Lycan Fallout (Book 2): Fall of Man (40 page)

“I could have tried.” She about drove her fist through her thigh. I was happy that punch wasn’t directed at me.

“It’s what we do from this point on that matters. What has happened is done, we cannot alter that no matter how much we wish.”

“And what do we do, Michael? Talboton is gone.”

“I’d give you that bullshit line about rebuilding, but that isn’t really my style. We’re going to regroup, somehow, someway, and then we’re going to kill Xavier.”

“We should have just kept chasing after him. We could have possibly prevented this entire thing.”

“Even now can you say you would have let those kids go on their own?”

“What good has it done? Nemmon is dead and most likely so is Breealla.”

“You couldn’t have known that. Again, Bailey, you did, at the time, what you thought was right. Each action has a reaction…it’s just impossible to know what that is going to be. I hate to be an ass, but you’re going to have to feel sorry for yourself at a later time. We need to figure out our immediate problem first.” I stood up.

She looked up at me. “I do not think you hate it. Help me up.” She stuck her hand out.

“We alright, you and me?” I asked her.

“We are for now.”

I knew what that meant, until I screwed up again, which was inevitable.

“Michael, we have a problem.” Azile was standing by the armory door.

I turned the corner to see a shaking Merrings holding an M-16.

“You have got to be kidding me. You survived?” I asked.

“Yes and I plan on keeping doing that!”

“I don’t think that’s proper English,” I told him, although who was I to judge. I’d been making up my own words for generations. “Put the gun down, Merrings. You’re an asshole, but no one wants to kill you.”

“How…how do I know that!”

“Because she’s a witch, I’m somewhat of a vampire, and my buddy over there is a werewolf, and that’s not even including the Warrior Goddess Bailey. Plus there’s still Lana, who may be part samurai. If we wanted you dead, it would be a foregone conclusion. However, if your twitching fingers pull that trigger and you hurt someone, I will not hesitate to snap your neck.”

He thought about it for a few seconds, then put the rifle down like it had just become superheated. I walked into the room.

“We’re going to have to leave these behind.” I was caressing the side of an M-16 crate.

“We can’t leave here!” Merrings was beside himself.

“Can’t eat bullets, and eventually the Lycan will sniff this place out. Plus, I, for one, have had my fill of tunnel warfare.” I shuddered.

Bailey came in after me. “Has anyone seen Gount?”

I shook my head, she could tell what I meant. Not that he hadn’t made it yet, but that he was never going to make it.

“We need to arm up and grab as much stuff as we can. Then rig this place to blow.”

“We cannot blow up the Talboton armory. This is the source upon which we were founded!”

“Now you’re getting patriotic, Merrings. You were ready to give it all away,” I said to him.

“Only enough to prevent a war. And what of it now? Wouldn’t it have been better had I succeeded?”

“See, Bailey, another mistake on our part. Merrings is right, we’re never going to be able to carry all this shit out.”

“Why destroy it?” she asked. “We can come back with more people.”

“If they find it, we could be even more screwed.”

“I can hide it,” Azile said as she walked around the room. “Much like I have my homes.”

“I like that better. You’re sure they can’t detect it?”

“As much as I can be.”

“Man, I can’t tell you how much I dislike vagaries.”

“I am more inclined to believe they will not discover it than they will. Bailey, please have your people get all that they can carry. The spell will work better if the door is closed and sealed.”

“I’m not leaving,” Merrings said weakly.

“Okay, you stay in here. If and when we come back, we’ll get you out,” I told him as I started putting on ammunition belts. Yes, that’s plural. I was planning on being a walking ammunition depot. Bailey and the twenty-two other shell-shocked survivors began doing the same.

I don’t know how many rounds a hundred and fifty pounds equated to, but that was roughly what I was carrying on my body. Merrings finally relented and came out. Azile spent five minutes performing her spell before we all began to make our way down the corridor. Mathieu and I led the way. Lana was somewhere in the middle. She’d wanted to stay up front, and seeing her proficiency with the sword, maybe I should have let her. But I’d only had two hundred years and hadn’t quite gotten over my sexism. Which is funny if you think about it, considering the sheer amount of strong women I’ve had surrounding me my entire life. Let’s call it chivalry instead.

I popped the door open, leading with the muzzle of my weapon. There was nothing as far as the eye could see, which was about ten feet.

“So far so good.” I stepped out, Mathieu immediately behind me and then quickly past me as he checked the perimeter.

There were a few distant screams, and it would have been impossible not to see the glow in the sky from the burning township behind us. Thick, cloying smoke was at about waist level as it seeped through and around the trees, giving the already eerie situation an added creep factor. Azile spent a few moments on the door behind us; I would imagine cloaking that as well. We were as silent as twenty-five souls (in reality twenty-four souls, but you get the meaning) could be, decked out in extra gear like we were. Some men were carrying two and three rifles in addition to their bullets.

“Where to?” Bailey asked, trying to peer through the haze.

“Denarth.” Lana had made her way to the front and was now leading; Azile and I next to her. Mathieu would lope off after every sound and would return soundlessly. The second time he came back, I made sure to tie a shirt around his arm so he wouldn’t get shot appearing out of the mist like he was.

We traveled for miles, free from the smoke and screams. The glowing of orange to our back had finally faded from view as well. We all felt like we could finally take a breath, even Merrings, who I had thought may never stop shaking.

We bunched up as we hit the edge of the forest. The night was calm. I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe all was not right, it was something in my gut. It was too peaceful, if that makes sense.

“How much time on that full moon?” I asked Mathieu. It is sort of strange to have a werewolf look at you like you were crazy.

“Less than an hour,” Azile answered.

