Tricia didn’t take the time to look at the new injuries on her hand. She brought the hanger back, then again lunged at Dawg’s eye, putting all of her weight behind it. She missed again, but this time she buried it all the way to her knuckles in the beast’s right nostril. Blood spurted onto Tricia’s hand, and Dawg bolted backwards through the hole in the door.
*-*-*
Once more, Jezebel came to Tony Parker in his dreams. She marched down the street the same as before. She stopped in front of the Parker house as before. She walked up to the steps, just as before, only this time, she stepped over a shattered white porcelain bugaku mask. Once again, the door opened, and she walked in and up the stairs.
She entered Nick’s room and stood face to face with Tony.
Again, he could feel her hot breath blowing on his face. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. He trembled again. She licked his face, making it wet.
He felt her big front paws push down on the bed, and he felt her full weight leap up on it near the foot. He felt her body, warm and heavy, lay across his legs. She gave a deep, long sigh.
Parker finally pried his eyes open and woke up. He jerked his head up and looked down at his feet. Nick slept curled up across his legs. He’d disturbed Julie, and she yawned and sighed, her warm breath blowing on his wet face. His entire face was drenched with perspiration.
The clock on Nick’s dresser read two thirty a.m. He gazed down at Audrey, sleeping between him and Julie, and stroked her little back, chuckled to himself and went back to sleep.
CHAPTER 55
There was a party going on. Lots of laughing and talking—and barking. The TV blared, and Lassie was on. Voices commented on the show. “I wouldn’t take no shit from that boy if I was her,” one deep, gruff voice said. “And I’ll tell you what, if I would’ve pulled that stupid cat from the river, I would’ve had its ass,” a higher pitched voice said.
A tapestry hung crooked on the wall, depicting several people sitting around a card table, playing poker. It resembled the one Parker had seen at the Bumfields’, only theirs was of dogs.
Looking closer at the tapestry, the people all had familiar faces. On one side sat Alvin MacGreggor. Next to him were Sergeant Big Jim Morowsky and Officer Farley Cox, the two cops killed at MacGreggor’s house.
On the other side were Mrs. Nightingale and Gus Spillman, the guard at the Epic Center. Steven Johnson, the young blind man killed by his own sight dog, sat beside them wearing sunglasses. In the middle, Jack sat, smiling. Steven Johnson had just passed an ace of spades to him under the table with his toes. Pastor Carl Santini watched from the window, looking as if he wanted to come in and join the game.
Doc tended bar in the background of the tapestry, a couple of uniformed firefighters were sitting at the bar, and Patsy was stepping over a rug as she walked toward the table with drinks. The rug was like one of those bearskin kind, only this one wasn’t a bear. The head of Ho Truong, alias Ming—eye patch in place—stuck up from it. His body, lying deflated and clothed in black, made up the rug.
There was more laughter and loud talking and barking and even howling. The room was full of dogs, a couple dozen of them. They sat up on a sofa like people would, drinking beer out of cans. Some sat on the arms of the couch and in a couple of chairs. Two leaned against the sofa back. They all watched television. Laughing and “carrying on so,” as Mrs. Bumfield would have said.
On the floor, two naked people lay, curled up in balls like sleeping dogs.
A dog wearing a skirt and an apron, stepped into the room on her hind legs, carrying an hors d’oeuvre tray. The greedy TV watchers quickly snatched up the goodies. They snacked on the fingers and eyeballs and ears and noses from the tray. A large yellow and gray paw reached over to the middle and scooped up a pair of testicles. The tray was cleaned, except for a small, homemade Raggedy Ann doll that, although nearly shredded, seemed to be there just for decoration.
The dog in the dress turned and walked back out of the room to go get more.
A closer look at the people on the floor revealed that they had familiar faces, also. It was the Bumfields of Sand Creek, Kansas. They did not sleep. They were dead, throats torn.
In the middle of the couch, Dawg, the Bumfield’s big Heinz fifty-seven mutt, pulled a cigar from his mouth, got up, and walked on his hind legs to the large picture window. He looked out at a tree. On a limb in the tree clung the Bumfield’s kitten.
