Read Wormwood Dawn (Episode II) for Free Online Page A

take on a whole army?”
    “What?” Dan joked, cupping his hand behind his ear. Drew laughed, handing Dan a glass of whiskey.
    “To victory,” Drew said, holding up his glass, “and many more.”
    They clinked glasses, taking a nice big gulp of whiskey before plopping down on the couch. It had been a rough day, and they both needed a little relaxation time. The whiskey was just the bonus. It felt warm going down, and the sensation put a smile on their faces.
    “I was thinking about what Shirley told us,” Dan said, “about how this area would go to shit. The bulletin board mentioned how Gephardt was planning to destroy the major cities. If they are evacuating them, where would they take the people?”
    “I don’t think they’re evacuating the people,” Drew said. “Just themselves. They’ll leave the people to die.”
    Drew was probably right, Dan realized. Why not just kill everyone off and start new. Everyone who was able to survive on their own was a liability for them, anyway. Starting a new fascist regime would be easier with people who flocked to them for help. Helpless people are easier to control.
    This all seemed too much like the perfect setup.
    “I wonder why the mercs were there at Shirley’s,” Dan wondered. “It’s like they were going house to house to round people up.”
    “Probably,” Drew said. “That means they’ll eventually come here; especially if they had called for backup during the firefight.”
    “Shit,” Dan whispered. “Maybe she was right. We should leave.”
    Drew sighed. “Eventually.”
    They sat silent for several moments, sipping their whiskey and enjoying the mild buzz that crept up on them. Dan drank more slowly than usual, Shirley’s words having stuck in his head. He was too much of a lush to do anything worthwhile. Drunken losers don’t make good survivalists.
    “I wonder if anyone knows where people are going,” he said, finally. “Maybe there are new forum posts on the bulletin board.”
    “You left the laptop on,” Drew said. “The battery’s probably dead. And, I gotta tell ya, running that generator at night makes me nervous.”
    Dan got up to check the laptop. There was still one-third of the battery left. That should be enough to browse for a half hour or so. He refreshed the screen and reloaded the bulletin board. There were no new videos, but some new forum posts. Perhaps he should write one himself.
    “Should we post the story about the cat?” he asked Drew, “or maybe the hunter-thing?”
    Drew got up and sat at the corner of the table. “Might be a good idea,” he said. “Maybe it will attract some attention. Don’t forget to tell everybody how I chopped its head off.”
    Dan chuckled, clicking the new post button.
    He described the night in question with great detail; how Drew had found the cocoon, their effort to burn it, its appearance, and the howl that almost seemed to attract the shufflers that had attacked. He added the floating body in the creek, and its appearance later on when it had emerged from underneath the house. And then, at Drew’s request, Dan detailed the battle, emphasizing Drew’s barbarian-like beheading of the beast.
    After clicking the post button, Dan sat back. “Well,” he said. “Now we wait.”
    “Click that,” Drew said, pointing at a post that was entitled New York City Update.
    “Citizens fleeing from New Jersey,” Dan began reading, “report that parts of New York City have been annihilated. After a massive firefight between Gephardt Security and National Guard troops, a blinding light swallowed the entire island of Manhattan, leaving it in ruins. The nature of the explosion suggests nukes, but there has been no confirmation. Witnesses from miles away described a blast, light, and heat wave similar to what they have seen in news reels capturing nuclear testing in the Nevada desert. No one is certain whether the destruction was meant to destroy the hordes of mutants that had overrun the