Hair of the Dog

by Gordon Carroll

  Jerome fired three times at them and they ducked back inside very quickly. Jerome turned his attention back to the men headed for the stairwell as a bullet hit the floor a few yards in front of him. The remaining four men were all facing him and firing. He ducked back into the elevator just as he saw the stairwell door open up behind them. Max came through like some kind of hound from Hell. He took the closest man to him down low along the hamstring, a full mouth bite, crumpling him.

  Gil came through the stairwell door, his rifle flashing bullets into the backs of the last three men. Making sharp popping sounds, just a bit louder than the impacts of the bullets themselves, as they sunk into flesh. All three went down and he planted a last round in the face of the man that Max was still thrashing.

  Jerome kept his rifle planted on the room where the men had pointed guns at him, but no one appeared.

  Gil Mason picked up on the apartment and advanced, his weapon pointing at the doorway, the monster dog padding beside him at his right leg.

  Jerome left the relative safety of the elevator and closed in from the opposite direction.

  Gil stopped Jerome a few feet back from the doorway with a hand signal. He pulled a flashbang from one of the many pockets his BDU pants sported. Pulling the pin, he tossed it into the room. The sounds of scrambling could be heard and then the body-numbing explosion of noise and light. Gil moved in fast before the shock could wear off, Max beside him. Two gang members staggered about inside the room, both holding guns. Gil shot the closest two times, center mass. Max charged, striking the other man just as he was pulling his gun up. Max hit him full force in the crotch and the man swung down instinctively with the butt, smacking Max in the head. That made him mad and he twisted and tore back, wreaking havoc on the tender flesh of the nineteen year old. Jerome put a bullet in the boys chest and he fell back, gasping for air that he would never breathe.

  Ziggy sat in a chair in the middle of the room, eyes wide and his head twitching like a bird. A woman and another man sat close by on a couch.

  Jerome looked down at Ziggy and started to reach for him.

  Gil saw the fear in Ziggy’s eyes and stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Wait.”

  Ziggy nodded his head wildly, jerking his chin toward his lap.

  Gil knelt down and saw the wires and plastique. He was no explosive tech, but he’d worked more than a few bomb dogs over the years and knew a pressure device when he saw one. Standing, he placed a hand on Ziggy’s shoulder and looked at Jerome.

  “He’s sitting on about a pound of C4. If he stands, we all go boom.”

  “Then what’s the play?”

  Gil scanned the room. Seeing the dead, something struck him. “I see Bloods, but where are the suits?”

  “Suits?”

  “Secret Service. Clyde.”

  “Not here,” said Jerome.

  It was then that Gil remembered the ‘plus one rule’. If there’s one there’s two. The adage usually applied to searching for bad guys and finding one, but it held just as true for explosives. Jerking his head, he saw a small red flashing light under the counter by the sink.

  “OUT!” yelled Gil, pushing the big man toward the door. He flashed a hand signal to Max and the dog leapt as the room disintegrated.

  41

  I saw the flash and felt weightless as a hot hand picked me up and tossed me, like the careless gods of mythology. My head and shoulder smashed into something immovable and then I saw nothing for a span of unknown time. When I woke up, my hearing was gone and blood ran down from my head and into my face. I swiped it away, feeling a twinge in my right shoulder. Heat blasted at me from behind and when I looked back I saw fire raging from a room that was no longer there. The entire floor was gone, sunken into the room below, and a sea of raging flames. Ziggy had simply ceased to exist. My brain wasn’t working quite right just yet, so I couldn’t put things together. Jerome lay on the floor in front of me, his eyebrows burned off and blood seeping from his ears and nose. Max lay on his side a few feet away. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. That helped me to pull everything together and I pushed myself to my knees. Debris and chunks of drywall weighted down my left foot, but I was able to disentangle it and drag myself the rest of the way into the hallway.

  Smoke billowed from the room, reminding me of a certain battle in Afghanistan, and I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth as a makeshift filter. It wouldn’t help much, smoke is extremely poisonous, but something is better than nothing. I had to get moving. Smoke is the big killer in most fires, but those flames would do just fine if we didn’t get out of here fast.