It pleaded with an insistent mew.
The big mutt burst out laughing, a loud vulgar guffaw, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
*-*-*
Parker’s eyes snapped open once again. Of all the nightmares he’d had over the past few days, this had been the strangest, but no less frightening. It was three thirty a.m.
“What’s wrong sweetheart?” Julie asked.
“Nothing. I can’t sleep. It’s all right,” he said remembering the Sand Creek files Doc had kept separate. The folks in Sand Creek had been overlooked.
Parker rolled out of the bed carefully, gently picking up arms and legs entangled around him and laying them back down with the love and care they deserved.
“Do you want some company? Do you want me to get up with you?”
“No, it’s all right, Julie. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said, walking out quietly, then closing the door behind.
He grabbed some clothes from the master bedroom closet, took Jack’s .357 from a locked nightstand and walked quietly down the steps. He picked up the phone as he put on his shirt.
Truong had started to tell him about what he had done to the people in Sand Creek but never finished. Where had his head been? How could he have forgotten them?
“Tyrone. . . . Busy night, huh…? Double shift…? You poor bastard! Well, it’s about to get busier. . . . I need you to get a hold of the sheriff…. Yeah, the sheriff. . . . Tell him to go out and set up roadblocks in every direction from Sand Creek. . . . Tell him to not let anybody in or anything out. Next, I want you to call the highway patrol and tell them what we’ve got, and see if the city police won’t cooperate, too. . . . If they won’t, see if the sheriff won’t get a hold of the National Guard. . . . Yeah, it’s happening again, we missed some of the dogs. . . . Thirty or so. Their files were in another room. Have ambulances standing by. I’ll contact you from the truck.”
Parker hung up and tucked his shirt into his pants. He turned and saw Julie step out at the top of the stairs. He hid Jack’s gun under his belt, behind his back.
“What’s going on?” she asked impatiently.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” he said as he hurried to the door. “Go back to bed.”
“Tony!”
“Just a kitten stuck in a tree. Now, please, go back to bed. I’ll be right back. I promise.” He went through the door and closed it without looking back to Julie or giving her a chance for rebuttal.
CHAPTER 56
The achy stiffness was returning to Parker’s traumatized body. He felt it in his shoulders and elbows as he guided the Jimmy recklessly down the quiet, early morning streets. His joints felt like cold, rusted steel, and his neck was rigid and painful to move. A fire raged inside his skull, and a dull throbbing hurt his temples with every beat of his racing heart. He felt a tremendous thirst, but with even the thought of water, his throat jerked and twisted in painful convulsions. He did his best to think of other things. He thought about the Bumfields and little Tricia. He wondered what he might find when he arrived in Sand Creek.
“AC base to AC One, you copy, Mr. Parker?” Tommy Chin’s voice pierced Parker’s eardrums like needles. He flinched, acknowledging the pain.
“Yeah,” he panted, his voice now hoarse and low.
“I just thought you’d like to know. When I came back from the emergency room at two thirty I checked in on Jezebel.”
Parker waited for Chin to continue. He felt there was going to be bad news. Jezebel wasn’t just a dog to Parker. She was more human to him than most people he knew.
She had been wronged. It was human greed and vengeance that had turned her world upside down.
“I was watching her sleeping, and all of a sudden she gave a deep sigh and just stopped breathing. I checked her for a pulse and couldn’t feel anything. Her pupils were dilated. I put her in a body bag and dragged her out by the incinerator to be cremated tomorrow.”
Parker hung up the microphone and turned off the radio without comment. He didn’t care to hear any more. A shiver worked its way up his stiff backbone. Jezebel had died at about the same time he’d dreamed of her climbing onto the bed and laying at his feet.
CHAPTER 57
Keening sirens and flashing lights suddenly shocked the still night as every available law-enforcement vehicle in Sedgwick County raced toward Sand Creek, the tiny town seven miles northwest of Wichita.
Pulsing lights could be seen for miles across the flat Kansas plains. Officers were setting up roadblocks in a perimeter around the town as Tony Parker had requested. He drove down the gravel road to within sight of Sand Creek’s grain elevator, illuminated by several mercury vapor lights that surrounded it.
