Lycan Fallout: Rise Of The Werewolf (31 page)

“Always with the half statements. Doesn’t anyone like elaboration in this age?” I asked.

“Shh,” she said.

I heard nothing except the distant ruffle of feathers from birds being disturbed.

“Let’s just wait until nightfall, I’m sure our stealthy guest will attempt to make themselves known in the most deadly way possible,” I said cynically.

“If I ever have children,” Bailey said, “please stop me if I desire to have you tell them a nighttime tale.”

“They’ll be bigger than me anyway. They can tell me stories of comfort,” I said.

When we finally stopped for the night, it was a welcome respite. Each of us had been lost in our own thoughts. Not more than a handful of words had been spoken the remainder of the day, which was strange, because we had stayed in very near proximity to each other, not yet knowing what was out there or what its intentions were. Although, if I’ve learned anything in my existence, anything following generally does not have the followees best interests at heart.

“Zombies?” I asked, once I got the fire started.

“Doubtful, stealth isn’t their normal forte,” Tommy said. “Plus, the stink would have given them away by now.”

“Who would have thought they’d be preferable to whatever is out there.” I threw another small log on the fire trying to offset the chill I felt.

Azile was quiet for a moment. “No I did not. It was all I could think to do. I felt I had a better chance with that than I did with convincing man to fight. The towns will fight when pressed, but each individual hamlet will not be able to stand up to his assault.”

“I should have stayed in Maine,” I said – not for the first time – and if I lived longer, not for the last. Azile didn’t even have the gumption to berate me for that statement. I knew she had to be feeling a little down. “Although, I guess if I had, I would have never met my new best friend.” I reached over and hugged Bailey’s shoulder.

She pulled away. “That hasn’t been established quite yet.”

“Oh, it’s only a matter of time. I’m entirely too charming to be denied for long.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Azile stood up abruptly. I reached for a sword I no longer possessed. “I have got to find a weapon
with a little longer range than a hand-axe.”

“Come forth,” Azile said sternly.

“Me?” I asked

Azile whipped her head back at me.

“Fine, fine…come forth,” I said.

Oggie whined low, I stroked his back. I caught a flash of something darker than the woods moving quickly by on my right.

“Azile?” I asked.

“I do not know,” she said.

Bailey had her weapon at the ready. Tommy was looking in the complete opposite direction from which I was.

“I do, however, think it’s safe to say that they are all around us,” she did finally answer.

“Maine sounds better and better all the time.”

“Be quiet, I cannot get a fix on them,” Bailey admonished.

“The fire, Michael,” Azile said.

I quickly overturned the pot we had been heating water in. “There goes my bath,” I said as the fire sizzled. Darkness quickly enshrouded all of us. A few of the hardier cinders kept going, but for the most part, the night was black as ink. An arrow whizzed by and struck the side of Tommy’s cart.

“I fucking hate arrows,” I jeered.

A ball of light shot forth from Azile’s hands –
much like a flare. The entire surrounding woods were enlightened in a bluish-green wavy haze as the ball hung a good hundred or so feet above us.

“What the fuck?” I asked as I saw twenty or so figures around our periphery. The shadows danced as small breezes caught the flare. Some had the heads of wolves, the others bears. It looked like the island of Dr. Moreau out there. “Are there things you guys haven’t told me about yet? I mean I’d understand, because I just flat out would have refused to come.”

“Tribal hunters,” Tommy said, pulling the arrow from his cart.

“Indians?” I asked. “I thought you had an understanding.”

“That was the Micmac. I do not know who these people are,” he said with some concern.

“I swear to God, if I get shot with an arrow, I’m going to be extremely pissed off!” I shouted.

As if on cue, another arrow was loosed. This time I saw in which direction and, more importantly, who loosed it.

“Fine, we’ll play your game.” I easily sidestepped the projectile. I moved with a speed and grace that my mis-condition afforded. I wrapped one hand around the warrior’s throat
; with my other I knocked the bow to the side.

I’ll give him this, he wasn’t going out without a fight. He reached down to his side towards a nasty looking knife.

“You grab that thing and I’ll crush your throat,” I told him.

As h
is hand kept moving slowly towards it, I tightened my grip. “Do you not understand English?”

“I understand your words fine,” a distinctively feminine voice croaked out. I removed her headdress fashioned from a fox’s head.

“I’m not the forgiving type,” I told her as I effortlessly lifted her off the ground. Her feet kicked a bit as she struggled for air. I heard the ululation of a war cry, and then all was still. With my free hand I plucked her knife from its sheath. “A fucking Ka-Bar? Are you kidding me? I’ll consider this a spoil of war,” I told her as I pulled the sheath free from her leg, breaking the leather twining as I did so.

“Are we done here?” I asked her rapidly stilling form. “Oh, right…I should probably put you down.” It was then that I noticed I had a good five or six people around me and they looked relatively hostile.

The woman rubbed her throat, once her feet were firmly back on the ground.

“Let’s everyone back away,” Bailey said forcibly behind me. She had her rifle trained on some of them.

