WELCOME ONE & ALL TO 365 INFANTRY: AUTUMN 2025. It took us a few hairs longer than usual, but we’re back at it again with another 5-prong assault of high-octane pulp (and a killer audio drama too). From here ‘till Friday, we’re serving up one story a day with more incredible art from Kevin John Jacob, and at the end of the week, you’ll be able to bring home the electrifying excitement through our 365 QUARTERLY! In the meantime, here’s the latest from the frontlines...
She did as all wives of war often do; held tight to him like tonight was all they had. Soledad Herrera nipped lightly at her husband’s cheek as he worked his toughened hand across her darksome body. The two black wolves hadn’t a night to themselves in ages, and tonight was as important a night as any.
Tonight they sought another child.
Tonight was the start of Month 1 of 9, the beginning of a long wait before the Herreras grew one hound stronger. When Grim finished, he pulled his dear wife close and nuzzled her. For the first time in ages, the stoic vaquero flashed a real smile. The kind he saved for his woman and his woman alone.
“All that time away, mi gran amor.” Soledad grinned. “And you still drive me loco when you want.”
Grim winked. “Nunco fallo, mi rosa del desierto.”
“And you’ll be around to see him. Or her.”
He knew that crestfallen face all too well, but never let it show. “Of course.” the black-furred captain smiled. “If Adam has his way, it’ll all be over soon. We go out, take her by the wires, pull the plug, and free those who remain. Besides, when all the big beautiful causes are said and done, the one thing I’m living for are nights like these.”
He locked lips with her and fell in love all over again.
When the morning came, he stayed long enough for breakfast and to see his Rosita one more time. He played with his pup, showing her what Padre had come across in all his many travels, from the horns of an Eastern creature to the pictures of him and his bronze-furred adventurer friend Jack Wellman who helped him take down the mighty Black Country outpost.
When it came time for the goodbyes, for his wife’s sweet cooing of their little phrase, Soledad was met with a most peculiar question.
“What were you thinking for Saturday, querida?
It didn’t register at first, until she saw those beautiful brown eyes piercing the shadow cast by the cowboy hat’s brim.
“Do you–”
“Weekends off.” Grim nodded. “Perks of getting a job done the way we did. If anything happens, I’ll have to jump in, but until we make the final move.” He gestured towards the house, head bowed.
Soledad flung herself on his mighty six-foot frame and held him tight, tears flowing freely as he laughed the first hardy laugh he had in ages.
“Fried chicken for the record.” she giggled through her sniffling.
“Por la liberdad, querida.” he spoke at last.
“Por la liberdad.” she replied.
Mother and daughter both waved as Grim threw his bag in the back of his deep-blue truck and roared off back to Base. The drive was a blur of sand, sky, and wind, the black-furred father basking in the afterglow of it all. His woman’s love, the joy on his child’s face. A self-assuring loop of those glowing fuzzy faces as he dropped the hammer and ran his Harvester Scout to the top of its bent. The halcyon glow radiated off him at every stage, from each Outpost he was vetted by to his prized parking spot in the Force’s garage, to the soldiers and staff who passed him by. They’d seen the many phases of Grim before, from stoic Captain to strict teacher to his world-class poker face when dealing with enemy forces. Seldom had they seen the hound truly happy, let alone smile, until today. No one said a word; they just tipped their hats when Grim tipped his.
All that joy was swept from his face by the site of what sat on his office doorstep.
Grim’s office faced the outer courtyard with the door swinging open to the sandy center where all manner of PT and drills were carried out. And sitting before that dark green door was something he couldn’t believe at first.
It was a dove.
The scarcity of wildlife in the Southwestern deserts was what made his experiences in the East so startling, the sights of mutated mammals and bizarre herds forever etched in his mind. And while synthetic mockups were known to be circulating in Haven as substitute pets, A.C.E.S. never saw fit to deploy animals for operations for the same reason; it’d be too obvious.
