The Cutthroat Cannibals (17 page)

Stone and Cracking Elk had but one dog left to contend with between them. The animal snarled first at one then the other,
unsure of which man to take on as they stood about six feet apart and taunted it. Suddenly the greyhound made some sort of
decision and leaped at the Indian. It was its last mistake. For at the very instant it hit the air Stone swung upward with
all his might with the branch, catching the thing full in the chest. As it rocketed upward squealing, its front ribs broken
like bad lathing, the Indian slammed his knife forward and down. The combined energy of the two strikes pushed the machete
into the animal’s neck with such force that the head was instantly guillotined. The dog shot past the brave, its head flying
in one direction, its body in another. It sailed into death one mixed up son of a bitch.

The men turned back to see who the next fool was that wanted them, but there were no more takers, just the pit bull facing
down his scraggly, blood-soaked opponent. The last one left. The animal whined a most pitiful kind of sound. It had felt tough
minutes before, but seeing its compatriots turned into compost had done something to the animal’s confidence level. As Excaliber
growled and started in, the greyhound decided that it had had enough. It turned tail and ran, putting all of its remaining
strength into getting a jump on the pit bull, which it didn’t have to go very far to do. For the bull terrier, seeing that
things were basically over except for the medal ceremonies, let itself relax, tongue snapping up and down from its mouth like
a broken venetian blind as the dog suddenly let its tiredness show.

“Let’s go,” the Indian said. “No time for trophies. Those are scouts. One got away and now they know exactly where we are.”
They started back down the shoreline, jumping over the still twitching greyhounds, broken like bloody dolls all over the place.
The morning sun was breaking through, lighting the surrounding mountains, the river, and trees with a crystal whiteness. Not
that the dogs needed to see: they could smell ten thousand times better than humans. But it would help Stone, who was able
to move a lot faster, being able to spot holes and rocks along his path. He realized that the further ahead he placed the
crutch the faster he could move. And once he saw what obstacles lay around him, he was able to zip along so that at some points,
on straightaways, he actually pulled ahead of the Indian, who was running at about three-quarters full speed.

But it couldn’t go on like this. Not when they stopped on a rise and could see the pack just two miles or so behind them,
a blur of racing bodies coming at them like an invading army, a blitzkrieg of claws and jaws.

“There,” the brave said, pointing toward the solid rock wall about fifty yards off. “A ledge, maybe twenty feet above the
ground. If we can—”

“If we can—” Stone muttered skeptically. But he was already following the brave, who made a sharp turn and was heading through
the omnipresent bramble bushes. They reached the base of the mountain, which seemed to rise up like a mythical castle into
the sky glowing overhead. Cracking Elk had seen right: there was a ledge, about fifteen, not twenty, feet above. But how the
hell did they get up? The same almost sheer rock wall that would keep the dog pack from scrambling up the side made it just
about unclimbable for them as well.

“Here, Stone Man, quick—on my shoulders,” the Indian said, kneeling down right against the side of the wall. “I’ll push you
up. Then you reach down and—”

Stone threw his walking/killing stick up onto the ledge, getting it up, thank God, with one heave. He leaned forward and stepped
up onto the brave’s shoulders with his good leg. The Indian stood up, grunting with the task of lifting the 180-pound-plus
Stone straight up into the air. But the brave was strong, having spent a lifetime hunting, carrying two-hundred-pound carcasses
of deer and elk back to camp on his shoulders. It was more Stone’s problem, once he was standing up, to get enough of a handhold
above to pull himself up. With his stiff splinted leg that acted like a dragging weight slamming against the rock, Stone,
using only arm strength, pulled with everything in him, slowly, agonizingly slowly, onto the ledge.

Suddenly he was up and he flopped over the top. He made a quick scan with his eyes to make sure there was nothing waiting
to do them in. But the place was deserted. Stone swung around, reaching out his arm, setting himself with the other arm against
some boulders right at the edge of the ledge. Cracking Elk couldn’t quite reach with his outstretched fingers, but taking
a little run he jumped up and caught hold around the outstretched hand. Stone’s arm felt as if it was being pulled right out
of its socket. But he held on. He had to, for as his face contorted with pain he could see that the front ranks of the pack
were already at the long stretch of sand that began about half a mile down the river one. There were only minutes left.

