by wade coleman
A dozen people stand outside in small groups. A woman and three men sit in chairs. The woman cries quietly while they all hold hands. I can see why they’re scared. Parked next to a hedgerow is a flatbed pickup. Inside are seven Hellhounds, their black scales reflecting the overhead lights. The eyes of one flash red when she looks at me with something like an unnatural intelligence. I don’t like their stare. It makes me feel like a piece of fresh meat.
Jason Baron walks out of his castle, and several of his men circle him.
He wastes no time and starts a speech. “Welcome to The Supplicia Canum, the Punishment of the Dogs. Four hundred years before the Common Era, the Gaul’s attacked Rome. The geese of Juno warned the soldiers of the attack by water while the dogs remained silent. Like our ancestors before us, today we reward success and punish failure. Although our central facility was taken over by the military.” Angry murmurs are passed through the crowd. “…the research is complete, and a new facility will be ready in six months. Congratulations to Doctor Novak. Mr. Novak and your staff, please step into the circle.” Waves of applause greet the three men and two women. The Baron gestures for them to step back and the applause fades.
The baron walks over and shakes Mr. Novak’s hand. “Your new life forms are the final solution to our problem.”
He turns to the people sitting on the bench. “Unfortunately, Counselor Markus, your team was unable to disseminate the virus.”
The Baron walks over to the flatbed truck with the Hellhounds inside and points. “Ten miles north is a river. If you can cross it before the hounds get to you, then all is forgiven.”
He leans against the truck. “You get a thirty-minute head start…as of now.”
The three men and the woman look at each other, their eyes wide, and run to the redwoods, where they are swallowed up.
Some people head back to the castle, leaving six men and the Baron looking at me with disdain.
“Mr. Norwich, I see you declined the clothes I offered.”
I walk over to the Jason Baron, who is standing near the Hellhounds. The dogs are lying there watching us, waiting patiently for someone to open the door to their cage.
Standing next to him, his men circle us. “I was never one for uniforms. Never the right fit.”
“My programs determined that your Portuguese comes from a bio-implant. Mr. Norwich, why are you here?”
I look at Jason. His face is calm, eyes penetrating and inquiring.
“I wanted to know - Is it just business, killing mutants and replacing them with your patent product? Or is it personal?”
He walks up close and sneers, standing a head taller than me, and uses his chest to push me back. “You need to understand your place in life, and your place isn’t among these fine men.”
I stand straight and face him. “You, sir, are a dinosaur.”
His fists clench, and he hits me in the stomach. Jason Baron has had bone and muscle augments. Because the force of the blow stiffens my vest and lifts me off the ground. I land against the Hellhound’s cage, which bark and snap their teeth at me behind the steel.
I stand up, murmurs sounding through the spectators. Walking back over to the Baron, I say, “The dinosaurs didn’t die off all at once, you know. Some clung on for a time, but the forces of evolution eventually killed them off.”
Jason and I circle each other.
“I direct the forces of evolution, and it’s your kind that faces extinction.”
A red dot appears on my chest, a sniper on the rook tower.
The Baron points to the woods. “Perhaps you should get going. Your friends have a better head start than you.”
I take off into the forest, the trees laid out in rows. While jogging, I get my goggles out of my vest and put them on along with my gloves. While my feet move at my cross country pace of ten miles an hour, I follow the heat signature of the footprints before me. I catch up within minutes. One man turns on hearing me and trips over a branch.
The others stop and help him up.
“Give me your shirts.”
They look at me and keep walking fast.
“There are seven Hellhounds and five people. If I can throw them off, some of you might have a chance if you split up.”
“Who are you?” one of the men asks, dressed in a suit and tie.
“Your best friend in the whole world. Now take off your shirts and wipe the sweat from under your armpits.”
When they’re done, they hand their shirts to me, and I point north. “The river is that way. When you get there, don’t try to cross, just float downstream.”
