Fenrir's Fangs

Chapter. 2
Darkness Incarnate.
Feelings of Severance.


Wolf’s heart pounded and her armor pumped faster and faster to keep her cool. She couldn’t stop, if she did that was the end, the horde chased her and she wasn’t sure if she was still going the right way. Her hand was clenched on her pistol, knuckles white and enflamed, but the weapon was utterly useless, she had expended what little ammunition she had brought with her on the creature that followed her, but to no avail, it still came after her, along with more sprinting stenches than she could count. The ground shook with every foot fall of the creature and she couldn’t help but wonder where Omen was, she had lost him after the alleyway, and when she turned around to find him he was totally gone.


She rounded the corner and continued to run, her breathing was ragged and she wasn’t going to be able to continue for much longer. She began to realize that it was a lost cause, she could not continue to run, and they could. When she stopped they would fall upon her and eat her alive, that was inevitable at this point. She ran past the school, and the memories came back, but she could not cry for him at this moment, now was not the time and she knew it, but it didn’t help her cause. She rounded the corner of the school and hid behind some of the rubble to catch a breath, but they say her and she had to start running again.

She continued to run on and on for blocks it seemed when the low rumble of a tank engine came to her and she smiled in relief. The tank rounded the corner the turret aimed directly over her head and fired off a round that singed her hair and knocked her over onto the asphalt. The shot hit the creature in the chest and sprayed the horde below it in chucks, killing more than a few. The man came out of the turret once again and began firing the fifty again. The large caliber bullets ended the horde’s advance as heads exploded and limbs flew.

Smoke rose from the barrel as the man hopped out of the turret and climbed down the tank. “Names Murphy.” he said as he helped Wolf up. His mesh armor was pitted and well used and, the cargo pants he wore were torn and had seen better days, but his green eyes still glinted with hope and verbosity. “Where’s your friend?” he asked her with a raised eyebrow. “ I lost him after you saved us the first time, I don’t know where he went.” Wolf said with a tear in her eye.


Murphy wasn’t entirely sure what to do about the woman standing in front of him on the verge of breaking down. Slowly he reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder. “We can go looking for him.” he said and pulled her towards the tank. Wolf sighed heavily and grasped the hand offered to help her into the heavy vehicle. After closing the door Murphy started the engine and the tank roared to life sounding much like an angered demon woken from it’s eternal slumber. As they traveled the nearly empty streets searching for Omen the steady vibration caused by the treads on the pavement began to have an effect on Wolf and her eyes began to close, despite her best efforts to stay alert exhaustion and the vibrating hum of the tank had their way and Wolf was soon fast asleep slumped up against the door. Murphy was about to say something to her about where they should search first but stopped short when he noticed that the woman was no longer aware of her surroundings. He swung the tank clear of a large pile of rubble on a corner and turned back towards the direction in which he had last seen Wolf’s companion. He figured the best place to start would be in the direction opposite of that which he had gone earlier when he found the woman staring into the horde he had just obliterated. They passed the gas station where he had helped the two strangers just a few hours earlier and continued to rumble slowly down the street past ruined buildings many with heaps of debris clogging doorways and stairwells. The streets were devoid of any sign of life, no zombies and of course no people. Dead plants hung in baskets on balconies and ivy that had once been green and vibrant hung in tattered shreds from porches as they passed into a residential area. Boarded windows and cars with flattened tires were solemn reminders of a once beautiful neighborhood no longer full of the sounds of life.

Wolf was standing in the front yard-watching Omen digging holes with Jake so they could put up the new swing set he had gotten for his birthday. The boy was giggling happily at an earthworm his father had dug up and deposited in his hand, both ends of it dangling from his small fist. Wolf went inside to get a pitcher of juice and make some sandwiches for the “Hard working men”. She hummed a tune to herself as she slopped mustard out of the jar and onto thick slices of home made bread and marked out the beat dropping big chunks of ham down onto the mustard. She loaded the sandwiches onto a tray and stacked cups next to them then balancing the tray of sandwiches against her hip she grabbed the pitcher of apple juice in one hand and a cold beer for Omen in the other. She poked the latch on the screen door with the bottom of the beer bottle and pushed it open with her knee. The scene that greeted her was so different from the one she left when she went inside that she stood there horrified unable to speak or move. A man she had never seen before was in the yard stalking animal like towards Omen, His face was dripping with blood and his clothes were torn and disarranged hanging from his limbs joined by ribbons of what appeared to be his own flesh. He swiped at omen with an outstretched hand and Omen swung the shovel he had just been using striking a resonating blow off the mans head dropping him to the grass. Omen looked up at her, his face showing confusion, then his eyes widened as three more people in no better shape than the man lying crumpled at his feet streaked into the yard at a full run two of them going directly towards Omen while a third went straight for the little boy attempting to hide next to the bags of cement, orange buckets, and the box his swing set was waiting in. As the blood soaked creatures tore into the ones she loved Wolf dropped the things she had in hand and the pitcher shattered as she screamed.

