by Toby Barlow
What is it? A truck? A semi?
And what’s happening there in the back?
On the screen, glowing orange lights
begin flowing from the rectangle
like luminescent sparks
erupting from a Roman candle.
Venable’s hiss breaks the silence. “Friends of yours?”
“No, I thought they came with you.”
There is an angry bark, and another,
four or five more answer and suddenly
in Peabody’s headphones there is a cacophony of howls,
the chorus of unleashed fury
loud, fierce, and mean.
On the radar
the orange lights surge together,
like hornets attacking.
Peabody looks at Morrow,
“What are we supposed to do now?”
Samuels smacks his gum, nods at Ryan,
and reaches for a case beneath his feet.
XIV
She had come up with the new pack,
in an old yellow school bus Tati had dug up somewhere.
She changed before she met them,
hopping onto the bus without looking at the other dogs.
Maria sniffed her once,
and recognized her from the night they met,
but the rest of the pack left her alone.
She was with Lark, good enough.
They thought only of the coming battle.
Some guy named Bunny drove while
the rest of them changed
one after another, from front to back.
She watched the whole bus transform
row after row, man to dog, man to dog,
a deck of cards cascading over
to expose some devil’s tarot underneath.
Lark sat behind Bunny, showing him
how to trail the cars, when to pull up
when to fall away.
And once the cars turned into the dump,
he had Bunny pull over and let the bus idle.
Lark moved to the back, clearly and loudly
reviewing the instructions once more.
Once more, they listened;
dogs gazing up with rapt attention.
Finishing his speech, he looked down and began his own change.
Bunny watched through the wide rearview mirror,
nodded when Lark was back up on four paws, then hit the gas,
driving their big yellow beast of a bus up into the maze of waste.
When the exit door finally opened,
she jumped
crossing the first fifty yards at breakneck speed,
well ahead of the pack.
Surprise, Lark told them, it’s all about surprise.
But anger helps too. The fury inside her fuels every step.
In no time her snapping teeth have found another dog’s thigh.
And with that yelp, the enemy pack turns.
Now the engagement begins,
as the waves of dogs she leads
fall in behind her, aiming for the enemy’s haunches
and necks.
She knows the smell of every wolf on the bus,
anyone else is fair game.
The dog she’s attacked turns and lunges, but
he’s not well trained, loose in his fighting,
and when one of her dogs intervenes, going for the throat,
it’s over fast. She releases her bite and snaps to her left,
sinking her fangs into enemy hide,
but the tight flesh between her teeth won’t give,
she gnashes again and as the flesh tears away,
warm blood fills her mouth, its familiar taste
flooding her tongue and throat.
Her heartbeat surges.
This is satisfaction.
Bite snap, go.
XV
Lark attacks, knowing this could be the end.
Back in the city, perched on the rooftop like a crow
watching the Econolines being loaded with serious muscle,
he had sensed the scale of what he was up against and
a yawning black hole of doubt opened up inside.
He had looked at Maria,
who read his mood and shook it off.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re ready for it.”
He knew she was wrong, but he went anyway.
Perhaps that is what Tati spoke of,
the curse of the coyote,
how, hungry for the pack,
you try to fight your way back in,
only to be snapped up and
ground down into the dust.
He’s planned, he’s studied, he knows
now is no time
for the impulsive play.
But still, he’s putting it all in motion.
Perhaps out of revenge,
perhaps out of nothing more than
love of the game.
There are two things that make
the conscious world move,
decision and desire.
And Lark has never felt more awake
than he feels leaping forward now.
He bites and snarls and drives in
as Maria, with Bunny behind her, leads a wing of the attack
off to the right, drawing the fight away from their target.
Lark and the rest of the dogs barrel on toward the hill,
where Baron stands
with a blond man, a little fellow, and a giant,
encircled by a protecting wall of dogs.
The men look more confounded than concerned,
more curious than afraid.
And with an anger alive in his chest,
a raw fury Lark has only rarely felt,
he finally becomes
the beast he is.
He charges toward the men, his ears back.
Growls, barks, and cries surround him.
Win or lose, all Lark wants to do
is eat that expression off their faces.
Mid fur-filled bite, while
shaking off an attack on his flank,
Lark sees one of the men,
the blond,
put his fingers to his mouth
and let out a low whistle.
