Chapter 19
SEBASTIAN
Lonnie picked up as many assault rifles as he could find, a total of four. He draped their straps over both shoulders and pocketed a service pistol lifted from the guard without a rifle. He looked ridiculous with all that hardware, but I didn't have a human mouth to tell him.
Amber took the lead. pulling the door open with her own pistol cocked. The hallway was clear, and in the room on the opposite side, we found the scientists and guards that they had taken care of.
Until I saw the bodies, this whole thing had seemed surreal. How were Lonnie and Amber here? Did they really attempt to rescue us, or was this still part of an elaborate plan my father had constructed?
They were here now, wearing forest camouflage fatigues instead of my dad's lab uniforms. That was all that mattered. I no longer had to worry about delivering our babies alone. Amber was a doctor, and Lonnie had been an EMT before I turned him into a hotelier.
Voices echoed down the hallway Amber identified as our way out. "Fuck, we missed some," she said.
"On it." Lonnie grabbed one assault rifle in each hand and pretended to shake them around like a cartel kingpin making his final showdown. Amber shook her head, and he dropped the second gun and held the first like he knew what he was doing, thank fuck.
He slipped through the door, closing it behind him. Amber grabbed the handle before it clicked shut, and I listened with my ear to the opening. It didn't take long before four shots echoed and the hall went deathly silent.
Amber nudged the door open. "Lonnie, are you okay?"
"All good, Princess. We're home free. If you count walking two hundred yards through radiated forest 'home free.'"
I nudged Gunnar to follow Amber into the hallway.
He walked with a slight limp, but a swell of pride nearly overwhelmed me.
We'd survived my dad's plan to turn our children into super soldiers.
Gunnar had single-handedly, or single-mouth-edly, protected us from doctors, lab workers, guards, and my dad.
I'd barely done anything while he ripped through their ranks.
My wolf wanted to wrap around him and hold him for as many days as we'd been forced apart. Later, when we were safe.
I fell in line at the rear, grateful for my wolf's ability to see in the dark.
When we found Lonnie fifty yards ahead, he looked haunted.
This trip would cost us all something. If not our lives, then our innocence.
My friends and I spent a lot of time contemplating what we would do in high conflict situations, but surviving this encounter would be worse than any horror story we'd told ourselves over campus bonfires.
Gunnar whined softly, and his sides clenched. Was that what his contractions looked like?
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Need to hurry."
I yipped a bark, and Amber grabbed Lonnie's arm. "We need to go. I don't want to learn how male wolves give birth in the middle of a dead zone."
Lonnie nodded. They ran up the incline, and we loped behind them. Gunnar still limped on his back right leg, but he kept up with the humans.
At the top of the rise, a hatch in the ceiling opened when Lonnie shoved at it.
A broken chain lay off to the side, a sign of forced entry.
I relaxed a little more. It was another sign my friends had told us the truth.
Trust came hard for me, but my college friends hadn't let me down in the twelve years since we met.
"Truck's over here." Lonnie pointed in the direction of a towering chain link fence a hundred yards away.
I stepped off the concrete, and the soil called to me through the pads of my feet. This was the land of my ancestors, the wilderness that begged me to return, to train the young wolves who no longer remembered their connection with people. I felt their longing, their loneliness.
Our paths had converged centuries ago, wolf and man. Some wolves became our companion animals, the trusty dogs we kept by our sides, while others passed their wisdom through the virus we shared, blending their genes with ours.
"Do you feel that?" Gunnar asked. "It's like the land wants us to stay."
"We could come back here," I said. "Later, when our pups are safe."
He grunted in response. I couldn't tell if he agreed or if he was in pain.
"Almost there." Amber clicked the safety on her revolver. "What the fuck is that?"
"Someone trying to steal our ride, out here?" Lonnie tilted his rifle from his shoulder and fired a warning shot.
Whoever it was didn't move. Instead, they beckoned us forward.
"I smell a pregnant wolf." The man had a heavy accent, Russian or Ukrainian, I couldn't tell. "You need my help."
He also smelled like pack. My wolf wanted to raise his snout to the sky and howl.
"How the fuck are you here?" Amber asked. "It's nuclear winter."
He squinted at her and then bared too many of his perfect white teeth. "It is spring, no? Look at this place. Green grass. Sunflower stalks shooting up. No humans for miles. It is perfect for us wolves."
