As the wendigos closed in, she heard the distant throaty roar of a diesel engine coming to life, and she knew that she had accomplished at least that much.
62
Knight came to with a start, looking around frantically. Since losing his eye, he often woke up this way, disoriented at the abrupt transition from dreams, where he had unrestricted vision, to a reality where half the world was hidden from view. This time, he had not been dreaming, but what he found upon waking was a nightmare.
Beck lay nearby, bruised and bloody, groaning but not quite conscious. One hand was still gripping the stock of her borrowed SCAR, but the other seemed to have developed an extra joint. Her left arm was bent at an unnatural angle between the wrist and elbow, and a jagged splinter of bone protruded from her forearm.
A little further away, Bishop was fighting a trio of wendigos with the same berserker fury that had saved Beck’s life earlier, but a crippled alpha was crawling to join the fight.
He realized, belatedly, that the booming report of Rook’s Desert Eagles had awakened him, but where was Rook now?
He twisted around just in time to see a second alpha reach down and grab hold of Rook with both arms. With astonishing speed, the creature thrust its captured prey into its gaping maw, but just as it was about to chomp Rook in half, there were several more loud booms, and the back of the alpha’s head exploded in red mist. The monster went down with a crash that reverberated through the ground, and Knight lost sight of Rook.
The crash jolted Knight into action. He grabbed the SCAR out of Beck’s hands, eliciting an anguished cry from her as he jostled her broken arm. He took aim at the alpha closing on Bishop. The rifle bucked against his shoulder, and a red flower bloomed on the alpha’s featureless head, but the shot accomplished little else. Knight scrambled to his feet…and nearly collapsed again as a wave of pain shot through his left ankle.
Broken? He had no idea, but it hurt like hell. He fought back the wave of blackness that threatened to overtake him, and fired again, putting a shot directly into the nostril slit above the alpha’s gaping jaws.
The creature twitched, and a stream of dark blood began gushing down into the serrated grimace of its teeth, but it kept coming.
Bishop, spinning like an Olympic gymnast, locked her legs around the neck of a wendigo and then whipped her body, along with its head, around one hundred and eighty degrees. As it dropped lifeless to the ground, joining several others that had already been dispatched, she managed to land on her feet, and scrambled away just as the alpha heaved into the space she had occupied an instant earlier. It lurched forward again, now just ten yards from Knight and Beck.
The enormous creature filled Knight’s lone eye. He pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened, and only now did he see that the magazine was bent nearly as badly as Beck’s arm. It was a wonder the weapon had fired at all.
The enormous maw opened wide, blasting Knight with a vaporous exhalation that stank of rotten meat. Beside him, Bishop was struggling to pull Beck out of the way, but there simply was not enough time. The jaws came forward.
Knight thrust the useless gun forward, jamming it between the jaws as they started to close. The hardened steel crunched against the jagged teeth but did not give. In frustration, the monster began whipping its head back and forth. Knight caught a glancing blow and went sprawling. Another wave of pain shot through his ankle, but he shook it off and started crawling toward Beck and Bishop, desperate to reach them before the alpha.
A noise as loud as a cannon boomed from somewhere on his blindside. The noise repeated, again and again, and with each report, there was an eruption of gore from the monster’s head.
Knight turned to see Rook, covered in the blood of the other alpha head he had killed, striding forward with the relentless determination of a Hollywood killer-cyborg, pumping rounds from his Desert Eagles into the creature’s head. The thing shuddered and collapsed, but Rook did not stop firing until both guns were empty.
Knight sagged in relief, but saw that the respite would be short-lived. More wendigos were appearing from every direction.
“Gotta go,” Rook said, hastening to Knight’s side. “You okay?”
“Do I have a choice?” He clasped Rook’s hand and stood again, purposefully putting his weight on his injured foot. The pain was like a baptism in fire, but pain was something he could deal with. “A sprain,” he said through clenched teeth. “Not broken. I can walk.”
