We had the house ready and Friday we and all the other people with new homes held open house. It was a party that went from about 10am until almost Saturday at sunrise. We were getting pretty good at having these parties! The group was growing and it seemed that I was finally beginning to feel comfortable with things. Billie Jo was marrying in on Sunday and all the new people were working out better than I could have ever hoped for. Those from the Brotherhood had taken to our ways like they were born to it and their excitement seemed to be infectious and everyone was playing happily together.

Late in the afternoon Willie came sliding into the house and found me. He was running the radio room today and we had a visitor at the front gate. He was alone on a motorcycle and had told the gate keeper to get word to me that my brother’s widow had sent him. I told Willie to tell Leon, who was on the gate to let him in. I went and found Deacon and we met the rider where the road enters the compound.

We motioned him to the radio room and sent Willie to find Rose. He was a smallish man and when he took off his helmet I could see that he was just about used totally up. The summer heat, especially in leather over body armor had just about cooked him. I sent Willie to get Rose for two reasons. First because he looked like he might fall out at any minute and also because even though the Brotherhood of Watchers was an ancient group previously closed to any but men, it had grown with the times and now at least 25% of the “Brothers” were women.

The roots of the Brotherhood go back so far into the past that it is lost in antiquity. Plato was a Watcher as were many of the great thinking men of the past. Where the Brotherhood of Watchers differed from other so called secret societies is that they didn’t build lodges. They didn’t gather monthly, build buildings or have social gatherings. What they did do was individually gather men and women who were of the right sort of mentality and character and share a few basic ancient teachings, special words, handshakes and signals. Then they watched. There was no advantage to being a Watcher during normal times. You didn’t do business with Lodge Brothers especially. They didn’t get involved on politics of any sort whether it was local, national or international as a group. All you did was watch and wait.

The waiting ended with the tribulations of the 2012 era. This wasn’t the first time civilization had gone down this trail. Nobody knew how many times it had happened. All that was known was that periodically the world went mad and the difference between good men and bad men would be crucial to how dark the following decades would be. Entire civilizations had for no apparent reason just crumbled and those that watched it tried to pass forward the memory that it could and would happen again. The Mayans tried to warn as did nearly all major religions. Some thought of it as the on going battle between good and evil. Others saw it as the periodic rampage of a mean god or gods or a god cleansing the world of the “bad” people.

The watchers believed that there were “places” in space and time that we passed through and while we were in these areas the very nature of some people became changed. The bad became pure evil and some of those that you had thought of as good were just good at hiding their true nature. Sadly many of these would be powerful. The thing is that according to records the severity of this region is variable and also the time span is variable. It now seems clear that the 2012 collapse actually first started in the 1930s as people like Hitler and Stalin were able to gather support and cooperation in their evil madness. The watchers had hoped that the passage would be quick but in general it was agreed that there was something to the 2012 warnings.

As times started closing in, people like Jeremiah had gathered their people and prepared as best they could to weather the storm and come out the other side as a powerful and stabilizing force. Some area’s, were lost even before the final collapse. Evil had gathered before the end just as the watchers had done. For the moment, The Brotherhood was in a good position in Texas. The presence of this messenger could be ominous.

“I’m Mathew Grey Wolf, what’s up?” I asked the rider before he fell out. “Deacon handed him a cool glass of iced tea.

He gulped down about half the glass and then pealed off the leathers and the body armor. “The sun shines from the shadows…”

I answered, “Even in the dark times the sun will shine.” He looked at Deacon and I said, “Second to me and now my Warden.”

He nodded, “My name is Donald Shafer. The word is that we are going to clean sweep the gangs in San Antone, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston in ten days. The Governor wants to know how many can you spare?”

“Set battles or what?” Deacon asked.

“No, we are to show no mercy and at 2 am on the 3rd all over the state we are going to hit them in their lairs and homes. It is a take no prisoners order. By the time the sun comes up we hope to have 80% dead and accounted for. The rest might be a little tougher. They haven’t figured out that the days of the good guys playing fair has past and in Texas, we didn’t wait for court orders for gangs anymore. This is war and the rules of engagement in war are totally different than in police actions or cops and robber games. We have death orders for 10,000 and if you are with them at the time we hit then… well that is just too fucking bad isn’t it. The general rule is going to be to hit the building, burn it and kill anyone that comes out. It isn’t going to be pretty.”

