Within the tiny cage, the fifteen-hundred-pound cow thrashed about in a braying, blood-splashing panic. Tim flopped limply, unconscious, thrown about by the cow’s torn body and its kicking rear legs. Cappy’s right hand punched madly at the thing biting his left arm.
Sara drew her Beretta and fired at the cow’s head, the gunshots thinly echoing through the confined space. The first bullet removed most of the lower jaw in a spray of blood and splintering bone. The second missed Miss Patty Melt’s thrashing head and ripped through the floor. The third turned the cow’s eye into a gaping red hole of negative space.
Miss Patty Melt convulsed harder, legs and hooves twitching violently. She let out a strange, sad yell that sounded achingly human, a noise Sara would never forget despite the horrors that were to follow in the coming days.
Sara dropped hard, planting her knees on Miss Patty Melt’s muscular neck. She put the barrel in the cow’s ear and pulled the trigger once more. Blood splashed up, splattering her coat, her face.
The cow stopped screaming.
Cappy did not.
His face contorted in agony, he punched madly with his right fist, raining blows down on the bloody creature locked on his left arm. “Let go let go!” He lurched back into the aisle, pulling the slimy, jaw-locked monstrosity all the way out of the cow’s stomach.
Holy shit it’s as big as he is holyshitholyshit. Sara reflexively jumped back a step, instinct screaming at her to stay away from the thing.
Suddenly Miller was there, throwing himself on the bloody creature, wrapping his arms around the thing. “Sara, shoot it!”
Sara put the barrel against the abomination’s skinless head, angled the Beretta so the bullet wouldn’t hit Cappy’s arm, then pulled the trigger. A baseball-sized chunk erupted out of the skull, spraying blood and brains and bone.
The thing fell limp, its dead jaws opening just enough for Cappy to slide his ravaged arm off the embedded teeth.
Sara wiped the back of her hand across her face, scraping away wetness. Some of it remained, hot but rapidly cooling in the plane’s frigid air.
The remaining cows lurched and bucked against their flight harnesses, probably driven to panic by the screams of Miss Patty Melt. Hooftips scraped the floor, filling the plane with a clicking, scratching chorus.
Sara saw Rhumkorrf in the veterinary area, holding tight to the edge of the lab table.
“Help… me,” Cappy called out in a weak voice, drawing her attention back where it belonged.
“Got you, pal,” Miller said. He leaned in to examine his best friend’s wound.
Sara stood and took in the carnage—two wounded people, a huge cow, a dead thing the size of a Great Dane and more blood than a slaughterhouse.
“Miller, how bad is it?”
He moved so Sara could see Cappy’s arm. She heard her own automatic gasp—the monster’s teeth had broken Cappy’s radius and ulna in several places. Blood spurted from the wound, spilling on his lap and on the floor where it mixed with the blood of the dead cow and the blood of the creature. His hand wobbled sickly each time Miller moved it, as if only a few strands of muscle kept it attached.
“We need help, fast,” Miller said. He tore off his jacket and wrapped it around his friend’s wound, trying to stop the bleeding with pressure. He looked at the bloody fetal corpse. “Sara, what the hell is that thing? ’Cause it sure as fuck ain’t no cow!”
“It’s dead, that’s what it is,” Sara said. “And as soon as we get out of this weather, we’re opening the back doors and dumping every last one of these fucking cows out the rear ramp and into Lake Superior.”
She rushed to an intercom panel and punched the cockpit button. “Alonzo, call Manitoba right away. We need an alternate landing site.”
The speaker crackled with Alonzo’s voice. “But Magnus ordered radio silence.”
“Cappy’s hurt bad. Get Manitoba on the line and tell them we need a landing site with medical facilities. We need it now. If they can’t find us one, tell them we’re heading for Houghton-Hancock.”
“Got it.”
Sara sprinted back to stall three, passing the still-anxious, still-lurching cows. Straps and buckles rattled, hooves clacked hard against thick plexiglass.
The dog-thing remained in the aisle, its blood spreading in a slowly expanding puddle. Redness clung to fur: white with black spots. The heavy, triangular head looked almost as large as the rest of the body. A strange growth stuck out of the back of the skull, like a single antelope horn but parallel to the stubby body. The growth wasn’t bone, though; it looked flexible. Skin ran from the growth down to the bloody creature’s back.
She tried to think, tried to process. She wasn’t trained for this. No one was trained for this. She looked back to the vet lab, where Rhumkorrf was still standing, his hands locked on the black lab table.
“Doc! Get your ass over here, we’ve got wounded!”
He let go of the table with an obvious act of will, then jogged down the aisle. Sara couldn’t bear to look at Cappy, so she focused on the fetus. She could see why Miss Patty Melt had kicked that way despite the poison coursing through her veins. Skinless little arms, still folded against its body, ended in paws with six-inch-long needle-claws.
That… thing, it didn’t want to die. It felt the poison… it tried to get away.
Then Rhumkorrf was next to her, kneeling by Cappy and Miller, his knees dipping into puddles of mixed blood. He took one long look at the wound, then started pulling his belt out of his pants.
“Hold him,” he said to Miller.
Rhumkorrf looped the belt around Cappy’s arm, just above the horrific wound, then slid the tongue through the buckle. Miller grabbed Cappy’s good arm and a shoulder. Sara reached over the top of Rhumkorrf and put her hands on the wounded man’s ankles.
Rhumkorrf leaned close to Cappy’s ear. “I have to put on the tourniquet to stop the bleeding. This is going to hurt very much, yes?”
Cappy’s eyes remained squeezed shut, but he nodded.
“Hold him,” Rhumkorrf said again, then firmly pulled the belt tight.
Cappy threw his head back and screamed.
Rhumkorrf tightened it further, then looped the free end of the belt around the arm and tied it fast. “Get him to the infirmary. I’ll look at Tim and come up as soon as I can.”
“Sara,” Miller said. “Get Cappy’s legs.”
She turned her attention to the task at hand. They carried their wounded friend up the aisle, past the stalls to the lift. The elevator platform lowered. Still holding Cappy, she and Miller rode the lift to the second deck.
NOVEMBER 30, 8:59 P.M.
THEY LAID CAPPY down on the infirmary table. His blood trailed out the door all the way back to the lift, like some twisted version of Hansel and Gretel.
“This fucking hurts,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Miller ripped open a cabinet, pulled out gauze and an air splint. “Just hold tight, buddy. You’ll be okay.” He looked up at Sara. “We need that landing site, now.”
Sara walked to the infirmary’s intercom and pushed the cockpit button.
“’Zo, what’s our status?”
No response.
She pushed the button again.