The Witch and the Werewolf Page 5

  The wolf lunged back in, head first, snapping at her. She managed to get the silver sword between the two of them, impaling the creature on it. Its head smoked ferociously, as the creature howled in pain, and then exploded, covering her in blood and brains.

  “Damn it,” she screamed, clearing the stuff from her eyes. The other half dozen wolves howled in anger from the surrounding roof tops. She felt their anger burning like a laser.

  Cassandra pushed against the massive bulk of the dead wolf, crawling on to the hood of the van that was picking up even more speed in the rising water. The tsunami was even clearer then, a twenty foot tall wall of water.

  “You want me?” she screamed at the wolves, standing on the hood of the van like a surfboard. “Come and get me!”

  A wolf leapt from a roof top, arching into the air like a comic book hero, but missed the van, landing in the rushing flood waters. She watched as it flailed madly, swept away.

  “That’s right, wolf,” she screamed. She was angry. Angry at the wolves for taking her mother, angry at the world for taking her life. She jumped off the hood of the van, into the water, and was swept up in its current. She barely held onto the swords, rushing down the street, twisting and turning in the current. The water, pushed out of storm drains and sewers ahead of the onrushing tsunami, was warm but stank of garbage and human waste. She righted herself, swimming with the current, and aimed for a brick house on her right.

  She just barely noticed the boy, standing on the roof, staring out with empty eyes. The poor kid had looked at the explosions, she thought, just before she slammed into the brick sides of the house. There were lawn chairs and an ice chest on the roof. They’d made an event of it. He knelt and crawled to the edge where she rested, the water slamming her against the brick.

  “Take my hand,” the boy said, reaching out for her.

  She had no idea how the eyeless boy could see her. His face was bloody and sticky with the remains of his eyes and yet he reached right for her. She tossed the swords onto the roof and took the boy’s hand. He pulled with all his might and, along with her own scrambling, finally yanked her up on the roof.

  Cassandra didn’t have a moment to rest. The boy, looking past her, screamed out.

  “Look out behind you!”

  One of the wolves jumped from another house, twenty feet into the air, and smashed down through the roof in a shower of wood and shingle.

  “Holy shit,” the little boy said, inadvertently, and then covered his mouth. If they hadn’t been staring at death she would have laughed at the boy.

  The wall of water was approaching. Cassandra didn’t think and reacted, scooping up her two swords and dragging the boy with her, down into the attic behind the wolv. The creature was flailing in a string of old Christmas lights, trying to get untangled, back to them. She calmly stepped across the rafters and drove both silver swords into the thing’s back. It howled in pain, reaching around to try and grab her, the wounds smoking. She turned the hilt of the handles, driving the swords in further. The creature howled in pain again, and then collapsed to the attic rafters.

  As it died it reverted to its human form. The eight foot tall humanoid wolf had been a skinny, dingy looking teenager.

  The wolves outside screamed at their cohort’s demise and the boy cried.

  “They’re going to come get us,” he whispered.

  “I think they are about to have bigger problems,” Cassandra said, pulling the swords out of the dying beast and driving them into the center stud of the house. She pulled the boy to her just as the wave of water hit the house.

  Dutch helped drag the still prone but breathing body of the wolf across the church’s polished wooden floor, again marveling at the priest’s deception. The interior of the church was much like the outside. It appeared old and, if not run down, then very well used. Dutch was surprised at how empty the church was. He knew other churches were packed to overflowing with people praying for salvation. Why wasn’t this one?

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Who?” the old Irish priest asked.

  “You know, people hoping Jesus is riding in on a white horse with a flaming sword to smote the beast and save the day. I figured you’d be at capacity.”

  “Aye,” the priest told him as they rounded a corner and entered what was, apparently, a broom closed. “We’re packed to the rafters with the faithful. I’d push more in but there just isn’t any more room.” The priest told him, his Irish accent thick to the point he wanted to offer the man a drink.

  “Okay…” Dutch said, flummoxed, as he pulled the werewolf into the closet.

  “Close the door, son. Don’t ya know there be a flood a comin?”

  Dutch hazarded a glance back at the front of the church where the first of the actual tsunami was washing through the streets of downtown Houston. The water was already above the window seal and little streams pushed through the cracks in the building and door. The waves were building and the old church groaned in response.

  “And we’re going to hide in the broom closet? What about that bunker you promised?” Dutch asked.

  “Patience, lad, patience,” the priest replied, opening a concealed panel and throwing a lever. Dutch listened to the hiss of hydraulic pistons and watched as an opening in the floor slid away, revealing a well-lit stairway down.

  The entire affair with the priest had been weird. Dutch hadn’t particularly believed the priest when he’d taken the job of capturing Wilbanks, but the man’s story was interesting enough that he had agreed to take it. What else was he going to do for the end of the world? The stairway led down into a large, open room that was indeed packed with people. Dutch dropped their load in the middle of the floor and the crowd backed away as if he’d come down dripping with plague. The priest worked a second set of controls at the base of the floor and the panel at the top of the stairs slid back into place.

  “How we lookin’ Alex?”