Rook nodded. “Good. Can you run?”
“Do I have a choice?” he said again.
Bishop helped Beck to her feet. Together the four of them hobbled in the direction of the pickup, which had come to a stop across the lanes in the middle of the highway, as if trying to block the road. The cab had been partially peeled back and a front fender was missing, but as they reached it, Knight saw that Bulldog was still behind the wheel, or more precisely, slumped over it, with blood streaming from a gash in his forehead.
Rook ripped the door open and shoved the unconscious man aside. He settled into the driver’s seat and tried the key. The engine made a mechanical chugging sound, but refused to turn over. Rook swore and tried again to no better effect.
Knight turned, looking for another vehicle, but the rampaging alphas had left nothing intact. All he saw were more wendigos, rushing down the road, emerging from the woods, streaming toward them from every direction.
Rook stomped the gas pedal to the floor, held it down, and tried the key again. The engine caught with a roar and belched a cloud of noxious exhaust. “Back seat!”
Bishop and Knight hoisted Beck into the bed and then threw themselves in as well, even as the first of the wendigos caught up to the truck. Rook hit the accelerator. The truck fish-tailed, leaving rubber on the pavement, then shot away. Knight spied grasping fingers hooked over the edge of the tailgate. Two creatures had made a desperate grab for the truck as it pulled away. They were now being dragged along behind it. He kicked his heel against the fingers, and the wendigos fell away, but more of them were trying to seize hold of the truck as it passed. There were repeated thumps from the front, as wendigos tried to stop the truck with their bodies. A few of them rolled up and over the windshield, dropping lifeless into the bed. Even though the impact shattered their spindly bones, the dying wendigos put up a fight as Bishop and Knight heaved them into the path of the swelling horde chasing behind the pickup. There were too many to count—at least a hundred, and more joined the hunt with each passing second.
Knight exchanged a glance with Bishop, and knew she was thinking the same thing. They were trapped on the island, with nowhere to go and no way to win against such overwhelming odds. He shook his head. “Sorry. I got nothing.”
Bishop shrugged in resignation. “Was good fight.”
He laughed. “Yes, it was.”
He sank down next to Beck and put his arm around her, holding her close. Bishop settled down beside them, her expression stoic.
There were better ways to die, but at least he wouldn’t be alone at the end.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Bishop said after a moment.
“What?”
“Rook. He seems to have a plan.”
Knight tore his gaze away from the chasing wendigos and looked around at the familiar landscape passing by. Rook was driving just fast enough to stay ahead of the horde, making no effort to outrun them. He abruptly turned off the highway and onto the road back to the site of their first battle with an alpha: the Lost Colony Festival Park. The truck slowed a little as Rook steered around wendigo corpses on the bridge, and then they were rolling past the corpse of the slain alpha, past the shingled buildings of the visitor center.
Knight leaned close to the half-demolished cab. “Rook, Bish thinks you have a plan.”
“Fucking-A right, I do,” Rook chortled. “Hang on, back there. The Pied Piper is about to take care of the rat problem.”
The parking lot flashed by, then a large empty amphitheater, and then suddenly
it was as if they were transported back in time. Crude log buildings, a blacksmith’s forge, a well, empty pillories—they were driving down the middle of a primitive colonial village, a recreation of the Roanoke colony. Behind them, wendigos were crowding into the open streets, filling the village square.
With a lurch, the truck smashed through a wooden palisade, crossed a narrow beach, and then splashed into the placid waters of Shallowbag Bay. The combined impacts stole most of the truck’s momentum, throwing the passengers forward. The engine revved as Rook tried to eke out a few more feet of progress, but the wheels just spun impotently in the soft mud, and then the engine died with an ominous clank.
“Everybody out! Swim for it!”
Knight was already taking steps to heed the advice. He scooped Beck up in his arms and heaved her over the side of the pickup, into the four-foot deep water. He dove in after her, and gripping her hand, began to swim for open water.
