It was like a wasp sting on her shoulder blade, and she heard the windshield crack at the same time - another bullet that went wide, or the one that just punched through her? She didn’t know, and figured it didn’t matter - she let herself fall back limply to the snow, as if shot dead.

Landing did not hurt as much as she feared it would, nor did the bullet wound, but she bet the latter was simply a temporary condition. She didn’t know how she couldn’t have seen the gunman when he must have been pretty damn close to hit his target in this weather, with such poor visibility, but she knew she had almost no time.

Even though she was sure the snowmobile was acting as a blind, she moved slowly moved her hand alone, snapping the cover off her holster (a small noise, swallowed by the wind) and clicking off the safety as she slowly withdrew her sidearm, a Ruger KP89. She heard and felt no new shots, so presumably her swan dive had been convincing, or maybe that had been an extremely lucky shot.

Her blood felt hot and itched maddeningly as it slid down her skin, but she managed to remain immobile, gun hidden beside her but cocked and ready, as she heard the crunch of footsteps nearing her.

She wanted to wound this son of a bitch, keep him alive for questioning, but she knew she really didn’t have a lot of choices here. He could have been alone, but it was more likely he had company. She would have to shoot first, and, if he survived, ask questions later.

Granular snow only occasionally fell in her open eyes; the wind blew most of it sideways, and it missed her. In her peripheral vision, something white lumbered towards her, in time with the crunching snow, and the sniper rifle he held seemed starkly black against his white clothing. Snow camouflage - weren’t they well prepared assholes?

As soon as he moved fast, shifted the rifle, she pulled her own gun and fired, not aiming but going for the general area of his head. She hit her target even better than she ever could have anticipated; his head seemed to explode in a shower of blood and bone, and he didn’t fall more than he toppled like an android that just had his battery pulled.

It was funny: in her entire twelve years in the police force, she had never fired her weapon in the line of duty, and now she felt absolutely nothing now that she had, and had killed a man. Maybe because he had already killed Reg; maybe because adrenaline was now dumping into her system because she was shot and losing blood like crazy. She could feel its queerly soothing warmth spreading down her torso and back, and wondered where the bullet had exited.

But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was she get moving and keep moving for as long as possible. Her first thought was to keep going down the road, but she left Logan at the cabin. If there were more - and she had a suspicion there was - she couldn’t leave a civilian to get killed in cold blood: serve and protect, right? Then they could take at least one of the bricks as evidence (or as negotiation, however it worked out) and get the fuck out of here; there was no way she could defend this place alone, but, on the plus side, the weather was working against them. They wouldn’t be getting far.

And, if Logan just happened to be in on this whole thing, she would kill him herself. So either way, that worked out.

She grabbed the dead man’s rifle, which was a type she had never seen before - it looked like a sleekly modified semi-automatic AR-15, with a strange kind of high powered sight, and what looked like some kind of silencer on the barrel. What the fuck was that? She’d never seen a silencer like this, and generally silencers weren’t silent (really they were just mufflers), and she’d never seen one for a semi-auto rifle with sniper range capability. She yanked the strap off his arm and slung it over hers, as she noticed the remains of his head were wearing a strange type of goggles - night vision, but a lot sleeker than the military had. Maybe she was wrong about these guys being small time.

There was pattering in the snow near her, but only when one dinged off the body of her snowmobile and whizzed past her head. She scrambled up onto the Sno-Cat, and seeing a light flash across the way, high up on the opposite hill. She blindly fired her newly acquired rifle, glad that, no matter how high the technology, the elements could almost always conspire to fuck it all up.

She had to drop the rifle and let it hang on her side as she started the snowmobile, feeling blood pool in her left glove as passing bullets tugged at her clothes, and she had no idea if any hit her or not. The snowmobile lunged forward as she put figurative petal to the metal, and tore off towards the trees. Unless there was a guy waiting for her there, she knew that was the best place she could be.

