There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (22 page)

A deep and wet growl rumbled out of her chest. Like thunder after the lightning. Her red eyes flew open wide with hate and hunger. No doubt about it.

They glowed with a light, unnatural and hot.

The lake…it seemed so very far away.

            
 
Chapter Seve
n
:

            
 
Those Red Rimmed Eyes…

Bud, Josie, and Rusty were wading through the waist-high quackgrass and buttercup weeds, laughing at how the field crickets and ladybugs were fleeing before them, like a multitude of Japanese villagers in a Godzilla movie, when Tubby came stumbling out of the Pines.

             
He hit the ground hard, his lunchbox leaping out of his hand. Immediately, he scrambled crablike, towards the lake. His eyes fixed on the Old Oyster Trail.

             
“Fuck a damn duck!” Rusty exclaimed hotly. “What’s gotten into that heifer?”

             
“Maybe it’s Lester,” Josie scowled. She watched the dark archway from which Tubby had fallen. Surely, that Prince of Pricks would emerge any second, cocksure and arrogant, cackling at his invention for cruelty.

             
Josie despised his kind.

             
“He wouldn’t dare!” Rusty snorted. “He’s too scared of running into Bud or the Red Eyed man out here.”

             
Bud wasn’t especially concerned. Like the common cockroach, he never gave the Noonans’ much thought. Just stepped on them whenever necessary. He trotted towards Tubby, who still hadn’t noticed them. His eyes remained locked on the Old Oyster Trail.

Josie hurried to catch up with Bud.
It has to be Lester!
What else could have frightened Ralphie so?

This time she would let Bud teach that white trash some manners—just so long as he didn’t kill him.

Rusty, meanwhile, stood rooted where he was in the tall grass—neck high to him—his mouth agape, his eyes open wide. For he’d seen what they had missed.

Bud stopped to pick up the lunchbox—and that’s when he saw the big gray dog. Swaying there in the dappled shadows like some giant gray mirage. Her red eyes ablaze, her black lips rippling. Her vicious intentions as clear as a striking Cobra’s. 

She took two shuddering steps towards Tubby. As if her joints were stiff and full of broken glass. It was hard to understand how she could manage to walk at all, what with her legs shaking like that. It looked to Bud like the dog was having some sort of seizure. Her fangs (that was the only word to describe them, really) chattered together as if she was cold, even though it was hot as hell out. Suds dripped from her undulating lips and onto the grass, leaving a trail of the nasty stuff behind her to mark her erratic journey.

             
It would be easy to track that animal,
was Bud’s first thought. And on the heels of that insight:
Rabies! That dog has rabies!
He heard Josie stop short behind him.

             
Her hand gripped his shoulder. “Buddy boy!”

             
“Shhh, Josie. I know,”
he whispered huskily.

The Gray’s eyes rolled feverishly in their direction, her sick brain thinking God knows what. She growled and snapped at the air, the dirty suds flying every which way, before turning her attention back to Tubby Tolson, practically lost from view in the tremulous weeds.

The Gray appeared to be wary of direct sunlight, reluctant to move completely out of the forest’s shade. Even within the dappled shadows she seemed distressed by the light, breaking through the branches of the trees here and there. Whenever the dog inadvertently stepped into one of these mote-filled, saffron shafts, she would jerk her body away—as if the muted light was somehow caustic.

Bud considered running back to the Bunker for a gun. Unfortunately, by the time he got back with it, the worst of what could happen, would have
already
happened.

             
Josie couldn’t remain silent any longer. “Ralphie!” she hollered between her cupped hands. “You get over here this instant!” Tubby kept right on backpedaling, though, towards the edge of the lake. “Watch out! You’re gonna—”

             
“He knows what he’s doing,” Bud said. He pulled Josie towards the lake as well.

             
“Bud, what’re you doing? That dog has rabies!” she cried. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t doing something to help their new friend. “If it bites Ralph—”

             
“Another name for rabies is
hydrophobia
,” Bud replied calmly. At the edge of the lake now, he came to a stop. He watched the progress of the dog as it creakily pursued their newest member. The fat boy’s instincts were good.
Bet he’s seen
Old Yeller
a time or two.
As soon as the dog noticed the water, she reared back in fright.

Now she was the one backpedaling!

              “Oh,” said Josie, getting it now. Hydrophobia literally meant
Fear of Water.
“Keep going, Ralphie!” she said, forgetting herself again. “You’re almost there!”

             
Realizing her prey was about to escape into the hated water, the Gray suddenly seemed to lose either her fear or the rest of her sanity. She lunged forward and snapped at Tubby’s legs, just as he found the lip of the ledge, her jaws coming together in a violent crash. In the still air it sounded like a bear trap clapping shut. Then the tearing sound of cloth, and Tubby Tolson falling head over heels into the waiting lake below.

             
The dog scrambled back again, whimpering like a scared puppy. She teetered there, looking like she might keel over, and then emitted a mournful howl into the pale blue sky. Her bowels and bladder released their watery waste at once, infusing the humid air with a foul odor.

             
The Gray didn’t appear to be aware of either bodily function. She didn’t squat, or even lift up her bedraggled tail, but let the piss and shit run down her shaking legs. Nor when she was done did she kick dirt over her scat—as is normal, healthy behavior in all canine species. 

Bud and Josie held their collective breath, waiting for Tubby’s head to come up for air. Finally, he did so, sucking in great gulps of the stuff.

