Ask the same number of doctors to describe the injuries they've seen Bears survive, fighting on to victory and recovery or toppling only once what's left of their bodies falls apart, and be prepared to have a short book's worth of incredible stories.
This is one of them.
* * *
You fueling cunt!
Valentine realized he couldn't breathe or see, and all he felt was a horrible, slimy mess surrounding him, seeping into hairline and nostril, lip and ear hole.
Can't breathe, wet cold panic
And flipped around again, violently jostled.
Wet hot fear
--turning into
White-hot anger.
Valentine wriggled a hand up, closed fingers around the corded knife hilt.
Red!
He lashed out, hand and foot, head and arm. Stabbed hard with the knife handle, punctured, punched through resistance, then with a long backhanded sweep opened up the voluminous gullet of the Big Mouth.
It vomited him out before he could fight his way free, rolled away, stricken and thrashing.
Valentine broke the surface of the hard-flowing river, hurt as he sucked air, found himself bouncing, got his toes pointed downstream, fetched up against a rock, lost it, slid against another, caught it, losing his knife in his desperation to get a grip.
He pulled himself half out of the rushing river, saw a long leg flail as the wounded Big Mouth went over the falls.
He climbed up onto the rock, thought about his wound, reached, and felt the hot wet blood against his palm. The bullet had plowed one long furrow along his rib cage.
You'll live.
She won't.
He jumped to another rock, sucked a deep breath of air, felt pain again, realized his rifle was still bouncing against his chest.
He removed the weapon's final proof against liquid infiltration, a heavy-duty condom over the barrel, and found a stone to crouch where he could watch events at the Outlook.
A stream of sparks cut across the night sky, exploded into red light as a flare wobbled down, blown northeast by the wind.
The parking lot where Valentine had once watched a few drunk figures play basketball was alive with slithering, hopping, humpbacked shapes.
Glowing red goggle eyes fixed on the snow-dusted gables of the Outlook. Warm yellow light shone within, fell in checkerboard patters on the virgin snow in front of the hotel.
Sleekee, slee-kee, slee-kee...
Mr. Norman Rockwell, meet Mr. Hieronymus Bosch. Mr. Bosch, Mr. Rockwell.
Valentine lifted his gun, chambered the first round in the magazine, sighted on Lieutenant Nageezi. An urge to run at her, grind her face into mush, was suppressed as he straightened up and felt the pain in his side. He lowered the front sight to her thigh as she paused behind a parked truck in the lot, Big Mouths flapping and surging around her.
No, she knows her business. Wait. Get back to the kayak. First-aid-kit.
The Big Mouths knew their business too. They divided into three streams of hopping shapes. Leap-gather-hunch-leap-gather-hunch-leap-gather-hunch on their way to the front and side entrances.
Crashes, screams, somehow softened by all the snow. There it was, the mad music of gunfire.