The Breaking

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Every time she looked up from the back of the red pickup, Paige felt as if she was farther from civilization. Atoka was still there, but its buildings were husks. Some were on fire. Most were broken to one degree or another. Claw marks had been scratched onto just about every surface and the only things that moved were being pushed around by the wind.

“Take a look around,” Burke said while running alongside the pickup. “This is what every city will look like if the Full Bloods have their way.”

“Why would they want things to be like this?” Milosh asked.

Paige flipped her sickle in her hand. Although her fingers weren’t as nimble as they’d been before her injury, they compensated by closing around the handle with an even stronger grip than before. “If we live until tomorrow, we can ask them.”

“If there’s any of those Full Blood assholes left to ask,” the Amriany snarled.

“That’s the spirit.”

They drove to the paint store to pick up the bait mixture that had been mixed up earlier. It was stored in all the containers they could scrounge from nearby houses and garbage cans, ranging from plastic water bottles to canteens and an insulated iced tea jug. Anything that could hold the viscous mixture without spilling it or allowing its scent to sully the air before it was needed was put to use. As they piled back into both trucks, those containers were divvied out to Skinner and Amriany alike.

“Come here, mole man!” Bill shouted.

Sighing reluctantly, Burke approached the passenger side of the red truck. The closer the Mongrel got, the more the bristly hairs along his back stood up. When he was within a few feet of the window, he was splashed with a slimy load of the pungent bait mixture. He bared his teeth, which only allowed some of the rancid gel to trickle into his mouth. “That shit’s gonna make me puke!”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Bill said. “Run around town and find as many Half Breeds as you can. Shouldn’t be hard with that stuff. Get them to follow you, and bring them to us. When it looks like we can’t handle any more, take them to the reservoir. Got it?”

The Mongrel grunted. “Could have warned me before splashing that shit on me.”

“Would that have made it smell any better? Just don’t do any tunneling or you’ll wipe it off.”

Paige unscrewed a plastic container she’d taken from Ginger’s kitchen that had been used to hold the pretzel sticks she and the other Skinners had devoured. “And tell Quinn to send any of the others over to us so they can do the same.” When she saw the resistant look on the Mongrel’s face, she added, “You said you guys wanted to help. This is what needs to be done.” Some of the howling in the vicinity stopped and was replaced by excited, panting breaths. “I’d be quick about it too. Sounds like someone’s already picked up our scent.” With that, Paige turned the container over and dumped its contents onto the side of the truck.

“You’re not getting that shit on my baby, are you?” Al said from the driver’s seat.

“Not at all,” Paige told him. “Get moving.”

The truck lurched forward, forcing her to sit down and brace herself with her feet against the interior of the bed. As they picked up speed, she let the large empty container roll around near the tailgate so she could pick up the water bottles. She tossed one to Milosh, who was in the back with her, and handed another to Bill through the little sliding window that opened into the cab. He took it and jammed it into the cup holder so he could tend to his hunting rifle. It was a large caliber model that Paige didn’t recognize, although she was certain Cole would have known it just by the scope. The sickle was trapped beneath her foot like a long-lost friend.

On the edge of the parking lot, Quinn threw a fit as Jesse doused her in more of the bait mixture. Nadya waved to Paige and climbed into the green pickup. By the time Al rounded the next corner, Jesse was gunning the other truck’s engine and heading for the opposite end of town.

Gail ran up to the red truck on Paige’s side, moving on all fours with every bit of the feline grace that her form suggested. When she looked up, she snarled in a voice that was barely understandable through her needlelike fangs. “Bait,” was all she said.

Paige obliged her by squirting some of the stuff onto the Mongrel. Farther down East Court Street, larger paws scraped against the cement. She drew her Beretta and braced herself against a pipe that had been welded into the bed to be used as a handle. “All of you, go!”

Gail scampered past the truck to rush headlong into the approaching Half Breeds. The werewolves barked at her and bared their fangs, allowing strings of drool to trail from their mouths as they lowered their heads and quickened their pace. Even with her unnatural speed, Gail was barely able to veer away from the creatures before being clipped by greedy, snapping jaws. Three of the five Half Breeds veered off to chase her, while the others charged at the truck. Once they got a healthier whiff of the bait Paige had applied to the pickup, they became so anxious to chase it that their paws slid against the gritty street in their haste to circle around it.

