After the Dark

Chapter eight Joshua fit the battle

Eventually, as Max’s sobs began to abate, Alec stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

Max glanced back at the X5, surprised by the gentleness of the gesture and the genuine sorrow on the handsome face. She swallowed, nodding to him a small “Thank you” for his concern.

His hand was still on her shoulder as Max — making no effort to rise — looked down again at Ray, as she continued to run a soothing hand through the boy’s hair, her fingers inches away from moist, matted blood.

He looked just as she remembered him, a bright-looking boy, hair cut short like his father’s, the color more the blond of his late mother’s. Rather small for his age — some of White’s fellow cultists had doubted the boy had it in him to belong in their “exalted” ranks — he might have been asleep, but for the hole in his head.

“Max,” Alec said, “we gotta haul — somebody in the neighborhood must’ve heard the noise, and we got three dead people here.”

“Three?” she asked absently.

“I broke one,” Joshua said, furry face matted with tears. “Did I do wrong, Max?”

She glanced at the beast of a man next to her, and it came back to her, Joshua bleeding, wounded, breaking that Familiar’s neck. Kneeling next to her now, as if they were both taking communion, Joshua seemed oblivious to his own wound, much less the knife blade still in his shoulder.

“You okay, Big Fella?”

He shook his head. “Too late,” he said. The eyes brimmed with more tears. “Boy shouldn’t have to, Max.”

“Have to...?”

“Take one. For the team.” And the tears overflowed.

She removed her hand from the dead boy’s head and stroked the side of Joshua’s warm, wet face.

Alec squeezed her shoulder. “Max!”

“You’re right, Alec. Let’s shake it.”

She rose, self-control flooding through her; she willed herself into a coldly businesslike state. Her sense of purpose had returned, in spades. She quickly moved out into the hall, where Joshua had left the limp figure with its broken neck, a fact made obvious by the severe impossible angle of it, as that neck was almost nonexistent, the large head sitting on broad shoulders. The man’s wide eyes peered out emptily through the eye holes of the stocking mask.

She knelt over this corpse with considerably less compassion than she had the child’s. The Familiar wore familiar TAC fatigues, and Max had a pretty good idea what she was going to find even before she jerked the stocking cap off the man’s big head.

The blond guard from the Lyman Cale estate.

Otto. Or was it Franz? She didn’t remember.

Not that it mattered. She felt it safe to assume his partner, the dark-haired one — Franz, or Otto, whatever the hell — had been the one to escape through that bedroom window.

She stood.

Alec said, “Max... come on! We gotta blow this pop stand.”

“Shut-up,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

“Maybe you could do that in the car.”

“Alec, shut-up.”

What the hell was going on here? The Familiars, working for Lyman Cale?

Only, Lyman Cale was a vegetable, a CGI image in public, and in private a husk hooked up to life support... No one really worked for him, did they? That security team, including the two brawny ones — Familiars — reported to Lyman Cale’s private secretary, that slick ever-so-helpful bureaucrat, Franklin Bostock.

Was Bostock the answer?

A strong possibility, but Alec was right — this was not the time or place to work out all the maybes; they indeed needed to haul. Far away, but getting closer, sirens wailed mournfully, as if knowing in advance about the child’s tragic death.

“Company comin’,” Mole growled, at her side.

“Okay,” Max said. “Joshua, can you carry this guy?”

Still ignoring the knife in his shoulder, Joshua responded by reaching down, grabbing the corpse and tossing it over his good shoulder, like a sack of grain.

Alec’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped like a trapdoor. “What the hell...?”

“Mole,” Max said, no-nonsense, “get the boy. Wrap him in a white sheet.”

Mole’s cigar fell out of his mouth. “No freakin’ way! What kinda ghoulish shit—”

Max thumped the lizard man’s chest with two fingers. “The kid is dead. When I said we wouldn’t trade the boy for Logan, I meant a breathing Ray White. It’s not going to hurt that poor boy now, taking a ride with us.”

Alec, his eyes as horrified as they were huge, stepped up. “Max, have you completely lost it? This plan beyond sucks!”