The woman who I had suspended like a piñata barked in some savage language. The men around us relaxed somewhat, but I had yet to see any of them put their weapons down.

“What are you?” the woman asked.

“No need to be rude, and considering I am the victor in this little battle, it is me that gets to ask the first questions.”

“Victor?” she asked. “Look around Old One.”

“I’m getting a little sick of that moniker,”  I told her. It was then I noticed there was another much larger ring of warrior’s around us. “Not thrilled I’m in the middle of a Mexican stand-off.”

“Why are you here?” the woman asked.

“Spa day,” I told her.

“My knife.” She held her hand out towards me.

“You won’t try to stick me with it?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. I didn’t take that as a particularly good sign. I handed her the knife hilt first, she held her hand oeldd.
ut until I handed her sheath back.

Azile joined in the mix. “Chieftress Inuktuk, it is truly an honor to finally meet you.” Azile bowed slightly.

“As well as you, Azile of the Red Order,” the Chieftress said. “What brings you on to our lands? You reek of Lycan.”

“That would be me,” I said, sticking my hand in the air.

“We met with their leader in an attempt to forego a war,” Azile told her.

“And he allowed you to live?” she questioned.

“Even the wild ones have laws they must obey,” Azile said.

“Come, we will feast,” Inuktuk offered.

“Really? Are you shitting me? You just tried to kill us,” I said.

“If the Chieftress had wanted you dead, you would be,” one of the braves said in a smooshed language kind of way. It was broken English to say the least, but that was the general idea behind his words, and he looked pretty irked that that wasn’t what happened.

I pointed at my eyes and then at him in the traditional
‘I’ll be watching you’ gesture. He had no clue what it meant, and I’ve got to admit I was somewhat amused watching him mimic it.

“You give him the finger, Michael, and I’m going to tell him what it means. So help me. We’re going to need their help before all this is over,” she told me as we were following the Indians back to their camp.
Wait...do I still have to say Native Americans?

It was a strange settlement they led us to; large canvas and fur structures dominated a small plain, some were free-standing with supports made from heavy timbers, others were attached to existing structures that had not yet succumbed to nature. To say it was Indian would be like saying casinos belonged on their land. There were less implements being used here than in the other towns I’d seen along the way. Those towns seemed in a rush to try and get back to where we had once been. I don’t know what the rush was
; the ‘good old days’ were anything but.

These people seemed to want to stay in sort of a homeostasis with the world around them. Take only what they needed to survive. That’s a hard way to make your path through life, but it’s honest. There was some agriculture, couldn’t really tell in the night, but it was easy to tell from the planted straight lines that this was not wild caused.

We were ‘guests’ in the same way mental patients were ‘wards of the state’. We were completely surrounded, knives might not been out and bows may not have been drawn, but hands hovered by hilts, and each warrior had an arrow in one hand and their bow in the other ready to nock in a moment. Now, I know there are other dangers in the night that might necessitate this, but it still isn’t a comforting feeling when you’re the stranger in the strange land.

We were led into the biggest tent structure in the village, had to have been forty feet across, the wall to our right was cinder block and appeared to be the foundation of some old factory, old graffiti still ingrained on the surface. ‘Spence’ might not have made it through the zombie apocalypse, but his name lived on. I raised my fist in his honor. In the center of the structure was a large fire th lamigat looked extremely inviting. And then the strangest thing I’d seen all night – and remember, this included seeing people wearing animal heads in the woods, was over to my left.

There was an old roll top desk almost completely encased in dripped wax, and more being added to it every second as at least a dozen candles blazed. Two guards stood a vigilant post over something I just could not explain, a blue visor protected under a Lucite container. The familiar golden arches logo were neatly embroidered on the front of the visor.

“What the fuck?” I asked so softly I don’t think I even said it aloud. It was then I noticed that, had I been paying more attention, I would have seen that almost all of the headwear the warriors
were wearing, had the logo either burned, stitched, or etched in. This time I couldn’t help myself.

“Want some fries with that?” I asked as I approached the shrine, for that’s what it was.

Azile intercepted my course, grabbing my arm and steering me back to the fire. The tent was rapidly filling with the inhabitants of the village.

“You see that?” I asked her.

“I have. You had best think twice, no make that three times, before you say anything condescending.”

“Me?” I asked incredulously.

“It obviously means something of great significance to them.”

“Me too,” I told her indignantly. “What I wouldn’t do for a Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

“Michael,” she admonished me.

“These people don’t strike me as Native Americans,” I said in her ear. “Shit, I’m darker than most of them, and I’m of European descent. Plus
, I don’t go out much.”

“I will give you an incurable case of diarrhea if you don’t shut up.”

I stopped short. “Wait…can you really do that? I don’t want to know. Although, if I wake up with a gurgling stomach I will always make sure I am upwind of you.”

“Stop.”

Oggie and Tommy were sitting on a large plank bench by the fire, Bailey was nervously pacing behind them. We all had to give up our weapons before entering the sacred tent and she was not dealing with it very well. Azile possessed a strength I did not think a woman of her stature could as she pretty much placed me in a spot next to Tommy.