Monster (33 page)

Us.
Humans.

The red ribbon turned a ghas
tl
y purple and began to
disso
lve along the endless road
bac
k to Earth
.
Then it
sudd
enly snapped, and Angela drew in
a
sharp
breath.

Yes
,
Angela Warner. She remembered who
she
was,
what
she
was. Not KAtuu,
not even with
the
horrors she had
co
mmitted. She was human. She was not the enemy. They
we
re.
They were evil.

“Kevin,”
she whispered. Tears formed in her eyes; she saw
t
hem
in the mirror. But she didn't allow them to flow on to
her
cheeks
.
Kevin
was
dead
–
she
couldn't worry about him
n
ow.
She couldn't think about what she had done to him,
or
she'd go insane before she could finish her job.

But that was easier to say than do. Nausea swept over
h
er
,
and she turned to the toilet and vomited red junk
that
made
her
keep vomiting until there was nothing left
in h
er
guts. She hoped
to God there was nothing left.

“
Kevin
,” s
he c
ri
ed softly.

The pounding began to throb inside her brain.

T
his
ti
me she we
lcomed.

Angela whirled and
ran
to
her
bedroom closet.
Earlier
she’
d had trouble tying the smaller bot
tl
es of gasoline in
a circle with the other
f
ive-gallon bo
ttles.
She had
finally
decided not to
put all her eggs in one basket.
She had stacked her eight two-and
-
a-half-gallo
n
bottles behind the clothes in her closet. Because she had gone and buried her grandfather's remains after all
,
she had not had time to make herself a second fuse. Her second basket was a last-resort bomb. She had figured if s
he had to light it, she
would probably be going up with it.

The bot
tl
es of gasoline were where she had left them.

It was past the time for last r
esorts, she decided.

Angela closed
the
closet door and began to rifle through her desk for a lighter. Luck was with her. She found a bag holding three new ones: red, white, and blue. A choice of colours. Ripping open the plastic, she grabbed the red
one.

T
he plastic.

The dog was standing on the balcony, peering in through the screen door with fear in her eyes. If she blew up the house, Angela thought, she would kill Plastic. A small price to pay for the safety of
the
human race, t
o be sure, but she already felt
bad for what she had earlier done to the dog. She hu
rri
ed to
the
sc
reen door and quietly opened it.
Plastic was forgiving.
The dog immediately began to lick
Angela's hands and whimper as Angela knelt beside her.

“Shh,” Angela said softly. “
You can't stay here
.
You
have to go swim.”
She pointed.
“
Jump in the water.
G
o swim,
that a girl. Go,
Plastic. Get the hell
out of here.”

Of course, Plastic did
n't jump in the lake. The dog ha
d never liked the water and wasn't about to start liking it
.
Angela was debating what to do next when she saw Ji
m
come through her bedroom door. He was alone. Sh
e
glanced at the closet. She had closed the door but had not shut it.

“
We are going to start the meeting
,”
Jim
said toneless
ly.

Angela let go of the dog
and stood. She tried to keep her
voice and face expressionless.
“
I
am coming,
” she said.

“Come now.”

She stepped into the
bedroom. Plastic remained on the balcony. “I
need
to
dre
ss
more,
”
she said.

“
It does not matter
,”
Jim
said, watching her
. “The meeting will start now.”

“
I
will be down in a minute,
”
she said, wondering if the
KAtuu
ever argued among themselves. Her eye
s
darted
to
the open drawer of her des
k, then back to
Jim
. She
had l
eft the torn packet of lighters sitting on top of a
bo
x
of unsharpened pencils. The red lighter, of course,
s
he had
h
idden in the
fingers of her l
eft hand. She was
in
a
quandary; she didn't want to move in the direc
tion
of the desk and draw
Jim
's attention to
it
, but she
remembered s
he had lef
t her hunting knife in the top dra
wer on the right
.
The way
Jim
was staring at her,
she might need that knife very soon.

“
What is that you're we
aring?”
he asked.

Damn!
Th
e
amulet
.

“
What?
”
she asked. She could feel the gold chain round
he
r
neck and didn't have to lower
her
eyes to look at the
a
mule
t. She began to edge toward the desk.

“
What is that y
ou're wearing round your neck?”
he
re
peated.

“It is decoration,”
she said. Another step towards the
de
sk.
Jim
turned his whole body to follow her. He took
a step closer.

“It looks like KAtuu,”
he said
.

“
Yes.
”

“Where did y
ou get it?
” he asked.

“What?”