He let out a half scream and pulled hard, and suddenly Cracking Elk was climbing right up the side of his arm like it was
a vine. In another second or two the brave was up and over the side. Now there was just one left, and it didn’t look like
he was going to make it. The pit bull was turning around in anxious circles on the ground just below them. He could see and
hear the enemy coming in like a deafening horde of locusts. Only these locusts had teeth and would rip him to shreds in an
instant. That, even the virtually fearless pit bull knew. The dogs reached the shoreline level with the ledge and turned in
such a sharp angle that the front ranks half skidded along the sand and tumbled out of control.

Stone looked around desperately and spotted the walking pole. He grabbed it and lowered one end until it was about six feet
from the ground.

“Jump, you mangy bastard, jump!” Stone screamed out in his most commanding tones. The dog got the idea, and setting its legs
back sprang up like something launched from a trampoline. But it misjudged the angle of flight and cracked right into the
side of the mountain, falling back down again as it completely missed the stick.

“Oh God,” Stone groaned from between his teeth as he saw the dogs coming down the open space to the mountainside just yards
away. The pit bull took one more look, prayed to its dog gods, and set its legs for what it knew would be its last try on
this particular event. The dog jumped just as a huge doberman launched itself out of the front ranks. Excaliber caught hold
of the front end of the thick staff and clamped his teeth around it like a vise around a piece of pipe. No way in hell those
teeth were coming unclamped from that wood. Stone pulled with all his might like a fisherman who had just hooked a sea monster,
and could hardly raise the animal, which dangled in the air right over the howling hordes that jumped up snapping at its tail.
The Indian threw himself forward and grabbed with both hands around the stick. Together they pulled, and their combined power
suddenly lifted the animal like it was being shot from a catapult. It rose up into the air and then over their heads, slamming
into the wall at the back of the ledge about ten feet behind them.

But they were safe, at least for the moment. The dogs below howled and charged at the wall, snapping up into the air. They
jumped and leaped about like the flame tongues of a vast fire. Ten thousand pounds of dog meat and dagger-sharp teeth came
flying into the air, like missiles seeking to rip out the faces of those above them.

“Man’s best friend?” Stone snorted as he fell back, gasping for breath on the rocky surface. “Those dudes got some bad attitude
problems. Must have had the Marquis de Sade for their fucking trainer.”

I
F looks could kill, then Stone, the Indian, and wonderdog were all dead as proverbial doorknobs. For after the dogs spent
a good ten minutes charging up to the rock wall, smashing against the mountain, they slowly realized that they couldn’t reach
the three climbers. And this drove them to even more infuriated heights so that they began biting one another. They probably
would have consumed each other down to the last tail, given enough time. But the Three showed up—the three immense canines,
the rulers of this particular band of monstrosities.

The Three weren’t even moving fast, just trotting along side by side with a contingent of guards, huge malamutes that ran
along on each side. The dogs moved with ease and arrogance as if the entire world was waiting for their arrival. They reminded
Stone of three rulers from the old world: Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler. He remembered seeing a newsreel once of the three
bloated murderers meeting, all smiles, stiff salutes, and standing around in tough poses, hands on hips. If he wasn’t most
probably going to be eaten alive in the next hour or two Stone might have found the whole theater amusing. But it wasn’t.
Not at all.

The Three walked up to an open area in front of the ledge where the two humans and Excaliber sat looking down, their hearts
still beating like war drums on the Mohawk. The other dogs cleared a way for the Three, stumbling out of the way, lurching
off as if their paws were on fire, letting out shrill yaps of terror as they rushed to each side, tails between their legs.
The power of the trio of dogs over the rest of the pack was quite extraordinary.

They looked down at the three dogs. The dogs looked up at them. And no words needed to be said. Stone fixed his eyes on the
Three: the Doberman, huge and sleek, with muscles like steel cables crisscrossing its brown body; the Labrador, big as a lion,
its thick black coat hanging down like a musk ox’s giving it an almost prehistoric appearance; and the Pit Bull, even bigger
than Excaliber, with canines the size of track spikes hanging from the front of its ugly mug.

