Wyrd Gere Read online

  Wyrd Gere

  Book 2 Valhalla AWOL

  Steve Curry

  Copyright © 2019 by Steve Curry All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2019

  Amazon ebook edition

  Steve Curry, Author

  Lubbock, TX 79413

  https://www.facebook.com/MyWyrdMuse/

  https://MyWyrdMuse.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  GERE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Untitled

  Appendix of Wyrdness

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements:

  To my usual crew, “The Crows”, Chuckie, John, Christhon and others. Julie Marie, Mr. Kellan, and Ms. McCridhe for their editing and proofreading. A hearty thank you goes out to Sheila for onerous rereads to check my instincts and scoff at my second guessing. To everyone in my circle of friends, critics, confidants and drinking buddies; thanks for the support, gentle nudges and drunken brainstorming sessions. Also thanks to “germancreative” on Fiverr.com for the amazing cover-art that helps me get the words out in front of people. Also on Fiverr, JAClement sculpted my document into a book. And finally, a huge thank you and appreciation to Cindy for pushing prodding and encouraging me with only the occasional reminder that I should have started writing twenty-years ago when she first told me I could write.

  GERE

  pronounced as the Anglish gear. “The Ravenous” in old Norse, Gere was one of two wolves who could normally be found at Odin’s side to do his bidding.

  1

  I was trying hard to keep on the lookout for Border Patrol, Lake Patrol, hostile gang members, immortal watchers, and a boat I’d never laid my eyes on. Hel for all I knew the NSA or Coast guard might be watching me in that gigantic lake on the Mexican border. I couldn’t see more than a stone’s throw away in the miserable drizzle. I called it miserable because the resultant trickle of near glacial water down my neck was increasingly annoying. The persistent rain had the added benefit of making me impatient and irritable at the driver's seat.

  I looked down with a glare for the icy water swirling in the bottom of the tiny rental boat. I distinctly remember leakier boats and worse weather. Those had been bigger boats with lots of other men around to help bail or row or whatever it took. This wasn’t a bad leak, but it was enough to bother me in the middle of a lake this size. I wouldn’t be able to see shoreline from out here even if it was broad daylight and clear weather. All of those factors were enough to make me ask how the Hel I got myself into this situation.

  Of course, I knew how I got here. After decades of keeping off the radar, I popped up in a big way. The start of it all wasn’t my doing. I was just the lucky winner who discovered the first body. After that, one thing led to another and I ended up with the attention of a spook from one of the alphabet agencies, and the much more welcome attention of a beautiful redhead from the Emerald Isle. I also caught exactly the kind of attention I had managed to avoid for so long.

  I guess I should explain the reason for my evasiveness. I’ve been around for a while. In fact, off and on, I’ve been around since sometime before the ninth century. Yeah, I said off and on. In the span of all of those years, I've spent an unknown time in Valhalla and can't count all my deaths. It’s an unknown time for more than a single simple reason.

  First off, even a life full of wine, women, and brawls palls after a few years. You can get bored enough to lose whole years at a time. Secondly, death loses some of its fearsomeness if it’s not permanent.

  I have a theory that most of the fighting Einherjar do is because they’re just that bored. We spent a huge amount of time training. More often we were kept in a kind of stasis. Oh, I have vague memories of good-natured competitive dismemberment. Remember, when one of us dies he just wakes up later back in the feast hall. Depending on your own group leader, aka Valkyrie, you might wake up in time for the feasting on the very day you died, or you might wake up when she decided you could be useful again. The worst part is, when she finally decides to wake you up it’s as if no time has passed. Someone else might mention that they hadn’t seen you in a while. Otherwise, you’d think you were back immediately.

  The best part was missions. Every so often one of us or even a whole bunch of us would get tapped for duty. Usually, it was a quick covert op. Drop us in at a key place to shift the odds in a battle. I know I took part in some events that were in the history books. I just can’t remember all of them. It’s my guess that whatever they do to keep us in stasis also affects our memories and freewill. Some of my brothers in arms were little more than mindless zombies.

  The best of us though were allowed more free thought. A zombie is only of limited use in any type of fight. That kind of troops main value is in how cheap they are. A zombie who just goes back to the fold is easy to waste. On the other hand, sometimes you needed more experienced boots on the ground. The fight that needs discretion is where those of us with a little more free will shined. Mine were some of those smarter boots. Or maybe I was just too stubborn for their brainwashing to stick.

  I was still suffering from certain effects that popped up after one of our discreet little missions back in Vietnam. Maybe I lost my memories in the thunder and fire of battle. Maybe I owed a certain manipulating old god for the lost years of my life. All I remember is the job we did that day and who was behind it. After that, I woke up in a MASH tent. I’m not sure whether old One-eye had a stake in the fight himself or was paid by someone else. Hel, he may have just liked the idea of a new type of airborne troop being used. Whatever the reasoning was; we were dropped in to provide some extra firepower in a bad situation.

