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

There was no hesitation now. I jerked the vest to chest level, hearing the double crack of the semi-auto as it unloaded two more rounds in my direction. The vest was ripped from my hand and went flying across the room as though it had magically gained the power of levitation. I dove to the side, toggling the switch of the transmitter on my belt, and felt the heat of a bullet scorch the hairs of my chest as it passed me. There was a meaty sounding smack and I saw Roger Doors’ head snap back and forward, a shocked expression on his face. A red dot, about the diameter of a .9 mm, decorated the center of his forehead. His entire body slumped in the chair.

I hit the wall, the impact jarring me. My breath was gone, stolen by the nugget lodged somewhere in my right lung. I coughed and bright, frothy blood splattered the drapes. A spray of wood chips peppered my cheeks as a bullet hit the log wall half an inch from my face.

My legs turned to rubber, the world tilted like a jarred pin-ball game. The barrel of Spock’s gun lined up with my nose.

49

I looked to the chair where my vest had been a moment ago and saw my undershirt and my gun — twenty feet away.

Spock saw the movement and followed. He looked back at me and smiled. “Think you can make it?” Amber was crying and kicking against him. He sat her on the floor behind him without taking his eyes from me.

My chest was on fire, but only a trickle of blood seeped from the wound. That meant I must be bleeding on the inside. Not good. “You killed your boss.” The words came hard, with no air, and it cost me a lot.

He glanced at Doors’ body, shrugged. “Accidents happen. There are other jobs. I won’t go hungry.”

“No,” I said. “You’re a dead man.”

“Really? I’m not the one bleeding out.”

“You won’t get away.”

“Actually, I will. I have another car coming up with a few of my men. A little cleaning up and rearranging and it will look like you killed Mr. Doors.”

“No,” it was so hard to talk, but I had to stall. “Nick Carlino’s men are at the bottom of the hill. They let you up, but no one else is coming.”

The smile left — returned. I’d shaken him for a second.

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

“Time to end this.” He nodded at the gun on the chair. “Want to try?”

I saw Max creep in from the shattered front door behind him. “Oh yes, I want to try.”

He nodded, lost the smile, his eyes as cold as the dead blood that ran through Dracula’s ancient veins. “Go ahea…”

Max hit him at the base of the skull, roughly the same spot that Joseph had rammed the barrel of the shotgun against Doors’ head. The impact took Spock off his feet, shoving him face first into the wood floor. The gun went spinning away.

I tried for it, took a step, blood erupted from my mouth in a gout. I landed on my side, the pain a bright, sharp point in a shroud of deepening fog that closed in rapidly. Spock was on the floor screaming, Max ripping at his neck, growls primal and raw rumbling past the blood and flesh.

Spock was a pro, I had to give him that. He swung back with an elbow, striking Max in the ribs; reversed hitting him from the other side, back and forth, the blows raining like a swinging pendulum. I could only guess at the agony those moves must have cost him with his neck in Max’s jaws. But Max was a killing machine. He absorbed the damage and continued on, digging in and wrenching fiercely. Spock changed tactics and grabbed at Max’s head, but Max ducked low, avoiding the clutching fingers and pulled his whole bulk backward in jerking movements that had to have been crushing the bones in the man’s neck. Spock screamed, flailing out with his hands. He grabbed the couch and I saw the cushion, with my shirt and gun on it, slide to the floor in front of him.

I blinked, forcing myself to stay awake, and saw the gun suddenly in his hand. He fired blindly behind him; once, twice, thrice. He was missing Max, but Amber was back there somewhere. She could be killed.

Rage swept through me like a flood. He had tortured and killed an innocent boy; kidnapped a baby, shot me. If he lived, he would kill Amber and probably the rest of the Franklins. I saw my hand, the silver WWJD bracelet shining, and remembered what Christ said about a man who would make a child stumble and how it would be better for a millstone to be put around his neck and for him to be thrown into the sea. And I remembered Amber, the first time I’d seen her, how her plump little fist clutched my finger while she sucked her thumb. I reached out in front of my face, slapped my palm onto the floor and pulled, dragging my body across the shiny, hardwood.

The gun was five feet ahead.

I gripped the wood with my fingertips, pulled, hauling my bare chest and useless legs behind me. Reached again, pulled — again and again and again.

Spock fired a seventh time and I heard Max growl in pain.

My hand closed around the butt of his .9mm. I looked up, saw him staring into my eyes, Max still at work, standing on his back and tearing at the meat of his neck. I pointed the gun at him. He swung my gun at me.

We both fired.

He missed. I didn’t.

Max dropped him like the dead weight he now was.

Through the heavy pounding in my head I heard sirens wailing toward us. But better than that, I heard Amber crying with all the verve a two year old girl could put into it. And that was plenty.

I