Once Mankiller was sure the monster was gone, she turned her attention to the fire. The station still had four fire extinguishers in good repair and fully charged, and she and Calmut were soon dousing the building’s side in white foam. They were lucky there was little more than a gentle breeze, and the flames already had an uphill battle against the ice riming the station’s siding.
She got back on her sights the moment she was certain the fire was out, squinting through the billowing vapor at the remains of the barricade. She was skilled at spotting the shifts in shadow that spelled movement, even in poor visibility. There was nothing. The barricade was still and silent. And that was not a good thing. Because there had been four people out there: Denise, Early Bird, Gunther, and Alba Rodriguez, who had been a crabber in Alaska before she picked up her sea bag and walked east on a lark.
Another minute on the sights and Mankiller finally vaulted out the window, dropped the three feet to the packed snow.
“What’re you doin’?” Calmut called down to her.
“Shut up and cover me,” Mankiller said, keeping her weapon at the low ready as she made her way to what remained of the barricade.
The line of trucks was little more than burned wrecks now, the remains of their paint blistering, the snow around them long since turned to gray slush. The gas tanks had already exploded, so they wouldn’t have to worry about that, and the flames had died down to the point where even a strong wind wouldn’t blow them against the station. She could waste precious chemicals putting them out, but there was no point.
The defenders hadn’t fared so well.
Denise was little more than a black smear on the snow. One of the monsters had flattened her head, and it looked like the flamethrower had exploded on her back, cooking what was left. Gunther had run halfway around the station before he succumbed to the fire. Early Bird was collapsed beside the truck, recognizable only by his bulk. There was more left of him, but he was burned just as badly as Denise. Mankiller cursed inwardly. Her last words to Early had been unkind, and she still held the rifle she’d confiscated from him. He had it coming, but seeing his corpse didn’t make it any easier. Even if he had been drunk, had been on the verge of shooting her, she’d wished like hell that she’d thrown an arm over his shoulder and told him just how much she loved seeing him around the town, sober or no. Early had helped her dress a deer she’d shot last summer, spending a whole day and getting his parka bloody up to the elbows, for no other reason than wishing to be neighborly. He was a drunk, but so were a lot of folks. Joe liked a drink now and then. So did she.
Alba had been blown clear by the blast, was lying in a heap on the barricade’s far side. Mankiller had seen plenty of dead bodies in her day. It was hard to look at dead folks, especially ones you’d come to know. In a way, them being all burned up was a blessing. A burned body looked so little like the person she had known that it made it easier to get the detachment she needed to cope.
Denise, Early, and Gunther were lost causes, but she had to do due diligence with Alba. The girl was surely dead, but Mankiller needed to at least check her pulse. Even from this distance, she could tell she’d have to look at Alba’s face, whole, eyes sightlessly staring. The sight of that face would do damage, the kind that lasted. That’s your job. To suck up that damage so other folks don’t have to.
Mankiller swallowed and made her way to Alba’s side, knelt, turned the girl over.
Alba hitched a gasping breath, her eyelids fluttering before snapping shut. Mankiller cursed, stripped off her glove, shoving two fingers against Alba’s neck. No pulse. “Ollie! Throw me the defib right now!”
She heard Calmut scrambling inside the open window, and then the red plastic box came sailing through the air to land in the snow just a foot from Mankiller’s knee. Mankiller popped it open, stripping Alba’s chest and getting the leads attached. She pushed the activation button, staring at the screen, waiting for the red charging light to turn green. ANALYZING, the screen read. PLEASE WAIT.
“Keep me covered, Ollie!” Mankiller shouted, her eyes still locked on the screen.
“I got you, Sheriff!” he called back.
ATTACH PADS, the screen read. CHARGING.
“They’re already fuckin’ attached, you stupid sonofabitch!” Mankiller shouted at the machine. It couldn’t have taken more than five seconds for the light to turn green, but to Mankiller, it felt like five years. She could imagine Alba’s brain, slowly starved of oxygen, dying a little more with each passing moment.
“Clear!” she shouted as soon as the light turned green. There was no one to hear, but following protocol helped some sense of normalcy return to a world inhabited by the kind of monsters who had done this to Alba. Alba’s chest jerked, her back arched, elbows hammering into the ice.
ANALYZING, the screen read. PLEASE WAIT.
“C’mon!” Mankiller shouted.
“Sheriff!” Calmut shouted from the window. “Look out!”
Mankiller threw herself to the side just as something gray launched itself at her. She rolled, came up with her rifle braced against her shoulder.
It was another of the monsters. This one was lean and long-limbed, dragging itself forward by its hands. It was missing part of its leg, sheared off halfway down the shin, likely a victim of Crosshill’s bear traps. She recognized it as one of the two who had come with the one who had called himself the Director. Its gold crown was gone, but the jeweled pectoral was still strapped across its narrow chest.
