Lycan Fallout (Book 2): Fall of Man (24 page)

“Did they attempt to shoot the rifles?” I asked.

“Our scouts said that they had not. Perhaps because they did not feel they had the rounds to waste or that possibly someone would hear them.”

“Lucky on our part, insane on theirs. How could they possibly think they are going to effectively be able to use them if they have never even fired them?”

“Any fool can fire a gun, Michael. Just think back to our time,” Azile said.

“Easy to do, difficult to master,” I responded.

“I wish they would try them. Maybe when they realized they didn’t work they would forget this folly and just go home,” Gount said. It was easy enough to see that he was deeply troubled.

“They’ll go home soon enough once they break against these walls,” Merrings replied. It seemed so out of character for him; or, more likely, this was who he always had been and it just took this set of extraordinary circumstances for him to reveal the true manifestation of his flawed character.

Gount either missed Merrings’ words or chose to ignore them. “Bailey, are your personnel ready?”

“They are, sir, and with the additional rounds, we may be able to keep casualties on their side down to a minimum before they realize that what they are attempting is a needless waste of life.”

“Oh, the soldiers will realize that immediately. It’s the assholes directing them who will need a little more convincing,” I seethed.

The approaching soldiers would be demoralized almost immediately as they attacked with either useless weaponry or close combat implements like swords and maces, as we sat far away and sent death spiraling towards them at supersonic speeds. Untouchable.

There wasn’t much to the rest of the meeting. Bailey was prepared—she had a system in place to rotate men and supplies out as needed should that have to happen. The general consensus was that we hoped it was all over before this was necessitated. I was not going to hold my breath in that regard. The meeting was breaking up when a scout bounded in and nearly took out Gount in his haste to deliver the news he was carrying.

“Sir!” He was breathing heavy. “Denarth marches,” he managed to get out before he placed his hands on his knees.

“And New Georgia?” Gount asked.

“Them as well, sir.”

“Any sightings of Ft. Lufkin?”

The man could manage nothing more than to shake his head back and forth.

“How much time do we have?” I asked.

It was Bailey who answered. “We will not be dining alone come dinner time.”

“Eight or nine hours? Okay.” I walked out. I had someplace I wanted to be.

“Michael?” Azile was racing to catch up.

“I was going to get a closer look at the Watchers.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Did you really just ask me that question? You know I would never think something out that far. And if, by some chance, I did…that would just be more incentive for me to do it.”

“I will come with you.”

“Is that wise?”

“I have already fallen down the rabbit hole, Michael. I may as well see where it leads.” She looked up at me, something between an angelic look and a devilish grin on her face made me laugh.

The woods looked darker from the sheer amount of shadows making their home in the boughs of the trees.

“If you were a guy, I’d be telling you just how much I might shit my pants looking at them.”

“And yet, I am not and you still have related the tale.”

“Loophole,” I told her. I don’t know what I was expecting to see as we got closer. I was more than fearful that they’d rush at us and I would see the screaming face of a demon or a skull with an impossibly huge, open maw silently cursing us. Nothing though, they just milled about as oblivious to our presence as the leaves they weaved in and around. “Any idea what they are?”

Azile had moved even closer, going up by a tree and sticking her hand up in the air. She was mere inches from touching one.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, Michael, perhaps I have taken a page from your journal. Do first, think about it later.”

“Yeah, because that’s worked out so well in the past.”

The spirit, for lack of a better term, did not acknowledge Azile’s hand. If anything, it may have moved back a bit as if fearful of the life she represented.

“They do not see me.”

“I think they do.” She looked at me questioningly. I came toward her, grabbed the lowest branch and began to climb.

“And you think what I did was crazy?”

“Look,” I told her as I moved around on the tree branches.

“It is subtle, but they are moving away from you.”

“It’s like I have ghost repellant on.”

“Is that like the human repellant you generally wear?”

“You’re a funny lady, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some Tynes blood running through you. Any idea what these things are?”

“I do not. I will have to seek some counsel.”

“Who could you possibly talk to here that would know anything about them?” I was trying my best to touch one of the specters, but it was deft at avoiding my entreaties no matter how quickly I moved.

“Not here.”

“Forget it, I don’t want to know. I’ve had my fill of otherworldly visitors, visions or is it visages?”

I had turned to look at Azile with my question. I felt an arctic blast of cold air come up along my side. The misty smoke swirled, a face pushed through the curtain of smoke and presented me with an image of a rather plain-looking old woman; her features long as if the weight of the world had pulled them closer to the ground. I was thinking all of this as I plunged to the ground some ten feet below. I landed with a loud grunt by Azile’s feet.

“No chance you could have caught me?” I stayed on the ground for a second more, evaluating my body to see if I had injured something upon impact.

Azile was giggling. “Your small flight was quite ungainly. I’ve seen ostriches do better.”

“Ostriches don’t fly.” I was sitting up. “Oh…forget it, I see your point now. Did you see the face that appeared? Could have been one of your kind, looked the part.”

“A witch, you mean?”

“I call them like I see them.”

“I saw the face. Like I said once before I am inclined to believe they are benign, but they are here for a reason. Perhaps they have the ability of foresight.”

“And what? They get their jollies watching people die?”

“I don’t think so.” She was focusing in on the woman who had once again reverted back to her swirling form. “I think that perhaps they are here to guide those who are about to die.”