Behind them, a seething mass of wendigos poured through the breach in the palisade and ran headlong into the bay in pursuit of their fleeing prey. At first the water barely reached their elongated knees, but as they pushed further out, the silty mud slowed them down, even as the bottom dropped away.
Knight saw Bishop in the water. Rook as well, pulling the still dazed Bulldog along behind him. He swam furiously, ignoring the throb of pain in his foot as he kicked away from shore, tugging Beck along with him, but instead of the desperation that had motivated him during the struggle to reach the truck, he was now borne along by hope.
The wendigos did not even attempt to swim. Their lean bodies weren’t buoyant enough to stay afloat, but their primal hunger was so great that they were incapable of recognizing the need to turn back. Instead, they kept going, striding forward as fast as the water would allow, until the water closed over their heads.
And they drowned.
All of them.
63
King caught just a glimpse of Queen before the wendigos closed in around her. He did not look again. The only way to give her sacrifice meaning was to stop Beltran. That was what he had to stay focused on. He turned his eyes back to the road and kept the five-ton rolling down the center line.
A mile and a half down the highway, he caught sight of the lumbering alpha, and Beltran evidently heard him coming. The monster turned around, facing him, and then started to run toward the truck.
King had about two seconds to weigh his options. The .50 caliber gun, a weapon designed to engage armored vehicles, would make quick work of the monster, but was there time to stop the truck and climb up into the gun turret? Probably not.
The machine gun wasn’t his only weapon, though.
“If it’s a game of chicken you want,” King muttered, “I’ll play.”
He pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor and aimed the front of the truck squarely at the advancing alpha. Beltran did not relent. Neither did King.
The distance between them shrank so quickly that King did not have time to second guess his decision. The alpha grew large, and then suddenly King was thrown forward into the steering wheel when the truck slammed into the enormous creature.
The truck slewed sideways as the wheels turned sharply. Then it spun around, out of control, and veered off the road. King was thrown out of his seat to slam against the passenger side door, and then he bounced around the interior like a sock in a tumble dryer.
It took a moment for him to recognize that the truck had come to a stop, and another to realize that it might take more than getting hit by a truck to stop Beltran. He scrambled to right himself, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, but when he sat up, everything was crooked and disorienting. The truck had nosed slightly down at an angle, just enough to throw off his equilibrium. Keeping one steadying hand on the dash, he rose up to grasp the lip of the gun turret, and then gingerly hauled himself erect.
The machine gun was pointing ahead and slightly down into the trees. A glance back showed the highway, empty in both directions. Where was Beltran?
Something jostled the truck, alerting King to danger. He braced himself against the turret, gripping the gun so that he could swivel in the direction of a target. He spun around, searching for the alpha. There was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, and then Beltran sprang up in front of the truck like an overwound jack-in-the-box. There was no time to fire the gun. King dropped out of the turret a millisecond before one of the alpha’s powerful arms raked across it, ripping the gun from its mount, sending it crashing noisily into the trees at the roadside.
The monster’s bulk blocked out everything else, darkening the interior of the cab, but King could see, amidst the intaglio of tattooed red and green feathers, the damage that had been wrought by the head-on collision. King surmised that, instead of being knocked clear by the impact, the alpha had been dragged underneath the truck. Beltran’s torso was a mass of mangled flesh and protruding bones. Blood poured out of his body, splattering the truck’s hood and windshield. The internal injuries had to be mortal, even for a creature as massive as Beltran had become, but death wouldn’t come fast enough to save King.
With another swipe of its arm, the creature removed the top of the cab, peeling back the roof like the lid of a sardine can. As its enormous head came down, jaws open wide, King rolled off the seat, curling into the footwell. Blood and saliva showered down on him. He felt the thing’s hot breath on his face. The entire truck shuddered as the massive jaws clamped shut right above him, again and again.
