Lycan Fallout: Rise Of The Werewolf (45 page)

Tomas stood there wrapping his hands around the knife.

“You ain’t dead yet?” Henrick asked when he was done washing the blood from his mouth. “Here let me twist that around for you a little bit.” He came back over.

Tomas yanked the blade free with an audible gasp and let the knifd lat aroe fall to the ground.

“Too stupid to die, ain’t ya, boy,” Henrick said. “Should have been you I sold, then I could have kept your precious Lizzie around for entertainment.” Henrick was laughing, blood spilling from his lips.

Tomas lifted up his shirt. The wound where he was stabbed had stopped bleeding, Henrick and Tomas both watched in amazement as the skin began to knit before their eyes.

“Devil!” Henrick screamed. He looked wildly past Tomas’ shoulder and to the exit.

All that remained was the drying blood to allude that anything had ever happened.

“Sit, father.” Tomas said evenly.

Henrick was looking around for something anything he could use to thwart the spawn of evil before him.

“I won’t say it again.” Tomas said with force. Henrick complied. “Why?” Tomas asked as his father finally took a seat opposite him.

“Why what?” Henrick asked belligerently.

“Why did you hate us so much?”

“I fed and sheltered you little mongrels. What more did you want?” he answered as if that was what Tomas was looking for.

“Would it have been different if mother had survived?” Tomas asked.

“Well, we’ll never know will we? You and your fat head made sure of that.” Henrick said with vitriol.

“I knew wha
t I was doing when I came all the way back here, I just didn’t figure that it was going to be so easy,” Tomas said, rising from his chair.

“What....what are you going to do?” Henrick asked nervously.

“It won’t hurt much,” Tomas said as he struck, yanking his father’s head to the side.

He drank the sour lifeblood from his father; not stopping even after he began to feel pieces of muscle and tendon pull up through the now empty holes. Henrick was twenty-five pounds lighter when his body was discovered. The stench of his decaying body had sent the wild dogs in the area into a frenzy as they scratched at the door trying to get in.

The tether between brother and sister intensified over the years, it became a game of cat and mouse, although in this version the mouse was stalking the much more dangerous cat. Eliza was aware of the bond they shared and allowed her brother only enough access to it as would
keep him on the leash. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the connection but rather the cruelty of always staying one step ahead of him. She could feel his disappointment when he came agonizingly close to catching her.

What Eliza was not aware of, was that, as Tommy’s powers grew, so did his ability for clairvoyance. He could see things that made no sense, but that had a purpose and would play a much greater role in events to come. He did not know why he saw those things, but he felt compelled to act on them.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” Crackers asked as Tommy slid into the trench nextd lat width="3e to him. Crackers was covered in mud and blood, he was almost indistinguishable from the grime that enveloped him
, his hands no less filthy. When Tommy came upon him, the man was scooping some sort of beef hash out of his helmet with those same hands. The food was intermixed with flies, lice, dirt, and gore.

“I’m Tommy. Looks good,” Tommy said sarcastically, looking at the helmet.

“Get your own.” Crackers pulled the helmet out of range.

“I already ate,” Tommy replied subconsciously wiping away any blood that might be around his mouth. He had visited the enemy lines first before coming to find Crackers. He had spent three days riding hard to get here today. He had dropped two mounts along the way. He had not understood the urgency with which the power had directed him here but he also knew that he could not fail.

“You new?” Crackers asked in between mouthfuls. He had the social graces of a two-year-old, he talked while he chewed and also smacked his lips.

“Far from new.” Tommy smiled.

“Uniform looks new,” Crackers said, touching the lapel and leaving a smear of something better left unidentified.

“I had to run a message back from the lines, got one in the rear.”

“Lucky bastard, you are. I’ve got more critters living in my britches than I care to count.” And with that phrase he began to furiously scratch at his crotch. “Got sores on my arse and lice the size of lobsters crawling around my balls!” Crackers laughed.

A whistle sounded off in the distance. “Oh shit.” Crackers said plopping his half-full helmet onto his head.”

“What’s that?” Tommy asked. Crackers looked at him strangely and warily as he gripped his rifle.

“Thought you said you weren’t new?” Crackers asked.

“Not new to the Army…new to the trenches.”

A great grin split Crackers face, his teeth preternaturally white in contrast to the rest of him.

“Well ain’t you in for a treat then. That was the warning whistle.”

“Warning whistle?” Tommy asked completely at a loss.

“Yeah, a warning to how many of us are going to die!” Crackers laughed. “Next blow and we crawl out of this perfectly good trench and run across all that open, barren, muddy ground. Alst the while, Germans are sitting in their fancy hidey holes shooting at us with machine guns, it’s a riot!”

“You’re kidding right?” Tommy asked.

“Watch this,” Crackers said as he leaned in close. He scrambled up over the top and out in to the open.

“Bloody hell, Crackers! Where in the blimey fuck are you going?” a voice shouted over to Tommy’s left. Tommy thought it was his sergeant-in-arms.

“Visions suck sometimes,” Tommy said as he grabbed his helmet and rifle and followed after Crackers.

“Who the hell is that? And nobody blew the bloody whistle yet,” the officer shouted. The end of his statement was punctuated with the loud long blast of a wg bo thhistle. Men screamed as they emerged from their trenches running pell-mell towards the German lines. Crackers had a good twenty or thirty
-foot lead on the rest of his mates, with Tommy closing in fast.