I backed up a few steps. “That’s fucking creepier somehow.”

“How so?”

“What if you knew your mom was in there somewhere? That would mean they knew you were going to die.”

“That is interesting. If someone were to realize that, could he or she somehow change his or her destiny? Maybe by possibly leaving this spot, or is your fate already sealed?”

“Like an expiration date.”

“Strange way of putting it, perhaps apt, perhaps not.”

“And that’s another thing.” I paused to collect my thoughts.

“What’s another thing? You haven’t said anything.”

“Why can only we see them? I know folks somehow know about them, it’s just weird they can’t see them as well. Nobody else over on that wall is able to or you can bet your ass the whole town would be up here. The guard probably thinks I’m an idiot reaching around myself for imaginary bugs or something.”

Azile thought on this for a moment. “It has to be something with our uniqueness, I suppose.”

“I’m sure that plays a part, Azile, I do. But I’ve been this…umm…uniqueness for quite some time. I’ve never seen them before. I think there is more going on here.”

“Any theories?”

“I’m not the one with a hotline to the spirit world. I think maybe you should get on the horn and ask someone.”

I had my thumb out to my ear and my pinkie to my mouth in the traditional “phone” gesture. That would be another gesture that the locals of this time and place didn’t know. Maybe I could associate that with a swear word as well.

“I’m not sure if it’s worth the time right now.”

“Would you believe me if I told you Tommy thought Watchers didn’t truly straddle the neutrality line but were slightly to the right of it?”

“He never said anything of this to me.”

I didn’t know how much I wanted to divulge about just how far gone I really was. “Umm it was right before I met Mathieu that he told me.”

Azile’s eyebrows furrowed. She did the math, Tommy was in the grave when I’d received my message. She let it pass, at least as far as I knew.

“Come, we should go, there are many things we need to do before the…” She let her words trail off before she said war.

I didn’t know it at the time; a guard told me when we got back, but apparently we had no sooner turned around to head back to town when he said there was a large, glowing mass of red behind us. He thought mistakenly for a moment that it was somehow the sun, but that was further to our right and already above the tree line. It was doubly strange, because we had not felt any heat, nor did the bright light illuminate us in any way or it would have cast a shadow in front of us, which would have been difficult to miss.

“Still benign?” I asked Azile (and to an even more confused guard who had just finished explaining what he had seen). I hadn’t meant it as an affront, just a true question. In my experience, red did not generally signify calm, tranquility, and peace.

“We” doing many things before the attackers attacked really meant Azile had many things to do. All I did was grab a rifle and enough rounds to buckle the knees of a pack mule had he the misfortune to carry my ammunition. This was not a battle I was looking forward to. Wait. That makes about as much sense as saying this was like a visit to the dentist that I was not looking forward to. No one in the history of mankind ever looked forward to the dentist. I guess unless you had a hand-in-mouth fetish thing going on, which I guess is entirely possible. So except for those few, and we’ll keep them out of the equation. Battle was battle, a necessary evil I suppose when one talks about mankind; it is our version of population control.

We sat atop the food chain for so long with no viable threat. We had to be our own worst enemy. Oh, occasionally a shark or a grizzly, maybe a tiger or two would take a man down a notch. But it was never a unified front; there had never been a wall of elephants trying to destroy Manhattan. We killed and we ate pretty much anything we wanted. The only thing that could take down man was basically man himself; and yeah, I guess a pesky virus. But again, man created the virus, so still the fault lies there.

Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, this battle. I was happy to have the rifle and the bullets, but I just wasn’t happy that I would be using them against other men, and poorly armed ones at that. Again, it makes no sense, because we had a huge advantage that I suppose just didn’t seem fair. It would be like the Polish Cavalry charging the German Panzer division. But this was war, if given the chance any of those soldiers would kill me; it was my responsibility to myself to end the threat before that happened. I could attempt to justify it all I wanted, but it still felt wrong. This would be something else that would keep me up long into the night as I weighed how this looked in the eyes of the gatekeeper.

I saw Azile from time to time throughout the day. Between her and Bailey, they must have traversed the entire town a few dozen times. I, for the most part, sat on the parapet with my back against the wall, my eyes shut for the majority of the day. Every once in a while, someone would step over my legs to get past, but that was out of the norm.

I was startled out of my trance, couldn’t really call it a nap, when someone kicked my boots. I looked up, but the sun was directly behind her head. The backlit figure would have been hard not to recognize.

“Enjoying yourself?” Bailey asked.

“As much as one can before a war.”

“Move over.” She kicked my foot.

I was going to tell her there was plenty of parapet space for her to sit down on, but she had the advantageous positioning as she stood over me. I took the wiser course for once and did as she asked. Scratch “asked.” I did as she told.

“Always a pleasure.”

“I’m sorry about Oggie,” she said when she finally got down.

“I’ll find him.” And I meant it.

“Looks like we’re going to make it another day without fighting.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Huh?” she asked. “We’re not fighting, dying, or killing. How is that not a good thing?

“It seems to me that this is going to happen, this war I mean, and I hate waiting. If we are to fight, I’d just as soon do it and be done with it instead of wasting time waiting for it.”

“I suppose, in some roundabout fashion, I can understand your point. However, I am of the hope that someone with more sense will take this time to realize just how pointless this battle is and will go home to prepare for the real enemy.”