Forged From Ash (16 page)

There were some phone lines still hanging from a set of posts along the road, so he followed them into town and checked every place along the way that might possibly meet his needs. There was a gas station, a diner, a few signs pointing toward little churches situated just off the road, and another plant that looked like a factory of some kind. He checked all of those except the factory. While he might not have known about the chemical plant, the wind blowing in from the direction of the factory reeked of Half Breed dens. As the industrial structures gave way to little houses and small businesses, Rico’s hopes began to rise.

He only stopped to look in on the houses that were close to the telephone poles. There could very well be underground lines anywhere beneath his feet, but he had to limit his search somehow or he’d lose days by testing one dead connection after another. There was an art to scavenging. Whether the goal was to find food, supplies, transportation or communication, there were things to look for and instincts that could be honed to point a scavenger in the right direction. Most of those instincts were telling Rico that coming to St. Albans may have been a mistake.

The last thing he wanted to do was turn back, however. Not only would The Vigilant be on high alert, but he didn’t want to push his luck in splitting away from the IRD by showing up again so soon. That would only make both him and Sayers look like morons. All of those discouraging thoughts were going through Rico’s head when he spotted a little strip mall on the side of the road. The first thing to catch his eye was a tattoo shop that still looked like it might be open for business. There were a few other neighboring storefronts but without a single undamaged window between them. Not only was the tattoo shop relatively untouched, but its windows were boarded up from the inside. Someone had taken the time to fortify. That was always a good sign. The burning in his scars, on the other hand, was not.

Rico slipped his wooden weapon over his right hand and shifted it into its gauntlet form. Gripping the Sig in his left hand, he tapped the tattoo shop’s door with the barrel of the gun. There was no answer.

“Hey! Anyone inside?”

Still no response.

“I’m looking for a phone,” he said to the door. “You know if there’s any working ones around here?”

Just as he was about to walk away, Rico heard something inside the tattoo shop. It was a quivering voice, muffled and strained. He placed his shoulder against the door and shoved, but it was locked too tight for him to budge. Moving over to the front window, Rico used his gauntlet to punch through the glass and knock out a hole that was big enough for him to step through. As he shoved his way through, glass shards and splintered boards scraped against his shoulders and arms without piercing the Half Breed leather of his jacket.

Inside, the place looked like any other tattoo shop Rico had visited. There were a few chairs near the door, a small counter where the register had been and a larger space in the back where the artists could do their work on customers who sat in barber chairs. The wall on the far right side of the room had been all but torn down, leaving a wide hole that opened into the neighboring store. A skinny girl with arms covered in dragons and Lotus blossoms huddled beneath one of the three big chairs in the workspace. A pair of equally skinny ink enthusiasts was lying on the floor. Rico couldn’t tell if they were male or female because their bodies were being ripped apart by a pack of four Half Breeds.

“C’mere, doggies!” Rico shouted. “I got a treat for ya!”

The werewolves were members of a newer generation. Although they might have looked as terrible as the rest of the packs to the casual observer, Rico had to be able to spot different incarnations of the creatures so he would know what to expect when taking them on. These Half Breeds had thinning coats and narrow bodies. What fur they had was short and bristly. Their snouts came to a point, and the teeth they bared were longer and more curved than usual. Two of the Half Breeds kept feeding on the dead bodies while the others moved toward Rico.

“All right,” he said under his breath as the pair of Half Breeds split apart to circle him. “You guys ain’t stupid. Let’s see how anxious you are to get your asses beat.”

Some Half Breeds would charge at anything that moved, regardless of whether it was firing a gun at them or not. Others kept more to their pack mentality and even used flanking tactics to get the drop on their prey. These seemed cautious as they placed their bodies close to the floor and stalked toward Rico. One of them even turned toward the other to give a few short, huffing barks as if it was some form of primitive language. As they moved, Rico noticed some peculiar things about their bodies. Their legs were longer than normal and their tails were barely nubs protruding from their hind ends. He didn’t have time to observe any more than that before he was forced to defend himself.

