The female mutt charged again, blood leaking thinly down her chest. Gunfire blasted her face from the bone. Cheek flesh dangled like fringe. She roared, her mouth open so wide it was like she ate the bullets, trying to chew past the silver to get at us. Our ammo poisoned the magic in her blood. She went to her forelegs, quiet. Fell with a thump.
Dead.
As if she'd linked them together for an instant but then the magic died with her, and the pack ruptured. Gone was the strategy. One of the mutts ran while the rest stormed us. I felt like an egg dropped into a buffalo stampede.
My mag ran empty and I changed out. A mutt realized my gun wasn't working and lunged. I didn't think, I swung my left hook at his skull.
Bad idea. My bones loosened again and broke along familiar fault lines. My yelp encouraged the wolf, who lowered his head and growled. I swung the AR-10, cracked his eyeball with the butt of the weapon, and then slammed the mag home. He charged and knocked me off my feet.
His monstrous paw squished my chest and pinned me. On the ground, I felt like lunch. Couldn't breathe. Automatically, I rummaged along my hip for the Jericho that wasn't there. Panic clamored inside my chest, heading toward my brain. Relax, I told myself. I fumbled my busted left hand on the FN, pulled it from my thigh, and passed it to my functional hand. The mutt snarled. I fired into his throat. He yelped, howled, and backed down enough for me to scoot away.
Everything happened at once, in mismatched lumps, like a room of blinking monitors playing different bits of the same scene. Sarakas and Keats were back-to-back between two faltering, blood-soaked mutts. Rosco struggled to free his AR from the frothy jaws of a tan, snarling beast. Each toss of the monster's head jerked him in the air. At the same time, the mutt I had sucker-punched came at me again.
I was changing mags. Not fast enough. Koko shot the mutt, trying to intercede. Click. Empty. No time for him to reload.
The most amazing thing happened.
Koko tucked his shoulder and charged the oncoming mutt.
I heard the impact, like two bulls colliding. Three hundred plus pounds of manpower executed a perfect offensive lineman tackle on a half-ton mutt. Took the surprised beast out at the knees. The momentum of Koko's stampede waylaid the mutt's trajectory enough for me to slap a mag home and aim. Koko’s beefy arms locked around the beast's forelegs, and his thick neck pressed against a furry shoulder. I eyed the mutt's bulk, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. Pumped silver into the mutt's spine. Blasted away the meat until I saw the splintering vertebrae. The mutt was dead before he crumpled. Koko hugged him while they went down in a dog pile.
Ha. Dog pile.
Relief, adrenaline, and nerves made me laugh.
Koko helped himself to his feet, coddling a knee and tucking his arm across his chest. Must have injured himself playing linebacker with a rhino-sized mutt.
“Dude, you're crazy,” I said appreciatively.
“Thanks,” Sarakas said. “She means to say, thanks.”
That was what I meant, and Koko knew it.
His massive arm seized and blood ran down his forearm. He'd been more than injured, maybe bitten. Some of the blood on his uniform was contaminated, officially making him an L-pos risk.
“What happened there?” I demanded, quick and sharp.
“Looks like a compound fracture,” he said.
“Let me see.”
His inert eyes stared at me. Like glass orbs in which I could see nothing of him. No way to know what he was hiding or how crazy that hidden thing was. Or maybe shock dulled his gaze.
I cut the sleeve back, exposing the source of the blood, the injury itself, a misshapen lump poking through his skin. He shuddered with pain and his snapped ulna winked at me. The wrongness of the bone's protrusion made my stomach swirl.
I hated broken bones. Blood was par for the course, an everyday occurrence, but exposed bones on living people gave me the willies. I wanted, more than anything, for him to cover it up. I took a bandage from his emergency kit to staunch the flow of red. Warm blood oozed over my fingers.
His breath roared at my touch.
“Let's get you out of here,” I said.
Koko limped on account of his knee. I offered to let him lean on me, but he declined. Probably for the best; the dude was freakishly huge. When Sarakas offered his shoulder, the man consented. Whatever.
My team guarded remains while we went with Koko into the lot. Across the barnyard battlefield, corpses shifted back to human.
