Crossing the Line (21 page)

“Deloris, you can’t be serious,” Mort said. “Juggernaut is more dangerous—”

“I am completely seriously, Mort. He’s the only chance any of us have if Brute has gone feral. The other dogs follow Brute as their pack leader. He can move without making a sound and he knows everyone’s scents. He will hunt us all down and kill us.”

“But—”

Deloris raised her head suddenly. Her dark eyes seemed to stab deep into Mort. He took a step back and clutch at his chest. He knew what the woman was capable of and in many respects he feared her much more than any of the dogs.

“If you continue to defy me I will feed you to the dogs
,” she snapped. “Now go get Ethan
and the two of you release Juggernaut. He may be dangerous, but he’s always hated Brute.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mort said and turned to leave.

“And, Mort, I don’t expect you back until this situation has been cleaned up. If you somehow manage to survive and Brute isn’t put down you’d better run and never look back. That goes for all of you. Without the dogs you boys are worth nothing to me.”

“I understand,” Mort said. He opened the door and closed it gently behind himself.

Deloris looked again at the shelf of photos and felt her heart break just a little bit more. The dogs were more than her pack of killers they were the closest she had ever come to having children. It was if she had imagined them and they had come to life. The games she once played as a little girl growing up on the ranch
were fully realized each time one of the dogs got to the next evolutionary step of thought. To some it would have seemed a step backwards, a step away from civilized human behavior, but to Deloris it was the future of all mankind.

How many nights had she spent sobbing in bed after her father or mother beat her with the hickory sticks? How many times had she wished she had an army of strong beasts to protect her from the horrors of
civilized
people? So many that she could not even begin to fathom the numbers. It was in the eyes of the people that rented her house that she saw true inhumanity. The dogs were not a product of society they were a product of nature. They were what God had intended men to be. The human growth hormones had turned them into the gladiators of Rome.

And now the gladiators were going to meet one another in battle.

31

Mort
’s hands shook as he unlocked the padlock on the shed. He knew the danger he was in more than anyone else that worked for Deloris. Juggernaut had not only gone feral, he had gone completely insane. Brute was a dangerous dog, but his older brother was much stronger. When he had separated from the pack it had taken Brute, Mutt and Cleaver to weaken him enough for Aaron and his men to put him in captivity.

In the confines of the shed the shadow of the beast was darker than the night. Though he was on his haunches Juggernaut was still nearly four feet tall. When he was standing upright he was seven foot three. He weighed nearly six hundred pounds and
none of it was in fat. When Mort
flipped on the light switch the horror only intensified. Juggernaut had bitten his own lips off in his rage so his dual row of filed down fangs were visible growing from his diseased gums. Behind the
teeth was three fourths of his long tongue
, the rest of the tongue had been bitten off and swallowed. His face was covered in scars outlined
by a thick beard. His irises were as black as his pupils and stared lifelessly from beneath his Neanderthal-like forehead. The remains of his ears were hidden by the thick, matted mane of hair that grew wildly to the middle of his back.

As his eyes fell on Mort
he snarled and pulled against the thick chains that held him hostage in the shed. His naked body was covered in thick filth.
Even with the murky film the definition of his muscles could not be denied. He had always been the strongest of the dogs. Even now that he had been starved and beaten he was still better than three times the size of a normal man.

“Be nice, Juggs. I’m not here to whip you. You’ve got yourself a chance to redeem yourself to Deloris. She wants you to do her a favor and, I bet, if you do a good job you’ll be her favorite when you’re done,”
Mort
said.

Juggernaut snarled louder. He pulled so hard at the chains that the concrete they were attached to let out loud
cracks
. Mort
reached in his pocket and pulled out a baggie of courage. He snorted a half gram of the meth and shook his head to emphasize the rush of it burning his nostrils.

“You shut the fuck up and you’re going to be one happy dog,” he snapped. “This is something you’ve been waiting for since you were locked up in this shithole. Deloris wants you to kill Brute.”

Juggernaut relaxed. The chains fell slack around him. He cocked his head to the side and snorted
at the air, as if smelling Mort
would tell him if the man was being honest.

“Kill Brute,” Juggernaut said. His voice was raspy and the words were spoken crudel
y. He sounded like Schwarzenegger possessed by demons. Not Governor Schwarzenegger, but the pre-Predator Mister Universe Schwarzenegger.

“Yes, kill Brute. You will be Alpha.”

Juggernaut snorted at the air again
. He sat down completely so Mort
would know he did not plan to
attack. Mort
walked over to him, pulling his key ring from his pocket and stuffing the meth away in the same movement. He unlocked the first padlock and the chain attacked to Juggernaut’s collar fell away.

Even
with the show of submission Mort
knew Juggernaut was not someone to be trusted. Each bolt he unlocked the knot in his stomach grew tighter. Releasing the behemoth wasn’t just foolish… it was suicide. Even if the dog didn’t come after him right away it was only a matter of time.

As the last chain fell away Juggernaut stood as straight as he could. The ceiling of the shed was too low so he had to keep his shoulders hunched. H
e took a brazen step toward Mort
and snorted in his face.

“Kill Brute,” Juggernaut snarled.

“Kill Brute and become Alpha and Deloris’s new favorite dog.”

Juggernaut stepped around Mort
and lurched to the door of the shed. He looked over his shoulder at the man one last time before vanishing into the night. T
he look sent a shiver down Mort
’s spine. It scared him more than if the dog had told him his intent. He stuffed the keys back into his pocket and after a moment’s consideration decided another couple grams of meth might be necessary if he was going to keep from dying of fright.

Ethan stepped into the shed a moment later and wiped sweat from his brow. “I forgot how scary that motherfucker was,” the young man said.

