The Night After

Kaden gulped inside of the car. He couldn't just stay here and wait all night, he needed to know what was going on.

Still, it was clearly a dangerous situation, and he couldn't just walk up where the action was. Despite how much he had improved lately, he didn't feel confident in a situation that involved guns and bullets.

He looked at the wall they had parked in front of, belonging to a three story building. If he climbed up on the roof, he may just able to see some of what was going on.

"I'll go take a quick look," Kaden made up his mind before slipping out of vehicle. He needed to know what the situation was like, so they would know whether to get the hell out of this city or what.

He went to the wall and looked for a way to get up. There was some windows and a pipe that spanned the entire height of the wall, used to collect rainwater.

The windows were too far space apart, he couldn't use them. That really only left the pipe, so it would have to do.

Clamping his feet around the pipe, he slowly started hoisting himself up. He would grab hold with his hands as far up the pipe he could, then draw his legs up after. He kept repeating this process, slowly getting closer and closer to the top.

He had always been an athletic person, and he remembered having done this in PE before just with ropes. It wasn't too bad, but it was a long way up and very risky if he fell. There was nothing to catch him below.

His hands reached the top of the wall without drama, and he managed to use that to pull himself up and over the wall.

He sprawled out on the concrete ground for a moment, just catching his breath, then stood up and looked towards the city outskirts.

Gunfire was still ringing out around him, and now he could see faint streaks of golden light as the bullets whizzed off in the distance.

Charging towards those bullets was a sea of gray. If he squinted, he could barely make that gray mass out to be a horde of wolves.

The wolves were fast and relentless, pouncing at soldiers whenever they got close enough. They didn't care if they were risking their lives, or that other wolves were being shot right next to them.

Both sides were dying rapidly, falling victim to each others attacks.

Despite this, Kaden could see that the soldiers were winning. As long as the soldiers had enough ammo, they would be the victor.

Bit by bit the wolf pack shrunk, thinning out from the sheer amount of casualties.

Soon a noticeably bigger wolf who seemed to be the leader had had enough. It raised up on it's back legs and howled. Within seconds there was a shift in the wolf pack as most of the remaining wolves started retreating.

There were some stragglers who stayed behind to cover their retreat, continuing the relentless attack. But that was just a diversion, Kaden was sure that the soldiers would be able to clean them up in no time.

Having seen what he came for, he went back to the pipe and crawled back down.

Inside of the car once more, he relayed the information back to the old man.

"How many did you say there were?" The old man asked.

"At least a thousand or two."

"Sheesh, that's a lot…" The old man scratched his chin in thought, "I don't understand how there can be that many wolves here in Iowa."

"I'm not sure either. The soldiers may have fought them off tonight, but…" Kaden didn't feel so good about their chances. If this was just the beginning so far, undoubtedly, something even worse would happen soon.

As they talked, gunfire continued to ring out intermittently in the distance. It had slowed down considerably, but the stragglers were clearly still not completely wiped out.

"If it's as safe as you said, we should get some sleep. Best to be rested for tomorrow," The old man said.

*****

Kaden woke up at the crack of dawn as the sunlight shone in through the car windows.

With the sunlight bearing down on him directly, it was impossible to stay asleep. Well, almost, somehow the old man beside ham was snoozing through it without any issues.

Luckily Kaden felt rested enough, even despite the fact that he had been training the entire time that he slept. The dreamscape really was a huge blessing, it allowed him to be much more efficient with his time. While others were sleeping, he could train, giving him a huge advantage in terms of hours in a day.

Since the old man was still sleeping, Kaden wrote a quick note before getting out of the car and locking it.

It wouldn't be good if someone broke into the car while the old man slept because he'd left it open. All their supplies were in the car, and in times like these, people could get desperate.

Since he was up early and nothing much was going on, he figured he could go take a look at the damage the wolf attack had caused.

It was confusing to navigate the city for the first time, but he managed to find his way over to the entrance that the wolves had focused their efforts on attacking.

It was obvious at first sight that a battle had taken place here. Everywhere he looked there was still a plethora of wolf corpses littering the ground.

Soldiers and civilians alike were hard at work carrying them into the back of military trucks.

All of the human corpses were already gone, it seemed that they must've been moved first.

The cleanup was made even harder as there was a constant stream of cars entering the city, one after the other.

More refugees? The city was going to get cramped very soon. When Kaden and the old man had arrived at night, the city was already out of space for them to stay. It was only going to get worse from here.

A high ranking officer keeping watch on the cleanup of corpses spotted him and came over.

"You looking for work kid? I'll give you a day's worth of ration coupons if you help move the rest of these corpses," The officer gave him a job offer.

"Ration coupons?" Kaden asked.

Had money already lost its value? That was far quicker than he had expected. He had only slept for around five hours, but it seemed that a lot had happened during the night.

"Recent change. We're not going to be able to import anymore food, so we need to ration what's left in the city. With the influx of refugees it's going to be tough, but this wolf meat is going to help out a ton."

Yeah, there really was a lot of dead wolves, probably several ton at least. Kaden had never ate wolf meat before, but he figured that it couldn't be that bad. It was actually a bit exotic.

"I'll do it," Kaden happily accepted the officer's offer. He wasn't stupid, he needed to eat and he had nothing else to do anyway.

"Great," The officer was pleased by him accepting, "There shouldn't be need for much introduction. All we need to do is move all of the corpses into the vehicles so that we can transport them. Ain't nothing to it but to do it." The officer left to go petition some other bystanders.

Kaden walked over and started helping out where he could. The corpses were heavy, so they needed to be two people to carry them to avoid injury.

It was hard and strenuous work, but it could've been a lot worse. At least he knew that there was a meal waiting for him afterwards, three meals in fact.

While carrying corpses, he took the chance to look over the damage the wolves had been able to do.

The barricades and checkpoints that the military had set up yesterday had all been torn down and run over. However, people were already at work constructing new and more permanent barricades.

It looked like they were planning on walling the entire city up. The new barricades were a bit shoddy, made out of whatever was available. Mostly it was fences and large pieces of sheet metal, but there were also some areas built using planks of woods.

Kaden was impressed, whoever was running things now had a way of getting things done.

He winced thinking of the cities and places that hadn't been lucky enough to be under military protection. Had those places already been run over by a horde of animals? Had other places even been attacked like theirs? Were they perhaps completely destroyed?

The influx of refugees pretty much confirmed his theories. If so many people were still running away, it was certain that they were running from something bad.

It was fortunate for those people that they had managed to escape, he doubted that everyone was so lucky.

They finished up the work by noon and Kaden was given his three coupons by the officer. After so many hours spent, the officer just seemed to be glad it was over. He happily went around to everyone who had helped, giving out the promised coupons.