Caleb Matthews came awake in the moment between breaths. His fingers tightened on the butt of his handgun in that same instant, eyes straining in the darkness to discover what had awakened him. There was little light to see by, even after his eyes had fully adjusted. The omnipresent ash cloud was a murky blanket obscuring the stars and painting the deep blackness of night a muddy brown.
He waited motionless for several long moments, his finger steady on the trigger and a bullet ready in the chamber, as always. The incessant hum of night insects was the only sound that broke through the muted silence of the impenetrable midnight veil. The crickets and cockroaches were the only things unaffected by the cataclysms. They still had plenty upon which to feed.
A small sound reached his ears, foreign to the standard night symphony. His eyes turned in the direction of the sound and noticed a faint glimmer of light from the copse of trees. The light flickered and swayed against the trunks, casting shadows that stretched out like fingers across the ground. Caleb had ignored the inviting embrace of the boughs when he had bedded down for the night. Instead, he had chosen to make his bed a few hundred yards to the south. Though the greenery and life had been a welcome sight against the backdrop of death, such havens invariably drew visitors, and he was unwilling to take that risk.
The small sound came again, and this time, he recognized it as the sound of voices. He immediately threw aside the light sheet, sending a shower of soot into the air. His handgun remained in his right hand. Packing his bedding quickly, he tossed his pack over a shoulder and silently holstered his handgun. He slung his rifle over the other shoulder.
He took a step to the south, away from the light, but then glanced back over his shoulder. His booted foot twitched in that direction, but he shook his head and growled softly, turning away. Part of him longed to creep toward the light and bask in the sweet sounds of human conversation once again. That part of him told him it would be worth the risk. But the wiser part of him, the survivor, warned him that anyone foolish or uncaring enough to light a fire within the confines of those trees would not be someone he wanted to meet.
He strode away, following the path he’d been tracking before bedding down for the night. A faint glimmer of red appeared on one horizon.
The footprints he followed were fresh, deep, and well-defined, without the buildup of ash from prolonged exposure to the air. At most, his quarry was only an hour or two ahead of him, hidden amongst the hills.
He drew his handgun with practiced ease and released the magazine, dropping it into his other hand and rolling it in his fingers so that he could glance at the rounds within. Round-points. He frowned ruefully as he stopped for a moment to reach into an outside pocket of his pack and pull out a second magazine loaded with hollow-points. The breadth and depth of the tracks told him he’d need the extra damage that hollow-point rounds would provide. If he were able, he would only ever have hollow-point rounds in his magazines. But it was becoming harder and harder to find ammunition. He’d picked the area around the ruined city-fortress clean, and his reloading supplies were already stretched thin—and were several dozen miles away at that.
He snapped the new magazine into place with a faint click. The first magazine went into another pocket on his pack, and he slipped a second hollow-point magazine into a loop on his belt, next to a brace of knives. He had his rifle, a scoped, bolt-action affair with a large enough caliber to take down just about anything that walked, but he wanted his backup gun ready. Just in case.
The sun rose completely, casting the landscape into hazy relief.
The land was devoid of life, buried under a sea of ash that engulfed the horizon as far as the eye could see. With each step, little clouds of soot blossomed around him, and his heavy boots sank deep into the ash. Blackened husks of trees and unidentifiable skeletal remains were the only marks on the horizon that broke up the monotonous blackened quilt, but even those were beginning to gray.
The sky continued its progression from blackish to reddish gray.
Caleb grimaced, not at the sight before him, but at the memories that swelled within him. They came unwanted, unbidden, and uncaring for his desires, swirling in a vortex that finally rested on the memory of the firelight he’d left behind him earlier that morning.
They had probably been marauders. Who else would have been that foolhardy? Those who ignored the basic rules of survival were either those too powerful to care, or those too stupid to realize they would shortly leave the world with one less idiot to populate it. Still, at least they’d been human.
With difficulty, Caleb banished the thoughts and continued his hunt. Nothing mattered besides the hunt of the day. This quarry had proved elusive thus far, always keeping a few steps ahead of him. But it was slowing now, and Caleb was getting close.
* * * *
The creature rummaged around in the trunk of a long-dead car, tossing a deflated spare tire aside as if it weighed less than a pillow. The tire landed in a massive drift of soot piled behind the car, sending a billowing cloud of thick gray into the air to mingle with the already drifting flakes.
On a nearby hill, Caleb watched the creature through the scope of his rifle. It was a relatively simple shot, especially with the rifle, but his finger rested against the side of the trigger, safety still on. Caleb studied the creature with a detached, professional curiosity, struggling to suppress the hunter’s voice within his mind long enough to assess the situation.
This was a creature he’d not seen before.
Caleb narrowed his eyes, considering the implication. Before the cataclysms—back before Caleb knew the difference between different handgun calibers and how to shoot, hunt, and defend himself from everything else that walked—things had been simpler, and happy. Afterwards all hell had—literally—broken loose. He’d long since resigned himself to goblins and trolls walking the earth, destroying everything in their path as they worked their way across the United States like a massive horde of locusts. There were other creatures, far fouler but less plentiful. And then there were the dragons and their masters.
The creature below wasn’t a goblin, though it was similar in appearance. Nor was it a troll, the larger counterpart to goblins. If anything, the creature seemed like a cross between the two. Almost man-height, the creature shared the green-gray complexion of the goblins, but the thickness and musculature of the trolls. This was something new.
Caleb knew they weren’t really called trolls or goblins. Most people called them that because giving them a name out of childhood stories and fairy tales objectified them in a way that made them less intimidating. At least, that was the hope.
