Ancestor

  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.