The sun began to set and the woods cast long shadows. SWAT had six civilians lined up on their knees, arms secured behind their backs, black bags covering their faces. More bodies laid on the ground in various positions of death. One man draped halfway out a window, bleeding down the side of the lovely white house. Casey appeared and felt the man's throat. He said, “All clear,” and kicked the body. Its descent, heavy like a sack of grain, held my full attention. The limp form plummeted, spun, and thumped on the ground, finally breaking my reverie.
“House clear,” Sarge said.
The whump-whump of a helicopter sounded over the horizon. Help arrived.
My body trembled with pain and stress. I couldn't stand still. Even my teeth chattered. Felt like my ribs were clawing at my lungs. My inflamed hand screamed as adrenaline faded. What a gig.
“Get in,” Sarge said, pointing to the copter.
“What? I'm fine.” The last thing I wanted was a trip to the hospital.
“I see you coddling that mitt,” he said.
I tried to hide my left hand, but the action caused a roar of agony that made me spasm. Sarge flicked a pontificating eyebrow.
“Dammit,” I said.
“If you don't go, you'll regret it later,” Sarakas promised.
I hopped into the helicopter and gripped the safety handle in a death-clench with my good hand. Looking down, a sensation of bliss and excitement overcame me. The higher we went, the more appealing the space between me and the earth became. Falling would be terrible pleasure. Scary as hell. If I slipped, all the guns in the world couldn't save me.
Sarakas elbowed my hip. “Okay?” he shouted.
I nodded and shoved the fatalism out of my head.
Chapter 27
Medics met us on the roof and took the big guy.
“What about you?” they said to me.
“Hand is a little sore.” I wriggled my fingers. “Not that bad,” I said as pain exploded up to my elbow.
“Take her to X-ray. Ma'am, you'll need to relinquish those weapons.”
“Over your dead body—”
“Durant, you know the drill,” Sarakas said.
I clenched my teeth and submitted. The hospital was smaller than my usual. Cleaner, too. Unfortunately, q-ward hosted the same sick and clean scents all mingling together in a nauseating perfume.
After I was completely disarmed and naked (or it just felt that way) they did the medical-thing involving more tests than necessary, enough time in the X-ray machine to give me cancer, and a cartload of GorgonBlood to stimulate healing. They insisted on a cast. Personnel also offered a list of restrictions.
Which I absolutely planned on throwing into the first trash receptacle around the corner.
Sarakas loitered with a cup of frightfully dark coffee. “Rough day.”
“I'm fine,” I insisted. “They exaggerate.”
“Relax. You're not the only one stuck here. Koko's down the hall and he's not getting out anytime soon. They pinned his arm but he lost a lot of blood.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Who is with him?”
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean, I’m stuck here?” I yelped, recalling his first statement.
“Santi wants you completely checked out. You've suffered too many deep injuries this quarter. Thems the breaks, kid. As for me, I have a plane to catch within the hour. See you later.”
“Wait!”
“Relax.” He winked. “Think of it as
a vacation.”
“Yeah, right.”
He smirked and shoved the cup of coffee into my good hand.
“Rest, Kaidlyn. The ugly business is over.”
“Andreas, we have no reason to assume the pelting issue is resolved. We might have hindered one group, but poaching could be a full-blown sporting pastime by now. Could be a dozen hunting groups in every state.”
“Don't extrapolate. It makes you sound paranoid. People will start to think you really need that psyche eval.”
“What? Huh? No way. Who thinks anyone needs an eval? That's silly.”
“You should know that Keats volunteered for a psyche diagnostic. He was pretty damn upset after shooting the man in the barn. Said he'd never had to shoot a person before, and he wanted assistance while dealing with it.”
My brain flat-lined.
Sarakas stood back and waited.
“He's never had to shoot a person,” I repeated gently.
“So he said.”
I threw the coffee cup against the wall. It splattered. I pulled out my cellphone and pounded Keats' number into the keypad so violently the buttons squealed in protest.
“Goddamn self-righteous, narrow-minded, dogmatic motherf—”
Sarakas took the phone. “A tantrum is probably not a good idea. C'mon. Keats isn't so bad. He believes the company lines.”
