The Witch and the Werewolf Page 8

  “Occupation?” he asked, staring down at a clipboard as a man, his wife, and young daughter behind him, walked up to his makeshift desk.

  “What the hell is this? Who are you to be asking my occupation? You’re not a cop, or anything. You’re just a nobody.”

  “A nobody with a big gun,” Robert replied, looking up at the man. “This is my bridge. You’re on my bridge so you talk to me. If you don’t like it you can leave. The exit is over there,” he said pointing.

  “Oh, we’re going,” the man said. “I’m not keeping my family her with you crazy fucks. But we’re taking the supplies from my truck.”

  “My truck,” Robert corrected. “My supplies.”

  “You can’t do this,” the man insisted. “I’ll sue.”

  Robert and the dozen or so men surrounding him laughed. “You will, huh? The only court I see is here and I’m going to go ahead and save you the trouble of changing your mind. Get the hell off my bridge.”

  The man started to say something else but found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle as one of Robert’s men stepped up.

  “Come on, Melissa. Let’s get out of here,” the man began but his wife pulled away from him. “What?”

  “I’m… I don’t want to go out there. Look at it. There’s nothing.”

  Besides the occasional lightning flashes it was hard to see the surrounding ruins. The swirling black clouds had effectively blocked out the sun. But the woman was right. There wasn’t much left standing. He didn’t blame her one bit.

  “What’s your occupation, ma’am?” Robert said as politely as possible, smiling at the man’s wife in a way that infuriated the husband.

  “You can’t do this, Melissa. You can’t stay with these crazy people. What about Shannon? What are you going to do without her?”

  “I’m a nurse, sir,” the woman said, ignoring her husband. “And I spent most of my career working in the emergency room. I’ve treated gunshots and knife wounds, among other things. I can…,” the woman hesitated, obviously uncomfortable in what she was about to say, “I can do other things as well. I’d make a good addition to your…” the woman paused again, staring past Robert at the surly looking men gathered behind him, “community.”

  “An ER nurse would be a welcome addition,” he agreed.

  “And my daughter?”

  Robert eyed the girl with disdain. He was done with girls. But one of the other men might like a shot at her. “As long as she pulls her weight, she can stay.”

  “You can’t do this to me, Melissa. You can’t stay with these crazy ass people.”

  “I am staying, Adam,” the woman said, finally turning to her husband. “You see what’s happened to the world and we survived. If Shannon and I are going to continue surviving we’re going to need someone stronger than you.”

  “What the fuck ever,” the man said in disgust. “Come on, Shannon. We’re out of here.”

  The girl didn’t leave her mother’s side, apparently coming to the same conclusion mom had, leaving the father embarrassed.

  “You heard her,” Robert said, unable to hide his grin. “Get the fuck out.”

  “If you don’t come with me its over. I’ll get a lawyer as soon as this is all over and divorce you!”

  One of Robert’s men kicked him in the groin, doubling him over, to the laughter of the other men. Robert knew the exact same debate was probably playing out across the world right then. There were those, like the husband, who thought that the world might return to normal at some point. Then there were the realists, like the wife, who knew better. The woman didn’t not look uncomfortable in her decision in the least but said nothing as her husband was led out what was now the south gate, leading down into the petroleum covered mess that had been Pasadena, Texas.

  “You made a good decision,” Robert told the woman. “He probably couldn’t protect you. Now head up the bridge and find a vehicle that isn’t claimed to call your own. The one you arrived in is fine,” he said, “as long as you understand the supplies in it belong to the community.”

  The woman nodded and led her daughter back up the steep incline of the bridge. Blackish snowflakes began swirling in the wind and one, landing on his mouth, tasted foul. He couldn’t imagine the crap that was in the air right then.

  “Hey boss, you gotta see this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Dude on a boat.”

  Robert went to the side of the bridge and looked down. A man in a small rubber raft was navigating the ship wrecks and debris in the channel, heading east.

  “Well that won’t do. We can’t have people navigating our lake without paying a toll. Find a rifle, make him swim.”

  The men laughed, having the time of their lives.

  If nothing else, Robert was a survivor.

  “I’m heading up to the truck,” he told Hank, thinking about the harem of young men he was starting there. There was fun to be had. “Keep up the interviews. We only need five hundred people. Kick the rest out and if they don’t want to go, shoot them. Come to think of it, put someone down at the south gate and shoot the ones that leave anyway. We don’t need them coming back later wanting retribution.”

  There was still a lot of work to do and what they had in their little Bridge Town kingdom was only going to last so long. But he’d make it work because that’s what he did.

  Run Faster, Fall Down

  The priest was crazy but Dutch was sure he was even crazier for letting the old man talk him into this so called mission.

  Finding a flowing waterway he could navigate east hadn’t been an issue. The streets that weren’t filled with debris were mostly flooded and most of the water was running south and east, back towards the bay. But there was hardly a clear place to walk through the ruins. The old clear paths of streets and sidewalks were gone, replaced by mud and junk. Buildings had collapsed, creating artificial barriers. So when he actually found flowing water, he pumped up the rubber boat the priest and provided and set out, east, and towards the witch’s home.

