"Where we going, sir?" one of the men called to him.
Callean gestured to me. "This girl is going to lead us through the scent screen to the main road Connor intends to use to transport his men and supplies."
One hundred pairs of eyes turned to me and I shrank against Luke. I gave them a weak smile and a wave. "Um, hi."
A hundred pairs of eyes turned back to Callean, and some of the men were not amused. Others burst out laughing. "Sir, we're supposed to be fooling the enemy, not ourselves," one of the men shouted.
"Why's she so special?"
"She's not even smart enough to wear a mask!"
"She's a girl!"
Emily took umbrage with that last shot. She secured all the straps of weapons an ammunition that criss-crossed her body and jumped onto the hood of our Hummer. "What's wrong with that?" she growled. The sight of the weapon-clad woman quieted some of the louder laughs.
Callean stepped to the edge of the Hummer's roof closest to his men. "She's a novice, but that's our advantage. Connor won't expect us to find his convoy until it's too late, but we'll give him a surprise."
Emily pumped her fist in the air. "Here here!" she agreed.
Tracker jumped onto the hood and mimicked her motion. "Here here!" he yelled.
Their enthusiasm rippled through the crowd like a highly contagious disease. Everyone pumped their fists in the air and chanted the mono-word slogan. Callean waved his hand and everyone quieted. "Stop the celebrating until we've got that fool beaten, and then we'll dance over his corpse!" The crowd ate up his pep-talk and cheered to his words.
I felt Luke stiffen beside me and looked up at him. His face was firm but ashen, and his lips were tightly pursed. "You okay?" I whispered.
He didn't look at me when he replied. "I am fine."
I rolled my eyes. "Uh-huh, and I'm the High Lord of the werewolf regions."
A grin curled onto his lips. "You may be, if we survive this."
I stuck out my tongue and wrinkled my nose. "Can you really imagine me being a politician?"
"No, but I can imagine you being a good leader," he replied.
I glanced over Callean's men and sighed. "I guess we'll find out."
Callean's men stopped their applause and gathered as many of their supplies as they could carry while still able to dodge gunfire. Everyone followed Luke and me to the tracks I'd found, and I fell onto all fours to follow them. I transformed a little to make my hands rougher for the hard ground, and we wound our way around the trees and under bush southeastward. The sun set behind us and the moon rose above us as I led the way onward to victory, or death. I really wanted the victory option. I wouldn't look good in a dress and coffin.
The farther we traveled the more worn became my sniffer. I may have been a novice in the arts of sniffing and tracking, but I was still a werewolf and after ten miles my sniffer was shot. I stopped and rubbed my nose. It was telling me it wanted to simultaneously sneeze itself off and combust. Luke came up beside me and knelt on one knee.
"What's wrong?" he asked me.
"What's wrong is these guys walked a hell of a distance and this dang fog is starting to get to me," I told him.
Luke frowned and rubbed my back. I would have purred like a cat if I wasn't such a dog. "Can you continue?"
I sighed and nodded my head. "Yeah, but not for much longer. Even if my nose was at one hundred percent novice efficiency the fog's seeped into the ground and it's getting harder to find the boot tracks."
"Try your best. We can't ask for any more," he replied.
I snorted. "I'm asking for a miracle, but I think we've used up our lifetime quota."
Callean, Tracker, Adam and Emily stood behind us. Tracker furrowed his brow and tilted his head to one side. "I hear something," he spoke up.
Everyone paused and listened. I rested my nose and put my ears to work. Since I was partially transformed my hearing was on par with the more experienced werewolves who surrounded me. I caught a rumbling noise. It was very faint, so faint it could have been a stampede of ants, but there was definitely something there.
Callean moved to the forefront of our group and turned to his four columns of men. "From here on out there will be no unnecessary talk. Everyone have their clips loaded and on hand. Transform if you have to, but stick low to the ground." The men hunkered down as I had done and partially transformed. It was both awesome and terrifying seeing so many battle-ready werewolves in one place. The scene made me realize just how serious this adventure was about to become.
