The Witch and the Werewolf Read online

  “Why is that? What good is it here?”

  “Water is coming.”

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  Jeremy nodded and then realized that his old man couldn’t see him nodding.

  “Yeah, dad. It’s the end of the world.”

  “I’m going to call for help,” his father said, standing and walking towards the edge of the house. “I’ll get us an ambulance.”

  “Dad, no!” Jeremy said, too late.

  His father fell off the edge of the house and smacked his head on the air conditioner unit. Jeremy watched as his life force spilled from his body, sinking into the ground.

  Robert Bawker stared at the prisoner chained across from him, wondering what the easiest way to break the man’s neck might be. If only he’d lean a bit forward.

  The prison van was stopped in bumper to bumper traffic on the Sydney Sherman Bridge, the part of Loop 610 in Houston that went over the sprawling Houston Ship channel. He, along with three other prisoners, was chained to benches along the sides of the van. He wasn’t sure of the man across from him’s name or crime.

  “What are you looking at, con?” Bawker asked him. “You lose something over here?”

  “You’re the one they call Junior, ain’t ya?” the tattooed and heavily muscled white man asked him. The man’s ink was a guide to his life and crimes. The tear drops under his eyes were people he’d killed, the cards a representation of his gang affiliations.

  “No one calls me Junior.”

  “Yeah, you’re him. I know you. Everyone calls you Junior,” the convict said. “And not because your daddy was senior. It’s because you like them young, right? How are you still alive in the joint?”

  “Pipe down back there,” the guard said from the van’s passenger seat. They were separated by heavy steel mesh.

  “And what are you going to do if we don’t?” the con asked. He had the same thing on his mind they all did. The world was ending and here they were, stuck in a prison van. It could be worse, Robert thought. I could be back in the can, staring at walls. At least in the van he had a chance. A chance at what he wasn’t sure of yet.

  The guard drew his gun and pointed it at the con. “I’ll kill you.”

  The convict was genuinely shocked. Robert smiled. “You can’t do that. You’re a cop. You’ve got rules and shit.”

  “The only rule I see,” the guard told him, “is up there. And up there says nobody cares if a van load of convicts makes it anywhere this night. Up there says if I put two in your head as you’re trying to escape,” he tapped his buddy, the driver, on the shoulder with a big grin on his face, “then nobody cares. Hell, at this point I’d be doing the world a favor, right?”

  Robert laughed out loud and the convict, unable to do anything about the guard with a gun, turned to him. “And what are you laughing at, Junior?”

  Robert had always hated the nickname he’d been given after his crimes. Junior, they’d spat at him, always trying to shiv him or hurt him. They hated him for loving little ones yet none of them said the first thing about the moans and groans filling the prison in the middle of the night. They called him a pervert but they were hypocrites, bent over each other huffing and puffing like animals in the night. He’d put a stop to it, though. They didn’t call him Junior to his face, anymore. Except this guy.

  “I’m laughing at an idiot that doesn’t know he’s dead,” Robert said calmly.

  The other two prisoners in the van were righteous brothers in their own right. In any other place they’d be the intimidating ones. But they knew more about Robert Bawker than the new guy did.

  “Dude, you need to watch it,” one of the other convicts warned the new guy.

  The convict leaned forward, grinning with a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Oh yeah? What’s he going to do about it?”

  “If you call me Junior one more time, I’m going to kill you,” Robert said easily and confidently.

  “Oh yeah, Junior?”

  Robert moved lightning quick across the narrow confines of the van, stretching the chain that bound him to the floor to its full length. He reached out and looped his handcuffed hands around the other convict’s head before the man could move back. He grabbed the sides of the man’s head and jerked violently. The sound of snapping bones filled the van. The guard looked on in horror as the other convict slumped to the padded seat.

  “I told you not to call me junior.”