“We need to pick our poison. Either we go now and there may be werewolves around, or we wait until the Lycan move in. Neither is very appealing. I vote we wait. My thinking is that there are WAY more werewolves than Lycan and the Lycan will be in no rush to leave the conquered town.” It was perfectly valid reasoning right up until we heard howling off to our immediate left. Sounded a lot like a hunting party on the trail of some food. There were screams of people not too far off.

“We have to move,” Bailey said. “It sounds like they are heading this way.”

“They’re bringing the werewolves right to us? We need to stop them!” Merrings said.

“Well, go out there and do it then,” I told him, shoving his shoulder. “Let’s move away from this spot and see if we can help them in any way.” We got about twenty-five yards away from the cover of trees before getting low in the tall grass, which nearly obscured us completely. The screams of terror trailed off as the howls of triumph increased. We saw one man totter from the woods, gaping wounds crisscrossing his chest. One arm was completely torn off, and blood was streaked across his face, totally covering his left eye.

“Lankins,” Bailey said softly.

Five werewolves fanned out around the injured Talbotonian. We had our rifles up, but did not fire for fear we would attract many more werewolves to our location. Lankins was a dead man stumbling. The werewolves were toying with their food, batting him around from one to the next, sometimes dipping in and savagely biting the man who had not even the strength to yell anymore. It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to watch. The werewolves were so sated with the flesh of their victims that they had time to play with their food now. Mercifully, he finally succumbed to the many wounds and fell to the ground. Two of the werewolves dove in and began to tear apart what was left while two others were just milling about. It was that last one that was going to be a pain in the ass. He had his nose up in the air and was sampling for smell. As our lack of luck would have it, we were upwind.

I don’t think he could see us, but he was staring straight our way even as the light of dawn began to creep across the land.

“How much time, Azile?” I asked as softly as possible.

“About five minutes less than the last time you asked me.”

The lone werewolf began to howl. His companions all stopped what they were doing to look at where he was. Then accompanying howls began to radiate from all around us.

“Run,” I told the group right as I put a shot between that werewolf’s eyes.

They crossed for a moment as if wanting to see the entry wound, and then he fell to the side. The pursuit was on, from the four original ones and the others in the general area. If I used the howls as a guide, I’d say they numbered in the range of fifty or sixty. But that was about as accurate as counting marbles in a jar by the ones you could see.

We’d been evading detection for going on ten minutes, but that was a luck that had its time running thin. Soon we would be forced to get into a defensive position and fight our way out, if that was even a possibility. Merrings was lagging behind, as were a few others who had been wounded or just winded. The bushes, scrub, and small trees were being uprooted around us as the pursuers tore through everything in their way in an attempt to get to us.

There was a scream as someone near the back was pulled from the column. They’d caught up to us and that someone had paid in blood. The werewolf had taken the man and gone further into the woods.

“This is our stand!” I shouted, turning at an angle. The group got into a loose circle, as much as the vegetation would allow anyway. Merrings, of course, found his way into the middle.  Like the sugary filling in a sweet cupcake, at least that was how the werewolves would see it. We had fields of vision of about sixty to seventy-five feet depending on which arc of the circle you found yourself on. The werewolves figured out what we were doing and began to amass in strength, flitting in an out of trees. My earlier estimate was low. Now I was thinking somewhere around a hundred, didn’t much matter. I shot an initial volley along with a few others, a couple finding their mark. I wanted to give them something to think about besides eating. If anything, it only infuriated them and made them move quicker.

Now normally anger in your opponent works to your favor, makes them do something stupid. That kind of goes out the window when your opponent is a werewolf, and he’s now hauling ass towards you, all teeth, claws and menace. The ground was shaking from their approach, but we were holding our own…or so I thought. Mathieu had moved slightly ahead of me and to the right, singlehandedly holding the line as werewolves were shredded by his powerful arms. He was a beast even more possessed than the ones attacking. Werewolves had breached the line from the other side. One had dragged two people with it as he had leapt into and through the circle. One of the men died instantly with a claw entering into his left eye. The other was screaming, the werewolf had him around the waist. Four rifles trained on the werewolf, killing him somewhat instantly.

Another man was taken not three people away. A werewolf had bit through his head just a split second before Lana could run her sword through its chest. Our circle was rapidly collapsing in on itself, and we were surrounded to the point where we could not run. The moon was twenty minutes away from a full retreat, ten of those minutes we did not have.

What happened next I would have thought a tall-tale had I not seen it myself, and even then I thought it could somehow be the aftereffects of Mathieu’s sour mash. Wolves. It was wolves, and my only thought at first seeing them was,
what difference does it make which way we die
; although, somehow the idea of being eaten by a wolf was more settling. At least it was a natural creature.

But that was not the case. Apparently wolves liked werewolves about as much as dogs liked cats. The wolves were attacking the flanks of the werewolves with incredible success, dragging down the edges of our invaders.

“Do not shoot the wolves!” I commanded.

I didn’t want some trigger-happy defender ruining what I hoped was an alliance. It could be that the wolves were just getting rid of another predator who was honing in on their meal.

One problem at a time.

Wolves and men were still falling to the powerful beasts, but more of the werewolves were dropping, and that was the important part of the equation. I’d taken a claw across my side. Mathieu looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. There wasn’t a person remaining who wasn’t sporting some sort of wound, except maybe Lana, the ninja.

I noticed Mathieu first. I’d thought that he’d perhaps finally taken too much punishment or had just run out of energy. He stood rigid before his knees gave out, he fell to the ground. Then I knew what was happening. We’d held out, our greatest enemy finally relenting, as the moon dropped below the horizon. We kept shooting. Bailey had seen the folly of her ways and was not going to make the same mistake twice.