Rose walked in and heard the last of it. “Fuck ‘em, when you remove a tumor you get it all even if a little uninfected tissue has to be sacrificed in the process!” She looked at me, “How many can we send Matt?”

“I think that we can manage about 20. I’m only sending the ones that are the best and have the most training. I’m not going to leave Grey Wolf undefended though. You never know where the darkness will appear next.”

Donald nodded, “I was told to expect about 15 so you are doing more than your share.”

“We got several new Brothers from San Antone recently. I expect they will all want to return to get a little payback.”

“Donald, I need for you to go to the clinic with me now.” Rose said, “You are dehydrated and near to if not actually having a heat stroke. I want to help you. I’m a Doctor.”

He nodded, “One more thing.” He turned to me and gave me frequencies and contact codes to let them know how many to pick up.” Say nothing but the numbers, no talk and no bullshit. The code numbers will tell them who and where and all that they need to know is how many. They will pick you up here in 7 days.” He looked at Rose. “Me too I expect.” He fell forward in a dead faint. Rose caught him and Deacon carried him to the clinic with Rose following. I told Willie to keep all this under his hat. “I mean Clyde and Susie too! Don’t let this come back to my ears that you ran your head!”

I left and went to gather Deacon up from the clinic and told Rose that I thought that we needed to wait until Monday to tell everyone else. She agreed that it would be a waste to upset everyone over our week end festivities and so Deacon and I left to rejoin the party. As we went we agreed to meet again in a few hours in the new woodshed to firm up who was going with us. It would be on a volunteer basis only but I had no doubts that the Brotherhood, especially those with the kind of training I was thinking of, would turn out 100%.

Not everyone that was Grey Wolf was BOW (Brotherhood of Watchers) but all of the original core group were and many of the ones that followed. I was positive that the newest members, those from San Antone would be chomping at the bit as soon as they heard.

The Brotherhood didn’t go in for ceremonies or anything like that. When a brother was sure of someone he would spend some time with him feeling him out and then once he was sure he would bring the person into the fold. This wasn’t something for your buddies, it was for men and women of moral and intellectual levels a little above the normal. You brought them in slowly and if at any point they proved to be less than you hoped, you stopped. Only in the very last stages when they were beyond question did you pass on the ways and means of identifying yourself to others. At any point up until that the worst they could do is look like a crank and make you look at them like they were crazy and twirl your finger around your ear. Until the tribulations started, the Brotherhood didn’t mean much. It was in essence just a warning and an invitation to gather if the times came during their life time. The Brotherhood really started to grow in numbers as the years following the 911 when things seemed to be rolling towards their inevitable conclusion. By the beginning of 2012 there were probably 15 million members in the US alone and since then it has grown by leaps and bounds. The thing that was the proof in the pudding was that the Brotherhood moved out BEFORE the fall and all over the country there were groups like Grey Wolf that had left the cities and set up enclaves and redoubts where survival was a more than hand to mouth.

LOL, NO, most of them were NOT as kinky as Grey Wolf. Each group formed around some shared belief or pleasure though and few were of a very religious nature. The most common was a back to basics sort. This made things easier when the comforts of civilization went south.

Deacon and I met and firmed up our choices for who we wanted to go and who we needed to stay to protect Grey Wolf. I saw Rose and asked how our visitor was doing and she assured me he was going to be fine. She had left him in the care of Anna.

I decided to go and check on him and sauntered over to the clinic. Anna told me what room he was in and I knocked and then when invited by a low hesitant voice, went in. Donald looked a lot better.

“Hey, thought I would stop by and see how you were doing.” He was still a little pale and his eyes were darting around a little making him look a little like a trapped animal. “Is everything ok?” I asked a little concerned.

He looked at me, blushed, and then sort of whispered, “YOU wouldn’t BELIEVE what that lady Doc and her nurse DID to me!!!!!!”

I looked at him thought about what Roses preferred treatment for both dehydration and heat exhaustion were and then busted out laughing! “I hadn’t thought about THAT; I howled, “She gave you enemas of course!” My knees buckled in laughter.