The thing was, in all this wind, it was impossible to aim as precisely as you wanted. The guy with no top to his skull anymore couldn’t quite nail her with a kill shot at close range (unless, of course, the round did manage to nick an artery in her arm, back, or chest - then she’d been dead in about ten minutes), and the sniper across the way (on the move judging from the jouncing of the flash from the barrel) kept trying for the lucky shock. He got one, but probably not the one he expected.

The noise was huge and fierce, and it seemed to hit her in the back as solidly as a battering ram, the heat washing over her like a sudden burst of sunlight. She had lost control of the Sno-Cat and was flying through the air when she realized, with a curious detachment, that one of the bullets had hit the gas tank of the tow truck, and the fucking thing had just gone up like a nuclear bomb.

She landed hard in the snow as she heard the snowmobile impact a tree with fiberglass shattering force, as huge dollops of wet snow and heavy branches plummeted down, torn free by the explosion, and flaming bits of debris were picked up and carried in the wind, dropping down all around her. She had been rattled pretty good, and the bullet wound in her shoulder seemed to flare as if in sympathy with the fire now consuming the remains of the truck chassis, but she shouted at herself in her own mind to get the fuck up. If she stayed down, she was dead. And the truck explosion was a good thing - bad for Reg, as there wouldn’t be much of him left to bury, but good for her, because now help was bound to be coming. They probably heard and saw that fireball all the way in Twotrees; she didn’t have to call this in. Firemen and Brent and Monie were bound to be swarming this place en masse in ten or fifteen minutes … which was the only problem. She had to stay alive that long.

She scrambled up to her feet and lurched towards the trees, rifle tucked under her arm, trying to ignore the dark spatters in the otherwise pristine snow. It was probably blood, but she didn’t want to know.

From the way branches cracked, she knew she was being shot at, but she wasn’t sure from where. She was too far for the long distance sniper to have at (although she knew he was closing the distance), so there had to be a third gunman as well, somewhere in the woods. As soon as she saw a flash of muzzle fire somewhere in the darkness between the trees, she hefted the rifle to her shoulder and sprayed randomly, basically just putting down covering fire as she moved. She never stopped moving through the heavy snow; she could not afford to.

The recoil from the rifle hurt her bullet wound more, and as she moved as rapidly as possible through the snow, a stitch developed in her side, leaving her short of breath. (At least she hoped it was just a stitch, and not internal damage … or another bullet wound … ) She gulped down as much air as she could, the cold scouring her throat raw.

She had no idea how close she was to the cabin when something hidden behind a tree grabbed her, yanking her both by her arm and her rifle into its meager shadow. She was about to kick it when he hissed, “It’s them, isn’t it?”

It was Logan. She could see his breath like white clouds, his grip on her arm like a steel claw. “Them?” She repeated quietly, not wanting to bring attention to them. Her ears were still ringing from the shots, and she wasn’t sure if she heard footsteps crunching in snow or not. She figured he meant the drug runners, so she said, “Yeah. Weren’t you supposed to guard the cabin?”

“I have been,” he said, and gestured towards something dark slightly uphill and ten meters from them - the cabin. Blinded by muzzle flash and snow glare, she had almost gone right past it. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, well, happens when you get shot, don’t it? Can you fire a gun?”

She couldn’t see his eyes or his face; he was just a silhouette with fucking strange hair. But there was something in his posture, something tense and almost animalistic, and she was obscurely glad she could not see his face. “I dunno. But I don’t need one.”

Rounds chewed up the bark of the tree trunk beside them, and branches snapped and came crashing down as Logan yanked her away, up towards the cabin, with more strength than she ever would’ve credited him with. But then again, this was a man who hiked the Rockies in jeans and flannels, with not a bit of frostbite to show for it.

She turned back and fired at the man shooting at them, but she twisted in a way that sent a knife blade of pain through her body, and made her right leg feel suddenly inexplicably weak. Either she just took another bullet, or an old one just found a place to settle. Shit.

