The Witch and the Werewolf (15 page)

“
Fine,” the girl said.
“Let’s get going, then. I’m sick of the wet and the
cold.”

He didn’t have the heart
to tell that, at least when he’d left, the Church was also wet and
cold. Maybe they got the ship open, he thought. He had a feeling
the world was going to be wet and cold for a long, long
time.

Cassandra was cold, wet, and a little annoyed with the cocky
soldier sent to rescue her. Rescue her mother, she silently
corrected herself, as she sat huddled next to Jeremy stirring the
unidentifiable contents of one of the MREs. Dutch, as the man
called himself, insisted they eat and rest before heading to the
bridge. Attacking the bridge was more like it, she thought, and
wondered if the man had a personal grudge against the survivors
there. Still, Jeremy had said the man was telling the truth and he
could see people on the bridge. The majority were okay, as he said,
but there were a few in their midst that were absolutely evil. She
felt it as well, though she’d been trying to block out the external
feelings. But even then how well did she know the boy? They’d
survived a couple of nights together but what did that mean? Why
was she having all these doubts now? She wished for the hundredth
time in an hour that her mother was there.

She tried to block the
wolf in the Church of the Dead Wolf out, but couldn’t. His pain was
her pain and she wanted to scream with each and every
step.

Focus, she told herself.
Ignore the pain. Move on. One foot and then the other.

Jeremy seemed to be taking
to the man, which also annoyed her. He was her charge, not
his.

Stop it, she silently
ordered herself. Do not do this now. Get through this.
Survive.

Jeremy snored quietly and
she couldn’t help but laugh. Here they were, in the middle of a
desolate ruin, and the boy was snoring. She was as exhausted, but
couldn’t let herself sleep. Not now, not when there was so much
danger about.

Dutch seemed to sense her
thoughts. “You should sleep. We probably won’t get the chance
again.”

“
They’re behind us still,”
she said quietly.

“
I know.”

“
And there’s one ahead of
us, isn’t there?”

Dutch nodded in agreement.
“But how could you know that?”

“
I feel him.”

“
Like a sixth sense or
something?”

She nodded. “Yes, but it’s
more than that.”

“
Like what?”

She didn’t really want to
talk about it. She couldn’t put into words the feeling of having
someone else in your mind. “I just know. I can feel him the same
way I can feel the others.”

Dutch nodded and seemed to
accept the explanation without further addition. She shivered in
the cold. It was dark and cold and the ground was covered in ice
and black snow. Dutch scooted closer to her, draping his blanket
over her. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to get fresh or just
helping, but his added body warmth, along with his rich, earthy
scent, was pleasant. She leaned in close.

“
A day ago I was ready to
die,” she told him, unsure where the speech was coming from. “I’d
accepted it. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but I was okay
with it. Now… I want to survive more than anything
else.”

“
What happened to your
mother… it was the wolves, wasn’t it?”

She shook her head in sad
agreement. “They killed her. I didn’t even know they were real. I
didn’t know my mother was a witch. I was such a silly girl, only
thinking about me. You know what I was doing during Worm Fall? I
was trying to get in a boy’s pants. So much death and destruction
in the world and all I could think about was going out with a
bang.”

It felt good to talk about
things she couldn’t say to the much younger Jeremy. And she didn’t
particularly care if Dutch listened or not. She just wanted to say
it.

“
I don’t see a lot wrong
with that. If I’d have had someone I cared about, I guess I would
have wanted to spend the end with them as well.”

“
You don’t have a
significant other?”

“
Naw,” he began, his
southern accent playing heavily, “there wasn’t anyone. I never
slowed down long enough to meet someone, much less the right
someone.”

“
You were a soldier
before.”

“
Yup. Among other things.
Whatever the job was, though, it generally involved bullets and
people shooting at me. So, at least for me, not much has
changed.”

“
Everything’s changed,”
Cassandra told him. “Werewolves are real and my mother was
apparently a pretty powerful witch.”

