Then all of a sudden the monster was gone, disappeared into the haze of the storm. For an instant Panther and Bear kept firing, even after Sparrow screamed at them to stop. Neither could believe that the creature wasn’t there, that somehow it had vanished. But when the wind rippled the curtain of the haze and it was still not visible, the pair held up again, swinging the muzzles of their weapons this way and that, searching frantically.
“Panther!” Sparrow screamed, and opened fire to his left.
He swung about, but by then the Klee was on top of him, attacking with terrifying speed. One huge arm knocked him flying, his weapon lost, his head spinning. He crashed to the earth and rolled hard, heard Bear roar in response, heard the boom of the flechette, heard Cheney’s deep snarl. Then everything seemed to jumble together, and he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He hauled himself to his feet, swaying drunkenly. Blood was running down into his eyes. He looked around, saw that Bear lay sprawled on the ground, a motionless lump. Sparrow was yelling at Cheney, who was attacking the monster once more.
Feebly, Panther cast about for Bear’s flechette, caught sight of it a short distance away, and staggered toward it, wiping the blood from his eyes. Cheney’s shaggy body flew past him, nearly taking his head off, thrown like a paper doll by the monster. Sparrow was firing again, standing all alone in front of their attacker, her warrior mother reborn. She wasn’t enough by herself, Panther thought, reaching down for the flechette. None of them was.
He snatched up the flechette and faced the monster, bracing himself for another attack. It registered then, a sudden frightening realization, that all the damage their weapons had inflicted had been for nothing. The creature looked as if it hadn’t been touched; its wounds had healed over.
How could that be?
He started forward, intent on helping Sparrow before it was too late, and heard Hawk calling his name. The Bird-Man was beside him, grasping his shoulder, holding him back and calling off Sparrow, too. Tessa was still clinging to him, eyes wide with fear. In the span of no more than a handful of seconds, Hawk had brought them together with a dazed and bloodied Bear, all of them watching as the monster turned for another attack.
“You see what that thing can do?” Panther hissed in rage. “Weapons don’t mean nuthin’ to it! What are we supposed to—”
“I want you to stay back,” Hawk told him, his voice steady, his gaze fixed on their attacker. “Keep Cheney back, too.”
“As if!” Panther snorted, dropping into a crouch.
“Do what I say!” Hawk gave him a quick, angry glance. “Sparrow, you too!” He snatched the spray from her hands. “It’s me it wants. I’ll try to draw it off. You go for help.”
Panther came right up against him. “You crazy! You’ll be dead before you get a dozen steps! We’re a family, remember? A family! We stick together!”
“He’s right!” Sparrow snapped. “Give me that!” She snatched back the Parkhan Spray. “You don’t even know what to do with that!”
They shoved Hawk and Tessa behind them and turned to face the monster’s slow advance. It looked huge, unstoppable. But they held their ground.
“Try to take out its legs,” Panther muttered.
“Or its eyes.” Sparrow was breathing hard.
They began firing their weapons, the Parkhan Spray’s steady burp contrasting with the boom of the Tyson Flechette, all of it back-dropped by the howl of the wind. Panther knew they were going to die, but at least they wouldn’t die of some stupid plague and they wouldn’t die alone. If it had to happen, better that it be like this.
His dark face tightened. The monster was still coming, brushing aside the damage the weapons were causing, unfazed by the damage, lumbering through the smoke and fire and explosions to reach them.
Frickin’ hell, he thought in despair and rage.
THE KLEE SAW THE TRAPPED LOOK in the eyes of its quarry and was pleased. They belonged to it now, all of them. It would kill them one by one. It would take its time.
But an instant later, a little girl appeared from out of the gloom. She rushed toward the others, a tiny figure pinned against the wall of the storm, red hair flying, arms waving, shouting something indecipherable. Her friends screamed at her to get back, to run away, but she kept coming.
The Klee turned, its flat head swiveling, its huge body following, blocking the little girl’s way. She seemed to have no sense of what she was doing, charging into the fray with such wild determination that she might have thought herself invulnerable to harm. The Klee reached for her, but the fierce dog knocked the little girl down, and wheeled back to stand over her protectively.