Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay, Gordon Carroll [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

and sneak on by, and that was nearly his undoing. A heavy paw caught him on the side, just below his shoulder. Something sharp punched through his flesh and Max felt his breath leave him violently. His body lifted into the air as though on a breeze. He was thrown a great distance and only the soft padding of the snow kept his bones from shattering on impact as he landed. He rolled instinctively, a spray of white enshrouding his movements.

The bear charged.

Max felt hot blood pour from his side and life saving air still refused to fill his lungs. Even so, he burrowed into the snow, diving between the bear’s rushing legs. Max’s head broke free from the snow, just behind the beast. Without thought, Max clamped down with crushing force on the bear’s left foreleg, twisting his body, with all its weight, to the side, and feeling the bone crack like old wood. The bear roared, and the sound of its pain spurred Max on, filling him with the lust for battle. He released, gulped in a greedy rush of air as his lungs finally started working again, and surged up and forward, attacking the bear’s exposed genitals with rabid ferocity.

Dropping to the ground, the bear nearly caught Max’s head beneath its weight. But Max sidestepped and bounded through the thick snow, launching as soon as he settled and landed on the bear’s back as it once again gained its feet.

Gone now were any thoughts of the Gray Wolf, or his dead pack. Now there was only the bear and the blood and the challenge.

The fur around the monster’s neck acted like a shield of sorts and Max had to burrow his snout deep, his teeth tearing and rending, as he instinctively sought a fatal target. The bear beat at him with giant, claw-studded paws that hit against his shoulders and hips like falling boulders. But Max hung on, searching for the spine, or the carotid or the jugular, anything to stop this mountain of fury and muscle.

The beast thrashed back and forth, droplets of red scattering across the once white snow, turning the landscape into a grizzly scene of battle crazed carnage.

A massive blow that clipped the side of his head stunned Max knocking him off balance. He slipped over the bear’s shoulder, and felt long teeth plunge into his hip and inner thigh. Again he was thrown as though his weight were insignificant, only this time his body struck two trees with crushing impact before he fell to the snow.

The world spun above him as though he were chasing his tail as he had when he was a pup. Pain spread from his leg and hip, radiating up into his belly and chest.

There was a loud “crunch” and Max saw the bear crumple as the bone of its left leg finally gave way completely. The bear landed heavily, but was up again almost instantly, running on three legs straight at Max.

He couldn’t move, he tried, but the world was spinning too fast and the pain was so great, he could only watch as death raced at him.

A figure jumped from a tree, landing in the snow between the charging bear and Max.

It was a human. The man threw a rifle to his shoulder and fired at the bear. Again and again and again, until Max thought his ears would shut down and his heart would stop. Here was a terror like none he had ever faced, a power beyond his capacity to assimilate.

The bear staggered, tried to rear back, took two more bullets to the throat and collapsed, blood pouring from its throat and head and chest, melting into the powder and creating red pools that spread like blossoming flowers before continuing to sink deeper and deeper into the snow.

The man looked down at Max and it was the first time Max saw the face of the Alpha. Max thought the man would kill him just as he had the bear. Instead, the man turned, sprinted to the beast and touched it with the barrel of the gun.

The world stopped spinning, the pain subsiding to a roaring ache. Max forced himself to his feet. He lost his balance, righted himself.

He could attack. The man’s back was to him and the distance was not great. But the sound of thunder still rang in his ears, the flash of gunfire like lightning, a bright glowing spot that had burned into his eyes.

For the first time in his short life, Max felt the fear of the unknown. He turned and was quickly swallowed by the forest.

He would live to fight the Gray Wolf another day.

Max opened his eyes, saw they were still driving and let the motion gently rock him back to sleep.

11

Gil

I left a few minutes after getting Tom and Lisa to agree to let me talk to the two older boys that afternoon. Joseph was my first choice. He was fifteen and closest in age to Shane. Marshal, at thirteen, was probably too young to hang with his seventeen year-old brother, but there was always the chance he’d overheard something.

I still couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching, so I was hyper vigilant as I drove away.

That’s why I picked up the tail so fast.

Whoever it was, wasn’t as good as the guys who burglarized the Franklins. They were three cars back in a silver, nineties Chevy. There were at least two in the car, maybe more in the back, but I couldn’t tell.

I had to be careful not to lose them.

I turned Northbound onto Wadsworth from Alameda, passed the Federal Center to Sixth Avenue. Turning west, I headed for the foothills.

I wanted some privacy.

They dropped back another car length, which would be a good move if I hadn’t already spotted them. Too late now.

The jagged ridges of the great Rocky Mountains loomed before me, lightly capped with snow. It was spring, but even in late April snow wasn’t out of the question. Overhead the sky