Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

CHAPTER FOUR

Dogfight

With a Doberman attacking him from the front and a rat terrier attacking from the rear, George decided in a split-second that if he wished to avoid being savagely mauled, he should probably focus on the Doberman. He quickly yanked the fuel pump out of the van and doused the dog in the face. It let out a loud yip and violently shook its body, shaking off gasoline as if it had just jumped out of an unwanted bath.

George kicked the snarling rat terrier out of the way.

Even more barking. Another frickin’ Doberman was running toward him. And behind it, some large brown-and-white dog of a breed that George couldn’t identify. What the hell was going on?

He kicked the rat terrier again. It latched onto his leg, biting but not breaking through the fabric of his pants. He didn’t want to douse a dog with gasoline unless absolutely necessary, so he swung his leg as hard as he could, hurling the dog into the air. It landed on its side, yipped, got back up, and rushed at him again, so he sprayed it.

There wasn’t time to get back inside the van before the other two dogs reached him, so he held the fuel pump like a pistol. He had a real one in a holster under his shirt, and this was one of those moments where he wasn’t particularly concerned about the locals knowing he had a gun, but shooting around spilled gasoline was never a good idea, even if the resulting explosion would most likely take care of his psycho dog problem.

He heard Lou’s door open. “Stay in there!” George shouted.

He sprayed the second Doberman, getting the unfortunate canine right in the eyes. Its wail of pain hurt George’s ears and his conscience, but the dog didn’t veer from its prey. It leapt into the air, striking George in the chest and knocking him down onto the cement.

He threw his arm over his eyes to protect them, blinking away tears as the gasoline fumes hit him hard. The dog’s head jerked around as if it were having an epileptic fit, but it got a good solid bite on George’s chest. He punched the dog in the face with his left fist, then bashed it on the side of the head with the fuel pump.

Had it broken the skin? Did he now have rabies? Did they still treat that with several painful shots in the stomach?

The woman screamed, though George couldn’t see what happened to her.

He could see, however, that Lou was standing a few feet away, holding his own pistol.

George tried to wave him away, but the Doberman’s jaws clamped onto his wrist. “Don’t shoot! Gas!”

Lou, thank God, behaved intelligently and did not shoot. He grabbed the dog by its leather collar and strained to drag it off of George. The Doberman let go of George’s wrist but its nails raked across his chest as his partner slowly pulled the thrashing animal away. Then Lou slammed it against the van. Once, twice, three times, four times, five times, and then the Doberman stopped struggling.

George had to kick the rat terrier again.

The brunette’s car door was open and she was halfway inside, but the brown-and-white dog was inside with her, tearing at her flesh as she shrieked in terror.

George quickly got up, forcing himself not to look at his wrist. Another small dog, some kind of mutt, came at him. George’s tendencies toward being pro-animal-rights were not as passionate now as they’d been sixty seconds ago, and he blasted the little bastard with enough gas that it ran off-course and smacked into the van’s back tire instead of him.

The woman flailed and kicked at the dog, but she couldn’t get it out of her car. George’s moral code allowed for breaking an old man’s fingers, and for driving an accused werewolf across the state in a cage, and for use of gasoline as a blinding agent against dogs when necessary, but it did not allow for watching an innocent woman get savaged by an out-of-control animal.

“You get in the car,” said Lou, waving him back as he hurried toward the woman. “I’ve got this.”

“What the hell is going on?” a square-faced, middle-aged man demanded, voice filled with panic. He’d come out of the convenience store and held a rifle.

“Get back inside!” George shouted.

But the man’s moral code, much like George’s, apparently did not include a clause about hiding in a store when somebody was being attacked. He took a few steps toward the woman’s car, then stopped and took aim at a new dog that was running toward them, having come from behind the store. Another Doberman. Who the hell owned all of these Dobermans?

He fired. A perfect head shot. The Doberman tumbled forward.

Lou reached the blue car. He grabbed the dog by its long tail with both hands and gave a sharp tug. The dog twisted around, bashing its head against the steering wheel and honking the horn, then scrambled out of the car, lunging at Lou’s throat.

