by Val Tobin
“They were pigs, Jack, all of them. Every fucking one.” Her voice contained an edge of hysteria, but she couldn’t help it.
“Okay,” he replied. “I’m sorry for whatever you endured.”
Silence blanketed them until Hound Dog broke it. “You don’t have to tell me about it, Rachel, but if you want to, you can.”
She studied his face and saw only compassion.
“Another time.” To her ears, she’d sounded bitter, but his expression didn’t change. As it always did, hearing him use her given name made something inside her flutter. She relaxed her hunched shoulders and inhaled. In a more gentle voice, she said, “Another time.”
Hound Dog slowed the car. “Up ahead.”
When Rachel squinted past the car’s high beams, she saw movement on the road. She could only make out humanoid shadows. Grendels? They’d better be certain. If grendels, then speeding up and mowing them down would be best. If humans …
What would people be doing out here in the night with grendels about? They had to be grendels. The figures scurried across the road, seemingly unconcerned about the car bearing down on them. She opened her mouth to tell Hound Dog to punch it when one figure raised a weapon and pointed it at them.
At the same moment, Hound Dog slammed on the breaks. “Hold on!”
Rachel did as he suggested and grabbed the handle above the door. Tires squealed and a cloud of dust obliterated everything outside the vehicle, which spun. The rear dipped as if it had lost the road.
“Christ, we’re going into the ditch,” Rachel hollered.
Hound Dog shifted gears even though the car was an automatic. He frowned, his face taking on a look of intensity. “We’re fucking not. They’re not getting us.”
A shotgun blasted behind them—they’d turned around and headed back the way they’d come.
“Go!” Her nerves ratcheted up a notch, the adrenaline flowing. She focused on Hound Dog’s face.
He concentrated, tongue between his teeth, the tip sticking out from between his lips. After glancing into the rear-view mirror, he grimaced. “Fuckers are chasing us. What the hell are they doing out here? An ambush? How’d they know?”
The questions were rhetorical, so she didn’t bother to reply. Good questions though. How had they known to wait for them here?
“No sirens,” she shouted, cutting off Hound Dog’s mutterings.
“Not cops then,” he yelled. “They’re from your dad.”
“Then he knew where we’d go. How?”
The shouted conversation continued, more as a distraction than as any attempt at a solution. Both clammed up when their pursuers closed in. Hound Dog tromped on the gas, pushing the needle on the speedometer higher until it hit one hundred forty kilometres. Then higher. A turn forced him to slow, but he careened around it at a hundred clicks. Behind them came a crash, and a horn wailed and cut out.
“One down.” He hit the gas again.
Rachel kept her eyes on the road behind them. One car remained, not getting any nearer but not dropping behind either.
“Twenty-eight ahead,” Hound Dog said.
“Take it. Toward Bancroft.”
“We won’t make it far on that highway.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“Then what?”
“Burleigh Falls.”
“What’s at the falls? We’re not going to Thelma and Louise into the chute.”
She guffawed. “No. Get to Thirty-six. We’ll lose them on the fire routes.”
“I hope you know where you’re going, because those dirt roads dead end.”
“Why do you think we haven’t seen any grendels?”
He replied immediately. “They expected us to head that way and cleared it. Did you figure out how?”
“I was stupid, Dog. It might still get us caught. We headed away from the arena by the most logical route.”
“He’ll have roadblocks in other areas. And if he doesn’t, the cops will.”
“The cops weren’t on the lookout for us until well after my dad set this up. Trust me. He had everything in place before he called it in. They let us get outside any perimeter the police would set up.”
Without another word, he hit the gas again, and they roared on into the night.
***
After an hour of dodging and deking, Hound Dog lost the tail on the fire routes and the two headed for Bobcaygeon.
“We can’t hit the town,” Hound Dog said, a warning in his voice.
“Have you seen it since the grendels arrived?”
“Once. Destroyed like all the other small towns.”
“Then you saw it before they rebuilt. Tough townsfolk. They pulled it back from the brink.”
“Then we really can’t go there. Someone’ll recognize us and turn us in.”
“Only if they catch us. We have to sleep. Find a place we can hide.”
He did as she suggested, and they found an empty barn to shelter in. People inhabited the homes within the town proper, but the surrounding farms were deserted. This barn, strong and sturdy, was intact while the house on the same property had been destroyed.
The people in the house had attracted the grendels more than whatever they’d stored in the barn. With treeless fields stretching away from it on all sides, the property offered grendels nowhere to hide except within the barn or the demolished house. When they opened the barn doors, they found stacks of hay and empty horse stalls.
She said, “The horses were out in the paddocks when the grendels attacked.”
“How do you know?” Hound Dog asked.
“The stalls are empty.” If they searched, they’d probably find the bones in the fields. They wouldn’t search, but they retraced their steps, and after killing a nest of three grendels, they scavenged the house for supplies: bandages, bottles of water, and unexpired packaged or canned food. They collected a small stash in plastic bags and headed for the barn. They scoured it once more for traces of grendels and found nothing.
