-CRY WOLF- Part 1, Act 4

-CRY WOLF-
PART//ONE: CONFLICTS OF A SINGLE VARIABLE
ACT IV

As if trying to deny reality, Kineta placed the Lone Sentry’s journal back into the pack along with the rest of the supplies. She said nothing, turning her face away and bracing herself for the wrath that was sure to come.

The Lone Sentry leaned against the wall opposite Kineta.

“If you can’t rifle through other people’s packs without getting caught, don’t do it,” he said.

Kineta said nothing in reply. She was shaking slightly, as if expecting to be shot.

“But, in one aspect, you have saved me a lot of trouble. I’m not like a lot of other furres. I didn’t kill Casamir just because he wronged me. I killed him because he was a sick-hearted bastard, more so than the other warlords. No doubt you understand now why I do what I do…and I didn’t have to say a word. All the better.”

Again, Kineta was silent. An image of her hazel eyes, full of fear, entered the Lone Sentry’s mind.

“I was like you once; sheltered from the harsh every day realities of the wasteland...sometimes, I wish I still was. I’m not angry…I have no need to be, so stop acting like you’re being held at gunpoint.”

Kineta nodded.

The Lone Sentry decided that he had said enough, perhaps even too much. There were other things to be taken care of. He sat down noiselessly.

It was late in the morning now and the city was still quiet. The Lone Sentry was truly worried. Normally, trader caravans would have passed through the surrounding area at least twice every morning. Their racket could usually be heard for miles.

But the air was devoid of hoarse yelling or the banging of trash bin lids. The only noise that could be heard was wind.

What is going on? , the Lone Sentry thought.

He received his answer in the form of a high pitched whistle. A salvo of rockets arced overhead, their intended targets hidden behind the jagged skyline. Dust and smoke billowed upwards in a dark cloud, telling the entire city of the death and destruction.

Something was distinct about the late morning bombardment. The Lone Sentry thought quickly, cycling through the various warring factions, trying to think of which one possessed such firepower. Many of the local warlords possessed artillery pieces, but none of them had the range these rockets were flying. Faction after faction was ruled out until only one remained. The SANAS was here.

Another salvo of rockets, this time accompanied by a cruise missile, found their mark, leveling some nondescript settlement and shaking the daily layer of dust from the ruins.

The Lone Sentry turned to Kineta.

“Grab the supplies. I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire and neither do you,” he said.

An airship ponderously made its way across the sky, a black shadow against a fiery orange background. Propaganda blasted from its lofty speakers, threatening all who resisted the will of the SANAS with extermination.

There was a shuffle of boots on concrete as a skirmish line of soldiers took position in front of the subway tunnel. These soldiers were too poorly equipped to be SANAS troopers; they were probably conscripts for the local drug cartel.

Amidst the chaos, no one saw two figures dart from the subway tunnel to a rubble-filled alleyway. The Lone Sentry peered around the corner to get a better idea of how strong the SANAS presence was.

None of the SANAS troopers even bothered leaving the comforts of their tanks and APCs. It took less than thirty seconds for the well-trained, well-equipped soldiers to obliterate the skirmish line. Assault rifles were no match for tank guns.

SANAS tanks rolled over the bodies like common road-kill. One particular corpse was run over so many times that it was reduced to a mere stain in the dirt. Kineta felt sick.

The Lone Sentry muttered a string of curses under his breath. He had made a grave mistake in taking the short path to Shambles.

Two weeks ago, the center of the city had been controlled by the LAR, or the Local Armed Resistance. The LAR had fought for years against the SANAS, sometimes losing, sometimes hanging on, but never winning. The main reason they had been able to survive was because the SANAS had taken little interest in the downtown area. While initial LAR control was strict, it slackened overtime as more and more of their forces were drawn off to fight until the area effectively under anarchy.

Anarchy made for easy traveling, but times had changed.

Now that the SANAS were hell-bent on controlling the metro area, it would be much harder to evade checkpoints and patrols.

The Lone Sentry reasoned that it would just be something else to adapt to. A new route was forming in his head, one that hugged close to the bomb crater. He and his temporary responsibility would follow the crater rim until they could travel straight south through unclaimed territory all to the way to Shambles.

“Okay,” he said, still watching the SANAS vehicles roll by, “we go with my backup plan now. I had wanted for us to take the short route to Shambles, but we’re going to have to take a detour around the main checkpoints. We won’t be stopping too often if we are to reach Shambles in a timely fashion, so you best prepare yourself for a long, hard march. Stick close to me and try to move as quietly as possible. Stay alert.”

The pair of canines made their way to intended target of this morning’s bombardment. It appeared that the SANAS had not bothered to send in additional patrols for clean-up.

Beyond the wall of ruins lay the remains of a small trading post. The attack had successfully killed every last living thing, but had failed to completely eliminate the inventories of several well-stocked arms dealers.