Murphy had been thinking about what to do next as the sky started to slowly darken when the woman in the seat next to him sat bolt upright and screamed. Her eyes held a look of fear and confusion and she jumped when he said “Hey, it’s alright you’re safe”. Wolf looked at him and her eyes cleared as she became aware of just where she was. “How long was I out?” She asked He looked over at her then back to the road and said “Bout two hours.”
They sat in silence as Murphy combed the streets looking for Omen. Wolf was about to doze off again when she heard the engine straining to reach a higher speed and felt the bump and crunch as Murphy plowed over a zombie that had been unlucky enough to cross his path. Wolf felt the bones crunching and splintering beneath the tank and was happy she could not hear the sickening squelch of flesh being forced out from between the treads.
Murphy turned down another deserted road and brought the tank to a stop in front of a large warehouse with the windows boarded over and pressed a button on a little plastic box next to his seat. The large garage door on the front of the building began to rise and light spewed out from inside. He edged the tank inside the building and pressed the button again after cutting power to the tanks massive engine. Pulling his pistol from his hip he opened the door and waited listening for any sign of movement inside the building. Satisfied that nothing had slipped inside with them he started to climb out of the tank. Wolf looked at him angrily and said. “what you’re going to quit looking already? You can’t just give up like that!”
“Ma’am it’s going to be too dark to keep looking within a half an hour and being out there at night is a suicide trip. We’ll start looking again in the morning.”
Wolf sighed heavily and climbed out of the tank behind him. The inside of the warehouse was empty save for the little area where Murphy had made his home. A small stove and refrigerator sat in one corner and a couch sat in front of a dead T.V. close by. A little further away there was a row of beds all but a few piled with random things, boxes of ammo and a few guns sat on one and on another were piles of bagged and boxed foods sorted by type. Wolf looked in wonder at the stockpiles of valuable goods and wondered just how Murphy had managed to do so well for himself while she and Omen were having such poor luck, she decided he must have help to have made it this far so well.
“How many people live here with you” she asked
“Just me, there was another guy for a while but he got munched after he’d been here about a week”.
“I don’t hear a generator, how do you keep this place lit?”
Murphy smiled and explained to her that after realizing that the sound of a generator, even a well insulated one, draws in the zombies he decided to get creative, a car dealership on the outskirts of town had a wind turbine that they had used to offset the cost of lighting their lot at night. It had taken him six weeks of careful planning and many hours of standing atop a wobbly ladder perched on the roof of the tank to dismantle the thing and bring it back hauling the massive components atop his tank and another six weeks to drag the parts up to the roof put the eight foot long blades and the twenty foot long pole back together, he told her about the endless days of standing in the front corner of the roof cussing the whole scheme and how he thought many times about giving up on the idea but the audience of zombies moaning and shambling about below served to steel his reserve and again he would pick up his wrench and start bolting the four foot sections of the fiberglass and steel pole back together making sure the wiring and even the direction of the tightened ends of the bolts were just as he found them when the hair brained idea got him perched so precariously up in the air taking mental note of exactly how everything was when he took it apart. Next he had to figure out just how to make it work with the wiring already inside the building, After cutting the lines running from the dead service poles up to the building he had to remember how they were wired at the dealership which was the part he had paid the least attention to when he was working on bringing everything back to this place. He had zapped the living hell out of himself a time or three hooking up the storage batteries but in the end it had all been worth it. The silent operation of the half sized turbine didn’t draw unwanted attention from the zombies and he had enough juice stored up in the batteries to get him through times when there wasn’t enough wind to turn the blades. He had looted parts from a hardware store to make the garage door work so he could bring the tank inside at night and avoid the creatures damaging his valuable machine.