They pushed the barn doors open as wide as they would go so they could get the car inside and then turned it to face the exit in case they had to leave in a hurry. When done, Rachel headed for the loft.
“You want me to take the first watch?” Hound Dog asked.
“Go to sleep, Dog. I’ll watch for vehicles from up there.” She pointed at the loft as she headed toward the ladder with the grocery bag containing the water, bandages, and first aid kit.
They’d probably be fine, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep her eyes and ears open. By the time she climbed to the top of the loft and settled herself near the door overlooking the fields facing the road, the wounds she’d ignored since she’d escaped the arena throbbed. Blood seeped through the bandage around her torso when she peeked under the T-shirt she’d swiped from the house.
She sat out of view near the loft, peeled off her shirt, and removed the bandage. Uncapping a bottle of water, she washed her wound. The disinfectant made it sting, and she gritted her teeth until the pain dwindled to a throb.
After she applied a fresh bandage to the wound, she checked the bag for snacks. She’d left most of the food they found in the bag she’d left below with Hound Dog, but she’d thrown a few chocolate bars into this one. Her stomach rumbled, and its emptiness gnawed her innards, but the prospect of figuring out how and where to cook food exhausted her too much. For now, the chocolate would have to do. She unwrapped a bar and nibbled.
Chapter Forty-Three
In the quiet of the early morning, a cock crowed in the distance. It comforted Rachel to know Bobcaygeon, at least, had cleared out the grendels enough to keep farm animals alive. This farm might have lost the battle, but others nearby had life that refused to be chased away.
From below, Hound Dog’s gentle snores drifted up, making her smile as she recalled other times she’d heard him. They’d camped together as a team on grendel raids, and Dog always made sounds in his sleep. Coder and Foot-Long slept like coma patients and never noticed.
Rage bubbled up in her then, and she had to restrain herself before she woke Hound Dog and stormed her father’s lab right now. She wiped the tears away and took deep breaths of the fresh country air to settle herself. The sun shone brightly over the fields that stretched out to the road in the distance, heralding a glorious fall morning that would quickly melt the frost that had gathered overnight.
She hadn’t seen a car since she’d sat down to her watch four hours ago. Hound Dog would rise soon. His internal body clock would signal to him to wake up and take his turn as sentry so she could sleep.
As if on cue, she heard him stirring, shifting. The barn door groaned as he slid it to the side, probably to go take a piss outside. Before long, his head poked up through the opening, and he shoved a bag onto the floor ahead of him.
“I’m starving. You eat while I was out?” he asked.
“Chocolate.”
When he saw her face, his expression changed from slight boredom to concern. “Everything okay? You were crying.”
Figured he’d notice though she’d done her best to wipe away the evidence. “Emotional, I guess.”
He climbed into the loft and went to her but kept his distance. He dropped to the floor across from her and sat cross-legged. “We’ve had no time to cut loose since we escaped. I’m not surprised it backed up on you. Wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head. His expression flashed hurt, but he stifled it. Annoyed he took it personally, and, worse, tried to pretend she hadn’t just wounded him, she snapped at him without meaning to.
“What I’ve been through doesn’t matter. I can handle it.” She relaxed. “I was thinking about Coder and Foot-Long. Jack, they didn’t deserve to die that way. I miss them.” The tears welled up again. “And Peter. They’re hurting him right now if they haven’t already killed him.”
Hound Dog moved closer and wiped the tears from her cheeks with gentle fingers. “What happened to them, to Peter, it’s not fair.”
“We have to do something about it.” She clasped his hands in hers. “I want to take down my father. If we run, we’ll run for the rest of our lives.
“What can we do?”
“I don’t know, but we’re not running. I’m not running. I understand if you want to escape.”
For a moment, he didn’t speak, and she held her breath, waiting. She truly understood if he wanted to leave. He could escape west and settle in Alberta or BC. Or he could head east and lose himself in one of the coastal provinces. Her father had reach in Ontario, but outside the province, he had limited power. All they’d have to do—all Hound Dog would have to do—was leave. The law would always want them for questioning, but if they turned themselves in out of province, they stood a better chance of having a fair trial and not mysteriously disappearing.
Rachel tilted her chin up and met his gaze. “What’ll it be, Jack?”
“I’m not leaving you,” Hound Dog said. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you. But think it through carefully. We’ll get only one chance.”
“Thank you.” That didn’t begin to convey her relief over his decision to stay, but it was all she could manage to say.
“Get some sleep. We’ll figure it out when you’re rested.”
“Okay. You can get a good view of the road from up here.” She pointed to a window opening on the back fields. “Nothing out that way but pasture. Nowhere for grendels or anyone else to hide. Don’t forget about it, but your focus should be the road.”
“Relax, boss, I got this.” He sounded more amused than annoyed.
“Sorry. I’m jumpy. They found us too easily before. They ambushed us.”
“They can’t track us. Sleep. We’ll be fine.”
She yawned, so tired not even the thought of grendels could keep her from closing her eyes. “All right. I’m staying up here.”
