Ancestor

6:18 A.M.

GUNTHER PULLED HIS blanket tighter and shivered. This was bullshit. Pure and utter bullshit. He looked out the tower-house windows, unappreciative of the sprawling, predawn view afforded him by the ten-meter-high wooden tower, which itself was perched on a high ridge. He could see almost the whole island—north and south shores each just over a click away, the mansion about eight clicks southeast, North Pointe just under eight clicks northeast.

Floodlights mounted under the tower’s small cabin cast a fifty-meter-wide patch of light down on the white snow beneath. Twenty below zero and he was in a wooden shack with only a piece-of-shit kerosene heater to keep him alive. But still, it was better than being around Magnus.

Gunther looked at the spinning green line on the radar system’s circular screen. He saw the same thing he’d seen for the last five hours: absolutely nothing. He tried to pull the blanket tighter. He’d had it. When he got off this island, he was quitting Genada. Freezing to death, suicides, crazy transgenic shit, Andy “The Asshole” Crosthwaite, freezing to death, sabotage, waiting for the CIA to storm the place, and freezing to death—just not worth it.

The radar unit beeped.

A green triangle now sat at the screen’s outermost circle. Gunther watched as the green line slowly spun around its center point until it hit the triangle and produced another beep. The bogey was approaching from 50 kilometers south.

He picked up the landline phone and dialed the security room extension. It rang. No one answered.

“Come on, come on… where the hell are you guys?”

Wherever they were, it wasn’t near a phone. Magnus had given specific instructions. Gunther’s eyes fell on the button for the old air-raid siren that could be heard anywhere on the island.

He hit the button.

6:20 A.M.

AT JAMES HARVEY’S farm, Colding stood straight up when he heard the siren’s far-off echo. He and Rhumkorrf had been going over their crude hand-drawn map of the island, trying to formulate a battle plan for finding Sara while simultaneously avoiding the ancestors.

Rhumkorrf looked out the window. “What is that sound? An alarm?”

Colding had bandaged the man’s head and hands with some gauze he’d found in a first-aid kit. The gauze covered up Rhumkorrf’s ears, so Colding had taped his glasses onto the gauze with medical tape. Even in these darkest of hours, Colding had to admit that Rhumkorrf looked more comical than ever.

Rhumkorrf had returned the favor, cleaning and dressing Colding’s gunshot wound. Not much more than a scratch, apparently. Considering Rhumkorrf was an actual doctor, Colding assumed he got the better of the exchange.

They listened to the siren for a few seconds, staring off like dogs hearing a distant call, then Rhumkorrf spoke.

“Does this mean we’re saved?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing someone is coming, either an aircraft or a boat. Gunther must not have been able to reach anyone on the phone, so he set off the fire alarm.”

“Wouldn’t he have called the mansion?”

Colding nodded.

“So where’s Magnus? Where’s Clayton?”

“Hopefully Clayton’s not in the same place as Sven and the Harveys.”

The Harveys’ ruined living room and the broken window told the story. There wasn’t much blood, mostly because something had eaten the carpet where the big spots might have been. The few remaining splatters told Colding the Harveys were no more. He’d risked a run out to the barn and seen much the same scene. The Harveys and their cows were now just biomass added to the growing ancestors.

A lone sheet of plywood had been sitting in the living room. Colding and Rhumkorrf had boarded up the broken window, kept all the lights off and stayed as quiet as they could. A brutal night, hiding in the house, wondering if Sara was out there, if she was safe, if she was sheltered from the cold. Searching for her in the dark would have been suicide. The ancestors moved fast, they moved quietly, and their black-and-white fur made for perfect camouflage in the winter night. He’d planned on waiting for full daylight, but the siren changed everything.

“We have to get to the landing strip,” Colding said. “If it’s Bobby coming in, he’ll be in the Sikorski. That’s twelve seats. We can use that to get everyone off the island.”

“The landing strip is two miles away. The ancestors are out there.”

Colding threw on his coat. “So is Sara, Doc. And if we can get that helicopter, we can use it to search for her.”

“Is this the part where you tell me I can stay here if I don’t like it?”

“No. This is the part where I tell you I will beat your ass until you get on that snowmobile.”

Rhumkorrf shook his head and put on his coat.

Colding ran to the door and peeked out—still no sign of the ancestors. Beretta held firm with both hands, he walked off the porch and started the Arctic Cat’s engine.

6:22 A.M.

A NEW NOISE.

Magnus had spent the last seven hours listening to breathing, the rustling of movement and the most disturbing noise of all—the growing rumble of the creatures’ stomachs. So many, blending together, sounded almost like the purr of a huge cat.

The new noise was faint, a far-off sound, something constant that he couldn’t quite make out. The creatures apparently heard it as well, for their hidden rustling sounds increased, faded away, then disappeared.

He waited for five long minutes, but heard nothing other than that far-off drone. He flicked on the flashlight—nothing in the tunnel. Nothing he could see, anyway.

Magnus slowly worked his big body out of the hole, trying to be as quiet as possible. After seven hours mashed into that freezing, confined space, his cramped and sore muscles didn’t want to cooperate. He slid out and almost fell, catching himself clumsily. Crouched low, he aimed the MP5 and the flashlight beam up the tunnel, waiting for the rush of creatures to come tearing around the corner.

No attack came.

Magnus walked quietly to the bend and peeked around it.

Empty.

They had finally given up on him. MP5 still at the ready, he trotted up the shaft. When he reached the entrance, he finally recognized the sound—an air-raid siren.

Oh, no. No-no-no. Bobby Valentine was coming in, and Danté would be with him.

Magnus looked outside. Still dark, although the light of dawn filtered through the woods from over the horizon. Nothing outside the shaft save for trees, and fifty meters away, the Bv206.

He had to warn his brother. Magnus sprinted to the zebra-striped vehicle. His eyes scanned the woods on all sides, but he saw no movement. He jumped in and slammed the door.

An armored vehicle. A defensible position. That gave him a second to think.

He couldn’t call the heli. No radio in the Bv, thanks to his own goddamn security rules. The helicopter would come in, and it would be loud. That noise would probably draw the creatures.

He pulled out Clayton’s keys to start the Bv, then paused. Clayton had keys for every building on the island, including those in the old town.

Magnus turned on the flashlight and set it on the seat. He held the keys in front of the beam and examined them one at a time. Black Manitou Lodge key—tarnished all over. Sven’s hunting shop key, the same. The church key…

…the flashlight beam played off fresh scratches.

Soon, he would deal with them all, with Clayton, with Sara, with Tim, but first he had to get to the landing strip and protect his brother.

6:24 A.M.

SARA POPPED OPEN the trapdoor and climbed out onto the turret, then helped the limping Tim up top. Stars flickered above, slow in relinquishing their place to the oncoming dawn. The noise that had been faint inside the thick church rang loud and clear in the open air.

“An air-raid siren?” Tim said. “What’s up with that?”

“Not sure. But obviously whoever is in that tower wants to let everyone know something’s coming.”

“Or he’s trying to call for help.”

Sara shivered from the cold. “Well, if those monsters aren’t there already, they’ll sure come running. They seem to go after noise. I hope whoever it is moves fast.”

“Unless it’s Magnus,” Tim said quietly.

Sara nodded. If only they could be that lucky.

6:28 A.M.

GUNTHER HELD HIS gloved hands over his ears, but it didn’t do much to stop the ear-piercing siren blaring underneath the small shack. Amazingly, he’d found a way to make his shitty situation even worse.

He forced himself to lower his hands so he could scan the horizon through his binoculars. Far off, he saw a tiny black speck. Bobby’s Sikorski. Bobby didn’t need any help bringing that thing in. Gunther had done his job. Time to head back to the lodge. Time to get warm.

He hung the binoculars around his neck, turned off the heater, walked out of the tiny cabin onto the wooden catwalk and started down the tall ladder. He was three meters from the ground when his eye caught movement from his left. Instinctively, he stopped and looked.

A flashing yellow color, but it wasn’t a light… more like a flag or something, like triangular fabric, lifting up and down in an irregular pattern. It was about fifty meters away, just at the edge of the tower’s cone of light, centered in an odd-looking patch of snow spotted with black rocks.

Holding the ladder with one hand, he lifted his binoculars, leaned out and looked.

Even in the dim illumination cast off by the tower’s floodlights, he saw it. A spear of fear stabbed through his chest. Not a flag in a patch of snow, an animal… a huge, strange-looking, dangerous animal. But what was it? And why was it just sitting there?

He heard movement to his right. Gunther lowered the binoculars and turned.

Another creature running full-tilt in an odd crouch-waddle, like a half-upright Komodo dragon. It gathered and leaped, huge mouth opening wide to reveal rows of long white teeth.

Gunther grabbed a rung with both hands and lifted his legs high.

The creature slammed into the ladder where Gunther’s feet had just been. Wide jaws snapped down just before momentum carried the big body through the ladder, shattering the cold dry wood into a hundred splintery shards. The remaining upper part of the ladder shook from the impact, so hard that it almost flung Gunther free.

The creature fell clumsily into the snow, its monstrous mouth working the ladder’s remnants in short, vicious bites.

Gunther’s legs desperately kicked open air as he tried to pull himself up. The ladder wobbled wildly, accompanied by the sound of grinding, splintering wood. He looked above—the right ladder post had snapped. Only the left one remained fixed to the tower.

More motion from below. The creature seemed to realize it had missed its meal. It violently shook away a mouthful of bloody splinters, then turned and gathered for another jump.

Gunther pulled hard, lifting himself enough to plant his foot on the wobbling ladder’s bottom rung. He scrambled up just before the leaping creature’s jaws snapped on open air.

He climbed, the wood wobbling with each step. His hands grabbed the platform just as the left post snapped loose and the ladder fell away. Feet dangling free again, he kicked them under the cabin, then pulled himself up when his body rocked back. He had to get to the phone.

Down below, the creature roared in frustration, a lonely, deep, guttural sound that echoed off the trees, clearly audible despite the blaring Klaxon. Gunther realized that it wasn’t just one roar. He stopped on the catwalk and looked around.

More creatures, dozens of them, coming out of the woods from all sides like some childhood nightmare, rushing forward with their strange waddling gait. Big as goddamn tigers. They gathered at the tower’s bottom, long claws digging into the wood as they tried to climb up, teeth flashing from mouths as wide and long as a grown man’s chest.

His hands squeezed down on the wooden rail. He took in a deep breath, then let it out. Control. Just another kind of combat, that’s all it was. Had to stay calm, make logical decisions, just like Magnus had taught him.

Whatever the fuck these things were, they couldn’t get to him up here. They couldn’t jump ten meters. He ran inside the cabin, grabbed the phone and hit the page-all button.

The phone rang.

No one answered.

The tower started vibrating under his feet.

Small tremors at first, but after a few seconds he had to put his hand on the wall to keep his balance.

Someone answer, goddamit, answer!

No one answered.

The shaking grew worse.

He set the receiver down, ran back onto the catwalk and looked.

The creatures were attacking the four thick wooden posts that supported the cabin. Biting and clawing, they tore out big, splintery chunks and tossed them aside before coming back for another try. Rough wooden daggers dug into their noses, their lips, their tongues, coating their black-and-white mouths with fresh spurts of red. Still they bit, they tore, climbing over one another to get at the wood.

Logical decisions didn’t cover this. Nothing covered this. Fear settled into a waiting pattern in his stomach and balls. He was fucked and he knew it. Gunther drew his Beretta and held it, knowing it would do nothing to help him.

