Ducking behind the chicken coop, she aimed at the soldiers who were fanning out around the back of the compound. She took them out one by one until her guns no longer held bullets.
Cassie sprinted across the yard into the weapons shed to reload. She quickly ejected the empties and shoved new clips into the chambers of her guns, filling her pockets with extras.
She scanned the scene in the brightening morning. At least two shifted wolves were down, bleeding into the concrete yard. The cafeteria had been blown half apart. Guns blazed from the windows of the bunkhouse. Several wolves were chomping at the remaining soldiers who ran from their SUVs.
Cassie strode to Rafe’s location, her guns at the ready. A soldier crawled across the black concrete behind him, slowly raising his gun to shoot Rafe in the back. Cassie shot one bullet straight into his brain. Rafe swung around, ripping a soldier by the arm along with him. The soldier screamed. Cassie shot him, and he stilled, falling from Rafe’s mighty jaws.
A few final screams sounded from the wounded. A gun shot in the distance. Stillness. Rafe shifted, standing naked and bloody before her. His face was dark and grave. He looked around at his fallen pack mates, gritting his teeth through the blood that dripped down his cheek.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, staring straight at her, his fists clenched.
“No. But. I killed… A lot.” She let her guns crash to the ground, and she sank next to them, covering her eyes as the tears gushed through.
Chapter 14
“Don’t. This is war. You are a warrior. A true warrior. Come. We must count the dead and tend to the wounded.”
He pulled her to her feet, walking naked and barefoot through the yard, now littered with debris, bodies, and blood.
He took her into the bunkhouse and deposited her on her bed, leaving briefly, only to return dressed and mostly clean. She’d sat staring at the wall all the time he’d been gone. She looked up at him, her eyes swollen from shedding silent tears.
“Enough of this. Don’t mourn the enemy. We’ve lost five pack mates today. I won’t tolerate sorrow for our attackers. We are meeting across the yard in my bunker. Now, come.”
Cassie followed Rafe across the ruined yard. The sun was bright, illuminating the destruction of their world. The calf bleated sorrowfully over its dead mother. The chickens had escaped their pen to wander into the pasture. She scooped up her guns on the way across the yard.
Inside the meeting room at Rafe’s bunkhouse, she met the drawn faces of the survivors. Only fifteen wolves remained. Selina, Neil, and Clark had survived, but she could not find Bethany among them.
Selina’s eyes were red, and her lips pressed together in a hard line. Neil’s dark eyes were as black as coal, shadowed by his deep scowl. Clark hung back in the corner, staring at the floor, rocking back and forth with his arms folded around his chest.
“Neil and I spoke about retreating after the zombie attack but decided against it. The compound has been compromised. We cannot defend it from another attack from the human soldiers. We will have to travel to our old location and regroup there.”
“Where did they come from?” Selina wailed. The rest of the group nodded in acknowledgment of her question.
“They came from one of the domes, no doubt. We have reason to believe that the humans in the domes are connected to the alien species that has been patrolling our skies since the end of the war.”
“She brought them here,” said Clark, lifting his finger to point at Cassie. Cassie’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open in shock.
“What are you accusing me of, Clark?” she barked.
“No one is accusing you of anything, Cassandra. Cassandra is a valuable asset to this pack. She’s given advanced warning for both attacks in the past several days, and her weapon skills have improved a million fold. I don’t want to hear of anyone disparaging her.”
“She didn’t warn us fast enough,” said Clark, still rocking back and forth while hugging himself.
“And what did you do during the battle, Clark? Run the fuck away again?”
“Enough!” Rafe’s voice rumbled through the room like thunder. “We will pack up provisions and go to our former location. No bickering. Get it done. We take all the weapons and all the food.”
“Where are we going?” asked Cassie, her voice almost at a whisper.
“South. To the desert.”
“All right, pack, you heard your alpha. Move out. We’re taking all five SUVs. Pack all the medical supplies, food items, clothing, the water filtration system, batteries, portable solar cells, fuel, and weapons. You know the drill. Let’s go!” Neil clapped his hands together and continued shouting orders at the pack while Rafe ducked into the terminal room.
Cassie followed Rafe and watched him as he unplugged his computers. “Are you bringing this?”
“Yes. There is no other way to get inside The Program. We need to get in there to find out what their motives are. There are still so many unanswered questions.”
“My mother said it isn’t a computer program. It’s some kind of inter-dimensional rift.”
Rafe stared at her, his face blank, and then he nodded, looking down at a cable. He pulled it out and wrapped it around his elbow and hand into a neat loop.
“Yes,” he said. “I gathered as much. I don’t get nearly as clear an image as you do. After I scavenged the hard drive from a destroyed dome in the desert and found the serum, I learned some things through the pipeline. Others had gone inside. Witches even. There is a group who can use The Program even more successfully than you can. They can travel in time, jump through space, universes, dimensions. They’ve had some luck affecting their own reality when they come back. And they can speak to the dead. I see you have some of the same skills as those witches, though yours are slightly different. Maybe not so intense. You use only your mind, no magic.”
“Wait. What?”
