Lycan Fallout 1: Rise Of The Werewolf Page 25

CHAPTER 16 - Mike Journal Entry Ten

  “We are being followed,” Azile said as she stood in her stirrups.

  “I thought we’d already established that?” I asked, turning towards Tommy.

  “Xavier’s warriors have already turned back,” she replied.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I didn’t give them much of an option.”

  “Always with the half statements. Doesn’t anyone like elaboration in this age?” I asked.

  “Shh,” she said.

  I heard nothing except the distant ruffle of feathers from birds being disturbed.

  “Let’s just wait until nightfall, I’m sure our stealthy guest will attempt to make themselves known in the most deadly way possible,” I said cynically.

  “If I ever have children,” Bailey said, “please stop me if I desire to have you tell them a nighttime tale.”

  “They’ll be bigger than me anyway. They can tell me stories of comfort,” I said.

  When we finally stopped for the night, it was a welcome respite. Each of us had been lost in our own thoughts. Not more than a handful of words had been spoken the remainder of the day, which was strange, because we had stayed in very near proximity to each other, not yet knowing what was out there or what its intentions were. Although, if I’ve learned anything in my existence, anything following generally does not have the followees best interests at heart.

  “Zombies?” I asked, once I got the fire started.

  “Doubtful, stealth isn’t their normal forte,” Tommy said. “Plus, the stink would have given them away by now.”

  “Who would have thought they’d be preferable to whatever is out there.” I threw another small log on the fire trying to offset the chill I felt.

  “Did you truly believe going to the Lycan king and petitioning for peace would work?” Bailey asked Azile.

  Azile was quiet for a moment. “No I did not. It was all I could think to do. I felt I had a better chance with that than I did with convincing man to fight. The towns will fight when pressed, but each individual hamlet will not be able to stand up to his assault.”

  “I should have stayed in Maine,” I said – not for the first time – and if I lived longer, not for the last. Azile didn’t even have the gumption to berate me for that statement. I knew she had to be feeling a little down. “Although, I guess if I had, I would have never met my new best friend.” I reached over and hugged Bailey’s shoulder.

  She pulled away. “That hasn’t been established quite yet.”

  “Oh, it’s only a matter of time. I’m entirely too charming to be denied for long.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Azile stood up abruptly. I reached for a sword I no longer possessed. “I have got to find a weapon with a little longer range than a hand-axe.”

  “Come forth,” Azile said sternly.

  “Me?” I asked

  Azile whipped her head back at me.

  “Fine, fine…come forth,” I said.

  Oggie whined low, I stroked his back. I caught a flash of something darker than the woods moving quickly by on my right.

  “Azile?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  Bailey had her weapon at the ready. Tommy was looking in the complete opposite direction from which I was.

  “I do, however, think it’s safe to say that they are all around us,” she did finally answer.

  “Maine sounds better and better all the time.”

  “Be quiet, I cannot get a fix on them,” Bailey admonished.

  “The fire, Michael,” Azile said.

  I quickly overturned the pot we had been heating water in. “There goes my bath,” I said as the fire sizzled. Darkness quickly enshrouded all of us. A few of the hardier cinders kept going, but for the most part, the night was black as ink. An arrow whizzed by and struck the side of Tommy’s cart.

  “I fucking hate arrows,” I jeered.

  A ball of light shot forth from Azile’s hands – much like a flare. The entire surrounding woods were enlightened in a bluish-green wavy haze as the ball hung a good hundred or so feet above us.

  “What the fuck?” I asked as I saw twenty or so figures around our periphery. The shadows danced as small breezes caught the flare. Some had the heads of wolves, the others bears. It looked like the island of Dr. Moreau out there. “Are there things you guys haven’t told me about yet? I mean I’d understand, because I just flat out would have refused to come.”

  “Tribal hunters,” Tommy said, pulling the arrow from his cart.

  “Indians?” I asked. “I thought you had an understanding.”

  “That was the Micmac. I do not know who these people are,” he said with some concern.

  “I swear to God, if I get shot with an arrow, I’m going to be extremely pissed off!” I shouted.

  As if on cue, another arrow was loosed. This time I saw in which direction and, more importantly, who loosed it.

  “Fine, we’ll play your game.” I easily sidestepped the projectile. I moved with a speed and grace that my mis-condition afforded. I wrapped one hand around the warrior’s throat; with my other I knocked the bow to the side.

