Joshua raised the .44 Magnum and aimed at the thing’s face.
The creature hissed, showing a mouth filled with red froth and chunks of dark flesh.
“Shoot it!”
The brute stepped over Bertha, ignoring her, and came toward Joshua.
Joshua could feel his blood pounding in his temples, and he trembled as his finger tightened on the trigger. “Please!” he pleaded. “Don’t make me shoot you!”
Bertha struggled to her knees. “Don’t talk to the damn thing! Shoot it!”
The creature was only feet away, coming on slowly, confidently, as if sensing Joshua’s inner turmoil.
Joshua felt sweat line the palms of his hands as he tried to will his finger to fire the Magnum. “Don’t come any closer,” he warned the thing.
“Shoot it!” Bertha bent over, her head touching the grass, dreading what was coming.
“Please!” Joshua begged one last time.
The brute suddenly roared and lunged for Joshua.
The .44 Magnum fired, the bullet striking the creature in the forehead, bringing it up short, a stunned expression on its horrible face.
“I’m sorry,” Joshua said softly.
The Redhawk cracked again, and again.
The thing was slammed backward by the impact, howling as it dropped to the ground, the muscular limbs still twitching.
“I’m so sorry.”
Joshua walked up to the brute, placed the barrel against its head, and pulled the trigger.
“May the Spirit forgive me.”
Joshua, abruptly weak, sat down on the grass, the Redhawk falling beside him. He couldn’t seem to focus his thoughts. What had he just done? Killed another creature! “Thou shalt not kill.” Violated one of the Ten Commandments! Rejected every moral and spiritual imperative! He sagged, feeling a need for sleep.
“Don’t faint on me, sucker!”
A firm hand gripped Joshua’s shoulder and shook him.
“There might be more of them things around. We got to get back to the SEAL!”
Joshua tried to touch Bertha, but his arms wouldn’t rise.
“It’s okay,” she was telling him. “The thing is dead. You did real good.”
Joshua nodded. “I did real good,” he repeated, mumbling.
“What’s the matter with you, Josh?” Bertha asked. “It was it or me. I’m glad you picked me! I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever fire that gun!”
“I killed it,” Joshua said numbly.
Bertha stared at the gaping holes in the creature’s head. “You sure as hell did!”
“I killed it!”
“Hey? What’s wrong? Is this the first time you’ve ever killed somethin’?”
Joshua nodded.
“Well, don’t blame yourself. God had a lot to do with it.”
“God?” Joshua gaped at Bertha, uncomprehending.
“Sure enough. When that thing was comin’ at you, I thought you weren’t ever going to shoot. So I did like you told me. I talked to God,” she said proudly.
“You talked to God?”
“Yep. I told God I didn’t want us ending up as dead meat, and I asked if God would help you fire the gun.”
“You did what?” Joshua’s head was clearing and he stood.
“You bet. I asked God to make your finger pull the trigger. I talked to God inside my head, just, like you said I should.”
“You asked God to help me kill?”
“Sure did.” Bertha was beaming, despite her pain. “And damn if it didn’t work! Maybe there is something to this God business after all!”
Joshua began laughing, an emotional release to the recent events, his mirth uncontrollable.
“What’s so funny?” Bertha inquired, trying to understand.
“Nothing,” Joshua managed to reply, before the laughter doubled him over.
“I’m sure glad you can laugh while I suffer,” Bertha said harshly.
Joshua immediately straightened, the thought of her injury sobering him.
“That’s better.”
“How bad is it?” he asked, taking her left arm and examining the bite marks.
“I’ve been hurt worse,” she answered. “You know, Josh, White Meat sure was right about you.”
“How do you mean?”
“No offense meant,” she said, inadvertently flinching when he accidentally touched a tender spot near her wound, “but you are one strange dude!”
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Joshua said, sighing, gazing at the dead brute, “at the rate we’re going, by the time this trip is done, I probably won’t have much strangeness left in me.”
“You’ll be normal like the rest of us?” Bertha asked.
“You call yourselves normal?”
Chapter Twelve
“I can’t get over it!” Hickok laughed uproariously, despite the lancing agony in his head. “I just can’t get over it!”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” Joshua dryly commented. “I believe we get the picture.”
“Old Josh actually blows away one of those critters! Incredible!” Hickok couldn’t seem to stop laughing.
“It wasn’t so funny for those who were there,” Bertha observed stiffly.
“Sorry, Black Beauty,” Hickok apologized. “But if you knew Josh like I know Josh, you’d be plumb amazed at him shooting that thing. Say, what are we going to call them disgusting vermin anyway?” he called out to Blade, who was driving the SEAL back to the concrete building in the center of Thief River Falls.
“I don’t know what they were,” Blade replied.
“They sure were ugly brutes,” Bertha stated, frowning.
“Then that’s what we’ll call them,” Blade said.
“What?” Joshua asked. “Ugly? I thought that was the name the people in the Twin Cities used for the mutates.”
“It is,” Blade confirmed. “No, I mean we’ll officially dub the creatures we’ve encountered the brutes. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“The brutes?” Geronimo smiled. “It certainly is a scientific title, I’ll say that. Plato would be proud of you, Blade.”
“Do you think there are any more?” Bertha nervously inquired.
“Probably,” Blade admitted. “Whatever the brutes are, I doubt there were just the two we killed in existence. There are bound to be more.”
“Where the blazes do they come from?” Hickok wanted to know.
“If I knew that,” Blade responded, driving at a sedate pace, “I’d qualify for a position as a Family Empath.” He searched for Joshua in the rear-view mirror. “By the way, Joshua, I’m proud of the manner in which you handled yourself during the attack on poor Bertha.”
“It wasn’t much,” Joshua said softly, embarrassed.
“To the contrary,” Blade disagreed, “it was a major step for you to take.
What pleases me most, though, is that you finally brought your psychic abilities into play. It was about time.”
“I require relative quiet and a minimum of distractions to properly focus my mental capabilities,” Joshua explained. “Since we left the Home, everything has happened too fast. There’s been barely time to catch my breath.”
“Well, pard,” Hickok spoke up, “don’t expect things to change much during the rest of this trip. We seem to attract trouble like horse manure attracts flies.”
“You always did have an eloquence with words.” Geronimo chuckled.
“We’re here,” Blade announced, braking the transport in front of the Watchers’ former headquarters and parking at the foot of the front steps.
“So what now?” Bertha questioned.
“We tend to your wounds,” Blade replied, exiting the SEAL, “and hold a conference.”
Joshua, over their vociferous objections, forced Hickok and Bertha to recline on blankets next to the bar, Bertha on her mattress, Hickok by her side on the floor. The bites on Bertha’s arm were deep, and some of her flesh had been torn away by the hungry brute, but the injury wasn’t life threatening. Joshua solicitously cleaned the bites, placed a portion of herbal remedy over the exposed areas, and bandaged her arm with strips of clean cloth.