By the time they made it to South Kentucky Avenue, Al had quite the following. Half Breeds relentlessly pursued the pickup, sideswiping telephone poles and streetlights in their haste to try and keep up with his erratic driving. More werewolves joined them as the main group fanned out and put some real steam into their strides in an effort to catch up.

“I think maybe you didn’t think this through,” Milosh said.

Paige held her Beretta in one hand and one of Bill’s .45s in the other. “Then why did you follow me?”

“At this point,” he said while waving his stump at her, “there’s not much else to lose.”

She waved her scarred and nearly petrified right arm at him and said, “I know how you feel. Since you seem to be doing just fine, stop your bitching and start shooting some of these things.” Leading by example, she turned to point both pistols over the side of the truck and pulled the triggers.

Milosh’s left stump had been cleaned and redressed by one of the Mongrels. There was always a medic in their packs, along with other vital members of a traveling community, including trackers and diggers. The only reason he was up and conscious was because of the Amriany healing serums that had been pumped into him. Paige knew he was going to crash and crash hard when the initial buzz wore off. If they were alive for that moment, she would be more than happy to crash along with him. For now, Milosh gripped one of Al’s hunting rifles and used his stump to steady the barrel. The Covid Accura .50 caliber fit snugly against his shoulder and made a satisfying crack as it went off. Even more satisfying was the sight of a Half Breed stumbling and rolling into the werewolf beside it as the round caught it low in its chest.

“Feeling better now?” Paige asked while pressing her side against the truck bed in order to fire three quick shots from the Beretta.

The Amriany nodded and showed her a wide, toothy grin. “This is the perfect cure. A little hair of the dog that bit me, no?”

“And then some. Watch your right.”

Milosh shifted his aim in that direction to find another group of Half Breeds charging down Sixth Street and skidding around the corner to fall into step with some of the others. His rifle sent a few carefully placed .50 caliber rounds into the front of the group. Between thundering shots he shouted, “I like this gun!”

Paige chuckled at his enthusiasm and took a few shots of her own. When the Beretta ran dry, she placed it under her foot and switched the .45 into her right hand. Half Breeds were closing in, despite the gunfire being thrown at them. They were only prevented from overtaking the truck by the sharp turns Al took and their own tendency to get in each other’s way in their haste to follow the malodorous bait. Once the Half Breeds had the scent in their nostrils, they would keep coming at them even if they lost a limb or two.

When her .45 ran dry, Paige reloaded both guns using spare magazines she’d prepared and tucked into her pockets back at the paint store. On many occasions, she and Cole had argued about gripping a pistol in each hand and firing away. He called it dual-wielding. She called it a great way to waste a lot of ammo without hitting much of anything. His defense boiled down to how cool it looked. Paige had to admit, when she fired both pistols at the werewolves that were now close enough to scrape their tusks against the side of the truck, she did feel pretty cool.

The guns bucked against her burning palms, spitting point-blank fire at the werewolves. When one Half Breed took a round in the face, it fell behind so another could charge forward and take its place. The motion of the truck and the constantly changing field of targets made it difficult to hit her mark every time, but even the misses did some damage as they ricocheted off the street and into another warm body. But somehow, no matter how many hits she scored, the werewolves were even closer by the time her pistols ran dry again.

“Milosh!” she shouted while ejecting the empty magazines one at a time.

The Amriany glanced over at her, spotted the pair of Half Breeds that had climbed onto the side of the truck and swung his rifle in that direction. Paige lay down and was forced to look up at the werewolves that in turn were looking down at her after scaling the side of the truck. Drool spattered against her face, dripping from their anxious jaws. When one of them hiked a third paw over the side of the truck, a .50 caliber round exploded from Milosh’s rifle and hit it like a sledgehammer. That werewolf collided with the other one, sending both of them to the street, to be swallowed by a growing wave of creatures.

Al steered onto Dickerson Avenue and headed south. His route would bring them to Route 3, through the main stretch of town, and back north to complete their circuit. More Half Breeds following them meant fewer of the creatures hunting the human survivors of Atoka. “There’s more of them than I thought!” Paige shouted.

Milosh fired another round at a Half Breed that had leapt forward to grab the tailgate with both front paws. The bullet chipped its tusk and snapped its head to one side, but didn’t knock it down. The werewolf set one paw inside the truck before the next .50 caliber round knocked it back into the street. “We took too much time preparing,” he said.

