Hill clung tight to Parker’s chest. They looked out timidly at the Wichita skyline. The city’s lights were lit as if night had descended. With every thunderclap, Hill squeezed Parker tighter.
“It’s all right, Sarah. We’re safe, now,” Parker said loudly over the driving rain and thunder. He coughed hoarsely.
“Safe? You call this safe?” she yelled back, trembling.
Parker put his ear up to the door to see if he could hear the dogs. Before, they had clawed feverishly at the doorjamb. He could still hear scratching. It sounded like only a couple of dogs. Maybe a single dog. They waited a few minutes, which seemed like hours. No one would come to help. They had no idea Hill and Parker were out here. The police might have already come and had the situation under control.
A forceful gust of chilling wind pushed them off balance and caused them to stagger.
Again, Parker put his ear to the door to listen. This time he heard nothing.
“I’ve got a plan,” he yelled, looking down at Hill.
Hill looked up at him with desperation in her eyes. Her long blonde hair lay soaked in strings on her shoulders.
“Anything. Anything will be better than this,” she yelled back.
“You stand here opposite the door. You’re the bait,” Parker said, moving Hill like a lobotomized mental-ward patient to the other side of the walkway.
She stared back at him as if to say, “Maybe this isn’t better.”
Parker stepped back to the hinged side of the door.
“I’ll stand here behind the door and open it.”
Hill’s eyes widened. “You’ve gone crazy!”
“If the dogs are gone, we’re okay. If they’re not, I’ll kick the first one that comes through off the roof and slam the door back shut.”
She looked astonished but didn’t reply. Her jaw seemed locked halfway open as if her lips couldn’t shape words and her vocal cords wouldn’t respond. She just stood there, watching the closed door.
“It’s all right,” he tried to assure her. “Okay, ready?”
He grabbed the doorknob and looked at Hill. She sank down to a sitting position, still staring at the door, terrified. Her legs were tucked under her left side, arms crossed over her chest.
Parker yanked the door open and stepped back. For a long few seconds, nothing happened.
Then, Hill’s eyes popped. A clanking noise came from the steel stairs. Dogs’ feet.
He took another step back. A flash of black dog shot from the doorway toward Hill. Parker met it with his right foot, mid-bounds, in the side of its chest with all he had. Pain shocked up from the stressed ankle joint. Still, his foot followed through perfectly, up and over his head. The sixty-pound animal didn’t soar like a football. Yet, it did soar.
It was against Parker’s nature to hurt an animal, but he had no choice. It was either the dog or them, and for an instant, as he watched the dog sail, tumbling end over end as it fell into the darkness, he felt pride in his kick, like in the old high-school football days. I’d like to have seen Jack try to block that one.
Reality returned. Parker’s left foot slipped out from underneath him. With help from his momentum and the rain-slick walkway, he slid to its edge, underneath the steel guardrail and over the side of the twenty-three-story building. He groped for a handhold and with one hand grabbed the bottom rung of the rail as he passed.
He looked up at the steel bar, his legs kicking air over three hundred feet above the ground. It was slick, too slick to hold onto, especially with only one hand. But before he could bring his other hand up, Tony Parker lost his hold.
CHAPTER 34
Sarah Hill shrank back in shock. Battered by the relentless wind and rain, her head swam like a mouse in a flushing toilet. The door to the stairway was still wide open, but all she could see was the empty top landing. The other dogs were yet to show themselves.
Tony Parker’s arm had just disappeared over the side. It took a few seconds for it to sink in. He’d fallen.
“No-o-o-o! Tony! Tone-e-e!” Sarah Hill cried out in desperation.
She forced herself to her hands and knees and crawled toward the edge. Her fear of heights stopped her. Tony was gone. There was nothing she could do for him. It hit hard. She began to cry in hard, grieving gasps.
Rumbling erupted from the stairway. The rest of the dogs were coming.