It hammered one fist down on the defibrillator, drove the long claws on its other hand into Alba’s throat. Hot blood sprayed, and it thrust its face into the stream, gray tongue rolling out of its mouth.
Calmut’s gun barked, and the snow next to Mankiller’s foot jumped.
“Damnit, Ollie! Don’ you fuckin’ shoot me!” Mankiller shouted as she sighted in on the monster and pulled the trigger. Even the Alaskan’s big-bore round did little more than snap the thing’s head back, sending it sprawling.
It righted quickly, flopping over onto its stomach and scrambling for Mankiller even as she was standing and racing for the window. “Ollie! Hatchet!”
Calmut was one step ahead of her, jumping down from the window with Freddie’s sledgehammer, the big two-hander he used to drive the wood maul. Calmut might have been old and skinny, but he swung that hammer like a carnival strongman, cracking the thing so hard that its head deformed, rebounding off the frozen ground even as Calmut was raising the hammer for another blow. It tried to rise, but the hammer came down again, and this time, its head was squashed as flat as Denise’s.
Mankiller abandoned the idea of going after the hatchet and pulled her long knife instead, kneeling on the monster’s back and sawing at its shoulder. She ducked to the side as Ollie brought the hammer down on its spine, shattering it in a sickening crunch. “Don’ knock me with that thing, either!”
The monster snapped its arm up, sending Mankiller flying as if she been nothing more than a straw doll, the knife spinning from her hand. She slid on her back, rifle bouncing in its sling, the barrel smacking her in the eye something fierce. She scrambled to her feet, raising the rifle, desperately trying to sight in through the tears in her battered eye.
She needn’t have bothered. Calmut had gotten two more whacks in since she’d been thrown. The monster was little more than a twitching sack of shattered bones, but Calmut just kept raising the hammer and letting it fall, again and again and again. His eyes were wide and his teeth bared. He made little grunts with each stroke of the hammer, sounds like an animal would make.
Mankiller slowly lowered her rifle, went to Calmut’s side. If the defibrillator had revived Alba, it had been short-lived. She lay pooled in her own blood, her throat laid open to the spine, eyes staring sightlessly upward.
Calmut kept hammering.
“Ollie.” Mankiller touched his elbow. “’S all right. You got it. It’s done.”
Calmut’s eyes returned to their normal size, but he still took two more whacks before he finally let the heavy steel head slump in the snow and leaned on the handle, panting.
“You okay?” In all their years working together, she’d never seen him like this.
“Yeah.” Calmut cuffed a tear away from his eye. “I jus’ . . . I fuckin’ hate these things.”
“Yeah,” Mankiller said. “Me too.”
“Alba’s gone,” Calmut said.
“I know it. I’ll get a detail together so we can get ’em all buried.”
“Defib’s gone too.”
“Well, hopefully, we won’ need it. There’s another one in the chapel, but I don’ wanna stray too far from here unless we gotta, okay?”
“Sure.” Calmut was already turning, heading back to the open window, where a crowd of citizens had gathered, crouching with their guns, doing their best to look brave. It wasn’t much of an army, especially when you considered what they were up against.
“That gold?” Calmut nudged the pectoral with the toe of his boot. There was precious little left of it after the flurry of axe blows.
“Leave it,” Mankiller said. “We can worry ’bout gettin’ rich after all this is over.”
“They comin’ at us again?” Calmut asked.
Mankiller nodded. “Jus’ don’t know how soon.”
Calmut looked back at the folks in the window. “Sorry bunch, ain’t they?”
“Let’s jus’ hope Joe got through.”
“That one . . . guy was after him pretty quick, boss. I dunno that I like his chances.”
“Joe’s harder’n he looks,” she said. “If anyone can make it, he can.”
They returned to the window and helped the burial party down. Sally’s sister Angela came first, her jowls shaking. She’d been Sally’s staunch ally in hating Denise, and Mankiller wondered what she’d think, seeing her bitter enemy so poorly served. She didn’t envy her the hurt she would probably feel. Somehow, the death of an enemy was almost always worse than that of a friend. Maybe it was because you realized you would never have a chance to make things right.
But no sooner had Angela’s boots hit the snow than she turned and scrambled back up the building’s scorched sides.
Mankiller and Calmut both whirled, guns coming up.
A lone figure was shuffling down the track, dragging himself along like a horror-movie zombie.
“Guess they’re comin’ already,” Calmut said as he sighted in.
“No.” Mankiller pushed the barrel of his gun down. “They’re faster than that.”
She started forward at a walk and, after three steps, burst into a run.
Because it was Joe Yakecan coming down that road. His clothes had been soaked and frozen solid. Red icicles hung from his lips, a gory winter beard. He shuffled and shivered, arms hugging tight about his chest.
“Joe!” Mankiller shouted. “Joe, I’m comin!”
Yakecan nodded and stopped walking, swayed on his feet.
Mankiller ran with everything she had, but she was still three steps shy of Yakecan when he fell.