"Holy mother of…" The tall man exclaimed, out of breath from swinging his metal rod against the head of the last Shrinker.
Catching his breath, Ajax leaned against the car he had just shoved across the road with his body alone, and met eyes with the man, who exchanged a nod with him.
"Jim!" Behind the man, the woman stepped forward, her pistol still aimed at Ajax with shaky hands, "He's one of them."
"Whoa! Whoa!" Ajax held up his hand, "Friendly, lady."
"Aim that down." The man whose name was Jim immediately pushed down the pistol in the woman's hand, before turning to Ajax, "Sorry about that. Our encounter with people like you was… it didn't go well."
Ajax nodded and looked between the two. He took two steps in the snow towards the man and stood a few feet away, extending a hand. Jim walked a couple of steps towards Ajax as well, shaking his hand.
"Jim Norton."
"Ajax Wills."
"Nice to meet you, man." Jim said with a smile that hung for a few seconds before adding, "Strong name, a Greek hero, you know?"
"Yep." Ajax smiled with a knowing grin, "My old man had a flair for dramatics." He then looked around for any other monsters before continuing the conversation with a bit more peace of mind.
"Lucky man. Amanda here never let me name our daughters Clio and Calliope, no matter how much I begged."
"I feel you. What did you settle for?" Ajax asked.
"Daphne and Thalia."
Ajax weighed the names for a bit before nodding.
"I see a lot of compromise, but you made it work, at least."
"True."
The two men seemed to have bonded over a little bit of ancient Greek names before nodding to one another, establishing baseline trust. Meanwhile, Jim's wife, Amanda, stepped back towards the car she was leaning against and opened its door, took out a large backpack, and from behind it, two young girls walked out. If Ajax were to guess, they were between six and ten.
"Listen, Ajax, we're heading this way…" Jim tried to say something, but he seemed not to have thought that far ahead before finishing.
"You want me to give you a head start if the lady's a bit on edge?" Ajax asked.
"That would be for the best." Jim nodded with a somewhat complicated expression.
Ajax looked behind him, his rough face reddening from the cold, then turned again towards the large man with a goatee and gave a small nod.
"I don't mind, but if you slow down, I may have to pass you. Let me warn you, though, a group will be coming this way, and I'm not sure about them, so I prefer not to stick around."
"Fine." Jim nodded, "Let's keep each other in sight then. I suppose you're heading to Omen?"
"A little bit east." Ajax replied.
"Same direction then." Jim frowned and looked away. "Do you know anything?"
Ajax shrugged, so Jim nodded and turned away.
No words were said afterwards as Jim took his family and started moving. Ajax watched for a bit, catching his breath after the strenuous effort he had just made, and looked around for his snowshoes, then watched the road south for a minute before moving again.
He could still see the Nortons walking ahead of him. Jim, a big man, broke the snow for his wife and two daughters, while Amanda stayed in the back, occasionally glancing at Ajax, as if hoping to keep him at bay.
Ajax could only wonder about such a family as they moved into the residential area past the bridge, one that looked fairly young and had somehow survived all this time, hopefully without losing any member. For a second, Ajax was pleased with himself, thinking that he could at least look out for the family in this journey, and there were still two hours of walking between them and their destination.
But after some time, disaster loomed as a dark cloud in the sky, and wolves' howls echoed in the air.
Everyone froze for an instant. Ajax looked ahead and saw the Nortons halt their steps. His heart almost skipped a beat when he thought they would start running. Thankfully, Jim seemed like a smart man and purposefully made his family maintain the same pace as before.
Wolves weren't a common sight in these states since the 1800s, but who knew what the Rifts brought to this world? However, the first word that came to mind after "wolf" was "pack," and Ajax started praying it wasn't so.
A lone wolf wasn't a threat at the moment, and it wouldn't attack humans on its own, going for much smaller prey. But running would make one look like prey anyway, and if it were a pack, things would get ugly.
Further down the road, the survivors started treading between buildings as signs of combat appeared. Holes the size of fists could be seen peppered all over the exterior of one house; inside, it seemed like some sort of monster nest had been dismantled, a sign of hope that someone was patrolling this area and killing the invading monsters.
But the howls still stirred the hearts of the weary survivors, forcing them on a ceaseless march in the thick snow. Ajax could see the two girls fall a few times. Jim wanted to halt and carry the youngest, but Amanda told him not to and carried her instead, as it seemed that the man was struggling his utmost to break the snow for them.