She latched onto Alec’s shoulder with a hand that was nowhere near as gentle as his had been. “Toughen up, girls!... Ames White’s going to want proof of what happened here. That it was the Familiars who betrayed him, not us!”

“You mean, the boy... his body... is evidence,” Mole said, picking up his cigar.

“You’re goddamn right he’s evidence!” a wild-eyed Alec said as the sirens grew more insistent. “You’re gonna put two corpses in our car, what, in the trunk?”

“That’s the idea,” Max said.

“And if we get stopped by the cops,” Alec said, “how do we explain that?”

“Firmly,” she said. “Mole, Alec — do it... or bail. If you’re not prepared to follow my lead, right now — bail.”

Alec swallowed and sighed... and nodded his commitment. Mole was already heading back into the bedroom, to prepare the small sad package.

And Max was no longer a distraught young woman, nor was Joshua an upset oversize teddy bear — all four of the transgenics made up a highly trained combat team again (Thank you, Colonel Lydecker, Max thought, for small favors), and nothing the Familiars and/or Ames White had to throw at them was going to stop them.

They were out of the Gulliver house in less than a minute, and — with the two bodies, the boy’s sheet-wrapped, tucked in the trunk of Logan Cale’s car — they took off, but carefully, Mole scrupulously obeying the speed limit. Though the sirens increased, Max and her unlikely teammates never even saw a squad car.

When they hit the edge of town without being stopped, Mole sped up a little, but he kept within a few miles of the limit.

“Where to?” the driver asked at last. “Or are we just gonna cruise around with our passengers until they start gettin’ ripe?”

“Three Tree Point,” Max said.

Mole shot her a look.

She gave him a sharp glance back. “Do I stutter?”

“Why in the hell?”

“Someone we need to talk to.”

Alec leaned forward from the backseat. “You need to talk to somebody on Lyman Cale’s estate, right?”

She half turned. “Not bad, Alec.”

Mole, not taking his eyes off the road, said, “What?”

Alec explained. “There’s no other reason to go to Three Tree Point than to steal a boat and head for the Cale mansion.”

Max smiled grimly. “See, Alec? You’re not just a pretty face.”

“And you really do have a plan that doesn’t suck,” he said with his own grim smile.

Catching up with them, Mole said, “So, then... the guy in the trunk who needs a chiro — he’s from Cale’s, right?”

She nodded, and quickly filled them in.

“So,” Mole said, “since Joshua killed Tweedledee, and since Tweedledum got away from us... they’re probably gonna be waitin’ for us.”

“With bells on,” Max said.

A grin creased Mole’s reptilian features. “Just think how sick they’re gonna look when we kick their asses, anyway.”

With the exception of Joshua, they all smiled at Mole’s bravado. Max only hoped it wasn’t misplaced.

She had fought Familiars before and was amazed at how much pain they absorbed with seemingly no response. She had seen Ames White shoot himself in the arm and not even flinch. Two of them had ganged up on her when she tried to free Ray the first time, and no matter how hard she’d fought, they hadn’t even seemed to notice her efforts.

She also had no idea how much of the security staff on Sunrise Island belonged to the Familiars. The burly boys, Otto and Franz, were obvious snake cult candidates. But Familiars didn’t always look like top physical specimens fresh from the gym. White himself was of rather average build, and yet in combat against him, she’d had plenty of trouble.

Granted, she and Joshua and other transgenics had scored a victory over White’s snake-cult SWAT team that time at Jam Pony; but every fight with the Familiars had proven to be arduous, to say the least — you had to beat them into unconsciousness or cripple them or kill them to take them out.

She wondered what the four of them could manage if the Familiars seriously outnumbered them on Lyman Cale’s private island.

“Let’s pull over,” she said when she felt they were safely out of town, “and get Joshua patched up before we do anything else.”

“Joshua is fine,” Joshua said, the knife hilt sticking out of him like a slot-machine handle.

“Shut-up, Joshua,” Max said.

“Shut-up?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Max.”

“Good.”

“Max?”

