“Yeah. I could see…” Nicole inhaled deeply and pointed towards the dark woods. “I saw everything. Everything! There’s something horrible that way,” She said, pushing away my arm. “It hates you more than anything in the world.”

Nicole was pointing to the north-east, back where I left Baxter. Maybe I should have triple tapped.

“Yeah, I should explain that,” I said, scritching Sassy as she returned with some sort of racoon-thing as an offering and dropped it at my feet. I began my explanation of the Reverend Baxter and my short encounter with him, ending with a firm warning against his mind control powers.

Gideon digested the news, his lips pursed in consternation. “What should we do?” He asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I’m gathering my family and heading back to the Village. Once we’re there I’m building the strongest compound I can. Raising a castle against psychopaths and things that creep in the dark.”

“Do you think we’ll be safe?” He asked. Mercy and Nicole watched our conversation with interest. I could see that the others in the gathering were passing rumours along the tables.

Shaking my head, I said “I don’t know. You have three brick buildings here and plenty of lumber. Perhaps you can defend against the things we’ve encountered so far, build shelter for the people. You need a wall, and people who can defend it. You need clean fresh water, a well or a clean creek, land for crops and livestock. Supplies for the winter. It’s going to be hard, I think. You should prepare for the worst. You should be prepared to lose people.”

“What about you?” Mercy asked, leaning forward to meet my eyes.

“I have enough for me and my family to last the winter,” I answered honestly. “I have twenty acres cleared, and if I take the wildlife preserve between my land and the river, that’s another thousand acres to be cleared and defended.” I added, taking a sip from the glass of whiskey. It was poor stuff, but it burned nicely going down.

“What of the people in the town?” Gideon asked. “Or the people from the church you mentioned?”

I frowned. “Look,” I said, blowing out a heavy sigh. “I honestly haven’t thought that far ahead. If people show up, I can’t just turn them away, can I? I’ll do what I can, but my family comes first. I’m sure that every one of you can respect that. Every man should protect his family first and his community next.”

I shrugged, imagining the scenario. In my mind, refugees kept arriving outside the walls I envisioned erected around my property. “If people show up and camp outside my land, that makes them my neighbours, don’t it?”

The table grew silent and we turned our attention back to the still warm stew that sat before us. The tables where the masses had gathered buzzed with low conversation and furtive glances at us.

Nicole finished her bowl and pushed it away. “How did Tommy do whatever it was that animal? Show me how it’s done.” She demanded, looking at me. Her voice was curt, harsh, and it rubbed me the wrong way.

She looked like she was in her mid 20s and my first instinct was to ignore her. I don’t mind helping people, but I’m much more willing when they don’t sound like I owe them something.

“How old are you, Nicole?” I asked, dipping a slice of bread into the stew. “Because you sound like I owe you something right now. I’m not your daddy. I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

Her mouth dropped for just a moment, then closed. “I’m 45 years old,” she said. “And I want to get stronger. Any advantage I can get, I just want to protect my son. Please.”

She’s much older than she looks too. Guideon said he was almost 70. I wonder how old Mercy is.

“I can respect that,” I said, lifting the raccoon [1] Sassy dropped earlier and placing it on the table between us. Nicole’s face wrinkled at the bloody sight. Sassy tends to get a bit bitey when she’s hunting. “This one is filled with yellow motes,” I said. “It should be easy to drink.”

After a couple of minutes explaining and encouraging, she caught on and the yellow motes slipped past her aura. The racoon slowly vanished and left behind a yellow core that I pocketed.

Mercy and Guideon quickly followed suit and learned how to drain beasts. Guideon even managed to selectively drain the motes, leaving behind a pile of bloodless, boneless meat that sent Nicole rushing away from the table.

As the evening turned to night, a campfire was lit which pushed the darkness back with flickering red-gold light. When howls rang out in the woods, everyone gathered the motley collection of cups and bowls and sought shelter inside the chapel for the evening sermon.

“Will you join us?” Gideon asked, offering me a warm smile.