So there the black-clad cowboy stood with a dove sitting before his door, the wing facing him sitting limp as the bird cocked its head towards the towering wolf. Gently he knelt down, and as carefully as he could, helped the bird into his palm. When it tried to flap its other wing, he hushed it, just as he would his daughter after a bad dream.
Carefully he opened the office door and looked for the best thing to rest the creature in. The thin blanket from off the cot would have to do, and he set about crafting a nest for the dove on his desk. Once set up, he called up Knox.
“General sir,” he began. “I have something of a favor to ask. Are any of the Sickbay staff skilled in animal medicine?”
“You can’t mean–”
“I do as sure as my eyes can see. It’s a dove with no visible signs of mutation. Jack told me of these before on our drive East.”
“Let me get you patched into Sickbay, Doctor Haywood ought to be able to help.”
At the other end of the line was the voice of a wolf who had so seldom been called upon for moments like these, an ebullient Creole ripping over the intercom.
“Doc Haywood, ‘ere in Sickbay.”
“Captain Herrera speaking.” Grim replied. “I’ve got an injured dove here at my office. No visible signs of mutation, just a wing in need of mending.”
The joy vanished into ice-cool professionalism. “Bring ‘em righ’ on down.”
With his lamblike gentleness, the black vaquero swaddled the white bird in the cot blanket and made his way through the winding corridors to Sickbay. Naturally most stood clear of the Captain, but the clacking march of his steel-capped boots could’ve cleaved the base in half the way he was moving. The only time he moved that fast was to get to his ride or to chew out a soldier, and no one wanted to be the hound of the hour. He took all the usual turns and soon entered Sickbay’s white-tiled halls. There waiting by the front desk was Haywood. She was a red wolf, almost as tall as Grim, but with a slightly fuller figure, accentuated by a slightly tight-fitting lab-coat per Sickbay requirements. Most striking of all were her eyes, a golden yellow that shot right through the black wolf, and straight to his soul.
She could tell he was worried sick. He could tell she knew her stuff.
Carefully, she took the dove over towards the X-ray room. It took some extensive recalibration–compacting the entire rig down to half-size so the bird would register–but she got it there in the end. Before long, she was getting her scans and studying them.
“Fractuh in the ulna it seems,” she remarked. “Migh’ be able to do a nano-fuse on the spot righ’ now.”
“How long until it fully heals?”
“Return to fligh’ ya mean?” Haywood pressed. “Depen’s on how long the fractuh’s been. Just cuz’ you found the po’ thing out the door don’ mean it ain’ been limpin’ roun’ fo’ longer. ‘Rays show a lil’ wear on the teeth of the cut. Bone been grin’in’ against one nutha, muscle lookin’ wee bit strain’.”
Grim nodded. “After recovery?”
Haywood paused and turned to the Captain. Again those golden eyes could read the black-furred officer like a book back-to-front. She walked up to him and flashed a soft smile.
“I don’ know what Knox’s rule ‘bout pets is since we don’ have none ‘round here. That said, I also know if one’s been able to make its way here, sho’nuff more migh’ be in the wild lookin’ for mates.”
The darksome cowboy could only nod. “He or she?” he pressed.
“She. Which could mean chicks. Which could mean repopulatin’.”
“Whatever’s best for la paloma.” Grim replied.
“I’ll take good care,” Haywood smiled gently. “Go’on rest easy naw, I’ll let ya know how she’s doin’ later on.”
Even for a seemingly small nano-fuse job–the kind of miracle surgery that had spared hundreds of wolves from amputation throughout the war–it still took a deft hand and several hours. Hours the black wolf tried to while away with everything from busy work (which he ran out of), to drill instruction (which went by too quick), to driving. Driving seemed the only balm to keep his mind off the patient he plucked up from his doorstep. Part of it frustrated him because he didn't understand why.
Why in God’s name was he so damn worried about this bird? He’d never been curious about the flora and fauna of the Old World before now. His time among the Eastern beasts in all their strange mutations hadn’t exactly endeared Mother Nature to him. And deep within, some cruel schoolboy part of him found the dove pathetic. A weakling that couldn’t make it through the world and so threw itself at the door of a hound whose boot-heel could’ve finished the job.