The Germans watched in casual amazement as the British teamed out of their side of the battlefield and streamed towards them. Tommy watched as soldiers on the other side took one more drag from their cigarettes, or one more forkful of food before they primed their weapons and let loose a deadly volley of lead. Sheets of the projectiles were being sent down range. War cries became screams of the dying. They had not covered more than half the distance to their goal when the retreat whistle was sounded.

“What the hell was the point?” Tommy asked as he saw the British soldiers that could, begin to turn around and head back to their side. They’re exchanging bodies for bullets, that’s all they’re doing. It comes down to who is going to run out of what first. Tommy was saddened at the needless loss of so much life. He had passed up Crackers at some point and had intended to stay right on his back as a protective cloak as they retreated. As he spun, Crackers passed him by still going forward.

Crackers had become silent, a look of anger and determination etched in the dirt of his features.

“They sounded the retreat,” Tommy said, struggling to catch back up.

“To hell with the bloody retreat,” Crackers replied. “I’m getting this over one way or the other. I’m sick of that whistle. Next time I hear it I’m going to shove it up his ass. He blows, good men die. And for nothing, that’s the quick of it…for bloody nothing. We run, sometimes the krauts let us get halfway, sometimes when they’re feeling a little pissed off they only let us get about a quarter of the way before they cut us down, then the whistle blows so we can go slinking back to our diseased little holes. Don’t see those bastards trying to get over here.”

Dirt clods began to fly in the air all around Crackers and Tommy as more and more guns began to train on them. They were rapidly becoming the only targets available on the frozen bloodied and muddied killing fields. Tommy got in front of Crackers; the force from the rounds as they impacted Tommy sent him back into Crackers. The pain was damn near immeasurable, but still he was able to clutch Crackers and bring him down with him.

“Stay down, you damned fool,” Tommy said as Crackers tried to squirm out from under him. A few more rounds bounced their way
with another catching Tommy in the leg. Tommy winced.

“You’re still alive?” Crackers asked incredulously. “I’m so sorry. Do you have any messages on you that you want delivered?” Crackers asked sincerely.

“You really think you’re going to make it out of here to deliver one?” Tommy asked.

“Sure…why not?”

“Well, because you’re about twenty meters away from a trench filled with Germans who would say otherwise.”

“Oh
them. I bloody well plan on killing them. I came here with four of my best friends, Lumpy Vales, Henry Smith, Wendall Renton, and even the limey bastard Cray O’Malley, loved them all like brothers. They’re dead…every single one of them. The bloody fucking whistle did it just as much as the krauts. But I can’t kill the whistle blower, cstlbroan’t do that. I get shot as a traitor and bring shame to my family. The funny thing, though, I just make it across this little line nothing more than a fly shit on a map and I can kill everything and everyone I see and I’ll be a hero. War is strange.”

Tommy agreed. “First, we stay here for a while, quiet. And when the night comes, we’ll exact some revenge for your friends.”

“You going to make it that long?” Crackers asked. “You got shot up pretty good.”

“Barely scraped me,” Tommy told him.

Crackers wanted to tell him that he’d seen the blood sprays and the approximate locations of the shots, and they weren’t of the fleshy wound variety. But he’d play along for now, a nap was exactly what he needed; and if it gave him a respite from the cries of dying men around him then that was just an added bonus.

The night was cloudy and dark as
onyx. Crackers had to blink a few times just to make sure he hadn’t gone blind sometime during his sleep.

“You still with me, Tommy?” Crackers asked softly, not expecting a reply. Not unless ghosts could talk…and those he didn’t believe in. He’d made a pact with his mates that if any of them died, they would haunt the others just for the hell of it, and he’d yet to see any of their ghostly mugs. He was startled a bit when Tommy responded.

“Still here.”

“Able to move?” Crackers asked.

“Can I convince you to head back to our side?” Tommy asked.

“As dark as it is they’d be just as likely to shoot us as the krauts. No, I’ll take my chances on this side. Plus…we’re closer,” Crackers said as he began to silent crawl.

“Ever heard of a plan?” Tommy hissed behind him.

“Heard of it, ain’t never used one,” Crackers replied. Tommy could see Cracker’s teeth as the man had turned to smile at him.

“Apparently. You need to stay safe, you play a much larger role in world events.” Tommy said.

If Crackers heard he didn’t respond, all that mattered to the man at the moment was the here and now. He couldn’t worry about a future he didn’t think he’d be around to see.

Periodically, flares would go up on both sides and Tommy and Crackers would halt their progress until the eerie fluttering light gave out. They crept closer, if another flare were to go up they would have no choice but to rush the Germans, and they were too close to be anything but an approaching enemy.

Crackers slid over the small berm quietly, making absolutely no noise as he
dropped into the German trench. Tommy’s foot came down on the edge of an upturned helmet sending it skittering off on the wooden planks inlaid on the bottom of the trench.

“
Haben sie eine zigarette
?” (Do you have a cigarette?) Crackers asked, trying to cover Tommy’s noise

“
Wer ist das
?” (Who is that?) the German asked back.

>“Death,” Crackers said before he started shooting.