The Blood Talisman (2 page)

He took his gun out of his holster,
prepared in case any wolf was out there. He pointed the flashlight
around frantically in search of his colleague.

“
Gene!” he called out once
more.

“
Alex?” a small voice
called back.

Alex moved his flashlight around
looking for the source of the sound. He heard the wolf howl again,
but this time closer.

“
Gene, where are you?” Alex
asked.

“
Here,” Gene answered
behind Alex.

Alex turned his flashlight around to
find Gene bent over on the ground.

“
You okay? You ain’t sick,
are you?”

“
No, but you need to run.
There’s a wolf out there that knows we’re here,” he
answered.

“
What happened to your
stutter?” Alex asked.

“
Just go,” Gene
replied.

As Gene looked up at him, Alex turned
his flashlight directly into Gene’s eyes. They were turning a
yellowish red. Alex scrunched his forehead up in
confusion.

“
Run!” Gene demanded again,
in a deeper, almost demonic voice.

Alex took a few steps back from Gene
and dropped his flashlight into the sand with a thud. He dropped to
his knees and was clamoring to find it in the sand when he heard
growling and moaning in front of him. He wrapped his fingers around
the cold black handle of the flashlight and shone it back toward
Gene. Where Gene had once been now stood a wolf on two legs, like a
man. The wolf had saliva dripping from its lips and dirty sand in
its claws.

Alex drew his gun on the human-sized
wolf and began shooting, but the creature charged him, knocking him
over onto the desert sand. The wolf was on top of him before he
knew it.

The wolf tore at Alex’s sleeve,
ripping it completely off and spitting it out into the dark desert.
It then dug into his arm with its teeth, shredding his flesh and
muscle. The dark red blood gushed out onto the sand. Alex knew he
had to do something fast. He snatched his knife out of its holster,
stabbed the creature in its sternum and tried to rip upward. The
wolf immediately rolled away and ran off. He could hear it howling
in pain in the distance. Alex blocked the wolf out of his mind and
started howling in pain himself.

“
Gene!” he shouted with
what voice he had left.

The wolf’s howl turned into a man’s
scream. And not just any man, but Gene himself.

“
No wonder the freaky
little bastard took every night shift,” Alex thought wryly, as he
lay there bleeding onto the light brown sand. He reached over to
find his ripped sleeve, and wrapped it tightly around his bleeding
arm.

“
Help!” he yelled out in
pain.

Gene was still screaming and gurgling
in the distance, but soon became eerily silent. Alex wondered if he
had died or run off out of earshot. He could hear other soldiers
hurrying towards him as he began to lose consciousness. He fought
to stay in this world, but the blood that was draining from him had
weakened him considerably. He began to think about the only thing
that he was truly here fighting for: Amalia. Her soft touch and the
smell of her long brown hair encompassed him. He longed for the
care that only she could give him. He let the thought of her love
consume him as he drifted off, in and out of consciousness. The
pain he felt encircled him until he only felt the pain of being
without Amalia. The darkness of the desert hindered his sight until
there was complete darkness and he only saw blank
nothingness.

***

“
Shit! Johnson, grab
Jacobs’ shoulders and drag him back to the infirmary. Capritio, go
and get Dodds and you two take care of Bailey’s body. I’ll go with
Jacobs,” shouted Commander John Fortner.

Johnson, a burly black man, grabbed
Alex by the shoulders and began to drag him toward the infirmary
back at camp. Capritio, a blond, witless wonder, and Dodds, an
average-looking, middle-aged bald man, were pouring gas all over
Bailey’s body before lighting it afire. They watched it burn and
began warming their hands over the remains of Private Gene
Bailey.

Alex looked very pale and unresponsive
to Commander Fortner.

“
He’s not going to make it
like this, Johnson, drop him,” the Commander shouted as he shuffled
beside him.

Commander Fortner placed his hand over
Alex’s uninjured arm, holding him down.

“
Hold his shoulder down,
Johnson; I’m going to make sure he stays asleep until we can get
him back with the others.”

The Commander stuck a needle into
Alex’s uninjured arm. Johnson released his shoulder and began
wrapping the injured arm tightly with white gauze that quickly
turned red from the blood still seeping out of his mangled
arm.

“
Do you think he’s going to
turn?”

Fortner stared at Johnson for what
seemed like a lifetime. He looked down at Jacobs, unconscious on
the desert sand. “I hope so. We need him on our side if we expect
to win this war – and I don’t mean the war in this desert. Besides,
Bailey was our last wolf here so this had better work. I can bend
him to what I need him to be. I only have to make a call and get
him transferred to Texas, immediately.”

Fortner ordered Johnson to take him
back to the infirmary and then left to make his mysterious call to
Texas. Johnson could hear Jacobs’ heart pounding beneath his chest
and see the blood coursing through his veins. He resisted the urge
to feed, but it was tremendously difficult. There wasn’t much of a
blood supply in the desert, and tensions were running high among
the men as their comrades came up missing for unknown
reasons.

He carried Alex’s barely living body
back towards camp and disappeared from the night into a small tent
marked ‘infirmary’. He carelessly chucked Alex down onto a clean
infirmary bed and stared down at him, wanting to taste his
blood.

He unwrapped the blood-soaked gauze
from around Alex’s wounded arm and placed it on the end of the bed
by his feet. He began wrapping the arm again and noticed that the
blood had stopped seeping from his wound. He continued to wrap it
tighter, to keep it from opening up again and gathered the old,
bloody bandages. He looked around for anyone who might be
watching.

