Their fetid smell clawed at Mia’s nose as she lunged at them, her eyes stinging from the heat of her torch, her back inches from the raging bonfire that licked hungrily at it.
“We’re not going to be able to hold them off forever,” she hissed to Corben, “and there’s more than seven of them.”
Corben had been thinking the same thing.
His eyes had been scouring their perimeter, trying to gauge how many they were up against. From what he could see, there seemed to be ten of them, maybe a dozen. At least, those were the ones he could see on the front line.
He faltered, his strength long gone, his legs living on borrowed time. A couple of the predators decided to push a little harder and darted at him, their long muzzles wide-open, their wet tongues slobbering ravenously, their sharp fangs gleaming in the firelight. He stabbed back with his brand, struggling to remain on his feet, the throbbing of an overtaxed heart deafening in his ears. The wolves dodged the flames with ease, pulling back with lightning agility. As if sensing his faltering life force, one of them decided to go for the kill and leapt at him, paws and jaws flung wide and aimed at his neck. Corben squeezed off a round that caught it in midflight, and it yelped and dropped like a sandbag, at his feet. Another grabbed the opportunity and pounced at Corben, who stopped it with another shot. The others seemed momentarily spooked by the gunshots and the sudden deaths of their brethren and retreated, receding into the darkness.
“You alright?” Mia asked, her eyes still locked on the shadows stalking them.
Corben could barely stand or keep his eyes open. He felt as if he were sinking into a smothering abyss.
“We’re going to need those automatics,” he rasped through clenched teeth. A burning sensation, more fierce than the heat from the bonfire, was scorching him from the inside. “Where’s the nearest one?”
“Down that way.” Mia pointed in the direction of the fallen villagers. “But they were too far to reach, I told you.”
“We don’t have much choice. I’m not going to get the rest of them with the handful of bullets this piece of junk has left in it. And without them, we’re dead anyway. The fire’s going to give out sometime. They’ll just wear us out, it’s what they do. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on ending up as wolf feed.”
“What do you want to do?” Mia asked, her mouth dry with fear.
“Grab two big fire sticks. The biggest you can carry. We’ll head out there, back to back. Take it one step at a time, keep them at bay. If I need to, I’ll use the bullets I have left. If we can get to one of the guns, I think I can take them out. What do you say?”
“Can you make it there?”
Corben wiped the beads of sweat streaming down his face. “Never felt better.” He grinned. “Shall we?”
Mia met his gaze. No matter what he’d done or what his intentions had been, he’d still saved her life more than once, and maybe, just maybe, he was going to do it again. Which had to count for something.
“Come on,” he blurted, coughing up some blood. “While we’re young,” he added, a sardonic glint in his eyes.
Mia bent to the foot of the bonfire and pulled out two large, flaming logs.
She nodded at Corben.
“Lead the way, but stay close,” he told her.
With her back against him, they crab-walked, sideways, inching away from the fire, heading into dark waters, swinging the torches back and forth, surrounding themselves with a ring of protective fire. Step by step, they edged closer and closer to the spot where one of the villagers had fallen, the image of the man’s dead body getting torn apart by the wolves clawing at their debilitated minds. All around them, the creatures snapped and snarled, lunging and pulling back, running around, their glowing eyes locked on their prey.
In the dim firelight, Corben spotted the shredded carcass of the villager, and, not far from it, the glint of the AK-47’s barrel.
“That way,” he grunted to Mia, adjusting their trajectory, angling towards the weapon of their salvation.
He felt his legs about to give out, but willed them to stay with him a bit longer, and with a Herculean effort, he managed to edge them over to the fallen machine gun.
“Keep them off me while I check it,” he managed, as he reached down and picked up the gun. It felt as if it weighed a ton in his hands. He grunted and winced as he lifted it up, then steadied himself and clicked out its magazine, pushing against the top cartridge with his fingers, checking its load.
“Well?” Mia asked, desperation ringing in her voice.
“We’re good to go,” he shot back, barely able to stand now. He set the selector to semiauto and half-turned to be able to see her face. She was looking at him, her eyes ratcheted wide with nervous anticipation.
“Take this,” he told her, handing her the rifle. “I’ll take down as many as I can, but if they get me, you’ll have to finish them off with this. The safety’s off. Just aim and squeeze, okay?”
She managed a smile. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but he knew now was not the time. She knew it too.
The creatures were now in a frenzy, sensing the final confrontation and the imminent kill. One of them bunched up its hind legs and pounced at Corben. He squeezed the trigger, and the wolf jerked in midair and fell dead just as the others swarmed in for the kill.
Corben loosed off more rounds, swinging the gun left and right, spitting death at them. His body was running on pure momentum now, each shot resonating across him, pushing him backwards against Mia, his fingers stuck in a death clutch on the gun’s handle and magazine. One after another, the wolves fell, stopped in midair as if hit by an invisible sledgehammer or slamming against a nonexistent glass barrier, toppling on top of each other, littering the ground with fur and bone and blood.
With two remaining wolves snapping at his feet, the firing pin slammed against the empty chamber in a loud clunk. One of the wolves leapt up at him. He spun the wooden stock of the Kalashnikov upwards and batted it off him. It righted itself almost immediately, as if he had swatted it with nothing more than a rolled-up newspaper. Before it could come around for another frontal attack, he’d flicked the machine gun in his hands, gripping it now from its barrel, like an ax, and brought it down heavily on the creature, pounding it once, twice, desperate yelps slicing the still air.
“Jim,” he heard Mia yell, but before he could turn, he was hit from behind by the last surviving wolf. He felt its teeth digging into his neck, its claws carving into his back, and the first wolf recovered, spun on itself, and joined in. The carbine fell from his hands and he saw the earth rise up to meet him as he plummeted to the ground. The pain was surreal, his body getting ripped to pieces from all quarters, but he was already numb to it all, his neurons long exhausted and no longer able to transmit any sensations to his depleted brain. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a gunshot, then another, and another still, and the movement on him stopped, the mauling ceased, and the teeth and claws that had buried themselves in his body froze in place.
He rolled onto his back and felt the light leaving his body. He saw Mia’s vague form grunting as she yanked at the beasts that had been tearing at him, pulling them off him, and then he saw her face looming down at him, studying him with a combination of horror and sadness, tears from her eyes dripping down onto his lips, their salty taste resuscitating the dead cells they were landing on, her soft fingers moving across his face and clearing something off his forehead, her lips moving and saying something he couldn’t quite fathom, a mesmerizing halo of distant stars shimmering around her heavenly face, and he decided it would be a good way to die, better than any he had ever imagined for himself or thought he deserved. He might have managed a smile, but he wasn’t sure of it, as he drank in a final warming sip of the glorious elixir before him before it faded to black and all feeling deserted his pillaged body.