Tritium Gambit

  Chapter 35. Max

  I woke up in a tiny room, lying on a bench next to a kitchen table. I sat up. Nearby was a miniature kitchenette and stairs going into the sunlight. I stumbled a little when I stood, and then I realized that the floor was moving. I crawled into the light. Miranda was holding a tiller and drinking a Diet Mountain Dew.

  “Where’s the sheriff?” I asked as I noticed we were on a small sailboat. She pointed to the bow, and I saw John sitting on the deck.

  I sighed. “I’ll bet he’s still upset about the car. What happened to the Wendigo?”

  Miranda frowned. “He escaped. I think the water freaked him out or we would all be dead. He got a good swipe in before he went though.” She lifted her shirt enough for me to see some scratches along her stomach.

  “So, why are we on a boat?”

  “You needed a safe place to recover and we needed a quick getaway. The police were converging on our location, and taking to the water seemed like the easiest way out.”

  I scanned the horizon. “Won’t they send helicopters or something?”

  “It has been windy, and the first day on the water was stormy. We’ll have to get off the lake soon now that the weather has cleared up.”

  “How the hell are we going to kill that thing now?”

  Miranda sighed. “I don’t know. We gave it everything we had and it still survived. We’re not going to trick it into getting that close to the water again.”

  “Its greatest weakness is that it needs to breathe, just like the rest of us. There are other ways to suffocate it. Maybe we can trap it in a burning building or launch it into outer space.”

  “We’re fresh out of spaceships, and the thing is twenty feet tall now and getting bigger. There aren’t many buildings we could fit it into.”

  “We’ll need to improvise. He’s tough to kill, but he’s not invulnerable. We need to keep trying. If we don’t do him in and he gets large enough, he’ll start making babies; and soon we’ll have more of them to deal with. It wouldn’t take long before the Wendigo’s progeny overrun the planet.”

  “If we find him too many more times, we’ll all be dead,” she said and shook her head. “I know we don’t have any other option, but I want to go on record that this is a bad idea.”

  I nodded. “Gotcha. If it doesn’t work, we’ll leave a note for any intergalactic travelers that the planet is overrun by Wendigo and that this was all my fault.”

  I climbed along the sailboat’s rail to the bow where John was listening to a radio. One of his arms was in a makeshift sling. The injury on his forehead had scabbed over.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about your car,” I said.

  John nodded and took a sip from a beer bottle.

  I cleared my throat. “So, I have a plan.”

  John didn’t look up, but he didn’t leave either. Maybe because there really isn’t anywhere to go, a little voice said inside my slowly clearing mind.

  “We’re going to sneak up on the Wendigo, figure out how to kill him, and then do it. Are you in?”

  John nodded but kept his eyes on the horizon. “You’re an idiot.”

  I crawled back to the stern and sat next to Miranda.

  “He likes my plan,” I said.

  “We’re all going to die.” Miranda turned the tiller, and the sailboat headed toward shore.

  “It could be worse,” I said.

  “How?”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, we could be unarmed bite-sized snacks for a creature that will smell us coming before we know where it is.”

  She smiled reluctantly. “You’re right. It could be much worse.”

  The scream of a rocket propelled grenade split the air.

  “Look out!” Miranda shouted. She pulled me overboard into the frigid water of Lake Superior, but a moment later I felt the heat of the explosion above us even as Miranda pulled us deeper. I could see that the sailboat was ripped apart above us, and I hoped John managed to get off in time.

  When we surfaced after what seemed about a half minute too long to me, I gasped for breath.

  Miranda spat water out of her mouth. “Wendy!”

  “Maybe the situation could be a little worse after all,” I admitted.

  John was sputtering and treading water with one arm a few feet away. Miranda swam over to him and helped him. I swam after them in my clumsy half-drowning way. The shore was a long way off, and I wasn’t confident I could make it that far.

  As we swam toward shore, I peered around us in all directions, but the source of the rocket propelled grenade was nowhere to be seen. I was sure Wendy was watching us, though. She wasn’t trying to kill me yet, which she had made clear she wanted to do slowly, but I was sure she wanted Miranda and John out of the way first. You couldn’t get further out of the way than dead.

  We kept low against the large boulders as we neared the shore and scanned for signs of our attacker.

  “How did she know where we were?” I asked through my labored breathing.

  Miranda frowned. “She might have put a tracking device on you while you were unconscious.”

  “Why? She thought you guys were dead and she was planning to torture me to death in that room.”