She leaped to the door, slammed it shut and leaned against it with the knob in both hands as the five dogs hit it, clawing and scratching relentlessly, snarling, barking, and she cried more, this time a scared, quiet cry, shaking her head as if to erase what had just happened, shake away Tony falling to his death, shake away the deadly predators on the other side of the door, shake away this terrible tornadic storm that had twisted and torn her world apart.
“Not Tony. No,” she said aloud and looked to the edge again.
The cables. Scaffolding hung somewhere over that corner of the building. Maybe, somehow, Tony had landed on the scaffold and survived.
She crept to the edge. With every inch she got closer, the cold wind’s intensity grew, sending wave after wave of stinging, hard drops. Her stomach knotted. The heights made her nauseous and tense, not to mention the bitter storm and killer Dobermans. She was afraid to look. She had to. What if Tony wasn’t there, his body splattered twenty-three stories below. I’ll fall, too!
She paused a few feet from the edge and held her eyes closed tight. “Please, Lord. Please, Jesus, let him be alive!” she prayed. She looked over the edge. The scaffolding was more than twenty feet below. Parker lay across it precariously, his left arm and right leg hanging over the narrow platform, face down, motionless.
*-*-*
Jack Simpson had just left the downtown police station two blocks away from the Epic Center when the call came over his radio about the attack. He’d had a talk with the police chief, who told him a similar talk was to happen between Parker and Alvarez. The chief had taken Simpson off of the case and put Lt. Hardessy in charge.
The windshield wipers slapped fast on Simpson’s windshield but did little good against the pounding rain. From a block away, Simpson saw Parker’s truck, amber lights flashing, in front of the building. The water distorted the lights and blurred them like a child’s watercolor painting.
Suddenly, something large and black hit Simpson’s hood with a tremendous crash denting in the steel six inches. A Doberman’s open mouth sprayed blood on the windshield in front of the steering wheel, but the wipers cleared it off with the rain.
He slammed on his brakes in the middle of the street and sat for a moment, gaping out at the dog on his hood, it seemingly glaring back with its own very dead stare.
“Damn, now the sons-of-bitches are flying.”
He pulled the car to the curb behind a long line of parked cars, most of them police cruisers. As he got out, he looked over the dog and rounded the front of the car. His overcoat hung open and flapped in the wind.
With his hand on his forehead to shield his eyes from the rain, he looked up the Epic Center, scanning one story at a time. Reaching the top, he squinted. Scaffolding. Someone was standing on the roof and he was unable to tell whom at that distance in the weather. He glanced at the dog and then at the roof again.
“Nice kick!” he said aloud.
Simpson sprinted down the sidewalk to the front of the building. Other police cars, including a K-9 unit, had pulled up and were parked behind Parker’s truck. Lt. Hardessy was there with his protective dog handling suit and Hero, his wonder dog of a German shepherd.
Hardessy looked up as Simpson ran through the lobby. “Hold it, Simpson,” he yelled. “You’ve been reassigned. I’m in charge now. The chief needed someone who could get the job done.”
Simpson didn’t slow. He kept running toward the elevator.
“I said, hold it, Simpson,” he demanded, stepping into the thickly padded, burlap-suit trousers. “I’ll handle this.”
“Kiss my ass, Hardessy,” Simpson said, reachi
ng the elevator door. It opened, and he stepped in.
*-*-*
Outside, on the roof, Sarah Hill begged Parker continuously to wake up. If he came to and wasn’t aware of where he was, he would surely fall.
“Tony. Tony, come on, wake up,” she pleaded.
His hand twitched then his head. He was slowly coming around.
“Lay still, Tony!” she screamed. “Don’t move until you know where you are. You’re on a scaffold, hundreds of feet in the air. If you’re not careful, you’ll fall.”
CHAPTER 35
Jack Simpson had reached the top floor. He found a young woman and four men huddled together in a law office. They told Simpson where Parker and Hill had gone, and he told them to take the elevator down to the lobby.
With everyone safely in the elevator, Simpson pulled out his .357 and trotted to the stairway door. He carefully opened it and walked in. Pausing briefly, he strained to hear anything that might give a clue as to what was happening. Nothing. He proceeded up the stairs, his revolver out in front pointing to the ceiling.
