With his daughter occupied, Gallagher slipped out and shut the door behind him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A WOLF WAS waiting for him. As if knowing that one of them would rabbit. It squatted there in the snow and sprang up at him with its jaws open.
Gallagher throttled the gas and swung the chainsaw up to block those awful teeth and cut deep into the lobo’s maw. The Husqvarna sawed through the yellow teeth, splicing deep into the bone. The wolf shook its head in a frenzy to extricate itself and it ran off.
He ran through the snow, the impact of each step jarring his wounds, the pain hot. The wolves came after him, pounding at his heels until he stopped and swung the chainsaw. The whizzing blade caught the fur of the closest lobo and the others backed off. And then it was a game of keepaway as the wolves chomped and he swung the buzzing saw at them. The lobos darted and feinted and he throttled the chainsaw to keep them back, moving downhill one step at a time.
The van squatted in the snow, the fuel door propped open just as they had left it.
The husky skittered along the floor. It barked and snapped at the wolves erupting through the windows and then cowered under the blasts of gunfire. When the wolf burst back into the window, popping the casing out with its bulk, the husky leapt and sunk its teeth into its neck. Jerking violently back and forth, trying to rip open the tough hide but the monster swung its head round and clamped its teeth onto the dog’s flank.
Amy shouldered the pump action but held off the shot, screaming at the dog to get out of the way. She saw the wolf bite into the husky and the dog yelped, hit the floor. It scrabbled away leaving a smear of blood behind. Amy unloaded the charge and the wolf screamed from the blast of buckshot to the face. She pivoted back to scream at her father but he wasn’t there. The door cracked open.
Lara spun at the dog’s cry and fired. The trigger piece locked, the gun jammed. The piece was hot as she hammered the slide to spin out the jammed round before the lobo crashed inside. Then she heard Amy scream for her father. Her eyes took in the girl and the open door but no Gallagher. He simply wasn’t there. Had he been snatched away?
“Where is he?” Her voice shrilled with panic.
Amy turned and her mouth gaped but no words came. The terror in the girl’s eyes was raw.
The husky limped forward, dribbling blood from its flank, and pointed its nose to the door. It bolted forward, hopping in a peculiar limp past Amy’s knees as it shot out the door.
“No!” She grabbed at it, hollering for the dog to stop but it sped past leaving her with a handful of bloodied mane.
Amy spun back to Lara for help, for anything. All she saw was the wolf bursting through the window like a hurricane, taking Lara down in a flurry of teeth.
Leviathan teeth chopped at Gallagher’s heel and he swung the roaring chainsaw but the monster dodged and parried. The wolves were playing with him now, matching his pace with unhurried grace, each lobo watching for an opening to take him down.
He felt a slick warmth run down his belly and he knew that the gauze had ripped away and he was bleeding anew. How long before he lost too much blood to keep up the pace? The van was close. The trap.
An unnatural roar blew hot on his ear. The crazed looking wolf with its walleyed stare pounded in recklessly as if it meant to run him over and he brought the burring saw teeth hard onto its snout. It cried out and he throttled it harder, exulting in the demon’s pain.
He sprinted for the van. Triumphant. Overconfident.
The scarred lobo with the disfigured snout came in like a shot on his starboard flank. It took him down hard and its teeth sunk into his ribs. It shuddered him hard, the way it would a fieldmouse and then let go and he spun crazily through space and slammed hard into the panel side of the cargo van.
Thumping onto the snow, light spots in his eyes. His injured left arm folded underneath him like jelly and bent at an angle it was never meant to. The bone shattered. The sunspots faded and he realized he had landed beside the van. Snapping jaws clarified before his eyes and he saw the pack surround him.
Easy pickings. No more challenge than a broken rabbit. The damned things almost leered at him with perverse lupine grins.
“Fuck you, hoss,” he hissed at the nearest wolf. “This ain’t your show.”
He dug into a pocket and came back with the cheap plastic lighter. Next to him, the open fuel door and the rippling stink of gasoline. The petrol soaked rag of gauze. One flick and it was all over.