  There was no time to check and see if either Max or Jerome were alive or not, so I pulled myself up and grabbed hold of Jerome’s gun strap and Max’s collar and dragged them to the stairwell I’d just come through a few moments earlier. The door opened inward into the well and I reared back and kicked it hard as I could. The hinges snapped and the door flew back before hitting the landing with a loud slap. I realized my hearing was coming back because I heard the sound.

  I stopped for a second to get my breath. I saw red flickers in the lower stairwell, below smoke thick as water, telling me this way was blocked. I shook Max, but he just rocked back and forth limply. But his chest rose and fell, telling me he was alive at least.

  Smacking Jerome did no good, he was out cold like my dog. I looked up the stairwell trying to think. No way could I take them both at the same time.

  I hoisted Max onto my shoulders and ran the two floors to the top of the elevator shaft. The fresh air got me to coughing so bad I didn’t know if I could stop. But I had to, so I did. I lay Max on the gravel and headed back into the smoky darkness.

  Cops and firemen have a little inner service rivalry and we joke with each other a good deal, but say what you want, it’s no fun running into burning buildings. Personally…I hate it.

  My lungs screamed as I found Jerome where I’d left him. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing and that was a bad sign. Having plenty of room there on the platform, I performed a textbook, Battle Field Roll, coming off the floor with him, all three hundred pounds, held tight over my shoulder. Going up the stairs was a little slower than it had been with Max, and once out of the chimney I collapsed, dropping him harder than would have been acceptable to a field medic. But hey, I was no more a medic than I was a pet detective.

  I coughed up gunk that had the color and consistency of the tar beneath the gravel I was kneeling on, and this time, I couldn’t stop for at least three minutes. Falling on my back, I tried to suck in as much nighttime air as my lungs would allow. Sweat and blood ran freely down my hairline and I began to notice that the gravel was becoming hot beneath me.

  Rolling over to all fours, I saw that Max was standing. He looked shaky, but he didn’t look hurt. Jerome was still out. I walked over to the retaining wall and looked down. Flames and smoke surrounded the building, working their way both up and down.

  My original plan had been to repel down from the eighth floor window and avoid all the guards in the stairwells, but repelling straight down now was impossible without getting crisped or smoked out. Just in case, I’d brought along a couple of rope climbers. I took the climbers and a roll of rope out of the backpack and hooked them to my belt with a carabiner.

  I went back to Jerome and dragged him to the wall. Then I cut the rope that held the grappling hook to the zip line. That left about five feet of rope to work with. I hoisted Jerome up and let him lean across my shoulder while I ran the rope through the carabiners and my harness. Then I hooked his harness to mine with my last carabiner.

  Max moved away from the shed as flames started poking through spots on the roof. The tar and gravel were turning to liquid.

  With no time to waste, I held an arm out to him.

  “Let’s go for a ride buddy. Here!”

  As he started to move, a large section of the flooring between us caved into what looked like the entrance to Hades. Max was cut off from me. I started to unhook
from Jerome when the wall we were standing by collapsed into space, taking us with it. I felt gravity take hold and we swung out and down. I saw the wall to the other building coming insanely fast and there was no breaking from here because this was no rigged zip line, just a straight pendulum. I jerked Jerome around so his body would take the brunt of the impact. It was a cold move, but I had to stay conscious if I was to have any chance of saving Max. We hit hard, and even through Jerome’s big frame, I felt the shock of the blow. I shook it off. I had to get back to Max. I spotted the closest window about three feet below us and let out enough rope. I got my feet straight against the wall, pushed back, and let us fall. We crashed through the window in a spray of glittering glass. I barely managed to grip the window sill to keep us from sweeping back out. Little slivers of glass lacerated my fingers and palms. I gripped Jerome with my legs, hauled him up and over the sill, then took out my K-Bar and cut off Jerome’s harness. He fell like a three hundred pound sack of flour on the floor and lay still.