“There is no time to explain everything. You are a psychic so you can access the fourth dimension even without magic. That’s all you need to know. That woman, who you thought was a hologram, is your mother. Her spirit anyway.”
“She said some Council of the Seventh House gave me a gift.”
“I’ve heard rumors about them.”
“But what are they?”
“Rafe, we need to decide if we are taking the larger water filtration system or just the portable one,” said Neil, standing in the doorway, looking hurried and winded.
“Just pack the small one. Cassandra, go help Neil. We can talk about this on the road. Now isn’t the time. There is too much to be done.”
Cassie followed Neil to the kitchens to help several shifters pack the food items. She carried huge boxes of spaghetti noodles, dried beans, and canned goods into the back of an SUV. They moved almost everything from the dry storage into the backs of two vans.
Neil, Selina, and a few others were packing the guns and swords into another car. Neil looked up at the wailing calf standing over his dead mother in the pasture. Without hesitation, Neil took out a gun and shot the small creature between the eyes.
Cassie jumped, tears fighting with rage.
“What did you do that for!” she screamed through the rising sunshine. Birds broke from a nearby evergreen grove. Neil put his hand on his hip and frowned at her from across the yard.
“We can’t take it with us. It will die on its own. Do you want it to suffer?” he yelled back.
She turned away, her tender heart broken. She had killed today and would probably kill again. Tears dripped from her eyes like rain. The others packing the food narrowed their eyes at her. Maybe werewolves didn’t feel tenderness for baby animals.
“Hurry up. We need to get out of here before noon,” said Meredith the cook, a middle-aged woman with fine lines around her eyes and a plump behind. Cassie wiped the tears from her eyes with little success. They kept flowing, but she continued to work until everything was packed.
As noon approached, they drove all the SUVs into a
tightly packed convoy and went through a checklist. Rafe read off items, and Neil checked with each team to make sure everything was accounted for.
After they were done checking the cargo, the pack piled into the SUVs and drove down the cracked pavement onto the main road.
Chapter 15
The convoy drove through the nearest abandoned town and turned onto the rutted interstate. Cassie rode in the passenger seat of the front SUV with Rafe driving. Selina sat in the backseat with Meredith and Clark, the jerk.
Rafe was able to play old MP3s from before the war on the car stereo, although Cassie really had to question his taste in music. She never would have guessed that Rafe liked classic 1990s hip-hop. The Beastie Boys? Come on.
They’d already listened to “Sabotage” six times as they drove down the narrow mountain highway. Cassie rolled her eyes and gazed out the window. Rafe bobbed his head up and down and put the stupid song on replay again. At least the view was beautiful because she was beginning to question her attraction to the pack alpha. He knew literally all the words, and he was not a good rapper. They crested the hill and started to descend just as Rafe and the Beastie Boys sang “Awww.” This was definitely a side of him she’d never seen before.
Cassie was beginning to have flashbacks to the horrible road trips she’d taken with her parents before the war. Rafe went to put the song on replay again, and Cassie smacked his hand. Everyone in the backseat said “Thank you!” simultaneously.
“Hey, I’m your alpha!” Rafe rumbled.
“You aren’t the alpha of the stereo. You’re going to have a mutiny on your hands if you don’t change the album, like, now,” Cassie warned. They were trapped in a car with Pyramid Corp on their trail; at least he could not torture them with this dumb music.
Selina who had been stone cold since Toby’s death giggled with Meredith in the backseat. Clark shifted in his seat and said, “No comment.”
“Fine, I’ll ignore your insubordination for now. What do you want to listen to?” he muttered as he gripped the steering wheel, looking straight ahead. Cassie grabbed his music device and flipped through the songs.
“Everything on this is terrible, Rafe. Don’t you listen to anything good?”
“What kind of music do you like? Boy bands?”
“Sometimes… I like a lot of things. You seem to only like white rappers from a million years ago. Vanilla Ice, Rafe? Really?”
Selina and Meredith broke into hysterics in the backseat, and Clark heaved a loud sigh.
“What?” Rafe asked as if he didn’t know.
Cassie started giggling with the other women, and before long they were all belly laughing, even Clark. Cassie had her eyes pressed closed, gripping her stomach from the pain of her laugher when Rafe slammed on the breaks.
The car went deadly silent, and Cassie opened her eyes to see why. In front of them stood a tribe of naked humans. Their hair was long and braided with feathers and beads. They held no weapons, but the look in their eyes was deadly.
“Cougars,” said Rafe, cutting the motor. He opened the door and got ready to jump out.
“Wait!” Cassie called after him.
“What? I have to talk to them.”
She opened her own door and followed Rafe along with the rest of the pack. The leader of the cougars stood with his arms folded over his heavy chest. His light brown skin glistened in the sunlight. A woman stood by him, almost as tall as he was; her long blond hair tumbled down her back, intertwined with small braids, beads, feathers, and bones.
“We do not grant you passage through our territory, wolves. Turn around and go back to your human compound.”
Rafe growled, his fingers extending slightly into claws. “We’ve been attacked by the humans from the dome. Our compound was destroyed. Now we are headed to our fallout shelter in the desert. We ask permission to cross your territory. We have swords, guns, food. We are willing to trade. Name the price.” Rafe’s words were tight but sincere. Cassie could tell there was something going on between them, but she couldn’t tell what.
