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

of them looked like Will Smith or Tommy Lee or even Chris Hemsworth. I saw one of the jackets pull away in the breeze, revealing a shoulder holster. That left CIA or bad guys.

Wow, bad guys were getting fancy these days. Limos and dress suits.

Two of them stood next to Baldy’s door, two more next to Skull Shirt’s. The fifth guy looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big brother, maybe six four and running around two eighty, all of it muscle. He had a cute little goatee that went well with his sunglasses, and a very tight buzz cut. He stayed at the rear of the car.

They opened the back doors at the same time and the one nearest Baldy said, “This one’s hurt.”

The one next to Skull Shirt must have seen the knot on his noggin. “This one too.”

“He gave us some trouble,” said Skull Shirt.

I used the opportunity to squeeze out behind Baldy. I gave him a little push, shoving him into the guy who had talked. The man next to him stepped up, grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me around the door. He had a pencil-thin mustache and big, thick legs. I wondered just how strong his knees were. Most knees take about fourteen pounds of pressure to snap from the side. I put my hands up and he turned me around so my back was to him and I was looking down at Pimple Face. The other two bad men were catty-corner from me on the other side of the car. That put me out of their immediate field of fire. The Austrian Oak stood his post at the back of the car.

Mustache Guy started to pat me down. My act and the number of men on his side made him overconfident.

His mistake.

I dropped my left arm — spun — smacking my forearm into his wrist — turning him violently to the side. Before he could react, I had him around the throat from behind with my .45 pressed under his jaw.

The guy I shoved Baldy into let him fall in a lump and grabbed for his piece.

“No-no-no,” I said, cranking the stainless steel muzzle into Mustache’s jaw. “You wouldn’t want your friend’s face to go splat all over, would you?”

His hand stayed on the butt of his sidearm, but he didn’t pull it free. “You kill him, we kill you.” He wore a diamond stud in his right earlobe.

“No,” I said patiently. “I kill him, then I kill you, then maybe your friends can kill me. But that won’t matter to you, because you won’t be here to enjoy it.”

He hesitated. I could almost see the gears working in that brain of his. His hand slowly moved away from the gun.

“That does change the picture, doesn’t it?” I motioned for the others to come around the back of the car. They complied, but I could tell they didn’t like it.

The back door of the limo opened and a sixth man stepped out. And suddenly the picture changed for me.

A Sheepdog always knows the Wolf.

This man was a wolf.

14

Max

Max’s body was still in the Escalade parked under the shady tree, but his mind was a continent away and nearly a year in the past, dreaming of his capture.

Pain, as twin darts punctured his flesh, and then a blinding sheet of white agony as electricity flashed through his being, and finally darkness. When he awoke he found his legs tied together and a thick leather muzzle strapped over his head. He was in a metal cage in the back of an old pickup truck, bouncing along a deeply rutted road. There was no tailgate and Max saw a jeep following them.

His body ached and one eye was completely swollen shut. His mouth tasted of blood and as he came fully awake, he became aware of deep gashes in his shoulders and sides. One nail on his front paw had been snapped below the quick and it felt like fire running up into his ankle. His fur was matted in both fresh and clotted blood.

The truck bumped down the road, walls of trees lining both sides, massive rocks littered about like some giant child’s play things.

Max tried to pull his paws out of the straps. The leather was old and weathered, but wrapped tight with several bands, lacing from his ankles up to his elbows. New streaks of pain splintered through his bones and muscles with each pull and tug.

Panic raced through him.

He scrapped his head along the bottom bars of the cage, trying to dislodge the muzzle. Vainly he tried to bite at the inside of the leather mask.

The panic grew.

Max had never been trapped before, a prisoner, at the hands of man. He smashed the side of the muzzle against the bars, again and again and again, until his ears rang and his nose bled. The swollen eye was caked with dried blood, but this new violence reopened the tear above his brow and a red stream poured into his eye and down his snout.

Every ligament and tendon screamed in agony as he writhed and fought and struggled against his bonds.

The panic squirmed like a living thing inside him.

His heart hammered in his chest, his breath chugging in and out of his lungs like pistons blasting at full throttle. Adrenaline surged through his body, giving greater strength to his muscles and renewed energy to his fear.

The truck lurched roughly to one side, going up high on a rut, then fell hard on the other side, sliding the cage across the bed where it crashed up against the half-wall. The impact smacked Max’s head against the metal bars so that he almost lost consciousness.

Nausea followed the adrenal dump and he threw up in the muzzle. Most of the vomit leaked out through the holes in the mask, but some of it splashed back into his nose and eyes and mouth.

He heaved again, another hot torrent surged up from his gut, burning his throat like acid. This