“I didn’t,” Mort said as he sniffled the drugs deeper into his nostrils.

32

Anna heard the footsteps outside of the van and held her breath. She had thought they had made the van soundproof, but it was actually the garage. That gave their captors plenty more room to do whatever it was they had planned. She thought about everything that had happened throughout the night as she held the dripping fabric in her hands.

“How the fuck will she know anyway?” she heard a man ask. It wasn’t any of the guys from earlier. This man sounded smaller somehow.

“I’m telling you, bro, it’s your funeral if you do anything without Deloris giving the okay. We still don’t know for sure what she wants us to do with the chicks. For all we know she’s going to use them as bitches,” another new voice.

The men sounded younger than the fake EMTs. They were standing to the side of the van having their discussion. Marcy and Lynne drew away from the sound of their voices involuntarily. Anna wondered if she was going to be the only one with the gusto to follow through with their plan.

“I’m telling you guys right now, these are grade-a pieces of ass. Why the fuck should the dogs get a piece of them before us? I say we fuck them and then just put them back in the van until Deloris gives us the final word,” this was one of the voices from earlier.

“If we get caught she’ll skin our balls, Greg,” first guy whined.

“Grow a pair or you won’t have anything to worry about, Dylan,” Greg snapped.

“Fine, I’m down. But if the shit hits the fan we’re blaming everything on Leif, agreed?” Dylan said.

“Fine by me,” Greg laughed.

“What the fuck, man?” guy three, Leif, asked.

“New guys always catch the shit, buddy. It’s the way of the world.”

The feet shuffled toward the back of the ambulance. Anna held her breath and moved her legs slightly so she would be able to pounce easier. Lynne came closer to her side, giving her a bit of confidence in her friend’s willingness to follow through with the plan.

The sound of keys rattling made all three girls hold their breaths. If it was possible the beating of their hearts would have shaken the van like a subwoofer. The blood rushed up into their heads as they pulled together every scrap of courage that they had.

The lock disengaged and the
click
seemed louder than a car back firing. Marcy jumped a little and then crawled closer to the doors along the side of the van. She was clenching her make-shift weapon so tightly that her fingertips were numb.

The doors swung open and light poured into the van’s bare interior from fluorescents hanging from the ceiling of the garage. A trio of grinning faces leered at the women like creatures in a nightmare. Anna sprang forward and tossed the piss-covered shirts at the men. One smacked the man in the middle directly in the face and he staggered back with shock and revulsion causing him to lose balance.

The other shirts missed their targets, but succeeded in making the men shift and
let their guard down. Lynne leapt from the vehicle with an inhuman scream. She brought the broken piece of metal down as she crashed into the side of one of the shocked men. The jagged edge tore the man’s throat wide open and sliced a path down to the base of his ribcage. He fell onto his back and Lynne landed with one knee in his abdomen and the other digging into his crotch. He sputtered in agony, blood spraying up from between his lips.

Marcy was slower in her attack. She crawled from the van and smacked the man closer to her across the side of the head. He stumbled back, still in shock from the suddenness of the retaliation. He regained his composure when Marcy swung at him a second time. He dodged the blow and punched her in the gut. She crumpled over in pain and dropped her weapon.

Anna grabbed the last piece of the gurney’s leg and jumped out of the van. She swung with all of her might and the wheels caught Marcy’s attacker directly in the temple. The man fell to the ground unconscious.

Marcy sobbed as she got back to her feet. She kicked the man feebly in the gut and looked around for her dropped weapon. Her eyes fell on a hunting knife that had fallen off of one of the men’s belts instead. She picked it up, marveling at how deceptively heavy it was. She mounted the man, who was lying on his side in a slowly forming pool of blood. His eyes began to flutter open just before Marcy brought the knife down in an accidentally well placed blow. The thick steel tip punched straight through the man’s eye, tore through his sinus cavities and burst out of the temple of the other side of his head.

Unaware that the first blow had killed him, Marcy struggled to pull the knife free and began stabbing him over and over again along the side of the neck and his arm and chest.

The man who had been directly hit with the piss shirt woke from his stupor and pulled the sopping wet garment from his face. He sat up and glared at Anna, who stood over him with her legs spread wide.

“Don’t fuck with a cowboy, girl, we all wear spurs,” he said. Anna recognized the voice as Greg. He was one of the fake EMTs that had picked the girls up from the house.

“Be careful which bull you spur, cowboy, we’ve got horns,” she said. With a battle cry that tore through the garage like the wailing of a siren she used both hands and brought the wheeled end of the gurney’s leg down between Greg’s eyes. There was a loud
crack
as his nose broke at the arch.

Greg fell onto his back with a howl of agony. Anna’s mind went suddenly blank as she mounted his chest and hit him over and over again. Blood splashed up onto her breasts and stomach, but she did not notice. The wheels broke away from the rest of the gurney’s leg, but she did not notice. She didn’t even notice when the remains of Greg’s caved-in head split open wide and she began pulverizing the skull back into the brain tissue. The world was gone around her. Everything went silent and dark. Her body made the motions without any conscious control.

When she finally came out of the spell she was crouched on the chest of a corpse whose head had been completely decimated. Bits of hair and skin were everywhere and the remainder of the skull looked like a dropped casserole dish. The bone was shattered and the contents had been hit so many times that they all mixed together.

She crawled off the man in disgust and looked at her friends. The man Lynne had murdered had been
fileted. His innards spilled out from his gut and blood continued to pour from the gash running from his jugular to his midsection. Marcy had stabbed her victim dozens of times, reminding Anna of a gnarly nursery rhyme about Lizzie Borden.