Greg caught sight of his reflection on its chrome. He raised a hand to touch his beard, shocked at how savage he looked. It was funny how much even the simple things of life had changed. Shaving was an unpleasant chore he’d given up on long ago. He supposed that’s what the end of the world did and folks just coped. Either they got stronger or they died. There was no middle ground. His body was lean but hard; his skin was baked from the sun. What would his coworkers at the firm think if they could see him today? He couldn’t help but wonder. Likely not much given they were dead, but the thought of a geek like him turned frontiersman brought a grin to his lips. Sheer willpower and determination to keep Anna and Eric safe and provided for had kept him alive while so many others died back then. His victory was hollow though. Memories of Eric’s screams as a pair of giant, hairy hands lifted him from the ground came flooding into his mind. Greg grimaced and shook the thoughts away again, fighting down the tears that threatened to fill his eyes.
Anna had every right to blame him for Eric’s death—but she didn’t. Not really. He could see that even in the worst moments between them. All she wanted was to let go of this world and go join Eric in the next one. If she
did
hate him, it wasn’t for Eric’s death but because he refused to give up and kept her here by his side so he’d have the strength to keep fighting. Maybe she was too scared to go alone or maybe at her core she hadn’t truly built up the courage to take her own life despite her numerous attempts. Either way, she wanted him in the hereafter, too, and to have their family made whole once more. His stubborn resolve to keep pushing on wouldn’t allow her to have that.
Greg rapped his knuckles over the Mustang’s hood. Why couldn’t she understand Eric would have wanted them to make the best of things here in this life and find a way to truly live again?
* * *
Colonel Holmes rode in the gunner’s turret of the IAV Stryker as it led the small convoy down the winding road to where the enemy waited. The convoy’s sole Apache was acting as their advance scout. Ten minutes before, Ron, its pilot, called in the location of a seemingly active Bigfoot den that was within striking distance without taking them too far off their route. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up regardless of the delay it would cause. Holmes ordered the convoy to alter its course. Destroying the beasts wasn’t their current objective, but it would serve as excellent training for the green, new recruits among them and allow him to bring the battle to the monsters’ doorsteps for once.
Ron reported there was no sign of the things attempting to flee the den even as the convoy rolled into visual range of the cave. Holmes’s gut told him the creatures were planning on trying to make a stand. A wide smile spread across his lips as he lifted his binoculars to get a better look at what they were up against. With a slight movement of his finger, he clicked them into infrared mode. Just from inside the cave’s entrance, shrouded in darkness, three huge males watched two of his transport trucks flank the cave’s mouth. A dozen of Holmes’s men spilled from each of them, weapons ready. He weighed the options at hand. Ordering his men into the cave would sacrifice their advantage yet he wasn’t willing to merely toss some explosives in there and hope for the best. Holmes supposed he could have his men blow the entrance, but he had no guarantee there weren’t other exits, or that the creatures that survived wouldn’t just dig themselves free through the rocks after his unit had departed.
With a nod, he decided to play this one by the book. “Throwers forward,” he said.
Two men carrying heavy flamethrower packs followed by six more baring AK-47s advanced on the cave’s mouth. The beasts in this area likely hadn’t encountered a group of men so well organized and armed in years. He wagered they wouldn’t have a clue how to deal with what was coming.
The flamethrowers roared to life, spraying streams of fire into the darkness of the cave’s interior. The three males who seemed to have been waiting to engage his men as they entered howled in pain as the flames washed over them. One fell to its knees, rolling around, trying to extinguish the fire that burnt away its hair and melted its flesh, but the other two sprang forward, fueled by their own pain, fear, and rage. The throwers shut off their streams and retreated as the troops with rifles formed a loose firing line to meet the monsters. Their AK-47s chattered on full auto. The first of the beasts to emerge was cut down instantly from the combined fire of so many guns. Holmes couldn’t even guess at how many rounds ripped into and shredded the thing’s flesh. Its massive form thudded into the dirt and lay still as the flames covering it continued burn and dance over its corpse. The second beast came roaring into his troops. It, too, had taken numerous rounds, but not enough to take it out of the game before it did some damage. One of the thing’s flaming fists connected with a soldier’s face, reducing it to a bloody mess of mangled bone and flayed skin. It grabbed another soldier by his arm and yanked it clean from his body, filling the air with spurting blood before a burst of rifle fire caught it in the back of the head and brain matter erupted from the gaping exit wound above its eyes. The remaining four riflemen closed in on the cave’s entrance where the corpse of the last male lay sprawled out just inside the cave’s mouth and the smell of cooking meat and hair was carried to them by the wind and smoke.
“We’ve got movement!” Holmes heard one of them shout.
A fresh chorus of automatic thunder burst loose in the wake of the soldier’s warning as the riflemen were joined by a second squad and pressed forward into the darkness. Roughly five minutes later, they emerged. Two of them carried the motionless and bloodied forms of the beasts’ offspring.
“You were right, sir!” Corporal Moody yelled up at him, flinging the corpse of an infant he held into the dirt near the Stryker’s wheels. “There were over a dozen young in the den.”
Holmes laughed. It was a small victory, but that dozen or so would never reach maturity to hunt men or breed more of their kind. Slaying the young was a rare thing and he took great pleasure in it. “Good work, Corporal,” he told him. “Mount up. New Denver is waiting on us and I imagine our job there won’t be quite as easy as this was.”
