from its body, but so did the splintered bullet.
Nina whistled.
Odin and two more elkhounds came from their hiding places in the parking lot.
Two thousand years prior, the Vikings used Norwegian elkhounds to hunt moose and bear the same way Nina now used them to hunt the Ogre. They ran at the beast, barked, and dodged its swings and kicks. Not attacking, but distracting.
Vince fired at its head, causing the thing to whiplash.
“Save your ammunition,” she ordered because she knew they would not get another supply drop for two days. “I’ve got this.”
Nina dropped her assault rifle and pulled her sword. The Ogre gave her a glance but the K9s kept its attention diverted. Caesar stepped closer, pulled the Mac-11 machine pistol he wore-like Nina-in a shoulder holster, and readied to offer her support if needed.
The dogs and Nina worked in concert. She ran in, they barked and backed off just as the monster punched at them, and she slashed the creature across the knee with her blade. It appeared Ogres were more susceptible to edged weapons than bullets.
It growled and stepped toward her but Odin bound in front of it and the old dog nipped its arm, then escaped before the creature could retaliate.
With its attention elsewhere again Nina stepped in, hacked, and opened a wound on its back from neck to ass. A red liquid that tried hard to mimic blood oozed from the wound and dripped on the road. The Ogre howled and turned to her.
The dogs ripped its lower legs from behind. It stomped and missed.
Nina swung again aiming high to decapitate the eight-foot-tall humanoid. Her blade hit true, but stuck in its throat like an axe into a tree.
It gurgled and stammered. She struggled to hold on to her blade as it remained lodged in the creature’s throat. The Ogre grabbed the sword with its large hands and, with a grunt, pulled it free, shoving it toward her with great strength.
Nina-her weapon in hand-fell backwards to the ground but turned the topple into a roll and ended facing her foe from one knee.
The Ogre stood defiantly for a moment-then the phony-blood poured from its throat, down its chest, and to the ground. Even the brave K9s backed away from the foul-smelling bile. The muscle-bound monster dropped to the ground dead-or whatever passed for death among Voggoth’s children.
Nina recovered her assault rifle while commanding, “Vince, sweep around the back side and cover Carl as he comes in,” she then faced the meat packing plant and waved her arm. Oliver Maddock emerged from a hiding place.
Vince circled around the burning tank and crinkled his nose at the sour roasting smell emanating from the destroyed vehicle. The dogs sniffed at the corpses and when one of the once-human monks twitched they tore out its throat.
Nina approached the rear-most supply vehicle and used her sword to lift a skin-like canvas covering the top of the canoe-shaped vehicle with eight wheels. Underneath the tarp she found a nest of gray balls of various sizes. She knew these to be ammunition for the coral-like artillery platforms, the Ogres’ slings, and various forms of Voggoth’s heavy guns.
“Tres funk, Captain,” Maddock spoke in Welsh slang with a light heart as he approached Nina and the convoy. “Of course, Carl won’t shut his cakehole all day about hittin’ the bastard right-on like that.”
Nina did not care if Carl Bly boasted or what Oliver Maddock thought about it, she just knew they had taken out another of The Order’s convoys. She only wished she could convince herself that it made a difference.
“Arty balls over here,” she said as Carl approached the last remaining cargo-hauler forward of the burning tank. “What you got?”
He peaked under the canvas and his nose curled.
“Seeds,” he answered. “Smells like more goddamn nest seeds. I think The Order is movin’ their farms east.”
“Then that’s our next target,” Nina answered as the remaining two members-including a smiling Carl Bly- joined her alongside the road. “I’m just sayin’, I want to start hitting things that make the bastards say ‘ouch’. We’ve got bridges, patrols, and a couple of these convoys. I want something bigger.”
She gave each man a good look in the eye and then ordered, “Vince, Carl, burn the bitches. Then we’ll break down the gear and hump outta here.”
While Nina, Oliver, and the dogs retreated toward their hideaway in the meat plant, Oliver and Carl Bly tossed small canisters into each of the remaining vehicles.
“Fire in the hole!” Bly warned.
Nina walked backwards to watch the show. She whispered an imitation of a howl that might just come from the wolf’s head with ruby eyes patched on her shoulder.
“Aaaawwooooo…”
The canisters exploded turning the remaining vehicles into fireballs. A horrible screeching sound came from the transport hauling Voggoth’s seeds. The second vehicle ripped apart as its contents caught fire and detonated. Smoke from the burning convoy rose a thousand feet into the morning sky, mixing black soot with gray cloud…
The Dark Wolves found a garage with several four-wheel all-terrain vehicles and siphoned gas from nearby cars. They used a couple of towed wooden carts to carry the three elkhounds that comprised the non-human contingent of their SpecOps team and equipment.
They traveled northeast for the first part of the day along a route that, according to Vince Caesar, followed the Santa Fe trail of Old West days.
In order to avoid the searching eyes of a flying Chariot the team hid in a farm house’s tornado cellar for an hour, taking that time to have an early lunch of tinned rations and dried meat. Later that afternoon a column of Voggoth’s monks backed by Spider Sentries blocked Route 50 around Spearville.
Nina, in response, moved her unit south and across a stretch of fields and rolling hills. They made slow progress and, due to several more Chariots scouring the area, abandoned their vehicles and moved on foot, lugging their equipment on their backs.
Just before sunset the Dark Wolves sheltered inside the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church at Windhorst. Nina spied a keystone dated May 4, 1912 and marveled at how the magnificent stone and brick building had survived not only time, but Armageddon, The Empire, and now Voggoth’s great march east seemingly without a scratch.
A little before midnight the K9s raised the alarm as a group of five human refugees sought shelter in the church, too. Nina noted that they were escaping west, not east. When the refugees told them why, Nina knew she had found their next target and hurriedly rigged a transmitter to contact air command…
Nina stood in a patch of warped, dying woods and watched the target through binoculars. It sat in the center of what had once been nine holes of fairways and sand traps. But now the greens of the Kinsley Country Club were cracked and brown not merely from negligence, but from the infection of Voggoth’s machines.
Most of the sky above remained blue, but overhead of the large structure at the middle of the club’s grounds a thunderhead of black churned to life.
The Order’s building stood 30 feet high and covered an area of 50 square yards. To Nina’s eye, it resembled a bronze and black snow globe held in a greenish base lined with bony ribs and covered in strands of yellow like a fishnet.
Cords slithered away from the centerpiece in a circular pattern resembling roots from a diseased tree. Rows of white fungi-like growths bubbled out from those roots, pulsating as if the sacs breathed, although Nina knew that to be a hideous irony.
She counted hundreds of Voggoth’s offspring squirming and growing across this farm. The entire field smelled of decay. Flies swarmed like deranged bees trying to pollinate the dead.
As she viewed those incubators she saw not only artificial flesh and gore but materials resembling iron and steel: a stark reminder that the biology of The Order’s machines defied any attempt to classify it as natural or alive.
Using her field glasses, Nina surveyed a pair of domes planted in the ground just outside the ring of growths. She knew these to be guardians that would rise up to face any ground threat. Further off, a tree-like dispenser unit