“Did she bite you?”
Bud called down to him.

His voice carried a quivering edge that Josie was unfamiliar with in her ever-stalwart friend. This discomposed tone, even more than the raging, rabid dog, chilled her to the marrow of her bones.

Tubby didn’t seem to hear Bud, anyway. His eyes belonged to the gray bitch, still howling her frustration up at the skies. Abruptly, she ceased her cries and snapped her hulking head towards Bud and Josie.

Seeing how close to the cursed water they were, she turned her attention to easier prey.

Bud followed the Gray’s blood shot eyes back to Rusty Huggins—still standing where they’d left him.

Shit!
He’d forgotten how afraid his friend was of dogs—and here was a hulking bitch straight from the hairy rectum of hell. “Get your narrow ass over here, Gnat!”

             
“It won’t go in the water, Rusty!” said Josie, also seeing her friend’s predicament for the first time.

             
Rusty just stood there, though, his eyes as big and wide as pie plates, blinking rapidly behind his thick specs. His legs trembling almost as much as the sick animal’s. Unlike the dog, though, Rusty couldn’t get his to move. While a telling stain spread across the front of his khakis, a thin stream of urine puddled around his Converse sneakers.

             
The dog’s crusty nose snuffled the air hungrily, pulling the pheromones of Rusty’s panic straight from the northeast breeze blowing in her face.

It was like waving a red flag at an angry bull.

Bud turned to Josie, shrugged his apologies, and shoved her sideways into the lake.

 
                            *******

Rusty was all alone. Lost in his own fear. He had seen the dog, partially hidden from view in the deep shade, and had already diagnosed its deadly illness before his friends had even noticed the animal at all. Like Tubby before, Rusty realized that despite his many phobias he had never truly been frightened before this moment. He thought it was probably akin to when he declared himself to be “Starving” before supper or lunch, when he’d never known that condition either. And as the dog turned its awful red eyes upon him, the fear fell on Rusty like one of those vicious summer storms that sometimes roared in from the Atlantic. The fear was black, rumbling, and swallowed him whole, leaving only his eyes to function properly. His breath was ragged and shallow and he knew his brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Any second now and he was going to faint.

              He felt the hot piss running down his leg but was too scared to feel any shame. Through the corner of his eye, he’d seen Bud and Josie, frantic, waving their arms about, their mouths forming soundless shouts and warnings. He heard nothing save his own shallow breathing. Then, suddenly, Josie was inexplicably gone…and Bud was running towards him.
No, not at me…

             
At
the DOG!
What is he thinking!
Bud was running straight for the dog! Holding something aloft in one hand.

Whatever it was, it gleamed in the sun like a drawn sword.

              The rabid beast couldn’t seem to care less. Its red-rimmed eyes knew only Rusty Huggins. There wasn’t even the tiniest speck of white showing in the sclera—and nothing resembling sanity resided within those awful crimson depths…

             
                          *******

Bud Brown knew what he had to do. 
Those eyes! Those red rimmed eyes!
He censured the hysterical voice in his head. No time for that shrill nonsense now. He turned to Josie and, before she could blink, he dumped her into the drink. That redheaded concern out of the way, shouting profanities in the lake, Bud took a bracing breath…and then raising Tubby’s metal lunchbox over his head, he charged at the dog—howling lustily at the top of his lungs:

                             “!!!HEYYYOOOOOUUUBBBBBIIIITTCCHH!!!”

             
Undeterred and unimpressed, she continued towards Rusty in that shambling, determined gait. Like one of George Romero’s zombies, hungry and without soul
.
The dog was less than ten yards away from Huggins now, and Bud realized he’d never get to them in time. He would only get one shot before the gray bitch was all over Gnat—and then rabies would be the least of his friend’s worries. Those huge choppers would make short work of the little guy.

             
Bud skidded to a halt, still thirty feet away, and put the crosshairs on that big wobbling head. Then he chucked Tubby’s good luck charm with all his
might
.

              The lunchbox left Bud’s hand in a straight and true arc. Right away, he knew it was spot on. Would it be enough, though, to stop the attack?

             
The lunchbox tumbled end-over-end, striking the Gray right in the back of her shaggy head, between the ears, where the skull met the spine. The thermos caromed one way, the carrot sticks and Spiderman the other…

             
The dog collapsed forward like a gray wave, tumbling right into Rusty, dog and boy rolling together, their limbs flying akimbo, seemingly interchangeable, ending up together in a limp and motionless pile.

In the lake, Josie bellowed:
“What happened, Bud? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!”

             
“No! No! No,”
Bud groaned, sprinting towards the inert bodies. Without stopping to consider the likely lethal consequences, he grabbed the dog’s hind legs and dragged the great beast off his small friend, lost somewhere underneath all that dead weight.

             
Her hairy legs felt hot to the touch, as if she was running a high fever. She slid off Rusty like a big side of beef, her head thudding heavily on the ground.

Left behind on Gnat’s shirt and pants was a sudsy swath of saliva. Bud dropped her legs and rushed to his friend’s side. Rusty was unconscious and his skin had an ashy look to it that scared the hell out of Bud. Like the homesick E.T., dying in Elliot’s arms. He gave Gnat a quick once-over but couldn’t see any bites in evidence.

She might not have bitten him, but the bitch left enough of her saliva to infect him a thousand times—