The tower lurched to the left, then stopped. Gunther grabbed at the rail in a desperate grip for survival. His bladder let go, the urine a final, brief sensation of warmth amid the bitter cold.

A second post gave way with a resounding snap. The ten-meter tower tilted to the south, slowly at first, but it quickly picked up speed, dropping like a falling tree. Gunther’s scream locked in his throat as the tower slammed into the snowy ground. The cabin shattered, as did Gunther, dozens of bones breaking on impact.

Unfortunately, the fall didn’t kill him.

Groggy but still conscious, Gunther rolled to one shoulder and looked back toward the base of the tower. The crash had broken all the tower’s lights save for one—that last light projected back toward the tower’s base, illuminating oncoming death in a morbid spotlight. They came like a tidal wave, a black-and-white tidal wave with a frothing crest of wide-open mouths and long teeth.

Oh, he wished he could have written that one down… that was the shit right there.

Gunther was too weak to scream as they tore him to pieces.

6:34 A.M.

WITH DAWN BREAKING across the angry waters of Lake Superior and wind whipping across their backs, the Arctic Cat screamed like nature herself. Colding couldn’t believe how fast the machine moved on the open ice—at eighty miles an hour he felt like a cruise missile streaking across the surface.

This open ice hadn’t been there just a few days earlier. Black Manitou continued to grow, reaching out like a spreading stain of white ink.

They had taken advantage of the new ice to circle around North Pointe, searching the snow-covered wreckage dotting the frozen-over Rapleje Bay. No sign of Sara. Now they headed southwest, the coastline passing by quickly on their left. Colding prayed they wouldn’t hit a patch of weak ice; any accident at this speed meant certain death. He wondered if the creatures were somewhere up on the coast, just inside the tree line, watching them.

When he reached the snowcapped Horse Head Rock, Colding slowed and stopped, taking stock of their tactical situation. Boyd Bay was frozen over all the way out to Emma Island. What had been treacherous, rocky water two months ago was now solid ice. The mansion perched high up on the bluff, looking like some gothic bulwark straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

He saw the approaching aircraft. A helicopter. He squinted his eyes against the rising sun… yes, it was Bobby’s Sikorski. Danté could be on it. If Magnus was alive he would surely go out to meet his brother, giving Colding a small window of opportunity to enter the mansion and get heavier weapons—for protection both against the ancestors, and against Magnus. If Andy was alive and staying home, then this would end quickly one way or another.

But what about warning Danté and Bobby about the rampaging ancestors? Danté might have known about the bomb plot. Known, and done nothing to stop it. Hell, Danté himself could have authorized it. But Magnus might have acted alone. If Colding didn’t do something, would two innocent men die? If he did try to warn them, would they kill him? Would Magnus? There were no right answers, and every course of action or inaction led to death.

Rhumkorrf tugged at his shoulder. “Are we going to meet them at the landing strip? They can fly us out of here.”

Colding shook his head. “We’ve got to get some weapons. Those monsters could be anywhere.”

“Which means we have to go up the stairs, on foot, and into the mansion, where Magnus could be waiting for us?”

“Exactly,” Colding said. “So, you ready?”

“I could not possibly be less ready for this insanity. Let’s go.”

Colding waited for Rhumkorrf to squeeze tight, then gunned the engine and shot across the ice toward the shore.

6:41 A.M.

COLDING CRAWLED UP the last few steps. He pointed his Beretta just over the stone patio deck, sweeping left to right, looking for any motion. Would he even see Magnus? The man was so well trained, so dangerous. What about Andy? Had he made it back? And where was Gunther? Whose side would Gun be on?

Colding licked dry lips. No choice. He had to get better weapons, and get Claus armed as well. Colding half stood and walked forward. He heard Rhumkorrf following close behind.

They walked across the porch and into the lounge, Colding leading, Beretta up and at the ready. Moving quickly but carefully, quietly, they worked their way downstairs to the closed security room.

He turned to Rhumkorrf and whispered, “You stay behind me. Keep a couple of feet back. If you see me turn, you run like hell. If you see me fall, you run even harder, got it?”

Rhumkorrf nodded quickly. His taped-on glasses bobbled against his bloody head bandage.

Colding punched in 0-0-0-0, then opened the door to a dark room. He heard a grunt.

Fighting back the fear of an ancestor or Magnus waiting inside for him, he reached his hand in and flipped on the light switch…

… and saw Clayton Detweiler, taped to a metal folding chair that sat in a pool of blood. Colding reached back and grabbed Rhumkorrf, pulled him inside and shut the door. The two men stepped into the puddle of blood to untie Clayton.

“Get him ready to go, fast,” Colding said. He ran to the ammo rack, grabbed a first-aid kit and tossed it to Rhumkorrf.

“This is duct tape,” Rhumkorrf said. “I need a knife.”

Colding tossed him one of the white Ka-Bar boxes. Rhumkorrf started cutting while Colding slid behind the desk and flipped through the security channels. If he could spot Magnus and the others somewhere on the grounds, that would help dictate next steps.

“Wake up,” Rhumkorrf said to Clayton. “Come on, wake up.”

“Wha…?” The old man’s eyes opened, and he blinked a few times.

Colding kept his eyes on the monitors as he spoke. “Clayton, why did Magnus do that to you?”

Clayton coughed, then spit blood on the floor. “Wanted… to know where Sara was.”

The words hit Colding like a boot in the stomach. “Sara’s alive?”

“I stashed her and Tim in da church. I told Magnus she was in da mine, to buy time.”

“Time for what?”

“For Gary,” Clayton said. “My son, he was coming out on da boat. He probably got them and is already back on da mainland. I can call him on da secure terminal, see if he’s back.”

Sara might not only be alive, she might already be off the island.

Rhumkorrf rolled some gauze into a small tourniquet. He looped it around the stub of Clayton’s pinkie. “This is going to hurt very much, yes?”

In response, Clayton grabbed one end of the tourniquet with his free hand, and put the other end between his teeth. He snarled and jerked tight the tourniquet with a grunt of pain and anger. He wiped blood away from his mouth with the back of his good hand, then stood and walked to the desk. “Let me sit down. I’ll call Gary.”

Colding stood and made space, but kept his attention on the video monitors. He saw the Bv206 rolling down the road to the hangar, still about two minutes away.

“Clayton, is Magnus driving the Nuge?”

The old man nodded. Colding looked at the next monitor, which showed the view from the front of the hangar. The Sikorski had landed, its slowing rotor blades still kicking up a cloud of powdery snow.

The helicopter doors opened. Bobby Valentine and Danté Paglione got out and walked to the hangar.

And beyond them, in the woods, small blurs of movement.

Colding switched the view to infrared.

The screen lit up with white blobs that glowed brightly against the cold wood’s gray and black.

“Dear God,” Rhumkorrf said. “We have to help them.”

Colding shook his head, wondering if he’d made the right decision. “Nothing we can do, Doc. Nothing we can do.”

DANTÉ AND BOBBY walked out of the hangar and started up the snowy, one-lane road toward the mansion.

Baby McButter, now 510 pounds and so very, very hungry, sat quietly and watched her prey.

She and the others had heard the noisy thing up in the air, stalked it from the cover of the trees. They saw it coming down, saw where it might hit the ground. Baby McButter knew prey liked the open areas, so that is where her pack mates waited.

The other animals, the bigger ones, those had been easy to take down. But the tall, thin ones… they could be dangerous. They had a stick. A stick that could kill.

She and her siblings had learned not to rush in when they smelled the stick. They had a new way to hunt, a patient way.

Baby McButter softly flicked her dorsal flap three times, signaling to the others. Saliva welled up in her mouth and dripped onto the snow. Small whines escaped her closed mouth.

Whines of hunger.

MAGNUS KEPT THE gas pedal flat on the floor. The Bv could not go fast enough. Down the hill at the end of the narrow, snowbank-and tree-lined road, he saw the Sikorski’s rotor blades spinning down. And walking away from the hangar, Bobby Valentine and Danté.

His brother.

His only family.

“Come on, come on!” All the yelling in the world wouldn’t make the Bv206 move any faster.

DANTÉ STRODE UP the trail toward the mansion, Bobby Valentine at his side. Up ahead, Danté saw Clayton’s snow-plow machine plodding down the road.

“Not exactly a hero’s welcome,” Bobby said. “Clayton’s shit-mobile. I would have thought Magnus would be here with the Hummer.”

Danté said nothing. In all his life, he had never been this angry. The hangar was empty. The C-5, gone. Magnus had defied him, moved the lab. The wonderful project was over. Raw fury blurred Danté’s concentration.

He felt a hand on his chest. Bobby had reached back in warning, his eyes focused up the trail. Danté followed Bobby’s gaze. About ten meters ahead, something was lying half buried in the roadside snowbank. Something black and white. One of the cows? It moved slightly, with the small motions of an injured animal. The snow all around the animal was churned up and lumpy, beaten down to the ground in some places, in others still a meter deep. It looked like the animal had been on the losing end of a fight.

Bobby took one cautious step forward, looked hard, then backed up. “Get to the chopper, and move slow, ’cause that sure as fuck ain’t no cow.” He reached into his leather flight jacket and drew a pistol.

Then Danté made the connection. Cow skin, sure, but the head was too big, too wide. And the body, all muscular, narrow hips…

… narrow, like a Synapsid.

“It’s an ancestor,” Danté said. “Rhumkorrf… he did it.”

Years of work, billions of dollars, and they had finally pulled it off.

They had won.

Spellbound, Danté walked toward his creation.

Bobby’s hand on his chest again, stopping him. “Boss, no way, back to the Sikorski, right now.”

Danté blinked, looked at Bobby, then at the creature. The huge, powerful creature. Yes, maybe the helicopter was the best place to be.

“Okay,” Danté said. He turned to walk back.

The snowbanks exploded in a cloud of white. Seven huge creatures erupted out of them like demons spawned forth from a frozen hell.

Bobby reacted quickly. He brought his gun up to fire at the closest creature, but it lashed out with long claws that slid through Bobby’s neck like knives through a balloon filled with red water. His severed head flipped through the air and landed at Danté’s feet. Before the decapitated body could fall, two of the creatures opened their huge mouths and lunged. One creature bit into the midsection. The other clamped its jaws high on the chest. Both yanked savagely, tearing Bobby in half just below the sternum. The first creature violently shook its bloody mouthful, making Bobby’s dangling legs flop like those of a cloth puppet. Danté saw internal organs fly through the air. Some landed on the ground, some were caught in mid-arc by the other creatures.

Danté turned and sprinted back down the road.

“NO, FUCK NO, fucknofuckno!”

Just a few hundred yards from the landing strip, Magnus watched the creatures bound after his brother.

COLDING WATCHED THE infrared monitor. The white glow of several huge creatures broke out of the dark-colored woods on either side of the narrow road.

They chased another white blur… a human-shaped one. Danté Paglione.

Rhumkorrf’s small fist, the one that wasn’t frostbitten, lightly punched the desktop over and over. “What have I done? What have I created?”

The first white blur picked Danté off in midstride. For just a moment, the blurs of predator and prey merged, becoming one on the screen. Danté’s blur, minus a leg, cartwheeled through the air, a trail of heat-white arcing from the new stump. Like a receiver and a defensive back going for a wounded-duck pass, two of the creatures leaped and caught him before he hit the ground. They jerked their heads, tearing the man apart. Three more animals smashed into the glowing white pile and joined the feeding frenzy.

Just like that, Danté was gone. The pack of monsters sprinted to the Sikorski, surrounding it, noses to the ground.