His expression showed surprise but he didn’t comment. Images of guards creeping into her cell in the night flashed through her head, and she flinched at the memory. Sleeping without having to be on alert, with Hound Dog to watch over her, would be a relief.
He waved at a pile of straw in the loft’s back corner. “Flake out there. Check for rodents first. I left the blanket I used below.” He stood and headed for the ladder. “I’ll get it for you. You’re liable to fall and break your neck. How long since you’ve slept?”
She grinned at him as she grabbed her water bottle and strode to the corner. “Too long, Dog. Too long.”
***
Four hours later, Rachel woke to rain pattering on the barn’s roof and the aroma of cooking wafting up through the hole in the floor. She jerked to a sitting position, jumped to her feet, and rushed to the loft doors to make sure no one lurked outside.
Hound Dog had left his post in the loft. He’d left her alone. She’d never have slept if she’d known he’d abandoned her. Her hands shook in reaction to her sudden fright. She scowled and, with a full bladder adding to her discomfort, climbed down the ladder.
The barn door stood ajar, a small campfire blazing just inside the door. Two buckets filled with water sat nearby. A saucepan rested on a grill, which sat on a circle of rocks. Soup bubbled inside the saucepan, producing the tantalizing scent to which she’d awakened.
Her stomach growled, and her mouth salivated. Hunger almost overrode fury, but terror over what could’ve happened while she’d slept, oblivious and trusting, overruled all.
He left the loft. Hysteria rose, and she wanted to scream and rant and rave at him.
“Hey, I went to the house and scavenged more stuff. I also found a working well.” He waved a hand at the buckets of water. “Cleaned stuff as best I could, so we’ve got bowls and spoons. Not too—” He noticed her expression. “What’s wrong?”
“You left your post.”
He scowled. “I’m always on alert. You were never at risk. As soon as it clouded over, I came inside. Haven’t seen any grendels, and no cars have driven past the property, never mind turned into the driveway.”
“You left your post.”
“No, I patrolled the area. What difference does it make if I left the loft? I patrolled.” He stopped, and realization flashed across his face. “I’m sorry.”
Uneasy, she shrugged, recognizing she’d reacted unfairly. He’d done nothing wrong. Except leave her alone. Was this her new normal? Would she always need someone around when she slept or this horrible panic would build inside her? Or was the need specific to Hound Dog? That would be much worse.
“I’ll be okay.”
He crossed to her side. “You’ll feel better after we eat something. Canned soup isn’t exactly gourmet, but it’ll taste great considering how hungry you must be. I had a snack while you slept, so I’m not starving, but I could eat again.”
After she’d stepped outside to relieve herself, she let him guide her to a blanket he’d spread out nearby and serve her the soup. He was right: the food tasted good even if it came out of a can and boxes and packages. Besides the soup, Hound Dog had found crackers and peanut butter, and for dessert, cakes and pastries in vacuum-sealed packages. Rachel’s tension released as her belly filled, and she silently forgave Hound Dog for leaving her alone in the loft. Aloud, she apologized for overreacting.
“Jack, I’m sorry.” When he gave her a puzzled look, she said, “For how I behaved when I woke up.”
He shook his head. “I get it. You don’t want to be alone.”
She winced and remained silent.
“It’s okay. Whatever happened before, we won’t let it happen again. Agreed?”
“We didn’t want to let it happen in the first place.”
He smiled and continued, “We won’t let them get us.” He popped
the remains of a cream-filled cake into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, then said, “I understand you don’t want to leave your friend, but if we try to break in, they’ll nail us—quick.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he held up his hand. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t rescue Peter, but while you slept, I’ve been thinking about how best we can do it.”
“I’m listening.”
He outlined a plan for her, and, as he spoke, a surge of energy and excitement had her getting to her feet. This could work.
Chapter Forty-Four
Home. It meant different things to different people. To Rachel, home meant safety and security—and solitude. It definitely didn’t mean the castle-like structure she and Hound Dog crept toward in the moonlit night. This was her father’s home, her stepmother’s home. It’d never really been hers.
She’d lived here on and off, but after her father and Marne had married, she’d never felt comfortable or happy here and had moved out before Marne moved in. After high school, she moved out, first to residence at university, then to the townhouse she lived in now, paid for in part with money her mother had left her.
She’d split her time between her townhouse and the base, and the base itself offered her the haven she needed—until Pattenden’s treachery took that away. The base had offered something else she hadn’t recognized before: a sense of camaraderie, of family, more so than she’d experienced with her real family once her mother died. She’d only returned to her father’s house for major holidays, when they gathered together in uncomfortable politeness. Frequently, Stefan showed up late to these gatherings; though, to his credit, he showed up no matter how busy with work.
Busy creating monsters.
“You lived here?” Hound Dog interrupted her reminiscences with a low whistle.
She glared at him. “Keep it down.”
“Sure thing, boss.” He pantomimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.
She shook her head in exasperation but said nothing more. Ahead loomed the stone porch with the double front doors. Motion-activated cameras would capture them if they got too close, so she held up her hand, halting their progress. She pointed to the bushes alongside the walkway leading to the front steps, and Hound Dog melted into the shadows.