"There are more of them?" Lonnie asked, glancing back at me. I gave him my best wolf shrug.
"Hurry. The wolves are fine out here, but you humans will melt."
My imagination conjured an image from my favorite adventure movie, and I shivered. Lonnie and Amber could be complete pains in my ass from time to time, but I didn't want either of them to die of radiation sickness and all the horrible effects that went with it.
We piled into the Humvee. Amber took shotgun to Lonnie's driver, and the wolfman climbed into the backseat with Gunnar and me.
The man was younger than my dad, but not by much.
He wasn't much to look at, with dark hair and skin so white it looked like he hadn't seen the sun in months.
I wondered if he'd been hiding out in a bunker or something.
But then why would he need to? He was in the safest place on the planet.
"There are blankets in the back," Amber said, turning to look over her shoulder at the wolfman.
I didn't need to ask what she meant. By the time he had turned back around with two rough woolen blankets in his arms, I had shifted and pillowed Gunnar's head on my lap. His pain-filled gaze squeezed my heart, and I felt helpless. It would take more than a blanket to convince him to shift.
"Where are you from?" the wolfman asked. "United States?"
"We're that easy to spot, eh?" I barked a short laugh. My voice was still rough from months of disuse.
"Are you with Paskal?"
"I am Paskal now," I said, though I would probably have some trouble asserting my claim.
Dad had picked the board of directors himself, and the shareholders thought I was incompetent, thanks to the shitty companies in my name.
"Ivan's dead," I explained. I offered my hand to the stranger beside me. "Sebastian Paska."
"The astronaut." He gave my hand a brief squeeze. "Sergei Maryshov at your service. We wondered where you went. No one had heard from you since they found the empty shuttle. When Paskal started ramping up here, we knew something was off." He jerked his chin toward Gunnar. "Who's he?"
"Gunnar Grayson."
"The other astronaut." He nodded. "So it worked. Sending you to the moon invoked your latent wolf genes." I gaped at him, and he laughed. "I remember your visit, when you were young. Your dad knew about us. He wanted our help, but we refused. We are on the same side, you and I."
"Knew about … what, exactly?"
"The power plant meltdown restored our ability to shift. Our wolves got us through the worst of it. There were only five of us, at first, but as the radiation spread, our numbers increased." He glanced at Gunnar before returning his gaze to me. "What's your story?"
His scent put me at ease, which was strange.
I rolled with it, scratching Gunnar's ears as I explained the chain of events, from the high doses of radiation disguised as immunizations to hijacking the shuttle and fleeing to Switzerland.
The story was as much for Lonnie and Amber as it was for him, and it felt good to share it.
While I talked, Gunnar took over more of my lap, until his head lay on his paws and his chest pressed against my thigh.
Our months in captivity had turned my prickly, "No PDA" mate into a touch-starved and cuddly wolf, and I was here for it.
I wanted to shift back to my wolf form and curl around him, but there wasn't enough room.
Sergei only interrupted me twice to give Lonnie directions. The longer my friend drove, the more his bronze skin took on an ashen pallor. By the time we swerved onto a dirt road leading through dense woods, rivulets of sweat trailed from his temples.
Amber lay slumped against the passenger door, her forehead pressed to the glass, neck arched in a way that couldn't have been comfortable.
"Just a little farther," Sergei said, his voice overly cheerful.
I fisted Gunnar's fur, the feel of his warm body my only anchor to the present. My wolf felt each of his contractions, my core tensing in sympathy. "Soon," his wolf said. "Must seek shelter."
"We're here," Sergei said. "Park there."
The Humvee skidded on the thick bed of leaves, bumping into a moss-covered fallen log that came up to the bumper.
"Close enough." Sergei was the first out of the vehicle, and I followed him out his door, not wanting to disturb Gunnar more than necessary. He crawled out after me, and I shifted back to my wolf so he could lean against me.
Lonnie stepped down and almost fell into a patch of leaves. Sergei caught him with his claws extended. I growled, but it was too late. He'd already sliced the back of Lonnie's forearm open, leaving a jagged cut in his flesh.
"What the fuck, man?" Lonnie sank against the vehicle's oversized tire. Blood pooled along the wound, but it dried up before a single drop fell to the forest floor. He wiped at it with his other hand, but the wound had already scarred over.