“Gimmie my phone,” I hissed.
“I think you broke it. It's typing 999999999...”
I reached for Sarakas' phone, attempting to dig through his pocket. He clapped his hand over mine.
“Maybe let this slide,” he said. “You know Keats.”
“Don't tell me what to do.”
“Really? That's how you want the argument to go?”
“What those pelters did wasn't human, Sarakas. It is the definition of inhumane. And what did we do? Killed the victims. Again! How does that sit with you? Now Keats wants to bewail the savage who tortured an unknown number of people and tried to kill us? Well, I say no. He doesn't get the privilege of feeling bad.”
“I understand how you feel.” He squeezed my hand. His grip was large and warm. I pulled back.
“Keep Keats away from me for a while,” I said. “I can't promise I won't punch him.”
Andreas laughed and went away. I stomped to the nurse's station.
“Give me a line out.”
“Sorry, hospital policy—”
“I'm a bon-i-fied federal agent. I hereby commandeer that there purdy phone. Gimmie a line out, now!”
With hostility, she obeyed. I dialed Santi.
“Hey, thanks for that mountain of paid leave,” I said.
“What?”
“If a superior recommends a hospital keep an agent overnight after she’s been cleared of field injuries, then that agent can opt for fourteen to forty days of paid leave. Seems like I’ve got quite a few such bounties coming my way, if I was inclined to claim them.”
He grunted. “You never take the hospital bounty.”
“I'm thinking a little vacation is what I need. I can spend months sharing some face-time with picketers outside the FBHS building. We never know when a good brawl will break out. Of course, we can never know how many video cameras or whining priests will be around, either. Hell, this could be fun. I still have one good hand, and did I mention how diligently I've been training my right hook?”
“Lord, woman, you really are an ass. Fine. Check yourself out.”
“I hear the plane is leaving within the hour. If only I could make it.”
“You have two hours.”
He ended the call. With a smile, I returned the phone to the sour nurse.
I grabbed another coffee cup and wandered down the hall in search of the big ape. Koko was alone, playing with the buttons that raised and lowered the upper portion of his bed.
“It goes up and down,” he said.
“So, morphine?”
“I'm fine.”
“How long until you can use the arm again?”
“The break could have done more nerve damage than it did do. Diddley-do.”
He smiled, his eyes and lips at ease for the first time since I'd met him. The brief levity took a decade off his appearance. His meaty forearm looked like a chunky ham. Koko the Giant.
“I've never seen someone tackle a mutt. Anybody ever mention how big you are?”
“Never in my life. In fact, they call me Tiny.”
“Ha. He's got jokes. What do you weigh?”
“Three hundred and fifty pounds, give or take. Mostly give.”
He said pounds: the old measurement. A lot of dissidents kept to the standard instead of new-age metric. Maybe it meant something, maybe not. He had quite a few years on me.
“I requested transfer to FBHS,” he said. “My sister lost a baby to a mutt.”
“That sucks.” I imagined a bloody cradle and baby limbs that looked like hotdogs.
“It was an accident. A mutt ran through rush hour traffic and shoved her car out of the way—and right into opposing traffic. She was in a coma for a week and lost the embryo. Fetus. Whatever. Five months pregnant. Was an accident. I wanted to join the bureau, but there's a waiting period, I guess.”
State enforcement doesn't like to turn good agents over to the FBHS. Our division eats them up and spits them out, and no one wants to flush talent down the drain. States suggest a three-month cool down for volunteers experiencing personal tragedy, which meant his loss was recent. His recovery from the compound fracture would postpone him another few months.
“I don't have any love for them, mutts I mean,” Koko said, “but what we saw today was uncalled for. Unwarranted. Unjustified. Completely...indefensible. Nobody deserves that.”
“Maybe a few politicians.”
He laughed and fiddled with the button that lifted his bed up and down.
“Koko, I recently lost a team member. She died. In the field. Her name was Yvonne. She was good people.”
The first person I discuss her with happened to be one blink from unconscious, but sharing my emotions always made me feel dirty. Hopefully, he'd remember the lesson and not the way I was stumbling stupidly over the words.