  “Holy hell,” the guard with the pistol in the passenger seat said. “You just killed that man. Right here in front of me. I saw it. You ain’t ever getting out of prison you child molesting murderer.” The man fumbled with his gun as Robert settled back into his seat, judging the distance to the steel grate.

  “And what are you going to do about that, Mr. Pig?” Robert said with a laugh. He half hoped the man would shoot him. It would be better than dying under the comet’s impact.

  “I’m going to kill you,” the man said, but Robert could hear the fake resolve ringing like a bell. He wasn’t a killer, not like the men in the back of the van.

  “Then please,” Robert began. “Open the back of this van and come back here and kill me.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you scum?” the guard said. Bright light filled the van and Robert knew that the UN’s missiles were beginning to strike the comet in the last bid effort to break the world killer into smaller pieces.”

  “Sweet Jesus would you look at that?” the driver said and the passenger seat guard turned and stared up out of the van’s window. “Oh my god.”

  Robert glanced at the two other prisoners in the back of the van. He whispered, “Don’t look at it. I’ll get us out of here in a minute.”

  He listened as the guards up front first awed at the site of the missiles striking Wormwood and then screamed out as their eyeballs melted in their face. Despite the light filtering into the van Robert resisted the urge to look up, knowing all those who stared at the explosions stood a very strong chance of losing their vision. He heard screams up and down the bridge as people suddenly realized they were going blind.

  “Knew that was going to happen,” he said with a laugh.

  “Oh my god… I can’t see,” the guard said, letting the pistol fall to the van’s floor. “My eyes.”

  “What’s the matter up there,” Robert said with a wicked grin. “Did looking at that comet melt out your eyes?”

  “You shut up,” the man said, fumbling in the floor searching for his pistol. “Just shut. You’re a dead man. I don’t care if I can’t see. Filth like you isn’t going to survive the night.”

  Robert edged as far forward as the chains would let him and waited until the guard finally found the gun, sticking it through the mesh. He held the handcuffs up right in front of the barrel.

  “Where are you? Where are you, you baby killer,” the man said, pulling the trigger. The bullet blasted through the chains, freeing his hands. He pulled the gun away from the guard, turning it on him.

  “No,” he said coldly. “I don’t think it’s me who’s not going to live through the night.”

  The gun rang out once, then twice, both blind guards dead. He turned the pistol on the two men in the back of the van.

  “You’re either with me or against me, boys,” he said, grinning as the fireworks show continued above.

  “We don’t want any trouble, man. None at all. Whatever you want. That’s what I want.”

  “Good,” Robert said, looking out at the mass of cars packed onto the interstate. It was the birth of a brand new world.

  Dutch knew a chunk of Wormwood had broken off and slammed into the Gulf of Mexico even without looking into the sky. He could hear the roar of the tsunami down at the coast. He realized that if he could hear it, some forty miles away, it was a monster big enough to wipe out the city. He wondered for a brief second just how water resistant the old priest’s shelter was.

  The streets were packed with blind partiers. Many who’d watched as the missiles struck th
e comet were left without functioning eyes, some even to the point their eyes had melted from their face. The missiles finally stopped but the lights had gone out with them. Dutch could only figure that enough EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, had traveled back to the earth to short electrical components. Not that the newly blind would be able to see anything, but the streets were dark.

  Dutch considered himself a hardcore sort of guy. He’d been around the world and seen a lot of death and misery. He’d seen things back in the Sandbox that he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. But nothing he’d ever done or heard prepared for him for the horror of thousands of blind people in the streets of downtown Houston panicking at once. Men grabbed for each other, begging for help. Women and children cried in the streets. None of them would survive long, he knew, not with that wall of watery death pushing north from Galveston Bay.

  Though it broke his heart he knew there wasn’t anything he could do for them.

  He didn’t have long to make it to the shelter but fortunately it was just a few blocks off of old downtown. His load was heavy, though, and he wasn’t quite sure if it was alive or not. The wolf, now completely returned to his man form, was dead weight. He felt silly pushing through the streets with a naked man strung across his shoulders, but it was what it was. His back was aching and having to step around all of the prone bodies and people screaming was not helping.