“Yes, Joshua?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, Joshua.”

“Because you said ‘shut-up,’ and Joshua thought—”

“Shut-up, Joshua.”

“Yes, Max.”

Hunkered over the wheel, Mole said, “I know a place not far from here. Nice and private.”

Max didn’t even want to know how Mole knew about places between Appleton and Seattle. Sometimes she had to remind herself that the transgenics hadn’t all moved directly from Manticore to Terminal City.

After pulling off the highway and onto a ramp, then onto a two-lane road from there, Mole took them a good mile from the four-lane before he turned into a field on a tractor-access lane and stopped the car behind a stand of apple trees, ravaged by the recent cold spell; the skeletal trees remained thick enough to block any view of them from the highway, and one of them gave Max a place to sit Joshua down and prop him up, while she did a quick triage.

“Mole, you got your lighter?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Gonna need it. Got a knife?”

Another nod.

Alec shook his head and said to Mole, “What if she’d asked you for a ham sandwich?”

“How do you know I don’t have one in my back pocket?” Mole asked the X5. “Anyway, Manticore did share their motto with the Boy Scouts, ’member.” He gave Alec a little three-fingered salute. “Be prepared.”

Alec gave Mole a one-fingered salute.

“Heat the knife blade,” Max said. “When I pull this thing out, I’m gonna want to cauterize the wound.”

Alec smirked. “You can take the girl out of Manticore, but you can’t take Manticore out of the girl.”

Joshua looked a little dubious, sitting there with his back against an apple tree, the moon illuminating his canine features with a lovely ivory cast. The temperature seemed to be slowly rising. Mole moved the flame over the blade of his knife, and Max could see Joshua staring at it, his eyes growing wider with each passing second.

When the blade glowed red, Max went to work.

She started with the knife in Joshua’s shoulder. “You ready, Big Fella?”

He gulped and said, “Ready, Little Fella,” and Max jerked the knife out of his shoulder. Joshua let out a piteous howl, his eyes growing wide, and he unconsciously started shaking his head as she dropped one knife and held out her hand for Mole to give her the heated one.

His eyes glued to the glowing blade, Joshua whimpered like a puppy.

“Hey,” she said, “who loves you?”

“Y-Y-You d-do?”

“That’s right, Big Fella.”

“Joshua loves Max, too, Little Fella.”

And with his eyes on hers, she grinned, he grinned, then she pressed the hot blade into his wound, and the werewolf howl that roared from deep within him reminded Max of Joshua’s brother Isaac and the screams of pain he elicited when in the throes of his homicidal rage. Surprisingly, the two brothers didn’t sound all that different... which was enough to give Max a little shiver.

She withdrew the knife and, under the flame from Mole’s lighter, inspected her work.

“Looking good,” she said.

Joshua gave her a frown that said he wasn’t as impressed, and that pulling the “Little Fella” limb from limb may have crossed his mind. “Max hurt Joshua.”

“Max had to... for your own good, Big Fella. Hey, it’s going to be all right now. Rest for a little while. I’ll be right here.”

He eyed the knife warily until she handed it back to Mole.

“Rest, I said,” she scolded.

Leaving the beast man to sleep against the tree, the others moved off a little ways and found places to sit on the ground.

Max looked up at a million stars. It was a different sky out here, somehow — more stars, brighter moon, reminding her of the night the twelve of them had escaped from Manticore. It had been a long trip since then, her only goal to find a home, to settle down. Now, in Terminal City, she had a home, all right; but being out here, on the run again, reminded her of how claustrophobic the city had become.

Mole yanked an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer out of his belt and set it on the ground in front of him.

“Where did you pull that out of?” she asked.

Alec smirked. “Are you sure you wanna know?”

Mole tilted his head in the direction of Appleton. “From the Gulliver house. Belonged to our no-neck passenger, in the car.”

Max hated guns. They all knew it; but she also was savvy enough, pragmatic enough, to know that a little firepower could make a difference tonight. And if Mole wanted to go that way, she had no right to try to stop him — not when she was asking him to follow her through the gates of Hell.