Johnson balled the bandages up as
tight as he could and brought them to his lips. He squeezed them
out over his mouth, drinking in the little bit of blood that he
could manage to press out. A few drops escaped and rolled down the
side of his face. He placed the bandages into a nearby garbage can
ever so lightly, as if he were placing a baby in the arms of a new
mother. He reached up to catch the drops of blood that were now
reaching his neck but his hand was stopped suddenly by another’s
hand.

“
What in the hell do you
think you’re doing?” Commander Fortner asked forcibly.

“
I’m dying out here. I need
the strength,” Johnson replied.

Fortner released his hand and Johnson
wiped up the drops of blood that had escaped him earlier. He lifted
his fingers up to his mouth and began licking them.

“
You disgust me, Johnson.
Clean yourself up and go check on the other two idiots.”

“
Yes sir,” Johnson said
sarcastically.

Fortner turned towards Jacobs and
leaned over, hovering inches above Jacobs’s face. “You have no idea
what you have found yourself in the middle of,” he
whispered.

Chapter 2

“
Here you go,” Amalia said
as she handed the brooding blonde sitting on her sofa a steaming
hot cup of black coffee. They had talked about everyone in the
neighborhood at least once and had circled back around to her own
happenings. “Selene, I really appreciate you keeping me company,
but I’m fine. I have actually grown accustomed to being alone.
Since Alex left, I’ve read fifteen novels and watched hundreds of
movies. I stay busy. My mind doesn’t wander,” she explained, as she
flipped her long brown hair off of her shoulders and twirled it
into a ball atop her head. She let it go with a slip of the hand
and it fell gently back down.

“
I know. I miss having our
girls’ nights out. I don’t have anyone to be my second wheel at
clubs with. It’s rather discouraging. Nobody wants to talk with one
girl. Two or more is always approachable.”

“
I’m sorry, but I promised
Alex that I wouldn’t get into trouble while he’s gone and I keep my
promises. Besides, we’re married now. It’s not like it used to
be.”

“
Have you heard from him?”
Selene asked as she picked up a picture that sat just over from her
on an end table. The photo showed Alex smiling at Amalia as she
snapped the selfie of them both. Selene rubbed her finger smoothly
over the picture frame and sat it back down carefully onto the
table.

“
I know you’ve always had a
thing for him, and I swear, if anything were to ever happen to me
that y’all would end up together.”

“
Am I
that
obvious?” Selene said, with a
breathy chuckle.

Amalia raised her brown eyebrows at
her and smiled. “I’ve always thought it was sweet. Never been
jealous.”

“
Gee, thanks.”

“
I didn’t mean any harm. I
know Alex. He’s very committed and takes his marriage vows
seriously. He grew up here in the Bible belt and he would never do
anything to compromise our relationship or our
marriage.”

“
Yes, yes. I know. He has
morals.” Selene said, making fun of Amalia’s response.

“
You’re so bad.”

“
Since I still can’t
corrupt you enough to go out with me, I guess I will go home and be
bored and boring. I swear, this whole marriage thing has really got
you both on the straight and narrow.”

“
Like it wouldn’t do the
same to you?”

“
True.” Selene gave Amalia
a friendly hug and stopped at the door before she left. “Keep me
updated on when he’ll be home, okay?”

“
I will,” Amalia promised
as she pushed her playfully out the door.

She leaned her back to the door and
smiled. She clung to her happy thoughts of Alex and wondered if he
did the same to thoughts of her.

Chapter 3

Alex had been unconscious for five
days, but finally he could sense the lights from his hospital room
gleaming down through his eyelids. He wanted to open his eyes, but
feared what he might look like after what he had been through, even
though he barely remembered his encounter with the wolf. He wanted
to know where he was since he no longer felt the torturous heat of
the desert.

The creature that had attacked him
consumed his dreams like an obsession. He continually imagined
himself being the creature, devouring whatever came into sight.
People and animals alike were claimed as victims by his animalistic
instincts. His longing to return to Amalia was now swamped by
unwanted, constant nightmares of the beast.

He peeled one eye barely open, rolling
it towards what seemed to be a teal and brown chair looming in the
distance. When he didn’t feel the presence of anyone in the room
with him, he opened both eyes. He heard the beeping of a monitor
next to him. The beats began to get louder and faster as he roused.
There was a crème curtain covering his small hospital room that
waved slightly against the hum of the air conditioning. He squinted
down at his feet. They were bare and clean.

The voices outside of his room grew
and the beep of his monitor became louder and faster still. He
tried to lift his head up to speak but no words came out. Alex
reached up to the round stickers on his chest that were attached to
the incredibly loud monitor that was now beeping almost out of
control. He yanked the stickers off, much to his dismay since a few
chest hairs came with them. A nurse came rushing into his
cubicle.

“
No sir, Mr. Jacobs. You
can’t take those off, they monitorin’ your heart, sir,” cried the
large black woman as she attempted to put them back onto Alex’s
chest.

He grabbed one of her chubby arms
firmly. The nurse looked surprised and scared at the same time. He
stared at his fist, grasping the smooth dark skin. He glanced at
his fingernails, which had grown into sharp points. Snatching his
hand off the startled woman, he held it out in front of his face.
The nails were fine. He figured that he’d imagined they were claws
due to all of the disturbing creature dreams he’d been having the
past couple of days. He gave a long sigh of relief and the nurse
looked at him in confusion.

“
Are you ok, Mr. Jacobs?”
she asked with true worry in her voice.

“
Yes, please get me the
doctor.”

“
Ye… yes sir.”

Alex threw his head back with concern
and uncertainty on his face. He could hear the nurse outside
talking to a deep-voiced man. His hearing was coming and going. His
body seemed to be out of his control. At times he thought he might
be able to hear a pin drop from the nurses’ station outside. Then
his hearing cut off completely, as if he were going
deaf.