CHAPTER 24
THE QUEEN OF THE HIVE
The creature rose from behind the wreckage of the staircase, completely ignoring the three bullet holes Nero had opened in its chest. Black, boiling blood ran down its grey skin, but the abomination showed no sign of pain.
In the weak light of the hearth, Nero understood the danger: this Hidebehind was twice the size of the others.
Its arms were longer, its claws thicker, and its yellow eyes shone with a malign and ancestral intelligence.
As in a wolf pack, or in a human anthill, this one was the Alpha. The leader.
It had worked its way around the fort and come in through the rear with a single purpose: to open the inner gates for its horde.
If you kill the queen, the hive loses its bearings, Nero thought, his cold mind calculating the last play.
The hunter raised both Colts and pulled the triggers.
Click. Click. Click. Nothing. The cylinders were empty. There was no time to reload.
With one quick movement Nero dropped the firearms and drew the old cavalry sabre.
The steel shone against the gloom, but against a beast like that it would look like a toothpick.
The monster came on like a grey bolt of lightning.
Before Nero could strike, the Hidebehind’s colossal claw caught him in the chest. The impact was devastating.
The hunter was hurled several metres, crossing the hall and sliding heavily across the wooden floor until he struck the Commander’s dining table.
Porcelain plates and crystal flew. Above him, a heavy bottle of imperial vodka fell with the impact, shattering directly over Nero’s chest and face, soaking his canvas duster in pure strong alcohol.
The Alpha leapt onto the table, raising its claws to deliver the final blow and take Nero’s head off.
But in the thousandth of a second in which it leaned over the hunter, the creature checked itself.
It wrinkled its elongated muzzle, sniffing the air violently.
Its yellow eyes dilated with pure terror.
That predator of the snows, accustomed to the pure freezing air of the mountains, drew its head back, coughing and swinging its claws as though the sharp, inflammable reek of the vodka were an unbearable poison to its keen senses.
That was the chance Nero needed. Gathering the last strength in his aching body, Nero swung the sabre upward with both hands.
The well-honed steel cut the air and tore deep across the monster’s throat from ear to ear.
The Alpha let out a piercing howl, a scream of agony that echoed through the whole house.
It staggered backward, spraying black blood over the rug, before collapsing dead, its body shuddering against the floorboards.
Outside, the effect was immediate. Hundreds of whistles and cries echoed through the fog.
The horde at the walls answered their leader’s death call with a howl of pure lamentation and fury.
Instead of falling back, the surviving Hidebehinds turned even more savage.
They began climbing the outer walls of pine log, going up over one another in a blind frenzy.
The Russian engineers, however, had left a surprise: the timbers at the base of the wall had been greased with heavy whale oil.
As the monsters tried to climb in a mass, they kept slipping and falling back on one another into the soaked mud.
Nero ran toward the back of the main house.
With his chest burning from the blow, he seized the iron bar of the rear gate of Fort Ross — an immense structure, far too heavy for one man.
Grinding his teeth and using every drop of adrenaline he had, the hunter shoved the solid timber until it closed with a monumental crash, and threw the bolt. The rear was secure.
Nero ran back to the ramp of the main wall, where Elena was still turning the rotating reaper and Volkov was trying to coordinate the infantry line. The hunter’s face was soaked in vodka and blood.
“Commander!” Nero bellowed at Volkov at the top of his lungs. “Get every drop of vodka you have in this fort! Barrels, bottles, all of it! Now!”
Volkov did not question an order from the man who had just killed the Alpha.
The commander turned to his garrison and roared a command in Russian.
Twelve soldiers dropped their rifles and ran for the underground store.
Minutes later they came back hauling several wooden barrels full of the high-proof spirit.
“Pour it outside!” Nero shouted. “Throw it over the wall, straight down onto them!”
The soldiers upended the barrels over the parapet.
Waterfalls of pure alcohol came down on the Hidebehinds trying to climb the oiled logs.
The instant the strong chemical reek of the vodka flooded the air of the fog, the monsters began to shriek, letting go of the walls and falling back in panic from a smell that assaulted their senses.
Nero turned toward the side tower, where the inventor was struggling with the fouled brass tube.
“Gideon!” the hunter bellowed through the chaos. “Did you fix your toy?”
Up above, Gideon wiped the sweat off his face with his coat sleeve and raised his arm, giving a thumbs-up. The phosphorus launcher was ready for one more shot.
“Then light the fire!” Nero ordered.
Gideon struck the match, lit the fuse, and aimed the modified spyglass straight at the alcohol-soaked ground at the base of the wall.
The phosphorus round crossed the air and struck the earth.
BOOM! The contact of the chemical phosphorus with that ocean of vodka set off an instant chain explosion.
An immense fire of purely blue and brilliant flame rose all around Fort Ross, tearing the grey fog apart.
The air filled completely with the strong smell of burning vodka, creating an invisible barrier of scent and heat that the monsters could not bear.
Terrified by the light, by the fire, and by the alcohol fumes choking them, the remaining Hidebehinds let out their last howls of defeat.
In a total rout, the horde turned its back on the fort and disappeared into the freezing darkness of the Sierra Nevada. Fort Ross was still standing.
It took the sun hours to beat the fog. When it did, it found the yard covered in wet ash, brass casings and grey carcasses that the soldiers were already dragging to the fires on the bluff. Nobody sang about victory. Men who survive a night like that usually stay quiet for a good long while.
Nero climbed the stairs of the main house with his duster still smelling of burnt vodka. At the end of the second-floor corridor there was a door of solid oak and, behind it, the dense silence of people who had spent the whole night holding their breath. He knocked twice with his knuckles.
“It’s over,” he said.
The bolt slid back. The Commander’s wife appeared in the gap, pale, holding a fireplace poker as though it were a bayonet, her dignity entirely intact. Behind her, sitting on the edge of a high bed with her back straight and her feet not reaching the floor, was a girl of thirteen.
She had her father’s almond-shaped eyes.
Elena stopped in the doorway. After two years, three deserts, an entire mountain, and a night spent turning the crank of a reaper until she could no longer feel her arms, it was there, in that warm room smelling of candle wax, that her legs finally gave out.
“Mia,” she said.
The girl stood up slowly. She studied that thin woman standing in the door, filthy with soot, her dark hair pasted down with sweat, the fresh scar on the back of her hand, the two-barrelled pistol still strapped to her thigh. She did not recognize her. That was what hurt.
Then Elena did the only thing she still knew how to do. She opened her mouth and sang, quietly and off-key, the same Spanish song Santiago used to sing on the wagon box when the first stars came out over the Santa Fe Trail, back when the whole world still fitted under a wagon’s canvas.
Mia ran across the room.
Nero stepped back and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving the two of them inside. He leaned against the cold wall of the corridor, took off his hat, and stood there listening. He was not the kind of man who wept. But he stayed there until the weeping was over.
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