Chapter Five: The End of Wolf Creek

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"You fight well for gentiles! I am Comrade Captain Devorah ben Yitzchok. Welcome to the Collective, and thanks for the assist. We can't cross the border to get those hatchetmen, but you sure put a rocket in his coffin! We're the Deborah Squadron, and you're not the first ones to have been confused by yiddish on the airwaves."
  Rex surveyed the squadron. It was at the full strength of two Collective air wings, six planes. "You don't fight half-bad yourselves. Five kills, and not a single loss? But how did you know our language problems?"
  "We have girls in our tower listen in on our opponents' radio. We can listen to them; they can't listen to us. That has saved our skins more than a few times. But we are all tired, and many are hurt; let's land and make proper introductions."

They flew to a very small aerodrome outside Clinton, which in itself was hardly more than an end-of-the-line rail yard next to the bombed-out bridge over the Mississippi. Given the courtesy of landing first (always a cautious move to let a guest land first), they walked up to the aerodrome to watch the other planes land and the pilots climb out. They were all women. After talking to each other in their strange language, they walked up and introduced themselves. It seemed they were all old testament people, and refugees from the ISA. Nooma held back and listened in on snippets of the conversation.

  "Damn fascists. One day, we simply got tired of it all, and flew over here."
  "Lacking good facilities or even ground crews, and posted much too close to the border, we are the Collective's very first line of defense."
  "Makes you rely on your own people. We adapt and survive. Like our little trick with the radio; imagine getting an ordinary air traffic controller to do that."
  "I'm afraid we still have enemies in the ISA. Illinois Nazis. They probably hired the Red Skull thugs."

  "But what are you doing so far away from home?"
  "Well, that's a long story"
  "The night is still young. It's not like there's any other entertainment here."

The next few days were pleasant enough. It turned out that finding spare part's for Rebel's engine was a real chore in the Collective, and it took a quick flight to Des Moines to get parts from the black market. Over there they started hearing nasty rumors of mysterious disappearances out west. Real ghost stories of people disappearing in their beds and passengers vanishing of planes. Devorah and her crew could only add to the rumors.

  "Well, our chance to catch dr Remoux with his pants down in Hollywood is probably gone. If he runs, he runs, so we can just as well spend some time looking into this." Diana said as she contemplated her breakfast bangle.
  "I don't know if I like the idea of jumping all over the pirate-infested midwest, on a wild ghost chase."
  "Heya Rex, where's your sense of adventure? It'll be great fun, and maybe we will even find some bad guys to shoot" Rebel's enthusiasm was infectious, and thus they went northwest, over the South Dakota Badlands and on to Rapid City and the Black Hills. People everywhere had heard rumors, but nothing really definite. On a tip from a drunken fur trader they went to Butte, Montana, once again a frontier town in the desperate no-mans land. A trader told the story of a band of treasure-hunters who had met a horror in Wolf Creek. Off they went, though it would be evening by the time they got there.

Wolf Creek might once have been a small city, but now it was a ghost town. There were no animals in the pastures, and the oppressive woods were slowly taking back the yards and streets of the town. A single place was still lit, a trading post with it's own small airstrip on what was once main street. It was getting dark, so they had to land right away. Diana circled as the others landed, as was her habit, but nothing stirred in town. They taxied up to an open barn that gave their planes some protection, then went up to the well-lit trading post.

"You would think they have noticed us, with them engines an' all." Rebel's drawl became more pronounced from excitement as she prowled towards the house. The front door was locked, and knocking produced no response. The windows had heavy shutters, all closed and scrawled with chalk crosses.
  "No way to get a good view from here; we better just go in an' check it out" The kitchen door was unlocked, and soon they were all inside. The kitchen was neat and well kept, but there was garlic and simple, homemade wooden crosses hanging everywhere. Every lamp was lit. The main room appeared empty as well, but a quick search revealed a young man sitting with a shotgun in his lap, his dead eyes staring blankly into space.
  "He is dry as tinder, not a drop of blood in his body!" Rex pronounced after a quick inspection. "But there are no bite marks…"
  "It cannot be vampires. With all the crosses and garlic these christian people have here, a vampire would flee right back to hell, where he belongs, if you catch my meaning."
  "Yeah, but something killed him all right. And he could hardly have lived here all alone. Where are the others?" Diana added sourly.
  "Lets go out back and check for graves." Rex said.