At the top of the steps, Simpson found the cooling body of Gus Spillman and stepped over it. He took a deep breath as if preparing to dive into a pool of alligators and entered the mechanical room.
Nothing moved. Darkness. He took a second to search the wall for a light switch but could find none.
*-*-*
The five Dobermans heard him enter. Trotted toward the doorway. Moved behind large boxes. Stood quietly. Waited. Licked their snouts. Showed their teeth. Waited.
*-*-*
Simpson saw the open stairs leading to the outside access of the roof. That was the way he had to go to find Parker.
A flash of lightning, and the crash of thunder closely following, caused Simpson to look to the window.
A figure outside on the scaffold was struggling to stand up. Parker.
Simpson rushed toward the window to see what he could do to help his friend.
Growls came from the darkness, loud and vicious.
Simpson halted. A figure appeared in the shadows between two large boxes, just to one side of his intended path. Strobing lightning revealed the dark shape as it showed its murderous fangs in a demonic grin.
Simpson raised his gun quickly, preparing to calm the beast with
a .357 slug.
Another growl came from the left, interrupting his aim. The lightning illuminated yet another figure, materializing from the darkness, standing motionless, snarling. It stood on a six-foot wooden crate five feet away.
Simpson replaced the first Doberman in his sights with the closer one.
Three more growls from behind. He looked over his shoulder as three additional shadows appeared in another pulsing flash of light, all showing their deadly weapons from underneath curled and snarling snouts.
They had him surrounded. He could only stop one, with luck, maybe two, by gun. They poised to attack at any instant. If he fired his revolver, they might run—or they might attack. He would have to shoot and run. But where could he run?
Simpson took short breaths from between parted lips. Sweat beaded on his already wet forehead. He’d shoot the closest target; the easiest shot—the one on the crate.
Movement from behind. A sort of clicking noise. The dogs were moving.
Simpson turned.
The three dogs that were behind him had disappeared as phantom-like as they had come.
He turned back to the front.
Lightning flashed. The other two dogs had also vanished.
Simpson moved closer to the window, his eyes searching the dark, shadowy surroundings. Another lightning flash and thunder explosion distracted him. He saw Parker trying to get to his feet outside.
“Tony, Tony! I’m here. Hold on!” Simpson cried out, now within eight feet of the window.
The storm and the thick glass prevented Parker from hearing.
Clicking from behind. A lot of clicking.
“The dogs!” he said, under his breath.
Now, a growl. Now, several. A chorus.
A scene from his childhood flashed through his mind. His brother was being mauled by the neighbor’s mastiff. The bicycle crashing. The terrible struggle. His brother screaming, crying for help. Vicious fangs. Flesh ripping. Blood. Desperation. No way to help.
*-*-*
Outside on the scaffolding, things were fuzzy and hard to figure out in Parker’s head. He started to get up, but his hand slipped, and his head bobbed over the edge of the scaffold. A window squeegee fell. The squeegee seemed to fall for eternity. Nearly out of sight, it bounced spastically on the ground.
His eyes blurred. He saw double. He felt nauseous. His head throbbed hard. Concussion. Parker struggled, finally coming to his feet. He gazed up the suspending cables to where Hill stood. The controls to raise and lower the scaffold still smoked from the lightning strike, fused together and useless.
A sudden bang on the large window made Parker hug the scaffold cables, startled. Simpson had been pushed face first into the window. His revolver had hit the glass at the same time and caused a crack to grow across it. Parker gaped at Simpson’s horrified face only inches away, pressed against the glazing, distorted from the blur of the rain and the dizziness in his head.
“Tony, help!” Simpson pleaded, his muffled cry barely heard through the glass and over the raging storm.
All five dogs were on him. They ripped and tore at his body. One tried for his jugular, but he knocked it away with his forearm. Two replaced it, thrusting with their terrible incisors at his neck. He held his hands to his throat. Instead they went for his groin and legs. Their powerful jaws clamped onto his body, and their sharp fangs punctured his flesh, ripping, tearing, chewing, tugging and shaking when they had a fast grip on a mouthful of Jack Simpson.