“With what we’re about to do,” Mole said apologetically, “I thought it might come in handy.”

She nodded, looking away.

“You cool with it?” Mole asked.

“No.”

“You want me to toss it?”

“Do what you have to.”

“I hate to bring this up,” Alec said to her. “But what exactly is your plan?”

Mole grinned. “Step one, find these assholes; step two, kick their asses.”

“Max,” Alec said, “is that your plan?”

Cigar jutting threatening, Mole asked, “What part didn’t you get? Step one, or step two?”

Max cut in. “This isn’t about revenge, remember. It’s about kidnapping.”

Obviously not sure he was following her, Alec asked, “Logan’s kidnapping, you mean?”

“No. This time we’re the kidnappers.”

Alec raised an eyebrow. “Well, I guess that’s a step up from your last assignment — body-snatching.”

Max ignored that. “Our target is Lyman Cale’s majordomo, Franklin Bostock. He’s the key. Nothing happens within that compound without his approval. Stands to reason, he’s either a Familiar or in their pocket — he very likely sent those two snake-cult goons to kill that child.”

“And his mother,” Alec said.

Max shook her head. “The mother was just collateral damage.”

Mole said, “What you’re sayin’ is, don’t ice the Bostock dude.”

“Bingo,” Max said. “His sleazy self, we need alive.”

“You think?” Alec asked. “We’re hauling two stiffs around, already — what’s one more?”

Max didn’t know whether to be irritated by Alec or amused — Alec, the guy who always cut corners, who always looked for the angle, was suddenly the conservative of the group. A squeaky-clean Alec was somehow a frightening thought. She was about to give him some good-natured hell about it when her cell phone chirped in her pocket.

She pulled it out and punched a button. “Go for Max.”

“Do you have my son yet?”

Ames White.

As always, that voice sent a chill through her.

“Working on it,” she said. “We know where he is.”

“Clock’s ticking, 452. Only two days to go. You’re going to do the right thing, aren’t you?”

“Doing my best.”

“Not playing games? Why do I think you already have my son?”

“I’m not playing games. But I promise you, we will deliver him.”

Somehow, even though this was Ames White, it sickened her to lie to the boy’s parent — not lie, really, like Original Cindy said... a sin of omission, not commission — when the child lay bundled in a white-sheet shroud in the trunk of a nearby car.

“I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world,” White’s processed voice said confidently into her ear. “Make it happen, 452, and your friend Logan might live to see the new year, that brand new world... and we can put our differences behind us.”

What the hell did that mean, a “brand new world”?

“I’m cooperating, White. Working to make it happen.”

“I hope you are. Now, don’t screw this up, 452 — your friend is counting on you.”

“Let me talk to him.”

White laughed mirthlessly. “I will, when you let me talk to Ray.”

“Can’t right now.”

“Puts us in the same boat, doesn’t it? Well, then...”

Were they in the “same boat”? Was Logan dead — as dead as Ray White?

“If I don’t talk to Logan,” she said, “no deal.”

“Do you really think you’re in a position to negotiate, 452? I have to say, for all our differences, I do admire your confidence. You have a certain... presence.”

“Yeah, well. Girl’s gotta try.”

“Try this, 452 — like it or not, we’re both going to have to show a little faith here.”

“Faith?”

“Not an attribute either of us would ever likely be accused of having in abundance... but in this situation, it would seem required. Comes down to this: you hold up your end, and I’ll hold up mine.”

“Why is it I have trouble believing you’ll hold up your end?”

“Ah. That’s where the faith comes in.”

The phone clicked dead in her ear. She looked at it for a long moment, and resisted the urge to fling it against a tree.

“What was that about?” Alec asked.

“Just Ames White, busting my chops,” she said. “What else is new?”

“Does he know about Ray?”

“I don’t think so. I suppose it’s possible... evil bastard like White. But my reading of this is, he really does want his son back... may even ‘love’ him, in his sicko Ames White way.”

“I wouldn’t know much about parental love,” Alec said. “Hard to bond with a test tube.”

