The people who had been scrambling to get back to the Church of Bob now rallied to our position. I saw one of Bailey’s men torn in two as he ran towards us. His legs traveled another five feet before they realized they had nothing steering the ship. Thankfully, the upper half landed out of sight. I had yet to see Tommy or Bailey, but leaving this present location was not a possibility. We were keeping them at bay but barely.
“Are there more arrows?” I asked, taking note that we were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in that regard.
My laughing man began anew with riotous, raucous abandon.
“Don’t shoot me,” I said nearly a fraction of a second too late as I moved in front of the firing line.
“Don’t get in the damn way,” one of the crotchety bastards repeated to me.
I started ripping arrows out of bodies and tossing them back towards where I had come. I think the main crotchety bastard understood what I was doing.
“Cover him!” he yelled.
I would have been safer on my own. As arrows whistled past me, I think I could have counted individual feathers if I stopped long enough to look. I turned to toss three arrows behind me, Laughing Man had tears rolling down his face he was enjoying himself so much. It was then I noted he was pointing in my general direction, and I was pretty sure his eyes weren’t even open.
“This sucks,” I said, moving to the side.
The arrow nicked my nose and thumped into the groin of a werewolf that had set its sights on me. The brute was in a great deal of pain as he stood up. I yanked the projectile free and slammed it into his midsection a few times for good measure. He fell over and was trampled by those coming up behind him. We were creating a decent-sized wall of dead, but these weren’t zombies, the impediment wasn’t going to stop them or even slow them in the slightest. The only thing they had in common with my former foe was that they cared as little about their fallen as the former. Which meant not at all. At least these fuckers screamed when they were coming at you. The eerie silence of a zombie attack was unsettling, although it wasn’t like this was worlds better.
We’d set up a sort of stalemate. However, once those arrows were gone, we were going to have to do a tactical withdrawal. I grabbed about a dozen men and women that looked the best suited for what I was proposing. Laughing Man was at the point where he was dry firing his bow.
“Get him out of here! All of you,” I said, referring to the bowmen, “go…get back to the church!”
“We’ve still got a few arrows.”
“We’ll need them later. Go while you can, we’ll watch your back. Where is the damned fire?” I asked of no one in particular.
We had filled in our shallow pit with pitch, the idea being that we would light it on fire and force the werewolves into the teeth of our defense. The damn thing should have been lit a friggin’ long time ago…had to figure that the person who was in charge of that ship’s had sailed.
We neeze=had toded that fire. That was going to be the only thing that kept us from being completely surrounded; although that ship was getting ready to leave port as well. Stupid ships. I was hacking and slashing, trying to give the people behind me some sort of chance at regrouping. Werewolves were flooding the street. Some even taking to the rooftops and leaping from one to the next. I could see Bailey and Tommy off to my right. Both looked bloody and impossibly far away. I used the only tool available – my mind, and some might say that was severely lacking.
“The fire, Tommy.”
He didn’t actually reply back, but I could sense his chagrin. He and Bailey turned and were out of sight. We were screwed. I knew it, and the werewolves knew it. Well…probably not, they don’t really give a shit. We were going to cause them many casualties, not that their overlords were going to care. As far as the Lycan were concerned, we were two scourges wiping each other from the planet. Hadn’t seen one of those bastards yet. And why would they unnecessarily expose themselves? The werewolves were their drones and the Lycan were fighting remotely.
I didn’t realize it at first, but I had become completely cut off from the retreat. The only direction the werewolves weren’t coming from was below. My sword became a blur; to stop its momentum was death. If I lodged this thing in a spinal cord I wouldn’t have enough time to remove it and keep them away. I think the only thing I had going for me was that I wasn’t the primary target, but rather, an impediment to that goal. Even as some stopped to end my existence, others streamed past. In fairness, they probably couldn’t see me. And now that I thought of it, that was to become my strategy.
I went for maximum viscera as I struck at the soft bellies of the beasts, ropes of intestines flooding to the ground. Half-digested human remains spilled out with it as stomachs were sliced in two. I went down to one knee just as the werewolf I had devitalized fell over on top of me. As disgusting as this is to write, living it was magnitudes of revolting worse. Timing was crucial as I let his weight push me into the mass of detritus. I was embalmed in everything you can imagine would come from the insides of a cannibalistic werewolf. I may have added my own vomit to the mix, but that would have easily been the best thing in that human stew.
I was under two feet of fuck-fest. My nose was the only thing not submerged, occasionally the air would be pumped from my lungs as a werewolf or two bounded off the pile. Funny how I once thought zombies smelled bad. The only thing that may have kept my fragile mind from snapping was the smell of burning pitch. Tommy and Bailey had succeeded, the fires were lit. We had filled the entire shallow pit, and now that it burned, we had finally stopped their egress from the sides of the town. It had been long moments since I’d felt the tremble of the ground from footfalls. I sloughed off the brute on me. I looked like a B-movie prop gone completely over the top. I was coated from head to toe, I thought about stripping and doing the ‘naked savage’ thing, but time was of the essence, and it was slightly chilly out, there’d be some shrinkage. Yes, even in a fight to the death I was concerned for what people might think about my helmeted buddy.
