The Witch and the Werewolf (11 page)

A wolf her alpha
feared.

It wasn’t much, Robert thought. Just the start of an
empire.

They’d lucked out and
found two other supply trucks and a fuel tanker on the four mile
stretch of bridge spanning what had been, once upon a time, the
Houston Ship Channel. Though the waters had receded from the
surrounding neighborhoods, the channel itself was still a lake, the
shores stretching out well beyond the base of the bridge on both
sides. The interstate stuck out several feet above the water,
though, and he’d had cars lined up crossways across the bases on
both sides to block anyone trying to get on the bridge.

It was crowded enough
already. There were some thousand survivors on the bridge and, by
his calculations, only enough food for half that number for any
length of time. Out of those thousand he’d found forty like-minded
men and made sure they were armed. The remaining survivors huddled
together as black snow fell to the ground, corralled in an open
area left by creating walls of the passenger cars. There he was
separating them into two groups, people he could use and people he
couldn’t.

“
Occupation?” he asked,
staring down at a clipboard as a man, his wife, and young daughter
behind him, walked up to his makeshift desk.

“
What the hell is this?
Who are you to be asking my occupation? You’re not a cop, or
anything. You’re just a nobody.”

“
A nobody with a big gun,”
Robert replied, looking up at the man. “This is my bridge. You’re
on my bridge so you talk to me. If you don’t like it you can leave.
The exit is over there,” he said pointing.

“
Oh, we’re going,” the man
said. “I’m not keeping my family her with you crazy fucks. But
we’re taking the supplies from my truck.”

“
My truck,” Robert
corrected. “My supplies.”

“
You can’t do this,” the
man insisted. “I’ll sue.”

Robert and the dozen or so
men surrounding him laughed. “You will, huh? The only court I see
is here and I’m going to go ahead and save you the trouble of
changing your mind. Get the hell off my bridge.”

The man started to say
something else but found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle
as one of Robert’s men stepped up.

“
Come on, Melissa. Let’s
get out of here,” the man began but his wife pulled away from him.
“What?”

“
I’m… I don’t want to go
out there. Look at it. There’s nothing.”

Besides the occasional
lightning flashes it was hard to see the surrounding ruins. The
swirling black clouds had effectively blocked out the sun. But the
woman was right. There wasn’t much left standing. He didn’t blame
her one bit.

“
What’s your occupation,
ma’am?” Robert said as politely as possible, smiling at the man’s
wife in a way that infuriated the husband.

“
You can’t do this,
Melissa. You can’t stay with these crazy people. What about
Shannon? What are you going to do without her?”

“
I’m a nurse, sir,” the
woman said, ignoring her husband. “And I spent most of my career
working in the emergency room. I’ve treated gunshots and knife
wounds, among other things. I can…,” the woman hesitated, obviously
uncomfortable in what she was about to say, “I can do other things
as well. I’d make a good addition to your…” the woman paused again,
staring past Robert at the surly looking men gathered behind him,
“community.”

“
An ER nurse would be a
welcome addition,” he agreed.

“
And my
daughter?”

Robert eyed the girl with
disdain. He was done with girls. But one of the other men might
like a shot at her. “As long as she pulls her weight, she can
stay.”

“
You can’t do this to me,
Melissa. You can’t stay with these crazy ass people.”

“
I am staying, Adam,” the
woman said, finally turning to her husband. “You see what’s
happened to the world and we survived. If Shannon and I are going
to continue surviving we’re going to need someone stronger than
you.”

“
What the fuck ever,” the
man said in disgust. “Come on, Shannon. We’re out of
here.”

The girl didn’t leave her
mother’s side, apparently coming to the same conclusion mom had,
leaving the father embarrassed.

“
You heard her,” Robert
said, unable to hide his grin. “Get the fuck out.”

“
If you don’t come with me
its over. I’ll get a lawyer as soon as this is all over and divorce
you!”

One of Robert’s men kicked
him in the groin, doubling him over, to the laughter of the other
men. Robert knew the exact same debate was probably playing out
across the world right then. There were those, like the husband,
who thought that the world might return to normal at some point.
Then there were the realists, like the wife, who knew better. The
woman didn’t not look uncomfortable in her decision in the least
but said nothing as her husband was led out what was now the south
gate, leading down into the petroleum covered mess that had been
Pasadena, Texas.

“
You made a good
decision,” Robert told the woman. “He probably couldn’t protect
you. Now head up the bridge and find a vehicle that isn’t claimed
to call your own. The one you arrived in is fine,” he said, “as
long as you understand the supplies in it belong to the
community.”

The woman nodded and led
her daughter back up the steep incline of the bridge. Blackish
snowflakes began swirling in the wind and one, landing on his
mouth, tasted foul. He couldn’t imagine the crap that was in the
air right then.

“
Hey boss, you gotta see
this.”

“
What is it?”

“
Dude on a
boat.”

Robert went to the side of
the bridge and looked down. A man in a small rubber raft was
navigating the ship wrecks and debris in the channel, heading
east.

“
Well that won’t do. We
can’t have people navigating our lake without paying a toll. Find a
rifle, make him swim.”

The men laughed, having
the time of their lives.

If nothing else, Robert
was a survivor.

“
I’m heading up to the
truck,” he told Hank, thinking about the harem of young men he was
starting there. There was fun to be had. “Keep up the interviews.
We only need five hundred people. Kick the rest out and if they
don’t want to go, shoot them. Come to think of it, put someone down
at the south gate and shoot the ones that leave anyway. We don’t
need them coming back later wanting retribution.”

There was still a lot of
work to do and what they had in their little Bridge Town kingdom
was only going to last so long. But he’d make it work because
that’s what he did.