“We needed that time or else we couldn’t have done much of anything about these things.”

“Then follow your own advice,” he said while clumsily fitting fresh rounds into the rifle he balanced against his knees. “Stop bitching.”

No matter how much she wanted to, Paige couldn’t argue with that logic. Once her pistols were reloaded, she holstered the Beretta so she could grab the sickle she’d kept trapped beneath her foot. She braced herself to keep from sliding across the bed as the pickup took a hard right onto Route 3. The sudden swerve caused the Half Breeds climbing Milosh’s side of the truck to either drop off or fall into the bed. Paige shouted for him to drop, and he tucked himself into a fetal ball as she leaned forward to sweep the curved blade in a deadly arc. Even though she’d managed to log some impressive hours with the machete, the shape and balance of the weapon was finally restored to its former glory. The sickle blade sliced across the eyes of one Half Breed and dug a deep trench across the chest of another. As those two yelped and recoiled, a third pulled itself forward until all four paws were in the bed of the truck.

Paige swung the sickle until her arm was bent across her face. Gritting her teeth, she sent the curved blade on a return path that drove its tip into the Half Breed’s shoulder. The edge that had been treated with fragments of the Blood Blade allowed the weapon to burrow several inches down, and the thorns in its handle kept the weapon in her grasp as the creature tried to attack Milosh. Its claws flailed wildly, scraping the Amriany’s shoulders and back to tear away layers of clothing before reaching his battered tactical vest. The wounds Milosh sustained were ugly, but nothing that the healing serums in his system couldn’t handle. Paige grabbed her weapon with both hands and leaned back. pulling at the Half Breed. The creature snapped its mouth shut within an inch of its meal before a charmed dagger punctured its forehead and scraped against the sickle blade within its skull. Milosh swore at it, twisted his dagger and then pulled it out.

“Al!” Paige shouted. “See if you can shake these things off. They’re scratching your paint job!”

She wasn’t sure which part of her warning ticked Al off the most: mortal danger to his partners or the damage to his truck. He shouted a string of obscenities while sending the pickup into a lurching series of turns that brought them careening up South Dunbar, around a tight corner, down Lincoln Street, and back onto Route 3. Since she and Milosh were already laying flat inside the truck bed, they were able to stay there while the Half Breeds were forced to struggle just to maintain their grip. Even with claws that could dig through metal, most of them were tossed to the street. The few creatures that tried to run in front of the truck were turned into living speed bumps that jostled Paige and Milosh even more.

Paige had kept hold of the Half Breed she’d impaled with her sickle. After twisting the weapon to make sure the werewolf was dead, she finally let go with her left hand so she could grab one of the squeeze bottles. “Get ready on that tailgate,” she said.

Milosh slid his knife back into its scabbard and scooted toward the rear of the truck until one foot was propped against the edge of the frame and the other was flat against the back.

Paige dumped a good portion of bait mixture onto the dead Half Breed and then pulled the sickle free. “Hit it!”

Milosh popped the latch and opened the tailgate with a solid kick. Then he pulled himself against the side of the truck bed so his body pinned the rifle in place and a path was cleared for her to shove the Half Breed out. She didn’t know where she got the strength to move the heavy creature, but her muscles barely protested as she pushed the carcass toward the back of the truck. The vehicle’s momentum and erratic movement went a long way in sending the dead werewolf into the anxious faces of the creatures running directly behind them. Knowing that some of the Half Breeds might try to jump up into the truck while it was open, she unscrewed the squeeze bottle and tossed it at the ravaging crowd so the rest of the mixture was sprayed across as many of the creatures as possible.

Propping herself onto her knees, she swung her sickle out and down to hook the tailgate beneath its curved blade. All she needed to do then was fall back to lock it into place. Since Al was constantly checking his rearview mirror, he knew when to steady his course so as not to throw her out along with the carcass they’d just unloaded. She grabbed the side of the bed and watched chaos unfold among the Half Breeds.

Most of the creatures swarmed the baited carcass. Others splintered into smaller groups to chase creatures with the mixture spattered on their coats. The newer breed definitely had a keener sense of smell than the previous generation and were driven beyond frenzy as they got closer to the mixture. One of the Half Breeds that had been sprayed by the water bottle ran in circles and flopped on its back like a dog trying to grind an itchy spot against the floor. It twisted itself into a pretzel in its attempt to gnaw at the bait and was quickly overtaken by its brethren as the overzealous werewolves ripped it to pieces. As the green pickup carrying Nadya and Jesse sped down a nearby street, more Half Breeds followed it onto northbound I-69 and led a couple dozen others in that direction.