Wolf was impressed, she could not imagine one person working so hard at a task meant for several people to do together. His answer to her query about his reason for undertaking such a monumental chore by him self was simply that it was something to do that was worth the time and effort it took to make it work, plus it had kept his mind occupied. He didn’t like to think too much about what was going on in the world, he had heard from another man he ran into while looting the parts for the door that somewhere far east of here survivors had started warring amongst themselves over resources and locations. When they should have been banding together to better help one another they had set to killing each other, and for what? The crap inside of a twice-looted grocery store? The whole idea sickened him and for a while he was glad to be on his own, working on a project that for all he knew would serve to better only his life.

After he had told her of how he came to be in his situation he asked about her and Omen. She told him a rather short version of what had happened when the outbreak hit and struggled to keep her composure when telling of the son she had lost. She told him what had happened at the gas station and how she knew that since the big mangled green hadn’t noticed them they should have left but their provisions were getting very low and they needed to bring something back so they wouldn’t starve on such meager rations. Everything had gone perfectly fine until they went over the low fence and had he not come along when he did she and Omen would surely have become dinner for the stinking horde. She was about to tell him about how she got separated from Omen but she broke down, with great sobs she struggled through telling him how she thought they were finally out of harms way but when she looked back Omen was gone and a new group of shambling rotting corpses was making it’s way towards her.
“God I hope he’s ok” She said as a new wave of tears streaked down her dusty face and she buried her head in her hands, wracked with sadness she cried into her palms.

Murphy sat silently until she had calmed down and after a while went to the little kitchen he had put together returning shortly with a hot mug of tea, he handed it to her and as she cradled the sweet herbal liquid between her hands relishing the warmth he busied himself in the kitchen once more. The smell of food brought Wolf out of her inner turmoil and she realized just how empty her stomach was. She was about to get up and ask if she could help somehow when he turned and came back to the slightly tattered brown fake leather couch and handed her a steaming plate loaded with fried potatoes over which he had poured a good deal of canned roast beef and gravy. He sat down and told her “As soon as there is enough light outside in the morning we will go looking for Omen again, but tonight you should eat and try to sleep, if you want there is a shower in the back” He gestured with his fork towards the opposite corner of the warehouse. “The water isn’t very warm but it’s better than nothing and if you look on the last bed on the way I’m sure you can find something clean to wear, I’ve kind of collected things hoping more people would wind up here at some point”. Wolf thanked him and proceeded to gorge herself on the first hot food she could remember having in a very long time. After she had eaten until she feared she would pop she made her way to the pile of random clothing and picked out some underwear, the first clean ones she had seen since the day when all hell broke loose, a pair of stone washed blue jeans that looked like they would fit her, a bra and a black long sleeved t shirt that had a big red nautical star in a velvety material on the front and smaller ones down the sleeves. She then grabbed a towel from the other end of the bed and walked towards the tiny curtained off makeshift shower in the corner, amazed that Murphy had the foresight to gather clothing in all sizes and types, even though he was the only person living in this hollow brick and steel building. She stepped inside the curtain and found that Murphy had rigged up a camp shower like the ones you get at a sporting goods store, she pulled the cord hanging from it and used the soap and shampoo he had sitting on the floor, using as little water as she could get away with she rinsed and dried herself off.

After putting on the clothes she made her way back to the living area and found that Murphy had brought blankets from one of the piles and set them on one of the beds closer to the end where the stockpiles of goods were, he had also set a hair brush down near the foot. She opened her mouth to thank him again for saving her ass and helping her try to find Omen but she stopped when she noticed he was already asleep snoring in the bed at the beginning of the line closest to the door. She pulled the brush through her knotted hair and spread the blankets out. Crawling into the bed she hoped Omen had found a safe place to hole up for the night and that tomorrow they would find him so he could share in the sheer luxury of the warehouse. Her legs ached from running and her heart twisted in her chest as she realized that this would be her first night without him in many years. Still hoping for the best and fearing the worst she curled up under the blankets and soon was sleeping the deep sleep of a person exhausted and emotionally spent to the point of near collapse.