  To the witch’s home, he thought, perplexed. His world had changed so much in the span of a day. Last week he was a mercenary for hire. Though he wasn’t proud of everything he’d done in that occupation, he always considered himself on the side of the good guys. Sure, good guys made bad calls, but they were good guys. This week he was still that, but in the employ of a man who might be over six hundred years old and had a hard on for werewolves that actually existed. Now he was out to find a witch, and her daughter, in a ruined city. The most likely scenario, he thought, was that he’d not find the woman and return to find the survivors of Father O’Leary’s bunker dead or scattered.

  Still, he’d seen the beast for himself. If there really were more of them, then the shell shocked survivors of Worm Fall wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Dutch let the raft go with the flow of the blackish water, trying not to look at the corpses. There were just so many of the already bloating bodies. To keep himself occupied he checked his weapon’s load. He’d kept the silver shooting 1911, holstered at his hip, but had replaced the lost shotgun with a AA-12 automatic shotgun. That the priest had one in his already impressive armory was impressive in itself. The automatic shotgun was normally reserved for police and military forces. He’d also kept a number of silver blades along with his regular, steel ones, just in case. He topped off his load with enough rations and water to survive three days without having to scrounge for more. It wasn’t enough, he knew, but he couldn’t physically carry what he thought would be enough out in the wastes.

  The raft floated down a street between the skeletal remains of multi-story buildings. Up to the twentieth floor, or so, the windows were smashed out and the floors emptied. The floors, as far as he could see, were covered in mud and muck. But further up, in the buildings, there were signs of life. An odd flashlight beam, a fire… people were alive, he knew. But for how long? Many would die in the coming days as the temperature dropped. Others would succumb to disease an
d starvation. Even more would fall to the wolves the priest seemed to know were gathering in the ruins. That alone gave him purpose and made some sort of meaning out of the destruction that surrounded him.

  He paddled around a commercial fishing boat lodged in the middle of the street and found himself in a fast moving current, drifting into one of Houston’s many bayous. It was a relief to be out of downtown and the dead buildings. The vegetation along the banks of the bayou was mostly washed away, though the odd cypress tree and tuft of grass remained. None of it would last very long, though. Clouds blocking out the sun had already dropped the temperature into the high thirties and once the surface’s heat was dissipated, it would only get colder. He pulled the heavy leather coat around him and then paddled, keeping the raft in the center of the bayou.

  A half a day later, the bayou fed out into the Ship Channel proper and Dutch gasped inadvertently at the damage that had been wrought. Industrial facilities, chemical plants and refineries, were no more than twisted piles of junk and shards of metal. Cargo ships of every shape and size were scattered about the neighborhoods surrounding the ship channel, many busted and spilling their contents out onto the ground. Fires burned, even in the mud covered areas and the air smelt of harsh chemicals. He couldn’t begin to imagine the sheer amount of dangerous substances that had been leaked into the wild and wished he’d brought a respirator of some type.

  The Ship Channel’s main port facility, a miles wide array of docks, warehouses, and ship docks, was flattened. There was one cargo container still moored to its dock, but the rest of the massive ships had been scattered about like children’s toys. He’d have to remember to tell the priest about the area. The cargo ships, like the one lodged at the church, could possibly provide a lifeline to supplies that the survivors of the church were going to soon desperately need.

  He floated closer to the massive bridge that spanned the channel and saw lights and activity through the gloom. He sighted through the rifle’s scope and saw a group of a thousand or more people at the southern base of the bridge. Cars had been arranged into haphazard walls at both ends of the bridge, stacked high, and there was a gate leading south. A steady stream of people were being escorted through the gate.

  The wall was smart, he thought, but kicking people out of your little kingdom isn’t. You’re going to need all the able bodied people you can find, soon enough. Dutch ducked low in the raft and hoped to avoid the place altogether. He wasn’t getting a good vibe from it.

  The first shot from the bridge struck well behind him. The second closer. Dutch took shoved the paddles in the water and pounded the water for all he was worth. The current was moving well and he was soon underneath the bridge, out of the range of the shooters. Who in their right mind would just randomly shoot at a guy floating down the water, he wondered. He beached the boat on the southern side of the channel and stepped onto the bank and then pushed the raft back into the current, hoping they’d continue shooting at it and not notice he’d left it. He checked the GPS and frowned, seeing that it was another solid fifteen miles to the witch’s home.

  He slipped through the wreckage lining the base of the bridge, finding passageways through wrecked cars and destroyed boats. He came to the icy interstate that led from the southern point of the bridge and froze. He ducked behind rubble and watched as the people that were being expelled from the bridge community were marched out. They were stripped of their belongings, many wearing only shorts and tennis shoes. The end of the world had come on a hot summer night and no one in Houston had predicted the quickly spreading nuclear winter started by the shards of Wormwood as it impacted various points around the globe. The people were dejected, huddling together for warmth. Men and women alike cried. He sighted through the night scope, watching as the armed thugs who guided them out laughed at their pain.

