Lou jumped out of the van. After a moment of hesitation, Sam fired.
Damn. He wasn’t quite as reluctant to use the gun as Lou had expected.
Lou’s leg buckled beneath him as he stepped onto the ground but he maintained his footing and did a fast limp to the back of the van. He winced as he did so--if he’d actually had any stitches in, they definitely would have torn at that. Hopefully Sam would waste a few precious seconds trying to work up the courage to get out of the van and come after him.
He threw open the back doors and grabbed the first thing he saw. He pulled the pin out of the grenade and tossed it over the van. He’d used a couple of fragmentation grenades before, but strictly for recreational purposes out in the New Mexico desert and never in a moment of extreme urgency. He couldn’t remember how much time he had between pulling the pin and the explosion--not that it mattered, since it wasn’t as if he could leisurely stand there waiting for the optimum moment to throw.
He slammed his hands over his ears and ran.
The grenade went off. Over the explosion, Lou heard Sam’s cry.
The questionable wisdom of throwing a grenade near a van containing a wide variety of explosives was not lost on Lou, but what else was he supposed to do?
Sam lay on the ground, half of his face black and charred. Though his limbs all remained intact, the bone was visible in several places on his body. The sight was grisly and sickening enough that Lou didn’t immediately notice that Sam still held the gun.
The bullet grazed Lou’s left thigh. He clutched at the wound and dropped to his knees.
Sam shouted something incoherent that might have been “I’ll get you” and fired another shot. Thank God he’d been so badly injured--the shot missed by almost nothing, and Lou was confident that it would have been an easy kill shot otherwise.
He forced himself to get back up. At least three of his bandages turned red all at once. He quickly stepped over to the right back corner of the van, which put him out of Sam’s sight unless Sam dragged himself across the ground a couple of feet. That seemed unlikely.
Lou hastily looked over his weapon selection. He didn’t want to kill Sam if he didn’t have to, but he couldn’t have the guy shooting at the van as he drove off. There had to be another tranquilizer rifle.
There were a couple of normal-looking rifles, and a few handguns, but nothing that seemed to be a tranquilizer.
There were several more grenades. A box labeled “Dynamite.” Another crossbow.
Sam fired another shot. It didn’t come anywhere close, and he couldn’t possibly see Lou, so he was just firing wildly. Lou didn’t blame him for losing his mind.
Screw it. There was no time to make a careful selection of weaponry or mentally debate the moral elements of the situation. He had to take Sam out of the equation, get in the van, and drive off to help George.
He picked up one of the handguns, then limped the long way around the van, focusing on not passing out. He peeked around the corner, saw that Sam was still looking toward the rear, and shot him in the head.
Lou immediately dropped the gun, leaned against the van, and let out a violent dry heave.
Fuck.
He’d seen a lot of awful things today, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d never murdered a human being. Even a cowardly little shit like Sam.
Focus.
Since he’d been forced to take a life, it was very important that he not waste it. If he used this opportunity to save George’s life, things would balance out, sort of. If he let George die because he was too busy wallowing in his guilt, well, that was a pretty lousy reason to guarantee himself eternal damnation.
The grenade had really done a number on the side of the van, but the tires looked okay. He offered a silent apology to the dead kid, got in the driver’s seat, and started up the engine.
He couldn’t wait to see how well Ivan did against this arsenal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Caged Madness
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you, George?” Ivan inquired.
“Something antisocial?” George asked, trying not to give away that he was in incredible pain and was scared out of his mind. Being Ivan’s prisoner like this was bad enough, but Michele was most assuredly not doing well. Her skin color had gone from pale to looking almost jaundiced, and he thought her eyes had become a much darker shade of brown. She reminded him of a druggie having a massive overdose, except that instead of heroin coursing through her veins, she had werewolf spit.
“You cannot even imagine what I’m going to do to you,” said Ivan. “Not even in your worst nightmares can you conceive of what’s going to happen.”
“That’s pretty vague,” George noted. “I’d expect more from you. When a guy like you is reduced to threatening me in generalities, I can’t help but feel less frightened than I was before you started running your mouth.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s just drive in silence, so you can think about what I might do to you instead.”
“That completely works for me.”
George needed full concentration for this next part, anyway. It was really going to suck. He pressed his dislocated shoulder against one of the cage bars, trying to line the ball up with the joint socket. Of course, he couldn’t see the bones inside his shoulder, so he wouldn’t know if this was correct until the unpleasant moment of truth.
Thank God Ivan couldn’t see what he was doing in the rear-view mirror. He’d purposely swerve or hit a bump.
“So what are you thinking about?” Ivan asked.
“You know, when you keep talking like this, it makes you seem insecure,” George said. “Why are you insecure, Ivan? It seems to me like you’ve got the upper hand. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Just keep talking. You’re only making it worse for yourself.”
“You’re not even listening. My point is that you’re talking too much. It indicates a lack of confidence. I’m supposed to be sitting here thinking ‘I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!’ but when I hear all of that jabber from you I can’t help but believe that you’re worried about something.”
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that I was talking because I was worried. How does pointing that out work to your advantage? I’m curious.”
“You might get so mad that you make a mistake.”
“Like you did right before I escaped from the cage?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, Georgie, I hate to break this to you, but not only am I not going to stop the van so I can go back there and try to scare you, but you’re unlikely to do a surprise transformation into a wolfman. You’re at quite a bit more of a disadvantage than I was.”
“I understand that.”
“But if you find my chatter reassuring, hey, that’s your decision.”
“It’s not really a decision. More of a mood.”
“Fuck you.”
“Now, when I said ‘fuck you’ before, you made a big deal out of it, like it was a sign of weakness. I don’t want to be a jerk about this, Ivan, but my theory about your lack of confidence is still holding up.”
Ivan was silent for a moment. “I’m taking your eyelids first.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You wanted specifics? The first thing I’m going to do is very carefully slice off your eyelids. Then we’re going to play a fun little game where we each get one of the eyelids, and we flick them against the wall, and we see whose falls off first. It’s really kind of a fun game. You’d be surprised how long an eyelid will stick to the wall if it hits with the wet side.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then it drops to the floor, and it’s not a very fun game at all. You have to flick it just right.”
George had nothing else to say to that. He took a deep breath, worked up his courage, and then slammed his shoulder against the metal bar as hard as he could.
He bellowed in pain. Michele looked at him with mild curiosity.