Caleb’s curiosity waned. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human, and therefore it was worthy of death. He itched to put a bullet between its eyes. Caleb slipped his finger onto the trigger and turned off the safety.
With a guttural growl, the creature righted itself from where it had been crouched half inside the car, its pig-like snout sniffing at the air. A faded red duffel dangled from one meaty hand.
“Time to die,” Caleb whispered. He dropped into a measured, easy breathing rhythm and tensed his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze off a round.
Movement from the opposite side of the secluded valley made him drop back down behind the blackened tree trunk, silently cursing. Part of him screamed to shoot the creature anyway, but his training forced him to wait, sighting back down the scope so he could watch what was going on.
Down in the shallow valley, the creature tossed the duffel bag aside with a snarl and snatched up a massive, double-headed axe that had lain hidden in the soot near its feet.
Caleb still marveled how a technologically inferior race could have so easily wiped out humanity, though in truth the cataclysms themselves had rendered much of the technological disparity between the groups null and void. Everyone in the Charlotte city-fortress had a different theory about it, each as unlikely as the rest. For Caleb, the what and why no longer mattered. He only cared about how he was going to continue moving forward.
The creature grasped the weapon loosely in one hand, outwardly calm as a pair of trolls entered the valley.
The trolls were much larger than the goblin-like creature. Well over seven-feet tall, gray-skinned, and stone-like, the trolls were muscular warriors who appeared to have but a single purpose: to kill. Their torsos were girded with thick, red breastplates that bore a flaming fist painted over their left breasts. Pennants hung from the wide-bladed spears they carried, an image of a red dragon on a field of purple, fluttering in the breeze.
Caleb studied the pennants closely through his scope, noting the intricate detail. The creatures often traveled in large groups, wearing similar clothing, but the armor and the pennants spoke of an organization that Caleb hadn’t witnessed before. These were obviously guards. This was another new thing, and new things were rarely, if ever, good anymore.
“Hail Loran,” one of the trolls growled in a rumble that carried up to where Caleb hid. “Right hand of Mortan-zai, Dragonlord of these parts hereabouts.”
Even after several years, Caleb still had trouble understanding the trolls’ speech. It was like listening to a native German trying to speak English through a mouthful of marbles with the occasional grunt or snort thrown in for good measure.
The goblin-like creature grunted, sounding like a dying pig, as another, shorter figure entered the valley behind the two armored trolls. Caleb guessed that this was Loran. The figure was wrapped in a red cloak, hood pulled down to cover his face. The figure stopped when he was level with the two troll guards. He paused and pulled back the hood, revealing a human face. Long brown hair tumbled free as the red hood fell away.
Caleb gritted his teeth.
“So this is the envoy Granil sends us,” the man said, studying the creature with cold green eyes. “A half-breed mutt?”
The half-breed chuckled in a deep, gravelly voice and snapped his axe up onto one shoulder, the half-moon blades glinting in the dull sunlight.
“I be Athore,” he said, “and I be the general of the armies that follow Granil, Dragonlord of the Browns.”
Loran regarded him coolly. His gaze grew flinty, boring into the half-troll as if Loran were attempting to kill him with a glance. Athore smiled back at him, revealing crooked, yellowed teeth that had been sharpened to jagged points. Loran’s smooth, flawless face broke into a tight-lipped scowl. He raised a hand, and the armored trolls snapped to attention.
“You train your pets well,” Athore observed with a mocking little bow.
The trolls rankled at the insult. Low guttural growls sounded from deep within their throats. The troll on the left glanced at Loran, who nodded and waved one hand permissively in Athore’s direction. It charged, pole-arm lowered. The other troll followed only a few steps behind.
Athore glanced at them both without apparent concern, not even bothering to raise his axe. “I be glad you have enough guards to lose these two, Subcommander.”
The trolls bore down on their smaller adversary. The troll on the left was the first to reach Athore and charged forward blindly. Athore stood motionless, watching them come down on him, and, at the last possible moment, stepped quickly to the left with astonishing speed. The halberd’s point passed harmlessly to one side, though the move took Athore directly into the path of the oncoming troll, who let go of the halberd with one hand to swipe at him with a meaty fist.
Athore took the blow on the side of his head just beneath an eye. Caleb heard the meaty smack as the blow connected and winced despite himself. Still, Athore retained his axe, which spun in his hands and swung back and to the side, neatly hamstringing the troll that had struck him.
It fell forward with a roar of rage and pain, dropping its weapon and clutching at its severed calf.
Athore stumbled slightly, his eye already beginning to swell shut, but managed to plant his feet in a ready stance facing the first troll.
The first troll changed its course clumsily to compensate for Athore’s sudden movements. Athore grinned and grabbed a dagger from his belt. His arm cocked back and then shot forward. The light glittered off the blade as it flew through the air and plunged into the troll’s shoulder where the breastplate ended. Athore cursed something inarticulate and readied his axe.
The troll dropped the halberd and tore the dagger from his shoulder with a small grunt of pain.
A moment later Athore’s axe crushed into the troll’s armored chest with enough force to knock the troll off balance. The massive gray creature stumbled, twisted nearly all the way around, and toppled toward the ground. Athore finished him off before he could rise.
Athore turned back to the hamstrung troll, who had managed to get back onto its feet with the aid of an abandoned car. It was weaponless, but bellowed in angry defiance as Athore sauntered forward.
“Finish it, half-breed,” the troll barked.
Athore touched a hand to his forehead in mock salute and stepped forward. It was over in mere moments. Athore buried his axe into the ground next to the lifeless trolls and sat down on the hood of car, which buckled and protested under the strain.