“
You didn’t know that
before?”

“
No.”

“
Wow,” Dylan mused. “I’m
sorry. I’m sure she was just doing it to protect you.”

Her mother had said
something similar when she died. “I know. But there is so much I
don’t know. I told you I wanted to die with Worm Fall. I had
accepted my fate. But now I don’t want to die. I want to take those
who took my mother and I want to know who I am.”

“
I understand,” he said,
pulling her a little closer. Whether he meant to do it as a gesture
of comfort or was just cold she didn’t know. But she leaned her
head on his shoulder and listened to his heart beat though the
howling wind for a bit. For just a moment everything was all right
in the world. It didn’t matter that Dutch was a mercenary that was
hired to come get her mother after the apocalypse. It didn’t matter
that there were wolves behind them and death ahead. It didn’t
matter that the mercenary didn’t know her from a complete stranger.
All that mattered was his heartbeat.

Jeremy sat straight up,
looking around frantically. “The wolves are coming.”

She felt them too and
chided herself for not paying attention to those sensations. She’d
been distracted by Dutch’s closeness.

Dutch nodded, checking his
rifle, and not bothering to ask her how them how they knew. The man
had quickly come to the same conclusions she had. All was not what
it seemed in the world. He’d more easily accepted the new world
than she.

“
Then it’s time to go.
Jeremy, you stay behind me. Stay low, but keep up. Cassandra, you
come behind him. If they get past me, shoot them. If I stop, you
stop. If I kneel, you kneel. Got it? Do what I do and we’ll be
across that bridge in no time. And please don’t shoot me in the
back. Ready?”

Cassandra shook her head
in agreement though she was in no way close to being ready for what
she thought was coming. Dutch took off at a jog, Jeremy right
behind him. They left the rubble and headed up an
embankment.

“
Don’t look at them,”
Dutch warned and it took her a moment to figure out what he
meant.

She gasped when she saw
the corpses. There were a dozens of them lying twisted on the
frozen tundra. She’d seen hundreds of corpses in the last couple of
days but these were different. These weren’t twisted and destroyed
by the tsunami. They hadn’t been killed by an act of nature. They
had been shot in the head. These were the murdered refugees Dutch
told them about. He’d been right, just as Jeremy said.

Dutch paused just outside,
where the bridge people had rolled and piled cars in order to form
a gate. Two men stood outside the gate, smoking cigarettes and
laughing. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world and weren’t
even watching. The soldier went to one knee and sighted through his
rifle’s intricate scope.

Pop, pop, was all she
heard and the two men dropped like stones. Dutch was up and moving,
running towards the gate, Jeremy right behind him. She followed,
trying to hold her rifle like Dutch did. He held it up, the sight
never leaving his eye, and always scanning left to right. A man
looked up at them from just inside the gate. He had a rifle a
couple feet away from him and once he recognized the fact that
Dutch was not part of his crew, reached for it. Dutch was quicker,
though, and another shot boomed out. The round struck the man in
the head, killing him where he sat.

“
Okay,” Dutch said,
ducking behind a car. “It’s going to get worse from here on in.
Just keep with me and keep shooting. We’ll be good.”

Robert
stood in the cleared out back of the eighteen wheeler, admiring his
new harem. The boys, ages ranging from just nine or ten to fourteen
or fifteen, sat heads down, eyes anywhere but on him. The younger
ones didn’t know what was going on and had no idea what he had in
store for them. They just knew their parents were gone and
something bad was about to happen. He was sure the older boys had
guessed, but they hadn’t said anything. Good for them, he thought.
They needed to learn their place in the pecking order
early.

“
Well hello boys,” he said
with a big grin. “Welcome to my home. I take it you’re all
comfortable?”

His home as it were, was
an eighteen wheeler cleared of its cargo. The sheet metal walls
were paper thin and despite the propane heater going in the corner,
it was still freezing inside. It wasn’t as cold as it was outside,
in the wind and snow, but it was still cold. That’s okay, he
thought. I’ll warm it up soon.