  “Just a couple of blocks, Dutch,” he told himself. “Rio was way worse.”

  He was kidding himself, he knew. He’d been in a lot of bad spots in life, no doubt. He’d been shot at in the Middle East, blown up in South America. A cartel warlord wanted is head in Juarez. But he’d never tried to outrun a tsunami with a presumably dead werewolf across his shoulder.

  The massive waves further down the coast pushed into the storm drains and sewers, pushing the waste water back uphill. Manhole covers popped from their receptacles and geysers of brackish water burst twenty feet in the air. Houston, a city built on a swamp, was known for its flooding problems and the water was quickly at Dutch’s knees, making all that much harder to push through.

  “Help me, please. God help me. My eyes are are gone,” a man said, kneeling on the pavement. He reached out and with a lucky grab got hold of Dutch’s leg. “Please help me. I can’t see.”

  Dutch groaned. “I can’t help you buddy.”

  “My wife. I’ll never see my wife again.”

  Dutch kicked the guy loose and kept moving forward. When he stepped into the street in front of the simple, little, old Catholic church, he grinned. What better place to put a bunker than right under everyone’s nose? The two-story church blended well with the surrounding, run down part of Houston. His legs burned as he made the last few steps, dropping his load on the cement and banging on the door.

  The roar grew louder and he could just see the tops of the massive tsunami to the south. It would be in the city in minutes. He pounded on the door again.

  “Come on,” he screamed, panic building. “I know you’re in there. I’ve got your damn wolf. Open the damn door.”

  He pounded again, the wave getting closer. Great, he thought. I’m not going to get in.

  The man wolf thing at his feet stirred.

  “Wow. You are a tough one, huh?” Dutch asked. “I guess I need to apologize. At least you’d have gotten laid if I hadn’t dragged you away to here. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get in, bud.”

  The wave pushed closer, toppling buildings, washing away cars and people like simple garbage. He was tempted to just eat the barrel of the pistol. At least it would be quicker than being ripped to shreds by the oncoming tsunami. But it wasn’t his style. He sat down on the steps and watched the waves.

  The door creaked open behind him, casting a dim light onto the steps. The old priest looked at him, the wolf, and then the waves.

  “Well are you gonna be comin’ to that church or what?” the man said in a thick Irish accent. “Even a cur dog knows to get out of the rain.”

  Dutch grinned. Maybe he would survive the first night of the end of the world.

  Water, Water Everywhere

  Cassandra barreled through the streets of La Porte, Texas, doing her dead level best to avoid parked cars, people, and the detritus littering the streets. She’d never been much of a driver to begin with. When she was sixteen her mother had refused to let her drive. She told Cassandra she was worried she’d wander away. She just wasn’t that experienced at driving and trying to drive away from the hundred foot wall of water rushing up from the south just made her that much more nervous.

  The wolves weren’t helping either, but she’d tried to block those out. The constant howling was hard to ignore.

  Worse, though, was the thing in her mind. It was a collision of thought and memory, her own fears mixed with the pain and torment of another being. She felt the old alpha as if it were a part of her, felt his fear and hesitation. She felt them torturing him. It burned like a lantern and the flashing visions, visions from his mind, interrupted her ability to concentrate on the road. It was like switching real time from a dream to the waking world.

  The pack ran through the forest at full speed, heedless to the dangers of fallen trees, bolting through the low hanging branches, baying at the moon full in the sky. She saw through the eyes the pack’s alpha who strode out front, leading his wolves. The pack ran for non other reason than the moon was full and they could. She felt the bond they shared as a physical connection. The alpha’s mind was intune with each other wolf, from the strongest males down to the youngest cubs. The alpha was intone with his pack on a primal level, feeling their fears, their hopes… their hunger.

