The men stopped, unaware that the figure had just lifted a double-bladed ax from a wall-mounted hanger.
“Run,” Bird hollered at the men. He lunged in front of Penelope and opened fire with the handgun. Dark chunks exploded off the assailant’s upper body, but the wounds didn’t stop him. He raised the ax over his head.
The tool came down on the skull of the closest man—
—spraying gore, driving him to the floor.
The second man threw himself away from the gunfire, ducking behind a display barrel of foil-wrapped Glow Sticks. Bird ejected the spent cartridges and the man scrambled to find better shelter. Trapped between Bird and the ax-wielding maniac, he clambered up the six-foot-high steel shelves dividing his aisle and the next. The sheet metal bent under his weight, spilling an avalanche of merchandise, but didn’t slow his ascent.
He reached the top when the first tent stake hit him.
They came out of nowhere. A dozen of them.
One after the other they plunged into his back like arrows fired from the shadows. Three more caught him in the head, casting him off the shelves and over the other side.
Bird cursed, thumbing fresh rounds into the revolver.
Penelope stood paralyzed by the sight. The shape at the end of the aisle advance toward her, moving with purpose. Bird grabbed her arm and hauled her after him.
“Come on!” He pulled her through the main doors, into the humid summer night. “My truck’s on the side of the building,” he said, locking the handgun’s cylinder in place. “It’s the blue one. The doors are—”
He fell to his knees with a shout, taking Penelope down with him. Three medium size knives jutted from his hip and side.
“Oh, shit, no,” she shrieked, trying to help him up.
She wrapped her arms around his midsection, struggling to lift his bulk. He gained one leg. Then the other. And five more knives jabbed into his shoulder and back, causing him to howl in pain. He collapsed.
Penelope pulled at his shirt, tears streaming down her face. “Get up.”
She looked to the store. The figure emerged from the doorway.
“Get up, Bird. Get up. He’s coming!”
The man had fallen silent, but his grip tightened on her arm. Pulling himself to a half-kneeling position, he pressed the handgun and truck keys into her hands. “Go. Hurry… Go.”
The words were still fresh from his lips when two more blades sunk into his flesh, entering his neck and the side of his head. His heavy body went slack and slipped out of her grasp.
Penelope staggered backwards, her gaze locked on the dead Indian. Five minutes ago he’d been an average guy doing his job. Now he was gone. She’d only known him by part of his name, but he’d helped her. Hell, he’d saved her life a moment ago.
Screaming, tears spilling down her face, Penelope pivoted away from Bird’s lifeless body.
She raised the revolver and opened fire on his killer.
Each shot jarred her arms to the bone. The recoil threatened to send the gun flying from her grasp, but she tensed her muscles and forced herself to hold the weapon level. At such close range—less than twenty feet away— the bullets pierced the killer’s body and punched into the walls of the building behind him.
Then, in a horrifying moment of heightened perception, she saw several sparks leap off a metallic cage of propane tanks near—
The building exploded.
CHAPTER 6
Melissa could smell the bodies all the way from the roadside, thirty yards from the house. Even here in the country, surrounded by sprawling green fields of soybeans and corn, the vast open space and gentle morning breeze did nothing to dilute the stench in the air.
She turned off the county road and onto the property’s dirt driveway, pulling to a stop behind the two Corcoran squad cars already on the scene.
She got out of the car and found herself in the shadow of a tank-like man who identified himself as Officer Davis. Melissa put the man at six-foot-four from the soles of his shoes to the top of his crew cut blonde hair. Despite his formidable size, a sickly pallor dominated his facial complexion. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
“I’m Detective Humble,” she said. “Hennepin County Homicide.”
After floundering for a response, Davis merely nodded.
“First body?” Melissa asked, giving the man time to recover.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“What can you tell me so far?”
“There’re, ah, two victims,” Davis said, leading her toward the farmhouse. “Mel and Florence Patterson, ages sixty-five and sixty-two. We found their IDs inside. One of’em’s in the house, the other’s in the garage.”
“Who found them?”
“Xcel Energy employee,” Davis answered. He pointed past the squad cars, to a white pickup truck with the power company’s logo on the door. “Guy’s name is Kevin Porter. He was doing scheduled maintenance both here in Corcoran and down the road in Loretto. He said he’d finished checking the transformer back near the road when he noticed the service pole feeding the house was down. He didn’t have a report on it, so he figured the people who owned the place were out of town and didn’t know their power was out. When he came up the driveway to have a better look at the damage, that’s when he saw the garage.”
The officer gestured to the large detached garage. The white aluminum door buckled outward at the center, as if someone had tried to drive out without raising it.
“That’s nothing compared to what’s inside,” Davis added in a whisper.
They approached the two-story home and ascended the front steps into the cooler shadows under the covered porch. Davis led her around the building’s front half, passing a cedar log bench swing and decorative bouquets made of dried cornstalks and sunflowers. He stopped at a side entrance to point out the first signs of destruction amidst the pristine yellow paintjob on the walls and the white trim of the doorway. Melissa crouched down to examine the splinters of wood that jutted from the doorjamb and strike plate like a vertical row of needle- sharp teeth.
She looked at the officer. “This door was kicked out.”
“From the inside,” Davis agreed.
He opened the door for Melissa and the smell of decay intensified to an almost unbearable level. Davis took a step back.
“It’s bad,” he warned her.
She glanced at him, knowing her small frame and youthful appearance often made other officers—male officers—feel inclined to treat her like a rookie on the first day of the job. But when she noted the unfeigned look of repulsion on his face, she strode inside without comment.
The door opened onto a true farmhouse kitchen, one that boasted two big ovens and a gas range that looked large enough to serve in any major restaurant. Copper pots and iron pans hung in neat order on ceiling racks over a central cooking island, and the dinner table looked like a marvelous solid oak work of art from a previous century.
Beyond those items the pleasantries stopped.
At the far end of the kitchen, between the counter and the ovens, Mrs. Patterson’s corpse hung on the wall like one of the knickknacks on the porch.
Melissa stopped in her tracks, gazing in disbelief.
