The strange effect of mana sight made it difficult to make out many of the wereghoul’s facial features. It seemed to consider him for a few moments, but it’s lack of movement gave Drew some courage and he took a few steps forward, looking behind him and wishing he had Katie with him to block off the back.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said in his best calming voice. Approaching the wereghoul like he would a strange dog. “I’m just here for the cart. I need it to carry my friend who’s hurt.” He continued talking, having learned that it wasn’t so much what he said but the tone of voice he said it in that most animals responded to. The wereghoul took a step back as Drew approached, ceding territory to the human.
Drew glanced behind him again, afraid that something was going to ambush him from behind. When he turned back, the wereghoul had used the momentary distraction to jump towards him. With a thought, a fireball rose to meet the wereghoul’s form. It exploded on contact about 10 feet from Drew, and the concussive force of the blast in the confines of the hallway washed past him, causing him to stumble. He already had a cone of frostfire moving to fill the space.
The aura around the wereghoul disappeared, the green mana within it slowly darkening. Drew carefully walked towards it, the frostfire ice underneath him giving a strange sizzle he had never noticed before as he stepped on it. Drew cast dancing blade as he went, wanting a melee weapon at hand. He was unsure what exactly it took to kill an undead were-creature.
It was clear that it wasn’t just playing re-dead by the lack of aura, but Drew nudged it with his foot just in case; it didn’t move. He attempted to turn it over, so he could look at its face. It had landed on its stomach, but he only got a handful of hair for his trouble. He shook the hair free of his hands in disgust rather than fear this time, then pulled more carefully, grabbing the softening flesh, which squelched unpleasantly as small bits of it came loose under his fingers.
Once he successfully managed to turn the body over he realized that whatever magic had been keeping it from decaying was rapidly fading. The hair covering its body was rapidly falling off and flaking away. He brushed the fur away from the face, wanting to see if he knew who it had been. With a few seconds of work, Juan’s face became evident.
Drew rocked back on his heels. “I’m so sorry Juan.” He looked over at the carts; both had been struck when the fireball killed Juan. He examined them and found the blast had broken a wheel on the first, and the second had three flat tires. They were both different makes, so it was impossible for him to trade them out without a significant amount of effort.
He stood up with a sigh, glancing over at Juan’s body, he arranged the arms in a cross over his body, then crossed himself, “I hope there’s life after this, Juan. You deserved better than this. We all do.” He clenched his fists, looking around for something soft he could hit, but didn’t find anything. He cursed under his breath. He cast fireball on Juan’s corpse to immolate it, not wanting any of the scavengers to get to it.
Turning away, Drew walked slowly out of the loading bay, up the ramp, and down the street. He cried then, letting the drops hit the ground without wiping them away from his face. It wasn’t fair; he didn’t ask for any of this, he didn’t ask for people to look up to him, to depend on him. If he was in a safe place he had a feeling he would be a mess, but instead, he locked it away in that dark corner of himself and moved forward.
Looking up at the exchange to see if Katie was still watching, he saw that the wall had been replaced. He turned towards the freeway, for the first-time in…a week? Maybe more. He wasn’t sure about time anymore. He was going to leave the base and he wasn’t sure what he would find, but he doubted it would be anything good.
He passed the guard shacks; there were no bodies, blood, or signs of violence in any of them. There should have been at least one guard out here. When it went dark, what would they have done? Go into the building or try to go home? He looked around but couldn’t find any indications of what would have happened to the guard.
Another 80 feet of walking had him across the street from the freeway. The wall that divided them was only about 4 feet tall at this point and made of unadorned concrete. He climbed on top of it, looking out over Anacostia Freeway. There were a couple of car wrecks on the road, not many though. The advent had happened at some time between two and three a.m.; most people had been off the streets at that time.
The other side of the wall had a 30- or 40-foot drop down into some trees and grass that served as a sound barrier for the freeway itself. Lines of girders separated the three lanes of northbound and southbound, as well as blocking the road from the frontage road on the other side of the freeway. On the other side of that was Joint Base Bolling. Studying it in the morning light didn’t give him much hope-there was no movement, and the only sound was the occasional animal cry.
The world felt strangely isolated and empty. He had become used to the constant hum and buzz of modern-day city life, and the silence unnerved him. He finally wiped his face; the sun and exercise had calmed him enough to stop his tears and he didn’t want to encounter anyone with streaks down his face.
“Stupid toxic masculinity,” he muttered to himself. The world had ended, and he still felt the need to appear strong. With a jump, he pushed himself off the wall, casting gravitas to lighten the gravity enough for him to pass over the trees and grass below. He landed roughly. His legs pretending to run in midair and keep running after he landed weren’t enough as he hit the ground hard, rolling into the fall.
He lay on his back on the asphalt and stared up the sky. The joy he felt in jumping eighty feet without injuring himself felt hollow, not quite enough to lift the oppressive silence of the world around him. This was the world now: a silent death trap. He sighed and closed his eyes, “This fucking sucks.”
Chapter Nineteen — Squirrels
Something hard digging into the small of Drew’s back forced him to sit up. He glanced down the freeway; to his left were several motionless cars, but no signs of life. To his right was the emergency turn around and more abandoned vehicles. Only a few people had been on the road so late at night, and it looked like most of the cars had pulled over when their lights and power steering died.
He began walking towards the turnaround, looking in the cars he passed on his way. There wasn’t any broken glass or other signs you would typically assign to an accident; they simply looked like parked cars.
“Where did everyone go?” he asked himself. There weren’t any bodies. Thinking back, he realized that the only sign of a human’s death he had come across was the blood-streaked hallway and severed hand near the spider queen. He looked at the base and frowned. Bolling was a bigger base-they had people living on it. Where would everyone have gone?
Crossing over the freeway and frontage road, he looked dubiously at the woods running alongside the road. It looked impenetrable with thick foliage and smaller trees that were about 15 feet tall while being wide enough that he couldn’t see the far side. He headed south along the road, something about the liminal space being empty felt surreal to him, like reality had been warped in an inexplicable way.
Twice he stopped, having heard some large animal moving in the small green space next to him, but he couldn’t identify its source with either mana sight or his regular vision. He quickened his pace as the feeling of being watched unnerved him.