Now I wasn't alone at the head. We six moved as a group toward the sound. The rumbling grew louder and I soon realized it was the sound of heavy tires on a packed dirt road. The fog grew thicker and worse-smelling, and I covered my nose with my coat. Ahead we saw the trees disappear at the edge of a road and then reappear on the other side. Vehicles traveled down the road. They ranged from Hummers like ours to a few semi trucks with their trailers. The Hummers, the armored trucks from the compound, and even some canvas-covered supply trucks were spaced between the semis and atop them were snipers and lookouts. The line of vehicles stretched into the distance northward, but southward their line ended with a heavy armored truck with a tall, open bed. In the bed was a Gatling gun that pivoted this way and that searching for something to kill.
We hunkered down and crawled on our stomachs until we were twenty yards from the convoy. The prognosis for this fight was grim. When I looked around so was everyone's faces. "Does anyone happen to be bullet-proof?" I asked them.
"I sincerely wish that were so," Callean spoke up.
Emily frowned and adjusted her straps. "I'm going in," she volunteered. She didn't wait for anyone to object before she crawled forward toward the road.
I looked to Luke and found him staring at me. There was a mischievous smile on his face. "Are you ready?" he whispered to me.
"I was born ready. Not for this, but close enough," I quipped.
We crawled after Emily and in a few seconds I heard noises behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the whole contingency of our warriors followed us along the filthy, muddy, disgusting ground. Mother Nature was really messy with her rotting vegetation. We scurried across the long battlefield, but were forced to pause whenever a scout glanced in our direction. The convoy rumbled on, and by the time we reached the road the last vehicle with its Gatling gun was just passing. Callean's men crawled to our left and made a line one-man deep down the road of retreating vehicles.
The truck crept past us. All my muscles were tense. We had to find some way to distract the Gatling gun or we'd be mowed down like green grass. The truck was a two door with armor plating, and the driver's window glistened in the light from the rear lights of the vehicle in front of it. I could see the driver. His hands clenched the wheel and he looked straight ahead focused on the front vehicle. I imagined any slight disturbance in the forest would make him jump.
That's when a suicidal idea hit me. I raced on all fours to the side of the vehicle and hopped onto the running board along the driver's side door. "Becky!" Luke whispered.
Too late. The driver turned his gaze toward me. I stood straight and pressed my face against the glass. "Hi!" I yelled.
The driver's eyes widened and he jerked the wheel away from me. The truck swerved and the werewolf manning the Gatling was thrown onto his ass in the bed.
"Now!" Callean yelled.
Half of his men jumped from their hiding spots and dashed to the vehicles. The other half stood and fired off several dozen rounds at the snipers and drivers. Lance's men returned fire and chaos erupted as soldiers with red armbands spilled from the backs of the cloth-covered trucks. They were armed, but close combat ensued and everyone and their dog was turning into a-well, dog.
Emily and Adam dove into the bed of the Gatling truck and knocked the operator about until they were sure he wasn't going to get up. Emily shoved a gun into Adam's hand and nodded at the top of the cab. "Let's give some cover to the boys!" They climbed atop the cab and sighted thei
r targets. They couldn't do any mowing tactics because Callean's men and Lance's were too intertwined, but they picked off who they could.
Luke jumped onto the runner beside me and smashed his fist through the window. He grabbed the driver by the neck and smashed his head into the steering wheel. The driver was now relieved of his duties, and Luke slid inside and tossed his unconscious body out of the cab. I slid in and pushed him out of the way to drive. "No Alistair to drive us, so I'm doing it," I told him. We had to work fast. The last third of the convoy was now at a standstill, but the front trucks, including the semis, picked up speed.
He frowned. "I would rather-" I stomped on the gas and tore dirt as we jumped forward.
Adam and Emily fell into the cab, and in a moment Emily's angry face appeared at the rear window. "What the hell are you doing?" she growled.
"Driving, now hang on!" I snapped.
I had to make a hard right to avoid the stopped vehicles ahead of me. Fortunately the road was wide enough I could get around either side, and I just clipped the right rear light of the front truck as I passed it. We sped along the convoy and were met the cab passengers evacuating their side of the vehicles. The headlights on my truck reflected their wide eyes before they jumped out of the way. Adam and Emily sat up and used the side of the truck to better aim their guns as we passed our enemies. They picked off the ones with guns as there were too many to pick off all of them.
