A/N: One more chapter after this one.
Disclaimer: As ever, don't own.
The grey haze of early morning settled upon the Coldstream farm, and the gathering light revealed a scene of utter devastation. Wherever the ground was dry enough for the grass to burn, small fires smoldered, the residue of Trina's Molotov cocktails. Beck's RV lay on its side, half-sunk into the mud, now a haunt for vermin. Harry's car, too, was a wreck, torn into fragments by the hooves and horns of cattle. And the bodies of animals – whether shot, burned, or simply dead of sheer exhaustion – littered the open plain all the way to the foot of the slope beyond. Only two survivors remained: mountain lions, a male and a female, prowling to and fro warily barely twenty yards from the house.
"Well, I think it's safe to say that PETA's not going to like this," said Jade, gesturing toward the carnage.
The others turned and gave her withering stares.
"What? I was just trying to lighten the mood, that's all."
It was needed. For all their successes in repelling wave after wave of attacks, matters still looked grim for the group. With little oxygen making its way into the tightly sealed house, breathing was difficult. The temperature was fast rising outside, and thanks to the fire still blazing in the fireplace, the little band of four were dripping with sweat. Harry had spent his last bullet on a black bear whose powerful paws had nearly wrenched the boards off the window, and the box of bottles was conspicuously empty, so there would be no more flaming grenades. Simply put, if the cougars should breach the perimeter, the four of them would be defenseless.
"Should we make a break for it?" Trina asked Harry.
"I don't much care for the idea of being torn to shreds, do you?"
"Well, no, but we've been trapped in this damn house for hours, and it's starting to feel like the freaking bowels of hell. It might be better just to try our chances out there. There's only two of them, anyway."
"That's two too many, so far as I'm concerned. Better to wait them out."
She sighed. "I guess you're right. And if I have to be stuck with somebody…well, I'm just glad it's you."
Despite his near-exhaustion, he managed to grin – that gleaming, white-toothed grin that had almost knocked Trina off her feet when she first met him. "The feeling's mutual."
"Hey! Lovebirds!" Jade called from across the room. "You're going to make me lose my lunch! If there's going to be any mushy stuff here, Beck and I will take care of it, okay?"
"Fine, fine," Trina grumbled. "What happened between you two, anyway? Two days ago you couldn't stand to be within ten feet of each other – now you practically live in Make-out City. I don't get it."
Beck put his arm around Jade and drew her close to him. "Sometimes it takes nearly losing someone to realize how much they really mean to you."
Jade scowled. "In other words, all I had to do to win you back was almost get my neck broken?"
"That's not what I meant-"
"Oh, and just what did you mean?"
"I…um…have I mentioned how gorgeous you look today?"
"I'm covered with sweat and mud, Beck. And don't you dare try to change the subject."
"Are they always like this?" Harry asked Trina.
"Yep, pretty much…hey, what's going on with the sky?"
The gray had been giving way to pink and gold for nearly half an hour, but now, strangely, darkness had returned, masking the rising sun.
"Oh, not another storm cloud," Harry said with a sigh. "We don't need any more rain just now."
Trina looked more closely at the patch of darkness. A chill went through her. "Harry? That's…that's not a cloud."
A great drone filled the air – a steady, monotonous humming that drowned out the song of the birds, the chirp of the crickets, and the whisper of the wind.
"Wasps," Harry gasped.
Jade and Beck abandoned their bickering and went to look. "What do we do?" asked the Goth girl.
"Not much we can do, really." The deputy had quickly recovered his composure. "And it's not as serious as it looks, anyway. We'll have to board up this gap, of course, but I don't think there's anywhere else in the house they can get in."
The swarm of wasps seemed to stretch for miles. Forming itself into a rough approximation of an arrow, it aimed its point directly at the smoking chimney.
"Are they crazy?" said Jade. "They're going to be incinerated if they try to come in that way."
"Maybe the effect of that chemical is wearing off," Harry answered with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Maybe they've lost that weird intelligence and gone back to being regular old wasps."
"But don't wasps normally avoid smoke?" Beck pointed out.
The deputy had no answer to that. He fell silent, brooding.
A cluster of wasps emerged in the fireplace, their wings ablaze.
"You're right, Jade. They've lost their tiny little minds," Trina said.
The wasps were clearly in crippling pain, their bodies nearly consumed, but they continued to move as one – directly toward the curtains that overhung the kitchen window. As their flaming wings brushed past, the thin fabric of the curtains was set alight.