Run Faster, Fall Down

The priest was crazy but Dutch was sure he was even crazier
for letting the old man talk him into this so called
mission.

Finding a flowing waterway
he could navigate east hadn’t been an issue. The streets that
weren’t filled with debris were mostly flooded and most of the
water was running south and east, back towards the bay. But there
was hardly a clear place to walk through the ruins. The old clear
paths of streets and sidewalks were gone, replaced by mud and junk.
Buildings had collapsed, creating artificial barriers. So when he
actually found flowing water, he pumped up the rubber boat the
priest and provided and set out, east, and towards the witch’s
home.

To the witch’s home, he
thought, perplexed. His world had changed so much in the span of a
day. Last week he was a mercenary for hire. Though he wasn’t proud
of everything he’d done in that occupation, he always considered
himself on the side of the good guys. Sure, good guys made bad
calls, but they were good guys. This week he was still that, but in
the employ of a man who might be over six hundred years old and had
a hard on for werewolves that actually existed. Now he was out to
find a witch, and her daughter, in a ruined city. The most likely
scenario, he thought, was that he’d not find the woman and return
to find the survivors of Father O’Leary’s bunker dead or
scattered.

Still, he’d seen the beast
for himself. If there really were more of them, then the shell
shocked survivors of Worm Fall wouldn’t stand a chance.

Dutch let the raft go with
the flow of the blackish water, trying not to look at the corpses.
There were just so many of the already bloating bodies. To keep
himself occupied he checked his weapon’s load. He’d kept the silver
shooting 1911, holstered at his hip, but had replaced the lost
shotgun with a AA-12 automatic shotgun. That the priest had one in
his already impressive armory was impressive in itself. The
automatic shotgun was normally reserved for police and military
forces. He’d also kept a number of silver blades along with his
regular, steel ones, just in case. He topped off his load with
enough rations and water to survive three days without having to
scrounge for more. It wasn’t enough, he knew, but he couldn’t
physically carry what he thought would be enough out in the
wastes.

The raft floated down a
street between the skeletal remains of multi-story buildings. Up to
the twentieth floor, or so, the windows were smashed out and the
floors emptied. The floors, as far as he could see, were covered in
mud and muck. But further up, in the buildings, there were signs of
life. An odd flashlight beam, a fire… people were alive, he knew.
But for how long? Many would die in the coming days as the
temperature dropped. Others would succumb to disease and
starvation. Even more would fall to the wolves the priest seemed to
know were gathering in the ruins. That alone gave him purpose and
made some sort of meaning out of the destruction that surrounded
him.

He paddled around a
commercial fishing boat lodged in the middle of the street and
found himself in a fast moving current, drifting into one of
Houston’s many bayous. It was a relief to be out of downtown and
the dead buildings. The vegetation along the banks of the bayou was
mostly washed away, though the odd cypress tree and tuft of grass
remained. None of it would last very long, though. Clouds blocking
out the sun had already dropped the temperature into the high
thirties and once the surface’s heat was dissipated, it would only
get colder. He pulled the heavy leather coat around him and then
paddled, keeping the raft in the center of the bayou.

A half a day later, the
bayou fed out into the Ship Channel proper and Dutch gasped
inadvertently at the damage that had been wrought. Industrial
facilities, chemical plants and refineries, were no more than
twisted piles of junk and shards of metal. Cargo ships of every
shape and size were scattered about the neighborhoods surrounding
the ship channel, many busted and spilling their contents out onto
the ground. Fires burned, even in the mud covered areas and the air
smelt of harsh chemicals. He couldn’t begin to imagine the sheer
amount of dangerous substances that had been leaked into the wild
and wished he’d brought a respirator of some type.

The Ship Channel’s main
port facility, a miles wide array of docks, warehouses, and ship
docks, was flattened. There was one cargo container still moored to
its dock, but the rest of the massive ships had been scattered
about like children’s toys. He’d have to remember to tell the
priest about the area. The cargo ships, like the one lodged at the
church, could possibly provide a lifeline to supplies that the
survivors of the church were going to soon desperately
need.

He floated closer to the
massive bridge that spanned the channel and saw lights and activity
through the gloom. He sighted through the rifle’s scope and saw a
group of a thousand or more people at the southern base of the
bridge. Cars had been arranged into haphazard walls at both ends of
the bridge, stacked high, and there was a gate leading south. A
steady stream of people were being escorted through the
gate.

The wall was smart, he
thought, but kicking people out of your little kingdom isn’t.
You’re going to need all the able bodied people you can find, soon
enough. Dutch ducked low in the raft and hoped to avoid the place
altogether. He wasn’t getting a good vibe from it.

The first shot from the
bridge struck well behind him. The second closer. Dutch took shoved
the paddles in the water and pounded the water for all he was
worth. The current was moving well and he was soon underneath the
bridge, out of the range of the shooters. Who in their right mind
would just randomly shoot at a guy floating down the water, he
wondered. He beached the boat on the southern side of the channel
and stepped onto the bank and then pushed the raft back into the
current, hoping they’d continue shooting at it and not notice he’d
left it. He checked the GPS and frowned, seeing that it was another
solid fifteen miles to the witch’s home.

He slipped through the
wreckage lining the base of the bridge, finding passageways through
wrecked cars and destroyed boats. He came to the icy interstate
that led from the southern point of the bridge and froze. He ducked
behind rubble and watched as the people that were being expelled
from the bridge community were marched out. They were stripped of
their belongings, many wearing only shorts and tennis shoes. The
end of the world had come on a hot summer night and no one in
Houston had predicted the quickly spreading nuclear winter started
by the shards of Wormwood as it impacted various points around the
globe. The people were dejected, huddling together for warmth. Men
and women alike cried. He sighted through the night scope, watching
as the armed thugs who guided them out laughed at their
pain.