A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [28]
My lungs hurt. Short sharp breaths. Sweat slicked me all over. I made a small baby sound and Kate stepped back, still with the gun pointed at him. “OhGod,” she husked. “OhGod. God.”
“Goddamn,” I rasped. Blood slid down my arm, hot wetness. I hadn’t thought to pack a first-aid kit.
Right now, that was the least of my problems. “Get a dowel.” My throat felt like it was on fire. “And the hammer. Hurry.”
She dropped the gun. I managed to get up on my side. My arm hurt if I put any weight on it and my Communion necklace dropped off, the cross a molten twisted blop plopping on the carpet. I crawled forward a little, listening for sirens. Did anyone hear the gunshots? Jesus.
The smoking ruin that used to be Edgar lay on its back, arms wide and charred lips pulled back to expose violently-white, killing-sharp teeth. Kate stumbled back and dropped the dowel.
I got to my knees, watching him in case he twitched again. “You’ll have to hold it, I’ll hammer.”
She nodded, lips clamped together. If I thought she was pale before she was almost transparent now. Sweat slicked her face and her cheek twitched a little right under one of her blue, blue eyes.
She held the rough point I’d chipped on the dowel to the left side of his chest. I hefted the hammer in my good hand. My arm throbbed, and it was a good thing I didn’t have to stand up. I didn’t think I could.
The first blow skittered off the end of the dowel. Kate jumped and squeaked. I swallowed hard, set my jaw, and waited for her to resettle the point against the crackling, blackened skin.
We wrapped my arm with an old kitchen towel and some duct tape. Kate wanted to spray some Bactine on it, but there wasn’t any. I took one look at the ancient bottle of hydrogen peroxide and said no way.
“You might get infected.” Kate bit her lower lip, rubbing her left wrist against her shirt. The leather cuff scraped T-shirt material, and she darted a quick glance at my face. “Or something.”
I shrugged. My hair fell in my eyes again. I swiped it away, irritated. I was sweating and everything smelled bad and I really wanted a big dish of cherry ice cream.
The phone rang. I would have told Kate to ignore it, but she picked up before I could stop her.
“H-Hello?” A short pause. “No, she’s not. I thought she was there.” She sounded honestly shocked. A longer pause, and her forehead furrowed. “Um, okay. No . . . uhn-uh.” She shook her head violently, as if whoever was on the other end could see her. “I will, sure. Okay. Bye.”
Then she hung up, her eyes big as saucers. There were bruised-looking rings underneath them.
“Kate? You shouldn’t have answered . . .” I swallowed, hard. Oh fuck.
“My mom.” It was a tiny breath of sound. “She’s not at work.”
We found Ms. Cooke sitting in her blue Mazda in the garage that used to be full of boxes and crap. I guess Edgar had been cleaning it out when we thought he was just laying there watching baseball. Her legs were out the driver’s side door and the dome light was on. She stared sightlessly through the windshield at us, her blue eyes clouded like weird Jell-O. Two neat little puncture wounds glared in her neck, one with a thread of dried blood trickling down.
Kate buried her face in my neck and started crying. I just stared, numb and dry-eyed, and tried to figure out what came next.
The cops never came, so I guess nobody heard the shots. We sat in the kitchen, my throbbing arm crusted with dried blood, and I drank a couple glasses of water. The puncture wounds were ragged, two on the top and two on the bottom, right in the meat of my forearm. There was bruising, too. Once I washed the blood off it looked like I’d slammed my arm in a car door or something.
Kate stared at the counter. Once in a while she’d pick at it with her fingernails. It took her a long time to say anything.
Finally, though, she raised her head. Her hair was lank with sweat, almost as dark as mine. “Do you think she’s dead?”
“Right now she is.” I took another gulp of water. “But when it gets dark . . . I dunno.”
“What are we going to do?”
A bolt of white- hot anger