Junkyard Dogs (30 page)

If he got to me and there was no choice, well, then there was no choice.

But what if it wasn’t Butch?

A lot of this stuff was passing through my mind in the few seconds it took the dog to race down the tunnel. I had learned how to handle a dog in a death struggle in the Corps. In boot they’d given us a chance against a few extremely well-trained German shepherds; an eight-man squad, and we’d all lost badly.

Hypothetically, the trick was to feed the dog your passive forearm, then wrap your other around its neck and push, effectively breaking the dog’s neck. The instructor said that it usually worked, unless the dog was large and powerful, in which case his jaws could break the proffered arm, making it doubly difficult to concentrate on step two. He also said that if the dog was trained properly it would leap for the arm but then at the last instant go underneath and clamp its jaws around your throat.

A recruit had asked what you did at that point, and the instructor said he’d heard that if you stick a finger in the attacking dog’s anus, the animal would break off the attack. Intrasquad consensus was that you’d have just as good a chance if you stuck the digit up your own asshole.

I set my feet and kept the butt of the .45 ready to bring down on the dog’s head.

I could see him plainly now, but it was impossible to tell which one it was. He looked like he meant business though. I braced my legs for the impact and then suddenly remembered the only other weapon I had at hand—my voice.

Just as he was shortening his stride to time a leap, I yelled. “Butch, bad dog! Down!”

It was as if someone had cut off the fuel, and he landed at my feet a little clumsily. His head was between his paws as he looked up at me with the glow of the flashlight in his eyes. He wagged his tail in supplication, just a bit, and then was motionless.

“Good boy.” His head rose. “C’mere.” He stood and turned, sitting his behind on my boots. “Good boy, good boy.” I ruffled his ears, stroking the silky hair at the back of his neck, and remembered the biscuits that Larry had given me at the drive-through. I pulled one out and gave it to him. That left me with another biscuit for Sundance, an item likely to be as helpful as an accordion on an elk hunt.

With the experiences of the last few months, I had to remember to carry an entire assortment of animal treats with me. “Good boy, good boy.”

I started down the tunnel again, this time with a wagging companion. I didn’t think I could get him to stay, so I let him tag along, figuring that I could close the door at the end of the tunnel to keep him from joining Sundance if Gina put him on me.

When I got to the end, I could see that the snow had crept in the doorway and held the door open a few inches. I looked down at my companion, still wagging. “This is as far as you go, buddy.”

I buttoned my sheepskin coat, flipped up the collar, and pulled down my hat. I wedged the door back far enough to get a leg through and just hoped that Gina wasn’t waiting on the other side with the .32 pistol. It was dark, and the darting snowflakes stung.

I dropped my face down into my coat and tried not to think about how my skin already stung, my foot already hurt, and about the bite wound on my left cheek. Butch had tried to follow after me, but I brushed him back with my boot and shoved the cellar door closed. I again figured if he got together with Sundance and Gina, he was more likely to run with the pack.

I turned into the night and wondered where my pack was.

Visibility was no more than twenty feet. I looked around for prints, but the gusts had filled anything that was out here. The wind was coming straight out of the North Pole, and there were no stars or moon.

I looked toward the ridge in hopes of seeing something that might indicate that she’d gone that way, but there was nothing but drifts, running like shallow sea waves toward the southeast. I looked toward the gated walkway that led to the quarry, but there was nothing there either.

She had to be after the tow trucks. They were solid and had four-wheel drive and weren’t blocked in by my three-quarter-ton. Had to be.

I postholed my way toward the junkyard below, aware that if I went in the wrong direction, I could take a seventy-five-foot header. The wind had scoured the edge of the cliff, and the pathway became more evident as I got to the gate, which was swinging freely in the wind. I could see boot prints now and figured I should move as quickly as I could, since there was no way Gina would stay out in this weather any longer than absolutely needed. If she was going for the tow trucks, she’d be going for them fast.

