Lycan Fallout 5 Read online

  I watched as a hundred arrows flew up over the wall and high into the air before arcing down with deadly precision. The vanguard of the polions fell.

  “Same angle, fire at will!” Mathieu shouted. The arrows were hitting with accuracy and causing damage, but it was going to be too little. The first of the polions had already passed the deadly line and more were doing so. The rifles were killing the closest ones, but it was a matter of basic math; we did not have enough ammunition, arrows, weapons, or soldiers to stop them. Didn’t matter what was happening a few hundred yards away; even though heaven and hell was opening up and the sky was changing colors faster than an old discotheque; right here, right now, we were in the fight for our lives.

  Azile, myself, Mathieu, Tim, Kalandar, Lana, Oggie, the ever-present Linnick, and roughly a hundred Denarthians were standing in the square awaiting the inevitable. The soldiers on the wall being charged had been ordered to abandon their posts. Arrows still flew and polions still died, but they would shortly make up for the one-sided affair. The ground shook as the stampede got closer. There was a thunderous clap and the wall shook as the first of them reached it, then the wall began to bow inwards as more and more of them made contact.

  “This is it!” Lana shouted, her sword in her hand, a fortuitous breeze whisking her long blonde locks; she looked like a vengeful Viking queen. Mathieu nodded to me before changing over and getting close to his wife.

  “What a strange turn of events.” Kalandar was introspective.

  “Just so everyone knows, when the vote was taken, I voted for extermination, not just to banish them. Who in their right mind thinks polions make a good pet?” Tim was talking and I felt pretty uncomfortable that we agreed.

  “Linnick, there’s still time. I can get you to someplace safe.”

  “We have known each other for far too long, Tallboat, for you to begin lying to me now. Besides, it is better to be close to your hideousness rather than witness your death from afar.”

  “You always make me feel so special,” I told her. “Oggie, please don’t get hurt.” The big dog was growling, his fur raised, his lips pulled back, and his teeth showing. Seemed a weird thing to say to one who was so intimidating looking. “Azile.”

  She turned to me; a tempest raged around her as she gathered her powers. “This had better not be something sarcastic.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  Her features softened. “Right now?”

  “Well, I was figuring when the day was through, but if we can find a priest, I say we go for it.”

  “You survive this day, and I will marry you. I have loved you forever, marriage or not. Now concentrate.” She turned away.

  “Good call. You want to take the hot ones off the market…all sorts of unsavory types out there. I was planning on making a move myself,” Tim said as he raised a fist, looking for a bump. I’m pretty sure I would rather have bit the heads off hissing cockroaches. I was saved the possibility of angering the clown by not reciprocating the gesture when the wall gave. We were showered in splintered wood and strewn rocks as the polions burst through.

  A wave of green passed over us and enveloped most of the courtyard. I looked over to Azile, who was standing completely still, her eyes closed, head leaned back, arms outstretched, sweat making her hair cling to her forehead. Tim was looking over at her chest, which was heaving with exertion.

  “Talbot-Fuck, one tit squeeze, man. That’s all I ask.”

  “You even sneeze on her, Tim, and this time I’m going to pop your eyeballs out and shove them up your ass so you can give yourself a personal colonoscopy.”

  His eyebrows furrowed before he started laughing. “That shit is hilarious! Fine, no tits. You think I can squeeze that Lana chick’s ass?”

  “Ask the werewolf.”

  Mathieu was looking down on the clown, every inch of every tooth exposed, long runnels of drool hanging from his mouth.

  “Pretty sure he told me ‘no.’” Tim was looking up and into the mouth, still smiling.

  “And they say clowns are stupid.”

  “Who says that!?” Tim roared.

  “Them, Tim. Direct that energy to them!”