And yet, when that thought rushed over him, he felt sick to his stomach. “Cabrón,” he growled to himself. “Miserable fucking wretch to think that.”
He’d managed to crush that schoolboy inclination with a stomp of the throttle as the topless truck roared on. A roar met with another, louder, familiar roar.
The roar of the Dragonfly.
Soaring high above the black-clad cowboy and his deep blue pickup was the Force’s lone plane: Ridgefield’s Cessna Dragonfly. The camo-colored attack aircraft flew high above at a steady pace, one of many test flights being conducted by Chief Ridgefield during these reprieves from battle. And it was at that moment it all clicked: flight.
Even for a wolf-made machine, there was something majestic about its T-shaped silhouette dancing among the clouds, reaching heights thought in centuries-past to be impossible to achieve.
And yet there was a creature born to be in those skies, having to be kept from them by some cruel stroke of fate. Something about that burned him; an injustice he couldn’t fix with all the electric lead and hellfire driving in the world. It was all out of his hands and he could only hope and pray that the lithe little being would come out alright in the end.
He got his answer while still bombing around the desert.
“HQ to V. Galvez, HQ to V. Galvez. Got a message from Sickbay, over.”
“Patch ‘em thru, amigo!” Grim barked over the engine’s roar.
“Captain Herrera, sir, it’s Doc Haywood. She’s alrigh’. Surgery wen’ fine, bone’s maintainin’ density withou’ any mo’ marrow. In fact, she already tryin’ to flap, the little fighter.”
“Gracias, senora.” Grim smiled, swinging a hand brake turn before heading back to Base. “How many days you figure she’ll be with us?”
“Har’ tellin’.” Haywood nodded. “I say give ‘er a week and if she fresh-n-ready, we can let her fin’ her own way back.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
The next week, between the fastest turnarounds on paperwork known to wolfkind and the same-old hard-ass instruction in the ways of gunplay and driving, Captain Herrera made time to see how the dove was coming along. He’d taken to calling her “Luchadora” after Haywood’s little quip, and took in all the unique details of feeding and caring for her in the recovery period.
“How did you wind up in animal science?” Grim asked one day.
“Lots of Ol’ Worl’ textbooks,” Haywood chuckled. “An’ some days growin’ up and seein’ what survived. There’s mo’ birds than doves left here. We got warblers, wrens, ravens still floatin’ ‘round. Numba’s scarce, but they still there. Been keepin’ touch with a few science outposts that do surveys. Turns out there’s a good chance Luchadora’s got company out there. Decent numbas too.”
Their chats were always punctuated by the dove’s cooing, the bird always eyeing up the tall black wolf who had brought her there in the first place.
“All tha’ gabbin’, but she migh’ be attached aftuh all.” Haywood grinned.
“Nah, she belongs with her own kind, to help ‘em grow.” Grim sighed. “Military bases like ours aren't exactly pet-friendly with all the soldiers and rides rushing around.”
“Well, on’ a few days lef’ to change yo’ min’ if you feels it.” replied the red doctor.
When that day came, Grim had thought about it, but he still talked himself out of it. He couldn’t live with himself if anything happened should she get loose or hurt. He did help escort the cage out to the designated release area with Haywood riding shotgun. When they got there, Haywood afforded the towering black wolf the honors.
There was more vegetation in this part of the land, the centuries-old wounds healing enough to provide the dove some of the nourishment she needed. Grim stepped out among the cacti, cage in hand, and opened the cage.
To his surprise, the bird needed no coaxing, practically shooting out the front and flying away into the distance.
“Good sign,” Haywood chimed in, resting a red-furred hand on the cowboy’s mighty shoulder. “Lookin’ like we was good ‘bout not domesticatin’ her. Good call on yo’ part.”
“She knows what is natural to her,” he smiled gently. “Here’s hoping she finds a good place to nest.”
“Mazin’ how nice this ol’ third rock heals up.”
The Captain nodded solemnly before hopping back in the truck.
