its head crashed into the bathroom door and busted a chunk of it open, much to Susan’s terror. She cried out in horror and Tommy began wailing. I looked up, about to assure her that the beast was dead, but then I saw a steak knife held in her hand come out and stab the beast in the side of the head.

  I smiled proudly and nodded. That’s my girl! I pushed the monster away and then pulled my sword free. I could hear Susan climbing into the bath tub to put distance between them and the monster, so I didn’t worry about the knife coming out of the hole as I pushed up to my feet.

  “It’s all right,” I called out. “I’m here. I got it!”

  “Is it dead?” Susan cried.

  “Yep,” I said. Remembering what Katya told me about harbinger wolves and their ability to regenerate, I raised my sword and brought it down hard on the neck. Unlike the werewolves, this took three full chops before the sword finally cut through the bone. The head lolled to the side and teetered back and forth for a moment. “It’s dead. You guys okay?”

  “We’re all right. Can you check on my boyfriend?”

  My throat went dry and a mix of sadness and anger mixed in my chest so that my voice came out as little more than a mousy squeak. “Boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, he’s in room 311,” Susan said.

  “Um… sure…”

  Susan went back to shushing Tommy. I stepped away from the door and stared at it blankly. In the distance I could hear gunfire dying down. People were crying and wailing, but there weren’t any more terrified screams. As I stood there, looking dumbly at the door that separated me from Susan and Tommy, Dan came into the cabin, armed with a Scar and followed closely by Marcus.

  “You find them?” Dan asked.

  I nodded.

  “They okay?” Marcus asked.

  I nodded again. “Yeah, but she wants us to check on her boyfriend in cabin 311,” I said quietly.

  Dan and Marcus shared a look and then Marcus moved in and bent down to look at my leg.

  “I’m good,” I said quickly as I pulled away.” I sheathed my sword and the weapon vanished as easily as it had appeared.

  “Mack said he located Indyrith, I’m gonna go check on him if you’re good,” Dan said.

  I took in a breath and leaned back against the wall opposite the closed bathroom door.

  Dan disappeared from the doorway.

  Marcus stood up and looked at me, and then to the door. “I’ll go to 311,” he said. Marcus patted my shoulder and then turned and left me standing in the room. I stood there for a while, listening to Susan force herself to stop crying just enough so she could sing a lullaby to Tommy. A lullaby that the two of us had made up for our son not long after he was born. The words were a bit silly, and we had admittedly stolen the melody from another nursery rhyme, but it was still ours. Something we had created for a person that was part of us. The anger in my chest started to win out and I turned to grab the 1911 so I could just leave and return it to Flint as promised. I had to move the body of the first werewolf to recover it, but other than the streak of blood across the side the handgun was unharmed. I worked the slide back into place and was about to slip it into my waistband when I heard the lock on the bathroom door click open.

  I turned just as Susan pulled the door open and peeked out. Her eyes stared at the headless monsters on the floor. She gasped, but forced herself to come out. She then looked up and caught sight of me, standing over one of the dead bodies and holding a pistol in my hand.

  “Josh?” she breathed quietly. “What are… how did you…”

  I slipped the pistol away and the rage left my chest, replaced by the impulse to rush in and hold my wife to comfort her. “I’m here,” I said as I stepped toward her.

  “No!” Susan snapped angrily as she stepped back into the bathroom and slammed the door. “No!”

  “Suzie, it’s me,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Please, can we talk?” I asked.

  “Daddy!” a little voice called out. I heard the handle wiggle, as if a little hand was reaching up to grab it, but then the lock clicked into place.

  “You can’t be here!”

  “Suzie, please, I need to tell you something,” I pleaded. “Just, listen, okay, you don’t have to say anything. Just let me explain what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on?! You were in jail for killing your father, and now there are monsters on a cruise ship and you’re here!”

  “I came to rescue you!” I said loudly. “The same thing happened in the alley in Dallas. I didn’t kill my father. He was killed by a monster, like these. I couldn’t tell you before, you
wouldn’t have ever believed me. But now, you can see that I’m not lying.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “How did you find us?”

  “I have a team of people that I work with,” I said. “We hunt monsters, and they have some guys who watch you to keep you safe.”

  “Keep us safe? You’re having us watched?”

  “Suzie, you’re missing the point,” I said.

  “Go away!” she screamed. She started crying again, and so did Tommy.

  “Please, let me see him,” I asked. “Just, let me see Tommy and then I’ll go if that’s what you want.”

  “No!”

  I fell against the outside of the door and slapped a palm to it. “Please, Suzie. Don’t let it hang like this.”

  “I can’t…” Susan said through her sobs. “I can’t do this.”

  I sighed and turned just as Marcus came back into the doorway. “I found the boyfriend, he’s all right,” he said.

  “Josh?!” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

  Carter Rutherford. I should have known. Susan’s mom had always been quick to voice her confusion as to why Susan had ever chosen me over him. Carter had grown up only a few blocks away from Susan, and like his father and grandfather before him, had become a highly successful lawyer. Big house, brand new BMW each year, the whole nine yards. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but rumor has it that he had tried to convince Susan to elope with him two days after I had proposed. Just another reasons I dislike beamer drivers.

  “Hey Collin,” I said with a fake smile. It wasn’t a punch in the face, but calling Carter by the wrong name had always gotten to the egotistical prick’s nerves.

  “It’s Carter!” he said.

  “Right, well, so why didn’t you come up here to help?” I asked.

  “I found him barricaded in his cabin,” Marcus supplied when Carter started fumbling for words.

  On second thought, playing name games with Carter wasn’t going to cut it this time. I walked up to him and put all of my weight into a straight punch to the jack-tard’s nose. His head whipped back and he stumbled out into the hall and hit the wall on the other side.