  Whatever Azile had done and was doing was causing the polions to move at maybe a quarter speed of their normal. Looked like one of those old-school Nintendo games when you were fighting the boss and a bunch of his minions; the graphics of the time could not process all the information they were trying to display, so you got a significant lag, but usually yourself, as the hero, suffered the same effects. That was not the case here. Also, an added benefit, if you could call it that, was she had stripped away the light fog that covered the animals. What I’d imagined they looked like couldn’t hold a candle to the disgusting thing before me. For simplistic terms, throw tentacles on a pink and gray fleshed porcupine, then throw in the hooked beak of a buzzard. That gets you in the ballpark. Blind, white, milky eyes ran a ring around the top of its body. They blinked at random times, but never focused in on anything. I was going to take it as a personal affront if something this ugly did me in. I had plenty of time to pick a target and fire; the eyes were exceedingly vulnerable and took the least number of hits to drop them.

  I was reloading magazines when I thought to ask Linnick something. “Me or the polions, which is more repellant?”

  “Is that something you wish to discuss at this moment?”

  “Shit, Linnick. You can’t even give me that?” I hit the bolt release and was back at it. I may have heard her chirping laughter in between rounds.

  Rifle fire was coming down from the remaining walls and the archers were doing their part. We were holding them at bay for the moment, but we had been running low before they broke in. Once we were down to using spears and swords, we were going to suffer huge casualties. There were screams all around as unlucky individuals were grabbed by thrashing tentacles and pummeled into the ground or torn in two, or sometimes three, pieces. I’d gone through my fourth magazine; the bolt had stayed open and the polions hadn’t had the good graces to leave.

  “Come on, this’ll be fun.” Tim bumped my shoulder before heading into the thick of it. He had a spear with a shaft roughly the size of my leg; we’d made some bigger ones to deal with just this enemy. The screams became more pronounced as more and more rifles became ineffective. The arrows were still zipping in, but quivers were alarmingly low on projectiles. Tim ran in and shoved that spear nearly two feet straight into the mouth of the nearest animal. It shrieked and its head pivoted high up, taking Tim with it. The clown was howling like a loon as I plunged my spear into one of the creature’s eyes. Its head thrashed about, but Tim was like a deeply embedded tick that would not let go. Took out two more eyes before the polion dropped to the ground with a grunt.

  Mathieu had got atop one and was scratching out the eyes with his claws, somehow staying away from quills as he moved. The tentacles were slamming all around, trying to get at him, but he deftly avoided the strikes and the animal pulled away, piercing itself numerous times in a desperate attempt to shake the interloper off. Lana was making this a bit easier for him, swooping in and hacking at the animal and its legs. Thousands of quills were being shot up into the air, and even at a quarter speed, it was impossible to avoid all of them or smack them away. I was struck more than a dozen times; if not for Linnick running around my body, pulling them out, I would have been like so many others–writhing around on the ground, screaming out in unimaginable pain as the toxin flowed through their systems.

  Kalandar seemed wholly unaffected by them, or his tolerance to pain was approaching epic proportions. He had so many embedded in his upper shoulders and head it looked to be some elaborate primal headdress. It did not hinder him from grabbing the jaws of a polion and yanking up to the point where he broke its head in half. With that done, he began pulling quills from himself and slamming them back into the animal they came from. They liked the experience about as much as their victims. Oggie had gone for the soft white underbelly
approach. When he got underneath, he latched his jaws and just pulled, ripping hunks of the pink mottled flesh free. Blood poured forth from the wounds as he worked relentlessly to make the gouge bigger.

  A couple of times the fighting had come close to Azile, but she appeared to have a magical shield up, and I was doing everything in my power to keep all away from her. Tim seemed to be having the time of his life. My small circle was holding its own, but the soldiers of Denarth were drowning in their own blood. They were getting wholesale slaughtered. I was doing all I could to drag those with quills in them to relative safety where they could get some help, but the help was minimal, the carnage too great. We were slowly but surely giving up ground and being pushed back to the civilian housing. Once through us, the polions would find little resistance with the old, infirm, and children.