Rhumkorrf kept pounding the desk. “What have I done?”

Colding switched back to normal vision. The Bv206 had stopped. It stayed still for just a couple of seconds, then turned left, slowly driving down the road that led to the rest of the island, to the old town.

The road that led to the church.

“Clayton, tell me you reached Gary.”

“He’s not answering, eh? I don’t think he made it back to da mainland. I gotta find him.”

Colding turned to Rhumkorrf. “Bobby’s helicopter, you can fly that thing, right?”

Rhumkorrf nodded.

On the monitors, more ancestors trotted out of the woods to join Danté and Bobby’s killers. They surrounded the Sikorski. Colding counted at least thirty of them. The stocky animals sniffed around, dorsal fins twitching up and down. Then, as a group, all their heads turned to look down the length of the landing strip.

Colding switched to a wider view. At the edge of the long, curving strip stood a black dog, left leg held up as if it were hurt, its body shaking with the intensity of its repeated barking.

Like a perfectly trained army, the creatures took off as one unit, sprinting toward Sven Ballantine’s dog.

Mookie’s body convulsed with one more round of barks, then she turned and ran into the woods at the strip’s northeast end. The creatures lumbered down the same curving strip that had once handled the C-5’s landing and takeoff. They followed Mookie into the dense trees.

Colding knew they might not get another chance at the helicopter. “Clayton, we’ve got to move, you good?”

“Good enough. Let’s get to da church. Maybe Gary is there with Sara, and if not we go from da church to da harbor.”

Colding shook his head. “No, you’re going on the helicopter with Rhumkorrf. I can’t trust him not to take off on us. Sorry, Doc, but I can’t.”

Clayton reached up and grabbed Colding’s arm. “That motherfucker Magnus cut off my fuckin’ finger and he could be going after my son. I’m taking one of those guns, and I’m going to kill that big bastard. You got that, Colding?”

Colding looked into the older man’s eyes, saw fury, hatred, stubborn determination.

“I won’t run,” Rhumkorrf said. “I… I swear it. This is my fault, everyone is dead because of me. I swear, P. J., I won’t leave you.”

Colding looked at Rhumkorrf. The scientist had a pleading expression on his face. He seemed desperate for at least some shred of redemption. Could he be trusted? Colding looked back at Clayton and knew that he didn’t have a choice.

“All right, Clayton. But you fall behind and you’re on your own. This isn’t some story you made up about bow hunting with Charles Bronson or whatever, and I won’t die because you can’t keep up.”

“Fair enough. But I don’t know why you’re babbling on about Charles Bronson, never met da guy.”

Colding grabbed the British SA80 assault rifle. He stuffed five full magazines in his snowsuit pockets.

Clayton held up one of the Uzis. “This will do just fine. Me and Charlie Heston used to shoot these back in da seventies.”

Colding took a Beretta 96 from the rack, loaded a magazine and handed the weapon to Rhumkorrf. “You know how to use that, Doc?”

Rhumkorrf looked at the pistol. “I would imagine I point the small end and pull the trigger.”

“Yeah, and if it’s one of your monsters coming after you, you keep on pulling it till the slide lock’s empty, got it?”

Rhumkorrf’s eyes filled with a sick fear, but he nodded.

Colding looked at the rack, then slipped out of his snowsuit. He grabbed a bulletproof vest and threw it to Clayton, then put the second one on himself. He pulled the snowsuit back on, feeling bulky from the thick vest. He had weapons, some protection, a vehicle—what he didn’t have was time.

“All three of us will ride the snowmobile to the helicopter. Doc, you take the helicopter up. Maybe the noise will draw the ancestors, give Clayton and me a chance to reach the church before Magnus does. Look for me to wave you down after we kill Magnus. You land by the well. Remember, we won’t have much time before the monsters come, so be ready to take us up right away. We lift off and head for the mainland.”

“That plan is fucked,” Clayton said.

“You got a better one?”

Clayton shook his head.

“Then let’s move.”

All three men ran out of the security room.

6:49 A.M.

MAGNUS PARKED THE Bv206 behind the abandoned log lodge, putting the building between himself and the church. He shut off the engine and hopped out, the MP5 slung over his shoulder.

He was alone.

All alone.

And Sara Purinam was to blame.

If she’d flown the plane like she’d been ordered, blown up over the water, then the ancestors would have died… and Danté would still be alive.

He’d never really known loss before. Dad had died, but Dad had been old, with a bad heart. Magnus had years to mentally prepare for that. This… his brother, his only family. Magnus could have never prepared for this pain, for the anguish that tore through his very being. He hurt, and in a way physical pain had never affected him.

Sara. All her fault.

He hadn’t seen any ancestors following him, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming. He’d driven slowly at first, hoping the engine would be quiet enough to avoid drawing their attention. But after a quarter kilometer, he’d opened it up, pushing the Bv to top speed. Had they heard it? He didn’t know. If they had, it would take the creatures at least ten minutes to run from the hangar to here, if they sprinted all the way.

He had enough time to do what needed to be done.

He took a long, 360-degree sweep of the area. No movement. The church was only about 50 meters from the lodge.

Time to get yours, cunt.

“OH NO.” SARA crouched lower in the tower, just her eyes peeking over the stone wall. “Tim, keep still, I think that’s Magnus.”

Tim slowly moved to the edge of the bell tower and looked. “Oh fuck. He’s coming for us. He’s coming this way! Shoot him!”

Sara felt Tim’s fear, empathized with it because she felt the same thing. The killer strode across the town circle, calm as all get out. His hands held a submachine gun. The morning sun blazed off his bald head. Dirt and bloodstains coated his clothes.

Blood from who?

If Magnus didn’t see her up here, she’d get at least one clean shot before he could react. One shot, with a pistol, from almost four stories up, while her hand shook from the subzero cold.

She felt Tim’s fear, true, but she also felt a burning rage. That bald bastard had murdered Alonzo, Miller, Cappy. And for that, he had to pay.

Magnus kept coming, moving with his smooth athletic grace. She had to control her fear, be a soldier, take that killer down. She could do it. Had to do it. Sara aimed, squeezing her hand against the Beretta’s knurled handle, feeling the cold metal press into her flesh. She’d take Magnus halfway between the wooden lodge and the well, where he had no cover at all.

Just a few more steps…

MAGNUS STOPPED. SOMETHING was wrong. He could sense it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and it wasn’t from the bitter cold. Grief had blurred his decisions. Grief and a need to lash out, to avenge… these things had put him in a terrible tactical position. Open space, no real cover. His instincts told him to turn around, find another approach.

But the ancestors were coming. There wasn’t enough time.

And that bitch had to pay.

SARA SQUEEZED THE trigger slowly, like her daddy had taught her when they hunted deer in Cheboygan. She squeezed… and twitched a little when the gun’s roar rang out.

HE HEARD THE pistol’s report only a millisecond before the bullet ripped into his meaty left thigh. Pain splashed through his leg, but it wasn’t the first time Magnus had been shot. Automatic impulses drove him to his right.

Another shot rang out, a miss.

He landed on his right shoulder, thumbing the MP5 to full auto as he rolled.

A third shot. That cunt was staying calm, aiming, trying to shoot straight, but still she missed. He heard the bullet whiz by his right ear as he came upon his feet.

Magnus fired on full automatic, ripping off ten rounds in less than a second.

SARA BARELY HAD time to duck—bullets sparked off the granite walls, filling the air with flying stone splinters that dropped lightly onto her trembling body. She’d hit him, she knew she’d hit him, so why was he still firing back?

“Tim, stay down!” Meaningless advice—if Tim got any lower, he would have been part of the stone floor.

Sara fought to control her breathing. If she could get just one more shot…

ONLY FIVE SECONDS since the bullet had ripped into his leg, and the real pain was already starting to set in.

Magnus limped backward, MP5 still pointed at the church tower. He squeezed off another five-round burst. The bullets kicked up little firework flashes when they slammed into the granite tower. He’d been such a dumb-ass. The church was like a fortress against small-arms fire. He needed the plastique. Shit, maybe even the Stinger. That would fix her fucking wagon, and fix it good.

Ignoring his screaming leg, he pulled out the empty magazine and slammed home a fresh one, all while moving backward and never taking his eyes off the black tower.

SARA WANTED ANOTHER shot, wanted to finish him, but she couldn’t make her body get up, couldn’t bring herself to look over the edge, to expose herself to flying bullets. She told her body to move. It refused.

From somewhere behind the lodge, Magnus’s voice echoed out loud and deep.

“You didn’t kill me, Sara. You can’t kill me.”

His voice seemed to fill the woods, as if the trees were possessed with a supernatural spirit come to tear her to pieces. She suddenly wanted the monsters to come back, come back and bring Magnus down. But they were nowhere to be seen.

“It’s going to be bad for you now,” his voice rang out. “Real bad.”

She shouted back without lifting her head above the rim. “Why don’t you come give it to me? Just come and get it on right now?”

“Reallllll bad,” Magnus yelled. “I’ll cut your wrists so you can watch yourself bleed to death. I’ll burn you until your bones blacken. I promise, you rotten whore, I promise that you’ll beg… and when you do, I won’t listen.”

Sara squeezed her eyes tight against the tension building in her brain, in her chest. How much more could she take? Now Magnus knew exactly where she was. She couldn’t run, not with those creatures out there. Magnus wouldn’t be dumb enough to step out in the open again—she had to find another defensible spot.

Magnus would kill her, bleed her out slow, burn her…

No, she couldn’t let the terror take her now. She’d fight that fucker, fight him till she had nothing left.

“Tim, get your ass up. We have to get downstairs.”

Tim crawled for the trapdoor. He descended gingerly, still troubled by his ruined knee. Sara followed him down, wondering how long it would be before Magnus came after them again.

6:52 A.M.

THE ARCTIC CAT rode heavy under the weight of three men, but it reached the Sikorski. Had the monsters heard the snowmobile’s whine? Were they coming?

Colding brought the sled to a stop. Rhumkorrf scrambled off and climbed into the helicopter, mittened hands shutting the door behind him. Clayton stayed on the back of the snowmobile, his good arm wrapped loosely around Colding’s waist.

Colding revved the engine, making it as loud as possible. He had to draw them in so he’d know where they were, know they were behind him. If he drove right to the old town, the creatures could attack at any point along the way. They might even be in the old town already. And if they were, how could he save Sara?

He scanned the tree line but saw no movement.

Colding revved the sled’s engine again. The motor’s whine filled the clearing, bounced off the hangar, so loud it hurt his ears. The smell of exhaust filled his nose.

Colding felt Clayton’s grip around his waist change from a manly barely-holding-on-to-you to a clutching, desperate grip of fear.

“Sweet Jesus,” Clayton said.

A quarter mile away, the creatures broke from the trees and poured onto the landing strip. At least thirty of them, huge and strong and savage, a phalanx of muscle and teeth.

“Clayton, hold tight.” Colding gunned the throttle.

The Arctic Cat still felt a bit sluggish, but free of Rhumkorrf’s extra 150 pounds the machine raced back up the one-lane road toward the mansion. Colding turned right at the main road, following the same path Magnus had taken. He’d outdistance the creatures and have maybe ten minutes to gather up Sara and Tim, if they were still alive. Then, if they could either kill or avoid Magnus, they could wait for Rhumkorrf to come with the helicopter and they’d be off this godforsaken island.

Overall? Shit odds. But it was all they had.

Running wide open, the Arctic Cat pulled away. The monsters gave chase.

6:55 A.M.