Beltran reared up and then reached in with his monstrously huge fingers. King felt them brush against him, and he wormed deeper under the steering wheel, just out of reach. He did not fool himself into thinking he was safe, however. Hiding from the monster was not the same as fighting it. Queen hadn’t given her life so that he could huddle in a corner and hope everything would turn out okay.
Beltran curled the fingers of both hands under the dash, and then with a mighty heave, split the cab apart like the halves of an oyster shell. It was the moment King had been waiting for. He launched himself out of the ruined interior and straight at Beltran’s exposed torso, plunging one hand into exposed viscera, the other grasping a protruding rib, as big as a rafter.
Beltran threw back his head and let out a deafening howl. King felt hands closing around him, and he gripped even tighter. When Beltran tried to rip him loose, he gave the broken rib a savage twist that elicited another howl of agony. Then he jammed his other hand deeper into the open wound in the alpha’s abdomen. He could feel Beltran’s heart throbbing against muscles and membranes, the pulsing beat like the rumble of some industrial machine on an assembly line.
He let go of the rib, yanked his hand out and drew his Ka-Bar. For a fleeting instant, he envisioned himself cutting out the monster’s heart. What better way to balance the cosmic scales? But the practicality of it defeated him. If the alpha’s organs were proportionate to its body, Beltran’s heart was probably now the size of an engine block, the veins and arteries that connected it to the rest of his body, as thick as tree branches.
No, he decided. No symbolic actions today. Just get the job done.
He thrust the seven-inch-long blade point first into the wound, and drove it home.
64
The wendigos towered above Queen, closing in on her like a wall of putrefying flesh. She lashed out with her fists, beating at them. At first she tried to direct her blows, but they shied away, and she was only able to score glancing, ineffectual hits. As her fists met only air, her punches became more desperate. She was not fighting because she thought she might win, but only because she refused to simply give up and accept the inevitable. She would die on her feet, not on her knees.
But the wendigos did not attack. The pack continued to writhe and churn. Those at the rear fought to move forward, clawing and jostling, driven by insatiable hunger, while those at the front shrank back in what seemed almost like a state of panic.
It was as if an invisible force field had been erected
around Queen.
She stopped flailing and stood still, wondering at the cause of this strange phenomenon. As a group, the wendigos weren’t fleeing, but individuals within the horde were shying away from her, only to try again when their nerve returned.
She reached out for one of them but it drew back, as if scalded.
Emboldened, she took a step forward, and the whole mass of them shifted back.
“What the hell?”
Wendigo repellent. That was what they had been looking for out here, and somehow she had found it. But what is it? What’s keeping them back?
Even as she asked herself the question, she knew.
“The spider bite.”
Sara would probably be able to explain it better, but something about the proteins in the venom the wolf spider had injected into her hand was driving the wendigos back like mosquitoes fleeing citronella smoke.
She took another step. The wendigos shifted, filling in behind her as she moved away from the woods, but none got closer than eighteen inches.
“That’s how they did it,” she said aloud. “Fat lot of good knowing it does me now. Except…”
She feinted forward as if charging the wendigos and watched them pull away in a panic.
“I wonder what would happen if a spider bit you?”
She turned and headed back in the direction of the woods. The creatures squirmed at her approach and gave way. When the way was clear, she pushed into the tangled understory, wrestling through the foliage with her bare hands.
The wendigos followed, perhaps hoping that the strange effect would dissipate, freeing them to rip her apart and devour her flesh.
The possibility imparted a sense of urgency to her task.
It wasn’t long at all before she spotted an inch-long brown spider sitting motionless on a tree branch. Wolf spiders were hunters, sometimes jumping on or chasing down their prey, rather than waiting for an unlucky insect to blunder into a web. Like most animals, they preferred to avoid humans, rather than waste their precious venom on prey that was too large to consume. They would bite if aggravated, though, so Queen was exceedingly careful as she goaded the spider onto her open palm.
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