Who they were with and what they were doing when the first reports started coming in. The sisters like to talk about where they were on the day the world changed. “Never were any decent men in this town.” “Nothing’s really changed,” Pure Helen says to me as she squeezes seawater from her dreads. The Galatea shudders and lurches out into the channel past Strawberry Island. I hand her a towel as Mandy starts the big diesel. She’s Pure Helen and we laugh because she’s insane. She’s Pure Helen, and she’s kept us alive for fourteen years. “Ladies only!” she hoots as we help her onto the Galatea. The weight of their leaden malformed bones pulling them under. She dives in, treads water and shrieks with joy as most of the pack follow her in to gnash their teeth and claw uselessly and drown around her. I watch her lead a pack of Andy out of the fog and straight to the docks at the bottom of Fourth Street without looking over her shoulder once. Best rifle in the Clayoquot since Cougar Annie herself she claims to have shot as many Andy as Annie did cougars. We laugh anyway, because she wants us to. She calls it a joke, but it isn’t, because jokes are supposed to have a funny bit at the end where you laugh. Pure Helen has a catchphrase she uses whenever she takes Andy down. Last Stand at Cougar Annie’s, by Scott R Jones
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