Jerome feinted left with the shield, then came right at me. I didn’t fall for the feint and danced to the side as agilely as my shaking legs allowed, coming up with a knee that clipped his hip. I followed it with a short hook to his right kidney and kicked him in the back of the right knee, buckling him. I snaked an arm around his throat and was just about to secure the carotid when he jumped straight up and back with enough strength to defy gravity, taking his body and mine all the way off the patchy grass and driving us to the ground, him on top, his body crushing into mine. That bullet I took had been over a month ago, but it hadn’t been long enough. For the second time in just a few minutes, all the air was stolen from my body.
Somehow Jerome managed to maintain his hold on the shield and as he rolled off me, he swung back with it, the metal edge striking my cheek and exploding suns behind my eyes.
Staggering to my feet, I barely dodged another swing of the trashcan lid. I tried a haymaker and missed. Jerome kicked for my stomach, but it was a tired, halfhearted attempt that didn’t even come close. My nose, eyebrow and cheek were bleeding and my knuckles were pretty torn up. Jerome started in again and I tried a side kick that he slapped away with the shield. He jabbed, his fist hitting me in the shoulder, but it was more shove than punch. We both sort of collapsed to all fours, breathing hard and watching each other wearily.
“Whach you want, white man?” said the giant. “Whach you after?” I could tell the words came hard, costing him a lot.
I sucked in and out three times before answering, sweat and blood dripping.
“The girl,” I finally managed.
It was the wrong thing to say. I saw fire spark way down deep in his eyes and he exploded at me.
9
Max slept soundly in the back seat of the Escalade, dreaming of his days in Germany before the Great Gray Wolf decimated his pack. His front paws twitched in the air and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a doggy smile as he ran and wrestled with his siblings in the thick forest grass that surrounded the farm on the north side, in the small valley at the base of the mountains. The air, moist with snow melt, tasted wonderful in his lungs and the sun shone brightly through the lush foliage that packed the landscape.
His eyes snapped open. The Alpha was in trouble.
Sounds of fighting, the smell of adrenaline flooding the air, his Alpha’s grunt of pain. Max waited for the door to pop open, crouched, ready to lunge from the vehicle and find him. But the door didn’t open. The sounds escalated, allowing him to triangulate an approximate location, but still he remained trapped inside the car.
Max jumped into the front seat, checking for an opening, then jumped to the far back, but there was no exit. He went back to the middle section, coiled his powerful legs under him and launched full out into the front windshield. The sloping, reinforced safety glass took the impact and recoiled him so forcefully that it almost knocked him unconscious. He landed heavily on his side across the front seats and bounced into the front dash.
Max rose and launched again with the same effect. His nose and lip coursed hot blood that dripped to the leather seat he stood upon. Max tried the side window, but was unable to gain the momentum needed to shatter the safety glass. Snarling, crimson foam coating his teeth, he turned for the back window. He charged and jumped, clearing the back partition and rolling his shoulder to take the impact. The tinted back window exploded outward and Max landed on his side and neck on the rough asphalt of the street. He rolled with the momentum and sprang to his feet, the Alpha’s scent strong in his nostrils and the sound of combat leading him true.
I tried to rise, but he caught me midriff, driving me up and back into the sliding glass doors behind me. A bomb went off and glass showered us both as we fell into his living room. I managed to get a knee into his chest, and as we rolled, I vaulted him over me. He crashed into an end table, disintegrating a lamp beneath his weight. And rammed up against a flower patterned couch that smashed into the far wall. I staggered to my feet, the world spinning, my eyes trying to adjust from bright sunlight to the darker interior. I heard a little girl scream and saw her sitting at the kitchen table, a white-bread sandwich in her hand and her eyes big and scared.