For Captain Herrera, the next few days were odd ones. They were days spent alternating between his usual routines and fits of...something. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Neither could his wife during their evening calls.
Most of the day he was fine. He could be a little sterner at target practice than usual, he felt himself being short with personnel in a way that he would notice but no one else seemed to. A terse reply or an odd glance, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as far as his colleagues were concerned.
But then, some days, it hit like a sledgehammer.
A yearning for motion. Not just driving, not even flight; total transcendence. He wanted to be elsewhere, be something beyond himself. The black-furred vaquero felt the call of something that he could not describe. Soledad couldn’t console him over the phone, and everything from his brandy to the one or two films he enjoyed–Old World war films from the days of Axis terrors and the dawn of the nuclear threat–couldn’t keep the strange flurry of ambivalent emotions at bay.
Throughout it all, one constant remained: the dove.
The image of the dove burned bright in his mind. He’d find himself sketching a crude impression of the creature on his paperwork. He’d see it in dreams late at night, always flying through the dark of his mind, off into the blinding golden light of the sky. He’d swear he was seeing things out of the corner of his eye when he’d turn a corner on Base.
Then one day, he couldn’t take it anymore.
He woke up in a frenzied mental fog and all he wanted to do was drive. And since he was one of the top ranks of the Force, no one would question him if he wanted to go for an impromptu race through the desert. He didn’t bother with breakfast, coffee, time cards, nothing.
He stormed down to the garage, asked for his keys, and leapt into that deep blue Scout. He patted the topless truck’s wheel and sped out of the garage and away westward into the desert.
He just kept going. And going. And going.
No intention, no inner rumination. Just pure dynamism, the machine carrying the hound, the hound controlling the machine. Complete symbiosis.
He rode that all the way through the sunrise and into the first hour of true daylight. He kept heading westward until he reached the inner ring of the Outpost network, the 100s that served as the last lines of defense and surveillance.
It was here that he spotted that Great Bird of the Force; Ridgefield’s Cessna. The light attack craft danced its gentle dance through the skies, and for the first time in nearly a week, that strange yearning ceased. The answer was right there, tens of thousands of feet above him. When Grim realized what it was, however, there was part of him that wanted to talk him out of it.
“Of course it’s not flight,” the Latin cowboy muttered. “You wouldn’t be able to readjust to the circumstances. You wouldn’t have the stamina. Ridgefield’s chico to you by seven years.”
It was only when the other part chimed in that Grim realized what he was actually enamored with.
“Maybe it’s just the flight itself.” he pondered. “Just to see, to know.”
This realization came just in time for a moment he couldn’t have imagined, even in his dreams.
Soaring above him, lower than the Cessna, but still a decent way from his head was the white dove. The slight crookedness of but one feather where Doctor Haywood had performed her surgery was clear as day.
For all his incredible adventures, this moment proved mesmeric for the older cowboy. There before the vaquero’s eye were two magnificent flying beasts. One of nature, one of wolfkind. The grace, the form, the seeming interplay at different altitudes. Most fascinating of all; the speed.
That dove could move. Grim opened his truck up and hightailed it after her.
“Rapido, luchadora.” he grinned mischievously.
He kept rattling through the truck’s gears, and just as he’d reach the pint-sized bird, she’d tear ahead once more. The cat-and-mouse game brought Grim alive, and soon he was roaring with that rich, Latino baritone of his.
Until he wasn’t.
Until he saw what was ahead.
Before him was one of the Force’s supply holds, nestled between the 100s and 200s of the Outpost system. At least it was, before a cadre of bandits began their siege on it, raiding for supplies and burning the rest.
The dove flew away into the sky once more, vanishing from view, but Grim had long since forgotten their chase. He was on the radio, roaring for backup, before turning his attention to the crooks before him.
The Captain’s eyes narrowed and he buried his boot in the floor. Between gearshifts, he flicked open the button on the lever and brought his carguns out to play. He had to choose his targets wisely as he didn’t want to lose any more goods to the anarchic ways of the wasteland’s worst.
