Astrid shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I guess I’ll pray,” Edilio said.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Astrid allowed.
A sound.
The three of them spun toward it. Edilio had his submachine gun off his shoulder, cocked, and the safety off in a heartbeat. Roger sort of slid behind Edilio.
“It’s a coyote,” Astrid hissed. She had not brought her shotgun, since she was carrying half of the measuring frames. But she had her revolver and drew it.
It was almost immediately clear that the coyote was not a threat. First, it was alone. Second, it was barely able to walk. Its gait was shuffling and it seemed lopsided.
And something was wrong with its head.
Something so wrong that Astrid could hardly encompass it. She stared and blinked. Shook her head and stared again.
Her first thought was that the coyote had a child’s head in its mouth.
No.
That. Wasn’t. It.
“Madre de Dios,” Edilio sobbed. He ran to the creature now just twenty feet away and so terribly visible. Roger put a comforting hand on Edilio’s shoulder, but he looked sick, too.
Astrid stood rooted in place.
“It’s Bonnie,” Edilio said, his voice shrill. “It’s her. It’s her face. No,” he moaned, a long, drawn-out wail.
The creature ignored Edilio, just kept walking on two coyote front legs and twisted furless legs—bent human legs—in the back. Kept walking as though those empty, blue, human eyes were blind, and those shell-like pink human ears were deaf.
Edilio wept as it kept moving.
Astrid aimed her revolver at the creature’s heart, just behind the shoulder, and fired. The gun kicked in her hand and a small, round, red hole appeared and began leaking red.
She fired again, hitting the creature in its canine neck.
It fell over. Blood pumped from the thing’s neck and formed a pool in the sand.
Once again, the avatar broke apart.
Pete had tried to play with the bouncy avatar and it had broken apart, changed color and shape, and stopped.
He had tried to play with another avatar and it had melted into something different.
Was this the game?
It wasn’t very fun.
And he was beginning to feel bad when the avatars fell apart. Like he was doing a bad-boy thing.
So he had imagined the avatars all back the way they started.
Nothing happened. But things always happened when Pete wanted them really hard. He had wanted the terrible sirens and screams to stop and the world not to burn up and he had created the ball he now lived in.
He had wanted other things and they had happened. If he wanted something badly enough it happened. Didn’t it?
Well, now he was feeling sick inside and he wanted the avatars to go back and be right again. But they didn’t.