Perry was one of the last to arrive.
He did what he could for the injured men which was little more than pray for them. Most were dead when he got there. His brain just dead tired and worn to threads from all the killing and bodies and blood, he went into Spence's and viewed the carnage. Had a tornado slipped through there, it could have been no more complete. Cabinets were shattered, chemicals spilled. Vats overturned. Walls smashed to debris from the passage of the beast. And mixed in with that refuse, was what remained of Wynona Spence.
Jesus.
Perry remembered Marion upstairs.
Steeling himself and pressing a hand to his back, he went up. Went up those creaking, narrow stairs and into the apartment above which smelled of incense and wood smoke. Their was a slightly sickening stench of lilacs, as if Wynona had been spraying perfume liberally.
It didn't take him long to find Marion.
Took him even less to realize that she'd been dead for years. Her skin was tight and flaking, gray as cement. The lips blackened and shriveled. The eyes sunk into dark, hungry pits. The fingers were shrunken into fleshy pencils. Wynona had embalmed her, turned her lover into a mummy she could covet and coddle for years and years.
Perry, sobbing, went back downstairs. "Oh, Wynona," he said. "Oh dear Christ, what happened to you?"
The locals would feed off this like leeches. Wynona's father had been a good man and Perry thought that, down deep, she was a good woman. Yes, she had a body up there. But she had harmed no one. Never slandered or hurt a soul.
Perry fired up an oil lantern and got it burning bright.
Then he shattered it against the wall. Flames engulfed the room and, eventually, they would take the entire building. And that was a good thing. For fire purified and Wolf Creek was long overdue.