The pedal hit the floor only when he saw a clear line from the Scout to one of the ratty vans trying to flee the scene. In one stomp, he could get the doors off the van’s rear. With one long burst, he got the tires and sent the van rolling. Because it would still be several minutes before even the local outposts could scramble support, Grim swung handbrake turns to keep tabs on the other raiders. The second van was firing wildly at the Captain, but he met them blow for blow with another burst from the carguns, the Gatling-styled barrels thundering away at the wheels of the rickety old Econoline. Try as they might, they couldn’t escape the black hound’s precise blows. But Grim couldn’t escape the 5,000 pounds of van as it rolled over on its side and slammed against the Scout.
Nor could he escape the third van that came in for the kill, firing wildly from behind, sending the black-clad Captain ducking for cover in his pickup, looking for his rifle.
Only to realize all he had on him was his Colt Automatic.
Quickly he checked his charge on his magazine, loaded the handgun and spent the rest of the time praying before every shot.
He leapt up and fired into the third van’s windshield, nailing the driver in the head before taking a shot to the shoulder. He swung himself back down, seething and groaning before coming back for seconds.
This time he got the bastard sitting shotgun-side who did the job, blowing his head all over the side of the van. With the dead hound’s boot still jammed on the throttle, though, Grim would have to do his damndest to shake the Scout loose.
He killed the carguns and started bashing the two vans, gunning his deep blue beast forwards and backwards, trying to make room enough to cut the wheel and speed out of there. He had just gotten himself free enough when one of the rat bastards from the first van, an especially mangy white wolf came charging up guns drawn. Firing wildly, Grim ducked, only to feel the sting of another shot to his shoulder. When he shot back up, ready for his reprisal, the cavalry had finally arrived.
Teddy Blanc squashed that sonofabitch with the business end of her black-and-bronze Rebel Machine, and behind her came a score of fellow hot rodders and bikers. Those who were still fleeing–about two other vans–were swiftly stopped and the raiders killed. When some of the Auto Corp soldiers helped get the vans out of Grim’s way, Teddy was the first to realize the Captain had taken some battle damage.
“Shit, sir, you alright?”
Grim looked at the slashes in his leather trenchcoat and the flecks of blood around them. When he looked back at Teddy, he tipped his cowboy hat and chuckled.
“You should see the other guy.”
In Sickbay, Grim asked for Doc Haywood, only this time it was a wolf who needed tending to.
“Ay, nah watchu done gettin’ bang-up like that?” she chuckled.
At first Grim just smiled and nodded, but then that solemn face came right back to him. “There’s something I wanted to say. Something about Luchadora.”
Thinking nothing of it, Doc Haywood nodded. “Go’on. It’ll distract ya from all that cauterizin’.”
“I saw her today.”
The red wolven doctor’s ears perked up. “Sweet, how she doing?”
“Flying free as...well a bird I suppose.”
“They ten’ to that.” she giggled, getting another smile from her stoic client.
“It’s just that...I wouldn’t have known the raid was happening without her. She was showing off, so I was showing off, and I chased her right to the scene of the depot. A few rights and lefts and I could’ve totally missed–IT!”
The cauterizing stung for a moment, but faded just as soon as Haywood finished.
“Sorry po’boy,” she said. “That them the worsta bunch. But abou’ our mutual acquaintance.”
She helped Grim up from the hospital table and sighed. “There ain’no science to these things, but I must say: I think she came to ya just the righ’ time. Picked a good day, caught yo’ eye, left ya thinkin’ bout her even after ya said no to keepin’ her captive. And there she proves herself a real gone patriot. Could be coincidence. But maybe she’s yo’ spirit animal. The white hat within ya flying nice-n-free.”
Grim nodded slowly and thumbed the bandage over the sealed wound. He hopped off the table and began to walk out the door. Outside he saw the bright blue sky above and, faint in the distance, the trails left by Ridgefield and his plane, and the memories of that brief reunion.
“Perhaps she is.”
Ah, it's been a while since I last saw Grim! (I think. I usually don't remember much)