I wanted to go running through the gates and give the Lycans a little taste of their own medicine, but the real fight was now behind me and getting further away the longer I debated. I waited for a moment, hoping thentnd give tat Bailey and Tommy would come back around. I stayed as long as I dared and then ran to get back to the Church of Bob. The darkest part of the night had long since passed, but we were still a couple of hours from the moon finally taking a bow. Seemed the fat bitch wasn’t quite ready to yield her place on the stage yet. And the hundred or so werewolves that remained were going to make the most of their time left on earth.
I wanted to ask them to stop jumping around so I could get an accurate count, but they were worse than first graders mainlining on Halloween candy. I came across the infirm werewolves first. The one I came upon had a gash that ran all the way from under her armpit to her calf. The skin had separated by as wide as three inches in some places, muscle and sinew rippled as she moved. How she was still standing eluded me; I figured I could solve that problem. My sword whistled as I sliced her deep on the small of her back. If she’d ever had a tramp stamp I would have surely marred it. Then I was left to wonder if that was one of those weirder fads that had died out with my time. I guess it gave the guy something to look at while he was getting busy, not sure the need though. I’d never felt any reason to be anything more than enamored with what was already going on. Call me crazy.
The werewolf must have already been out on its last legs. As it fell, it barely gave out an ‘oomph’ as it collided with the ground. The next had an arrow that had caught it in the shoulder. I was looking at the protruding barb as I approached. Blood pumped out of the wound with every tortured step it took. There were another half dozen in some sort of weakened fashion that I rid of all earthly troubles, one sword stroke at a time. Now I was to the meat of the fight, the werewolves I was now encountering were fighting each other to get into better position to kill. None, as of yet, had figured out th
e threat to the rear. That was about to change.
I must have looked like the walking dead as they turned, a vengeful, deathly spirit come to exact my toll. I’d like to think I’d struck some chord of fear in them, but that seemed like a lot of wishful thinking on my part. In the annals of history, this won’t go down as a particularly big battle, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in ferocity. Screams of anguish were intermingled with cries of triumph and punctuated with tears of tragedy. We just needed to hold on…that was it…just a little longer. That was the gist of the battle plan: hold the fuck on. I knew that if my arms were aching, then the people on the other side of this werewolf wall had to be flagging.
The only thing we seemingly had going for us was that whoever was left, was here. There were no werewolf reinforcements rounding the bend. I gritted my teeth; shoulders aching as I slashed again. Body parts littered the ground. It looked like a Civil War operating floor. I felt a rush of heat as a claw ripped through my side, I danced away as far as I could before it could sink deep. As it was, it would need tending even with my recuperative power.
A werewolf head rocked back as a bullet struck it in the side. I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was the one that had tried to take a chunk from me. Bailey was running towards me at a full tilt.
“You did not take that shot on the run?” I asked. Not that she could hear me, but the question needed to be posed.
“Last bullet,” she said as she joined the fray. She was as deadly with her eight-inch blade as I was with the sword, probably more so. She jammed the da jastion nmn thing so far into the throat of the closest werewolf, it came out through its back. It struggled to put its hands up to the wound. She kicked it over before it had a chance.
“Tommy?” I asked.
She gave a curt shake of her head. Her lips pressed tight.
I knew that for the impossibility that it was. It was inconceivable that Tommy could die. Nobody lives for six hundred-plus years, and then ‘poof’…is just gone. I would not and – more importantly – could not accept that fact. If I lost one more tie to the past, I would be adrift in a sea of despair. Seconds became minutes as we fought. Ever-swirling, with Death as our partner; so close, he would sweep in and I’d swear I could smell the sodden earth of my burial pit.
Screw that. “If I die,” I yelled to Bailey, “tell Azile I want to go out like a Viking!”
“No idea what a Viking is,” Bailey replied almost effortlessly as if she were removing wax from a roll of cheese as opposed to fighting werewolves. “But you are not going to die.”
If Tommy, who was bigger, faster, and stronger than me could die, then all bets were off on my particular status. I could only hope that he would somehow find his way back to his sister. There would be more than enough time to mourn later. Now, all my effort went into fighting through the Lycan wannabes and defending Azile. I could only hope it wasn’t too late.
***
Tommy spotted Mike fighting. He had completely forgotten about the fire and why it hadn’t been lit. Preserving one’s life tended to intrude on all extraneous thoughts. He knew what Mike was asking as soon as the words blistered into his mind.
Going to have to teach him some volume control, Tommy thought as he grabbed Bailey and headed back towards the fence line. Werewolves were still making their way in, and it was all they could do to get to one of the torches that lined the street. Tommy snapped it off at its hilt and ran towards the trench. The fire was attracting unwanted attention. Tommy was carving a path; he could see the futility of being able to make enough forward progress. He quickly moved his sword to his left hand and the pitch-soaked torch to his right.
He reared back and tossed the torch as far as he could, the flame had no sooner left his hand than he felt a savage bite on his knee. The bones splintered as the animal tore through the fabric of his being. Tommy wailed in pain as the animal shook its large head back and forth. He was frozen in shock. Bailey drove her bayonet through the back of its head and then kicked it in the jaw to push it away from him.
