Page 47 of The General's Captive
“You sure you want to hear this? It was pretty fucking horrendous, Alex.”
“Let me carry the pain with you.” I told him and he closed his eyes as if those words had meant everything to him, then he nodded before explaining,
“The supply run for most part went as smooth as they can go. We found the warehouse, loaded up the supplies and then suddenly darkness started to roll in, it’s like they knew we were coming. As soon as we started to load back into the Jeeps they were there, we didn’t even realise at first as it was so dark, like night had fucking descended.” I inhaled a quick breath.
“Like it did the day of the Rift?” I commented making him flinch.
“Yeah, just like that. Then Jacobs pointed out the small yellow dots hovering around us like stationary fireflies and as Rodriguez moved forward the dots disappeared…it was a fucking creature right in front of our faces blinking!” I sucked back another sharp breath as if I was seeing it for myself. Yellow eyes…I knew what that fucking meant.
“It all happened so fucking quickly, like we all realised what they were at the same time and before we could lift our guns to shoot Rodriguez was gone. His screams pierced the silence and I swear I can still hear the sound of his muscles and bones being ripped apart just as Jacobs lit up the scene with the torch.” A hand flew to my mouth this time, as I uttered a horrified,
“God no.”
“It was fucking brutal! I had never seen anything like it. I would rather have shot blindly into the dark than see what they had done to him in that split second. There was no way we could have saved him, we would have been picking up the pieces for hours.” He said, this voice thick with the emotion as he played it out all over again making me feel bad for pushing.
But then I also knew that he needed to get it off his chest for his own sanity or it would just eat him alive. A feeling I knew well when finally getting to talk about what happened to my uncle. As it hadn’t just been his death that had plagued me, it had been knowing that pieces of him had been left in those woods. That his body would never know a burial or be laid to rest, just like thousands that had lost their lives to the Myths.
“They were werewolves, weren’t they?” I said as it wasn’t hard to guess.
“Yeah, from the description in your book, I would say so.”
“I… I didn’t know they hunted in packs…I am so sorry Riley…if I had known I could have…” At this he took my hand in his and shook his head before saying,
“No, don’t do that Alex, you couldn’t have known and even so there was no warning, nothing to indicate what was coming. This isn’t on you…it’s wasn’t on anyone.” He added making me nod, glad that he didn’t blame himself at least as like he said, there was nothing anyone could have done.
“But I did notice that dark vail you have described in your book before.”
“The darkness?” I questioned.
“Yeah, it just seemed to rise up around them. We sprayed the bastards with bullets but it was like an invisible shield or barrier was protecting them. The bullets were hitting something just not the wolves, and the bullets were just falling to the ground.”
“Christ.” I hissed.
“They nearly snatched Hamilton, but Volkov pushed him away and got a nasty wound to his shoulder. I don’t know what stopped them but they all turned, sniffed the air, and then howled in unison before sprinting away.” My eyes widened at this quick to question why,
“Wait, they just left? Just like that?”
“Yeah, and a fucking good job at that or we all would have ended up like Rodriguez” I shuddered at that, also thankful, as I didn’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to him.
“You never told me how you knew about the werewolves and how you managed to write about one.” He said making me shiver as I thought back to my own terrifying experience and how I came to realise the myths about them were true.
They hated silver.
But then the movies made the idea of making silver bullets easy. However, when you were stuck in the middle of anapocalypse, not so much. Not only did you need a shit ton of silver to melt down, but you also needed the equipment to make them in the first place and it wasn’t exactly a common skill taught in schools.
I released a deep sigh before allowing my mind to take me back to one of the most frightening nights of my life before admitting,
“Because I fought one once.”
Iquickly asked myself how I had made it back here.
On a night of what I could only describe as the worst storm I had ever encountered since the Rift opened; I had taken shelter in what I had hoped was an abandoned house. There was so many of them I had used for the night that I had lost count. Yet each one had left a pang of guilt in my soul. Every single-family photo hanging on the wall, I asked myself if they had made it out? Going so far as to create stories in my mind of them all surviving this Hell together.
But then I would come across the ones that were impossible to fabricate. The ones that held signs of a struggle with blood still staining the floors. The homes that twisted the happy endings as soon as I stumbled across a corpse forcing reality to slam into me.
The worst had been an entire family taken in one swift and brutal moment. The gunshots in their temples telling me that it wasn’t by the hand of monsters born from the Rift, but ones born from this Earth.
I had written about the lives I found here, needing to immortalize them in my journal so as they wouldn’t be forgotten. My tears staining the pages as well as the dirt from my fingers that smudged across my words. I had even taken the time and effort to bury them in their backyard as my heart had hit its limit. Trying to somehow make up for the lack of humanity that took their lives and instead giving it to them in death. Laying them to rest as a family and in the home I could tell they once loved. It had taken me hours but I had pushed past my exhaustion until the job was done.
