Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (2 page)

BOOK: Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Will slowed and Thor recovered his position. They went around a curve. One of the werewolves had gone straight over the hill. It was now closing on Mary’s side of the truck. She fired. The slug hit the werewolf on the forehead and bounced off its thick skull plating. The slug did, however, distract the wolf and made it break its stride.

Will veered away from the werewolf and off the road. This brought the wolf into Thor’s sights at point-blank range, and he did not miss. Twenty rounds or more hit the wolf, leaving gobbets all over the landscape.

The truck entered the tall corn in the adjoining field at high speed. Will was desperately searching for another road, but he couldn’t see anything, nor could he slow down much. With all the jouncing that the truck was doing, Will had a tough time keeping control of it.

Thor was hanging on in the back of the truck, unable to see or sight in on anything due to all the flying corn chaff.

Suddenly they were out of the corn, and there was a werewolf standing right in the path of the truck. In the contest of werewolf versus truck, the werewolf lost—but not by much. The truck’s front end bounced up with the werewolf’s unintentional help. The bottom of the bumper hit the wolf in the upper chest. It felt to the humans like they had hit a light pole, or a tank.

The truck lurched to a stop, with the werewolf dragged under it. Thor grabbed his big rifle, hit the quick release, and hopped out of the vehicle. Will activated a timer switch and jumped out as well, avoiding the swipe the werewolf took at his legs with its claws. Mary and Leona were not far behind, running grimly with their shotguns held high.

They ran for cover as fast as they could. Just as the werewolf was starting to push the truck off, it exploded, killing the wolf instantly.

The blast knocked the party off their feet. Thor was the first one up. He helped the rest to their feet.

“We have to keep moving. There is still one more werewolf out there,” said Thor. “It’s going to be pissed that we just killed four of its friends.”

Thor heard the first howl shortly after they started running. The wolf was farther away than he expected. It must have lingered over the car that the werewolves had been tearing apart. Thor hoped no one had been in the car, but he knew that was probably a vain hope.

The cornfield was igniting into flame from pieces of the wrecked truck. He would have felt bad about that ordinarily, but Bill and Sandra, who had owned the field, had been “disappeared” about sixty days ago.

Disappeared
, Thor thought,
what a nice way to say abducted by alien werewolves
.

The digital game-playing crowd were all hiding; the fighters were all fighting. No one would ever harvest the crop on this farm.

Thor and his family ran through the cornfield, staying upwind of the fire. The smoke would hide their scent from the werewolf. The corn was tall enough to hide in. They were careful to stay between the rows so that the sharp-eyed wolf would not see the stalks of corn waving, and know their position.

Another howl came from about a half mile closer. Damn, that wolf was moving fast. There was no way to outrun it. Thor signaled to the group to slow down and move very quietly.

The fire was grew rapidly in the cornfield. Thor tried to keep the smoke between the group and the howling.

A third howl was heard—seemed to be in the same location. Then Thor’s blood froze. From in front of them, at least a mile off, came a return howl.

“Crap, did you hear that?” said Will. His voice was hoarse.

“Kinda hard to miss,” replied Mary. She shifted her grip on her shotgun nervously.

“Were you able to save any of the JDJ rounds?” Thor asked Will.

“Only one bandolier. It’s full, so, twenty-five rounds.”

“Shotgun rounds?” asked Thor.

“Forty,” said Leona.

“Twelve,” said Mary.

“I have the fifty-cal handgun, let’s see…twenty rounds for that,” said Thor. “Will, give me the JDJ rounds. You take the Smith and Wesson, and this belt of ammo for it. OK, if it just stays the two of them, then we have a chance.”

The men traded the weapons and ammunition. This gave the two women a chance to catch their breath.

“I’ll try to get some range on one of them, while you guys keep an eye out to make sure the other big SOB doesn’t sneak up on me,” Thor said.

Thor saw that the group was coming to the edge of the cornfield, so he motioned to the others to stop and take concealed positions. He crept slowly to where he could see.

There! On the roof of Bill and Sandra’s farmhouse was a werewolf. It was obviously trying to figure out where they were. Thor froze. When he was certain that the wolf was not looking in his direction, he backed up so that he could just barely see it. With luck, the werewolf would not see
him.

With no room to set up the tripod for the rifle, Thor decided that it was best to shoot from the prone position. Just as he was about to fire, another shot came from behind the werewolf. It hit the wolf in the back of the head and its lifeless body was flung from the roof to the ground.

Another werewolf, just thirty feet from Thor’s position, charged toward the shooter and away from Thor.

Lucky for me the other guy shot first. That wolf would’ve had me before I could’ve reloaded
, Thor thought.

Thor sighted on the back of the charging werewolf and fired. The round hit the wolf in the lower back. It fell, but was trying to get back up. The wolf let out a howl of pain and anger.

Thor fired again. The wolf’s howl ended abruptly. However, the shot was too late. Two answering howls came from the far side of the cornfield.