MAGNUS SAT IN the Bv’s front seat, a first-aid kit open next to him. His right hand held his Ka-Bar knife, his left pressed a bloody ball of gauze against his thigh. Had to stop the bleeding. Blood had already soaked his sock, his shoe, and his pants leg from the knee down. He wondered if the ancestors could track a blood trail.

He’d underestimated her. He’d deserved to get shot for being so fucking stupid, walking out in the open like an idiot. First Clayton, now Sara—Magnus had lost his edge.

He’d used the knife to cut open his pant leg. Funny to have his own blood on his knife, but it wasn’t the first time. He pulled the gauze back for a look. The torn flesh instantly filled with thick red.

Fuck. She’d hit an artery. He jammed the gauze back in, pushing until the pain radiated through his entire leg. He’d been to this dance before. Pressure alone probably wouldn’t do the trick, and he didn’t have time to wait.

The wound sat on the outside of his thigh, close to the knee, so he knew it wasn’t the femoral artery. Maybe it was the… what was it called… the lateral circumflex? Didn’t matter, he had to stop the bleeding and go kill that murdering cunt.

He pinched the Ka-Bar between his knees, point up. With his right hand he reached into the back of the Bv, digging around in his canvas bag until he found what he needed—the propane torch.

How ironic.

How many people had he burned with a torch just like this one? How many lives had he taken with it? And now that same device might save his own.

He used his left elbow to keep the gauze jammed into his wound, then opened the valve on the propane tank. He fished the lighter out of his pocket and lit the torch. Magnus pointed the blue flame at the tip of the knife and waited for the blade to heat up.

He’d have to cauterize the wound. Pull off the gauze, stick the knife in and sear the artery. Then a pressure bandage, and he’d be good to go. No telling if the wound would open up on him again, but it would buy him time, let him move.

The blade started to glow red.

“You’re going to pay for this, Sara. I’ll find a way to make you pay over and over again.”

He wondered if this knife would make it back to Manitoba, if it would join the others on his office wall.

He shut off the valve and dropped the propane canister. He held the knife handle with his right hand. The glowing tip hovered just a half inch from the gauze.

“And where the offense is, let the great axe fall.”

His left hand pulled the bloody gauze clear, his right stuck the hot knife point into the bullet hole. Blood bubbled and muscle sizzled, filling the Bv’s cab with the stench of burning flesh.

6:58 A.M.

CLAUS RHUMKORRF SAT slouched down in the pilot seat. Only his eyes moved as he watched the last of the ancestors filter past the Sikorski and up the road leading to the mansion. They were the last stragglers from the pack that chased after Colding and Clayton.

He was on the helicopter’s right side, looking out the plexiglass pilot’s door window. And if he could see out, they could see in, so he had to stay very still… hard to do when his body shook from both the cold and piercing terror.

How could he have been so damn blind? From the first moment the embryos started to take shape, he’d known—somewhere deep inside—that they meant death, not life. It all lined up now, all made a twisted kind of sense. He had shorted Jian’s meds to bring out her staggering genius. But doing that also brought back her manic-depressive symptoms, her suicidal urges, and she’d manifested those urges by creating these things.

The last of the ancestors turned down the main road toward the old town. He would wait just a few more minutes, make sure he had time to lift off in case the Sikorski’s engine noise drew them back.

Only now, with death all around him, did Claus realize what kind of a man he was. The ancestor project wasn’t about saving lives. Not really. It was about creating a living creature. From scratch. Not some bacterium or a virus, not a simple thing with only a few thousand genes, but a large, advanced mammal.

Creating life was the sole domain of God.

God, and now, Claus Rhumkorrf.

He’d conveniently deluded himself until it was too late. And when there could be no more delusion, when he’d watched his creation almost kill Cappy, he’d had yet another chance to stop everything. When the plane crashed, he should have let the cows die, but his overwhelming hubris controlled his actions.

Claus’s breath caught in his throat. Back up the trail, a lone ancestor trotted back out from the main road. It stood at the intersection a hundred yards away from the helicopter.

It seemed to be looking right at him.

“No,” Claus whispered. “Please, no.”

The ancestor’s sail suddenly stood straight up, the translucent yellow membrane catching the morning sun. Its toothy maw opened wide. Claus couldn’t hear it inside the cockpit, but he knew the creature was roaring a hideous roar, calling its brethren back.

He sat up straight in the seat, reached over his head and pushed the start button for engine one. His frostbitten finger howled in protest, but he easily ignored the pain. The blades started spinning up.

His body shook uncontrollably. The lone creature sprinted toward the helicopter with the crazy gait of a top-heavy pit bull. A hundred meters away and closing fast.

He turned back to the controls. The N1 gauge read 54 percent and climbing. He hit the button to start the second engine.

He couldn’t stop himself from looking up again. The ancestor had closed half the distance, enough that he could see its beady black eyes and massive muscles rippling under black-spotted white fur. But that wasn’t what froze Claus’s heart in his chest. Behind the monster, the woods seemed to erupt, spewing forth a horrific wave of black and white. They barreled down the narrow road like some barbaric army bearing down on a hated enemy.

He pushed the throttle on engine one to the fly position, felt the rotor blades spin up faster. Just a few more seconds and he’d lift off.

Something hit him from the right, driving him into the controls that separated the two front seats. Too much weight to bear, crushing him, then the sensation of something sliding away. He opened his eyes to see a sheet of plexiglass, flopping free and smeared with thick wetness—the window of the pilot door. He started to sit up and push it off when the weight hit him again, driving the back of his head against hard plastic knobs. Plexiglass smashed against his face, flattened his nose until he absently registered his eyelashes brushing against it with each rapid blink. Through the plexiglass, inches from his face, the ancestor’s gaping mouth opened wide. It shot forward and snapped shut, but the inwardly curved teeth scraped against the plexiglass. It opened again, snapped again, and again the deadly points couldn’t catch. The helicopter lurched with each lunging bite. Claus heard and felt claws scratching at the plexiglass, scrambling like a sliding dog trying to find purchase on a linoleum floor. The abomination slid back out a second time.

The plexiglass slid out with it.

Claus pushed himself up, his glasses gone, his vision a blur. The ancestor had fallen on its ass. Feet kicked against the snow-covered pavement as the big creature awkwardly started to rise.

Oh god oh god oh god…

Claus reached into his jacket and pulled out the gun Colding had given him. He held it with both hands, his elbows pressed tight to his ribs.

The ancestor coiled to leap into the Sikorski.

Claus heard the first two gunshots before he realized he was firing. His finger danced on the trigger again and again, faster than he knew a gun could fire. The scientific, observant part of his brain noted with fascination that all eleven shots hit the creature in the face.

The slide locked on empty.

The monster fell, blood gushing nearly neon red against the snow.

And beyond the dying animal he had created, Claus saw the pounding black-and-white blur of the ancestor horde, now only thirty meters away.

He dropped the gun. Eyes flicked about the cabin even as his hands reached up, moved the engine two throttle to the fly position. He saw his glasses on the floor and snatched them up. One arm was broken off. The other arm he jammed into his head bandage. The lenses were a little cockeyed, but he could see clearly again.

The horde closed to ten meters.

The spinning rotor blades finally lifted the Sikorski. Claus felt his breath rush out as the leading ancestors reached up for the hull… reached up, and missed.

He urged the damaged helicopter forward and headed for the ghost town.

The horde of hungry ancestors followed.

7:01 A.M.

COLDING AND CLAYTON stopped in the trees at the edge of town, a good twenty yards from the nearest building. The tattered, one-eyed moose head of Sven’s hunter shop stared at them. Colding needed just a minute to think, but didn’t know if he had that much time.

He shut off the Arctic Cat’s engine and listened. The wind had died away. The woods seemed deathly silent save for the distant sound of the Sikorski’s rotors slicing through the air. At least Doc had made it off the helicopter pad.

“Anything behind us?” he asked Clayton.

“Haven’t seen them since we got on da road. If they’re coming, then we’re way ahead of them.” Clayton cocked his head to the side and looked up. “You hear that?”

The helicopter sounds grew louder. They were out of time.

“I hear it,” Colding said. “If Sara is in the church, where will she be?”

“If I was her, I’d be in that bell tower. Stairs at da back right side of da altar go up to da choir loft, then a ladder up to da tower.”

Colding looked up at the tower, hoping to see her face. He saw no movement. Someone could be up there looking right down at him, and if they stayed still he wouldn’t see them at all.

He chewed on his lower lip. They didn’t even know if Sara and Tim were here. Maybe Gary had made it, taken them off the island. Maybe Magnus had already killed them. No way of knowing. Colding could, however, make sure they weren’t still waiting. And all he had to do was risk his life to find out.

“Clayton, we’re going as soon as Doc flies over. That might draw Magnus out, give us a chance to kill him.”

Clayton leaned out and looked across the open town circle. “We’ll be exposed for looks like ten or fifteen seconds. Can Magnus get us that quick?”

Colding nodded. “If he’s ready, or if he heard us coming, yeah, he could take us out. Just depends on where he is.”

“And if we get to da church and he’s already inside?”

Colding paused. Anger started to replace his fear. “Then we kill him.”

Clayton nodded fiercely. “That’s da first time I’ve ever heard you say something that made sense. You drive, I’ll shoot.”

Colding started the Arctic Cat and waited for the Sikorski to fly over.

7:03 A.M.

INSIDE THE CHURCH, Tim looked up at the ceiling.

“Sara, do you hear that?”

Sara listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s getting louder. I think it sounds like…”

She heard it, faintly, but she heard it. “Like a helicopter.”

They rushed up the ladder to the turret’s trapdoor.

7:04 A.M.

MAGNUS HEARD THE flutter of rotor blades. Helicopter approaching. He’d seen both Danté and Bobby go down—that left only one person who could fly the Sikorski.

Rhumkorrf. The man who had murdered his brother.

“I’ve got something special for you, Doc. Yes I do.”

He reached into the backseat.

7:05 A.M.

THE SIKORSKI’S ENGINE hum dopplered into a roar as it flew directly over Colding’s position. The helicopter slowed and started to circle back toward the well.

“Clayton, we’re going! If you see Magnus, just start shooting!”

“Ya think? Just drive, asshole.”

Colding gunned the engine.

The Arctic Cat shot out into the open.

SARA HAD NEVER seen a sight so beautiful—a Sikorski S-76C. Bobby Valentine’s ride, coming in low. And she saw something else, down on the ground, something far better—even bundled up in the snowsuit, she knew it was Colding on that snowmobile. Clayton was on the seat behind him, holding an Uzi with one hand. Hope and love exploded in Sara’s chest. They could make it. But Magnus was still out there somewhere. He could kill Colding at any second. Sara looked around the town circle, trying to spot the big man.

There, by the old log lodge… Magnus.

When she saw what he held, that feeling of hope crumbled and died.

MAGNUS TRACKED THROUGH the Stinger’s viewfinder. If Rhumkorrf hadn’t made these abominations in the first place, Danté would still be alive.

Claus Rhumkorrf was a murderer.

“Breathe your last, motherfucker.”

Magnus pushed the firing button.

7:06 A.M.

SARA, TIM, COLDING, Clayton and Magnus watched the Stinger missile’s flashing white trail. Oddly, the intended target was busy trying to readjust his bobbling, broken glasses: Claus Rhumkorrf never saw it coming.

The five-foot missile homed in on the Sikorski’s hot exhaust. Rhumkorrf had swung the chopper around to face the town center, just in time for the missile to slice into the cockpit window. The warhead exploded on contact, blossoming into a brilliant orange fireball.