  A nerdy looking kid, horn rimmed glasses topping a hawkish nose, consulted a tablet. “Looks good, Father. The seals are in place and the positive pressure system is putting out at ninety-eight percent.”

  “How long will we have?”

  “Sir?”

  “How long will this church stand in the wave coming from the coast?” the priest asked and, as if cosmically pointing out the seriousness of the question, the church roared in agony above them. Dutch imagined the walls coming in and water washing everything away.

  “I don’t have any way of answering that, Father. We designed the system to withstand a lot of things. Being permanently underwater was not one of them. On the plus side, the water shouldn’t stand long. It will push in and then, once it loses that force, recede back to the ocean.”

  “But what will be left, dear boy?”

  The werewolf stirred and Dutch saw one of his eyes open. Now in its man form the thing squirmed in the burning silver ropes.

  “Please take these damned silver ropes off me,” the thing growled. “The pain is quite excruciating.”

  “I would imagine so,” the priest said, kneeling that he was nearly face to face with the wolf man. “Hello, David. How are you?”

  “I’ve been better, O’Leary. I see you’ve conned someone else into doing your dirty work.”

  “Dutch had done a right fine job, indeed. He took you, did he not? Regardless, you are here. All you have to do is tell me where he is and I will set you free.”

  “How do you even know it’s a he?” the wolf man asked. “You think if you kill the first one we will all perish?”

  “Its’ but a feeling. Are ye saying’ your kind answers to a bitch? The pack is run by a female?”

  Dutch wasn’t sure where their conversation was going and didn’t actually care, at that point. He was exhausted and wet. “So what do you want me to do with this thing?”

  “Come,” the priest began, “we’ve got a place for him.”

  “You should have left me to die in the street,” Wilbanks said, staring D
utch in the eye. “It would have been better than what this thing has planned for you.”

  He leapt atop another building just as his previous resting spot, a wooden house, crumbled in front of the wall of water. He hoped the brick home would stand better, but there was no fighting the tsunami. He and the remains of his pack had already been pushed far from the neighborhood where the witch’s cub hid. They would not have their revenge that night and he was lucky to hold onto anything at all. The bitch’s cub had already managed to kill two of his pack without even trying.

  The beast howled at the night sky. The human’s missiles had struck the monster, only wounding it, but not stopping it. Wormwood looked like a second moon now, reflecting the sun’s light through the flood ravaged ruins. The beast howled again, at the second moon, not only for the loss of its pack mates but for the new world it had been born into. The second moon would give the pack a life. No longer would they cower in the shadows, fearing mankind’s vengeance. They were the masters of the world now.

  Though the pack had fed, they’d also expanded. The converts were safe in human basements being watched over by the pack’s females as they changed. He felt their minds awakening, becoming one with the pack’s. The pack would grow and again they would be the dominant species on the planet.

  On the two moon dawn man would be nothing more than meat.

  The Sydney Sherman bridge, Interstate 610 over the Houston ship channel, rocked violently as the tsunami passed underneath. Robert watched, in horror, as the ships along the ship channel’s docks were ripped from their moorings, rising up over the banks with the wave. The ships, and their scattered cargo, slammed against the bridge’s pylons. Robert held onto the side of the Corvette, trying to steady himself.

  “We’re going down man! The bridge is going to collapse!” the prisoner with the arm full of gang tattoos screamed. Robert laughed at the man’s panic.

  “But what if it holds?” he asked the man and his friend.

  “What the hell do you mean, man?” the other man, the Chicano in the leather vest, asked.

  “What if it holds?” Robert repeated. “What if we’re still here in the morning?”

  He felt more alive than he had in years. Because the world would be different in the morning and it would be a world custom built for people like him.

  “What if it holds?” Robert asked the two men. “It could, you know. We could survive this thing.”

  The top of the wave lapped the bottom of the bridge and, looking south, Robert stared in awe as the waves covered the surrounding neighborhoods. The water was awash in corpses and junk. The bodies didn’t bother him any. It would be that much less competition for what was to come. The people still alive, clinging for their lives to the tops of floating debris, were a bit disconcerting, but he also knew that it meant that many fewer mouths to feed afterwards.

  “You’re crazy man,” the Chicano said. “This thing ain’t gonna hold,” he screamed as the bridge shook again, a fifteen feet wide chunk of concrete dislodging from a section a couple of hundred feet from them. A car, the family inside, went with it. “And even if it does, so what? It’s the end man. The end of the fucking world.”

  “But it will hold,” Robert told them with confidence. “And just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean it’s all going to end.”

  The tattooed man grinned. “You think we’re going to survive this. And then you’re thinking something big afterwards.”

  Robert grinned. “What are the three things we have to survive if this bridge holds?”

  “Booze, guns, and girls,” the tattooed man responded.

  “Girls are easy, booze and guns are going to be tougher. But I was thinking more basic. Food, water, and shelter. The rest comes later.”

  “Okay. So?”

  Roger pointed at the BigMart truck just across the bridge, in the northbound lanes. Why the company had sent a truck out on the last night of the world was a mystery, but it was also pretty handy.

