Lycan Fallout (Book 2): Fall of Man (7 page)

Michael is surely dead
, she thought.
I hope you have found the peace in death that eluded you in life.
Her flesh goosed as she walked out of the water. She applied some salve to the myriad of wounds and waited until she was mostly dry before donning her clothes. In the morning, she would bury Nemmon and take Breealla back to her village where they would prepare and wait for the inevitable attack of werewolves and Lycan.

With what little time she was being afforded, she hoped it would be enough to wipe the dirty blotch of this night free from her. She held little hope in that regard.

Midday was rapidly approaching when Bailey finished laying dirt atop Nemmon. She’d physically had to remove Breealla from her brother and then she’d had to carry her away from the gravesite. It was when her arms finally gave out that she felt comfortable enough to let the girl down without her running back to the clearing and her brother’s final resting spot. The girl had not said anything to Bailey since her outburst the previous evening. It wasn’t until they stopped for the evening that Breealla spoke.

“I wished he’d killed you,” she said as Bailey started a fire.

Bailey said nothing as the words cut deeper than her physical wounds had. She knew it was with the twisting fates of the world that the girl was most angry. It just so happened Bailey was the only one within earshot to catch those heated words.

“It should be him I’m with today, not you.”

Bailey looked up from the growing flame. “He would have killed you as well, and now he would be sitting in that clearing wondering if what happened the night before was some distorted dream. Then he’d find your bones picked clean and realize what he’d done. Is that what you would rather have? He’d be alone, scared, confused, and disgusted with himself for what he’d done.”

“If he were alive and I were dead, at least I would no longer feel the pain I do now.”

“You are still looking out for your brother, Breealla, just in another way. His death has spared him the pain of knowing he killed you. It is the best gift you could have afforded him. You are shouldering the pain and guilt he would have worn for the rest of his life.”

“It hurts so much, Bailey.” Breealla’s head was down. Her body hitched from her silent cries. Tears could not be squeezed from her dried-up ducts.

Bailey grabbed her and held her close, rocking her back and forth in as comforting of a manner as she could. Breealla clutched tight, if she could have, she would have crawled up into Bailey’s lap.

Chapter Nine – Mike Journal Entry 6

“Is that you, Tommy?”

I had pulled myself to a small outcropping of rock and was in a reasonable facsimile of a sitting position. My leg had nearly been chewed through, I’d lost a lot of blood, and a battalion of flies were doing their best to lay their offspring in my wounds. I was thirstier than I could ever remember being in my entire life. I was fairly certain as a half-vamp I wasn’t supposed to get sick, but there was no doubt in my mind I was burning with fever. My forehead was coated in a thick sheen of sweat. I alternated between bone-shivering shakes and heat flashes. Each minor contraction sent jolts of pain through my entire body, the soaring of my internal body temperature bringing me dangerously closer to dehydration, shock and death. Was that even possible? I’d completely forgotten about my “visitor” until he spoke. I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open, and even when they weren’t shut, it was difficult to keep them focused.

“What do you think, Mr. T?” Tommy asked, a look of concern on his face.

“Well, it’s possible I’ve conjured you up in my fugue state, but I think I would have done a better job, like maybe you would be carrying a cold pitcher of Kool-Aid, and you sure as shit wouldn’t have on that super serious look of concern on your face.”

“You’ve got to move away from here, Mr. T.”

“And just how do you propose I do that, Tommy?” His face was blurring and doubling, and sometimes more alarmingly, began to look as if I was viewing it through a pinhole.

“Lycan will come this way. Where is Oggie?” Tommy looked around.

“Wouldn’t my ‘vision’ know Oggie was with Bailey? This is weird.”

“Focus, Mr. T.”

“Easier said than done; I feel like I’ve been hanging with Trip all day.” Trip was a friend from long ago who had taken the term “recreational drug use” to a whole new level. Pretty much made a career out of it you might say. “How is it up there by the way?” I tried to point upwards, just the thought of the superfluous action seemed beyond my capabilities at this moment.

“You above all others should know I have not and cannot make the ascension.”

“Can’t you throw me a bone? Maybe tell me a bedtime story before I go to sleep?”

“You cannot rest, Mr. T. You must leave this place.”

“How about you leave me the fuck alone? How about that? You’re the one that went and got yourself killed. Now, when I need you most, you’re dead.”

“I’m here now, Mr. T.”

“Come on, Tommy, I’ve done enough drugs in my time to know a hallucination. I mean, it’s a good one and all, but you’re no more real than—” I coughed, a rib-rattling expulsion of air. I’d been meaning to laugh, but it had devolved into a choking sob.

“No more real than?”

“I almost said zombies. How rich is that?”

“Not very.”

“I guess you’re right. Hard to be funny when you’re on death’s door step.”

“You are not merely on the doorstep. There are Watchers here.”

“Watchers?” We’d first noticed them right before Harbor’s Town was destroyed. They somehow precluded death. Maybe they received a program and knew how things were going to play out and wanted to see for themselves. I guess harbingers would have been a better term. I asked Tommy that last part.

“They are not quite as benign as we first thought. They also have the ability to manipulate events to a certain extent, and the thoughts of watching a Shade or an Old One, such as yourself, die has them working overtime.”

I could just make out small, black figures on the periphery of my vision. I would have been more inclined to believe it was my vision fading than anything of substance. 

“I love today,” I said as sarcastically as I could manage.

“It’s tomorrow you should be concerned with.”