Last week, the Lone Sentry had estimated that he would have an eighty percent chance of pulling of the old wolf’s errand and an eighty-five percent chance of getting away without retribution. However, now that the SANAS was here with superior firepower and numbers, he lowered his chances of making it to Shambles to a paltry seventy percent. They were decent enough odds given the large monetary incentive and equipping his companion with better weapons would help the statistics.

The Lone Sentry rummaged through a scorched weapon shop, muttering to himself as he threw aside cheap AK knockoffs until he found something that caught his eye. Midst the piles of burnt or otherwise unusable weapons lay an RPKM light machine gun, complete with a stack of 75-round drum magazines.

The weapon itself was missing several parts, but these could be replaced by components from Kineta’s AKM.

“Give me your rifle,” the Lone Sentry said bluntly. The situation did not call for manners.

Kineta, still somewhat shaken by the morning’s events, timidly held out her AKM; she put her trust in the Lone Sentry’s superior knowledge of fire arms, more out of fear than actual trust.

It was but the work of a few minutes for the Lone Sentry to remove the machinery cover on both weapons and complete the transplant. He pushed the RPKM into Kineta’s paws as soon as he had finished his work without a word.

Despite the silence, Kineta understood her new weapon as a kind of apology for the Lone Sentry’s outburst the previous night. It had to be. In all other contexts, this had been an unnecessary stop in a long, grueling journey that pressed for speed.

By the time the Lone Sentry and Kineta reached the crater rim, early morning had given way to a scorching noon. Radiation from the crater, combined with the sun made the burnt soil seem sentient…and hostile.

Perhaps worse, the area was devoid of landmarks. The sun was useless as a compass in the perpetually cloudy sky and there were no buildings for at least a five mile radius. Every part of the crater was desolate, radioactive, and shielded by an unfathomably high wall of earth fused into glass by sheer heat—a testament to the power of a thermonuclear explosion that had occurred at five feet above ground.

In short, the center of the city made an excellent route for bypassing patrols no matter what faction they were from. Of course, this was based on the assumption that one would survive the journey.

Kineta looked out upon the land. It was a landscape dominated by ripples of crude glass and razor sharp ridges where seismic activity had pushed up the ripples…just like every other square inch of the city center.

The only sound that could be heard was the steady crunch of boots into the glass-strewn terrain and the quiet tick of a Geiger counter.

Many long, torturous, hours of dodging radiation pockets passed before the Lone Sentry called for a halt. At last they had arrived at the southernmost edge of the crater.

Kineta, not being particularly skilled in the ways of the navigator, looked at the Lone Sentry questioningly.

“Why are we stopping?” she asked.

The Lone Sentry smirked and gestured southward with a sweep of his arm.

“Those are funny words coming from you, missus. Look and behold, the path that will point us to our destination.”

Kineta turned in the direction the Lone Sentry had indicated…and let out a quiet gasp of surprise.

Leading out the crater like a river out of a lake, a ribbon of glass shards paved an eerie, dark green road that led directly southward. It was the work of centuries of sandstorms, erosion, and the general semi-solid qualities of glass. Ruins creaked perilously on either side of the path, protecting all who traveled upon it from prying eyes.

All that stood in between the travelers and this road was the roughest part of the crater rim.

The Lone Sentry set off toward the path immediately, Kineta following behind.

Two pairs of footsteps could be heard, echoing off the ruins. One was surefooted and only occasionally changed in rhythm. The other was inconsistent and constantly interrupted by shuffle of glassy dirt.

Kineta slipped on an especially large and smooth shard of glass and nearly cut her herself in half on it.

How does he make it look so easy? , she asked mentally.

Less than five minutes had passed before the Lone Sentry called for another stop.

It was an intimidating ledge, no more than an arm’s length wide. The Lone Sentry slid across the oddly smooth surface, jumped off without a second thought and landed securely on his feet.

Kineta would have had no qualms about jumping, had the ledge been made of rock or concrete. But this ledge was really the edge of one of the many ripples of glass surrounding the crater rim.

And it just so happened that blowing sand had polished the ripple to a near frictionless surface.

The consequences of slipping weren’t just a few bruises. Below the ledge, just behind the Lone Sentry, lay another ripple of glass at the bottom of a short slope. But it was facing the wrong direction and jutted out of the ground like the point of a giant spear.

Kineta had two options. One was to go forth, as boldly as her guide had. That might result in being impaled on the ripple. The other was to find an indirect route.

But around the crater rim, indirect routes weren’t always the quickest…or the safest. And her lack of terrain-negotiation ability meant that she might as well jump off the ledge.

By this time, the Lone Sentry had correctly identified the ripple as both a potential hazard as well as a psychological obstacle to his temporary responsibility.

Waiting for Kineta to overcome her fear was out of the question. Time was of more than the essence.

Something drastic was in order.

He turned around and extended his arm.

“Take my paw,” he said, as if there was no element of danger present.

Kineta shakily took the Lone Sentry’s outstretched paw, as if she were about to grasp some poisonous serpent, and steadied herself.

She never got past the first step.

The Lone Sentry, being far more used to prying open steel doors and decking unruly drunkards, had not intended for Kineta to slowly make her way across the glass ledge. He had wanted to simply pull Kineta across.

