Rise of the Werewolf
Page 33
They crossed for a moment as if wanting to see the entry wound, and then he fell to the side. The pursuit was on, from the four original ones and the others in the general area. If I used the howls as a guide, I’d say they numbered in the range of fifty or sixty. But that was about as accurate as counting marbles in a jar by the ones you could see.
We’d been evading detection for going on ten minutes, but that was a luck that had its time running thin. Soon we would be forced to get into a defensive position and fight our way out, if that was even a possibility. Merrings was lagging behind, as were a few others who had been wounded or just winded. The bushes, scrub, and small trees were being uprooted around us as the pursuers tore through everything in their way in an attempt to get to us.
There was a scream as someone near the back was pulled from the column. They’d caught up to us and that someone had paid in blood. The werewolf had taken the man and gone further into the woods.
“This is our stand!” I shouted, turning at an angle. The group got into a loose circle, as much as the vegetation would allow anyway. Merrings, of course, found his way into the middle. Like the sugary filling in a sweet cupcake, at least that was how the werewolves would see it. We had fields of vision of about sixty to seventy-five feet depending on which arc of the circle you found yourself on. The werewolves figured out what we were doing and began to amass in strength, flitting in an out of trees. My earlier estimate was low. Now I was thinking somewhere around a hundred, didn’t much matter. I shot an initial volley along with a few others, a couple finding their mark. I wanted to give them something to think about besides eating. If anything, it only infuriated them and made them move quicker.
Now normally anger in your opponent works to your favor, makes them do something stupid. That kind of goes out the window when your opponent is a werewolf, and he’s now hauling ass towards you, all teeth, claws and menace. The ground was shaking from their approach, but we were holding our own…or so I thought. Mathieu had moved slightly ahead of me and to the right, singlehandedly holding the line as werewolves were shredded by his powerful arms. He was a beast even more possessed than the ones attacking. Werewolves had breached the line from the other side. One had dragged two people with it as he had leapt into and through the circle. One of the men died instantly with a claw entering into his left eye. The other was screaming, the werewolf had him around the waist. Four rifles trained on the werewolf, killing him somewhat instantly.
Another man was taken not three people away. A werewolf had bit through his head just a split second before Lana could run her sword through its chest. Our circle was rapidly collapsing in on itself, and we were surrounded to the point where we could not run. The moon was twenty minutes away from a full retreat, ten of those minutes we did not have.
What happened next I would have thought a tall-tale had I not seen it myself, and even then I thought it could somehow be the aftereffects of Mathieu’s sour mash. Wolves. It was wolves, and my only thought at first seeing them was, what difference does it make which way we die; although, somehow the idea of being eaten by a wolf was more settling. At least it was a natural creature.
But that was not the case. Apparently wolves liked werewolves about as much as dogs liked cats. The wolves were attacking the flanks of the werewolves with incredible success, dragging down the edges of our invaders.
“Do not shoot the wolves!” I commanded.
I didn’t want some trigger-happy defender ruining what I hoped was an alliance. It could be that the wolves were just getting rid of another predator who was honing in on their meal.
One problem at a time.
Wolves and men were still falling to the powerful beasts, but more of the werewolves were dropping, and that was the important part of the equation. I’d taken a claw across my side. Mathieu looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. There wasn’t a person remaining who wasn’t sporting some sort of wound, except maybe Lana, the ninja.
I noticed Mathieu first. I’d thought that he’d perhaps finally taken too much punishment or had just run out of energy. He stood rigid before his knees gave out, he fell to the ground. Then I knew what was happening. We’d held out, our greatest enemy finally relenting, as the moon dropped below the horizon. We kept shooting. Bailey had seen the folly of her ways and was not going to make the same mistake twice.
“Cease fire, cease fire.” I held up my rifle.
The wolves did not listen to me. They tore through the fallen humans without mercy, even as they were begging for forgiveness and their lives. They were truly innocent in all this and yet they still had to pay for their transgressions. It was when a large wolf came towards Mathieu that I stepped in front and in between the two. The wolf got low, his back bristling, his exposed teeth and a blood-covered maw slowly closing in.
“Not this one,” I told the wolf. “This one is a friend.” I tried to use as soothing a voice as I could which wasn’t easy, not with this animal approaching. The wolf tilted his head.
“Michael, move. I will shoot it!” Bailey shouted. The wolf growled at her.
I spared a glance to my side and thrust my hand out. “No, do not shoot!”
I turned back to the wolf, which was looking at me. I placed my rifle on the ground and got down low, extending my hands.
“He is a friend,” I told the wolf.