“A pragmatist specter. Who would have thought?”

“There is a patrol of Lycan looking for these three. They are miles away, but they will be swayed in the most subtle of exploitations to move in an easterly direction as opposed to the northerly route they were on.”

I was able to hold up my middle finger. I hoped the Watchers, unlike the majority of the people in this time, understood the gesture.

Tommy snorted. “That’s not going to be enough.”

“Yeah, but it felt good.”

“You have to drag yourself out of this clearing, Mr. T.”

“Tommy, first off, let’s get this out of the way. I want to tell you to fuck off. Then I want to tell you I’m in too much pain, and then I’ll probably tell you I need to rest for a bit. But I can tell by the way you’re shaking your head that you don’t want to listen to any of it. Dammit.” I placed my hands down by my side and started pushing against the ground. At first, I could not get past the inertia of my own weight, then I moved. A snail would have laughed at my speed, but it was something. “How far?” I asked, but he was gone. “Well, if I knew the ‘fuck off’ part was going to work so well I would have done it earlier.”

I pushed, each rock I traversed over that was bigger than a pea causing my leg a pain I could not even quantify.  There was a time back in my day when you would go to the doctor and they would ask, “On a scale of one to ten, one being a mosquito bite and ten being the worst pain imaginable, how would you rate your discomfort?” Now there were times I’d gone to the ER after some serious accidents, usually of my own doing. (I should have sued HGTV when I had the chance for all those fucking ideas they gave my wife about home renovations. “Oh, honey, this will be so easy!” she would say excitedly as she pointed to a wall that needed to come down. “Easy my ass,” would be my mutterings. “If it’s so easy why don’t you do it?” Nope, never had the balls to say that last part out loud!) Well, even on my worst residential injury that had even required Dilaudid (that’s one drug I would never recommend, made me feel like I’d done bong hits in a washing machine during the spin cycle), the worst number I can ever recall giving was a six. It was probably a seven, but I shaved a number off for pure macho manliness. I needed the extra points on my man-card.

“Where the hell was I?” I asked as I gritted my teeth so hard together I was in a very real danger of shattering them. “Pain. That’s right.” To give what I was feeling an arbitrary number seemed pointless and completely unjustifiable. The doctor’s exact words were, “worst pain imaginable” and this was beyond anything I could have ever expected. The synapses in my brain were angry hues of red; thinking was beyond my comprehension. I wondered if it were possible to melt a brain internally. My arms collapsed. My chest was heaving, I was crying out, and I hadn’t gone more than ten feet. The only thing I was doing was hastening my departure from this plane, not this location.

I’d passed out at some point, I think. Dusk was rapidly approaching, and I’d somehow moved another twenty, thirty feet. I saw drag marks, but that meant nothing as I was dragging myself. I needed to go at least another fifty yards to be out of sight. This seemed impossible, especially since the terrain would become exponentially harder than what I was dealing with right now. It was uneven and overgrown with vegetation. Really, what was the point? I plodded on. If nothing else, I was stubborn; once set on a course, I would usually finish it regardless of the outcome whether known or not. This was not the greatest strategy to have when dealing with life, as inflexibility more times than not got one killed. That’s why I would keep my head down and plow on so I wouldn’t see what was coming.

The night had come on in all its glory. I don’t remember it happening, the haze of hurt made thinking, whether rational or not, impossible. I had been reduced to the repetitive motion of plant hands, scoot ass, repeat. Oh yeah, throw in crying out a few times and that would sum up my day.

The howl cut through the fog like a laser beam. I heard it, and I also understood what it meant. Lycan were coming, and probably fast now that they’d caught wind of something. I was only ten feet into the short brush, so I would be hard to miss when they came. If I knew of a way to off myself, I’m not ashamed to admit I might have taken it. They would not be kind in their dealings with me and, knocking on death’s door or not, they could still get a lot of mileage out of me before I made my walk.

“You’re in rough shape,” a grizzled voice from behind me said.

“Any chance you can make this fast?” I asked, looking for a modicum of mercy.

“Gonna have to, not much other choice. Sorry about this.”

My vision was obscured as a piece of cloth shielded my face. It was then rolled up and pulled tightly into my mouth. Gone with a gag, sure, why not? I blacked out or died.

Chapter Ten – Bailey

“Where are we going, Bailey?” Breealla asked, not for the first time, as they walked on.

Bailey had answered the question at least a half dozen times, but the girl’s grief was so thick, she was having a hard time comprehending and processing what was being told to her.

“First my home, Talboton, to get supplies and some help. Then, I think, to Denarth.” Bailey was patient, more so than she felt inside. She needed to find Azile to let her know what happened as soon as possible, but she could not move with the speed the situation necessitated because of Breealla.

“Can’t I just stay at Talboton?”

“I have told you that Denarth will be safer, at least for the next couple of moon cycles.”

“Moon cycles,” Breealla repeated with reverence.

Oggie had not been himself since they left. He constantly looked back the way they had come. At first, he had stayed nearly attached to Bailey’s hip, but the further away they went from where they had left Michael, the more he tended to roam. One night, he had not returned until the following morning, covered in burrs and insect bites.

“I’m sorry, Oggie, but he’s gone,” Bailey had told him. Oggie had whined a high-pitched nasal response. The next night, he had not returned at all. That was two nights previous. Bailey had stayed at their camp hours longer than she had meant to, hoping he would come back.

“I have failed nearly all those around me.” Bailey looked back at the trail.