  I felt a white-hot anger pour through me as I thought about what was to come if we failed. “We stand now!” A golden flame shot forth from my sword; for a heartbeat I felt like I was twelve and I’d just got a hold of a true working lightsaber. It wasn’t quite that cool, maybe, but it would do the job. As I swung my blade, a coil of molten gold whipped up from the top and struck the nearest polion, shearing off nearly a third of its body. The smell was horrific, the damage was lethal. I was concerned with whether my new weapon could discriminate friend from foe; I thought it wise to move further into the mix where I hacked, swung, chopped, and slashed at anything foolish enough to come my way.

  “Lana!” Mathieu roared. She’d taken six quills to the back and was falling; he bounded over and scooped her up, dashing off with her for help.

  “These…fucking…sting,” Tim said every time he pulled a quill out. He was backing up and stabbing at the same time. Linnick was working frantically to keep me clear; it was still like continually placing a finger into a live socket.

  “Stop moving around so much!” she’d yelled at one point. I didn’t even have an opportunity to respond to that. Only a handful of soldiers, myself, Kalandar, Oggie, and Azile now held this field of battle. Tim was leaning against a wall, letting a terrified small child pull the arm-sized quills from his body.

  Azile was near the end of her ability to perform the spell. I could see her beginning to fold in on herself from the sheer exertion. I fought my way closer, knowing that when the time came, I was going to grab her and run as fast and far as I could. When I felt she was safe enough, I would return to do what I could. Denarth was lost. The polions were smashing into buildings and making them topple. Soon, all we would be defending would be rubble. There’s a lot to be said for protecting one’s home, but what’s the point of continuing to defend once it’s gone? The idea struck and stuck.

  “Retreat! Let’s go!” Azile oomphed as I picked her up. She felt as light as a feather; I don’t know if it was due to the adrenaline coursing through my body or that she had used up so much of her resources that she’d started wasting away. Maybe a bit of both.

  “Gabriel! To Gabriel!” I shouted as I ran. “Kalandar, Tim, come on!” I noticed that Tim grabbed the kid. It didn’t look like he was going to eat him immediately; I had to be content with that.

  “What are you doing?” Azile asked before she slumped in my arms.

  “Mathieu, grab Lana. We have to go.” I was heading to the town meeting hall; it was where we had planned on staging our final stand. We were making some ground on the polions as they were busy feasting on the newly deceased citizens of Denarth. “Inside, everyone inside,” I told the bevy of guards at the front who were planning on giving their lives so that those inside would have a few more moments of breath. But if this worked, maybe we’d all make it through the day.

  Then as if this day weren’t weird enough, should have expected it considering I’d set the wheels in motion. It’s the smell, it’s always the smell. Zombies had arrived on the scene, thousands upon thousands, looked like Times Square as the sea of them moved toward us. My heart caught in my throat as my Azile love-doll was smashed into half a dozen pieces as it tried to get past the polions.

  “Bastards!” I yelled at them just as the first of the zombies collided with the beasts. What I was witnessing I suspected was a lot like what I figured a farmer’s combine would do to an unsuspecting herd of Dikdik’s. Those are small antelope, not a herd of penises; can’t even really imagine what that would look like and now I’m saddened I’ve even thought about it. Heads, arms, legs, torsos all just flying up into the air, spiraling around crazily and crashing back down in random patterns.

  It was a slaughter, at first, then sheer numbers on the zombie side began to factor in. I was mesmerized like a Kansas farmer might be as an F5 tornado swept across his fields

  I expected the people inside to be a huddled mass. I should have known better. No matter whether they were seven or seventy, every Denarthian wielded some sort of weapon. Even a soldier on a cot, bandaged from head to toe, was weakly holding onto a sword hilt.

  “Gabriel, a gate,” I said as I ran toward the boy. “Make a gate.”

  “For everyone? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Can you do it?”

  He looked at me. There was the quivering of a lip and some serious doubt displayed across his brow. When a loud crash came from behind me, signifying the polions were once again on the move, he decided right then he was going to try. Mathieu had reverted to his original form to better grasp at the quills. Lana’s teeth were clenched as he worked quickly on getting them out.

  I’d no sooner seen the last one being pulled from her when Gabriel informed me it had been done.