More bullets peppered the snow as he dragged her into the cabin and slammed the door shut against the wind. She heard more rounds hit the cabin, punch through wood, but as soon as he let go of her arm, her right leg gave way and she hit the floor, aggravating all existing injuries. She tried not to cry out, but a little garbled yelp of pain escaped her anyways, and she realized she was squelching. Somewhere beneath layers of down and Gore-Tex, she was losing lots of blood, but then again, how many times had she been shot? She was running on pure adrenaline, and really couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Stay down,” Logan said, and walked right out into a hail of bullets.

She tried to call out after him, but he had already slammed the door behind him as more rounds punctured the cabin, sending splinters flying. She covered her head when they got close, but then started to crawl forward on her elbows and (one) knee, unable to believe that Logan had just walked out, unarmed, into the fate of Sonny Corleone. He really was a fucking headcase.

And that’s when she heard the scream.

It was hard to say what it was at first - it didn’t sound Human, but there was too much emotion in the sound to be anything but. It was a full throated roar of rage, with good dollops of agony and fear mixed in - it was so chilling she couldn’t help but freeze to the spot. She must have not been alone, because for a second it was like all gunfire just died. Maybe they were trying to figure out if they woke up a bear or something, but Lily felt a shudder of terror down her spine as she realized they woke something else up. That was Logan - who else could it be? - and that scream sounded primal, savage, and too painful to keep in; it sounded like a man who just lost what little mind he had, and was far from happy about it … and needed something to take it out on.

Gunfire started up again, and she forced herself to crawl forward more, trying to ignore the fact that she was crawling through her own blood, as she felt she had to give him some cover if he was still alive. There were no windows in this dingy hovel - why would there be? - but some of the rounds had torn a hole in the front wall that she was pretty sure she could jam her rifle barrel through. Everything in her hurt, and some part of her just wanted to stop and close her eyes, maybe get a breather, but she knew if she stopped her forward momentum she would stop altogether. She couldn’t think, but she couldn’t rest either; she would hold the fucking fort until back up arrived, because … well, she didn’t know why anymore. She just felt it was something she had to do.

A quick glance out the hole showed nothing but snow and darkness; there was no movement, no Logan splayed out on the ground. There were dark splotches that could have been blood, but just as well could have been debris. No way to tell at the moment. The wind moved the trees so violently she couldn’t judge if there were people out there at all. But she still heard sporadic gunfire, as well as a man somewhere down the hill shout, “Oh my god!” There was another burst of gunfire, then dead silence. In a strange way, she didn’t want to know what was happening out there.

There was movement outside, white on black, and she squeezed the trigger, aware that Logan wasn’t wearing white. The repeated recoils against her shoulder was agony, but she dealt with it, even with tears of pain spilling from her eyes. The white thing went down and didn’t move, so she bet she tagged it. Or she nailed a snowdrift; honestly, either was good.

God, she was so tired. And cold; her blood was starting to cool, and she felt slimy and wet, as well as beaten to a pulp. Her eyes were starting to lose focus as well, and by the way her rifle seemed to be wavering, her hands weren’t exactly steady either. Her eyes really wanted to close, and she had to fight them all the way. And she wondered why she was bothering to fight it.

She tried to focus, tightened her finger on the trigger, and wonder where the hell Logan was, and what he was doing. The gunshots were growing fewer and fainter. “You’re the Hulk, aren’t you?” She said, thinking aloud, and then laughed. Oh man, she was fading fast.

Lily noticed the world going gray at the edges, and she was starting to feel warmer now; it really was kind of pleasant. She clenched her fist and punched the bullet wound in her shoulder. She had to punch herself a couple of times before she hit the right spot, and she was instantly sorry.

She screamed and rolled aside as the pain that shot through her body was electric, and seemed to make her muscles convulse; maybe it was a seizure. Her vision was sharp focus red, and she could taste blood and bile in her mouth, as nausea came and went in a hard wave. She was fully conscious now, but shaking hard, and she fucking hurt! It felt like her blood was full of shrapnel, and her nerves had been scraped raw as pain bled through every fiber of her being. Unconsciousness really looked like the better of two evils now.