Light ‘em up.
The wolves closed in.
Amy.
He thought of his daughter. He wished he could say something more to her. What was there to say? Goodbye never works. He wished this didn’t have to happen, that none of it had come to pass. He wouldn’t be around to see his daughter grow up. All those clichéd milestones. Graduating high school, maybe college. Dinners when she’d come home for the weekend. Walking her down the aisle to some putz he would never approve of but would fake for Amy’s sake. Kids. Grandkids.
There was so much left to do. All he had left were seconds.
She’d be okay. Amy was smart, tough when she needed to be. More than that, she was wise. Wiser than she should be for a kid her age. That happened to kids of divorce; they got wise or they got troubled. Amy would be okay, even after all this crazy bullshit. He trusted her in that.
But before any of that, he had to do what was required. To underwrite that future.
The lighter wavered and he couldn’t stop his hand from trembling.
Do it. Now or forever.
Movement snagged his eye and something shot through the legs of the wolves surrounding him and collided into him. For a flashing moment he thought it was one of the pack but it was too small. It licked his face with a coarse tongue.
The dog squirmed up against him, wagging and whining as it licked his chin. The mangy Siberian he had pulled from the pound all those months ago. Of all the times…
“No!” He pushed it away. “Get outta here! Go!”
The husky slunk its head low, confused and cowed, but it wouldn’t leave.
He swatted its rear, trying to make it bolt away but the stupid dog wouldn’t run and now it was too late.
The wolves closed in. No way out now.
He pulled the dog in and draped his arm round it. Cursed it for being so goddamn thickheaded. The plastic lighter flickered in his hand and the flame blew. Gallagher pulled the dog close and buried his face into its neck.
It was bright and it was hot and the flames ate the breath from their lungs.
And then it was over.
The weight of the wolf pinned Lara to the floor. She kicked at it like a mule. Two battles, fighting off the wolf with its teeth in her and holding back the wolf inside. The lobo within clawed at the door of her heart but she wouldn’t let it out no matter how much her nerves screamed for release. Capitulating to the lupin now would mean the death of them all.
The wolf bit down, its yellow eye walled up at her own. She caught a glimpse of Amy hammering the butt of the shotgun against the monster, trying to crush its skull. Feeling the impact of each blow through the teeth in her shoulder but the lobo refused to let go. She twisted under it, gaining some wiggle room and drove her thumb hard into the wolf’s eye. It popped with a wet smack.
The thing reared back and shook its head as if trying to dislodge the crushed eyeball. Then an awful noise broke against the timbers of the house. The howling of the pack, savage and unearthly. A war cry. The wolf lunged away, crashing through the door as it escaped.
Lara felt herself jerked upright, Amy pulling her to her feet. The girl was in a panic, barking at her to hurry. “Slow down,” she said. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s out there. He ran outside.” The girl’s eyes were crazed with urgency as she pulled Lara to the door.
The pain in her shoulder clouded everything. The girl wasn’t making sense. Why would Gallagher run outside? It didn’t make any sense.
They hurtled down th
e broken steps, lurching onto the snow. Further down the path they saw the wolves congregated before the crippled van. Then a glimpse of Gallagher, clutching the husky to him and then it all flashed out in a ball of fire.
The shockwave knocked them back. The fireball mushroomed bright against the winter sky. Tiny comets of flaming shrapnel zipped past their ears.
Lara turned her eyes from the light of this artificial sun, disbelieving what she already knew was true. Gallagher had sprung the trap.
He was gone.
She reached for Amy. The girl’s face blanked in shock, her lips worked up and down without sound until a single word tripped out.
“Dad.”
The girl stumbled for the inferno, repeating the word like a mantra. Lara pulled her back and Amy fought to get away but she held fast until the girl collapsed into her.
A cry of anguish erupted from the bonfire. A mass of molten flame stumbled from the blaze and careened over the snow this way, now that. The wolf a shimmering mass within a rolling ball of fire. It staggered on, howling as it went and Lara blocked her ears until the monster fell into a heap and howled no more.