It was Beck who was first to realize the horror of what was happening. "No. They know exactly what they're doing. It's a suicide mission. They're going to burn this place down and smoke us out, no matter how many of them have to die to do it."
Without a word, Harry Yang went for the fire extinguisher and began to spray. Trina ran madly for the storeroom for buckets and handed them one by one to Jade, who filled them from the bathtub faucet and passed them on to Beck to hurl on the various blazes that sprang up. But their efforts, Herculean though they were, were not enough. Just as Beck had successfully put out the parlor drapes, another cluster came through and set upon the hallway carpet. Harry's extinguisher, meanwhile, was already running low on foam when a third flaming wave flew up the staircase and dispersed itself upon the wooden support beams of the roof high above. Tiny wisps of fire erupted at two dozen different points, spread, and joined each other, consuming the timbers greedily.
"It's no good!" Harry yelled to the others. "The roof's going to cave in at this rate. We've got to clear out!"
"But the cougars-" said Jade.
"I'll distract them!"
"No!" cried Trina. "I won't let you-"
"We don't have time to argue!" The muscular deputy lowered one shoulder, worked himself up to a running start, and crashed through the boards over the living room window, tearing open a path. "Come on!" He faked right, then cut left, trying to draw off the male. "Just try to catch me, you son of a-"
But neither of the cougars had any interest in Harry. Waiting for the other three to emerge, they charged straight at Jade – the weakest of the pack, the easiest to bring down. Once they were through with her, it would be on to Beck, then Trina and Harry, the two who posed the greatest physical threat.
Harry drew his service pistol and aimed it; the chamber might be empty, but perhaps the simple sight of the gun would be enough to frighten the mountain lions into withdrawing.
No such luck. They were too cunning to fall for so blatant a trick. Instead they both circled the group of three, looking for an opening to separate Jade from her friends.
Beck and Trina formed a screen in front of her. "Are you actually trying to protect me, Vega?" Jade said incredulously.
"I guess I am. Things really are topsy-turvy now, aren't they?"
Harry was all but set to leap on the male's back and try to wrestle it with his bare hands when he spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon. Something was approaching at lightning speed. Dammit. They're bringing in reinforcements.
Wait a minute…
He broke out in exultant laughter.
"What the hell is the matter with you, dude?" Jade cried. "This isn't exactly a funny situation!"
"I'm sorry. It's just…I never in my life thought I would be able to say this and mean it literally, but – here comes the cavalry!"
Now the two cougars finally turned, and the fur bristling on the back of their necks made it clear that they were feeling genuine panic. There was indeed a mighty creature approaching, but it was not on their side.
"Sorry to come so late, my friends!" shouted Carlos from astride Thunderheart. "It was not easy to coax el caballo out of his cave. I think he is ashamed for what he did to señorita West."
"It's okay!" Jade cried as tears of relief began to flow. "I forgive him!"
The black horse reared high and brought its muscular forelegs down on the back of the male cougar. The big cat was flattened to the ground; its spine snapped with a sickening crack.
The female hissed in fury and anguish over the death of her mate. She made a move to attack Thunderheart from the flank, but he turned to face her with a contemptuous whinny, and she immediately thought better of it. With a final defiant snarl, she loped away toward the refuge of the mountains.
The group turned to watch as the last of the wasps poured into the Coldstream chimney in a now utterly futile gesture. As Harry had predicted, the roof began to totter, then disintegrated, falling in onto the already burning second story; the floor collapsed in turn, burying the living room where the four of them had just been holed up in a pile of flaming debris.
"Susan's going to be heartbroken when she sees this," said Beck.
"If she's still alive," Jade replied softly. "We don't have any idea how widespread this was, or how many people died."
"No," said Harry. "But we're going to find out. And we're going to help anyone who needs it."
"The roads are covered in mud; even the Jeep will not be able to make it through," said Carlos. "We must go on foot, and it will be a long journey into town. Perhaps señorita West would like a ride?"
Jade climbed onto Thunderheart as the ranch hand dismounted. The feel of the stallion's powerful muscles beneath her fingers filled her with an exultant thrill. He let out a soft snort as she stroked his mane.
"All righty, boy. I know we had a rough time of it before, but maybe we can get to know each other properly now, okay?"
He whinnied cheerfully in response – and was it Jade's imagination, or did he actually nod his head?
"Well, I guess that's settled," she said with a smile. "Away we go."
At a slow trot, her friends following on foot, she headed down the valley. Behind them, at long last, the sun rose high.
And this time, there was no red sky.