We burst through the firefight and hand-fighting, and came out ahead of the stopped vehicles. The others had a half-mile head-start and were fast leaving me behind. I stepped on the gas, but one of the gunman in the fight behind us noticed our leaving the party and decided they didn't want that. There was an explosion along our left side as a bullet tore through the front driver's side tire.
I slammed my foot on the brake and kept the wheel steady. We skidded twenty yards along the rough dirt road with sparks coming out the front whenever the rim hit a rock. The truck stopped without rolling and I sighed in relief, but before us the majority of the convoy disappeared around a bend in the winding road. We'd lost them, and with them the war.
24
"Damn it!" I yelled.
Luke opened his door and slid out. "We have to hurry," he told us.
Emily stuck her head over the side of the truck. "Hurry to what? We can't fend off their bullets with our guns and if we go running at them we'll be moving targets," she pointed out.
"We have to try. Otherwise we will be moving targets in all the werewolf regions," he countered.
Adam swung out the bed and reloaded his rifle with bullets given to him by Emily. "Laughton is right. It would be more honorable to make a stand here than to live out our days running away from our enemies."
Emily waved her hand at the fight behind us. All of Callean's men were preoccupied with that third of the convoy. "And how to you propose we deal with those guarding the rest of the convoy? We don't have anyone to spare."
Our renewed hope came in the form of the blare of a truck horn. The noise came up the road behind the fighting and in a few seconds a pair of headlights rounded the bend at a rate of speed high enough to take the corner on two wheels. My face lit up when I saw Steve situated over the cab with a rifle in his hands and his eyes behind the scope. At the wheel of the barreling vehicle was Rick, and he hollered and honked the horn for all he was worth.
The strange scene made all the fighters pause and stare at these two crazed humans rushing at them in a large, white, full-ton pickup truck with extra-wide wheels. Steve sniped off several of Lance's werewolves before they could react. Their loyalty armbands told him who to shoot and who to miss. Lance's men, disorganized and now very confused by the arrival of this lone truck, raced into the woods with some of Callean's men in hot pursuit. The truck skidded to a stop just short of the rear vehicle of the convoy.
I grinned from ear to ear, but the joy wasn't over yet. Around the bend, a good half mile behind Rick's driving, came a long line of trucks. No two were the same. There were small ones with short beds, large ones with short beds, short beds with medium-sized cabs. All sizes of trucks and twenty-four of them, and mostly-transformed werewolves ran alongside the convoy. In the lead truck was Burnbaum at the wheel and Mr. Stewart beside him.
We rushed forward to greet them and halfway there we were joined by Callean. "You know these guys?" he asked us.
Rich stuck his head out the driver's side window. "We're the cavalry!" he shouted.
I ran up to him, jumped onto the running board and pecked a kiss on his grizzled, unshaven cheek. "And you came just when we needed you," I told him. His cheeks blushed as red as the armbands of our foes.
Burnbaum stopped his truck just behind Rick and Luke with Callean walked up to him. "I didn't believe you would make the war," Luke teased.
Burnbaum chuckled. "We would not miss this party. There is too much fun to be had." He nodded at the wounded and dead on the first battlefield. "It seems you have started it without us."
"But you're not too late to join in the fun," Luke assured him. He pointed at the road ahead of us. "Two-thirds of the convoy have escaped. We need your trucks to reach them and have a fighting chance against their guns."
"Then let's not waste any more time here," Stewart spoke up.
"My men will salvage the trucks here and bring up the rear," Callean offered.
Burnbaum glanced past Luke and raised an eyebrow at the stranger. "Who is this we have here? Another Green?"
Callean grinned. "I'm on my own side and have a personal dealing with Lance."
Luke stepped between them. "He's Callean, but formal introductions will be later. We need to hurry. Those trucks were traveling far faster than we can run for long, and I'm sure not only is Lance in one of them but so are the formulas."
"Then climb in," Burnbaum invited us.
"I'll go with those crazies," Emily spoke up as she pointed a rifle at Rick's truck.