It was easier going downhill, and the wind wasn’t as bad inside the quarry. The snow had been accumulating with a vengeance and was about two feet deep in the junkyard itself, but at least the visibility had improved to the point where I could now see about thirty feet, which was the length of one of those behemoths they made back in the forties and fifties.

It was easy to feel small and alone in the muffled quiet of the snow amid all that dead hardware.

It was hard enough for me with my long legs to move quickly in the deep drifts, and I wondered about the desperation that must have forced Gina to try. I thought I saw something ahead and stopped by a ’66 Belvedere with a Buick stacked on top of it and a Ford sedan on top of that. It was only when the ricochet of a .32 slug caromed off the quarter panel of the Plymouth that I became really sure.

I jumped back to the rear of the coupe with all the agility of a circus bear and peered around the taillight. “Gina, it’s the sheriff. There isn’t anywhere to go. I’ve got people on the way and they’re going to block off the gate, so you better just give it up now!” I hoped the part about the people was true.

My answer was another round from the .32, which disappeared somewhere behind me, and the barking of the dog.

I figured I’d flank her and continue down the next row and try and cut her off before she got to the trucks. I high-stepped to my right and hoped she and the dog hadn’t had the same idea as I made my way along the other side of the car tower. I tried to remember how many rows there were before the main thoroughfare that held the office and the straight shot to the gate and was thinking three before I hit the turn of the century in motor vehicle manufacture and crossed the road.

I hurried through the seventies and the eighties, and was just making it to the nineties when I thought I saw something ahead again.

It was smaller than me and, more important, it wasn’t standing upright.

I stood there breathing heavily, most of my energy drained from slogging through the snow, and waited. That primordial stem at the back of my brain shot a jolt through me, the same jolt that it’d sent through my ancestors’ brains for a couple hundred thousand years, the jolt that told you something was coming for you and you were too far from the safety of the trees.

He knew where I was but was waiting to see if I knew where he was.

The hackles rose between his shoulders, and the sound that resounded there had nothing to do with civilization. He walked on his paws with the shape of his own savagery: suspicious, hostile, and deadly, with yellow eyes as still as a snake’s.

“Easy.”

He didn’t hesitate for an instant, and it was almost as if my speaking to him had weakened my position on the food chain. My voice went out into the distance like a match dropped in the snow.

I could easily see the great, gapping jaws now and the saliva dripping from his lips. He lumbered in the snow on the first few steps but that almost instantly changed into a gallop. He launched like a torpedo, and I had that sickening feeling that there wasn’t going to be any way to circumvent this. The dog’s mouth was like a tunnel full of teeth, and he was fast. I had dissuaded Butch but knew the results were going to be different this time.

Sundance didn’t waver, didn’t misdirect, but came straight at my throat. The beast forced me backward in the snow, and we both rolled ass over elbows. His mouth slammed shut, but the majority of the bite went into my heavy sheepskin coat, and I flipped him over my head, the momentum forcing his jaws loose as he continued to bite at me with bone-crushing force.

I flailed with the .45, but one of the bites hit my wrist. I rolled over and flopped forward, desperately grabbing for my dropped sidearm. It was snow- caked, and I reached for it, but my hand refused to operate. The bite had either broken the bone or hit the pressure points in my hand enough so that the thing was useless.

The monster had turned now and was rising from the snow with his black lips pulled back and his ears lying flat. I could see the muscles ripple under the heavy coat, and the determination in the jaundiced eyes that weren’t likely to be fooled again.

I scrambled my left hand across my body, but there was no way I’d make it.

He leapt, and I have to admit at that moment I was stunned by the grace of the animal; the way the broad chest and magnificent head looked in that final moment of attack. Maybe I’d get the Colt up against him before it was all over but probably not.

It was then that something hit me square in the back, forcing my face into the snow and knocking the wind from me. All I could think was that Butch must’ve gotten free from the tunnel and had decided to join the fun.

My hand finally closed on the Colt but the dog on top of me was gone, almost as if he’d used me as a launching pad.