“You're telling me there's an opening?” he said.
“It's rough trade, man. People go fast. You have a good gig here.”
“People die fast here, too. Monsters be monsters. Poachers, terrorists, meth farmers, mutts: what's the difference?”
Koko did a few more clicks of his morphine control.
“Are you in pain?”
“Nah. I'm floating, like...floaties.”
“Right.”
I took the clicker. He grabbed my good hand. Tough grip for a doped guy. Huge palm, so calloused I wanted a piece of sandpaper to rub it down. He had half of a stumpy pinkie. His skin was clammy from pain and drugs. He clenched so hard the discomfort passed into pain.
“You've got nice hands,” he said. “Girl hands. Callous on your thumb here, that's sexy.”
“Koko, that callous goes with a very nice gun which I occasionally use to shoot grabby people.”
His grip softened. “Sorry about your friend.”
“Thanks.” Yvonne's face lurked in the back of my head. We needed more manpower. Maybe not more, but better. Koko felt solid, and I didn’t mean his grip. More than a dumb ape. “Tell you what. If you're a hundred percent certain you want the FBHS job, I'll give you kudos and tell them what you did in the field today.”
“Hooah,” he said. I grabbed the heel of his thumb, peeled his hand back, and dropped it on the bed. His rough heat stayed on my skin a bit longer.
Koko grabbed the clicker and started playing with the button again.
A nurse poked in and gave me the stink eye.
“Ma'am, we've been looking for you,” she said. “You've been released. Frankly, you shouldn't be working for six to nine weeks. Seriously, you might consider a new career altogether.”
She placed three bottles of pills into my hand. M
y mouth watered. My body developed sudden enraged aches and pains, any excuse to take those blasted little helpers. The nurse didn't know I was an addict. I wasn't about to take career advice from someone I didn't know about a life she didn't understand. I shoved the pills into my pocket.
I had a plane to catch.
I examined my hand with Koko’s comment fresh in my mind. I had 'sexy' callouses on the base of my thumb where the gun butted against my flesh.
Christ.
I literally had callouses from killing people.
Chapter 28
At home, I slept for two solid days. Being high on Gorgonblood left me feverish and swollen, but I couldn’t stay inside any longer. I stopped at the post office to collect my mountain of black-wrapped packages. Hell. After my shit week, I had to deal with more pornography? And not one crate, but six? Toshino claimed he fixed it, but apparently I was still on someone's shit list. My vision swirled and hazed red. My temperature rose further.
How serendipitous: this batch of porn had a return address for a shop in the middle of Red Sector.
I stomped to my truck and drove like a crazy person.
Red Sector remained the most ugly-beautiful part of town. Tucked between the demolished lands of two massacres, it had become a libertine desert oasis. The northern crater marked the Berlin Beagle incident. Poor mutt had looked like a beagle, no joke. Not the noblest of sights. What he lacked in majesty he made up for in cruelty. Ate twelve senior citizens in a retirement home, killed three dozen more, and buried them for later. Big Fed plowed the remains into a mass grave. Everyone within four city blocks relocated to escape bad-mutt juju. No one had bothered to rebuild.
The south side crater was born in the Wonder Bitch incident. The black mutt had had a golden mane around her monster head, looking like Wonder Woman, thus the nickname. She killed dozens and ate as many as her belly could hold. When she shed back, the consumed bodies broke through her human belly like meaty shrapnel. The bloodbath brought mutt scavengers out of the woodwork. FBHS killed six mutts in the raid before the neighborhood went up in flames.
Red Sector flourished despite being condemned by civilized society. Graffiti art coated every surface, some brilliant and some unrecognizable. Inside the walls, residents cluttered the marketplace. Unkempt. Enthusiastic. Wild. Vicious. Like walking down a street in Detroit during the first days of the Revival. Party paraphernalia and other debris drifted across the street. The duplicitous sector gave me mixed feelings. I hated crowds but all the lively people enthralled me. I didn't like titty bars but respected the blatant expression of lust, greed, and loneliness. People used cash here—real paper funds—and sometimes even bartered.
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