“In just a bit,” I said, finishing the whiskey before chasing it with a swig of water. “I’m going to have Sassy scout out the area and see what’s making such a ruckus. I assume you have guards that keep watch?”

“We do,” He nodded.

“Any ideas what’s howling out there?”

“Red dogs. They’re huge, like wolves,” He said, looking into the shadows of the nearby woods. “They don’t come near the fire, so we keep it burning at night.”

“Red Wolves,” I muttered, pursing my lips. “Bigger than Sassy?” [2]

“The one’s we’ve seen are waist high, so about the same size. They look bigger though.”

“Any special powers?”

“Thankfully, no,” Mercy interrupted. “I awakened my power after the first time they attacked a family pet. They’re actually a bit shy. They never come close to the fire, but you can see their eyes.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, sending Sassy out to scout.

Gideon and Mercy went into the chapel with everyone else, while I stared at the dark woods along with a couple of other men who were keeping watch. I’d ping my aura every minute or so, looking for anything interesting, but nothing caught my attention. I could feel Sassy heading towards the howls. The further she went, the lower the ‘resolution’ became. When she was close, I felt like we shared senses to the point I could smell what she did and see things from her point of view if I closed my eyes. But as she got further away I was left with nothing but a sense of her presence and vague emotions.

She loped through the woods with a gait that quickly ate up the distance. I could see things with a sort of ‘night-vision’ through her eyes, but the further she went, the more it degraded. Eventually, all I could do was sense the general direction she was in and her emotions.

I felt Miguel and Sparky chime in through the link, lending their strength to our bonds. Everything snapped into view just as Sassy encountered her first Red wolf and crouched low, watching it through a thicket.

Sudden movement to the right revealed another wolf, causing Sassy to leap from her concealment and dash through the woods. I watched breathless as she raced between trees with the predators close behind. Her eyes were sensitive to the low light that illuminated the woods in stark black and white as bright as day. I followed mentally as she ran, leaping over fallen logs, across burned areas where people had once lived, evading the pack of howling wolves that followed her.

Then she lept up a tree, digging her claws into the hard bark and scrambling up to a thick bough twenty feet above the ground. There, she waited.

The pack gathered below her, two dozen animals, pacing and slathering as they eyed their prey. Sassy yowled loudly, causing the wolves to bark and snarl below her.

Then my vision went dark and I got the sense that I was elsewhere, a place that was and wasn’t, and suddenly I was back on the ground again and dashing through the underbrush. She had teleported away, leaving the wolves miles away from the church.

Sending emotions of pride and relief through the bond, I rose and headed into the chapel.

Climbing the steps to the wide peristyle that sheltered the thick wood doors, I entered the brick church. Hurricane lamps sputtered near the alter, flicking shadows around the sanctuary. I pulled off my hat as every eye in the building turned to settle on me.

Shoving that discomfort into the pit of my stomach, I marched forward until I reached the front row and took a seat near Mercy, Nicole and her son. Gideon paused at my entrance, giving me a big smile as I took a seat. I returned the smile with a dip of my head and turned my attention to his words.

I dislike organised religion, for personal reasons. The sermon of Gideon was bland in my opinion, offering worn scripture to bandage the fresh spiritual wounds of his congregation. I gave it half my attention as I followed Sassy mentally, watching as she ran through the woods, circling back on herself, and teleporting once again. I could feel that she was tired, but satisfaction leaked through the bond. If those wolves were going to track her, they were in for a bad time.

Standing with the rest of the congregation, I joined them in a hymn that I was familiar with, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, which caused me to reminisce about my grandmother and the time I would spend in church with her.

Damn. I didn’t need those memories. She’s been dead a over a decade now, and I still miss her. I left in the middle of the hymn and went outside to sit on the steps, staring at the aurora blazing overhead.

It’s funny how grief works. When Grammy Carter died, it was like a punch to the gut and it hurt every single day. As time passed, it hurt less, the grief dulled as daily duties distracted me. I would go days, or weeks, without thinking of her until some small memory pulled away the scab, exposing the grief once again.