  A new idea in the American Army had been to quickly move some real tough troops into position. The indigenous people in those jungle mountains were good at fast hit and run strikes against the entrenched American bases. So some bright chair polisher came up with Infantry that moved fast in helicopters. These Air Cavalry could hit the ground within minutes or hours rather than the days it might take to respond by marching or trucking troops through the jungle.

  Well, they responded fast alright. They got there ahead of any real Intel. I heard later that the first scout caught was asked how many of the VC were up on the mountain. His reply was supposedly “All of them.”

  That was all gossip, but there were certainly enough of the little bastards to go around. Kara, our Valkyrie, got us into position beside a dry river bed. For the first half of that battle, we moved around the perimeter providing some secretive assistance wherever it would do the most good.

  Everything came to a head later in the fight. The little guys with black pajamas made a massive push and broke into the troops we were assisting. Kara popped up out of nowhere and yelled “Charge”.

  When a Valkyrie yells, any soldier or individual with even a spark of the old warrior spirit is carried along with her will. So compelling was her power over us, that only a handful kept using our more modern weapons. The rest of us charged in. I clubbed my rifle at darting smaller figures. Beside me, one of my brothers
stabbed and ripped through those same bodies with the bayonet from his rifle. Past him, I saw an entrenching tool chop a hand off just as effectively as our axes centuries ago. Those of us still mobile were shooting, hacking and chopping right up until the supersonic birds streaked overhead and slowed just enough to drop napalm on us.

  I’m not going to try and tell you what napalm is like. But I’m pretty sure the guy who invented it had seen visions of the Christian Hell. I went from shooting and brawling to darkness in a scarlet thunder and screams of anguish. Dozens of people were screaming around me when I lost consciousness. Kara must have thought I was one of the dead ones. She never left one of us just hanging out after a mission. We either went back with her or were dead and just woke up later.

  I woke up briefly in a helicopter with bullet holes everywhere you could see. I almost tossed my breakfast from the stench of overcooked meat. I didn’t figure out until later that some of those smells were coming from me. I quelled the puke by focusing on the other sensations around me.

  I felt hard steel against my back. The steel plate surged and bucked with the wind and the will of the pilot. I also heard a continuous litany of sulfurous profanities coming from the cockpit. I knew just enough English to know the pilot was beyond furious about something to do with orders and other choppers. The ride was bumpy enough that I didn’t mind passing out again.

  The next time I woke up it was to a cheerful nurse with a fake smile asking how I was doing. It was the first time I woke up in mortal care since before I died first a thousand years ago. There was more to it but it’s too much to tell all at once.

  Short version is, I stole a dying soldier’s dog tags and ID and got shipped stateside. It was Hel keeping anyone from looking under the bandages at first, but once I was en route people just looked at my orders and took them at face value.

  Queue forward half a century.

  I still looked like a military veteran. I sport short hair most of the time. People tell me I’ve got pretty good posture whenever anyone notices. I even have the scout’s tendency to keep my eyes moving to spot “them” before they spot me. Anyone seeing me would guess I’d spent time in the middle east “sandbox”, rather than Vietnam though.

  For one, I’ve been told I look to be in my thirties or maybe a very, very well maintained forty-something. That’s always a little embarrassing. I mean, I was in my mid-twenties when a spear took out most of my left lung and did some pretty unpleasant things to my heart in passing. That hardly shows though except for an ugly scar on my chest. Kara didn’t fix that when she brought me back from the fight that first time. Some Valkyrie like their troops all flat muscle and scar-less. Kara liked us to keep the ones we got before she chose us. She also let us keep any we picked up against her wishes.

  My short faux-hawk hair is a tawny brown. In contrast, I wear a goatee of slightly darker brown or auburn with bits of coppery red showing through. I keep my tattoos covered by long sleeves as much as possible. No scars or brands are visible unless I have some clothes missing. I don’t even show much jewelry unless I happen to be wearing one of several earrings I’ve made for special occasions.

  Perhaps the most notable aspect of my appearance is what I prefer calling an atypical height to width ratio. My shoulders are as wide as most football players even with their pads on. Unfortunately, I also have to look up to even a moderately tall woman.

  I’m pretty sure my appearance isn’t what gave me away to get me out here on Lake Amistad in the middle of the night though. The very large and intimidating biker I met had “sniffed out” the little oddities of my origin more than saw them. He helped me avoid some legal entanglements through creative fraud and moving/mutilating a corpse.

  The problem was, he isn’t exactly a man. He tends to spend a lot of time at the right hand of one of the most powerful beings I didn’t want to see. And worst of all, he wanted a favor from me.

  THAT is what got me stuck out in a freezing rain in the middle of a ponderously large lake on the Mexican border.