And then Lark feels the night around him
begin to simmer with motion
and he can’t tell
if he’s been caught in a trap
or something even more
unpredictable.
XVI
At the whistle’s mark,
Palo’s wolves leap out
from behind the shadows of debris and the ridges of rusted waste
falling on both sides of the fighting pack and raising the volume
to something louder and more chaotic,
a shrieking, killing symphony of noise.
Anthony sticks close to Palo,
a dog protecting his master
from the unbridled violence that’s closing in.
The little man speaks up. “This is most unexpected,
do you think we’ll be all right?”
At which point Palo’s glance catches Baron’s,
for the first time they understand each another.
Baron pulls his shirt over his head, Palo shuts his eyes.
“What are you—” but then Venable screams.
For at the signal of the change,
the dogs at Palo’s feet have leapt up on Goyo,
the man whose chain-link fence in Mexico
held certain dogs to the cruelest death.
Now Goyo is the one cornered, the one
trying to survive as the pistol he pulls out
falls away useless while leaping
fangs sink into veins on his wrist.
Three dogs take him down so fast his last moments
are mere motion and guttural groans.
Venable kicks at the dogs, shouting,
his attention divided between
the ago
ny of Goyo’s suffering, which he can’t fight,
can barely look at,
and the rippling metamorphosis on his side
which he can’t believe, and can’t turn his eyes from.
The briefcase has fallen from his hands and burst open,
the cash spilling into the wind and mud.
Baron and Palo rise up, beasts themselves now,
and dive at each other without hesitation
while Venable is still screaming a high-pitched scream,
kicking at the dogs that draw near.
The dogs don’t touch him,
letting him watch, helplessly, as his friend
is torn and rendered
into large and muddy chunks
of bone, meat, and tendon.
Sobbing now,
Venable doesn’t hear
the helicopter descending
or the first bullets
raining down.
XVII
Samuels and Ryan, armed with night vision
and assault rifles, feel something akin to battle.
In a way, this is nothing, these
are just dogs after all, wild feral vermin,
target practice, though
an urgency does drive their efficiency,
as the distance of helicopter and
the wavering of human decision
have brought them in range too late for three men
who have now disappeared from their radar.
But the fourth still stands clearly at the center.
Perhaps they can save the fourth.
Peabody and Morrow watch as bullet after bullet
is squeezed off into the fray below,
the tip of each rifle moving in
small increments of sure precision,
as Samuels shoots at his next target,
as Ryan fires with
a certain calm.
XVIII
Dog and wolf packs usually fight bloodlessly,
a snarling for pecking order
or mere dominance,
but these packs come with blood that’s tinged
with the more brutal violence of man,
making this battle something unique.
And just like that
Maria dies, a bullet
from above cutting through the bone of her skull
releasing her in one fell swoop from the vast blue sea of sorrow
she had only just learned to navigate.
Bunny sees her go, watches
the darkness pulled across her face like
the snapping of blinds,
and for him
and for the whole new pack, the battle
is done at that, ending with an abrupt metal punctuation.
He rears back on his haunches,
spinning away from the mass,
almost making it to the tires’ shadows
when a bullet catches him as well
tucking between his ears,
sending his long snout crashing down
into the wet dirt.
He wouldn’t have lived long
without Maria
anyway.
Spence, Russ, Griff, Stone, Cho, Pauley, Kato, Miguel, Ian, Marc,
Ali, Gus, Ice, Spike, Shel, Francis,
Jin, Craig, Zed, Tanner, Skip, Ben, Jon, Arturo
all go down in quick percussive beats,
one’s teeth in another’s skin, yelping as
bullets work and bodies spin, flip, are kicked down.
Soon the dogs are racing to run
away from this grim metal storm,
still with the war, though, as they pull their battles
out of the invasive light.
In twos or threes, they flee, chasing or chased,
their fights moving fast to the shadows
like spilled marbles running under the furniture,
or a school of fish darting to the hidden depths.
Lark pauses and measures the vanishing field, finally spotting
a dog he would know anywhere,
his great betrayer, his oldest friend, his simple destiny,
scampering off to nimbly duck behind a sagging column
of torn rubber and steel.
Lark pursues Baron full pace, tongue lagging,
with a passionate resolution
and a vengeful glee.
Dashing around the corner
he races into
waiting teeth.