I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I was here to help and that I would take her away from the bad man, but there was no time. Jerome charged, his face a bloody mask of rage and his big fists swinging fast and hard. I dodged the first one, but the next clipped my forehead and the third hit me in the liver, almost finishing me. I caught his wrist as he tried to pull back for another swing, bent it in and toward me, trying to break the bone. It hurt, I know it did, but he took the pain and caught me between the shoulder blades with a massive punch that felt like it went all the way through me. I kicked into his right leg with both of mine, still maintaining my grip on his wrist, and let my body’s weight flip him over. It was either that or lose his arm. He landed hard on his back, with me on top for a change, and I swung an elbow into his lips. I tried for another, but his speed saved him as he shoved my arm up and over his head. He grabbed my throat with his free hand, his thumb digging into my Adams Apple again. I tried for his eyes with the hand behind his head, but couldn’t quite reach, so I just dug my chin in and flexed my neck muscles waiting him out. We stayed like that for several seconds, both breathing hard, the little girl screaming in the background for me to leave her daddy alone. It broke my heart for her to think that, but there would be time to explain later. I hooked one foot under his thigh, released my bent-wrist lock and elbowed him in the side just below the ribs where they connect with the solar plexus, knocking out his wind. I heard him grunt and he sagged for an instant. I twisted hard and ended up on top of him. I crawled up, pinning his arms like in a school-yard fight, and punched straight down into his face; Wham! Wham! Wham! Each hit sounding meaty and thick, like Rocky punching the cow carcasses in the slaughter house. A split opened over his left eye, blood spraying, his nose mashed in and his lips ruptured. I hit him twice more and then I heard crunching glass behind me. The girl screamed again and the barrel of a gun smashed into my temple, knocking me off Jerome and onto the floor.
A tall skinny black guy, with an open red baseball shirt and a gold chain, stood over me. He held a silver .357 Magnum and pointed it at my face. Grinning, he said, “Thanks for the help,” and pulled the trigger.
Max slid through the back gate, silent as a panther, his big, thick-padded paws rolling with each step, the nails pulled up so as not to make a sound on the concrete walkway. He had flown like an arrow from the car, seeing the three men running to the sounds of the Alpha up ahead, but slowed to a graceful creep, as he rounded the corner. The men stood over and around the Alpha, one of them pointing a gun at his face. Max knew the danger of guns, their loudness, their deadly power. He launched from behind, catching the man with the gun by the throat, his ninety-plus pounds whipping up and around, his inch-long fangs sinking gum deep. Blood flooded his mouth, driving him even further into frenzy. He saw red, tasting the primal life force and completed the roll as the gun fired, the bullet going wide and hitting the floor a few inches from the Alpha’s face. Max let go at the last second and the gunman crashed into the linoleum floor hard, the gun flying from his hand and skittering across the room and under a chair.
Without pause Max turned and bit the closest of the men on the thigh. The baggy jeans slid as he made contact, causing the wound to be mostly a tearing scrape with shredded clothes. But the man reacted as if he had been castrated, screaming in a high pitched voice and jumping back so fast he fell over and dropped his own gun.
The third man fired five rounds at Max, plunking holes in the flooring, but never coming close as the dog darted straight at him.
The Alpha reached the man first, punching him in the groin and then kicking him in the face as he bent over. Max hit an instant later, striking the side of his head with powerful jaws, driving him up and back, taking off his left ear. But the man was tough and grabbed a handful of Max’s jowl as they
tumbled together to the floor, destroying another end table and lamp in the process. Max let go of his tentative hold on the man’s face and crushed down on his left shoulder as the Alpha made it to his feet and stomped down on the man’s knee, snapping something vital. All of the fight left him and he curled into a fetal ball, moaning as Max jerked him into the kitchen.
The wild lust of battle took complete control as his primal drives switched from combat to prey and the need to simply fight converted to the need to utterly destroy. His head thrashed back and forth at lightning speed, shredding clothing and flesh and digging to the bone beneath. The man screamed again and then went limp and silent as Max savaged him.
From somewhere far away, Max heard the Alpha’s voice. In his exited state, the sound seemed muffled, as though being spoken through water. He wanted to ignore it, to ignore the command the Alpha spoke to him. To continue to destroy, to shred, to peel the very flesh from the carcass of his vanquished opponent. But the order of The Pack, to obey or die, ran hundreds of generations deep, and as strong as the drive to completely decimate his prey pushed, the need of The Pack overshadowed it and forced his compliance. He pulled himself back with a supreme act of will and obeyed The Alpha’s command to release and guard. He lay next to the bloody heap, quivering in suppressed rage.
I ordered Max to release and guard before he could actually skin the last of the gang-bangers that had disrupted Jerome’s and my fight and looked about the kitchen to make sure the little girl hadn’t been hit by a stray bullet. But both she and Jerome were gone.
The second guy Max had bitten was trying to get to his feet while searching for his gun under a shattered table at the same time. I punted him hard in the face and scored an easy three points, knocking him unconscious.