“I hear you,” she said. “But my gut says, White is a victim here, too — his son was murdered. And, dark as it may sound, that may be to our advantage.”

Mole chomped on the cigar, frowning. “How the hell...?”

“If we can convince White that the Familiars killed his boy, and sold him out, then it maybe takes the heat off us, gets us Logan back, and turns White against the cult.”

Alec snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah — that would be a nice bonus. Get Logan back, and take down the snake cult.”

“I’m just sayin’ — he’s been betrayed, and I don’t think he knows it. White thinks we haven’t gotten to Ray yet, and has no idea that his son’s dead. On the other hand, if White finds out the boy’s dead before we can convince him it wasn’t our fault...”

Grim nods from both Alec and Mole completed the thought.

They got moving.

Mole stuffed the pistol back in his belt, Alec and Max helped a slightly groggy Joshua back into the car, and they made for Seattle, Max trying not to dwell on the bodies in the trunk.

At Three Tree Point, where security was lax, to say the least, they helped themselves to a motorboat — Max thought it might be the same one from her previous trip to Sunrise Island. The car with its trunkful of corpses was lying low in a dim corner of the parking lot. They would have the cover of darkness for their approach, but — true to the island’s name — they would arrive just as the sun peeked over the horizon. That didn’t make Max feel any better, but there was nothing to be done about it.

As they droned across Puget Sound, Max laid out a plan of action for taking the island. None of her crew questioned any of her strategy; no jokes, no doubts — a commando squad ready to serve their leader.

Again using a rubber raft, Max and her transgenic trio hit the beach just as the sky lightened in the east. Max was mildly surprised that no one was waiting for them at the shore. Using hand signals, she communicated that they should spread out and approach the house in pairs.

As usual, Joshua went with her to the left, while Mole accompanied Alec to the right. She knew the security force numbered at least twenty, and she hoped her assumption that only a handful of them were Familiars was correct. Twenty ordinaries would barely raise a sweat for either pair of transgenics; the Familiars, though, they might be another story...

Again, that brutal battle against White’s SWAT team on the second floor of Jam Pony popped into her mind, and she shook her head a little.

Twenty Familiars might be more than the four of them could handle.

She turned to glance at Joshua for reassurance as they made their way through the woods. The Big Fella held his nose in the air, sniffing. He pointed slightly ahead of them and to their left, then held up three fingers.

No sooner had Joshua made this gesture than a trio of Cale guards in their black TAC fatigues stepped into their path, automatic weapons leveled at the pair. No dogs tonight — except Joshua, of course. She noted that the three were paunchy, probable ordinaries.

Immediately, instinctively, she saw Bostock’s plan.

The first wave would be ordinaries, the Familiars staying close, protecting their leader and his treasure, that valuable vegetable, Lyman Cale.

As per plan, Max and Joshua raised their hands, giving off an aura of surrender. Almost imperceptibly, their captors relaxed...

... and in the next instant Max moved forward, in a blur, disarming all three before they could start squeezing a trigger, much less fire a shot; and she tossed their weapons into the woods with twig-breaking thuds.

Simultaneously, Joshua had blurred forward himself, moving right behind her, cracking two side-by-side skulls together, knocking the guards out, while Max dispatched the third with a kick to the head that didn’t quite kill the man, though when he awoke from this sleep, he’d likely have the worst hangover a man who hadn’t been drinking ever had.

And the two transgenics pressed on.

On the other side of the island, Mole and Alec faced a similar challenge.

Mole had spotted the three guards early on, and signaled to Alec that they should get around the trio and come up behind them. His plan worked beautifully and the three guards were dispatched almost before they knew they were attacked.

The best part, Mole thought, was the fact that he and Alec now each carried an HK53 submachine gun. They would stay silent as long as possible, but at some point Mole expected there would be more serious trouble.

Still, he kept up his cigar-chewing bravado. Careful to keep his voice low, Mole growled, “And Max was worried about these punks?”

Alec shrugged. “She’s a girl. She’s a worrier.”

They edged forward through the woods and had managed another two hundred yards when five more guards surrounded them.