Venable looks to the hovering helicopter, still screaming.
His shoes are soaked in blood and dirt,
a thousand muddy bills flutter loose in circles
a swarm in the wind around him.
His arms are open wide, his mouth agape,
begging the gods in the machine
to carry him away from this
unfathomable world.
XIX
“Look out for Palo,” Annie had said
and a blind loyalty to the brother who brought him here
fills Anthony’s body with keen light and brutal focus.
There is a kind of redemption he feels as he sends
searing jaws down into the enemy’s muscle and fat.
Yes, this is it. Take it all down. Bite deep until its dead.
Palo fights at his back.
Anthony lashes out at the dogs coming at them,
the fire of universal aggression toward the unknown
propelling him forward until the moment arrives
when he hears
Palo collapse behind him.
Glancing back, he sees that two bullet holes have
sheared off the left side of the blond dog’s head.
And so Anthony stops too, pants, ponders, and wonders
what next, watching as the dogs from his pack scurry off,
just as the other pack did when their Queen died.
Then he hears a bullet snap
and looks up to find
the only two left
are him
and one angry bitch.
XX
That dog there, the one in her sights, turns and
looks to his dead companion.
She notes the pause,
the chink of weakness and
in a flash she lunges.
As she crosses the ground,
another dog by her side is hit and goes down
with a piercing whine.
At this, her target turns his head
and sees her speeding at him.
So much for the element of surprise.
He rears back and races from the site,
fleeing either from the terror overhead
or the anger in her eyes.
Either way, she doesn’t care,
there will be nothing to stop her.
She has chosen his fate.
She knows she will chase this certain dog
to his certain end.
XXI
Up in the helicopter,
Peabody watches on the radar as
orange lights one by one
go black like matchsticks blown out.
Samuels and Ryan are taking their toll.
“There’s the guy there.” Morrow aims a spotlight.
Peabody sees Venable standing
clearly insane in his hysteria.
“That’s the guy,” Peabody says to Morrow.
“The little fellow?”
“Yeah.”
Venable is yelling and hopping around,
yelling like a fevered fool.
Peabody watches him, thinking about the soft self-assurance
he heard in Venable’s voice
when they first spoke months ago,
recalling all the places that voice has led him since.
Peabody says, “Let’s loop around and make sure everything’s secure.
We can come back and pick him up later.”
The helicopter crew is silent
knowing t
hey’re leaving this man
to the judgment of mad dogs.
But when the soldier Samuels speaks up,
all he says is, “Okay.”
“Yeah.” Ryan shrugs. “No point landing
till we know the ground is clear.”
And the chopper heads off
leaving Venable
soiled and screaming
with a fresh and blossoming pain.
They arc the helicopter round in
widening circles above the landscape
fragments of orange popping on the screen
as dogs fight in the shelter of the dump’s refuse,
impossible to target. So the helicopter flies on,
each man reading the earth carefully, eyeing the terrain,
until suddenly: “Fuck. What the hell is that?”
Ryan’s pointing to something glistening in the mud.
“Get closer,” says Samuels.
Ryan is on his walkie,
alerting unknown and distant voices
to the strange scene they are descending toward,
one which has everyone onboard,
even the battle-scarred soldiers,
staring wide-eyed
in dumb wonder.
XXII
She chases the dog,
her paws raw and torn from the rocks and loose glass,
her neck bleeding as she leaps over tires and through toxic mud.
The radial fibers tear into the tender flesh between each paw.
The pain fuels her anger as she eyes her prey hop nimbly
from one pile to the next.
She keeps after him.
She will chase him until
he has been severed from time.
XXIII
Cutter hides at the edge
watching gravely as Blue,
pierced with a bullet
that must have touched his brain just so,
lies twisting in the mud with an epileptic fury.
Blue’s contortions are worse than shock, electrical
crosscurrents inside his mind set the change
surging.
Cutter can barely watch as Blue’s face
goes canine then human then canine again,
fur riding up and down his flesh like a bristled wave,
Blue’s spasms squeeze an agonizing wet growl from his throat.
Cutter steps out gingerly, preparing
to end his friend’s pain in the surest and hardest way.
But bright lights sweep the ground and he quickly jumps back
as the helicopter descends.
Three men, moving fast, grab
a shaking, bleeding Blue, lay him on a plastic sheet,
and lift him into the loud bird.