Two highway patrol cars blocked the road ahead with one officer standing in front, resting a shotgun butt on his side. A vacant sheriff’s patrol car was parked on the roadside nearby. Parker pulled up to the officer and stopped as a highway patrol helicopter droned loudly overhead.
“Are there any . . . ?” Parker paused, finding it difficult to finish.
“Looks like we’re too late,” the young patrolman answered, tipping his Smoky-the-Bear hat back and shaking his head. “No sign of the dogs. The dispatchers have been trying to get through to the residents by phone. There hasn’t been even one to answer. Looks like they even got their mailman and a lady from the postal service who went out looking for him. Found both their cars.” He glanced back toward the town. “Nothing’s moving down there.”
Parker felt nauseous as the officer spoke—a burning on his neck. His body ached, every joint hurting. His head and every thought inside it had been shaken up, mixed to where nothing was clear. He saw himself in the side mirror of the Jimmy as he leaned out, listening to the cop. Mucous came from his nose. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Now his entire body and senses numbed. His thoughts tumbled. Rabies…. Bumfields…. Tricia…. Dawg…. Death…. Blood…. Death…. Rabies….
He screamed, beating the steering wheel and the dash hard in a tantrum, “Damn, damn, damn!”
The officer looked shocked, holding out his hand as if trying to stop a speeding car.
“Hey, hey, easy now! You okay?” the officer asked.
Parker answered with a sort of growl.
“Jeez, man, control yourself. Now, if you’ll back your truck up and park over there to the side.” The officer pointed to the side of the road, still giving an amazed look.
Parker slammed the truck into reverse, then floored the accelerator. The tires roared and threw gravel on the officer. Parker backed up into the shallow ditch, then jammed the shifter into first gear and the Jimmy bolted out, and he pulled it to the side. He sat in the truck, squeezing the steering wheel, trying to understand the hurt in his head as several more law-enforcement vehicles drove past.
Parker popped the glove compartment open and pulled out Jack’s gun. The pain intensified. Dull throbbing all over his body. A feverish burning. Joints grating and aching. His neck was stiffening, and he held his head cocked to one side. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and yanked the bandage from his neck, exposing a large, dark red, pus-filled sore.
Parker raked in a deep breath and stepped out of the truck, then wiped the snot from his top lip with the shoulder of his short-sleeved shirt. He held his forearm up to block the numerous vehicles’ blinding lights that irritated and burned deep into his eyes. Moving in unstable, stiff steps, he approached the crowd of a dozen or more law-enforcement officers and stopped beside the sheriff.
A tall, lanky man in his fifties with a belt that hung low on his hips turned to him. He wore a brown cowboy hat and a sheriff’s badge.
“You Parker?” Sheriff Warren asked around his cigar.
Parker gave a slow nod.
“The chopper pilot says there’s a pack of dogs, gathering on the other end of town and heading this way.”
Parker looked at him through half-open eyes. His nose was beginning to run again, eyes watering, saliva rolling down his chin, lips parted showing the tip of his tongue.
The sheriff looked him over carefully, his gaze pausing at the pistol in his right hand.
“You okay, son?” he asked, looking back up into Parker’s eyes. He squinted and leaned forward, seeing the large infected sore on his neck. “Damn, what happened to you?”
“Rabid skunk,” Parker said in a gruff whisper.
The tall lawman continued eyeing him carefully.
“Sheriff, here they come!” one of the officers called out. Sheriff Warren looked over the cars toward the tiny town, glancing back once to Parker.
“All right, everybody, get behind the vehicles. And no noise! We don’t want to scare ‘em,” Sheriff Warren commanded, throwing his cigar to the dirt.
Parker snickered. “Scare ‘em,” he mocked with a crooked sort of intoxicated smile.
The sheriff leaned against the front fender of the car in front of him. “Do not, I repeat, do not fire until I tell you to.”
Parker moved to a clear gap between vehicles. He could see the pack of angry dogs coming up the road with Dawg in the lead. Parker stood, stooped at the shoulders, and checked the revolver’s cylinder for bullets. There were two left.