  A man rushed one of them and a shot rang out. Multiple blasts quickly followed and the unarmed refugees were cut to shreds. Dutch’s finger tightened on the trigger and the rifle barked in his hands. The gunman who’d shot first was flung backwards, a three round burst catching him in the shoulder. The other men ducked behind cover, leaving him no targets. He was tempted to wait around and kill the men anyway. Maybe he’d sneak into their impromptu camp up on the bridge and make a night of slitting throats. The anger at the senseless slaughter threatened to boil over but nothing he could do, right then, would bring the dead back.

  And he had a mission. It might be a mission from a crazy ass old priest, but it was still a mission.

  Dutch slipped away from the bridge promising the dead he’d be back.

  Cassandra led Jeremy through the mud, both of them shivering to the point their teeth chattered in their jaws. They held onto each other for warmth, which made it even harder to slog through the mud. Though most of the buildings were scoured clean from their foundations, she still recognized the general lay of the land. The remains of the BigMart were easy to find and she guided the boy there, hoping to find something else to wear besides the shorts and tennis shoes she had on. They’d freeze to death long before they ever made it to her house, at the rate they were going.

  They were closer to the wolf that shined like a beacon to the east of them, closer to the point that she could feel fragments of his thoughts in her mind. Pain, torture, fear… the wolf was in a dark place and someone was hurting him regularly. He was at once the enemy and someone she felt something for. If nothing else there was simple pity. She didn’t want to see anyone tortured like that.

  She wasn’t the only survivor to think that the BigMart was the place to go. There were a couple of dozen people in the ruins of the big store, picking through the remains.

  “They’re safe,” Jeremy told her. “They’re just hungry and cold, like us.”

  “You can tell that?” she asked, shivering.

  “Sort of. They all are a light green color. Light blue doesn’t seem very dangerous, does it?”

  “No,” she agreed. “I guess not.”

  “You’re a darker blue and you’re not dangerous.”

  She wasn’t sure if she bought the kid’s reasoning or not, but shrugged it off. “Let’s find some clothes.”

  “And something to eat. I could eat a horse.”

  “And then home,” she said. “It’s only a couple of miles from here, north,” she said trying to figure out exactly where north was. It was hard to tell without the sun in the sky but she knew the road by the BigMart led north, to home. It was just a matter of picking their foundation out of all the other wrecked houses.

  “And after that, to find this Church of the Dead Wolf, right?”

  “Yup,” she said. If the church was for killing the wolves she already liked them. And maybe someone there could tell her exactly what she was.

  The survivors in the BigMart were a pitiful lot and she wondered how they’d survived. Surely they all weren’t witches with mystical, magical force bubbles pouring out of their guts? To a person they were wet and dirty, covered in a layer of mud that gave them the look of a primitive people from the jungles of the Amazon. They avoided eye contact, keept their heads down, and dug through the muddy remains of the store. Cassandra kicked at the mud, seeing if there was anything underneath.

  “It’s so cold,” the boy said, his shivering nearly convulsion like.

  “I know,” she said, digging through the mud. The store’s products were tossed about like a garbage heap. She finally found some large beach towels with cartoon prints, wrung the water from them, and wrapped the boy with them. “We’ll keep looking.”

  The boy nodded in agreement but she could hardly tell the difference from his shaking. She kept digging, following the store’s layout from what she remembered after being in it so many times. She came across a duffle bag and began stuffing it with the other odds and ends she found. There were a couple of water bottles, a six pack of Cokes missing one, some cans of kidney beans… it took an hour of digging to find a sealed comforter in a plastic bag. She pulled it from the
container and wrapped it around the boy.

  “No,” he said through chattering teeth. “You keep it. I have these.”

  “Thanks kiddo,” she said, forcing a smile, “but I’m all right.” She was lying, of course, but she needed to be strong for the boy. His survival gave her a sense of direction, a course to follow. If she was consumed with his survival then she didn’t have time to think about her own plight.

  “Okay,” the boy said meekly.

  “Whaddya you got there?”

  The man walking towards them was covered in grime. He had a garbage bag slung over one shoulder and a hammer in his free hand. He had a maniacal look on his face and his eyes darted about crazily.

  “He’s red,” Jeremy whispered. “I don’t know what that means yet.”

  Red means stop, Cassandra thought. “Junk. Same as you.”

  “Lemme look.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, standing, a sword in each hand.

  “Whatcha gonna do with them machetes?” the big man asked, letting his own load fall to the mud. “You ain’t gonna stick no one with them.”

  My mother dies and this guy survives, Cassandra thought. “Stay away from me or you’ll find out.”

  The man eyed her bag greedily and she was sure he was going to make a play for it. Finally, though, he started to leave. “My BigMart. Can’t take stuff from my BigMart.”

  As the man turned and trod off through the remains of the store, she heard a sound that chilled her to her core. A wolf howled in the day time darkness, not too far from them.

  “We have to move. It’s not far now,” she said quietly, hoping the boy hadn’t heard it.

  “They’re going to come for us, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said, but then felt guilty for not saying the rest of what she thought. They were coming for her, not him. He’d have a better chance of avoiding them if he’d go a different direction. “But we’ll beat them if they do. I already did it once, right?”