Lou slammed his hands together, boxing the dog’s ears. It yelped but didn’t stop fighting. As Lou quickly backed away, the dog snapped at his legs.

Yet another goddamn dog--was there a dog factory in the area or something?--came running toward the gas station, followed by two more. All big ones. One of them was dragging a leash.

The gas station attendant fired the rifle. Either his first shot had been total luck, or he was getting too scared to shoot straight, because this one didn’t even come close. He fired again. Another complete miss.

George’s fuel hose wasn’t long enough to reach the dog that was attacking his partner, which didn’t matter because Lou stood between the dog and a possible gasoline stream. George dropped the pump and rushed forward, kicking the dog in the side, hard enough to produce a crunch.

The brown-and-white dog stumbled away, then launched itself against the car, bashing itself against the metal over and over.

George looked at the woman. Her shoulder was a mess. The gas station attendant fired again, this time hitting one of the oncoming Dobermans in the ear. That didn’t stop the animal. The top half of its ear dangled in a bloody flap, and the attendant adjusted his grip on the rifle, holding it like a club.

“Behind you!” the woman shouted at George.

George didn’t even have time to turn around before the dog knocked him to the ground. He couldn’t see the creature, could just hear its growling and feel its hot breath on his neck. He elbowed it in the face, which probably hurt his elbow worse than its face. Some froth got into his eyes.

George frantically tried to blink it out, as Lou grabbed the dog under its front arms and pulled it away. The dog snarled and twisted around and bit at Lou’s nose, while Lou struggled to get the thrashing animal away from George.

“Help!” the attendant shouted.

George pushed himself up again. The attendant lay on the ground, kicking at the dogs that had brought him down. He swung with his rifle, but one of the dogs sunk its teeth deep into his forearm, creating a spray of red, and he lost his grip on the weapon.

“Pull your legs in the car,” George told the woman, putting his hand on the door. She seemed to be in shock and didn’t respond. Instead of acknowledging his command, she was staring off behind--

George looked to see what she was staring at. A pit bull. Running right at him. Fast.

Again, there wasn’t enough time to get the van door open, or even to grab the fuel pump. George, less concerned with dignity than survival, quickly climbed up onto the hood of the van, just as the pit bull’s teeth snapped at his ankle. George had a lot of good physical attributes, but few would call him nimble, and the process of scrambling up onto the hood of the van was a sloppy one.

While the pit bull was distracted with George, Lou managed to run around to the other side of the van. George heard a squeal of pain as Lou apparently kicked a miniature dog, and then Lou successfully got into the driver’s side of the van and slammed the door shut behind him.

The pit bull jumped for George’s tender and succulent (he assumed) flesh. It didn’t get his ankle, but it did get his pants leg. George grabbed for the first thing he saw--a windshield wiper--to steady himself as the dog tried to pull him off the van.

He pounded on the windshield. “Start the car! Start the frickin’ car!”

As George tried to shake the pit bull off his leg, he helplessly watched the gas station attendant’s desperate fight for life. One dog was at his legs, the other was at his shoulder, as if they were working together to rip him in half. The attendant still had a lot of struggle left in him, but the dogs were winning.

Awful way to go.

Lou started the engine. As he backed up the van, George’s already precarious grip slipped away, and he tumbled off the front of the vehicle, crushing a tiny dog beneath him as he landed on his ass. The pit bull went for his face.

He punched it away, but the blow barely seemed to phase the animal. George extended his thumbs and thrust at its eyes. He missed by a few inches--and missed getting his thumbs bit off by even less. He elbowed the dog just like he’d elbowed the other one. It had the same lack of effect.

“Hold it steady!” said Lou from above.

George looked up. Lou had rolled down the passenger-side window and was pointing his gun at the dog.

“Don’t--!”

Lou squeezed the trigger, firing a bullet into the dog’s forechest. The dog flopped off of George and lay on the cement, flailing and whimpering.