She was attempting to reach for the rifle when the wind slammed the door open … only it wasn’t actually the wind. A man stood there, dressed in a puffy white parka splattered with mud and blood, breathing hard white clouds, and aiming one of those modified AR-15s down at her. “You bitch,” he spat, and she noticed he had no goggles. His naked eyes were wide and wild with fear, and possibly chemical enhancement. But he was just a pale, blurry moon in her limited range of vision. “Why couldn’t you leave it alone?!”

She figured she was as good as dead, unless she could pull her Ruger in time. She managed to slide her shaking hand around the butt, as he was nearly vibrating with nerves, his eyes darting wildly around the room, briefly lighting on the board before coming back to her. God, how old was he? Nineteen? In spite of her poor vision, she could see his hands were shaking.

“Nobody else has to die here,” she told him, using her best calm cop voice. “Just put the gun down.”

It could have worked, but he was just too freaked, too scared of not getting away. He tensed on the rifle, and his upper lip curled like the high school bully he must have been in another life. “I didn’t wanna be a cop killer! You made me do this!”

Before she could find out which one of them was quicker on the trigger, it was all over.

He came in like a shadow, dark and swift, and even though he must have seen him in his peripheral vision, the gunman could not react fast enough, could not even turn around. Logan was behind him in the space between seconds, grabbed his head, and yanked. The crack was as loud as a rifle shot, and the boy’s body jerked once before Logan let him go and he collapsed to the floor, as boneless as a rag doll, head lolling at an angle charitably described as wrong. From zero to dead in a second. Well, he didn’t suffer - she’d never seen a neck broken so cleanly, with such precision and savage intent.

Maybe consciously Logan had no idea what he was doing, but someone had sure trained him well.

He looked down at her, huffing breath of steam like a dragon, like he had been running a marathon - and perhaps he had. How much ground had he covered in almost no time at all? And no more guns fired. Her head swum as she tried to calculate how many gunmen had been out there, armed with these rifles, and maybe at least one more with night vision goggles … no, it was impossible. He had no weapon; he couldn’t have killed them all, gotten behind them and snapped their spines clean. (Yes, he had a weapon. He was the weapon. Wasn’t that abundantly clear now?) He must have known some of them; he must have called them off.

But even she could see he was covered in blood, and his shirts were torn with bullet holes. He’d been shot several times in the torso, and blood was splashed over his face like morning rain. How much of it was his? “One got away,” he said, his voice sounding taut with rage. “One broke for a vehicle while this one came this way. I - I decided to get this one first.”

It almost sounded like he was apologizing. “Sorry for saving your life - won’t happen again.” “They’ll get him,” she assured him. “He can’t go far, not even on a snowmobile.” She let go of her Ruger, but with a reluctance even she found surprising. Was she thinking of shooting Logan herself? Maybe he could have incapacitated the kid rather than kill him, maybe. In time to stop him from shooting her? She didn’t know. She knew, if he had been a cop, she wouldn’t have questioned the shot. She was planning to shoot the kid herself.

She attempted to push herself up to her knees as the whine of fire engine and emergency sirens doppled closer - the cavalry, a tad late, but still welcome. Logan seemed torn, and looked between the open door and her as if trying to decide whether to stay and help, or bolt, run from the thing that haunted him, the people that scared him. “Go if you hafta,” she said, feeling alarmingly dizzy, even though she hadn’t quite mastered sitting up just yet. “They’re here, I’m good, you weren’t here.” She didn’t know how she’d explain this in her report, but she figured she’d worry about it only if she lived. No point otherwise.

She saw the shock in his posture first, before she could make out his face. He didn’t believe she had opened the metaphorical door to him; she had told him to walk. It only now occurred to her he had been shot, he needed medical attention, he could go out in the night and die … but for some reason, she thought he was fine. No matter that his shirt had been shredded by multiple impacts, several quite close to the “kill zone” in target shooting; she really thought that he was okay in spite of it. It made no sense, but he made no sense. None at all.