A short search uncovered three fresh graves out back but nothing else. The house was intact, well-kept and seemingly safe. No one wanted to look dutch to the others, and they were all tired, so they took some rooms upstairs and went to bed. Things were quiet, the deep quiet of the wilderness that city people rarely hear.

Rebel tossed and turned in her bed. Somehow, she was either to warm or to cold to fall asleep. After a while, she decided to get dressed and catch up on her diary. Nooma also burned the midnight oil, striving to decipher the strange glyphs copied from the device she had stolen at the north pole. Rex slept the sleep of the innocent. So did Diana, but some sixth sense awakened her just in time. She was suffocating, a dark, damp sheet was smothering her in bed! Desperately flailing with her arms to get rid of the thing did no good, so she reached out for the gun on the night-table, her trusty fully automatic Broomhandle. She felt her strength waning and saw bright pinpoints of light dance before her eyes, but there it was! She got her small hand around the smooth handle, pulled the gun to her chest and held the trigger down. A long burst of autofire lit the room, and caused the dark blanket-thing to jump up and down above her. The gun fell silent, emptied, and Diana rolled aside as the thing fell back down over her, seemingly unhurt.

The roaring of the gun startled everyone. Rebel was at the door in seconds, Rex and Nooma on her heels. All they saw was the half-dressed Diana rolling off the bed, and a shadow that seemed to fall right down, through the bed and floor, to disappear below. Rex tore his eyes of Diana's shapely figure, walked up to her, and smiled as he helped her to breathe. There was a couple of tense moments before she started breathing by herself. "Rebel, you stay here and watch Diana. I'll grab some clothes and go down to the kitchen and seek it out." Nooma followed him down the stairs. But nowhere was there any monster to be found, and when Diana had dressed and joined them down below, there was still no further sign of danger.
  "It seemed my bullets passed right through it, whatever it was. I'm not sure we can hurt it that way."
  "But every light in the building is on. Maybe it's vulnerable to light" Nooma added thoughtfully.
  "There's an old fire-extinguisher here, and plenty of kerosene. I think I can jury rig a flame-thrower. That ought to lighten our prospects." Rex answered with an evil grin.

Rebel was furious. Where could the creature have gone to? A few cracks between the floorboards, but that was all. But it had attacked Diana while she was sleeping. Maybe if she went to bed and put out the light, it would come back? Putting out the light, she listened intently and tried to keep her breathing slow, but all she could hear was Rex hammering away in the kitchen below. But what was that? Wasn't the light from the window getting weaker? Lightning-quick, she reached out for the light switch and caught the pulsing, black carpet-thing red handed as it was preparing to float down on top of her. Once again gunfire rang out, but this time it was Rebel's old Le Mat revolver. The creature tried to flee down through the floorboards, but there stood Rex with his makeshift flame-thrower. The blast singed it as it swept up through the ceiling, and once again Rebel fired away. Desperately seeking to escape, it slithered down the corridor, Rebel in hot pursuit. When it hit the outer wall, it went down through the floor once again. Rebel rushed down the stairs.

Rex came into the main room just in time to see the creature making its way through the outer wall, and fearlessly jumped right out after it. Shards of glass and gouts of flame formed a cloud of vengeance around him as he landed and ran, Rebel on his heels, shouting "Yehaa! Guns blazing!". Together, they managed to catch up to it and down it with a hail of hot lead and even hotter kerosene.
  "That was fun! Do you think we killed it?" Rebels face shone in the light from the burning trading-post.
  Rex examined the ground. "I don't know. It could just have slipped down into the earth. But I think we caught it"
  "Our rooms are burning, and soon the flames will reach the planes or the fuel depot." Diana's face was red and her breathing hard as she came riding through the night on the horse she had rescued from the burning stable.
  "Well, at least we get one good thing out of this. This blaze is as bright as daylight, so we can see for liftoff, and when we get to Hollywood, it will be full daylight. I know ''Rex' is a byword for an early start, but this is early even for me!".
  "Rex is a byword for what?!" Diana protested
  They all laughed at this, relieved to be alive despite the night's dire events, and soon took off by the light of the blazing house. It was still several hours till first light. Behind them they heard the great boom when the blaze reached the trading post's fuel dump. Wolf Creek, Montana, was no more.