Sikorski pieces and streams of burning fuel rained down on the old town.

THE HELICOPTER EXPLODED above the snowmobile’s forward path. Colding yanked the steering handles hard right, away from the church. The sudden movement caught Clayton unaware and threw him from the seat. He slammed into the snowy ground, rolled once, then skidded to a halt.

He didn’t move.

Colding managed to stay seated as he fought for control. Burning wreckage rained down around him. He squeezed the brakes and pulled hard left as the tail shaft—rotor still spinning—crashed into the ground in front of him. He’d turned too sharply this time; the snowmobile pitched on its right side. Colding dove free before the machine rolled three full, horizontal, rattling times. It landed on its skids, the fiberglass body shattered beyond repair.

Colding hit hard. He smelled burning feathers before he felt the heat, before he realized his jacket sleeve was on fire. He rolled on the ground, pushing his burning arm into the snow. The flames hissed out before he suffered any serious damage.

He stood, smoke and steam rising from his ruined sleeve, a murderous gaze fixed on his face. He unslung the SA80 rifle and looked for his target.

A voice from behind.

“Drop it, Bubbah.”

Fury. Fear. Colding shook. He fought the urge to whirl around and open up with the SA80. He wouldn’t even make a quarter turn before Magnus gunned him down. There was nothing he could do.

Colding dropped the rifle.

“And the Beretta,” Magnus said. “Slow.”

Colding slowly pulled the Beretta from inside his snowsuit and tossed it away. It fell into the snow and vanished.

“Now put your hands in the air and turn around. You and I have a date with a hot little lady.”

7:08 A.M.

A large gush of burning fuel had set the log lodge ablaze. Sara watched long flames rise up into the morning sky, whipped to and fro by the returning wind. She figured the old wooden structure would be completely engulfed by flames within fifteen minutes. Several of the town’s buildings smoldered or burned. The Sikorski/Stinger combo would finish the work begun by a mine accident some fifty years ago.

Far worse, the church itself was about to go up in flames. A chunk of engine had spun wildly into the air, arcing a good thirty yards before slamming into the church roof. Small flames glowed, seeking purchase through the slate shingles to the old wood beneath.

From her spot in the bell tower, Sara couldn’t get near the flames. Even if she could, she had nothing with which to put them out. The tower’s stone turret wouldn’t save them—when the fire caught full force, she and Tim would be cooked from below if the smoke didn’t kill them first.

“Tim, we have to move.”

“Fuck that,” Tim said. “The helicopter, the explosion—the noise will bring the monsters.”

“We run or we roast. Let’s go.”

Tim paused, but only for a second, then crutch-walked for the trapdoor. Sara opened it for him. Tim started his awkward climb down, then they heard death speak out loud.

“Saaaaaaraaaaa.” Magnus’s voice. From inside the church. “Sara, I’ve got someone here to see you.”

Blazing rage pulled Sara’s lip back into a snarl, even while an urge to run and hide made her stomach clench. Fear or no fear, there was only one way out, and that was over Magnus Paglione’s dead body.

“Stay up here,” she said to Tim. “I’ve got to take care of this.”

She descended the ladder.

7:09 A.M.

A gun at his back, Colding stood in the church’s center aisle amid the broken and moldy pews. The place already smelled of smoke. Small fires burned the rafters on his left, filling the church with a flickering light. Up above, a few sunbeams filtered through the stained glass of the Twelve Apostles. On his right, up in the choir loft, he caught a glimpse of someone deep in the shadows.

Sara.

Behind him, Magnus saw her, too.

“’Tis the east,” Magnus called up to the loft. “And fair Sara is the sun. I brought your boyfriend for a little visit.”

Magnus had a tight hold on the hood of Colding’s parka, keeping him at arm’s length. Magnus was too smart to jam a gun into Colding’s back, where a sudden move might point the barrel at empty space. Colding knew the MP5 would be low, on Magnus’s hip. If Colding spun and made a move, the MP5 would blow his ribs and stomach to pieces.

More movement from the loft, just a hint, and from a different place. “You think I give a fuck about that piece of shit?” The voice came from the shadows. “That bastard sent me to die.”

“Oh, come on,” Magnus said. “You know that was me.”

“Bullshit. I’ll shoot both of you right now. And this time, Magnus, I’ll finish the job.”

Colding looked toward the sound of her voice, but he couldn’t see her in the loft’s dark depths. Damn, but she was smart. Colding’s right hand made a fist, his index finger pointing out, his thumb up—the shape of a gun. He slowly moved his left hand and pointed at his chest. He had no idea if she’d understand, or even do it.

And if her aim was off at all…

CLAYTON RAISED HIS head.

“Oh… I need a vacation.”

The old town burned all around him, he had a broken left leg, the creatures were coming and some Canadian shit-eater had cut off his pinkie. He stayed low and still, trying to take it all in before he did anything.

Movement on his left, about twenty yards away, at the edge of town where the trail led into the woods. A flash of fleshy yellow.

Burning wreckage surrounded him, blurring the air with shimmering waves of heat. If he stayed still, it might hide him from the creatures for a few minutes. But if he didn’t move, sooner or later they’d get him.

Clayton slowly turned his head to the right. The lodge was on fire, the dry old wood glowing red from flames that shot thirty feet into the air. No shelter there.

But behind the lodge, just past the hazy flames, he glimpsed a small bit of a familiar black-and-white pattern. Clayton grimaced, readied himself for the pain, then started crawling.

7:10 A.M.

The fire in the rafters spread slowly but steadily, filling the church with a spastic, flickering light. Shadows jumped, making the pews and the big crucifix vibrate with evil life.

Do it, Colding thought, as if she might somehow read his mind. Do it, shoot me.

Magnus stayed behind Colding, but kept calling up to the loft. “Sara, why don’t you send Feely down? I’ll trade you for Colding. I don’t need you. I just need Feely. You don’t know enough to be a danger to me.”

“Then why did you try to kill me?” Her voice came from yet another spot.

“I didn’t try to kill you. I tried to kill Feely and Rhumkorrf. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So was my crew.”

“That’s why we gave you hazard pay,” Magnus said. “Use your head. Jian is dead. Rhumkorrf is dead. Now all I need is Tim and this is over. You and Colding can go on your way. If you make it off the island, more power to you. At least then you’d have a chance. What do you say to that?”

Silence.

“What good is Colding to me if he’s dead?”

“He’s not dead,” Magnus said. “He’s standing right—”

A gunshot roared out. Colding felt a sledgehammer slam into his chest. He instinctively jerked backward. His feet caught on a pew and he toppled into Magnus. Colding landed on his right side, then flopped facedown and didn’t move.

MAGNUS SLID HIS body half under a pew, hoping the .40-caliber bullets couldn’t punch through it. Another shot rang out—the bullet smacked into the frozen, rotted wood.

“What do you think of that, Magnus?” the loft shadows called out. “Now you ain’t got jack shit to trade, you sick fuck!”

He popped up from behind the pew and opened fire on the choir loft. The wood railing came apart in a shower of splinters. Sara popped up in yet another new spot—Magnus ducked back down just as she fired again.

SARA STAYED ON her belly, shooting between the spokes of the choir loft’s rail. The madly flickering firelight made it hard to target Magnus, who kept crawling around under the pews and popping up to spray the loft with bullets. Sara could barely breathe from the smoke. She had two shots left, maybe three—dammit, she’d lost count.

I shot him. He WANTED me to shoot him.

Colding had to be wearing a bulletproof vest; that was the only reason he would want her to do it. Shooting him had robbed Magnus of the human shield, and in a twisted way taken Colding out of danger. She silently prayed that she hadn’t somehow misunderstood his signals—that she hadn’t just killed the man she loved.

Sara pushed herself back from the loft’s edge so that she was out of Magnus’s line of sight. She rolled several times to her left. Had to keep moving. A burning feeling shot up her leg. She kicked, knocking away a smoldering piece of rafter. Flames crawled across the ceiling above her. Sara rolled a few more times, carrying her away from the hot spot. She lay flat and eased herself back to the loft’s edge.

7:11 A.M.

Colding coughed. A thin stream of spit and blood landed on his chin. It felt like someone had driven a baseball bat through his chest. He slid a hand under his bulletproof vest. It hurt, hurt like a bitch, but his fingers came away without blood. The blood in his mouth, it seemed, came from the lip he’d bitten through.

He looked under the pews, the only vantage he had from his prone position. He couldn’t see Magnus. Pieces of burning rafters dropped every few seconds, little meteors plunging down. Some of the pews danced with fire, some were just smoldering. Flames wiggled across the warped wooden floor. Acrid smoke expanded through the church, choking out oxygen and stinging his eyes.

Colding rose to his knees and peeked over the pew. With this much cover, Magnus could be hiding only a few feet away. Colding knew he had to make a run for the altar and the loft stairs, had to reach Sara, but Magnus could cut him down with ease.

Behind him, the tall, heavy, double doors swung open and smashed against the inside wall, flooding the burning church with morning light. A dozen yellow sail fins rose above the pews, spreading out, moving forward.

The pain in his chest forgotten, Colding stood, rounded the pew’s corner, and sprinted for the altar.

WHEN HE HEARD the big doors slam open, Magnus peeked out from behind the altar’s thick crucifix. Through the shimmering heat haze and the growing smoke cloud, he saw a dozen nightmares trot into the church—muscles thick like lions on steroids, massive heads with jaws wider and longer than a crocodile’s, strange yellow dorsal sail fins flipping up and down in twitching anticipation.

Movement on his left. Human movement. Colding, up and sprinting for the right edge of the altar. Drop him, remove a variable, move on to the rest. Magnus brought up the MP5.

I’VE GOT YOU now, fucker.

Sara had seen Magnus hide behind the thick crucifix, then watched and waited for her shot. In a brief moment of total awareness, the world slowed and she saw everything: the monsters spreading out through the church, Colding sprinting for the stairs, Magnus coming around the cross and raising the MP5.

She squeezed the trigger. Just before it clicked home, a burning chunk of rafter fell onto her leg, pulling her aim slightly to the right…

…THE .40-CALIBER BULLET tore a huge chunk out of the old crucifix, spraying splinters into Magnus’s cheek. He ducked back, his face consumed with pain. He popped around the other side and fired a wild burst, hoping to hit Colding, but the man disappeared up the stairwell. Magnus looked to his right, back out into the church. Maybe twenty of them. Some sprinted up the main aisle, some crawled over the moldy, smoldering pews—all wanted to get him. Magnus moved out from behind the cross and shuffle-stepped toward the stairs, opening up with the MP5. The one closest to him fell hard, blood spurting from a half-dozen fresh bullet holes, but there were so many of them…

SARA FINISHED SMACKING the flames on her pant leg, then looked over the edge of the choir loft for another shot. Her eyes stung from the smoke. She fought back a cough. Magnus was shuffling to his left, toward the stairs, his attention occupied by the wave of sail-finned land sharks sprinting for him. No cover for him this time. She raised the gun, a part of her brain telling her it felt funny even as she did.

The slide had locked back.

Empty.

She holstered the weapon and ran for the bell-tower ladder.

BREATH RAGGED FROM stress and exertion, Colding cleared the final stair step. The thicker smoke up on the choir loft made him cough violently. Through the black clouds, he saw Sara at the other end of the loft, her feet on the bottom rung of a metal ladder.

“Peej, come on! Up here!”

Colding ran to the ladder and started up, hoping against all hope that Sara knew what she was doing.