“You’re problems are not our problems, and you have nothing we want. The Earth provides for Her children. We do not live like humans, wolf. That is your problem. Holding on to the old ways. Time to adapt or the Earth will gobble you up to digest in Her belly.”
“There are greater forces at work here, cougar. If we revert to animals, we won’t be able to defend ourselves against those with greater technology. You can’t even defend against the zombies without swords. What do you do when they come after your pride? Run up a tree?”
The cougars’ leader growled at Rafe, showing elongated canine teeth. Rafe growled back. This exchange was not going anywhere. Cassie wanted to step in, but she had no place here. All she could do was watch.
“We’ve all seen the ships in the sky. The creatures that fly those ships are in league with the humans from the domes. If we don’t find a way to defend ourselves against them, none of us will survive,” said Rafe.
The cougar’s chest deflated visibly. “We have seen the flying ships like all of you,” he said. The rest of his pride nodded. “We do not know what to make of them.”
“We aren’t entirely sure yet either,” said Rafe, rubbing the back of his neck. “My sources suggest that they were behind the war.”
“What?” the cougar said, his eyes growing wide. “How is that possible? We saw the war with our own eyes.”
“None of us can be sure. We don’t even know what they want,” said Neil.
“I do,” said Cassie, her voice small.
“What?” said the cougar. He leaned toward her and sniffed the air. “You travel with a human. How are we to know you aren’t working with the space men as well?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Rafe.
“You will not pass.”
“If it’s a fight you want, then it’s a fight you’ll get.” Rafe shifted. The seams of his clothing popped as his body contorted and expanded into his giant werewolf form.
The cougars shifted with less constriction as the other wolves followed Rafe’s lead. There were an even number of cougars and wolves, but a shifter fight was not exactly on Cassie’s list of road trip games.
As Rafe lunged for the clan leader, Cassie scurried back to the car looking for her guns. She’d packed them in a backpack but couldn’t remember whether she’d put them in with her bras or with her lady hygiene products. She rummaged through the bag until she found the right pocket.
With the loaded weapons in her hands, something came over her. She felt invincible, strong, warrior-like. She strode toward the battling shifters. Teeth and fur flew; blood seeped onto the broken pavement.
She popped a warning shot into the air and aimed her weapons at the alpha cougar and his mate. He saw her loaded gun and disengaged from Rafe, shifting back to human form.
His naked body rippled with muscle. Broad shoulders tapered into a narrow waist that pointed toward his endowment. Cassie had to pull her eyes away and keep her gun aimed at his heart. The other cougars and wolves shifted back to human form. Some were bleeding. Everyone was breathing heavily.
“So, you bring a human with a gun to our fight. Typical wolf behavior,” the cougar leader spit out.
“This has nothing to do with him,” Cassie yelled. “You’re too stupid and stubborn to listen for two seconds. I lived in a dome. I know what it’s like. The human kids in there are brainwashed. I was brainwashed. It was as if I couldn’t feel anything. I just went around like a robot. But I know what they’re doing in there!” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes as she yelled at the pride and pack of naked shifters. Her hands shook, but she kept her guns aimed true. “They’re mating girls with those, those vampire aliens. It’s so disgusting. Those monsters are raping girls when they are unconscious. It could have happened to me, but I got out!”
Everyone went quiet and still. All eyes were on Cassie, who was crying. Her guns were still trained on the cougar leader and his lady.
&nb
sp; “Cassie,” said Selina. “I had no idea.”
Cassie used one hand to wipe her eye but pointed the gun right back at the cougar. “Pretty fucked up, huh?”
The cougar leader raised his hands to his chest level with his palms out. His eyes betrayed his inner feelings. Everyone was just as shocked.
“All right,” he said, stepping back. “We will let you through this time. But don’t come back here. Next time we won’t take it so easy on you.”
The pride shifted and ran up an embankment and into the forest.
Cassie finally lowered her Glocks and doubled over, resting the butt of the guns on her knees as she sucked air into her lungs in long, shuttering breaths.
“Selina, help her back into the car,” said Rafe. The entire pack’s clothing had been torn to shreds. Everyone pulled a change of clothes out of their personal bags and slipped into them on the side of the highway.
Chapter 16
The convoy continued its trek through cougar country. No one spoke. Cassie used her shirtsleeve to dry the still-flowing tears from her eyes. Damn emotions. The sooner she could get them under control the better. She’d always been sensitive before the war, but this was ridiculous. She felt as if her emotions were erupting from deep within her like an overheated volcano.
Cassie watched out the front window as the deep green conifer forests and pale green groves of aspens flew by. The blur of the road lulled her into a restfulness she hadn’t felt since leaving the dome. Every once in a while, Rafe had to slow down to avoid a massive pothole in the road, and everyone hung on while he maneuvered through it.
The sun tipped toward the west, and they parked at a pre-war rest stop in one of the national parks. There were putrid restrooms, but everyone chose instead to use the woods. A river ran along the edge of what was once a manicured lawn that had become overgrown with tall native grasses and wildflowers.