  I’ll give him this, he wasn’t going out without a fight. He reached down to his side towards a nasty looking knife.

  “You grab that thing and I’ll crush your throat,” I told him.

  As his hand kept moving slowly towards it, I tightened my grip. “Do you not understand English?”

  “I understand your words fine,” a distinctively feminine voice croaked out. I removed her headdress fashioned from a fox’s head.

  “I’m not the forgiving type,” I told her as I effortlessly lifted her off the ground. Her feet kicked a bit as she struggled for air. I heard the ululation of a war cry, and then all was still. With my free hand I plucked her knife from its sheath. “A fucking Ka-Bar? Are you kidding me? I’ll consider this a spoil of war,” I told her as I pulled the sheath free from her leg, breaking the leather twining as I did so.

  “Are we done here?” I asked her rapidly stilling form. “Oh, right…I should probably put you down.” It was then that I noticed I had a good five or six people around me and they looked relatively hostile.

  The woman rubbed her throat, once her feet were firmly back on the ground.

  “Let’s everyone back away,” Bailey said forcibly behind me. She had her rifle trained on some of them.

  The woman who I had suspended like a piñata barked in some savage language. The men around us relaxed somewhat, but I had yet to see any of them put their weapons down.

  “What are you?” the woman asked.

  “No need to be rude, and considering I am the victor in this little battle, it is me that gets to ask the first questions.”

  “Victor?” she asked. “Look around Old One.”

  “I’m getting a little sick of that moniker,” I told her. It was then I noticed there was another much larger ring of warrior’s around us. “Not thrilled I’m in the middle of a Mexican stand-off.”

  “Why are you here?” the woman asked.

  “Spa day,” I told her.

  “My knife.” She held her hand out towards me.

  “You won’t try to stick me with it?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. I didn’t take that as a particularly good sign. I handed her the knife hilt first, she held her hand out until I handed her sheath back.

  Azile joined in the mix. “Chieftress Inuktuk, it is truly an honor to finally meet you.” Azile bowed slightly.

  “As well as you, Azile of the Red Order,” the Chieftress said. “What brings you on to our lands? You reek of Lycan.”

  “That would be me,” I said, sticking my hand in the air.

  “We met with their leader in an attempt to forego a war,” Azile told her.

  “And he allowed you to live?” she questioned.

  “Even the wild ones have laws they must obey,” Azile said.

  “C
ome, we will feast,” Inuktuk offered.

  “Really? Are you shitting me? You just tried to kill us,” I said.

  “If the Chieftress had wanted you dead, you would be,” one of the braves said in a smooshed language kind of way. It was broken English to say the least, but that was the general idea behind his words, and he looked pretty irked that that wasn’t what happened.

  I pointed at my eyes and then at him in the traditional ‘I’ll be watching you’ gesture. He had no clue what it meant, and I’ve got to admit I was somewhat amused watching him mimic it.

  “You give him the finger, Michael, and I’m going to tell him what it means. So help me. We’re going to need their help before all this is over,” she told me as we were following the Indians back to their camp. Wait...do I still have to say Native Americans?

  It was a strange settlement they led us to; large canvas and fur structures dominated a small plain, some were free-standing with supports made from heavy timbers, others were attached to existing structures that had not yet succumbed to nature. To say it was Indian would be like saying casinos belonged on their land. There were less implements being used here than in the other towns I’d seen along the way. Those towns seemed in a rush to try and get back to where we had once been. I don’t know what the rush was; the ‘good old days’ were anything but.

  These people seemed to want to stay in sort of a homeostasis with the world around them. Take only what they needed to survive. That’s a hard way to make your path through life, but it’s honest. There was some agriculture, couldn’t really tell in the night, but it was easy to tell from the planted straight lines that this was not wild caused.

  We were ‘guests’ in the same way mental patients were ‘wards of the state’. We were completely surrounded, knives might not been out and bows may not have been drawn, but hands hovered by hilts, and each warrior had an arrow in one hand and their bow in the other ready to nock in a moment. Now, I know there are other dangers in the night that might necessitate this, but it still isn’t a comforting feeling when you’re the stranger in the strange land.

  We were led into the biggest tent structure in the village, had to have been forty feet across, the wall to our right was cinder block and appeared to be the foundation of some old factory, old graffiti still ingrained on the surface. ‘Spence’ might not have made it through the zombie apocalypse, but his name lived on. I raised my fist in his honor. In the center of the structure was a large fire that looked extremely inviting. And then the strangest thing I’d seen all night – and remember, this included seeing people wearing animal heads in the woods, was over to my left.