A low growl issued from the closest creature’s throat. That one scrambled along the floor as the other took a few steps and then sprung from both rear legs to clear the floor. Rico dropped and huddled into a defensive ball. Turning his shoulder so his jacket was protecting as much of him as possible, he willed a pair of long wooden blades to emerge from his gauntlet. As the first Half Breed latched on to his arm, Rico sank his blades into the second one’s belly and dragged them all the way through to its groin. That creature hit the floor amid a wet pile of its own spilled guts, thrashing its legs in spastic death throes.

Rico bared his teeth as the Half Breed’s fangs punctured his sleeve. Before they could drill too far into his arm, he slammed his bladed gauntlet into the creature’s side like a boxer tenderizing his opponent’s ribs. After three or four hard shots, the werewolf went limp, and Rico shook free of its bite. Keeping that arm in front of him, Rico took a more stable stance and shifted his gauntlet into something that would give him better reach. Instead of several smaller blades, he melded the available wood into a single, longer blade curving up from the top of his hand like a slender tusk.

Both remaining Half Breeds lowered their bodies to less than an inch above the floor and showed their fangs in a display that looked as if the front portion of their faces were being peeled away. Rico took aim with the Sig and squeezed off a few rounds that punched through one Half Breed’s eye. It snapped its head around and howled while scampering through a broken wall and into the neighboring store.  Since the last creature was backing away from him, Rico decided to put himself between it and the girl.

“How many of you are in here?” he asked.

All he could hear apart from the low growl of the Half Breed was a trembling whimper from the room behind him. Without taking his eyes away from the werewolf, Rico snapped, “Answer me! How many of you are here?”

“Just me,” she replied. “There were more but they’re….”

“All right. Do you know a way out?”

“We need to make those things go away. There’s too much here to just leave it behind.”

“This place is done,” Rico said. “Those Half Breeds are already making a den in the next room and…what the hell?”

Some of the Half Breeds had been killed and others wounded, so it wasn’t unprecedented for them to retreat and lick their wounds before taking another run at some fresh meat. Seeing one of them roll around in a pool of freshly spilled blood was something new.

The Half Breed whined as it hit the floor and stretched out so the wounds Rico had given it pressed against the dirty tile. Its whines weren’t pained, however. Instead, they were more like contented panting that quickly drifted closer to obscene mating grunts. When it climbed to its feet again, the creature stretched out with its haunches raised and then shook the blood from its coat as though it had just come in from the rain. Although its wounds were still there, they were partially healed and dwindling by the second.

“Get out of here,” Rico said. “NOW!” Without looking back, he charged forward to attack the Half Breed before it was fully healed.

The werewolf reared back to pounce but wasn’t able to spring before Rico got to it. He drove the sharpened point of his gauntlet into the werewolf’s head. Even as he grabbed onto its snout to keep the thing from pulling away, Rico could hear the Half Breed groaning as though it was deriving perverse joy from the damage it was absorbing. Rico attempted to sink the weapon in deeper, but found it was wedged in place.

He was only able to pull it out less than half an inch, which was far enough for him to see the viscous black crust that had formed between the gauntlet and the open wound it had inflicted. As he watched, blood that had coated the gauntlet was drawn into the Half Breed’s flesh, and the wound closed around the weapon like a toothless mouth.

“You like that, huh?” Rico snarled. “Let’s see if this trips yer trigger.” With that, he focused all of his will into shifting the weapon even further.

The Half Breed scraped its paws against the floor and bared its teeth while snarling in a way that reflected pure rage.

“Now that’s what I like to hear!”

Keeping his fingers wrapped around the creature’s snout without putting them in its mouth was a mix of practice and insanity. Most of the fighting Skinners did was up close by nature, but Rico’s weapon forced him to get his hands even dirtier. Rico pressed his hand against the Half Breed’s face while pulling his gauntlet from where it had been lodged. As the weapon slid out another inch, the Half Breed’s eyes rolled up into their sockets.

When Rico’s weapon emerged from the werewolf’s head, it opened the entire top of its skull thanks to the twin hooks that he’d formed at the weapon’s tip. Thick chunks of brain matter were snagged on those hooks, emerging amid a spray of blood and bone chips. Once the weapon was free, Rico’s other hand sent the werewolf to the floor where it hit like a sack of bricks.