Running to the front door, I made it just in time to see their car turning the corner with little Keisha standing on the back seat and looking out the window at me. Her face was a mask of fear as they pulled down the street and out of sight. A rage flared inside me that blanked out all rational thought and I strode back into the kitchen as the guy that had pointed the gun at me staggered to his feet. I saw blood spouting from his throat past the fingers of the hand he had pressed tight against the ragged wounds. I punched him as hard as I could in the upper lip. Teeth splintered and his whole face practically caved in. He bounced into the wall and right back at me and this time I swung an uppercut that blasted his chin, snapping his head back so hard it must have come close to breaking his neck, which would have been fine with me just then.
I followed with a straight jab to his solar plexus and I could swear my knuckles scraped his spine. He folded, his face puckering as though he were caving in on himself. I’m pretty sure he was out on his feet, but I saw Keisha’s face in my mind’s eye and came around with a right hook that buckled the remaining bones in his face. He crumpled in a loose heap and I turned, fists clenched, hoping for someone else to punch, searching the kitchen and living room, but all three of the gang bangers were out cold, bleeding quietly to themselves.
That wouldn’t work. I needed answers.
Max watched silently as The Alpha sat the man He’d bitten in the thigh up against a couch, his legs straight out in front of him. The Alpha smacked him across the face several times until the man jerked awake. Max tensed inwardly, ready to lunge. He sensed the man’s pulse in the thick arteries of his throat, thigh and biceps. He could sever any of them in an instant.
Once again, The Alpha confused him. Instead of killing his enemy, he allowed him to live, granting his opponent another opportunity to kill him. It made no sense to Max. In the wild, life was life and death, death. Fair play and rules and laws held no place in nature where the strong survived and the weak perished. And of course his animal brain could never comprehend the idea of leaving an enemy alive to question. But The Alpha commanded and so he obeyed. But if the man attacked, Max would hold back no longer and blood would flow.
10
In the old days, back when I was still a K9 cop, I would have used what’s called a sternal rub to wake this guy up. But I was cranky and they’d just tried to kill me and had stopped me from saving a little girl from her kidnapper. So instead, I smacked him pretty hard a couple of times across the face until he opened his eyes all wide and scared and he jerked back like he thought I was going to hit him again.
Couldn’t blame him. I actually did want to hit him a few more times. But I held back.
“Okay,” I said, “this is the way this is going to work. I’m going to ask you questions and you are going to answer them quickly and truthfully. If you start to stammer, or try and stall or lie to me in any way shape or form, I’m going to have my partner here,” I thumbed back to Max, “rip something off you. It might be a finger or an ear or who knows, maybe something more important.” I glanced down at his lap and he cringed a little. “Either way, I promise it will be something you wouldn’t want to lose, something you couldn’t want to lose, something you shouldn’t want to lose.” I could tell he was one of those people who are naturally terrified of dogs, and Max was more wolf than dog just now, so I felt pretty confident he would see Max as the monster from his childhood nightmares. If not… well… I’d just have to let Max tear a piece or two off to prove it to him.
“Man,” said the bleeding criminal, “you can’t do that… cops can’t do that.”
I smiled a little, just a twitch of the lips really. “Do I look like a cop to you?”
“Yeah,” said the gangbanger, seeming to gain a bit of confidence, “you look just like a cracker cop.”
“Cracker?” I said a bit offended. “That’s very un-PC of you.” I wiggled a finger and Max padded slowly forward… one step…two steps… I held up my hand in a stopping gesture and he stopped… licked his lips… staring at big bad gangster sitting on the floor, his eyes wide as fifty-cent pieces. “I’m not a cop and this,” I thumbed back to Max again, “is no police dog.” I saw Keisha’s face staring at me from the car window and I thought of my own daughter as the boots crunched through the broken glass moving closer and closer. The hint of a smile left my lips and my eyes at the same time and I let him see my true nature. “Who sent you?” My voice sounded dead to my own ears.
His face turned ashen and he cringed back. But his head jerked slightly to the negative and I knew further convincing would be necessary. I stood up and took a step back. I gave Max a head nudge and he struck like a ninety-pound cobra catching the bad man square on the left pec faster than the man could think or move or act. He gave a little grunt and then Max started shaking and pulling and the grunt turned into a scream and then a shriek and then something that pretty much defies human interpretation…something primal and deep from the depths of the soul…something filled with more than fear, more than terror, something digging down to the bowels of horror itself.
Hair of the Dog Page 4