Ajax wanted to step forward and help carry the children, but he saw Amanda still looking back to keep track of his position every once in a while.
What transpired between the Nortons and the Awakened individuals they ran into must have been horrible. It goes without saying that even among the strongest and most fit to survive, some of the Awakened took things too selfishly, especially the Warrior class, who grew very powerful very quickly.
Power such as this gets into one's head, especially a head that knows no discipline. The Airport Camp was such an example: people found power and became leaders by default, without knowledge or training. No chain of command, no order, just flexing and thuggery.
While these thoughts kept his mind from dwelling on the tiring march and allowed him to simply walk his hardest, Ajax noticed Jim tripping and falling all of a sudden, causing the three behind him to immediately rush to him. But then, a large shadow leapt from between the ruined houses.
"WATCH OUT!"
Ajax shouted and aimed his rifle in less than a heartbeat, bullets flying and hitting the stalker that had almost jumped the Nortons.
The girls screamed, and as the panicking Amanda turned and aimed her pistol, the large creature was already in front of her.
It was a wolf.
Not a normal wolf, not a monster wolf, not a man-wolf; simply a big wolf, a wolf the size of a horse, legs moving in the snow unbothered by its thickness, and a white coat of fur that hid the wolf from sight.
The wolf bared its fangs at Amanda and approached her in a flash. If not for the bullets from Ajax's rifle hitting its side, she would have been ripped to shreds. The wolf chose to jump away, its snarl turned into an obvious wince of pain before it jumped away.
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[ Dire Wolf ]
< Large Beast, Invader >
A massive, battle-scarred predator with unsettling intelligence and a claim-staking howl that chills the air. It hunts with patience, circling and testing prey before striking with lethal precision. Rarely reckless, it prefers control over chaos.
Relentless Pursuer: Tracks targets for days without rest.
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Ajax ran forward and chased the wolf with a few well-aimed shots. However, even the 5.56mm bullets that almost killed most monsters only drew a few drops of blood on the snow from the beast as it retreated and disappeared.
"Shit!"
Ajax ran as fast as he could and arrived at the Nortons, only to find Amanda sitting on the ground, barely breathing as her life seemed to have flashed before her eyes, while Jim was covering both his daughters with his body, a desperate attempt from a desperate man.
"Are you alright, Amanda? Jim?" Ajax asked, eyes scanning the pale white landscape for any movement, but the wolf seemed to have disappeared from sight.
"God!" Amanda blurted, looking up at Ajax, shaken and tearful, but then sniffed and rubbed her nose, averting her gaze from him as she turned to her equally frightened husband.
"Ajax…" Jim turned to him with a trembling voice, but as he stood up, carrying his deathly terrified daughters, he looked around, then back to Ajax, "Is it gone?"
"Let's not wait to find out." Ajax replied and counted his bullets, "I'll take the lead, stay close."
There was no peace of mind in the following hour of walking. Ajax and the Nortons passed broken neighborhoods and burned places, but sensing shifts in the distant snow, they could still detect movement from the Dire Wolf.
The System described the wolf as a Relentless Pursuer, which meant that no matter what, it would keep on their trail, and if there were no military or help at the end of this long road, the five of them would be the wolf's dinner.
As for Jim Norton, once he calmed down, he started analyzing the situation with hope in his voice. A wolf as big as this wouldn't be a pack hunter for sure, since its size could give it an advantage over many prey, meaning that it hadn't developed the qualities of a pack hunter in its evolution, as it clearly looked like no wolf from Earth.
Ajax wanted to argue with this analysis, but proving it wrong would kill the little hope that kept the Nortons going. However, what proved it wrong wasn't a rational argument, but irrefutable observations that dawned upon them when a blizzard started to brew and wolf figures with it.
Dire Wolves!
Two, three, four…
"Shit! RUN!"
Ajax could shoot as many bullets as he had, as fast as he was trained. He kept two wolves from snatching Amanda from behind. Jim wasn't so lucky; he was rushed, caught by his arm by a wolf that tried to drag him as he carried his daughter, with a fourth going for the young girl. With little time to act, Ajax aimed for the last wolf attacking the girl and successfully shot it in the eye, causing the beast to whimper and run.
The girl carried by Jim fell in the snow, but Amanda caught her quickly and started running, looking back at Jim being dragged away, crying and wailing for her husband. Ajax rushed to the other side, peppering the dire wolves with bullets that drove them off. He then went after Jim immediately, who was desperately waving his metal rod at the wolf while being thrashed in the snow.