The little village he was
calling Bridge Town was coming along just fine. The survivors
they’d elected to keep all had shelter and at least one meal a day.
Clothing from the BigMart truck had been parceled out and most
everyone had some protection against the elements. The trouble
makers had been sorted out and the remainder knew just exactly who
was in charge. Bridge Town had the makings of a kingdom and he was
just the man to run it.

“
So who’s ready to play a
game?” Robert asked the dozen boys in the trailer.

Gunshots outside
distracted him for a second. One or two weren’t strange, though he
was going to have to talk to the gate guards about taking pot shots
at shadows in the wastes. The third round of shots, and the volleys
that followed, however, were more worrisome. He stood and buckled
his gun belt around his waist.

“
Games are going to have
to wait, boys,” he told them as he headed for the rear of the
trailer.

His men were running down
the bridge, towards the southern gate. He could see the flashes of
weapons fire, down there, and hear the screams of men as they were
hit. Someone was attacking his kingdom. The audacity of it… did
they know who they were messing with?

“
Get down there,” he
screamed at the men. “Get down there right now!”

He climbed down from the
back of the truck and then stopped. He heard a sound that chilled
him from top to bottom, a sound so primal it froze him in his
tracks. Somewhere, to the south past the raging gun battle, wolves
howled.

Move,
shoot, move, shoot, kneel, reload. Find cover. Move. Rinse,
repeat.

Dutch was a machine,
moving up the bridge, killing anything that had a gun, anything
that looked like it may want to do him harm. He was only partially
aware of the boy and girl behind him. He knew the girl was shooting
as well, but was zoned in on the task at hand. Bad guy pops up with
a gun, shoot the bad guy. But the bridge was filled with more than
just bad guys. There were people there that the thugs hadn’t kicked
out. He was sure they had some useful skill or maybe the bad guys
had just taken a liking to them. They were the petrified, staring
out from cars they’d tried to make impromptu homes in. He tried to
avoid killing them and as long as none stepped up to attempt to
defend their little colony, he’d leave them be.

“
There’s a lot of people
here, Dutch,” Cassandra said from behind him. He barely heard her.
“They might need our help.”

Dutch shot a man through
the eye who was unfortunate enough to pop up behind a car at the
wrong moment.

“
I know,” he replied,
trying to hide the frustration at his earlier failure from his
voice. He hadn’t been able to save the people out at the base of
the bridge. He’d been too slow pulling the trigger. But some of
these people were here by choice. Others were prisoners. He had no
way of sorting them out during a running gun battle.

“
So what do we
do?”

“
Keep shooting,” he
ordered. “If they want to go with us they are going to have to
follow on their own.”

The girl grunted and he
could tell she didn’t like his answer. It didn’t matter. They’d
never be able to help the people on the bridge if they were
dead.

A wolf howled from behind
them and Dutch turned just in time to see the beast leap over the
barricade, fangs bared. He emptied the magazine loaded with
standard lead rounds into it. It came down in a crouch near
Cassandra, the lead bullets having done little damage to it. He
dropped the half full magazine from the rifle and shoved in a
silver one, released the charging lever, and aimed.

Dutch watched in slow
motion as the thing jumped out of his line of fire just as the
precious silver rounds whizzed by, leaping at Cassandra, claws
extended. The girl stared in horror at the beast in flight and
Dutch was afraid she wasn’t going to react. She did, at the last
moment, and he watched as she let the rifle fall to its sling and,
in a flash, had both silver short swords in her hand. She twisted
out of the way, like a pro football player, and sliced at the wolf
as it landed, gutting it from stem to stern. The thing screamed in
pain at her, landing in a crouch, blood gushing from its two long
cuts. It lunged at her, like a coiled spring, and Dutch managed to
put four rounds in it before it got within five feet. It hit the
deck, already returning to its human form. It died in a painful
looking convulsion.