A tingling heat consumed him suddenly. He looked down the road and then at the numerous officers, their guns pointed at the large group of shadows moving in their direction. He couldn’t remember why he was there. It didn’t make sense. The pain overwhelmed him, and convulsions erupted throughout his body, nearly sending him to his knees. He looked down the road again and saw the dogs. They were trusting, innocent creatures, betrayed and corrupted by human greed and self-pity. Over a dozen guns were trained at them.
Parker flicked the cylinder shut and spun it, then pointed it at the back of the head of an officer standing behind him. He pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped an empty chamber. One cop, who had just trotted up, heard it and looked to him. Parker pulled the trigger again. Another snap.
“Damn, what the hell are you doing?” the newcomer exclaimed.
“Screw you!” Parker barked out, now pointing the gun at the new officer. Again, he fingered the trigger. Another vacant chamber.
By now the Sheriff and several other officers turned to him and watched as he squeezed the trigger for the fourth time. Yet another snap.
“Shit!” Sheriff Warren yelled. “Grab the son-of-a-bitch!”
Parker raised the gun to his own temple. No more empty chambers. This would stop the pain. This would stop the killing.
CHAPTER 58
Tony Parker jerked the trigger of Jack’s .357 with the muzzle pointed to his own temple. The gun blasted as Sheriff Warren grabbed his hand. Everyone’s attention turned to Parker. It felt as though a machete had split his skull and nails had been driven into his eardrums. He felt blood roll down his nose. Four of the officers wrestled him down to the ground, and Jack’s .357 bounced on the gravel and landed in the nearby ditch.
“The dogs!” another cop yelled.
Suddenly, the vicious dogs leaped onto and over the car hoods, their flesh-ripping fangs revealed.
Several officers screamed, as the dogs’ teeth punctured their skin.
The dogs answered with furious growls.
Pistols and shotguns discharged with loud explosions.
The dogs attacked savagely but were no match for the many guns. Fangs tore into flesh, and blood spurted from arteries and flowed from terrible red gashes. Guns fired from close range—many at point blank.
Several dogs attacked the officers holding Parker down, and he struggled free. He shook his head, s
meared the blood across his face with his hand as he stood just out of the melee.
In and out, back and forth, the pain and his thoughts teetered.
He saw Dawg on top of the sheriff, ripping into his forearm. He remembered now what these terrible beasts had done.
Parker gave a guttural roar and grabbed the dog by the throat, lifting him off of the sheriff. Several other dogs saw the struggle and came to Dawg’s rescue. Parker threw Dawg to the gravel and fell on top of him, again grabbing his throat and squeezing. Dawg’s rescuers leaped onto Parker’s back, rolling him off.
The officers slowly gained control of the situation. They finally silenced all of the dogs except for the five Parker battled. The cops gathered around with guns pointed.
“Hold your fire,” Sheriff Warren yelled. “We don’t want to hit Parker.”
“The hell with that, Sheriff!” the officer Parker had pulled the trigger on shouted back. Didn’t you see him? He was trying to kill me.”
“I said, hold your fire! The boy’s got rabies. He can’t help it.”
All the officers stared at the battle. The dogs ripped and tore at every part of Parker’s body, but he still stood, knocking them left and right as they attacked.
Parker gave another roar.
“Don’t just stand there, boys, get in there and help him out,” the sheriff commanded.
There was no response as they watched.
“Well, shit, then!” Sheriff Warren said and stepped into the battle, pulling the dogs back and flinging them away.
The officers opened fire as their targets were slung off and away from the sheriff and Parker.
Parker still struggled with Dawg as the last of the attackers were killed. He finally got a good grip on the dog’s head and twisted hard.
Dawg’s vertebrae answered with a definite crack, and the large dog’s body went limp.
Parker dropped the dead carcass to the road.
“You okay, Parker?” Warren asked as he shuffled to him, arms reaching.
Parker returned the gesture by leaping at the sheriff, knocking him to the ground, hard. He bit, tearing into the side of his neck.
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