The Witch and the Werewolf by John Burks Read Free Book Online

monster big
enough to wipe out the city. He wondered for a brief second just
how water resistant the old priest’s shelter was.
    The streets were packed
with blind partiers. Many who’d watched as the missiles struck the
comet were left without functioning eyes, some even to the point
their eyes had melted from their face. The missiles finally stopped
but the lights had gone out with them. Dutch could only figure that
enough EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, had traveled back to the
earth to short electrical components. Not that the newly blind
would be able to see anything, but the streets were
dark.
    Dutch considered himself a
hardcore sort of guy. He’d been around the world and seen a lot of
death and misery. He’d seen things back in the Sandbox that he
wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. But nothing he’d ever done or
heard prepared for him for the horror of thousands of blind people
in the streets of downtown Houston panicking at once. Men grabbed
for each other, begging for help. Women and children cried in the
streets. None of them would survive long, he knew, not with that
wall of watery death pushing north from Galveston Bay.
    Though it broke his heart
he knew there wasn’t anything he could do for them.
    He didn’t have long to
make it to the shelter but fortunately it was just a few blocks off
of old downtown. His load was heavy, though, and he wasn’t quite
sure if it was alive or not. The wolf, now completely returned to
his man form, was dead weight. He felt silly pushing through the
streets with a naked man strung across his shoulders, but it was
what it was. His back was aching and having to step around all of
the prone bodies and people screaming was not helping.
    “ Just a couple of blocks,
Dutch,” he told himself. “Rio was way worse.”
    He was kidding himself, he
knew. He’d been in a lot of bad spots in life, no doubt. He’d been
shot at in the Middle East, blown up in South America. A cartel
warlord wanted is head in Juarez. But he’d never tried to outrun a
tsunami with a presumably dead werewolf across his
shoulder.
    The massive waves further
down the coast pushed into the storm drains and sewers, pushing the
waste water back uphill. Manhole covers popped from their
receptacles and geysers of brackish water burst twenty feet in the
air. Houston, a city built on a swamp, was known for its flooding
problems and the water was quickly at Dutch’s knees, making all
that much harder to push through.
    “ Help me, please. God help
me. My eyes are are gone,” a man said, kneeling on the pavement. He
reached out and with a lucky grab got hold of Dutch’s leg. “Please
help me. I can’t see.”
    Dutch groaned. “I can’t
help you buddy.”
    “ My wife. I’ll never see
my wife again.”
    Dutch kicked the guy loose
and kept moving forward. When he stepped into the street in front
of the simple, little, old Catholic church, he grinned. What better
place to put a bunker than right under everyone’s nose? The
two-story church blended well with the surrounding, run down part
of Houston. His legs burned as he made the last few steps, dropping
his load on the cement and banging on the door.
    The roar grew louder and
he could just see the tops of the massive tsunami to the south. It
would be in the city in minutes. He pounded on the door
again.
    “ Come on,” he screamed,
panic building. “I know you’re in there. I’ve got your damn wolf.
Open the damn door.”
    He pounded again, the wave
getting closer. Great, he thought. I’m not going to get
in.
    The man wolf thing at his
feet stirred.
    “ Wow. You are a tough one,
huh?” Dutch asked. “I guess I need to apologize. At least you’d
have gotten laid if I hadn’t dragged you away to here. It doesn’t
look like we’re going to get in, bud.”
    The wave pushed closer,
toppling buildings, washing away cars and people like simple
garbage. He was tempted to just eat the barrel of the pistol. At
least it would be quicker than being ripped