“Thought you had our back,” Mole said.

“Thought I did,” Alec replied.

Stepping forward, one of the guards said, “Put the weapons down... softly... carefully.”

So much for having machine guns.

They both set their HK53s down, bending at the knees to do so; then the transgenics exploded into action...

Sidestepping the one who had given the order, Mole went for the guard to his left, launching himself and hitting the guard in the stomach with his shoulder. The guard let out a whoomp, as all the air in his lungs abandoned ship. Both guards toppled to the grass, Mole rolling away and jumping up just as the leader’s gun barked twice. Mole dodged right and felt a bullet graze his left side, the other bullet striking the guard he’d knocked down in the forehead, as the man tried to rise.

That would leave a mark.

Spinning back the other way, Mole unleashed a vicious side kick that knocked the machine gun out of the leader’s hand. From the corner of his eye, Mole saw Alec leap, kicking out in opposite directions, each foot connecting with the face of a guard.

Three down, two to go.

The leader stepped in and delivered a quick left jab, followed by an overhand right, rocking Mole. As the lizard man staggered back, the leader kicked him in the solar plexus, driving the air out of him, knocking him off a tree, and leaving him dazed in a pile on the ground at the base of the trunk.

Struggling to stay conscious, Mole got to his knees, expecting the leader to be on him at any second...

... but no attack came.

His vision cleared and he looked up to see that Alec — who had dispatched the fourth guard — now had the leader in a full nelson. Before Mole could get to his feet, though, the leader dropped to his knees, pulling Alec over the top and rolling toward Mole, who grunted as Alec struck him and knocked them both to the ground.

The transgenics rose as one and saw the leader scrambling for the machine gun Mole had knocked away. Both of them took off as if fired from cannons, coming up behind the leader, each grabbing an arm and using the man’s own momentum against him as they sprinted toward a huge oak.

They passed on either side of the tree, the leader meeting the trunk face first with a sickening crunch, his arms slipping from their hands as his momentum abruptly stopped.

The leader stood facing the tree for a moment, as if it were a door that had been slammed in his face; then, with no more consciousness than the tree, he flopped back on the ground, his face a mask of blood, his mouth hanging open, several of his teeth broken. Guy probably wasn’t dead, Mole thought, but definitely out of the game.

Alec asked, “You all right?”

Mole looked down at his left side, stained dark in the half-light of dawn. “Never better,” he said, not wanting to tell his friend that it hurt like hell.

“Like Max says,” Alec said, “let’s blaze.”

And they were running.

A pang of worry shook Max when she heard the shots from the other side of the island.

She hoped the others were safe, but — soldier that she was — she couldn’t afford to fret about it long. Off to their right she saw a five-man patrol just as they saw her. The guards were only about thirty yards away and their guns came up instantly.

“Guns!” she shouted. “Run!”

She’d already taken off.

Zigzagging, she could hear Joshua crashing through the woods behind her as bullets whizzed past, snapping branches, thunking into trees, the five automatic weapons sounding more like a hundred.

Max and Joshua sprinted on, running for all they were worth, ducking, weaving, dodging, the guards giving chase now but keeping up the barrage. Only the transgenics’ special gifts kept them from being gunned down, and Max wondered how long their luck and skill would hold.

Then, suddenly, Joshua went down!

Max heard it and sensed it and turned to see, but she’d lost sight of him as she skirted the bullets still flying at her. Rolling to her right, she popped up to see Joshua throw one of the guards like a football, the man splatting into a tree and sagging to the earth.

Springing to her feet, Max rushed one who was so stunned he didn’t even fire as she ran toward him, leaped and kicked, her boot connecting solidly with his face. Blood spewed from his broken nose as he went down, unconscious.

She got a glimpse of Joshua throwing another one into a tree, and that made three down...

Another one shot at her, but the bullets went wide right, as she instinctively dodged left. Jumping high, she somersaulted and came down at the feet of guard number four, who flinched just before she decked him with a right cross that knocked him cold.

She looked around for Joshua, found him, then her heart lurched as she realized the last guard had avoided hand-to-hand combat as he tracked his shot and the man now had Joshua zeroed in...

