Katarina Kills. Part II.
Katarina Kills, excerpts from Dark War: Retribution, has become the most popular group of words that I've posted in the six years of Over da Edge's existence. I get it. Sort of. I enjoy reading it myself. A lot of folks have asked me what happens after the Katarina Kills excerpt. Well, ask no more. There are references in here you might not get. In 25 words... earlier in the novel, Hudson found a strange relic at a Catholic Church (where else?). Subsequently Lycans ambushed Hudson's unit, and Hudson lost the relic. Hudson and Kat are returning to find it. Dark War: Retribution is currently on Kickstarter. The campaign lasts until February 23rd, 2017. We could use your help. You can pledge here
1
They waited until
dark, in the room with the dead Russians. On the bed where they had made love,
the sheets smeared with crimson. Afterward they discovered that the shower
worked. So strange, Hudson thought, to find normalcy in this abnormal world.
Kat dressed in clothes she found in the dresser, again jeans and a tee, pulling
the hoodie on over.
Hudson found
something in the master bedroom. Jeans and a sweater. His fatigues were
unwearable, the dried blood from Kat's chest already rank.
In a back closet
they found a locked gun cabinet. A shotgun, hunting rifle, and a 9mm. Kat took
the 9mm, slipping it into a thigh holster she found hanging beside it,
shrugging. "It'll have to do."
"The shotgun
creates more havoc," Hudson observed.
She found three
clips on a small shelf to the right. "Perhaps."
It was dusk, they
smoked in the living room, waiting for night.
Kat spoke.
"Where is it?"
"We were not
too far from here." Again he recounted the ambush, including the beasts.
"Probably
the same pack."
The glowing tip
bobbed in the dark room as Kat nodded her head. The air smelled foul, the
ammonic odor of urine from Kat's prey spreading through the house. Hudson
replayed the scene, glad they were leaving, then thought of the bed, wished
they weren't.
"What's the
chance we'll see them?" Hudson kept his voice flat.
"Not much,"
Kat replied, "that's not the way those animals operate."
Hudson laughed,
without humor. "No they don't operate that way. They spring ambushes as if
they've been training all their lives, take out sixty-ton tanks like it's
nothing, and assault Soviet prisoner of war camps like a special forces A-Team.
That's the way they operate. I'd say that they are pretty, fucking cleaver
animals."
Another cigarette
on the floor. Carpet this time. Kat ground it with her boot. The smell of
burning carpet mixing with the air's stink. "It's time."
She stepped to
the front door.
"Wait."
She turned.
"Food, I
don't know where we'll get food."
He headed to the
kitchen with the yellow backpack he had found in the daughter's room.
"I can fix
that."
He turned and
looked at her. She stood with her hand on the doorknob. "You don't have to
be human."
For a moment he
stared, her image little more than a silhouette. Then he turned and walked to
the kitchen.
2
Clouds occluded
the sky, and the West Germans still observed the blackout restrictions of their
all-but-conquered government, making the night darker than dark. A chill made
Hudson glad of his field coat, if the temperature affected Kat, she didn't show
it. There were no cars out, and they went on foot, reluctant to draw attention
to themselves. It was but a few miles.
On request, Hudson
once again recounted the Lycan's ambush of the convoy. "How
convenient," Kat replied.
"Not
convenient," Hudson shook his head, "just coincidence."
No reply. He
stared at the back that walked several paces to his front, wondering.
The site wasn't
difficult to find. The stench reached them first. Burned metal, melted plastic,
roasted meat. Even in the darkness Hudson recognized the road's curve.
"Kat, get off
the road." He stepped into the woods, not wishing to stroll into whatever
scavengers might be picking the vehicles' remains. If the night was black, the
woods were a bottle of ink, and Hudson quickly regretted his decision. Barely able to distinguish looming tree from
clear path, at least for the first couple of steps, and then Kat was by him,
striding confidently forward, and he followed in her wake. Both carried
flashlights scrounged from the house, but they would do nothing but give them
away to anyone at the site. A minute later, they crested the small rise
bordering the road.
There were no
scavengers. There was no one. Ten minutes of stillness at the woods edge,
laying on the rise, assured them. A few meters below them the road lay cleared,
shadows hulking by the side. Hudson recognized them. The burnt truck to their
front, now canted in the roadside ditch, the destroyed M-113 beside, but no
tank. Not surprising. Hudson could have driven it off himself. The vehicle was
undamaged, the crew, on the other hand, were eviscerated. The thought somehow
cooled the night's air even further.
"Cover
me," Hudson whispered.
He slid down the
embankment, the dew soaking his jeans. At the bottom he paused, rifle to his
shoulder, eye to the sight, slowly scanning the litany of wrecks. Still
nothing. He dashed to the nearest truck, the vehicle nothing but a charred
wreck. Again the pause. Again nothing.
"Kat,"
he hissed. A moment later she was by his side.
"Where is
it?" she whispered.
"That
M-113," he gestured with the tip of his barrel, still not trusting the
quiet. He stepped off, rifle still at his shoulder. "Eyes peeled."
"Really,
Mike?" She shook her head, muttering. "Four-hundred years I've lived, and he thinks he
knows how to survive?"
Nothing stirred,
nothing lived. Yet, as his squad mates used to say, 'he felt eyes.' He swept
the woods with his rifle's sight. Nothing. The M-113 rested on its tracks, nose
into the embankment, debarkation ramp up, twenty feet distant. Was the ramp
up when the Russians marched them away?
Hudson couldn't
remember, and it didn't really matter, it was up now. At the M-113 he made a
final sweep of the wrecks, the woods, and the road. No one, nothing. What
did you expect? A glance back at Kat. She gave him an arched eyebrow, accompanying hand
gesture, the meaning clear. What are you waiting for?
There were two
ways for troops to exit the M-113. The easiest was by lowering the debarkation
ramp, in essence dropping the entire rear of the armored personnel carrier.
This formed a relatively wide opening through which the troops could exit. A
smaller access hatch, about man sized, formed the left third of the debarkation
ramp. Hudson had only to shift the hatches dogging handle and pull to open the
door.
He stepped to the
hatch, immediately noticing that the dogging handle was in the up, or open
position. He aimed the AK with one hand, opening the door with the other.
"Hi,
Mike."
Mike Hudson lived
in a world of impossibility. He was fighting the Third World War, a war that
the soldiers from both sides thought was improbable. His woman was a 400-year
old vampire who protected him from vicious werewolves and made love to him on
blood-soaked sheets. He found a magical stone. A magical-freaking-stone, just
like something out of The Sword of
Shannara. But this, this…
“What’s the matter, Mike? You look like you’ve
seen a ghost.”Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games, the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any reviewer says, as well as World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, Everyone Dies in the End, and numerous short stories. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell? The games? Well that's Flying Pig Games. Retribution will release in the summer of 2015.
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