  As they entered a clearing she jerked in reaction to the pack’s instant fear. A group of women stood there, all armed with bows.

  She shook the vision, trying to differentiate the panic she felt from the vision from her own fear, and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  The wolves were chasing her. She knew that. She felt them in the pit of her stomach, a deep primal dread that made her skin crawl. It was completely different than the feeling she got from the connection with the old wolf. She feared them. The beasts ran along the van, howling as they leapt from telephone pole to telephone pole, leaping over houses and coming within mere feet of the speeding van. They were toying with her. They were trying to let her know that they were in control and she was… well she was nothing but their next meal. Just as her mother had been.

  The water came, though, and quickly began filling the streets, making it harder for the wolves to follow her. She knew what was happening, knew a piece of the radioactive comet must have fallen in the Gulf. She knew she should find some kind of shelter. But she drove on anyway, driving until she ran into a patch of water in a suburban neighborhood too deep for the van. It stopped in the water, the engine died, and she felt the tires move under her. The van was being carried away in the current.

  The power was off in the city and it was pitch black. Besides the sound of the rushing water the city was strangely quiet. She thought she could hear screams but they were muffled and distant.

  She sat in the van for a long time, the vehicle inching down the street in the torrent of water surging up from the sewers, tears streaming down her face. So much had happened in so little time. There was so much about her mother she didn’t know, so much the woman had hidden from her. And now it was too late. Her mother was dead. Her mother hadn’t kept her hidden because of boys. She’d been trying to keep her from the werewolves. Cassandra had spent her life acting like a spoiled little girl, never seeing the signs of what her mother was, never understand exactly what it was her mother was trying to protect her from.

  And those signs were there, now that she thought about them. Her mother has always leaned towards the occult. Cassandra had dismissed it as silly fantasy leanings and often accused the woman of being a crazy old cat lady. Worse, she’d been what many called a ‘Prepper’. She’d always assumed her mother had been preparing for the same
sorts of emergencies everyone else had been… floods, hurricanes, nuclear wars. She had no idea her mother had been preparing for werewolves. She needed to go home and look at her mother’s things. She needed to see if she could learn more about her mother, the witch.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. She’d told Brad she was okay with it. She’d accepted her fate then. But there was more now. The burning desire for revenge, for taking her mother before the woman could tell her what she was, was intense. And then there the thing in her mind. She felt it constantly, like a burning pain. She had to know more about a creature that old.

  But what to do? The van picked up speed down the street, flood waters pushing it north. She, foolishly tried to turn the steering wheel and step on the brakes. The water was rising rapidly and the wall of water grew in the south, destroying everything in its path. She could hear the tsunami blasting through homes and refineries, leaving explosions and destruction in its wake. She had to find someplace to hide and quickly.

  A werewolf howled at her from a nearby rooftop, jerking her back to attention. She could reminisce about her missed chances with her mother later. The wolves wanted her dead. Another wolf leapt from the roof of a truck, landing on the hood of the van, driving razor sharp claws down into the metal. It howled at her and then smashed the front window in one punch, reaching for her.

  Cassandra screamed, pushing back into the seat as far as she could while reaching for one of the silver blades in the passenger seat. She’d been trained to fight, to shoot… but none of that had ever prepared her for fighting a werewolf as her van floated down a street. The wolf pushed its head through the glass, snapping its jaws at her. Its breath stunk of rotting meat.

  “Hello little pretty,” it growled. “You smell so sweet. So sweet like your mommy.”

  The wolves’ voices were guttural and barely comprehensible, sending chills up and down her spine.

  Cassandra grabbed the hilt of one of the short swords and haphazardly jabbed it at the wolf. She just nicked the wolf’s face but it was enough to send it screaming backwards, the bloody wound sizzling as if burned. She grabbed the other blade, and then tried to open the door. The pressure of the water outside the van, still rising, prevented it.