  “It’s a truck,” the Chicano man said and Robert was sure the other thug was the brighter of the pair.

  “It’s a truck packed with stuff heading to a BigMart, fool,” his buddy told him and then turned to Robert. “Okay, so what’s the play?”

  “We dump the driver in the drink,” Robert said. “And then we sit on the truck. If the bridge holds and we’re here when the water recedes, then we branch out.”

  The tattooed man stuck out his hand. “Hank. And this idiot is Ricky.”

  “Robert,” he said, returning the shake. He felt much like the contestants on a reality survival show making alliances at the beginning.

  “I’ve got this,” he said, showing the guard’s Desert Eagle. “You take the other cop’s.”

  Hank grinned, looking at the little pistol. “Damn straight.’

  “Good enough,” Robert said, turning to head across the lanes and the divider median.

  The bridge shook again and Robert was thankful for having something to do. The trio headed across the six lanes and over the median, weaving in and out of cars. The car’s occupants rarely gave them a second look. Many sat there, hands clenched on the steering wheel, staring blankly ahead. Others prayed. Very few had even stepped out of their vehicles. The BigMart driver was standing on the diesel tank of the truck, staring at the rushing waters below.

  “Hello friend,” Robert said, pistol in hand. “I’m going to need you to get down from that truck.”

  “What?” the driver asked and then saw the gun. “You’re robbing me on the last night of the world? What the hell? Here, take my wallet. Take anything you want.”

  “I want the truck,” Robert said. “And I want you to get down now.”

  The driver’s eyes went wide with realization. “Man, you’re not taking this truck. It’s full of canned goods and bottle water. I’m taking it to a relief camp up north.”

  Robert smiled. “You’re not going to make it. The relief camp is right here.”

  The man started to turn around and reach into the truck. Robert pulled the trigger and the big pistol jerked in his hand. The .44 caliber round blew out the man’s back, leaving a gaping hole. He fell to the steps, but despite the wound, still tried to crawl away.

  “Would you look at that?” Hank said in dismay. “Fucker is still going.”

  Robert pulled the trigger again, obliterating the man’s head. “Toss him over,” he ordered and the two men complied. He liked that. He didn’t think he was going to have to kill one to show them who the boss was.

  He climbed in the cab and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Then, after his two cohorts had tossed the headless driver over, went to the back of the truck and unlocked it. Just as the driver had said the back was filled with canned goods, camping supplies, and bottle water. It wouldn’t last the survivors of the bridge long. He was going to have to whittle down that number.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” a man asked, behind them, a small boy at his side.

  “Appropriating supplies,” Hank answered, gun in hand. “What the hell is it to you?”

  “You…” the man stammered. “You shot the driver.”

  “And now I’m going to shoot you,” Robert said, aiming the pistol at the man’s head and pulling the trigger. The bullet blew out the back of the man’s skull, covering the boy in brains and gore. He smiled at the kid and motioned him to come to him. The little boy, in shock, stepped cautiously forward as his father’s corpse collapsed to the ground.

  “What’s your name, sport?”

  “Simon,” the boy replied meekly, looking at his father. “You shot daddy.”

  “He’s just sleeping, kiddo. Tell you what. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll make sure you stay safe while your daddy rests.”

  Hank looked at him quizzically but shrugged. It was a brand new world, after all, and if his tastes ran a bit to the extreme side, who was going to do anything about it.

  He was king of the world, now. He just had to conquer it.

>   Captain Franklin Ross stared out from the ship’s bridge in horror as they plowed through the waves towards the stricken city of Houston, Texas. The only thing louder than the constant blare of the collision alarm was the sobbing of the Merick’s lead navigator, Donnie Green. The man had started sobbing as, against orders, he’d stared at the missiles slamming into the monster entering the earth’s orbit. He’d continued to sob long after his eyeballs had liquefied and streaked down his face, continuing to do so now.

  “Stop your damn crying man,” Ross ordered. “I told you not to watch the damn explosions.”

  Most of the ship’s dozen crew members and their family members, snuck onto the ship months before, had heeded his orders and not watched the nuclear explosions in the sky directly. They’d all stared in horror, however, when the shard of Wormwood plummeted into the Gulf, even going as far as to track it on radar. The city sized chunk of space ice impacted two hundred miles south of Galveston, Texas. The wave was so big it showed up on the radar.

  “Hold on,” he ordered as the wave swept the Merick away, pushing it towards land and the city.

  Ross held on for dear life, expecting the ship to turn over at any moment. Instead, the massive cargo container scraped across the tops of buildings, tearing through coastal refineries, and bumped along the top of the wave. He and his men cowered in the bridge, afraid to do anything but hold on. He glanced out the windows only occasionally and the death and destruction he saw as the wave ripped through the coastal areas of South East Texas only made him turn away.

  “We’re going to hit that,” the ship’s first mate exclaimed. “And we’re going to hit it hard.”

  Ross didn’t have to stand to see the skyscraper looming out of the water ahead of him. It stuck out of the water high enough that it filled the window.