Tying the shirts together, I drag them on the ground as I jog. Natasha tells me I have eight minutes before they release the hounds.
Resuming my pace, I notice the canopy of redwoods blocks most of the light from the moon. The forest floor is clear of brush. My feet are almost silent in the damp leaf litter.
I dial the phone and Kim picks up on the first ring. “Yeah.”
“I’m heading for the river with seven Hellhounds on the loose. Take the dirt road and go upstream.”
“Roger that,” Kim replies.
“Hermes, it’s been thirty minutes.”
I pick up the pace, the goggles illuminating obstacles along the way. From my cross-country training, I’ve covered four miles. I know the hounds are twice as fast as I am. I start looking for the right spot to make a stand. Within a few miles, I find a fallen redwood which has opened a gash in the forest canopy. I toss the shirts on top of the log.
Light from the waning moon casts shadows. Waiting for a cloud to pass, I look up and spot a tree branch thirty feet up or so. Putting my hand in the shadow, I teleport to the branch, reform and grab hold. I swing myself up and sit with my back against the tree. After pulling a penlight from my vest, I tie it to the limb. Turning on the light, it casts permanent shadows independent of the moonlight. I slip back down the tree, remove the knife taped to my back and slide on the plastic knuckles. Stepping into the darkness, I lurk in a shadow and wait for my prey.
Footpads approach. Two red eyes reflect the dim moonlight, a hound closing in on my location. She finds the shirts and shreds them to pieces. Her head shakes back and forth, jaws drooling. I think about what those jaws and teeth would do to human flesh.
The hound follows my scent and stands next to me.
I shift deeper into the dark.
She sniffs the ground before me.
When I’m in the shadows, there’s this point before I shift where I’m not here or there. I just am. I look at the fallen redwood and think about the shadow and wait for the beast to turn her head.
She turns her head and I step out of the shadow.
I wait for the hound to turn her head and then step out of the shadows. I drive the knife between two bones in the hellhound’s neck. Her legs drop out from under her.
As I pull the knife, I hear another hound closing. Natasha accelerates me, and just like that, the world slows to a crawl. The hound leaps, her serrated teeth diving for my neck. I lean back, raise my dagger and plunge it into her eye as she passes only inches from my face. The dagger pierces the eye and punctures the back of her eye socket. A shudder goes through her body.
The knife breaks when I try to take it out. Then, a force hits me from behind that stiffens my vest. Turning on the way down, I stuff the broken dagger into the mouth of the third Hellhound.
But her massive weight pins me to the ground. The monster shakes her head, trying to get rid of the broken dagger, but with the help of my suit, I manage to hold on. With one of her claws, she pins my shoulder to the ground. The other claw grabs my arms holding the dagger. Her sharp talons grab hold of my wrist. The Hound tries to rip my arm off, but my spider undergarment stiffens, and she howls in rage.
I move my leg into a shadow and teleport twenty feet up into the tree, reform and grab hold of a branch near the trunk. The hound is not as nimble. She tries to hold on, but the hound’s weight is too great for the branch. It be
nds, and she falls hard to the ground.
I return to the surface and reform next to her. Her back is broken below her shoulders. She tries to stand and fails miserably, letting out whimpers of pain. We look into each other’s eyes, and she lets out a whine.
“Sorry, can’t help you. Your friend broke my knife.”
From behind the canopy of trees, I hear a branch snap. I slip into the shadows expecting another beast. Instead, a giant mechanical spider is moving towards the penlight I left high in the tree. Its legs are roughly twenty feet long and as thick as bamboo.
It reminds me of the weapons platform I saw in the caverns under the old army base. But this was built so a man could ride in the center. I turn the camera on in my goggles to record what I’m seeing.
At the center of the mass of legs is a man with a hunting rifle. He stands on a round platform with a railing as high as his waist. He inspects the dead and puts the two Hellhounds out of their misery. He steers the spider to the tree to inspect the penlight.