He was still coming closer, though he seemed less sure of himself. He was close enough that he sniffed at my fingers. I swear I watched his eyes get wide. Then I got nailed from the side. Bowled over was more like it. This was it; my throat was going to get ripped out. A tongue bathed my neck. All I could see was the impossibly fawn coloring of a wolf as it licked my face.
“Oggie?” I tried to sit up, he would not let me. “Oggie?!” I grabbed his face. “Oh my God, Oggie, it’s you!” I cried into his fur. The dog was barking wildly, I was surprised when his tail didn’t propel him into flight. I hugged him as tight as I dared. I was sobbing and I didn’t care who saw.
“Umm, Michael, we may have a problem.” It was Azile. I finally looked up to notice that wolves surrounded us, six or seven of which were close enough to be sniffing me.
“These your friends, Oggie?” I asked cautiously.
I extended my hands to show the wolves I had nothing in them and I meant no harm. They backed up at first then came in to sniff the proffered limbs. It was a large female that came in closer than the rest. She came straight up to my face, her nose close enough to mine to be considered an Eskimo kiss. Then she surprised me when she licked my cheek.
“I guess that’s a good sign.” I slowly moved my hand and rubbed the side of her neck. I could tell she was nervous, but she held her ground. Finally, she was all right with it. I grabbed her face and pulled her close, rubbing her vigorously. “Thank you for bringing my Oggie back. I will not forget this.” She gave a short bark, looked at Oggie, maybe tipped her head. Oggie barked back, the wolves left as quickly as they’d shown up.
We’d lost thirteen of our number. Of the thirteen remaining, two were injured to the point where they would succumb to their injuries. We fashioned some crude travois’ so we could take the wounded and the supplies. Mathieu, Azile, Lana, Bailey, Oggie, Merrings, the six others, and I struck out for Denarth in the hopes that we could mount some sort of defense of what was left of man. We would encounter more refugees from Talboton as we walked, many with stories as horrific as our own to share. Xavier had taken a major step in his quest to rule the world. Would our rag-tag band of exiles be enough to stem the tide? I didn’t hold out much hope we could stop them. He’d taken down a human stronghold in half a night, the rest would be easy enough to topple in comparison. The fall of man was in full swing. At that moment I wasn’t sure if I cared. I had Oggie back.
Talbot-sode
Oggie did not once leave my side. I don’t think I would have let him even if he wanted to. We walked for hours, my mind drifting as it was wont to do. I went back to another time and war I did not think we
had a chance in hell of winning.
“I once saw Godzilla.” Those were Trip’s first words of the day. We’d been running a perimeter check on our defenses, making sure there was no way the zombies could get in.
“The movie?” I don’t know why I phrased it as a question, where else could he have seen him. “Not the one where he steps on Bambi, right? Because we had this discussion.”
“They did a documentary on Godzilla stepping on a fictional Disney character? That seems strange.”
“Godzilla is a fictional character as well, Trip.” Why I tried to explain beats me, I guess at some point you figure something has to get through that burnt-out haze, right?
“Naw, man, I was off the coast of Kansas.”
I palmed my head. “The coast of Kansas, you say?”
“Did you not hear me? I’ll speak louder!” He was yelling inches from my face.
“Oh, unfortunately, I did.”
“We were fishing for beavers.”
I didn’t touch that one, not with a stick; it could have gone wrong quickly in so many ways. I just nodded at the appropriate times, hoping that Stephanie his wife would show up soon with the Lithium pills.
“He came right out of the water, he was huge!” Trip proceeded to extend his arms as wide as he could and then jumped from side to side in an attempt to expand his wingspan.
I had to laugh. If nothing else Trip had a way of alleviating the heaviness of any situation, then, just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger, he would snap out of his continuous stupor and slap you with a heavy dose of reality, at least his version of it.
“We win here, you know.”
“What?” I asked, the tone he delivered these words in different from the previous, much more serious.
“It doesn’t get any easier, especially for you.”
“Trip, you’re freaking me out.”
“There’s these huge, hairy things. Look like giant Prairie dogs.”
I jumped to the present. Had he been foreshadowing the werewolves and Lycan, or was I merely finding similarities in his ravings?
What he said next about froze my heart.
“The seasons will come and the seasons will go, a time will come when even you are not a part of them. Another so named from the iciness of the world will arise and carry the torch.”
I didn’t even know what to say. Then, as quickly as his lucidity had come, it vanished.
“Godzilla crapped all over this mobile home, completely covered it. Looked like he really enjoyed corn.”
“TMI, Trip. TMI.”
“Trip makes ice cream? When did I start doing that? And what’s that got to do with corn in Godzilla’s crap?”
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The newest Post Apocalyptic Horror by Mark Tufo:
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tablot-sode