“Don’t shoot!” George shouted. “There’s gas everywhere!”

“It was killing you!”

“It wasn’t killing me, it was attacking me! Don’t fire bullets when there’s gasoline spilled on the ground!”

“The gas station guy did!”

“He wasn’t near the actual gas!”

“I saved your life!”

“Put the gun away!”

George got up yet again, though this time it was quite a bit more difficult.

“Move!” Lou said.

Before George could move, Lou fired another bullet, shooting a medium-sized black dog that had been racing at George.

“I said stop shooting!”

“Then get the hell out of danger!”

George turned to check on the woman. She hadn’t shut her car door. In fact, she was no longer in the vehicle. She was running toward the gas station attendant, which seemed like the exact opposite direction in which a young woman who’d already been mauled by a dog should be running.

The attendant wasn’t struggling as much, but he was still alive. The woman had something in her hand.

Lou reached through the open window and smacked George on the arm. “Get in the goddamn car!”

That was an excellent recommendation. Lou scooted back into the driver’s seat as George opened the passenger door, got inside, and slammed the door.

As the woman rushed over to the attendant, the dog that was ripping apart his legs let go of its bloody prey and turned on its new victim. She blasted it with a dose of what was looked like pepper spray, and the dog howled and ran off in the other direction.

Before she could get the other dog, it tore a huge strip of flesh out of the attendant’s throat. George winced and slapped his hand over his mouth. Even if he wanted to be a hero, that poor bastard would be dead within seconds.

The woman sprayed the dog. It yelped, but the pain wasn’t enough to keep it from tearing out a second piece of the attendant’s throat.

Lou sped forward. The van bounced as he ran over one of the dead dogs. “Get the lady!” George said.

Lou drove up next to her, George opened his door, and she jumped inside the van, squeezing onto George’s lap. He pulled the door closed most of the way, then threw it open again, bashing yet another Doberman in the face. Then he closed the door and, tires squealing, they sped out of the gas station and back onto the road.

The woman began to sob. “You’ll be okay,” George assured her. “We’ll get you to the emergency room. They’ll fix you up.”

“Did you see what they did to that man? He...he...I don’t think we can help him.”

“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Lou. “They couldn’t all go rabid at once like that, could they? I mean, do you think they escaped from a medical center or something?”

“No idea. Not a clue. Jesus.” George hurt in several places and wanted to check out the extent of his injuries, but he couldn’t do it with the woman in his lap. He did glance at his wrist, which had a couple of puncture wounds, but the blood was seeping instead of spraying so he figured he’d be okay.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

George cursed under his breath. Ivan kicked at the bars of his cage once more, and then smiled at the sound of the woman’s gasp. “My name is Ivan. Lou is driving. You’re sitting on George’s lap. They’re driving me to my death. Because you know this, I assume you have to die, too.”

George pointed a warning finger at him. “Shut up.”

“Oh, I’m done. No, wait, I missed the part about you thinking I’m a werewolf.”

“I said, shut up.”

“What are you going to do, come back here and beat me up in front of a witness? That doesn’t seem very smart. When you kill her, are you going to snap her neck quickly or drag her death out, slowly?”

“One more time--”

“I think you should drag it out slowly.”

“Enough!” George shouted. Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to get rid of the sudden migraine. He hadn’t had one of those in over a year, and he’d been in a lot of stressful situations in the past year.

“Don’t take it out on me,” said Ivan. “I’m not the one who let her into the car, Mr. Intellect.”

George took a deep breath, willing himself to remain calm. The situation was screwed up enough already without him letting Ivan send him into a rage. He had to ignore the werewolf, keep himself from losing his mind, assure the woman that she was in no danger, and think this whole thing through.

They drove in silence for a few seconds. The woman looked as if she wanted to lunge for the door handle. They’d almost definitely let her go free fairly soon, hopefully outside of a hospital, but George couldn’t have her making any wild escape attempts until this was all figured out. He reached over and locked the door.

“So what now?” she asked.