MAGNUS FLEW UP the stairs, firing blindly behind himself until the MP5 clicked on empty. As he ascended he tried to pop in a fresh magazine, but the narrow staircase made it hard to bring the gun around while taking the steps two at a time. The wooden stairs shook from something even larger than he was.

He had almost cleared the last step when that something hit him from behind. His face cracked into the choir loft’s stone floor. The MP5 skidded free. The fresh magazine flew out of his hand, rebounded off the wall and skittered over the loft’s edge to fall among the burning pews below.

A slashing pain seared up the back of his left leg.

Magnus rolled to his back, cocked his right leg and kicked with all his power. He felt his foot smash against solid muscle, against skin and bone. The creature roared with anger and pain. In a single motion, Magnus sat up and slid his feet beneath him, leaving him with knees bent, fingers on the floor, weight on his toes. The big animal recovered from the kick, reared back and charged up the final five stairs. Magnus shot forward, ducking under the jaws and driving his shoulder into the monster’s throat. The impact shuddered through him, far worse than any hit he’d suffered in the CFL, but enough to keep the creature’s body trapped in the narrow stairwell. Sliding off the impact, Magnus moved to the right and locked his thick arms around the ancestor’s barrel-like neck, left arm underneath, right arm over the top. Its big body thrashed against the stairwell walls, blocking the way for the others.

Magnus let loose his own savage, primitive roar and squeezed with all his power. The muscular monster thrashed its head back and forth, trying to bring its jaws around for the killing bite, but the stairwell kept it from turning. Magnus timed a thrash left, a pause, a thrash right, a pause, then slid his left hand farther up and jabbed his thumb into the monster’s right eye. He pushed the thumb in deep and hooked it, using the inside of the orbital bone like a handle. The giant head pulled away, jaws snapping clack-clack-clack, trying to back up, but its pack mates blocked the stairs behind it.

In the split second it took the creature to realize it couldn’t retreat, Magnus’s right hand drew his knife. Left thumb still deep in the animal’s eye socket, Magnus drove the Ka-Bar blade into its throat.

“You killed Danté!” Spit flying from his mouth, his face a warped mask of psychotic fury, Magnus twisted the knife, pulled it out, struck again.

Blood gushed across the floor, across his legs, so thick he heard it splatter against stone even over the crackling flames and the roars of this bastard’s brethren.

“You all killed Danté! You hear that, Colding? I’ll kill this thing and then I’m coming for you! You murdered my brother!”

The ancestor weakened, and then it shot backward down the stairs. But the things couldn’t move that way. Magnus had a moment of confusion before he realized the others had yanked it away. Some of them started biting it, tearing off great chunks as blood and bits of flesh splashed the stairs, the walls and the ceiling. Only some of them, though, because another scrambled past both the eaters and the eaten.

Magnus stepped forward to meet it. They could only come up the stairwell one at a time, and he would kill them all.

Hand to hand.

One by one.

7:14 A.M.

Sara climbed through the trapdoor. Just two rungs behind, Colding had stopped, unable to look away from the battle. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Magnus turned his body just before a huge head shot out of the stairwell, white teeth clacking on empty air. Magnus kicked out, the sole of his left shoe pinning the monster’s head against the corner of the stairwell. Before it could adjust its body to push back, Magnus drove a knife in an over-handed arc, burying it in the creature’s left eye. Magnus screamed, pulled the blade out, then rotated in an underhand windup that drove the bloody blade deep into the monster’s neck. The creature kept fighting even as its blood shot across the already slick floor.

“No,” Colding said quietly. “You don’t get to live.”

He put his feet on the outside of the metal ladder’s poles, then slid down to the bottom. He grabbed a piece of fallen rafter and held it like a torch, the burning end hissing and crackling with flames.

“This is for Jian and Doc.”

Colding reared back and hurled the burning wood. It spun three times in the air before the flaming end hit the left side of Magnus’s face. The big man screamed, then fell to his back. Colding hurried up the ladder.

A monster walked out of the stairwell and closed in on Magnus.

MAGNUS’S HANDS PRESSED at the seared cheek. Even as his skin bubbled and he howled in pain, he knew he had to move. He sat up fast, trying to bring his feet underneath him, but before he could a wide mouth and long teeth snapped for his face. Magnus brought up his hands and hooked his thumbs inside the skin at the sides of the creature’s jaws. Five hundred and ten pounds drove him to his back. He locked his arms straight out, fingers digging in from the outside to grab big handfuls of coarse fur. The jaws cracked shut less than an inch from his nose. Sharp claws dug into his massive chest.

He was trying to bring his heels up to hook-kick at the eyes when another creature came from his right, teeth snapping down on his arm, his shoulder, punching into his chest, through his lungs.

His eyes went wide and his body stiffened. The creature shook him, snapping bones, rending flesh. Hot blood in his face, again, but this time his blood.

Movement from his left. A third creature, mouth open wide, blocking the fire’s flickering light. Three-foot-wide jaws smashed shut with crushing power. Teeth punched down through his right temple and up through his left cheekbone, sliding together somewhere in his brain.

COLDING KICKED SHUT the turret’s trapdoor. Sara ran into his arms and—finally—he held her close again. Sobs racked her body. He squeezed her tight. Her body molded to his, and he felt his soul breathe a deep, clutching sigh of relief. He kissed her smoke-streaked forehead.

“Take it easy,” he said just loud enough to be heard over the roaring fire. Still holding her, he took a quick look around. Fire danced across most of the roof, ten-foot flames pouring up and around the remaining slate shingles. He heard a heavy, wooden crack from inside the church, followed by the sound of something smashing to the ground amid roaring flames. Then came the horrible, deep roar-howls of the ancestors trapped beneath.

The flames had spread almost to the tower. The turret’s stone walls wouldn’t burn, but they wouldn’t have to—heat billowed up like a concussive force, the round tower funneling it like a chimney.

He rubbed Sara’s back. “Come on, Sara. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Oh, let her cry,” came a voice from behind him. He turned to see Tim Feely, defeated, resting heavily on his crutch. “Just let her cry, Colding. There’s no way out of here. Even if we could get out of this turret, look what’s waiting for us.”

Colding shuffled Sara a few steps to the left so he could look over the edge. Dozens of ancestors circled the turret’s base. Some were trying unsuccessfully to climb the black rock. Others were actually biting it, chipping their long teeth as they tried to tear the foundation out from under them. Every few seconds another ancestor ran out of the open double doors. Some were on fire, trailing smoke, their black-and-white hides adding the stench of burnt fur to the ghost town’s carnage.

Tim was right. It was over.

“Shhh,” Colding said softly as he petted Sara’s head. “Everything will be okay.”

Tim started to laugh—the sick, demented laugh of someone who’s given up all hope. But over his laughter, over the sound of the raging fire, over the sound of the roaring, hungry ancestors, Colding heard something else.

The gurgling growl of Ted Nugent.

7:17 A.M.

Clayton Detweiler grimaced as he worked the clutch with his broken leg. Pain dominated his thoughts, but he pushed it away, focusing on the task at hand. He’d been hurt worse.

“Got somethin’ for ya, ya little shits.” His left hand held the wheel, his right held the Uzi. “Time to whack ’em and stack ’em.”

The Nuge shot around the burning lodge, pivoted on thick tank treads, then rolled toward the church. The ancestors surrounding the turret turned as one and sprinted toward him.

BABY MCBUTTER SAW the strange, noisy animal come roaring toward her brethren. It had been sitting still earlier, still and quiet, and it hadn’t smelled like food—but now it did. And it smelled like something else.

It smelled like the stick.

Baby McButter lifted her sail three times, signaling alarm, but some of her brethren didn’t notice. Those were the ones too hungry to worry about any danger.

CLAYTON STOPPED THE Nuge near the well. He slid over to the passenger side and stood on his good right leg, pushing his upper body out of the top hatch.

“You hungry?” he shouted to the oncoming horde. “Uncle Clayton’s got a snack for ya!”

He opened up with the Uzi, firing short, controlled bursts just like Chuck Heston had taught him. The first burst hit the lead ancestor dead-center, dropping it in midstride. Clayton bagged two more, clearly killing one and blowing the left leg off the second. It fell to the snow-covered ground, writhing in pain.

He slid back inside and pulled the hatch shut, then gunned the engine and drove straight for the wounded ancestor. Clayton Detweiler smiled when the tank tread crushed through the creature’s chest, leaving two twitching halves behind.

He drove the Nuge to the bell tower and stopped. Popping in a fresh magazine, he again stuck his head out the roof hatch. A big bastard scrambled around the curved tower, claws digging in for traction. Son of a bitch had to be over 550 pounds if it was an ounce.

“Aw, fuck ya,” Clayton said, and held the trigger tight. Twenty-five rounds ripped out in less than three seconds. The creature’s skull disintegrated in a cloud of brain and bone and blood. It fell forward, momentum sliding the dead body over the snow until the mangled head mashed up against Ted Nugent’s front right tread.

Clayton reloaded with a full magazine and looked for a new target. The monsters now kept their distance, keeping to the shadows or behind smaller fires where the intense heat distorted their visages into shimmering, demonic ghosts. Most of the creatures stayed a good twenty yards back, feasting on the corpses of their fallen pack mates with a savage, shaking desperation.

Clayton looked up the church tower. Peering down over the edge were the joyous, shouting faces of Colding, Sara and Tim.

7:19 A.M.

Colding watched Clayton crawl out of the roof hatch. The old man’s face wrinkled with agony, but he moved as quickly as he could and climbed into the rear section. Colding would have never thought Clayton Detweiler beautiful, but seeing him riding up in that lift bucket, an Uzi dangling from a strap around his neck, he could have been Miss America, Miss Universe and the Playmate of the Year all rolled into one fabulous farting package.

The bucket reached the turret. Colding reached out and grabbed Clayton’s shoulder. “You’re one mean old bastard! You saved us!”

Clayton pushed his hand away, then gave Colding the Uzi. “I’m fuckin’ done. Where’s Gary?”

“I saw him last night,” Sara said. “He took off on his snowmobile. The monsters were chasing him, but… I don’t know if he got away.”

Clayton sagged. Colding stepped into the bucket and slid under the man’s arm, keeping him up. Sara got in next, then helped the crutch-wielding Tim do the same. Four people made for a tight fit. Colding worked the simple controls, lowering the bucket to the Bv.

Ancestors darted around but didn’t make themselves an easy target. Some lurked just inside the tree line, some hid behind burning wreckage. They were smart enough to block roads, smart enough to use protective cover. He couldn’t assume they would behave like animals at all.

Sara scrambled out of the bucket and into the Bv’s open rear section, then hopped over the side and ran for the driver’s door. Colding helped Tim out of the lift bucket, across to the front section and down into the rear hatch. Clayton crawled out of the bucket on his own, but the old man’s left leg looked bad. His snow pants stuck out at a strange angle, anchored by one bloody point. A compound fracture. Colding watched him slide through the rear hatch, trying to imagine just how tough Clayton Detweiler had been to hold that pain in check long enough to rescue them all.

Movement, rustling. The ancestors, getting closer.

Colding dropped to the ground and ran to the passenger-side door. He climbed in and stuck his head out the front hatch, just as he’d seen Clayton do.

An ancestor rushed the Bv from the right. Colding brought up the Uzi and ripped off a hurried burst. Some of the bullets went wide, but at least two hit the thing in the chest. It stopped, skidding slightly, twitching like a kid just stung by a bee. Colding ripped off two more bursts as the thing scrambled off. He wasn’t sure if he hit it or not.

Clayton reached up and handed Colding a fresh magazine. “Last one,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”

One full magazine, a second maybe half empty… about forty-five rounds total.