Her glove skidded on her own blood on the floor, and she nearly hit the floor face first. She managed to stop herself, but she landed on the side where she had been shot, and had to swallow a scream as more pain surged through her, sharp and hot. God, she was fucked, wasn’t she? She survived just long enough to die before they could find her - now that was quality irony. A fresh gout of blood came up her throat, and she realized she was not going to be standing up right away. Maybe after a nap. She just needed to find the strength to attempt it.

But when she opened her weary eyes, Logan was crouched beside her, looking down at her in a confusion so deep it was almost kind of funny. “You’re dying,” he said, like a doctor making a diagnosis.

“No shit, Sherlock. I got more lead in me than a Sherman tank.” She tried to laugh at her own joke, and failed. It hurt too much. “Just go already, Logan. You did good, you’re absolved for whatever crime you think you committed, so get out of here.” Even she wasn’t sure what she meant by that “absolved” comment, but in a way she did, didn’t she? It was so obvious - there was a guilt in the fear. He wasn’t just afraid of people, he was afraid of people being exposed to him. And considering how he had just completely wiped out a bunch of armed drug runners, he may have had a good reason to fear people being around him. It also gave her a good, solid lead as to what his “crime” was. It was funny how much shit you realized in retrospect.

That curious warmth spread over her again, but this time she didn’t fight it; it was nice. She was tired of being so fucking cold, and the heat even seemed to take most of the pain away, reducing it to a dull throb. But she had to know one thing before he took off, so she asked, “Who are you?”

He was still looking down at her, but she couldn’t really see his face; it was just a blur, and she had no idea how to focus. But if he had said the Hulk she just might have believed him. “I’m … I’m what’s left behind.”

The Hulk would have made a fuckload more sense than that, but as she closed her eyes and let that inviting warm darkness sweep her away, she really didn’t care. Sometimes any answer was better than none.

****

Brent was mostly annoyed about some stupid mystery explosion getting him out of bed (it was probably a propane tank someone hadn’t secured properly, damaged by cold or some idiot trying to tap it) until he heard Steve Andrychuk, resident macho fire chief and regional cook off winner five years in a row, report on the radio, “Looks like the Rose truck went up.”

A cold shock of fear woke him up better than Tim Horton’s jet fuel grade coffee could. He picked up the radio from its cradle, and asked, “Are you sure? Reg was using that as a stake out blind.”

“Shit. Let’s hope he wasn’t still in it, ‘cause it’s spread all over the hills here.”

“Shit.” Even though Brent knew the four wheel drive could handle these roads, no matter the storm (it was actually the police department’s truck, but they only had the one, so during the winter months they traded it by weeks - it was the end of his week to take it home with him; ironically, it was Reg’s next), he was still cautious about putting the gas pedal all the way down, as much as he wanted to. The headlight beams were barely cutting through the thick, swirling snow, and sometimes the wind blew so hard he could feel it trying to shove the goddamn truck. This was not a night for man nor beast; he really hoped it had made Reg pack it in early.

The radio crackled with static as he came to the bend of Briar’s corner, and suddenly Steve came back on, sounding like something had freaked him out. “Uh, get a move on Ellison - this is a crime scene. We got a body here …”

The way he trailed off was even more unnerving than what he had actually said. “Is it Reg?”

“No, I - no. I don’t recognize him, but … most of his head is gone, so I think you’re gonna need to go by fingerprints here.”

Oh god damn it! One murder in Bear Creek since it’s founding, and now that one murder had seemingly led to a spate; some kind of violence damn had burst, and now the modern day was flooding into this backwater mountain town like gray water from a broken sewage treatment plant. He ended his conversation with Steve, and put out a call on the general band. “Nick, have you gotten a hold of the Chief yet?”

