My inclination was to assume there were no survivors inside, hose the place down, then torch it to be sure. But I couldn’t see what Lindemann could see. Maybe he was going to try and reason with it or some nonsense. You never knew. Theoretically, I was in command, but Milo was far more experienced than I was. Earl had left me in charge because Milo wasn’t comfortable with the whole leadership thing, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t pick his superior brain. “How do you think we should play this?”

“Gas pump is far enough away we should be able to destroy the building and not blow us all up. But…” Milo stroked his long red beard thoughtfully. “Klaus has boots on the ground. Let him make the call.”

I could see one of the camouflaged individuals pointing and giving orders. A split second later, all five of them rose and opened fire on the building. The remaining windows shattered. The glass cases inside came apart. One German rose and chucked something into the open garage. Lindemann’s men all ducked as one. A sharp explosion later, a cascade of dust and smoke belched out every opening. A lone hubcab went rolling across the parking lot.

“You know, I’m starting to like these guys,” I said.

The Hind’s nose was pointed at the building as we slowly drifted across the parking lot, and with Milo and me hanging out by the bungee cords, we could both shoot forward. “They don’t get to have all the fun.” Milo let the 240 thunder. Every fifth round was a tracer, and Milo shredded the facade of the convenience store with a continuous stream of red flashes. Cinderblocks puckered, spat, and then broke. Milo kept working the muzzle side to side, absolutely wrecking the place.

“Hee hee hee…Pretty.” Skippy, for one, liked the tracer’s effect.

Once Milo had run through his two hundred rounds, he immediately yanked the cover open, just as Trip pulled over a fresh belt. “It’s cool, but I wish we would’ve brought the mini-gun. Six thousand rpm is so much niftier. In fact, I picked up a brochure for this new model today—”

While Milo carried on about justifying the purchase of another mini-gun, I was still watching, waiting. The place had been shredded, but there was no sign of the creature. It had to have been hit. The question was if we were dealing with something that particularly cared or not.