“Hold tight,” Sara said. She drove the Nuge away from the church inferno. The town square looked like a war zone cluttered with twisted metal wreckage, every building burning bright.

Colding felt a tug on the bottom of his tattered parka. He looked down. Tim handed up a green canvas bag. Colding looked in the bag with several quick peeks, not taking his eyes off the surroundings for more than a second at a time. Two, no, three pounds of Demex. About two dozen detonators. His heart leaped when he saw four magazines, but it sank again when he realized they were for Magnus’s MP5, which was somewhere in the burning church.

Sara pointed the Bv northeast. With his head sticking out of the hatch, buffeted by the wind, the town roaring with flames and the Bv’s diesel happily gurgling away, Colding had to scream to be heard.

“Sara, where are you going?”

“The harbor! Gary’s boat might still be there. And this thing is low on fuel. We probably can’t reach the mansion, so the harbor it is.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, she just drove. She managed to avoid most of the Sikorski’s wreckage. The pieces she couldn’t avoid, she simply ran over. The Nuge bounced along as it rolled over twisted metal and through small fires.

Sara drove out of the town and onto the road, thick snow-covered woods on either side, the harbor maybe a mile away.

Three ancestors rushed from the woods on the left. Colding fired off a quick burst at the leader. The monster slowed but kept coming. He let off another three-shot burst. One of the bullets caught the ancestor in the eye. It fell to the ground, thrashing and shaking its head as if it were being electrocuted. Its two companions stopped, looked at the retreating vehicle for a few seconds, then turned and attacked their fallen comrade. Within seconds, three more creatures joined the brutal feeding frenzy. The fallen ancestor fought desperately, lashing out with long claws and drawing blood several times, but finally fell still, its corpse torn asunder and swallowed in giant chunks.

Colding had never dreamed such savagery existed. For the first time he wondered if these things could breed. And if they could, and they got off the island… well, quite frankly, that wasn’t his fucking problem. Someone with a higher pay grade could sweat it. He just wanted to get these people to safety.

The ancestors kept up the pursuit, running parallel to the Bv but staying in the trees. They were like shadows in the deep woods; a flash of white, the reflection of a beady black eye, but little more. Every hundred yards or so, one of the critters grew bold and attacked. Colding waited until they got so nerve-rackingly close he couldn’t miss. He bagged one with a lucky head shot, the bullet likely bouncing around inside the skull and ripping the brain to shreds. The other ones acted little more than annoyed at the bullets—they’d rush, take a few rounds, then turn and dart back into the woods. He didn’t need an Uzi… he needed a fucking cannon.

The wind swept in from the beach at twenty miles per hour. With the Nuge driving straight into it, Colding suffered severe windchill on top of twenty-below weather. His face stung. His ears and nose felt numb.

Sara’s steady forward progress started to outlast the ancestors’ short sprints. At the half-mile point, the monsters fell behind. That would buy a few precious moments at the dock.

They topped the dune and rolled down the other side, the wide-open expanse of a roiling Lake Superior spreading out to the horizon. Colding saw Gary’s snowmobile near the dock. He also saw the Otto II. It was at the far edge of the harbor, about twenty feet inside the north breakwall.

The Bv slowed, crunching over jagged shore ice before Sara stopped it near the dock.

Clayton screamed into the heavy wind. “Gary! Son! Are you there?” There was no answer. With the wind so loud, even if Gary was on the boat he probably couldn’t hear. Clayton hobbled out of the vehicle, then reached back inside and grabbed Tim’s crutch.

“Hey,” Tim said.

“Fuck ya,” Clayton said, and started limping out onto the ice toward his son’s boat.

Colding looked behind the Bv—no sign of the ancestors. They had made it.

Then he looked back to the boat, and he saw it.

They all saw it.

Sara stepped out of the driver’s door. She stood and stared.

“No,” Tim said from inside the cabin, his voice thick with frustration. “No, I can’t take any more, I just can’t.”

Colding looked down at Sara, who shrugged as if the weight of the world hung from her shoulders. He looked back out at the harbor, his mind reeling from this latest blow.

The harbor was frozen solid. Up to and even outside the breakwall entrance, an irregular sheet of snow-covered ice shone like a sprawling, massive field of broken white concrete. The Otto II sat in the middle of it, resting at a slight list to port where the ice had frozen unevenly and tilted the boat.

The frigid wind dug deeper into Colding. He really wanted to just lie down. Lie down and sleep.

“Peej,” Sara said, “what are we going to do?”

He couldn’t quit now. There had to be a way. “The Bv is amphibious, right?”

Sara shook her head. “It is, but there’s no way this tin can will make it to the mainland. Look at those waves out there.”

Colding looked. Far past the breakwall ice, fifteen-foot waves moved like sea monsters hunting for a victim. “Maybe we can’t make it back, but we could drive it out on the ice, into the water, maybe wait for help?”

Sara shrugged. “Maybe. But when we run out of gas, the waves will push us back to the island. You know what will happen then.”

Colding’s body grew weaker, both from the cold and a growing avalanche of despair. The ancestors would arrive at any second. “We need an icebreaker to get that thing out. Something.”

Sara looked at him. “Hopefully that’s an icebreaker in your pocket, but maybe you’re just glad to see me.” No humor in the words, no joy. She had given up.

Colding started to shake his head, then remembered the canvas bag slung around his shoulder. The canvas bag full of plastique and detonators. He looked at Gary’s snowmobile. “Clayton! Come here!”

Clayton turned and looked back, sadness visible on his face. He cupped his hands to his face and shouted. “I gotta find my son!”

Colding waved his arm, beckoning Clayton to return. “If we don’t break the ice, no one will make it out and the ancestors will climb right into that boat. Get back here and start Gary’s snowmobile—do it now!”

Clayton looked at the boat one more time, then started crutch-walking toward his son’s snowmobile.

Colding crawled out of the hatch and dumped the bag’s contents onto the scattered snow. “Sara, Tim, help me. Either of you know how to make a time bomb?”

They shook their heads, then each of them grabbed a timer and started playing with the controls. Necessity was the mother of invention, and this mother was one mean bitch.

7:28:01 A.M.

Baby McButter cautiously crested the dune and looked down. The prey sat at the water’s edge. She sniffed—despite the strong wind, she still caught a faint wisp of the stick. The stick had stung her once already. She did not want to be stung again.

Her stomach churned and growled, but it felt different, not as bad as before. She sensed that change had nothing to do with the chunk of leg she’d eaten back by the fire.

Baby McButter flicked her sail fin into high in a short, definitive pattern. Behind her, the remaining ancestors fanned out along the dune’s crest. There was nowhere left for the prey to run.

7:28:12 A.M.

Gary’s Ski-Doo idled next to them as Colding, Tim and Sara worked quickly to make more and more fist-sized bombs. The timers proved to be very simple. They’d synced them all to P. J.’s watch, but had yet to set the detonation time. He didn’t know how many it would take, and he couldn’t risk leaving the job half-finished. Almost done now, just a few more.

Clayton sat in the Ted Nugent’s backseat, leaning against the passenger-side window. Maybe he’d passed out, maybe not.

Tim looked up from his pile of plastique balls and detonators. “They’re here.”

No, it was too soon. Colding and Sara snapped a quick look at the snow-covered dune. They saw small bits of movement from just behind the crest, like sticks blowing in the wind. That, and a few small glimpses of yellow.

The ancestors weren’t attacking.

He remembered their intelligence… they knew about the guns. He stood and pointed the Uzi at the dune, then snapped a quick glance at his watch.

“Set all the timers for 7:30, do it now! Shove ’em in the bag!”

Sara and Tim didn’t argue, they grabbed bombs and started setting timers. Would that be enough time?

Sara thrust the bag at him. “Don’t fuck it up,” she said. Some women might have said good luck or at least I hope you know what you’re doing, but that just wasn’t Sara’s way. He handed her the Uzi, threw the bag full of bombs over his shoulder, then hopped on Gary’s snowmobile. He gunned the engine, driving the sled out onto the bumpy ice toward the Otto II. The rough surface jarred him with punishing ups and downs.

He reached the boat and started a wide circle around it, dropping plastique balls as he went.

7:28:33 A.M.

Sara saw two ancestors bound over the crest and barrel down the snowy dune.

Why only two?

“Tim, get in!”

Sara fired as she backed toward the Bv. She got lucky on the first burst, the bullets smashing into the ancestor’s front left leg. It toppled forward, instantly crippled, rolling head over heels in a cloud of snow and sand.

She fired a burst at the second one, now only fifteen feet away, so close she could see its tongue inside the open mouth. The bullets drove into that open mouth.

It kept coming.

Fear pulled her finger tight against the trigger. Bullets sprayed into the ancestor’s face. It stopped only five feet from her, shaking its head violently, trying to turn away, but it was too late. It fell heavily to its side, twitching and kicking its powerful limbs.

Sara pointed the Uzi at its head and fired.

Two bullets came out, then the little submachine gun made a click sound. Sara blinked a few times, tried pulling the trigger again, her adrenaline-soaked brain not quite comprehending the fact that she was out of ammo.

Again, just a single click.

Dozens of ancestor heads popped up into plain sight. Every yellow sail fin rose high into the air.

“Fuck me running,” Tim said. “They know the goddamn gun is empty.”

The ancestors rose and charged down the snow-covered dune, their wide-open mouths roaring in long-delayed triumph.

Sara tossed the Uzi aside and jumped into the driver’s seat. She gunned the engine, driving straight out onto the ice. It would crack eventually, but the Nuge was supposed to be seaworthy. If she could get them close to the Otto II, it might be enough.

It would have to be.

7:28:54 A.M.

Colding pushed the Ski-Doo to its limits, smashing it over the uneven ice. Any second now the jagged crust could crack under him, drop him into a freezing, watery grave.

But the ice held.

He drove to the breakwall entrance, stopping maybe thirty feet from the open water. That was as close as he dared go to the ice’s edge. He tossed a Demex bomb. The fist-sized ball bounced once, then came to rest only five feet from the splashing water. Colding looked back toward the Otto II. He’d left a line of ten bombs between the boat and the harbor entrance, another six in a circle around the boat itself. He checked his watch: fifty-five seconds and counting.

The sound of a diesel engine and smashing metal drew his attention. The zebra-striped Bv206 pounded across the ice. Tank treads ground over the uneven surface, slowing the vehicle to maybe ten miles an hour. The ancestor pack was only thirty feet behind and closing fast.

A sick, coppery feeling ran through his stomach—he wouldn’t be able to make it to the Otto II before the ancestors did. He looked in his canvas bag. Still had eight plastique balls.

Plastique balls that were ticking away.

Fifty seconds and counting.

Colding pointed the Ski-Doo at the shore and gunned the engine.

7:29:11 A.M.

They were only twenty-five feet from the Otto II. She checked the side mirror: three ancestors at the back bumper.

She heard a deep, splintery cracking, then the Bv dropped through the ice and plunged into the water. The passengers’ heads snapped forward as if they’d driven straight into a wall.

Icy water welled up over the windshield, over the roof, and poured through the open upper hatch.

A scream came unbidden, but the cold wetness locked it tight in her throat.

7:29:16 A.M.

Colding saw the Bv drop through the ice into the water. It almost went under, then popped up like a slow-motion cork. The ice broke up under the lead ancestors. Two dropped into the frigid water. The last one leaped into the Bv’s rear flatbed and clung to the zebra-striped lift bucket.

Colding couldn’t help Sara now. He didn’t have a gun, didn’t even have a knife, for fuck’s sake. She would have to find a way to deal with it.