“Who gave you that amulet?”
he asked.

She finally looked at it; she touched its gold
surface and said a
silent prayer of thanks to Shining Feather
.
If sh
e was go
ing to die, at least she was going to die human.

“
An Indian,
”
she said.

“When?”
He was close now, maybe two steps away.

“Just now,”
she
sai
d.

“
I do not understand
,”
Jim
said. “
Where is this Indian?
”

“I will show you.”
She strode towards the
c
lose
t,
passing
within inches
of the desk. But she didn't reach for the
knife
–
not yet. One hand on the door of the closet, she said,
“He is hiding in here.”

Jim
quickly stepped by her and threw open the door of the closet. In that same moment Angela took a step back, pulled open
the
desk drawer, and grabbed the knife with her right hand. The stacked bottle
s
of gasoline had distracted
Jim
just enough for her to accomplish that small manoeuvre. But
Jim
had ears, he had reflexes. He was whirling to confront her when she snapped back the knife and stabbed the razor-sharp blade into the side of hi
s
neck.

“
H
e
lp
!”
he shouted as
a
fountain of blood erupted over his shoulder. The blood was darker than it should have been; it had
a
dist
inct
green tinge to it. She had lost the knife in her attack. He reached up with both hands to pull it free as he staggered back
a
step. She lashed out with her foot, with every bit of her newfound strength, and caught him direc
tl
y in the balls. He grunted and bent over, and the blood from hi
s neck dripped on to the floor
.

“Bastard!”
she swore.

She ran to the bedroom door and slammed it shut. They were already coming up the stairs. She twisted the lock into place. She did not think that it would hold them long, and she was right. Their first blow on the door brough
t the sound of splintering wood.

An
gela hurried back to the closet.
She had to jump over
Jim
in the process. He had fallen to the floor. He feebly reached up to grab her leg but failed. He was swiftly losing strength. His blood formed a pool round him, and she briefly wondered how many poor souls' blood had gone into his veins to make that weird puddle.

“
Help,
”
he gasped.

The door shook again. They would be inside in seconds.

Angela opened
the closet door and grabbed the top bottl
e of gasoline. She dropped it on the floor in front of her, jumped in the air, and landed on
it
with both
feet.
The plastic walls burst; the gasoline
s
pilled over the floor of the bedroom and the closet, round
t
he st
ack of plasti
c
bottles.
The fuel also splattered the hem of her robe. She
wh
ipped up her left hand and flipped her Bi
c. The orange fla
me glowed like a
ti
ny sun in her eyes. She looked down
at
Jim
. He was watching her.

“
You waited a hundred thousand years for revenge,
” she sa
id.
“Y
ou wasted your
t
ime. You're goners. You're just a
bu
nch of dead heads from a dead world.
”
She paused and
sm
iled wickedly
. “
I
hope you feel pain when you die
.”

With that Angela leaned over and lit the edge of the
p
uddle of gasoline. It
caught
immediate
ly
; the flames raced
into
the closet and engulfed her wardrobe and the bot
tl
es
of
gasoline. Her robe had also caught fire, but she didn't
stop
to try to put it out. He
r bedroom door lurched; a huge ch
unk of wood came smashing in behind the power of an
a
ngry fist. Angela turned and ran towards the door to the
ba
lc
o
ny.

It was fortunate she had left the door open.

Angela h
ad scarcely crossed the threshold
to
the outside
w
hen two
t
hings happened almost simultaneously. The
be
droom door burst open, and the front ranks of the
gang
of vampires barged in. They had only a split-second
to
survey their fallen leader and
the
fire in the closet before
her
alternative bomb exploded.

Angela experienced the shock wave as the slap of a
giant’s
unforgiving hand, a slap that literally swept her
off
her feet and off the balcony. She was immediately
bl
inded by the brilliant light. But this was a hand that
co
uld strike more than once. A second shock wave hit as she hovered above the lake. At the back of her m
in
d she registered the fact that the power of the
explosion
upstairs had been sufficient to burst through to the
base
ment and ignite the larger bomb.

All si
xty gallons h
ad
gone up. Whew.

Then a
third
shock wave hit her, and this one made the
other
two puny
b
y comparison. She was in the sky, flyin
g to
wards the moon
– a
nywhere but towards the asteroid
belt –
and she still understood what had happened. The
pro
pane tank had blown. No one, she thought,
nothing
could have survived that. The fact reassured what was left of her mind and body as she reached the upward arc of her flight and began to fall, down into the cold black wa
ters
where it had all begun, and where it would now all end.