New Denver was the only stronghold of humanity that Holmes knew of in a five-hundred-mile radius. So far, the people there had kept to themselves. He doubted they even knew his unit existed. Holmes knew quite a bit about them, however. Several of his most trusted officers, posing as traders, visited the city. His militia contained two hundred and sixty soldiers with a tagalong batch of about one hundred civilians, mostly the families of his men, and whores for entertainment purposes. New Denver possessed a population of more than a thousand according to his agents’ estimates, but the convoy’s sheer firepower gave them an edge he hoped the city couldn’t match. The Apache alone could do a great deal of damage to any of its defenders that got in his way if talks failed . . . and they surely would, if it came to it. Holmes had no intention of settling for anything less than everything the city had to offer. New Denver was a thriving place in an otherwise barren land. They could be a powerful ally against the beasts as long as they bowed to him and no other. He was tired of life on the move and fuel in the amount he needed on a daily basis was nearly impossible to find. Their own stores were running out and it was time to face the facts: they needed to settle down and make a stand. New Denver was as good as a place as he would ever find to do just that. But before he went in guns blazing and risking damaging the resources he wanted for his own, he would give New Denver’s leaders a chance to see the light.
* * *
Greg lay on his stomach in the dirt, watching the convoy roll out through the scope of his rifle. He’d finally decided to go hunting only to have his efforts cut short by the sound of distant gunfire. He followed it to its source, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw in the valley below. A full-fledged army unit, armed to the teeth with working vehicles, appeared to have discovered one of the beasts’ dens and eliminated it in short order. All together there was over a dozen vehicles including trucks, jeeps, and an even an APC, with more people on foot moving alongside them. The men were clearly professionals. Were it not for their ragged uniforms and the signs of wear on the vehicles themselves, he would have believed that some part of the world rode out the dead plague intact and that help had come at last. Part of Greg wanted to fire a shot into the air, get their attention, and beg for their help. He couldn’t remember the last time another living human being passed through this area, but he held himself back from doing so. The world wasn’t the same as it used to be. One couldn’t afford to take chances anymore. There was just as much a chance the men would kill him on sight to take what little he had, including Anna, for themselves.
Making a note of the direction they were headed in, Greg crawled back down the hill until he was sure he was out of sight, then ran for home. Their appearance only reinforced his desire to take to the road and find somewhere else to ride out the coming winter. Sometimes men were worse than the beasts.
Greg burst into the house, startling Anna. She dropped the plate she was carrying. It shattered on the floor.
“It’s time to go!” he told her, darting into their bedroom.
Anna recovered and followed him. She stood watching him as he hurriedly snatched up a backpack and began to shove it full of their meager belongings.
“What happened?” she asked.
He ignored her, focusing on his task.
“Greg!” she shouted. “What’s happening? Are the beasts coming?”
Greg whirled on her. “There are men out there, Anna. A lot of them and armed to the teeth. Who knows what they’d do to us if they found us here? We both knew it was time to leave anyway. It might as well be now before it’s too late.”
Anna was silent for a moment. A tear slid over her cheek. “I’m not leaving, Greg.”
He tossed the half-full backpack aside and started towards her. “Anna . . .” Gritting his teeth, he struggled to keep his cool. “Anna, we’ve got to go.”
“I’m sorry . . . but I can’t,” she said and leaped for the night table beside their bed.
He watched in horror as she snatched up the heavy pistol there and pressed it to her temple. His whole world shook and shattered as she pulled its trigger and the gun thundered, echoing in the small room. Red rain splattered the bedroom’s wall with clumps of brain matter. Anna’s corpse toppled forward onto the bed. Greg’s mouth hung open with a scream of protest he never got the chance to vocalize. He stood frozen in place, too stunned to move, staring at the growing pool of blood spreading across their sheets.
* * *
Wally didn’t bother to hide. He positioned himself in the middle of the road and waited on the convoy to reach him. The number of vehicles in it alone assured him these people had not come from New Denver. He doubted they would merely run him down. The lead vehicle, a Stryker, was an old world APC. Its massive wheels squealed to a halt. Two of the jeeps accompanying it drove on around it to flank him. Nervous-looking young men aimed rifles at him as they stared at him. Mounted .50 calibers from the rear of the jeeps also pointed their barrels in his direction.
The gunner hatch atop the Stryker opened. A man who was clearly in charge of the entire convoy poked up through it. Wally placed the man in his early forties. He had the hardened appearance of a veteran who’d lived through the war that had ended the world.
“Mind telling me what you think you’re doing?” the colonel asked. Wally identified his rank from the stripes on the sleeve of his jacket.
“I was walking until you and your boys decided to hog the road,” Wally said coldly.
The colonel laughed. “You’re got balls, son, I’ll give you that, but I don’t have time for your games. Tell me who you are and where you’re from. If you do, I may let you live.”
“You’re welcome to try. You’d likely even succeed, but not before quite a few of your men were dead. Good men are rather hard to come by, wouldn’t you say?”
The colonel frowned. Wally could see he was on the verge of having the men in the jeeps gun him down.
“I’m from New Denver,” Wally said. “I was a Hunter. Now I am just a man searching for something lost. Perhaps we could help each other? I imagine you’re on your way to New Denver from the look of things. It won’t be an easy city to take.”
The colonel climbed down from the top of the Stryker and walked towards him. “The stories about you Hunters are a bit unbelievable. Have you really slain a beast with just that sword?” He nodded at the Katana sheathed on Wally’s back.