Chapter 9 Warlord Kyle

John woke up in the comfortable bed after a good night sleep, with Luna laying at the end of the bed, taking more space than John. John got dressed, and although there was no water in the faucet, the innkeeper had given him a basin filled with water last night. Using it he washed up. John left with his rifle on his back, still wearing his military clothes, although they looked kind of stupid, no one could deny how strong and rugged they were. With Luna in tow, John left for the main street.

John arrived at the main street after a short while. He went directly over to Dave, who was already up and working on the mysterious metal. “Hello Dave, did you figure something out already?” John inquired, interested. “Oh, hey John, I did in fact figure some things out. Firstly, this metal is apparently called Ocharicilum, weird I know. Secondly, take a look at this” Dave said as he handed John what looked like a dagger.

“Although I couldn’t make a sword with the pieces you gave me, I can make one of these daggers. I did some testing last night, and I figured out that the crystals by themselves aren’t fazed by even the most volatile fire, however when I put in both the metal and the crystals, they melted like butter on a piece of toast and soaked into the Ocharicilum. Once it did, the Ocharicilum became really malleable. However, I almost had to work on it inside the forge it kept losing heat so fast, and I got the feeling that if I let it cool down I would never be able to work on it again. So, I very quickly beat this dagger to form, and it came out quite well” John, inspected the dagger, which at this point was just a piece of metal with no handle or ornamentals. John lightly pressed it against his upper forearm. “Hey careful, it is extremely sharp!” Dave warned. When John removed the knife, blood started seeping through slowly, despite John only having lightly tapped his arm. “Wow, you weren’t bluffing” John said in amazement. “No shit, Sherlock” Dave answered slightly annoyed, that John hadn’t taken him seriously.

However, as Dave looked at John, or more specifically his arm, he noticed that it had already stopped bleeding and if he didn’t know any better he would say it was already healing. “You, are you…?” Dave asked subtly, John looked at him and gave him a knowing wink. “Who is the one in control of this place anyway?” John tried to gloss over what just happened. “Uh, oh, that would be Kyle or Warlord Kyle as some call him. If you want to see him, just walk down this road until you reached the mayors office” Dave answered. John nodded with a smile and walked away.

Eventually John reached a fairly tall building, it was the tallest building around. Outside stood two men with ARs. “hey stop” when John was right in front of the door, he got reprimanded. “I am here to see Kyle” John answered. The guards looked at each other. One of them reached for a walkie-talkie on his shoulder. “Uh, boss, there is a guy here who wants to meet you” the guard spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Tell him I have some information he might be interested in” John said. “He says he has info for you” the guard continued. John could hear some garble coming out of the walkie, however he couldn’t tell what was said. “alright, go a head, take the stairs, the elevator doesn’t work”

John swiftly arrived in front of a large double door, with Luna in tow, it seems they don’t care about wolves in this town. John knocked on the door, to be polite. “Come in” he heard from inside the room. Inside the room, the sealing was very far up, on both sides there were large paintings. However, what caught his eye, was the astounding amount of arms and ammo around. Almost every corner was filled with boxes of ammo with loads of guns leaning against them. In the middle of the room there was a large desk, behind it sat a quite handsome man, with short brown hair and strong eyes, truly a fierce leader. He was wearing a green shirt and denim pants.

“Good day, Mr.?” Kyle asked, “John” John responded. “well nice to meet you John, I am Kyle, now what brings you to my humble abode?” Kyle asked with interest. “Well for the short while I have been her, I noticed that you have a lot of weapons and ammo. However, do you mine for the metal to make these things?” John asked, hoping that his guess was correct, John knew that there are some people mining somewhere, however he couldn’t be sure what they were mining for. Kyle looked inquisitively at John “We do indeed, what about it?”.

“Well my hometown, incidentally has a not only an iron mine, but also a steel mill, there should be literal tons of steel laying around, since everyone abandoned it” John answered. Kyles eyes suddenly light up with excitement, he almost seemed too happy about the prospect of several tons of steel laying around. “That’s great, how far away is it?” Kyle asked with gusto. “Only about a two hour drive” John answered with a smile. “Fantastic, how come I haven’t heard anything about this before!?” Kyle pondered angrily out loud. “Ah, well my hometown is quite small and remote, not many know it exists” John answered. “I see” Kyle answered. “would you like a cigarette? I feel like I need a cigarette to celebrate right now” Kyle remarked happily. “Sure” John answered with a smile.

All three stood outside on the large balcony, which had several static gun emplacements, consisting of DSHKMs, M2s and M240s. On the balcony, John and Kyle could see across the whole town, which wasn’t very big, one could see the town entrance only a 150 or so yards away. There were some sparse forest here and there, however most of the town was surrounded by open plains and fields being used to plant food. “Ah, I do love a drag of the old poison stick once in a while” Kyle remarked, while enjoying his cigarette. “Oh, by the way, what is the wood barricade, do you have problems with animals?” John asked, remembering that creature in the forest and shuddering a little. “ah no, that’s for…”

however just as Kyle was about to answer, suddenly the local church’s bell started ringing. For a brief moment, Kyle had a face full surprise, but not the good kind. “ENEMY ATTACK” was suddenly screamed out by someone. Kyle started rapidly scouting around the plains and fields looking for something. On the left side of his vision John spotted a bunch of people running across the field. John looked over and started focusing. What he saw surprised him mightily. Not only were the people running across the field, incredibly skinny, their skin was also a pale gray color. Since this was only a 100 or so yards away he could tell that none of them were carrying any conventional arms. However, on their fingers, they appeared to have long slender claw like nails.

Kyle’s eyes followed where John was looking, and saw the creatures. Fury was stirring in his eyes, he obviously did not like that these things were knocking on his front door. Kyle raised his right arm, which promptly started transforming, getting longer and thinner. Until eventually his whole right arm had turned into a gigantic, long gun barrel. *CHUNK, CHUNK, CHUNK* sounded out as Kyle started shooting his shoulder gun. John jumped a little from the sound, and turned over to Kyle, the sight of his gun arm, surprised John a lot. “What the hell are you” John shouted. “I’m a gun man” Kyle answered with a stern look, he would have probably said it with a laugh at any other point in time, however now was not the time to laugh. John looked as the gigantic shells flew out hitting the ground next to the creatures and exploding on impact, shredding the closest creatures to bits. “What the hell are those things” John yelled, while Kyle continued shooting. “Vampire spawns” Kyle yelled back. John’s eyes went wide as he yelled” There are vampires!?”. “Yeah, as far as we can tell, those things are unfortunate people that have been turned into vampire spawn. We don’t know exactly where the vampire is, however we know he is close to Wellspring”

John took a second to process this information. Wait wasn’t Wellspring where his sister lived. John added 2 and 2 together. His eyes turned blood red as he realized. His anger alone made him spontaneously transform. Kyle was mightily surprised as a 9 foot tall werewolf suddenly was standing next to him, and he stopped firing. However, before he could do anything John had already left. When John had realized, what could have happened, Luna could feel his burning anger like a sun, it was so strong it had even made her transform spontaneously. She quickly followed John, running east, towards the creatures. John was so furious it had blinded him has he continued running southward, only occasionally swiping a vampire spawn that got in his way. As such John and Luna raced across the fields, at close to 70 mph. “What the fuck was that?” Kyle remarked stunned, before he continued shooting vampire spawns. He could barely see John and Luna disappear into the forest heading for Wellspring.