as she reached and stumbled towards the two men, making a thick gurgling sound.
Xavier leaped left, up onto the bed where he discovered the sheets were tacky with blood, a sticky box cutter lying near a pillow. Pulaski froze, staring at the girl with his mouth hanging open as she closed on him.
“Kill it!” Xavier yelled.
Pulaski dropped the lighter, grabbed the tire iron with both hands and drove the sharp end into her belly. The girl grabbed at him, getting a fistful of his hair and pulling herself forward. The pipe fitter shrieked and jerked away, but she didn’t let go and stumbled after him, the tire iron poking out of her.
Xavier came in from the side, throwing a hammer blow of a punch at the side of her head, then three more. The dead girl’s head rocked to the side and she fell against the TV, knocking it over, but not releasing Pulaski’s hair, dragging him down.
“Get it off me!”
Xavier was about to land another punch, but she turned her head and he faced snapping teeth. Instead he jumped back, looking around as his shoe crushed a plastic bong lying on the floor.
The girl got her other hand knotted into Pulaski’s hair, and she pulled.
“Ah, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” He strained back against her, trying to pry her fingers loose, but she was a big girl, bigger than him, and now she was bringing those snapping teeth to his face.
Hanging on a wall near the corner was a ferocious-looking tribal mask with crossed spears behind it. Xavier darted that way, but ignored the spears (he figured they were cheap replicas) and snatched something off the floor beneath the mask. He came up with an ebony statuette of an African fertility god with a gigantic, curving penis. It was solid and heavy, and he raised it over his head and brought it crashing down on the girl’s skull.
There was a crunch, and her fingers jerked open. Pulaski fell backwards. Xavier hit her again in the same spot, grunting with the force of the swing, and her head caved in. The girl’s body slumped against the wall and slid over onto the floor.
Both men were breathing hard, and neither spoke for a moment. Finally Pulaski approached and yanked the tire iron out of her belly. “The head,” he gasped.
Xavier swallowed hard and nodded. “The head.” He tossed the fertility god onto a leather sofa.
“I thought I was gonna piss myself,” Pulaski said, looking at the priest. “But I was so scared, I don’t think I could have squeezed a drop if I wanted to.”
Xavier checked the front of his sweat pants. “I thought I did piss myself.”
They stared at each other, laughing like two crazy people, and then looked at their watches in the glow from the window. “We’re out of time,” Pulaski said.
They searched the room quickly, neither wanting to go through all this and leave empty handed. They were rewarded. In the closet, hidden behind stacks of sneaker boxes, they found a combat shotgun, a pair of automatic handguns, and a big, snub-nosed .44 Bulldog revolver. Inside several of the shoe boxes they found boxes of ammo for everything. A Timberland boot box held half a dozen loaded magazines for an assault rifle.
They found the AK-47 concealed in a cut out hollow in the bed’s box spring.
“Satisfied?”
Pulaski grinned, loading the shotgun.
They tore apart the closet until they found a pair of nylon gym bags, putting the handguns and magazines in one, the boxes of ammo in the other. Xavier checked the Bulldog, found it loaded, and slipped it into a pocket of his sweatpants. He slung the AK-47 over a shoulder, and they went back downstairs, stopping again in the doorway.
The fire had gone out, and once again bodies moved slowly through the fog. There were more of them now.
“Use your lighter,” Xavier said. Pulaski lit it, holding it high and moving it up and down, like a night club owner signaling a stand-up comic that his time was almost up. There was no response from the darkness of the looted dollar store. Xavier checked his watch. They had been gone for forty minutes.
“Do it again.”
Pulaski did, and then they waited. Nothing. “They’re gone. The teacher did what you told him and took off. We’re on our own.” He nudged the priest with his elbow. “Let’s find a back way out of here.”
Xavier stared at the dark shop across the street, imagining Alden trying to get the two teenagers out