and tried to smash them aside. One of the spines from the thing's ruff slid into the back of her left hand. Steaming spittle spattered her face.
She felt the staccato rhythm of the wolf-creature's breathing hesitate and cease as its body slumped onto her feet. But now she felt a chill spreading across her hand and up her arm. Cordelia grasped the spine with her right hand and wrenched it free. The shaft came loose and she hurled it from her, but the coldness didn't abate.
It'll reach my heart, she thought, and that was the last thing that passed through her mind. Cordelia felt herself collapsing, falling across the crazy-quilt arrangement of monstrous bodies. The wind filled up her ears; the darkness took her eyes.
"Hey! You okay, kid? Whattsa matter?" The accent was all New York. It was Marty Carlucci's voice. Cordelia struggled to open her eyes. The man bent over her, breath minty with recent toothpaste. He grasped her shoulders and shook her slightly.
"Damn straight," he said. "I don't know how many hours I slept, but I feel like shit. How about you?"
Memories of the night slammed back. "What's going on?" Cordelia said.
"We're landing. Plane's about half an hour out of Auckland. You wanna use the can, get cleaned up and all, you better do it quick." He took his fingers away from her shoulders. "Okay?"
"Okay." Cordelia sat up shakily. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with sodden cotton. "Everybody's okay? The plane isn't full of monsters?"
Carlucci stared at her. "Just tourists. Hey, you have some bad dreams? Want some coffee?"
"Coffee. Thanks." She grabbed her bag and struggled past him into the aisle. "Right. Nightmares. Bad ones."
In the restroom she alternated splashing cold and hot water on her face. Brushing her teeth helped. She slugged down three Midol and unsnarled her hair. Cordelia did her best with makeup. Finally she stared at herself in the mirror and shook her head. "Shit," she told herself, "you look thirty"
Her left hand itched. She raised it in front of her face and stared at the inflamed puncture wound. Maybe she had caught her hand on something when she'd moved in her sleep, and that had translated into the dream. Perhaps it was stigmata. Either story sounded equally implausible. Maybe this was some weird new menstrual side effect. Cordelia shook her head. Nothing made sense. Weakness flooded over her and she had to sit down on the lid of the toilet. The inside of her skull felt scoured. Maybe she had spent much of the night battling monsters.
Cordelia realized someone was knocking on the door of the restroom. Others wanted to get ready for New Zealand. So long as they weren't wolf-creatures ...
The morning was sunny. The North Island of New Zealand was intensely green. The 747 touched down with scarcely a bump and then sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes until the agriculture people climbed on board. Cordelia hadn't expected that. She watched bemusedly as the smiling young men in their crisp uniforms walked down the aisles, an aerosol jet of pest-killer fogging from the can in each hand. Something about this reminded her perversely of what she'd read of the final moments of Jetboy.
Carlucci must have been thinking something similar. Having promised not to smoke, he'd moved into the seat beside her. "Sure hope it's pesticide," he said. "Be a really nasty joke if it was the wild card virus."
After the passengers had murmured, griped, wheezed, and coughed, the jumbo taxied to the terminal and everyone debarked. The pilot told them they had two hours before the plane left on the thousand-mile leg to Sydney.
"Just time to stretch our legs, buy some cards, make some phone calls," said Carlucci. Cordelia welcomed the thought of getting some exercise.
In the main terminal Carlucci went off to place his trans-Pacific calls. The terminal seemed extraordinarily crowded. Cordelia saw camera crews in the distance. She headed for the doors to the outside.
From behind her she heard, "Cordelia! Ms. Chaisson!" The voice wasn't Carlucci's. Who the hell? She turned and saw a vision of flowing red hair framing a face that looked vaguely like Errol Flynn's in Captain Blood. But Flynn had never worn such bright clothing, not even in the colorized Adventures of Captain Fabian.
Cordelia stopped and smiled. "So," she said. "Do you like new wave music any better these days?"