Standing in his shadow, I reform instantly behind the man operating the spider. The platform he stands on is enough to hold at least four people. The railing is waist high with rests mounted on each corner for a rifle.
Standing behind him, I watch him work the controls of the spider. The hunter heads for the river, doing no more than ten miles an hour. I check my goggles to make sure this is being recorded.
The radio in the man’s pocket comes to life with static, and someone’s excited voice says, “Looks like Felix won’t be taking early retirement,” a voice over the handheld radio.
“The old is the first to fall,” Jason Baron’s replies.
The man operating the spider keys his mic. “I had one dead and two wounded hellhounds.”
“What happened?” Jason asks.
“One hound had her spinal cord severed, another had a dagger in its eye. A get this, the last one had a broken back.”
“Say again.”
“The hellhounds back is broke, right between the shoulder blades,” the hunter replies.
“Okay, looks like we have a new generation military android on the loose,” Jason says, “All eyes, look sharp.” The hunter clips the radio to his belt and picks up his rifle.
I smile in the back of the spider.
When we get to the river, and the hunter driving the spider keys his mike: “No sign of Mr. Norwich,” he says, “What do you want me to do?”
“Follow the river upstream to the road,” the baron voice answers, clearly irritated. “Look sharp. Someone tampered with our security cameras. It seems our android has accomplices.”
I hide behind the man driving the spider and consider who would hunt people for sport with such overwhelming odds, and I’m reminded of the short story, The Most Dangerous Game.
The woman I saw earlier is illuminated by moonlight, the stream in front of us. A Hellhound is quickly closing in behind her. I look at the man’s rifle, only a thirty caliber. It won’t do enough damage at this range to help. The man reaches up and pushes a small button on his glasses to record the carnage about to ensue.
By the time we get to where they crossed the river, the hound hits her from behind, knocking her violently to the ground. She lets out a short scream before the hound grabs her head between its jaws and pulls it clean off, shakes it, drops it to the ground and howls. The whole scene sickens me to such an extent that I can barely contain my rage.
The man driving the spider keys his mike. “Mary is down!” his voice ecstatic. “It’s, it’s a magnificent killing machine.” I stand there stunned by the scene, too shocked even to move.
Suddenly, something inside me snaps, and I walk up behind him. I channel my fury and knee him in the tailbone as hard as I can. The bone makes an audible crack as it breaks.
He lies on the ground screaming and writhing in pain, contorted like some insect. I take his sidearm out of his holster and toss it over the railing. With his hands off the controls, the spider stops on the dirt road by the river.
“I never hated a man before, until today.” I pull him up, leaning him against the railing. “Is that how you see people…as things to entertain your sick little fetish?”
I pop him in the mouth with my forehead and pieces of his teeth shatter, ending up in the back of his throat.
He coughs and spits them out. “Thuck-ou.”
I take off his glasses with the video camera and wipe it across his bloody lip, put the glasses in a vest pocket. “Now your blood is tied to a set of glasses that recorded a murder. You should get a good lawyer. I hope the irony isn’t lost that you’re hunting good attorneys, not that I’m complaining.”
This time I head-butt him in the nose and his lights go out. I rip his unconscious body unto a thicket of blackberries near the water.
Behind me, a Hellhound bays into the night. I get to the controls, move the joystick forward, and the spider starts moving. Walking on the dirt road by the river, this mechanical monstrosity tops out at fifteen miles an hour.
I dial Kim. “Rachel, I’m heading your way on a giant spider with a pack of hounds behind me.”
“I can see you. I’m turning around now.”
I switch to infrared and spot the heat from her engine. Soon, I catch up and then slide down one of the spider’s legs.
Kim hops out. “You drive.”
The hounds call to each other. We get in and shut the doors to the Humvee.
I drive, looking over my shoulder. “Pam, get in front with me.”
Kim slides a clip into her thirty-caliber rifle while Pam climbs over the seat. She checks the glove box and takes the pistol.
“What’s going on?” Pam sounds worried, and suddenly I’m wondering if having her here is a good idea.