Burnbaum frowned. "I loaned him my truck and see what he does? He drives like a madman."
"That would be because he is a madman," I chimed in.
"I resemble that!" Rick shouted.
"We haven't time to bicker," Luke reminded our little ragtag group. He climbed into the rear of Burnbaum's truck and I followed suit. Adam and Emily took the bed of Rick's truck.
Rick let out a holler and Steve let out a whimper. "Let's get them!" he screamed.
He pressed on the gas and burned a little rubber before the truck jumped forward. I heard Burnbaum mutter something about maiming and we followed with the truck convoy and transformed werewolves at our backs. Rick sped around the damaged and abandoned vehicles of Lance's convoy and whipped around the corner. We kept up as best we could and I enjoyed the wind through my hair as we zoomed past the trees. The coming part of the road was carved from gently sloping hills on either side of us so there was a tunnel effect ahead and behind us.
Before we saw our prey Luke grasped my hand. I glanced over to him and saw he faced forward and his lips were pursed together. "Whatever happens keep yourself safe," he instructed me.
I smiled. "Only if you do," I countered.
He didn't smile in return. "I mean it. If either of us doesn't live through the battle then the other must go on," he insisted.
My face fell and I nodded my head. "I promise."
Luke smiled and squeezed my hand. "Good, now prepare for bloodshed. Lance no doubt has his best men ahead of us and-"
He didn't get to finish his sentence before four shadows swooped out from the darkness on our right side. two of them landed in the bed of Rick's truck, and the other two in ours. Luke and I turned around and our eyes widened. The shadows behind us were Alistair and Stacy, and the shadows in the other truck were Stevens and Baker. Their empty eyes told me they weren't here for a happy reunion.
Luke pulled me behind him and growled at the pair. They growled back. In the other truck the fight had already started, and fortunately Stevens and Baker weren't winning against Adam, Emily
, and a screaming Steve. Alistair was the first to attack us. Luke pushed us apart and I clawed at the cab to keep from falling off the edge onto the fast-moving ground beneath the truck tires. The men grappled, and I heard a growl and turned in time to see Stacy lung at me.
Stacy knocked me against the side, but I grabbed her outstretched claws and avoided having my face rearranged for me. "Snap out of this!" I yelled at her. She growled and snapped her jaws at me. "That's not what I meant!"
"Knock them unconscious!" Luke yelled at me. "If we are unable to reach them then we can at least ensure they won't be a hindrance!"
"Easy for you to say!" I yelled back.
Luke had a firm grasp of Alistair and the old wolf's fighting abilities, but Stacy had age and ability up on me. Her powerful jaws chomped closer to my face. I turned away to avoid losing my semi-useful nose. A few inches to my cheek. One inch.
Stacy was wrenched away from me and thrown against the tailgate. Stewart stood over me and offered me a hand. He'd climbed out of the cab and gotten behind her. I smiled and had him pull me up. "Thanks. Another second and I would've known how the Donner party dead felt like," I told him.
Stewart opened his mouth, but Stacy tackled his side and slammed him into the back of the cab. The whole truck shook with the force of the blow and I heard a few of Stewart's ribs crack. I snarled, jumped onto Stacy's back, and did what any intelligent, combative woman would do; I grabbed a chunk of Stacy's long, luxurious, golden hair and gave a good yank. She howled and stumbled back with me still her backpack. Her claws tried to grab me, but I wrapped my legs around her middle and pulled first the left side of her head of hair, then the right, alternating between which claw was closest to me.
Stewart pulled himself out of the impression he'd made in the back of the cab and returned the favor by rushing Stacy and grabbing her around the middle. He pushed her to the bed floor and rolled so they landed on my side. My right leg was pinned beneath Stacy's body and the bed, and a sharp twang in my leg muscles told me Stacy was heavy and I'd just torn something. Stewart and Stacy clawed and bit at each other, and since I was a trapped audience I decided to upgrade myself from spectator to competitor. I grabbed Stacy's hair and knocked her head against the bed. She went limp and I pulled myself free from her body while Stewart hurried the whole four feet over to Luke who still had an Alistair problem.