He held the gauntlet close to his eyes while willing the hooks at the end of the blade to come together once more. “Daniels will wanna hear all about how I got THIS sample,” Rico said through a grin smeared in gore.

“Who’s Daniels?”

Turning toward the meek voice, Rico instinctively aimed the Sig Sauer at the skinny girl with the tattoos who’d asked the question. “I thought I told you to leave,” he said while holstering the pistol.

“You did,” she replied while standing up. “Who’s Daniels? Is he your partner? Don’t Skinners work with partners?”

“Usually, yeah. Standard procedures tend to go out the window after the apocalypse hits. Have you seen many of these things around?”

She looked at the werewolf carcasses scattered throughout the room before staring at the hole in the wall. “There weren’t many of them. Just the packs that passed by outside. We were safe in here until a few days ago when those things started sleeping next door.”

“Looks like you were safe for a while. I’m gonna have a look to see if you have any more new neighbors waiting to say howdy. I’d tell you to leave before you get hurt, but if you ain’t already gone, me repeating myself won’t help much.”

“I can help,” the girl said. “We have weapons.”

That stopped Rico in his tracks. The hole in the wall loomed in front of him like the mouth of a cave. Squinting to try and make out any signs of movement from the next room, Rico asked, “What’ve you got?”

“Some shotguns.”

“This was a tattoo parlor which means there should have been some alcohol in here for sterilizing needles and customers. You got any of that left?”

“Plenty. We haven’t had many customers lately, and the people we did work on weren’t too worried about being clean. I guess that’s one of our standard procedures that went out the window.” Although she’d been relaxing a bit now that there were no Half Breeds in sight, the sound of throaty snarls from the next room put her right back on the defensive. She slid behind one of the barber chairs and crouched down to make it clear she wasn’t about to move from that spot anytime soon.

“What’s your name?” Rico asked. When he didn’t get anything from her other than a few dazed blinks, he added, “Mine’s Rico.”

After swallowing hard, the tattooed girl said, “Haley. I’m Haley.”

“Haley? Kind of a cutesy name for a rocker chick, ain’t it? I don’t know about you, but I fuckin’ hate cutesy shit.”

She smiled and nodded. “Me too. That’s why I started getting inked.”

“Do me a favor and get some of that alcohol together along with some rags, matches and anything else that’ll burn. I’m gonna step next door, but neighbors like them need a bit more than please and thank-you before they get the hint they ain’t wanted.”

Haley nodded. “I can do that.”

“Good,” Rico said while approaching the hole in the wall. Pointing to the floor near the edge of the tattoo shop’s waiting area, he added, “When you get all that stuff together, just set it down here. Don’t come over where I am…no matter what you hear. If I ain’t back in five minutes, toss as much alcohol around as you can and light a match.”

“Ok.”

The gauntlet had shrunk down to a smooth shell encasing Rico’s fist. He slipped it off and put it on his left hand before drawing the Sig with his right. It was good to be on his own again, but he wouldn’t have minded an IRD fire team at his back when he stepped through the broken wall and into the decimated interior of what had once been a diner. There was a counter on the far side of the room and two rows of booths on adjacent walls, all of which had been broken beyond hope of repair. The entire place looked as if it had been set upon by a rowdy bunch of fans from several years’ worth of speed metal concerts. Every inch of the walls that hadn’t been stripped down to the studs was covered in scratches and filth. Judging by the smell, Rico knew only some of that filth was dirt. Tables and chairs had not only been overturned but were pulled apart and piled into heaps that the Half Breeds were using as beds. The one that had been shot through the eye lay there, curled into a ball and licking its forepaws.

Rico moved forward cautiously with Sig Sauer held at the ready. There were no other Half Breeds in that den. The dull burn from his scars assured him of that much. The faint itch beneath the scars told him something else. When he got close enough, he could see the werewolf wasn’t licking its paws but was instead slopping its tongue along a length of bone protruding from flayed skin that was covered in matted hair. The creature looked up at him with one eye that was clouded by feral rage and another that was already partially reformed into a clean, glassy orb.