  There was an old roll top desk almost completely encased in dripped wax, and more being added to it every second as at least a dozen candles blazed. Two guards stood a vigilant post over something I just could not explain, a blue visor protected under a Lucite container. The familiar golden arches logo were neatly embroidered on the front of the visor.

  “What the fuck?” I asked so softly I don’t think I even said it aloud. It was then I noticed that, had I been paying more attention, I would have seen that almost all of the headwear the warriors were wearing, had the logo either burned, stitched, or etched in. This time I couldn’t help myself.

  “Want some fries with that?” I asked as I approached the shrine, for that’s what it was.

  Azile intercepted my course, grabbing my arm and steering me back to the fire. The tent was rapidly filling with the inhabitants of the village.

  “You see that?” I asked her.

  “I have. You had best think twice, no make that three times, before you say anything condescending.”

  “Me?” I asked incredulously.

  “It obviously means something of great significance to them.”

  “Me too,” I told her indignantly. “What I wouldn’t do for a Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

  “Michael,” she admonished me.

  “These people don’t strike me as Native Americans,” I said in her ear. “Shit, I’m darker than most of them, and I’m of European descent. Plus, I don’t go out much.”

  “I will give you an incurable case of diarrhea if you don’t shut up.”

  I stopped short. “Wait…can you really do that? I don’t want to know. Although, if I wake up with a gurgling stomach I will always make sure I am upwind of you.”

  “Stop.”

  Oggie and Tommy were sitting on a large plank bench by the fire, Bailey was nervously pacing behind them. We all had to give up our weapons before entering the sacred tent and she was not dealing with it very well. Azile possessed a strength I did not think a woman of her stature could as she pretty much placed me in a spot next to Tommy.

  “Witchcraft?” I asked her. I had to have some excuse to how easily she manhandled me.

  “Whatever it takes to shut you up.” She sat next to me. She grabbed my hand, but I think it was more so that she could squeeze the living shit out of my digits if I started to say anything that might get us into trouble. I felt like we were in a zoo as seemingly the entire population walked by us; more than one would reach out and touch Bailey. I couldn’t blame them, if any among us looked like the gods of old, it was her. Bailey was statuesque, beautiful, dark, and deadly. She seemed none too happy to be the object of so much attention.

  “If one more person tries to touch my hair, I will break their fingers,” she growled.

  That seemed to endear the throng to her more.

  “See! She can say some stuff and they’re not throwing stones at her,” I said, trying to further my case. Somehow, Azile made my pointer finger and pinkie touch. “Fine!” I blurted out.

  Bailey stepped over the bench and nestled herself between Tommy and me; it seemed the crowd was in no great rush to get by our sides, and that she was marginally safer under our wings.

  “Having fun?” I asked her.

  She rolled her eyes.

  People began to settle down. Rough, woven blankets were set down as they began to sit. The murmurs quickly diminished and then, somehow, the fire went from this blazing inferno to something you’d expect to see in a responsible Boy Scout’s camp, although I’d never been to a Boy Scout’s camp, having had a problem with authority even back then. Well, to be honest, I never had the opportunity to join; I had been tossed from the Cub Scouts and banned from future events. It was a mess, just some political bullshit.

  “Magic?” I asked Azile, pointing towards the flame.

  “It is not magic, it is more a harnessing of the earth’s energy.”

  “So, magic then?” I winced as she squeezed my fingers.

  “In the beginning,” Inuktuk spoke as she entered the structure, “the world of man was poisoned with the curse of ‘The Death’. This was his transgression for questioning the might of the one true leader. Man fought back, finding ways to extend lives unnaturally…even approaching the point of immortality.”

  “Not all it’s cracked up to be,” I said so softly that even Azile with her bat ears couldn’t pick it up. Tommy looked over though and smiled sadly. He knew.

  “The Creator watched as His wayward children played with a fire they could not control.” On cue the fire blazed up for a brief second, the crowd ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed.’ I noticed as Azile swiveled her head around; probably looking for the special-effects supervisor. “He became angry, His children had turned their back on Him, and like any good father, he needed to teach them a lesson. The dead were brought back to drag man down from their lofty perch.”

  Inuktuk’s words were mesmerizing to the gathering. Women clutched children, men hugged their women. Eyes were wide with fright.