The burning vehicle popped and blew, smaller eruptions that flung more shrapnel through the air and these flaming missiles struck the dryrot shacks of the town. The desiccated wooden frames went up like stacks of kindling and the fire reached out its greedy fingers to touch the next one, a daisy chain of flames winding its way through the ghost town.
“We have to go.” Lara pulled the girl up but Amy wouldn’t budge. Still in shock, Lara doubted the girl could even hear her. “Please, Amy. The fire is spreading.”
Amy flailed and pushed away, saying she didn’t care and then she lay down on the snow and hugged her knees.
Lara watched the girl shudder with sobs but she had made a promise and pushed down her own grief. She snatched Amy up and jerked her clean to her feet. “We’re getting out of here. If I have to carry you, I will.”
The girl lowered her head and took the woman’s arm, letting herself be led away. Lara turned them away from the burning wreckage and guided the way out. The heat rolling off the burning shacks singed their faces as the fire raced from ruin to ruin. She quickened the pace, startled at how fast the decayed outpost was going up in flames.
An ungodly shriek rang out, stopping them in their tracks. They turned. A ball of fire broke from the inferno and shot towards them. Flames riffled and trailed like a comet’s tail as the burning wolf thundered at them. Its boiling eyes locked on Lara and Lara alone.
Even through the flames, Lara deciphered those ravaged eyes. Grissom.
She blanched. Only enough time to push Amy out of the way before the fireball slammed into her, impacting with the force of a runaway train. The woman and the wolf tumbled over the ground. Flames hissed against the snow and teeth popped in the woman’s face. Her hands singed holding back its jaws. The wolf savage and driven mindless with pain, its sheer strength overpowering her.
She could not win this contest, doomed if she tried. Lara dug deep and unclenched some small part of her heart and allowed the wolf a little space. Just enough to stretch its limbs and give her its strength. Like walking on razorwire; too much and she would lose control, too little and the burning lobo would snap her neck in two. It was already too close, the beast blowing hot on her face.
It flared up in her eyes, a guttural sound rumbling in her throat. Power hummed her veins and Lara Mendes dug her fingers round the wolf’s throat. Its windpipe collapsed under her grip and she didn’t let up until the monster choked and rolled away.
The wolf scrabbled madly over the snow, its hide billowing up greasy black smoke. It jerked and reeled in spasms, morphing with the roll of tremors. Fur and blood flew off with each paroxysm until the wolf shed its skin to lay bare the man.
Amy rolled onto her knees, eyes saucered at the struggle, then the transfiguration. The man lay in a wreckage of twisted limbs and charred flesh. She looked away. Lara gasped for breath like an asthmatic. A volcano trembling to erupt.
Amy threw her arms around the woman and pulled her close. The way one would to a child suffering a fit. “Easy,” she cooed. “Push it down.”
The woman shrilled at Amy to get away from her. She shrugged and shirked, trying to slip free but Amy held on that much tighter and whispered into her ear. “You’re bigger than it. Push the wolf down.”
Tremors rippled through her stem to stern. Lara bit down, folding the wolf back into its place in some dark and unmapped chamber of her heart. The wolf bansheed for release but she choked it back until the lobo capitulated and sank with a low tail.
Amy felt Lara go limp. The struggle was over, Lara had won
Bitch.
A garroted voice, gurgling out that single word. Grissom clawed at the frozen ground, a charred husk of a man reeling under the eye of the moon.
“Bitch,” he gibbered, smoke puffing from his lungs. He dragged his broken frame forward. “You were supposed to be our bitch...”
Amy felt Lara shudder and held her tight until the last tremor passed and she hissed at Grissom. “Shut up. Just shut up and die.”