Only it wasn’t Butch.

I raised my head and tried to focus. The two of them rolled like a giant, fur-covered wheel into the open well of a junked, snow-covered GMC pickup. The collision caused the snow to fall off the vehicle like a miniature avalanche, but neither of them was giving quarter. Sundance crunched down on the back of Dog’s heavy neck, but Dog lurched forward, slamming him into the fender of the truck. Sundance redoubled his efforts, but Dog’s wide head rammed him, flipping him sideways and backward. Sundance was faster, but Dog’s muscle mass gave him the advantage in close contact.

My dog stood there in the center of the pathway between us, the hackles raised on his swirling red, brown, and blond back that surged with a tide of muscle. His muzzle was wider than the wolf ’s, mastifflike, with teeth like the edge of a front-end loader.

Sundance started to move left, still intent on getting hold of me, but Dog shifted his weight, and I watched the spittle drip between his splayed legs. There was blood in the strings, but he showed no sign of weakening.

I had to give the wolf credit for concentration; even faced with Dog, he was still focused on me as his victim. I brought the .45 around with my left hand, fumbling to get it aimed, but my movement distracted Dog. That was all the wolf needed. He sprang forward but was struck sideways when he passed as Dog closed his massive muzzle on one of Sundance’s forelegs, and I could hear the sickening crunch from a car length away.

The damage was done, and he fell away with a squealing yelp. Dog stood his ground and watched as the other dog struggled up on three legs to pace right. Dog pivoted to follow.

Sundance stopped pacing and growled, but Dog countered by digging his claws into the ice and snow in a false charge. The wolf backed off, and just like that, the fight was gone from him.

The .45 trembled in my hand. I lowered it and pushed up on my hands and knees.

I stayed there for a few moments, trying to get my adrenaline level back to approaching human. I cleared my throat and caught my balance with a hand extended to the nearest junker.

I struggled up beside Dog. “Jeez . . .” I could feel the bile in my throat and choked back the nausea. My balance was still a little off, and I put a hand on the door of another rusted hulk, took a few more breaths, and got my voice back to a squeak. “What took you so long?”

He didn’t turn to look at me, but his head cocked as if I were calling to him from another world—I guess, in a way, I was. He raised his bloodied muzzle but kept his eyes on Sundance. “Good boy.” I breathed out a great sigh. “Good boy.”

He was bleeding from his jaw, and his ear looked torn, but he wouldn’t turn. I took a few more deep breaths and whispered the only word I could think of saying. “Stay.”

I swear he glanced up at me with the expression of “What the hell else do you think I’m going to do?” I smiled and kicked off after the only prey left, confident that Dog had my back.

My right hand was still inoperable; it didn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t work from the wrist down and only flopped when I rotated my arm. I checked the Colt to see that the breech was still pulled and the safety off, which it was.

In the distance I could hear a motor turning over, the starter grinding in the cold, running the battery down. I continued through the snow and could finally see the row of tow trucks, but I couldn’t tell which one was producing the noise.

I stepped from the row as one of the tow-truck engines caught and fogged a blackened exhaust onto the snow. It was the one closest, and I raised the .45 in my left hand. “Sheriff ’s Department, freeze!”

My voice might’ve carried to the end of my arm.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sheriff, freeze!”

Maybe two arms’ length.

I bellowed out with all I had as I staggered forward, the Colt leading the way. “Sheriff !”

I could see Gina, frantically trying to get the tow truck in gear with both hands, and then could hear the horrendous noise as the gears caught and the big vehicle leapt forward in granny—a good one mile an hour.

The Fords I remembered from that period had floor shifters like Arthur’s sword in a stone and, once you got them in the lower-case gears, they didn’t come out. The hubs were locked, and the heavily knobbed snow tires dug like the steel wheels of a locomotive.

We were now set for the slowest chase in high plains history.

Brandishing my sidearm in a highly dramatic fashion, I limped forward, only slightly faster than the approaching truck. “Gina, shut that thing down! Now!”