  “Incredible,” Kalandar said as he poked his head through.

  “Is it a safe place?” I asked hopefully.

  “It’s the wastelands in the Underworld; I hardly think ‘safe’ is an appropriate term,” he responded.

  “Alright, give me a term I could use.”

  “Risky.”

  “I’ll take that,” I told him. “Lana, you need to get your people through this gate.”

  She looked to Mathieu and then out on the scared, but resilient, faces of those still with her. The meeting hall shook as the first of the polions slammed into the wall. Glass smashed out from a half dozen windows. Dust fell in sheets from the rafters above. I don’t know if it was an accidental sign or a blessed one, but the roof had shifted enough that a sliver of sunlight was able to make its way down through the murk, perfectly illuminating Gabriel’s gate.

  “Running out of time,” I told her. “We’ll stay here and fight, if that’s what you want.”

  “No.” She stood. “We will not die today. People of Denarth! We must live! We must right these wrongs and we must rebuild our great city. But right now, we need to get away.” The cross beam on the door cracked under the assault. It would not hold much longer.

  Mathieu and Kalandar were making numerous journeys back and forth, assisting all those that needed help. Tim, myself, and some soldiers were creating a barrier to slow down the polions as they got in.

  “Getting close!” Mathieu shouted from the other end.

  “Go,” I ordered those with me. They began to peel off and head to the gate. I had turned and was heading that way. “Tim! Let’s go.”

  “Fuck no. Been there–can’t stand the place.”

  “Thought you were a fan.”

  “You make due with what you can.”

  “It’s just for a little while.”

  “Listen, Talbot-Fuck. For my first life, I was a major dickhead, just a rude, narcissistic prick that enjoyed terrorizing the living shit out of anyone I could, including my mother. When I was reborn a zombie, I brought all those traits with me then added all sorts of bonus points to the list of reasons why I should be hell-bound. I killed indiscriminately; I ate people, not just because that was what the zombie part of me dictated, but because I enjoyed it to no end. I mean, you can’t even understand the bliss I felt as I gnawed through the femur of some still-kicking victim. Good times. I was so bent on staying alive I som
ehow willed myself into existence two more times before Yorley-Bitch did me in. I would slowly eat that chick from the toes up, if I could get a hold of her…and maybe that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked, bewildered.

  “I’m atoning.”

  “What?”

  “The polions are going to break through before everyone is across. I’m going to hold them off for as long as I can.”

  “You’re going to sacrifice yourself for others?” I was completely mystified. “Are you sure?”

  He looked at me all serious, then a broad grin pulled those huge red lips up, making them nearly touch his ears. “Naw, just fucking with you. I can’t go through that gate. I said all that shit hoping the big man upstairs thinks I did this for noble purposes. Put in a good word for me when you get there. Now fucking go, because I already regret not killing you before those fuckers get in here; that would have been so satisfying.”

  “You’re a strange clown. I want to thank you, but I feel like I would be breaking one of the ten commandments.”

  “Go, Talbot-Fuck!” he yelled just as the doors exploded inward. My back was pelted with fragments of the crossbeam. “I’m Tim! You can’t kill me!” were the last words I heard from him as I crossed over into the relative quiet of the Underworld. Half a tentacle wriggled and squirmed by my feet, cut off from its host as Gabriel closed the gate behind me.

  “Where’s the clown?” Mathieu asked.

  “Strangest thing. I think he may have had a conscience after all,” I told him, looking at where the opening had been. I shook my head and looked around for Azile. Lana was getting her some water.

  “We have to get moving,” Azile said, though she could barely lift her head.

  “Let’s just rest some,” I told her, keeping an eye out on our surroundings. The Denarthians were staying in a tight group. The best way I could describe the setting we found ourselves in was like the artists’ renderings of the Martian landscape from when I was a kid. Red ground, large rocks everywhere, hills off in the distance, and not the slightest hint of life anywhere. It was slightly improved by the lighting, which had a soft vermillion hue to it, though it did add to the effect of the Red Planet motif.