It was a moment before Nick Leary got on the radio, and he sounded really stressed. Late night shift like this was the deadest time in Deadville; Nick usually caught up on his computer games during this time. “Uh, no. Company says her cell’s not in service, but I think the storm’s fucking up the transmission towers.”

“What about her home number?”

“Just getting her machine.”

He had a really bad feeling about this all, making it seem like his gut was twisting itself in knots. Lily would be the first person out here, he knew that; she wasn’t sit on her ass and give orders kind of Chief, like Milligan had a tendency to be. She was as out there as she was as just a line cop; he had never struck her as the desk type, and that’s what he liked about her. Maybe she was already on scene … but why wasn’t she on the radio? Even if she didn’t have hers, she could (and would) borrow Steve’s.

“Have you heard from Reg?” he asked, pushing aside his nagging fears about Lily. Fuck, where the hell was she?

“Reg?” Nick repeated in disbelief. “No. Should I have?”

“Call him. If he’s home, tell me.”

“Wh-” Nick began, but Brent had cradled the radio receiver, shutting it off. Even though he could barely see anything ahead of him, and his windshield wipers kept getting caught in sudden gouts of snow, he saw the flash of red lights, and knew there was a fire engine somewhere ahead of him. He pulled over to what he presumed was the shoulder of the road, the wheels skidding slightly as he braked, and the engine was still ticking as he jumped out of the truck and started slogging towards the scene.

There was just one engine here - others might be coming in from Twotrees, but since they were on the other side of the pass, it would take a while - and what passed for an ambulance in Bear Creek. It was actually just a jury rigged SUV driven by the town doctor, Molly Sutcliffe, who may have been nearing sixty, but still showed no sign of slowing down.

In fact, he found the strangely grandmotherly doctor kneeling in the snow beside the body. The fire engine was superfluous - in spite of the intensity of the wind, the cold and the snow had put the damper on the flames, and all that was really left was a twisted, smoldering chassis, so Steve and the three men he’d brought with him were standing around, looking like they really didn’t know what to do. He sympathized.

Molly looked up as he started slogging towards her, and Brent found it disconcerting to see this woman who reminded him of his Grandma Janey in her fur lined black parka and tiny reading glasses studying a corpse that was half-buried in newly fallen snow. “Odd angle trajectory,” she said as he came up beside her to have a look at the body. She gestured at a dark smear not far from the stiff. “See? The bullet tore the top of his head clean off. A shot from ground level?”

Brent did a double take at the dark smears. Those weren’t brains, were they? He told himself it was the smell of burning rubber and metal from the smoking tow truck that made his gorge rise.

There was a whine of a snowmobile engine, and his sudden hope that it was Lily was dashed, as he knew she would never wear a man’s brown leather jacket - it was Monie. “What the fuck’s happened here?” She exclaimed, even before she shut off the engine. “Where’s Reg?”

“Nick’s checking that for me,” he told her, as she got off the Sno-cat and started towards them.

“What about the Chief?”

He didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t know where she was, that he had this terrible feeling they’d find her body - along with Reg’s - somewhere around here, maybe buried under snowdrifts that had an ominous taint of red. But just as he opened his mouth to try, Clay, one of Steve’s guys, shouted, “Ellison!”

He and Monie both looked sharply towards him, but Clay had aimed his large safety light into the dark stand of trees, and the other firemen followed suit. For a moment, Brent didn’t know what they were trying to get a look at, but then the swaying of dark branches gave way to genuine Human movement, and the glint of light off metal.

Both he and Monie had pulled their guns and taken aim before the figure resolved itself into a strange man - the man the Chief had been looking for? - with a bloody face, who flinched from the bright lights, but kept coming down anyways. “Freeze!” he shouted. “Don’t you - “ But the rest of his commands died in his throat as he saw what the man was carrying.

In his arms was the bloody body of Lily; one of her arms was hanging down, and something dripped from her sleeve with a steady, unnerving rhythm.

Oh god, he had killed her. He was going to murder that son of a bitch.