  I wanted to shout what kind of God would do that, but that seemed wholly unacceptable. Man had been his own downfall; he needed little help from outside sources to destroy himself.

  “The dead destroyed life, cleansing it away like the pestilence that it was.”

  “This is rich,” I said, barely holding on to my rising anger. T
he cleansing away she so casually talked about were my family and friends. “What do you know about the cleansing?” I shouted. I think Azile broke one of my fingers as I stood.

  The crowd had completely hushed as they all looked to me, I had interrupted something important, a ceremony they’d probably been having for years.

  “I knew those people that were ‘cleansed’ as you so eloquently put it. They weren’t vying for God’s positions. They didn’t want immortality…they wanted to live and to love. They worked hard to provide for their families, they were normal people who put too much trust in a government that did not have their best interests at heart. So, don’t you stand there all high and mighty talking about how they were struck down by a vengeful God. You weren’t there. It was people listening to misguided leaders that got us in this world of shit! They spoke lies and the populace believed it, maybe because they didn’t think they’d be lied to,” I said, pointing at Inuktuk

  “Michael, we are guests here,” Azile said from my side. “Who are we to question their beliefs?” She tried to pull me down and minimize the damage.

  I was shaking with rage. “Beliefs mired in ignorance,” I said.

  Inuktuk clamped her lips. I could tell she was not used to having her authority questioned. Her eyes bore into me. Bailey stood up as a few armed guards began to move in from the periphery.

  She waved them away. “It is not often that we can talk about The Purge with someone who was actually in attendance.”

  Had I not been so focused on my rage I would not have missed her reference of ‘often’. She did not say ‘We have never had the opportunity to talk about The Purge with someone who was actually in attendance.’

  “Well, then isn’t it your lucky day,” I told her.

  “May I continue?” Inuktuk asked. “This is more a story of our origins than of your struggle to survive.”

  “Yeah, let’s get this over with,” I told her.

  Azile sat, rubbing her hand across her face. I followed suit and sat. It was many long minutes before Bailey felt comfortable enough to join us.

  “What is it about Tynes’ that always feel the need to protect your ass?” Bailey said softly in my ear.

  “I must be winning you over,” I told her. I was slightly uncomfortable as I realized we were still being watched intently.

  “I’m listening,” I told Inuktuk.

  “When the world seemed at its darkest, one man arose,” Inuktuk said, and as a practiced chorus, the crowd chanted, “Samir, Samir, Samir.”

  “Samir?” I asked. “Fuck that sounds familiar,” I said, hardly above a whisper. I saw Azile’s lips moving, I think she was prepping an incantation that would keep me wrapped head to toe in heavy cloth if I so much as made a move to scratch my nose.

  “The Great French architect,” Inuktuk continued, “came forth from the Wild West and, with his Golden Arches, lit the way for a new people.”

  The chorus started again. “Landians, Landians, Landians.” They were swaying to their words.

  “What do they put in the water around here, I could go for a glass.”

  “Talbot, shut the fuck up,” Bailey said.

  “Ah…there’s the Tynes blood line ringing forth,” I said to her.

  The pieces started falling into place and it started with a pickle. Samir worked at McDonald’s. The great French architect was more of a Fry Tech than an architect. I’d had an encounter with him many long years ago. It was a bad day at that point in my life, but nothing in comparison to the ones that were merely right around the corner. Was it all just some elaborate cosmic joke that he would survive the zom-apoc to create this community? I’d like to say yes, but I don’t put much stock in coincidence.

  Samir, a hard working immigrant from India, had destroyed my McDonald’s order that had quickly spiraled out of control and into a pickle tossing fiasco. You’ll have to find one of my zombie journals for a clearer explanation.

  Inuktuk continued. “He knew to keep his people safe he would have to distance himself as much as possible from man’s modern ways. Away from the sky flyers, away from the spider web of information called ‘the net.’ Away from the poisons that were routinely injected into our bodies.”

  He got that part right.

  “He began to live off the land like our great ancestors did, taking only what we needed, leaving the rest. We became one with the land, thus naming ourselves Landians.”

  The chorus started up again, the whole Landians thing. Maybe with a little mescaline this could be palatable, just needed a drum circle and we’d be all set. She droned on for most of the night. I had zoned out a while back. I know myself well enough that if I had stayed tuned in I would have taken offense to something and voiced my opinion no matter the consequences. Somehow, being drawn and quartered didn’t fit well into my future plans.