  I was interrupted mid-muse by the murmur of a boat motor idling slowly closer. I cranked my head around looking for lights but never found them. What I did spot was a bobbing shadow that resolved itself into a decrepit old pontoon boat. The slow-moving beast was fitted with what seemed like an excessive number of fishing poles in metal pipes welded to the rails. Other than that it consisted of a single flat deck with some beat-up old bench seats and a pedestal from which a barely visible wiry looking silhouette steered. I watched the stern lights and bow light alike sort of flicker and then dull to a glow so wan and sullen that the driver’s watch dial was more visible.

  “Hey Jeffe...toss me a line.” I got a glimpse of the driver of that unsafe looking boat when the flare of his match lit a narrow face within his hooded raincoat. He ducked his head down and looked at me sideways through the smoke that spiraled up from his fresh cigarette. The eyes were partially squinted, maybe from the smoke but I was betting from a cold calculating stare. What I could see through the slits of his eyes was dark enough to be black in the darkness. I was guessing at dark brown. His thin and somewhat sparse moustache, however, looked black and a little oily as did the small soul patch and sharply pointed beard under thin and colorless lips. The lips themselves were curved in a cunning little smile. “I mean you better be the fellow ole Lobo got Pedro Perro out here for on a shitty night like this.”

  I shrugged and then thought about the fact that he might not be able to see me. That also meant he probably couldn’t see the pistol grip shotgun I had hanging down beside my leg. In daylight, the shotgun might have been a little too visible. In that case, I’d have brought a pistol. At night on a moving boat though, the shotgun with its barely legal length of barrel was the obvious choice. I might not be able to sweep the deck of the other boat, but it would spread big enough to clip two men if they were standing close together. With boats bobbing on waves I probably needed the pattern just to efficiently nail one guy.

  ”I’m the guy that was supposed to meet you in Doc Holiday’s two nights ago. Which begs the question, why send me a note and drag me out here on such a shitty night?” I did toss him a line with my left hand. The gun-toting right hand I kept somewhat behind me and out of the light. A sharp glimpse and nodding grin from “Pedro” told me he wasn’t that oblivious.

  “Big gringo I saw getting out of his border patrol car. We was um, acquainted. Didn’t really want to get reacquainted when he was drinkin with his buddies.” His grin was less calculating this time. He was probably trying for open and charming. I got oily and manipulative out of it.

  He nodded at the gun while tying our boats together. “You ain’t gonna need that bro. Ole Lobo told me you was a VIP. Handle with kid gloves, full cooperation, and all that crap. Ok, I’m tied off. You got a compass up there then head off at twenty-two degrees west of north. Otherwise, just head that way.” His indicator for direction was nothing other than the cigarette in his cupped hand as he jumped from his higher deck into my smaller if sturdier-looking boat.

  I shrugged and turned the wheel as directed. We were just about to a reasonable speed when he tapped me with the same cigarette laden hand. “Ease up on the throttle. We don’t need to get too much attention. I got the fuel tank rigged up on the pontoon boat. If anyone stops us you’re just giving a poor old Mexican fisherman a ride for gas.”

  Well, I was pretty sure that a clandestine meeting somewhere in the middle of the night hadn’t been planned for the scenery. I just hoped he wasn’t engaging me in some crime I’d disapprove of. My bet was drug smuggling. He was referred by a guy who looked the part. My only glimpse of the old “Lobo’s” crew said they were probably major contributors to the consumption if not the distribution of drugs and alcohol in the states or wherever else they might be at any given moment.

  Ok, don’t get too judgmental. I don’t do drugs. I don’t even like most recreational pharmaceuticals. I damned sure don’t like the idea of pushers getting kids hooked in sch
ools. But in my own personal experience, most of the people buying their “candy” from distributors were old enough to know better. Sure it was poison but rarely did someone hold down the victims and force them to partake.

  Did I feel bad for their families? Sure. It’s never good for the honor of your bloodline to be stained with the kinds of things drug addicts did. In that instance, it was probably the family’s job to deal with the addict.

  I hadn’t met anyone from my bloodline in a very long time though. These other poor fools, the ones who burned up their lives with needles or pipes didn’t mean much to me. Come to think of it, it was unlikely that this Pedro Perro was doing anything worse than I had been part of more than a few times before.

  I kept my thoughts to myself as we puttered at a stealthy crawl across the lake. I thought maybe old Pedro Perro was drunk or lost when we got to his destination. For a while, it was kind of touch and go about whether we were going to make it at all. His boat was low in the water when he jumped back over the rail. I caught his gesture to cut my engines and did so. He reached under the dashboard and played with some wires then fired up the rusty old outboard motor and drove the boat right up into the shallows near the shoreline.

  It wasn’t a particularly distinctive piece of shoreline either. I didn’t see anything to indicate where exactly along that massive lake we might be. Apparently, my guide did though. He managed to get the decrepit old pontoon sideways to the overgrown shore with one whole edge of the pontoon over dry land while the other side grated and bumped in the surge of waves. I was impressed that he could drive that well with my boat a deadweight on the side away from the shore.