Dragon Hunter

Chapter 1: Smuggler

When the fires were put out and the dust settled, not many knew what to do next. First a war against aliens from another universe using strange, mystical powers nearly obliterated the world in less than a month. Then an invasion by giant, flying reptiles out of myth and legend nearly made Humanity go extinct in less than a week. No wonder the surviving people didn't know what to do in the aftermath.

Luckily ex-biker Cooper Jacks wasn't one of those people. He knew what he'd be doing as soon as the first attack came. Because to him, it was as black and white a thing as it could get. He would do whatever he had to, to take Earth back and save Humanity from extinction!

Today, that was running weapons to the Calgary enclave.

"Help me with this crate, Jesse," he grunted as he dragged the long wooden box of automatic rifles towards the back of a cargo truck.

"I gotcha, Coop," Jesse, one of their senior riders said as he stepped around the back of the truck, a converted army transport, to grab the worn rope handle on the dragging end of the crate. Lifting it, the two men then slung it into the back of the covered bed with a clatter.

"That's the last of it?" Jesse, a grizzled biker of African descent a good twenty years Cooper's senior, asked. Dusting off his gloved hands, Cooper nodded.

"As long as we can get it to the Calgary enclave without getting ashed, this will finish their contract," Cooper indicated. "And we'll get the supplies we need for the winter stretch."

Jesse nodded.

"Nice. I'll tell the old man we're ready to run. You coming with?"

"Yeah. I'm on the fifty cal," Cooper indicated.

"Good. Nobody keeps the bats away with a fifty better than you, brother," Jesse said with a pleased grin. "For real. Like you were born to it."

"Not to inherit the club when Trip finally gives up the reins?" Cooper replied with a self-mocking half smile.

"Yeah, well, you'll probably still do that. Especially if Maggie gets her say." He then looked around.

"It's a whole new world out there, Coop. Rising from the ashes of the old one. A world where being able to kill fire bats is way more important than following in your old man's footsteps."

Jesse gave Cooper a comradely slap on the shoulder. Then he was off to finish preparing for the dangerous smuggling run to the human enclave huddled inside what used to be one of Western Canada's largest cities, Calgary. It was over 220 kilometers over open ground, with each meter vulnerable to attack by the aerial fire-breathing reptiles that had nearly turned the planet into a smoldering ruin. And if they weren't running tight and hard, they could get ashed in an eyeblink.

That thought made Cooper frown. Some had thought transforming a motorcycle club from gun running, drugs, and prostitution to smuggling life-saving weapons and medicine across no-man's-land was impossible. 

But, in truth, it was an almost organic evolution. Cerberus had spent so much time learning how to outthink and outmaneuver the Royal Canadian Mounted Police up here and Montana State Troopers, the FBI, and the ATF across the former border, it was natural to turn those skills into avoiding giant flying reptiles burning them down as they gun-ran across the bald frickin' prairie.

Cooper snorted. 

Correction, the formerly bald prairie. The western plains of Canada had reverted back to their more natural state of grasslands interspersed with forests, becoming the land it would've been if humans had never come to North America. What used to be a straight line on the QE2 to Calgary was now a drive through dense river bed foliage and under forest canopies formed by hardwoods that hadn't been on the prairies in tens of thousands of years, like maple and chestnut. Forests filled with deer, elk, moose, sprawling herds of buffalo, packs of wolves and even mountain lions.