Stone felt the pure power of the dogs as their wills tried to take over the wills of the men and the dog. They weren’t like
normal dogs. Their eyes, black and dilated, seemed to burn with an almost supernatural flame, as if the animals could see
right into the men’s brains, their hearts. Stone had always prided himself on having a will as strong as any man’s. He hadn’t
broken even under torture, which he had had the misfortune of running into more than once on his travels in the brave new
world. But this was something else. He could feel his mind being pulled by their eyes. The blackness was drawing him forward
the way a black hole pulls the very planets into its core. Then a voice was telling him to rise, to come forward, to join
the animals. And yes, it seemed like a good idea, to just stand and jump down and play with them. They had so much fun together
living wild, racing through the rain, lightning flashing in their eyes, the blood of game running down their jaws. Yes, join
them, join them, rise and—

“Stone Man,” a voice was yelling right in his ear. “Stone Man, don’t look in their eyes! Tear yourself away! They can hypnotize.
You hear me, man, snap out of it!” It was Cracking Elk, his face just inches away. Stone shook his head. It felt as if he
had just swallowed a chaser of LSD or something, as if his brain was being sucked right through his skull.

“Jesus Christ,” Stone whispered, pulling his gaze away from the animals, whose eyes blazed as they tried with every bit of
the mysterious power that ran between them, that had enabled them to make virtual slaves of every dog on the shoreline, tried
to get the three beings above to bend to their will. Yes, it was the eyes. When not looking at them, he could still feel the
darkness pulling him, but it wasn’t nearly as strong. Stone glanced over at Excaliber, who had walked to the very edge of
the ledge and was engaging in his own mano a mano with the Three.

And he was holding his fucking own, Stone saw with amazement. The animal had opened its own oriental eyes to their fullest
as if trying to hypnotize the Three itself. With the two humans turning away from them, the Three concentrated all their power
on the pitbull. But lo and behold the dog was able to fight it all off. As a representative of the human species Stone felt
a little ashamed that he couldn’t even do what the dog seemed able to. But the Indian as well couldn’t face the combined gaze,
Stone reminded himself as he tried to rationalize it all.

The Three sat as motionless as sphinxes back on their haunches while all the other dogs lay around them silent as fallen leaves.
The troika just kept staring up at Excaliber, and he met their gaze like a missile sent out to intercept a whole fleet of
them. Stone swore he could feel the sheer energy in the air whizzing back and forth. It was almost tangible, yet by a human
not touchable at all. There were realms that man would never penetrate though his machines could peel back the very atoms
of the universe.

After a good hour of this the Three suddenly turned at once and disappeared within seconds into bushes thirty yards off. Excaliber
hadn’t flinched. The other guys had blinked first. Stone felt a funny kind of awe for the dog that he wasn’t quite sure he
liked. He had already had moments where he wondered just
who
was the master in the human/ dog relationship. And now the animal’s willpower, its pure force of soul, the flame that burns
like a fire in every living thing, had proved stronger than any of them, human or devil dog combined. Both men looked down
over the great flood of dogs that still remained, all frozen in place, every one of them staring straight up at the ledge.

“The demon dogs, they are the dark ones that the Hawk Dog threw out of the heavens,” the brave said in a fearful whisper.
“Only the Hawk Dog himself is supposed to be able to withstand their wills. Yet—your dog—he—” The brave seemed confused. He
didn’t really believe, or want to, that the pit bull was in fact the mythical dog returned from the misty past to fulfill
his destiny.

“Oh, he’s just a fucking dog,” Stone said, getting annoyed at all this Saint Excaliber bullshit. “He just happens to be one
of the most stubborn sons of bitches around, so when three ugly mutts try to stare him down, Excaliber won’t let them just
out of plain orneriness, not because he’s the dog from another planet. I mean, give me a break, will you.” The damn animal
already had such a high opinion of itself that Stone didn’t want to give another drop of encouragement to its narcissistic
tendencies, or its head might swell so much it would explode in a storm of fur shrapnel.