“Oh, God, no! Jack!” Parker pleaded back, his face pressed up against the glass, opposite Simpson’s. He beat on the glass as Simpson slid below the window, eyes bugging with pain. An all too familiar fever enveloped Parker’s body. It excited him with overwhelming anger. His cold joints stiffened, and the wound on his neck was afire.
“No, no, no, no!” Parker demanded. “Jack!”
He watched, enraged. He could no longer see Jack in the dark room. A dog’s head or back occasionally flipped into view as the dogs swarmed like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
He looked up the cables, this time grabbing one without thinking twice. With his feet against the side of the building, he tried to climb up the slippery steel cable, hand over hand and foot over foot against the side of the building. But on every attempt, he slid back after only making a few feet. On his last try, he fell back to the scaffold hard and kicked into a bucket hooked onto the side. A thin nylon rope was attached. If he could throw the bucket up to Hill and have her tie the rope off, he’d stand a much better chance of climbing up.
“Stand back!” he ordered.
He swung the bucket around like a lariat and then slung it up and over the railing to Hill. Hill’s head ducked back as the bucket came over. She quickly reappeared with a questioning look.
“Tie it off!” he told her.
He gave her a few seconds to secure the line and then tugged twice to check it before trying to climb. Once again, Parker’s attempts were thwarted. The rope was too thin and slippery. Parker cried out in anguish as he slipped down beside the window. All this time wasted while the dogs ripped Jack apart.
CHAPTER 36
Parker gritted his teeth and took two more steps up the side of the building, holding onto the thin rope. He started slipping again, but now, he knew what he must do. He’d seen it many times in the movies and on TV. Bruce Willis and Batman did it.
Parker wrapped the rope around one hand for a better hold and then bent his knees, squatting on the wall. He shoved off with his legs while holding tight to the rope. He swung out. Coming back hard, he hit feet first against the window. The glass shattered and Parker swung in, ready to begin a melee of dog bashing. Glass and rain pour
ed in through the broken window. He lost his grip on the rope and fell flat on his back beside Jack Simpson.
The dogs were gone. He leaned over onto his side and looked at Simpson’s blood-seeping body. There were wounds too numerous to count.
The roof door slammed and the metal steps rattled as Sarah Hill ran down. She sprinted over to Parker and Simpson.
“Get out of here, now,” Parker said. “Go get help.”
Hill obeyed and ran to the stairway door. Parker watched her until she made it through, making sure the dogs didn’t follow her.
He knelt beside Simpson. He was surprised when Simpson feebly opened his eyes. He was mortally wounded, it was obvious. Blood ran from a multitude of wounds: neck, face, arms, stomach and sides, legs and groin. He lay with his head and shoulders against the wall below the large, broken window.
“Hey, Tony,” he said faintly, “that was one hell of a kick you gave that Dobie. You know he landed on my hood? Nobody blocked that field goal.”
Parker smiled what little he could muster, trying to comfort his dying friend. He couldn’t hold it for long.
“Jack, come on now. This isn’t any way to die.”
When Simpson smiled back at him, Parker flashed back to the day they met. The big game, the field-goal attempt that Simpson blocked and robbed from him, and the fight afterward that ended in a long and very loyal friendship.
“I’m sorry, Jack!” Parker said, shaking his head.
“You’re sorry? What for, ol’ buddy?” Simpson asked.
“For calling you a—nigger.”
“What? Tony, that was over twenty years ago, and if I remember right, I called you an ignorant, white-trash asshole.”
They both chuckled until Simpson coughed up blood.
“Tony, do me a favor?” Simpson’s face was serious.
“Sure, Jack.”
“Don’t mess around on Julie. She’s the best thing you ever had.”
Simpson’s concern surprised him. “Sure, Jack, I know she is.”
“And one more thing. Look after Sadie and the kids, will you?”
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