Upon hearing the answering howls, the other shooter broke from his position and started running to the burning section of the cornfield. Thor thought he was crazy, but without a better plan he decided to follow. With a quick shout to the group, Thor was up and running. He glanced back make sure that everyone was behind him. He then tried to look through the smoke to see where the shooter had gone.

The shooter was bent low to the ground in the middle of the fire, holding open a dirt-camouflaged trapdoor. Thor took up a covering position near the door as he waited for the rest of the group. Once they were inside, he followed, quickly going down into the hidden shelter. The shooter was the last one in, and he made sure the door was securely bolted.

Thor and Leona had owned a book called
The Zombie Survival Guide
. When the werewolves first arrived and the family were teaching themselves how to survive, that book had taught them a lot of interesting survival tips. The most important were probably the cautions to keep quiet, and keep moving.

Guess we didn’t keep quite quiet enough
, thought Thor.
Nine dead werewolves in two days—couldn’t help but catch the aliens’ attention
.

Bob McCoy was the group’s new best friend who had led them into the shelter. He was a thin man who looked tired and hungry.

“We should be safe here,” he said.

“No place is safe, only safe-
er
,” said Leona.

Ah, my star pupil
, thought Thor.
That was the second important point from that Zombie book
.

Bob looked nonplussed for a moment. “Yeah, well, it is a hell of a lot safer in here than out there,” he said. His voice was just a bit louder than it need have been to make the point—like he was trying to convince himself more than Leona.

The shelter was a quick-build bomb shelter. It was a simple design: take two shipping containers, dig a hole with an excavator, drop the containers in, pour some cement, reinforce with quick-build supports, and add access tubes. Two guys with the right equipment could have it built in a weekend. Thor had built three just like this with Will’s help.

“How did you know about this shelter, Bob?” Thor asked.

“I helped Bill and Sandra put it in—too bad they didn’t get to use it.”

“What is the reading on the re-breather?” asked Thor.

While he waited for Bob to read the meter, he thought about carbon dioxide. The first attempts to hide from the werewolves had just resulted in the people being “lunch in a can.” The werewolves could locate any exhaust vents by smell and just dug down until they found the hiding humans. Now all shelters had re-breathers.

“It’s good,” said Bob. “We have about twenty hours of air.”

Just then, a long rumbling howl sounded right above the shelter. One would think that no one could hear a howl from twenty feet down, but there it was. It chilled everyone to the bone. Mary actually shuddered with fright.

Twenty hours of listening for howls and signs of digging followed. The group slept off and on. It wasn’t a good sleep, and it was more “off” than “on.” Finally all decided that they were awake and declared it “morning.”

The family had gotten to know Bob overnight. He had started out two days ago with a hunting party of six. He didn’t say if they had originally been hunting game or werewolves. Things had gone bad and his group had split up. They had been spotted by a large number of werewolves. Bob said the car that the family had seen being torn apart the previous day had probably belonged to members of his group.

Bob had a lighter version of the rife that Thor carried. It was probably a knockoff, but it fired the same ammo. Thor gave him five rounds as a reward for helping the family. Bob was delighted. He was even happier when Will told him there was another seventy-five rounds in the destroyed truck, if they hadn’t cooked off in the explosion.

It was time to move out. Thor and Leona talked over the options. It was a truism that if you have a hiding spot, you should never go out the way you came in. A well-fortified door was only good when it was closed. There were stories about how unwary people had left shelters only to find werewolves waiting for them at their entrance. Fortunately, Bob had known this when he built the shelter with Bill and Sandra. There was a second door.

Bob decided he was going to check out the truck. Thor told him that he thought it was an extraordinarily bad idea. Bob was determined. He seemed to be obsessed by the thought of all that ammunition. Who was Thor, then, to say different?

Bob and Will opened the back hatch, which was about a hundred feet from the other door and hidden by some rocks. The women were behind them with their shotguns at the ready in case of leaping werewolves. Thor stood back, sighting over everyone’s heads to get off a quick distance shot with the rifle.

Bob went first, moving slowly when he did not see any wolves. The others filed out silently, one by one. When they reached a point where they could peek over the rocks, sure enough, there was a werewolf asleep by the main door. Bob started aiming at it. Thor quickly pushed the barrel of Bob’s gun aside.

“No! We don’t know how many others are around.”

The group moved quickly and quietly away from the werewolf. The wrecked truck was located to the west, one of Thor’s shelters was to the north, and the wolf was to the south. In the thinnest of whispers, Leona and Thor calculated that the distance to the shelter was about two hours of normal walking and maybe eight hours of careful walking under cover. Bob moved away from group, going west. Thor was not unhappy to see him go. In the brief time he had walked together with the family, he had made a lot of noise.

BOOK: Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Katherine by Anya Seton
Machine by K.Z. Snow
Knight Avenged by Coreene Callahan
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
The Dunston Blade by John Daines
Kwaito Love by Lauri Kubbuitsile
Deadman's Crossing by Joe R. Lansdale