“Four Hellhounds closing in on us.”
“Bagged three…nice,” Kim says proudly.
I smile. “Yeah, they think I’m an android.”
Pam slides the safety on her pistol. “What’s a Hellhound?”
I pull up the camera feed for the back bumper, and it displays several heat sources on four legs closing in quick. “That’s a Hellhound. Use armor piercing rounds. Their protection is thinnest in the pits of their legs and belly.”
The car jerks to the side as a hound rips a piece off the fender. Kim opens a window and pulls the trigger. After a full clip, the hellhound goes down. One leaps onto the trunk, and I swerve to shake her off, but her claws are dug into the metal.
Kim slams in a fresh clip as the monster tears at the rear window. The other two Hellhounds lock their jaws on the fenders. The back window is ripped free by talons the size of small daggers. The beast pulls herself through the opening. Pam screams while Kim swears in Japanese and shoots.
The beast ignores Kim and comes after me, intelligent enough to know to attack the driver. I push the button for the metal partition, and it rolls up, catching its neck. Straining to push through, it growls and salivates, the dagger-like canine’s inches from my face.
But the metal wall holds, and I move forward against the dash to avoid its snapping teeth. Pam crouches low on the floorboard, takes careful aim and fires. The bullet bounces off its cheek, then off the bulletproof windshield, where it lodges into the seat next to me. “Are you trying to kill me?!”
Scared and angry, Pam yells, “If I were, you’d be dead!”
Kim unleashes another series of blasts from the backseat. The beast coughs blood and is suddenly still. I lower the metal partition, and its head rests against my headrest, I push the mouth full of teeth aside and sit back in my seat.
Kim grabs the Hellhound’s head and pulls it into the backseat. “That’s two down and two to go.”
Leaving the dirt road, I turn onto a paved street that leads to the exit while Kim reloads. As we make the turn, another Hellhound lopes towards us and launches towards the back passenger window, knocking it out. Glass shatters into tiny pieces. Then, with uncanny dexterity, the Hellhound reaches in, grabs the handle and opens the back do
or next to Kim.
“Fuck me raw!” Kim exclaims.
Looking over my shoulder, its gaze is almost human. And the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
“Fakkuanataohh!” Kim yells and shoots at his paw.
The Hellhound withdraws, but the door swings open. The other Hellhound leaps at the door and tears it off its hinges, and Kim is suddenly very exposed.
I straighten the Humvee, punch the gas and turn on the nitrous oxide. With the extra armor, acceleration is a bit slow.
In the rear video monitor, the Hellhounds get to their feet. The one with the good paw catches up, even though I’m doing thirty miles an hour.
A black head with red eyes sticks in the opening where the door used to be. Pam screams again, and Kim opens fire, and the hound falls behind, baying. The Humvee eventually gains speed, and the Hellhound disappears, howling over the wind coming through the cab.
“Are you all right?” I ask Kim.
She puts in a fresh clip and gives me a thumbs up.
“Get in the front.”
Pam sits up in the seat while Kim crawls through the opening and into the front cab. I roll up the steel partition, and the wind from the missing door grows quieter. Pam puts the pistol back in the glove box, heaving a sigh. I notice her hands are shaking.
“You all right?”
“What in the fuck were you thinking!” Pam screams. “This our first date! Are you insane?”
I just broke one of the Pureblood dating ritual rules. No near death experiences on the first date. In retrospect, probably not a good idea.
I approach the bridge with the security checkpoint, the gate down. “Pam, sweetheart, you need to put on your seatbelt right now.”
Kim puts on her seatbelt.
Pam shakes her finger at me while Kim straps her in. “Don’t you sweet…”
She stops talking abruptly when a thirty caliber round dents our windshield. Several security men are firing at us, lined up in front of the gate. Little do they know our front grille will stop fifty caliber rounds. The windshield is not as well protected, “Ladies, you might want to scrunch down out of sight.”