Even with the road momentarily cleared, Paige knew better than to celebrate. She flipped the sickle into the bed and trapped it once again beneath her foot. “Where are we headed, Al?”

“Straight through town on Mississippi Avenue. Don’t know how far we’ll make it before one of those damn things shreds a tire.”

Paige winced. She hadn’t thought of that. While making a suicide drive through a town infested by shapeshifters, getting a flat tire seemed almost too common a problem to consider. Even so, anything that brought the truck to a halt would be one hell of a serious situation. “How far is the reservoir?” she asked.

“Just a few miles north of town. Getting there is still pretty sketchy considering how much we’ll have to plow through.”

“Don’t think about that,” she told him while popping the top off another squeeze bottle. She sent it pinwheeling into some trees at the intersection where Liberty Road met Mississippi Avenue. Some of the Half Breeds peeled away from chasing the truck, but the ones that remained had their sights set on her and would not be diverted. To make matters worse, some creatures emerged from those same trees to either attack the container of bait mixture or replace the Half Breeds that had broken off their pursuit.

Al turned to look over his shoulder. There was a maniacal glint in his eye when he said, “Give the gimp something to hang onto.”

“What?” Before Milosh could fire back with anything more than that, he was tossed from one side of the bed to another. He and Paige rattled around as the pickup tore through a tight series of turns that sent it between groups of Half Breeds, over refuse scattered in the road, into the dirt beside the road, over a set of low bumps, and finally back onto northbound Mississippi Avenue. Once there, Al slammed his foot onto the accelerator and cranked the knob of his stereo. If he was going to drive into hell, there wasn’t any reason why he shouldn’t hear some Tom Petty along the way.

It took a few seconds for her to reorient herself, and then Paige sat upright and grabbed onto the side of the bed. Most of the light in Atoka came from whatever spilled down from the moon. Even though it wasn’t full, the pale glow was especially dazzling. To many people in other parts of the world, it must have been a beautiful sight. From where she was sitting, however, the moon made Atoka look like death frozen over. Many of the town’s lights were off and an overwhelming percentage of those that did shine were sputtering to stay that way. Smoke rose from fires in a few different locations, and whenever she spotted another human being in the distance, that person was cut down by the rampaging beasts that had overtaken the town. In some houses or beneath a few darkened stores, people were huddled just like the ones jammed into Waggoner’s panic room. For all she knew, the redhead with the Tupperware, those families, and even Waggoner were already dead. Even worse, they could have been among the Half Breeds being led to the reservoir.

Paige reached over to help Milosh get back into a seated position with his back braced against the wheel well. Unlike the other times she’d tried to help him, the Amriany accepted her efforts. “We shouldn’t be leaving this place,” she said in a voice she thought would be too quiet to be heard over the truck’s engine and the snarling of her countless shapeshifter pursuers.

Having reloaded the rifle and steadied himself so he could sight effectively along its barrel, he replied, “We aren’t going far.”

“But there’s people who can still be saved. The Mongrels probably need our help.”

“Plenty of people need help. There will always be someone to save. When you watch the news on television, all you see are those in need, and people like us are always thinking of ways to help them. You know what we have to do?”

“What?”

Milosh shifted and grunted as the heavy hunting rifle weighed down the tender stump of his left arm. “We need to stop watching the news.”

She would have chuckled at that if she hadn’t been forced to hang on for dear life as Al swerved to avoid running into a wall of Half Breeds. The truck took the corner and headed north.

“Did you ever hear of a village called Bruusk?” Milosh asked.

Since the green pickup had helped take some of the pressure off them, Paige said, “No.”

“They were being terrorized by Nymar, and three good Amriany refused to leave even when more and more of the villagers were turned.”

“This had better be a quick story,” Paige said. “We’re getting close to the Full Bloods.”

“All three Amriany, along with every last villager, died because none of them knew when to leave. How’s that for a short story? This is the case now. It is time to leave, and if we don’t, we die.”

Paige hadn’t allowed herself to feel guilty over decisions she’d made for a long time. There were things that needed to be done, and she did them as best as she could. That’s all there was to it, and that was usually enough to get her through the night.

It was going to take a lot more than that to get her through this night.