Max yelled a warning, but it came too late: the guard squeezed the trigger and fired a single round. Joshua’s eyes met hers for the briefest fraction of an instant, still long enough to share love, surprise, forgiveness, thankfulness, everything in that one bit of a second...

... then the bullet thwacked into the gentle giant’s chest, and Joshua hurtled backward, his arms flying out, his eyes going wide, his mouth dropping open, but no sound came out and he disappeared into the brush.

In the next instant the shooter was turning toward where he’d heard Max yell.

She dove for cover, rolled, and — possessed by a burning rage... no soldier ever forgave another soldier for doing his duty — she blasted forward, blurring into a zigzagging ghost, the shooter always just missing her as he fired off the whole clip. When he went empty, she swept his legs and dumped him on his ass. As he tried to kick his way back to his feet, Max caught him with a straight right that slowed the guard, but didn’t hurt him.

A Familiar.

“Good,” Max said, and smiled a terrible smile. “Time we found out just where your pain threshold begins...”

He was a good six inches taller than her, and a good fifty pounds heavier, and if the muscles bulging through the fatigues were any indication, he was probably a good deal stronger than her, too.

The man growled, but it got cut off by the boot she planted in his chest. He backed up, then came forward trying to get in close, where his size would give him an advantage. Max sidestepped him, back-elbowed him in the head as he went by, then — as he turned — she leapt and broke his nose with her boot.

Incensed now, he charged again.

This time she held her ground and — when he hurled himself at her — Max simply went limp and dropped.

As the guard flew over her, she caught him in the throat with an uppercut. The guard sprawled onto the forest floor. He rolled and tried to rise, but it was clear he was losing momentum, his breathing ragged through the blood-filled broken nose, even as he choked from the last punch.

As he sat up, Max was on him again. Three quick rights sent him back down, groggy. When he lifted his head again, Max — tired of her new game, deciding this snake-cult son of a bitch didn’t need to suffer, just die — took his skull in both hands and gave it a violent twist, breaking the man’s neck like a celery stalk.

She let go of the head, and the limp dead form slumped to the ground.

She went off to look for Joshua and spotted him, spread-eagled about ten yards away, his eyes closed, his chest barely moving. She went to his side, knelt next to him and finally forced herself to look at the wound in his chest. To her surprise, she saw no blood on his coat.

Max steeled herself to lift it back, but then Joshua moaned, opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and in a strangled voice barely above a whisper, asked, “What happened, Little Fella?”

“You were shot, Big Fella.”

“Took one for the team?”

“... Afraid so.”

Joshua swallowed thickly. “C–Cold.”

She stripped off her leather vest and covered him with it as best she could.

He moaned, and it almost sounded like a death howl.

“Does it hurt?”

“Hurt,” he repeated. “Like I got punched — hard.”

His hand went to his chest and she tried to pull it away, but he was stronger. Reaching under the vest and inside his coat, he drew out something red, and for the briefest moment Max had a vision of him pulling out his own heart.

But what he had in his pawlike hand was a book...

... the hard-back copy of Gulliver’s Travels she had used to find Ray White in Appleton.

Slowly, Joshua sat up and looked at the blood-colored volume with a neat entry wound in the cover that went almost all the way through. When he riffled the pages, the bullet tumbled out.

“Are you mad, Max?” he asked.

“Mad?”

“Joshua ruined Father’s book.”

Relief flooded through Max and she grabbed her monstrous friend in her arms and gave him a big hug.

“Ow!” he growled.

“Aw, did that hurt?” she asked. Pulling back and taking his face in her hands, she gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.

This time he didn’t say anything, and when she let him go, a wide smile spread over his face. His eyes were glassy, and he wobbled for a moment.

Then he passed out.

“Big Fella,” she said, and shook him.

He was dead to the world... but not dead, thank God.

Plenty left to do tonight, and now she had two or three hundred pounds of dog-boy transgenic to haul out of these woods.

Still, it was a hell of a lot better than leaving his dead furry body behind.