He banked left, between the shore and the ancestor horde, dropping plastique balls along the way.

Forty seconds and counting.

7:29:21 A.M.

Sara regained her composure. Despite ice-cold water up to her ankles, she punched the gas pedal to the floor. The Nuge moved forward, slowly churning through the harbor.

“Tim, get over here. Keep your foot on the gas!” Tim slid sideways. Sara hopped over him to the passenger side as he took the wheel.

Sara crawled out of the passenger-side hatch, water dripping from her legs. She gathered her feet under herself and crouched, trying to keep her balance on the swaying Bv’s slick metal roof. They had to tie off to the Otto II to get everyone onboard.

Then she heard the roar.

So close it hurt her ears, so close she felt hot breath on the back of her neck. She knew, finally, that her time had come.

Sara turned to face her fate. An ancestor perched on the Bv roof, long claws scraping into the metal as it struggled to keep from sliding off. Not even two feet away. So big. So big.

A snarl twisted Sara’s lips. Her hair strung wetly across her face, her eyes hateful slits, she looked as much like an animal as the beast preparing to end her life.

Come on, fucker. Get it over with.

The ancestor opened wide and leaned forward.

Sara closed her eyes.

Five shots rang out.

The ancestor reared backward, blood pouring from an eye, from its mouth, from its nose. Big clawed feet slipped on the wet roof and it tumbled overboard, splashing into the icy water like a boulder dropped from ten stories high.

Sara turned, unable to grasp the fact that she was still alive.

Standing in the bow and wrapped in a thick blanket, Gary Detweiler held a smoking Beretta in his outstretched hand.

“About fuckin’ time.” Clayton’s voice, from inside the Nuge. “Where da hell you been, boy?”

7:29:45 A.M.

Colding tossed the last plastique ball and turned toward the Otto II, chancing a quick glance at his watch.

Twelve seconds.

He had only one chance. He opened the throttle and leaned forward, holding on tight as the Ski-Doo slammed toward the boat.

7:29:49 A.M.

They didn’t have time to tie off. The Bv’s port side ground against the Otto II, breaking away ice that clung stubbornly to the starboard hull. Sara and Tim scrambled aboard as Gary pulled his dad out of the hatch. Clayton screamed in pain, but with his son’s help made it onto the boat.

Sara looked around for Colding but didn’t see him. “Gary! Where’s Colding?”

Gary ran to the short ladder leading to the boat’s flying bridge. As he climbed, he pointed out the port side.

Sara looked. There was Peej, driving toward them, Ski-Doo bouncing off the broken ice like a Jeep driving through a rutted gully.

She checked her watch. Two, one…

7:30:00 A.M.

Twenty-four balls of Demex plastic explosive detonated simultaneously. Ice chunks and shards flew like frozen shrapnel, some to land a good mile away.

A six-pointed ring erupted around the Otto II. The concussive force ripped inward, powerful enough to hit the ancestors closest to the boat and knock them into the frigid waters. Sara and Tim dove to the deck, ice flying all around them.

Colding was halfway between the ring and boat when the plastique detonated. The shock wave hit him from behind, so powerful it tumbled the Ski-Doo like a toy thrown by a petulant child. He flew through the air, the snowmobile spinning out from under him and smashing into a dozen pieces against the ice.

He landed fifteen feet from the boat’s port side, his limp body cartwheeling off the ice. He flew another ten feet to plunge into the newly open water just five feet from the boat.

Sara watched, horrified, as P. J.’s body vanished beneath the surface.

“Rope!” She stripped off her jacket. “Get me some fucking rope!”

The Otto II’s engines roared to life. Gary looked down from the flying bridge and pointed to a footlocker.

She opened it and pulled out a long coil of red-and-white nylon rope. Then Gary was at her side, clumsy bandages across his chest showing huge splotches of red, some of them wet and fresh.

She handed him a loose end of the rope. “Tie it around my waist!” She peeled off her sweater and kicked off her boots as Gary tied the rough rope around her hips.

She turned on Gary. “You do not pull me up until I tug on the rope, understand?”

Gary shook his head. “You’ve only got a few seconds in that water, Sara, you can’t—”

She reached out and held the sides of his face.

“Pull me up before I tug, and I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Gary nodded.

Sara turned, put her foot on the side rail, then dove into the water.

The cold splash from the Bv’s brief submersion had been bad, but nothing like this. She tried to stay under as her body rebelled, instinctively pushed for the surface.

Get out get out get out.

Her head popped out of the water, barely in time for her to let loose a scream of primitive, instinctive fear.

She looked up at the boat. Gary stood there, the white-and-red rope in his hands, a look on his face that said Should I pull you in?

Sara didn’t answer the unasked question. She drew a huge, rattling breath, then forced herself under once again. The cold scraped her skin like a grater, driving at her with needles of pain. She kicked and kicked. Hard to see anything in the murky water.

So cold…

Her lungs screamed from lack of oxygen, but she dove farther. She wouldn’t leave him down there. She kept on kicking with all of her quickly fading energy.

Where is he? I can’t lose him…

She couldn’t see. Blood roared inside her head. Her heart banged like a kick drum, faster, faster.

Her hand smashed into a slimy rock at the bottom of the harbor. She couldn’t take any more, had to go up. She put her hands out to push away from the bottom, and her fingers hit something soft.

Soft like fabric.

She grabbed for it. It was a body—Colding’s body.

He’s not moving…

Sara wrapped her legs around his back and yanked on the rope. She immediately threw her arms under his shoulders, clutching him chest to chest in a desperate, loving embrace. The rope snapped taut around her waist, pulling them toward the surface.

Can’t breathe can’t breathe…

Sara’s mouth opened of its own accord. Icy water poured across her tongue, into her throat. She thrashed, panic taking her, yet she refused to let go.

Her head broke the surface. She gasped for air, coughing violently. She barely felt the hands pulling her into the boat. Her body shivered as if from an epileptic fit. Somebody pulled off her pants and wrapped a blanket around her before her thoughts became her own again.

She sat up. Tim was over Colding, performing CPR, blowing air into his mouth, then pumping his chest.

Unable to move, Sara watched while her lungs kicked out deep, chest-rattling coughs. Engines roared. She felt the boat lurch forward.

Colding coughed, sending a splash of water out of his lungs and onto his face. Tim turned him on his side. Colding coughed again, then Sara heard the sweet sound of air rushing into his lungs.

“Help me get his clothes off,” Tim said. Sara reached in. She and Tim pulled the waterlogged snowsuit off Colding’s body. Colding kept coughing, but he obliged, weakly helping them remove his clothes. Sara moved to him and held him, their two naked, wet, frigid bodies wrapped in the same blanket. Gary threw a second blanket around them. It had blood on it—the same blanket he’d been wearing only moments earlier.

“You two will be fine,” Tim said. “I’ve got to look at Clayton.” He limped to the bow, leaving Sara and Colding clinging together, their bodies shivering in unison.

“Guess I owe you one,” Colding said through blue lips.

Sara nodded. “Guess so.”

They kissed, both sets of lips feeling icy and clammy, but it didn’t matter. All the death was forgotten in that moment, because she had life, and she had him.

They had won. Not without a heavy price, but it was over.

They had survived.

Huddling together, shivering together, they looked back to shore as the Otto II pulled away from Black Manitou Island.

COLDING’S LAST EIGHT plastique balls had made an arc behind the ancestor horde. The bombs shattered huge chunks of ice, enough to break off a massive slab that stranded the ancestors in the harbor.

They ran about the slab, looking for a way off, but there was nowhere for them to go. A small piece near the edge broke off under one’s weight—it fell into the water, thick limbs splashing uselessly. It lasted only a few seconds before it slid beneath the surface.

The main slab cracked in two. When it did, the seven ancestors at the edge of the left chunk proved to be too much weight—the slab tilted like a large teeter-totter. The seven tried to turn and run back up the ice, but it was too late: they all splashed into the water, doomed by their useless attempts at swimming.

The slab continued to break apart.

Sara and Colding heard the animals’ roars even over the wind and the Otto II’s full-out engine. One by one, the ancestors fell into the water and disappeared.

One last ancestor remained afloat. It was missing its left ear and had an all-white head save for a black patch on the left eye. It looked at the boat, seemed to look right at Sara and Colding. It opened its mouth and let out a huge, primitive roar of unbridled fury.

Colding saw something moving in the water, something with a wet, black head. Could some of them swim after all? Then the image crystallized in his brain.

“Mookie,” Colding said quietly. He shouted up to the flying bridge, “Gary, stop the boat!”

The black Australian shepherd cut through the frigid waters, heading straight for the patch of ice that held the last ancestor.

“Mookie!” Colding shouted. “Get the hell away from there! Come here, girl!”

But the dog ignored him. She reached the ice patch and struggled to climb on top.

BABY MCBUTTER TURNED and saw the small creature. She had seen this prey before. It had been there when she’d torn her way free from the big animal, when she’d taken her first bite of the trapped prey with the wounded leg. This creature had attacked her, hurt her.

Baby McButter roared in wide-mouthed fury, challenging this new threat. The prey managed to clumsily scramble aboard the ice patch—it roared back, the roroororoo sound pitiful and small in comparison, but no less hateful, no less primitive.

Baby McButter took a step toward the prey, but stopped—the ice shifted with every movement. She’d seen all of her brethren enter the water and not come out. She had to stay still.

The little prey ran toward her, barking, stopping just out of claw-swipe range. Its black lip curled back to show small white teeth. It made threatening lunges.

It wouldn’t stop making that annoying noise.

COLDING LOOKED AWAY from the ice-top battle to see Tim helping Clayton move to the back of the boat.

“Dad!” Gary shouted down from the flying bridge. “Are you okay?”

“Good enough,” Clayton said. He looked up and smiled. “I’m proud of you, son. Now get me da hell out of here.”

Colding pointed out to the ice floe. “Clayton, you know that dumb-ass dog, call her in here! What the hell is she doing?”

Clayton leaned heavily on the rail and looked out. “We haven’t seen Sven, eh? I think he’s dead, and I think Mookie knows it. She’s getting some payback.”

Mookie barked so hard her body shook, pure fury encapsulated in wet black fur. The last ancestor took a tentative snap. Mookie easily danced away, kept barking, kept snarling.

The one-eared ancestor reared back its head, then lunged at the dog. The ice floe tilted instantly, sending dog and ancestor into the frigid harbor. The ice righted itself, splashing back into the water. A huge white head with a black eye spot surfaced. The ancestor’s long claws splashed feebly, hitting the edge of the ice. Chunks broke off with each swipe, giving the creature no purchase. It opened its mouth for one last roar, then slid below the surface.

Colding looked hard, hoping, wishing. Finally, he saw a small patch of black cutting through the ice-filled water.

“Come on, girl!”

The dog looked exhausted. She paddled straight for the boat. Waves lifted her, buffeted her. She panted, spitting out water in big, cheek-puffing gasps. Colding reached out as far as he could. Sara weakly held his legs, letting him stretch even farther. Mookie dipped under, then popped back up. She slowed. Colding reached farther… and his fingers grabbed the dog’s collar. He dragged her to the rail. Sara reached over and helped him pull the exhausted, tuck-tailed dog onboard. Mookie collapsed between Colding and Gary Detweiler, shivering madly, chest heaving: one more exhausted, wounded survivor of the disaster.

Her tail slapped wetly against the deck.

Finally, it was over.

The six survivors of Black Manitou Island headed out into the churning waters of Lake Superior.