Ajax's only course of action was to get uncomfortably close to a beast twice his size and rush it with his power to avoid shooting Jim. His attack relied on him charging a good distance at his enemy to maximize the force of his momentum, but the snow constrained him, only allowing him to get the wolf to let go of Jim's bloodied arm and turn on him.
With a vicious motion, the wolf tried to bite down on Ajax, but he had a pistol on him, and its loud bangs and piercing shots were enough to discourage the wolf from thrashing him as it had done to Jim, leaving the two men and running off into the distance.
"Jim!" Ajax shot to his feet almost immediately and walked to the groaning man.
"My k-kids! Amanda!" Jim stood up, flesh shredded all over his right arm, yet he didn't care in the slightest as he leaned on Ajax.
"Ahead of us!" Ajax said and dragged him along, "This way!"
Ajax covered all the flanks he could think of as he ran, trying to follow and reach Amanda and the two girls, but his vision was deteriorating as the blizzard got stronger. Jim desperately ran after the trail left by his wife and daughter, only to find their backpack midway. He clung to it with his good arm and started dragging it desperately.
"AMANDA! DAPHNE! THALIA! GOD! PLEASE, GOD! GIRLS!"
"Jim, careful!"
Behind the father, Ajax turned after covering the rear, only to see a giant in the storm.
Then the realization dawned on the two men, the memory of the last news broadcast ever seen in the United States: giants walking in a snow blizzard and laying siege to the White House.
The blizzard, the storm, the large silhouettes, all of them were scary indeed, but what was the scariest was the fact that Jim's family, Amanda, and the girls were now in the hands of the giant, lifting them beyond the veil of the blizzard.
"NOOOOO!"
Jim cried from his core, a scream of anguish as he watched his entire life being snatched away by the cruelty of fate. Jim let go of reason itself and rushed like a madman, while Ajax froze at the sight of the monster that would decimate anything in Brighthaven once it set foot into the already decimated city.
The giant immediately raised one leg, its mighty foot rising no less than fifteen feet, and it moved forward, ready to stomp down on the unfortunate survivors, only for the foot to land right behind Ajax with a thunderous quake that shattered the earth.
It missed him… it missed him?
Ajax had already sent a prayer to God and was ready to meet his loved ones, but as he hesitantly looked behind, he saw the mangled body of the white Dire Wolf that relentlessly pursued them in the snow, half-buried under the giant's earthen foot.
"Behind cover!"
Springing out of the snow mist, ten men emerged in snow-camo combat outfits, carrying combat rifles and shooting red beams at targets in the snow, dragging Jim out of the way and signaling Ajax to take cover.
The whimpers of wolves followed after each buzz and crack of these strange weapons that had the sound effect of whips lashing against the air.
"Retreat to the trench line!"
Another order was given, and as the group moved back in the snow, Ajax and Jim found themselves falling into a dug trench before moving through tunnels with the armed militant squad. Jim squirmed as he wanted to get back to his wife and children, but the soldiers told him they were safe and put him on a stretcher before transporting him down the tunnels to a wide room.
There, Ajax noticed that he had entered some sort of field hospital with so many injured lying around, people with wounds similar to Jim's, others with signs of frostbite on their feet and hands, and a few in severely critical condition.
But from a different tunnel, Amanda and the two young girls suddenly emerged, running towards Jim frantically, hugging the injured family man and crying as he was being treated by a freckled and ginger combat medic.
Behind the Nortons, a man appeared dressed in a militaristic black suit, a long coat, and a peaked cap, showing a lot of authority, as every soldier in the room greeted him on the spot. He was busy dusting dirt and snow from his suit, and he immediately started giving multiple orders to the soldiers around.
Ajax felt no familiarity with the military salutations or conduct around this figure of military authority, but Ajax needed this more than anything: a military chain of command, active, and speaking U.S. English.
He stepped immediately into the officer's path, saluted in the only way he knew how, and identified himself:
"Staff Sergeant Ajax Wills, U.S. Army. 75th Ranger Regiment, 2nd Battalion. Eight months no contact, sir."
Every soldier in the room paused, but with a signal from the officer, who appeared to be fairly younger than Ajax upon closer inspection, all of them went about their orders.
"Damn!" The officer spoke in a raspy but youthful voice, "A thousand refugees and we finally got ourselves the first U.S. military personnel."
"Excuse me?" Confused, Ajax interjected with a worried look.
"Be at ease." The officer replied, "I am Lieutenant Justiciar Adam Clay. Welcome to the Legio Bellarium, Earth Legion."