Grasping the shotgun with both hands, Tommy pumped the entire magazine into the beast.
It grasped at a rail and held on tenaciously, but the last two blasts tore it loose and hurled it to the bottom of the steps. The thing rolled out of the stairwell, onto the afterdeck again, out of sight.
The indomitable creature would be stunned, as before. Judging by experience, however, it wouldn’t be out of action for long. There wasn’t even any blood on the steps. It seemed to absorb the buckshot and bullets without sustaining any real wounds.
Dropping the shotgun, Tommy retrieved the .44 pistol. Thirteen rounds. That might be enough ammunition to knock the beast back down the stairs twice more, but then there would be no time to reload.
Del appeared at his side, looking gaunt and more worried than she had been before. ‘Give me the gun,’ she said urgently.
‘Who’s driving?’
‘I locked the wheel. Give me the gun and go forward, down the port stairs to the foredeck.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he demanded, reluctant to leave her there even if she had the Desert Eagle.
‘I’ll start a fire,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You said fire distracted it.’
He remembered the enraptured mini-kin at the blazing Corvette, lost to all sensation except the dancing flames. ‘How’re you going to start a fire?’
‘Trust me.’
‘But-’
Below, the recuperated Samaritan-thing shrieked and entered the bottom of the stairwell.
‘Give me the damn gun!’ she snarled, and virtually tore it out of Tommy’s grip.
The Desert Eagle bucked in her hands – once, twice, three times, four times – and the roar echoed back at them out of the stairwell, like cannon fire.
Squealing, spitting, hissing, the creature crashed down to the afterdeck again.
To Tommy, Del shouted, ‘Go, damn it, go!’
He stumbled across the open top deck to the port stairs farther forward, beside the helm station.
More gunfire erupted behind him. The beast had come back at her faster this time than before.
Clutching at the railing, he descended the open port-side stairs, up which he had climbed earlier. At the bottom, the narrow railed passway led forward to the bow but didn’t lead back toward the stern, so there was no easy route by which the Samaritan-thing could make its way to him directly from the afterdeck – unless it broke into the enclosed lower deck, rampaged forward through the staterooms, and smashed out at him through a window.
More gunfire crashed above and aft, and the hard sound slapped across the black water, so it seemed as though Newport had gone to war with neighbouring Corona Del Mar.
Tommy reached the bow deck, where only a few min-utes ago he’d taken a stand against the Samaritan-thing when it had first tried to board the vessel.
In the night ahead, Balboa Island loomed.
‘Holy shit,’ Tommy said, horrified by what was about to happen.
They were approaching Balboa Island at considerable speed, on a line as direct and true as if they were being guided by a laser beam. With the wheel locked and the throttles set, they would pass between two large private docks and ram the sea wall that surrounded the island.
He turned, intending to go back to the helm and make Del change course, but he halted in astonishment when he saw that the aft end of the yacht was already ablaze. Orange and blue flames leaped into the night. Shimmering with reflections of the fire, the falling rain looked like showers of embers from a celestial blaze.
Scootie padded along the port-side pass way and onto the bow deck.
Del was right behind the Labrador. ‘The damn thing’s in the stairwell, burning in ecstasy, like you said. Creepy as hell.’
‘How did you set it on fire so quick?’ Tommy demanded, half shouting to be heard above the drumming rain and the engines.
‘Diesel fuel,’ she said, raising her voice as well.
‘Where’d you get diesel fuel?’
‘There’s six hundred gallons aboard.’ ‘But in tanks somewhere.’
‘Not any more.’
‘And diesel fuel doesn’t burn that fiercely.’
‘So I used gasoline.’
‘Huh?’
‘Or napalm.’
‘You’re lying to me again!’ he fumed.