Grissom rolled over onto his back. Eyes open to the night sky, a last tendril of smoke issuing from his lips. “You were the one. You were supposed to save us…”
Amy gritted her teeth, willing the man to die. She dug through the pockets of Lara’s tattered parka until she came up with the big gun and its calibers of silver tipped catastrophe. She gripped the piece in both hands and leveled the barrel at the burnt man.
Her arms trembled under the weight of it. The man was a monster. A killer. She screamed at herself to put him down but the man’s eyes rolled up to meet hers and her finger froze on the trigger piece.
A hand touched her arm. Lara teetered up on shaky knees. “Give me the gun.”
Amy didn’t respond, didn’t move. Her arms locked in place.
Grissom swiveled his eyes to Lara. “You betrayed the pack…”
“I’m not like you,” she said. “Never was.”
Boom.
Amy pulled the trigger and Edgar Grissom’s head erupted in a vomit of gore over the snow. The upper half of his skull splayed out but his jaw remained whole. It gibbered open and shut as if there were some last words to say but nothing spilled out and then the jawbone stilled.
The moldering cottages around them burned in a riot of orange and yellow flames, the dried up mining town giving up the ghost to the fire and the heat of it melting the snow around them.
The woman leaned on the girl and they turned away and tottered back the way they had come. No father, not even the dog.
They said little on the drive home. Stopping at a gas station, they cleaned up as best they could before crossing the border. Despite having to work the holiday, the border agent was cheerful and seemed to sense the grief rolling out the window of the Cherokee. She waved them through, wishing them a merry Christmas.
Traffic was light as they came back to city. Amy shrank down in her seat as the familiar sights zipped past the window. It didn’t look the same. Never would.
The Cherokee rolled to a stop outside of Cheryl’s house and Lara killed the engine. Amy looked up at her mother’s house and listened to the truck tick and sputter.
Lara grasped for something to say but there were no words that fit. All she could do was reach out and take the girl’s hand.
“What happens now?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stay.”
Amy nodded and Lara felt her heart sink even further. After all the girl had been through and now she had to abandon her.
Amy wiped her eyes. “Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe south.”
“Will you stay in touch?”
“Of course.”
Amy scrounged a pen from the glove box and scratched out an email address on a scrap of paper. She handed it over and swung out of the cab. “Goodbye, Lara.”
“Goodbye, Amy.”
Amy closed the door and watched the truck roll away and then she turned and went up the steps.
NEW MEXICO
- One month later -
THIRTY-NINE
THE BUS RIDE was long and tedious and Amy tried to sleep through most of it. Twenty-six hours on the road from Oregon to New Mexico, with stopovers in Boise, Twin Falls and Salt Lake City. She slept coiled up in the seat with her shoes off and her head vibrating against the window. The stir of the other passengers woke her and she squinted out the window at that unending flatland. A line on the horizon, low hills in the distance and sky. She had never seen anything so barren.
“We’re here,” said the man next to her. He straightened up and ran a hand through his hair. “About damn time too.”
Amy watched the desert scrub give way to flat-topped buildings and grey strip malls as the bus wheeled through the streets of Albuquerque. She slipped on her shoes and silently thanked God the bus ride was over.
The bus trip was her brilliant idea but her mother had flat out refused to let her go. All kinds of terrible people travel by bus, Cheryl argued. It’s no way for decent people to travel she declared and refused to buy a ticket. Amy packed her gear and paid for the ticket herself. Cheryl had insisted on driving her to the station and on the platform she slipped an envelope into Amy’s pocket as they said goodbye. Amy didn’t touch it until the bus had pulled away, opening the envelope to find a modest stash of twenty dollar bills. The note read: Walking around money. Call if you need anything. She smiled at that.
She stepped off the bus and collected her backpack from the luggage compartment. The sky overhead was blue and the air dry, so unlike the constant dampness of home. Shouldering the pack, she looked over the people milling through the bus station for a familiar face.
Lara Mendes cut through the foot-draggers, her face beaming with a big, big smile. The backpack slid to the floor and they embraced and held on and when they pulled back, both wiped away tears. “It’s good to see you,” Amy said. “You look great.”
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 53