  “Maybe,” John said as we climbed into the rocks, sitting down beneath the skyline to get our breath. “She might have known there was a chance Miranda and I would live. She could have had a contingency plan. Planting a tracking device is what I would have done.”

  “She might have been planning to keep him alive for years,” Miranda said. “Having a tracking device on him would keep him from escaping.”

  “So what do I do about it?” I asked.

  “Well, we lost our backpacks, and so you can’t switch clothes. Why don’t you take off your shoes first and we’ll try to check them?” Miranda asked.

  “She’s probably watching us right now,” I said.

  “She is definitely watching us right now,” John said. “But Miranda is right—there’s no sense running if she can just follow us.”

  I took off my shoes and Miranda and John studied them.

  “They stink,” John said. “Maybe she’s following the smell.”

  “Take off your shirt,” Miranda said.

  I did, and they examined every stitch. Miranda threw it back at me. “Put that back on and do what you do best—take off your shorts,” she said.

  I didn’t argue. I handed her my shorts, and she studied them. They looked stumped.

  “I don’t see any tracking devices here either,” she said and tossed them at me.

  John grabbed hold of my hair.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  “Hold still,” he said. I felt him run his fingers along my neck.

  “Found it,” he said. He jabbed a spot, which was uncomfortable under his big finger.

  “Great,” I said. “How do we get it out?”

  “Miranda, take this,” John said. I couldn’t see what they were doing behind me. “I can’t touch his blood.”

  I felt a hot slash. “Ouch! What are you…”

  “Hold still,” Miranda said. I felt her dig around in my skin with a sharp instrument. “Stop squirming!” She dug some more into my flesh. “Got it!”

  I reached back and touched the spot on my neck where she had cut but it had already healed. I rubbed my neck anyway because it still stung.

  I turned around and she was holding a short bloody knife that she wiped off and put into her boot. She showed me a tiny black ball.

  “Looks like the bunny rabbit left a pellet.”

  I noticed a roving red dot on Miranda’s forehead and pushed her down as energy crackled through the air and struck me in the shoulder. I smelled burnt flesh and felt numb on my left side.

  “Ow,” Miranda said.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet that hurt,” I said through gritted teeth. I took a deep breath as sensation in the form of pain returned to the left half of my body. I fell to my knees and Miranda and John scrambled behind a large pile
of rocks. I joined them.

  “She’s mad that Tyler’s dead and thinks it’s my fault because people around me have a propensity for getting hurt.”

  “It’s sort of hard to argue with her on that point,” Miranda said.

  John patted me on my good shoulder. “You really have a way with the ladies.”

  “I’m going to draw her fire,” I said. “You two make a break for the trees and don’t stop running.”

  “We’re a team; we’ll stick together,” Miranda said. “I only wish I wasn’t out of ammo.”

  “We don’t have any way of fighting back, and she’ll kill you. She only wants me,” I said. “She would rather you were safely out of the way, as in dead, but she won’t risk losing me again and so won’t follow you. If she gets in close trying to get us all, you’ll miss your chance to get away.”

  “Good plan,” John said. “Right after you start running, we’ll make a break for it.”

  I handed Miranda my graviton bars, which she looked at with confusion.

  “What are these for?” she asked.

  “You need these to help find the Wendigo. If you put them on a reverse setting, it’ll reduce gravity and let you jump really far. I probably should warn you about the reverse setting—there’s a slight risk you might implode.” I didn’t wait for Miranda to respond. I peeked around the edge of the rock. Wendy was walking warily our way, stopping behind boulders as she came to them and peering around them. I ran straight toward her.

  When she leveled her gun at me, I tried to jump to the side but she shot me in the chest. The shot knocked me flat on my back. It’s rather disconcerting to see the flesh stripped off your chest, even if you know it will grow back.

  I took the Bar-F I had been saving and ate it in two bites as Wendy approached. She was looking warily around as if expecting an attack from the others. She clearly didn’t realize they were unarmed.

  I rolled to the side and jumped to my feet, only to be shot in the leg and fall back down. I crawled toward her while I healed, and as she watched me with amusement.

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” she said.

  She blasted me twice more, once in the arm and once in the back as I crawled. I kept coming, and she took a few steps back. She pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

  I hurt, but I managed to get to my feet to charge. She was fumbling with a clip when I knocked her back. The gun and clip went flying in different directions, but she grabbed hold of my head and hit me with a jolt of electricity that knocked me straight out.