He also overestimated the amount of force necessary to pull Kineta across the ledge which caused her to slip anyway, practically fly over the ledge, and land awkwardly…

In the process of steadying herself, she had flung her arms around the nearest vertical support to stop herself from falling.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that something was the Lone Sentry, who was having a very hard time breathing in Kineta’s embrace of terror.

“Kineta. You can let go now,” he rasped.

Kineta suddenly re-entered reality and took notice of her present circumstance. She let go, feeling a slight burning sensation in her cheeks.

Another hour passed before the pair of canines had reached the path. The ground was rough and falling was likely to result in a face full of glass, but at least the area was flat. The Lone Sentry allowed himself a mental pat on the back for surviving to this point.


Green and blue light filtered through the glass encrusted ruins, illuminating the shade with a blinding lightshow.

The day was almost at its end.

The Lone Sentry seemed to have shrugged off the earlier awkwardness and was picking up the pace. He started with a quick march, but had sped up into a trot by sunset.

Again, the eerie silence haunted the outcast. Something had gone horribly wrong. It seemed beyond even the SANAS’s capability to simply carve a swath of destruction through an area as vast and as disorganized as the Nameless City.

Then again, the SANAS wasn’t a local faction. Who knew what sorts of resources it had access to?

Shambles drew closer. The glass road slowly dissipated into sand. Soon, the familiar scene of skeletal buildings had enveloped everything.

Today, however, something else graced the normally cluttered streets: bomb craters. They were fresh, too. The smell of Semtex plastic explosive, napalm, smoke…and death still lingered in the air. The streets, normally clogged with the detritus of past wars were cleared to the extent that one could see for miles down a single corridor of ruins.

The Lone Sentry felt a pang of hesitation. He was perhaps more familiar with the sorts of nasty surprises the SANAS liked to leave behind. Surprises like self-deploying landmines, unexploded cluster bombs, or even radiation dispersal canisters, like the sort which had killed the Lone Sentry’s sisters.

Or if the SANAS didn’t leave anything behind, other disagreeable characters often took advantage of the false sense of desolation.

Kineta detected a new scent coming off her guide: fear. She did not understand what could have the Lone Sentry, who at all other times seemed apathetic towards dangerous situations, so afraid.

There was a high pitched beep. It was barely audible, coming from somewhere underneath the blackened soil, but before the female could ponder on what had made the noise, she was shoved aside gruffly by the Lone Sentry.

The IED went off with a thunderous bang, throwing up clouds of dust. Fortunately, the explosive was designed for vehicles, and the Lone Sentry simply brushed aside the low-velocity shrapnel lodged in the bullet-proof lining of his trench coat.

There was little time for respite, however, as a small conscription party suddenly appeared from the ruins, weapons blazing in the dusk.

It was an ambush, plain and simple.

Kineta let her militia training takeover. She leapt into a bomb crater and began returning fire with her RPKM. 7.62 x39 mm rounds flew through the air in frightening volume, accompanied by a staccato rhythm of booms.

The conscription party was not prepared for such a fierce response from mere travelers and was forced to use an alternate tactic. They began to simply shoot and then move to another piece of cover, hoping to outflank the travelers.

The Lone Sentry would have none of that.

Powerful anti-tank rounds ripped through piles of rubble and concrete walls, blowing the fighters hiding behind them into multiple pieces.

Now the fighters were seriously confused. They could see that there was one wolf with a machine gun pinning them down…but how were they taking casualties behind cover?

No conventional weapon was capable of such deadly force, or so they thought, the travelers must have commanded supernatural powers…or worse, one of them was an outcast.

Wait. Didn’t outcasts travel alone?

What if both of the travelers were outcasts?

Whatever the case, there were going to be no prisoners.

Panic gripped the small squad of survivors, and they ran for their lives.

Not one of them managed to escape.

Kineta simply adjusted her aim and mowed down every last coward. She was breathing heavily, her ears were ringing, and her hands were numb. But she was alive…she just wished that she hadn’t had to kill to ensure that fact.

The road was quiet again. Whatever plan the conscription party had was surely ruined by now.

Something was definitely off. Conscription parties had never before ventured so closely to civilization. SANAS airships never flew so far south.

Night had already taken hold of the sky when Kineta noticed something that was odd about the horizon. She did not hesitate to voice this.

“Why are all the lights off?”

The Lone Sentry stopped in his tracks. He had been so focused on keeping a steady rhythm that he had failed to notice the darkness where the shining lamps of the town walls should have been.

Darkness in and of itself was no danger, but what hid in the darkness was what worried the Lone Sentry the most. The outcast immediately entered a combat mindset and signaled for Kineta to keep low.

Sneaking up to where Shambles should have been was routine. The pair of wolves leapfrogged from one piece of cover to the next, keeping each other covered while they moved, one at a time.

The Lone Sentry raised his rifle and peered through the scope. The PSOM-9 telescopic sight cut through the darkness better than any natural night vision.

In the inky veil of night lay not Shambles, but where Shambles used to be.