Larson looked up at Billie’s command, just as she fired the Magnum from a few feet away. Thunder shook the room as the hollow point round tore its way through the left side of the marshal’s forehead and out the back, spraying the far wall with flecks of blood and hair and dead gray matter. The impact almost knocked him off of Charlie. But he just shook his leaking head, looked up at Billie, and growled, “Wait your turn, bitch,” before attacking Bean again.

“The knife!” Bean screamed. “GET THE KNIFE!”

Larson laughed at that, and it grew into a mad cackle that made the deputy’s flesh crawl. “Sorry, Charlie,” he said, a rivulet of viscous fluid and brain cells running down his face. “Knife won’t do you no good. What’s a knife gonna d—” He stiffened as the tapered blade of the cake knife pierced his already shot-up back, and groaned even louder when Billie put her weight behind it and drove the point as deep as she could. Dutch fell away from Bean and writhed across the carpet, his limbs rigid and jerking. And then, just as suddenly, the spasms ceased. There was one last exhalation, and the corpse was still.

Bean climbed to his feet unsteadily and found Billie standing over the body, her look a mixture of vengeful satisfaction and outright disgust. She was trembling. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I . . . I think I’m gonna puke. Excuse me.” She staggered into the corner and dropped to her hands and knees.

Charlie knelt next to the marshal’s body. Dutch’s features were already softening, losing their savage mien. It worked, the deputy thought as he inspected the killing wound with clinical thoroughness, cautious not to remove the knife, no matter what. Now we can fight these fuckers. Eat your heart out, Stiles.

When Billie recovered, she found Bean picking Doreen’s body off the floor. He laid her gently on the couch. “Why don’t you go out in the hall,” he said, throwing Billie his shotgun. “I’ll be through in a minute.”

“I’m staying,” she said.

He pulled the slipcover loose from the couch and draped it over the girl to form a flowered shroud. He made sure her face was covered; he didn’t want to see it again. Then he went to the pool table and picked a cue from the wall rack, laid it against the table, and stepped on it. The stick shattered. He took the sharper end back to the couch and plunged it into Doreen’s body. The first try glanced off the ribs and missed; pulling it out was the worst part, and that was when he started to cry. But his subsequent aim was better.