I sat and chewed old memories until Mercy joined me a few minutes later, sitting on the steps next to me. She didn’t say anything, just sat there while I stared into the flickering sky. “I used to go to church with my grandmother,” I said after awhile. “The hymn reminded me of her. I just wanted to be with my thoughts for a while.”

“Should I leave?” She asked in a quiet voice.

“No,” I said. “It’s okay. You can distract me if you want. Tell me about yourself.”

People love talking about themselves. Just ask a few vague, personal questions and they’ll monopolise the entire evening. Mercy was no different, and she opened up like a flower with a few well placed questions and agreeable noises made at the appropriate times.

By the time the service finished I felt like I had been on a speed date with the young-ish lady next to me. Nearly 40, although she looked in her 20s, never married, no children. Moved back home with her parents when the pandemic hit and her job shut down. They were safe in the congregation, but she worried about her brother who was in the military and stationed overseas.

I had no comfort to offer her, just empty platitudes as the doors opened behind us and people emerged.

I joined Guideon and the other men in the Bachelor building where single men and teenage boys slept, claiming a corner on the floor in his room. The horses had drifted off to sleep, filling a corner of my mind with peaceful emotions of endless sunny fields. Sassy had returned and was curled up near the fire outside.

Stripping in the men’s bathroom, I wiped myself down with a rag, smearing the sweat around on my skin and hopefully removing some of it. Looking in the mirror over the sink, I examined the man who stared back and didn’t recognise him. It was me, a younger me, but it wasn’t. Time had made changes to my face that the magic just couldn’t erase. If I had a younger brother, this is what his face would look like.

Dumping the water in toilet to flush it, I deposited the tin pail outside the door and hung the rag over the edge for the next person making a mental vow that sanitation would be the first priority when I constructed my compound. I felt Sassy stir from the fire and head towards the door, indicating her desire to be let inside.

I let her in and headed back to the room I shared with Guideon. Closing the door behind me, I paused a moment to watch as motes cycled around Guideon’s circulatory system then scatter as I interrupted his concentration.

“It’s a strange feeling, this ‘cultivation’,” he said softly in the dark. “I feel something, and I can feel it respond to my thoughts, but it’s thin, like trying to grab fog.”

Chuckling at the metaphor, I pushed Sassy over and climbed under a blanket, struggling a bit as we fought for the most comfortable position and appropriate share of the blanket. “I can’t imagine not seeing the motes. It makes it so much easier to do anything with them,” I said.

“You have a very powerful gift,” he said, then continued after a moment. “You know what they say about great power, yeah?”

“Yeah, I do,” I replied. “I’ve had my butt handed to me several times so far, so trust me when I say that I don’t feel like I have great power - I’ve just been really lucky so far.”

“I’m sure God has a plan for you,” he said. “And me, I hope. I never expected to live this long, or experience this…rejuvenation. Part of me wants to embrace it as a sign, but I can’t ignore that nothing like this is in the scripture. I just can’t reconcile the two ideas.”

“You have responsibility for these people,” I said, settling back against a horse scented saddle. “You know what they say about great responsibility, yeah?”

Guideon snorted. We chatted in the darkness, sharing anecdotes of our lives, fears and hopes, until dreams separated us.

Footnotes

1. Racoon. Procyon lotor Novus. Yellow core. Mostly harmless. A clever species with opposable thumbs, the racoon seems to be much more intelligent post-apocalypse. While they will flee given opportunity, reports of tool-using tribes are not uncommon. Those reports also include use of crude weapons, traps, strategy, and outright thievery.

2. Red Wolf. Canis rufus rufus Novis. Red core. Minor Threat. Pack animal. Possibly related to the original Louisiana red wolf which was an endangered species. Weighing approximately 150lbs, it is far larger than the originally recorded species. A shy animal, it will attack livestock or if opportunity presents.

Copyright © 2021, Conteur. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter: 117.3:2