“GO!” he screamed when she tried to grab his arm and help him. “We won’t make it! GO!”
Bailey saw the wisdom in his words, but it wasn’t in her to leave someone behind. They’d never be able to move fast enough together to get away. She would stay and fight with him until the end – which seemed exceedingly close at the moment. She moved out of saber range but stayed back to back with him. Werewolves closed in from all angles. There was a flash of heat as the torch found its mark. A gust of super-heated air blew past them. Werewolves close twolat the moo the conflagration erupted in great gouts of flame. The chaos that ensued as burning werewolves ran into each other was the window that Bailey needed to half carry Tommy away from the melee. Tommy had taken on a sickly hue as his body did what it could to mitigate the bite and reverse the damage.
“Are you in danger?” Bailey asked as they huddled behind a broken brick wall.
“I think that goes without saying.” Tommy winced.
“From the bite,” she said stingingly.
“From turning? No. But the bite carries its own toxins that will make healing that much more difficult and painful. Werewolves don’t have enough of the disease in them to turn anyone, but it’s still enough to kill a person if they don’t get proper attention.” Tommy was trying to readjust his leg, every position seemed to cause more pain than the last.
“At least we stopped them,” Bailey said as she peeked over the wall.
Tommy was still for a moment, his face turning white as if someone had draped a funeral shroud over him. “I never thought it would end this way,” he said aloud.
“What way? You’re not dead yet. BT’s journals said Mike was prone to dramatics, it didn’t mention you anywhere in that passage.
A small smile crept across his face. “He really is, isn’t he? He’s the key in all of this, Bailey. You need to protect him.”
“From what?” she asked, not sure where or why this conversation was going on.
“From himself, of course. He’s always been his own worst enemy.”
“You protect him. I’m no one’s babysitter,” she said defiantly. She had meant it as a way to help stop his defeatist, dour way of thinking…not as a rebuke.
“He needs you now.” His eyes rolled up a little into his head before coming back and focusing on her.
“That may be. Although I have no way of knowing how you know that. But what I do know, without a doubt, is that you need me as well.”
“Ever play chess?” Tommy asked obscurely.
“I have, Tommy. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Sometimes an advantage can be gained with a sacrifice.”
She liked his words less and less.
“But only if the player is deft enough to realize this. You must make him see this, he will come to a crossroads and it will be your forceful hand that will nudge him in the right direction.”
“Are you saying we are merely pawns in Michael’s game?”
Tommy looked at her sweetly. “No, my child,” he said, struggling to get his hand to her face. “We are all powerful pieces. You, me, Azile…even Lana will play her part, but Mike is the king.” He laughed, a spot of blood falling from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t tell him that, though, his head is already too big.”
“I need to get you to help,” she said with alarm as she looked down to his ravaged knee, a puddle of blood had pooled od s. You, mebeneath it. “Will my blood help?”
“Don’t!” he said in alarm, “I would not be able to control myself. Go help Mike. When the moon has finished its damned journey, bring help back here. I promise I won’t move.” He laughed weakly.
“You die on me, Tommy, and leave me with that crazy man…I will haunt you to the ends of the earth.”
“I look forward to it.”
She had no idea the true meaning behind his words, but she did not like the way in which they were delivered. She once again rose to loo
k up; the werewolves that had not been burned in the flash were gone. She hoped they had retreated, but she had a better idea of which direction they had headed.
“You stay here, Tommy, do you hear me?”
He nodded.
She meant spiritually. Physically, nothing short of two strong men and a litter were going to be able to move him without incurring more damage.
“Eliza?” Tommy asked.
Bailey shuddered as she moved, keeping her profile low to match the wall. She knew all about the Cruel One, and to think she was close enough that Tommy could sense her was enough to get her moving. Werewolves had taken a backseat in terms of fear – at least for the moment. She found herself pursuing werewolves, which was entirely more palatable than the other way around. She had a few bullets left – six if she had been keeping accurate count – but she wanted to save those. Also, using them would give her away.
Werewolves and Wheatonville residents choked the roadway. It looked as if the townsfolk were giving as well as they were getting. It was still an unsustainable war. The Lycan would always be able to rearm, so to speak. Those were thoughts for another time, she figured, as she drove her bayonet up and through the back of a werewolf’s neck. Another was leaning up against a wall snarling at her. His leg had been chopped off at the knee. She brought the rifle to her shoulder and almost splattered his brains on the wooden wall behind him.
“Dammit,” she muttered pulling the rifle down. She didn’t want to get too close but she also didn’t want to alert any others nearby. The werewolf was swiping with his massive paws. “How bad you want it!” She charged at him.
The thrust caught the edge of his nose, slid up the cartilage and pierced his eye; he was still before he could take an effective stab at Bailey. The rest of her journey towards the center was unencumbered with the living. For good or bad, everything that was going to take place was directly up ahead. She was distinctly aware of the passage of time and how every second she was away from Tommy was a moment lost in being able to rescue him. Even though she had known it was too late as she left him.