Charley heaved his first Molotov cocktail against the side of the creature. Flames lent it sudden volume. Susan would have stepped back to take the whole of it in. There was no time for that. She snapped open her Ronson. She thumbed the ignition wheel, once, twice, three times—to no effect. The flint was damp, or she was nervous. Either way, she knew she was dead.
Illyenov threw his gasoline bomb into the creature’s crablike maw. It bellowed, loud as a locomotive in labor. The roar startled Susan. She dropped the bottle. It crashed across the ground. Suddenly she was covered in gasoline and broken glass, and this flaming mountain of flesh was rolling her way.
Charley Shrieve stepped up next to her with his Colt. He fired right into it from a little more than arm’s distance. A tentacle unfurled from the dark and took his hand. The gun clattered to the ground. It levered Charley down, right beneath its many whipping and scything mouthparts. With his free hand, he reached back for his gun. But his gun was gone.
Susan remembered the charcoal drawings by the bonfire—that awful parody of a human face leering down from the carapace. She sensed vulnerability in its most human feature.
She raised her Walther to fire into the humanesque mask riding atop the flaming hump. It occurred to her that she was covered in gasoline. She saw her muzzle flash catch a bit of vapor from her clothes—saw herself lit in a halo of flames.
Even as she lowered her pistol, a second image overpowered the first. A middle-aged woman, waking every silent morning to the feel of that unsqueezed trigger.
Susan closed her eyes and fired.
A new scream erupted—grating and musical in its pain. Blood gushed down the rubbery hide.
She fired again. The thing turned its flank to her. It backed away to starboard. Charley rolled aside, shook the feeling into his arm.
He scooped her up and nodded across the glass at the shattered locomotive. “That way,” he said into her ear.
She called to Illyenov to follow them. Illyenov had been afflicted with inspiration. “You hurt it!” he cried. He reared back with his second bottle of gas. “You Magyar, you Cossack. We’ve got you now!”
A machine gun opened up from the far side of the crater. Cheap Russian plating chattered like silverware in a drawer. She heard a bottle shatter. Light flared up, and she heard a breathy whoomp. Heat bathed the side of her face.
Where Illyenov had stood, a scarecrow wrapped in flames danced foolishly. It flapped its arms against its shoulders and legs. The scarecrow opened its mouth wide to scream, and—surprise—Illyenov’s voice burst forth.
Susan forgot the gasoline on her clothes. She grabbed for him. Something long and fibrous wrapped Illyenov around the chest and snapped him out of reach. He disappeared under the rubbery skirt of the thing, still burning.
Susan stared in amazement. Shrieve pulled her down as a line of tracers split the night right overhead. The glass trembled against her belly. She looked back over her shoulder to see the smoke gathering itself just yards behind her.
She grabbed his arm. “Time to go.” Urgently now.
They sprinted toward the wreck of the train. No time to worry where Malmagden was. They dove through a shattered windshield into the cab, followed by a line of .30-caliber slugs. The cylinder shook. Hot metal chunked over their heads.
Was Malmagden out there? He had to be dead by now. The locomotive shivered again. Slower this time. Something had gotten under the flank of the overturned train and started shoving.
Susan had hold of a steam throttle. Directly beneath her, an open window rested against the lakebed. A surge rose up against the engine’s driving wheels. She lost her grip. She fell to ground, feet-first. A second shove knocked her forward. The locomotive began to roll so that her legs were outside the cab.
She grabbed more throttles, anything she could find. Charley had her by the arms. He pulled her back into the train. A third shove began to roll the locomotive completely onto its roof. A membrane, bilious and wet, pressed in through the open window. Susan drew away as much as possible. But the windows above her were also open. Any minute, something would come down through there as well.
A moment of silence followed, like the trough before a steep wave. She grabbed onto Charley and he grabbed for whatever he could find. When it came, she realized, this one would be bad.
Machine guns opened up from the entire line of gun emplacements on the compound’s western perimeter. But the fire was panicked and indiscriminate. It did nothing but draw the monster’s attention.
Susan heard the relentless weight of the thing move off into the darkness. The fire from the camp grew frantic, to no effect. The creature moved methodically down the line of foxholes, dragging wire and machine guns and bodies in its wake.