  Fire engines were arriving, their strobes and sirens stabbing through the smoke.

  I clipped the climber to the rope at chest level and down around my knees and hooked my feet in the straps. I was racing against time and Max didn’t have much.

  The Alpha had abandoned him and the smoke and heat were everywhere. Max bit at the red tendrils of flame as they attacked him, but each time, they danced away, leaving only pain behind. Never in his life had he experienced fire like this and he could only comprehend it as he would any other enemy. But attacking proved useless, so he backed away and moved around the edge of the burning hole that gaped through the roof. He first headed to the elevator shed, but the ground turned soft and hot and then started to melt into itself. Max had to jump back as the entire structure fell into the ever-widening gap of smoking heat from below. He moved in a cautious circle, checking each step and eventually coming back to the wall where he had crashed into the building. He smelled the Alpha on the grappling hook and rope and a rage of his own burned hot at the thought of the Alpha letting the Pack be destroyed like this. The Alpha had proven himself insufficient in protecting the Pack. Pilgrim would be the only one left, and Pilgrim was too weak to protect even himself.

  Max should have heeded his instincts and taken control when he had the chance. Now it was too late. Max looked past the destroyed part of the wall and saw the darkness below.

  Making it to the roof, I unhooked from the harness and sprinted to the elevator shed. I had only a half-formulated plan as to what I was going to do, but I had to save Max.

  I spotted him moving toward the wall, but I also saw that I might be too late. The roof was mostly gone; melted away and fallen into the destroyed structure.

  Max felt the rage burning and building within him. The flames licked higher and closer. Twice now he’d almost fallen through the molten slag that had been solid moments before. Death fast approached. Instinctively, he’d started to jump over the wall several times, stopping only because he saw the Alpha across the expanse and thought he might be coming back for him.

  Max’s vision was highly developed and he could see far better in dark conditions than humans, but his depth perception, like all canines, was poor, allowing only a twenty-or-so-yard window. Beyond that, everything went flat, so that a drop could be twenty yards or twenty thousand. Max felt the danger of the fall, but the very real danger of fire was far closer. When it comes to terrors in the animal kingdom, fire is king. And even Max was not immune to it.

  Max saw the Alpha make the rooftop and watched as he hooked up his strange devices. With each passing second, his anger grew. The Alpha had left him here. The Alpha had abandoned his pack-mate, leaving him to die. The genetic drive to take over the pack had never felt so strong. Max considered trying to make the jump to the other building just so he could confront the Alpha. He knew himself to be faster, stronger, with more abilities, but the leap was impossible and so he stayed his ground. But in his heart, rage burned as bright and hot as the fires below.

  My plan was to zip line down, hook Max up and repeat what I had done with Jerome. I’d lost the zip attachment, so I looped a small section of rope over the line, gripped it tight and dropped off.

  “MAX!” I yelled, as I zipped toward the wall. I had to get his attention; we were working with seconds before the whole place would collapse in on itself. I saw him look at me, but he wasn’t moving.

  “HERE!” I screamed, trying to be heard over the roar of the flames, the crackling of crumbling brick and steel and the sirens coming in from everywhere.

  Max didn’t budge. He stood about ten feet back from the wall and I could see the massive hole in the roof widening outward with incredible speed, the edges dripping black tar and rocks of gravel that disappeared into the raging fire beneath.

  The Alpha shouted his name and Max looked up to see him flying through the air toward him.

  Good. Max would not have to attempt the jump. The Alpha was coming to him.

  “MAX! HERE!” I screamed again, and this time I saw his eyes look up to mine as I broke hard and let my feet smack into the wall. The heat had already done its damage though, and the brick collapsed inward and then fell apart, the grappling hook coming free and dropping beneath my feet. I grabbed for wall, but clutched only empty air. I started to fall, the small loop of rope slipping through my fingers, but I clutched at the main rope as it dropped my weight straight down, following the hook.

  My body jarred as my grip stopped my downward momentum, but then I was starting the swing back towards the other building and Max was still standing there watching me.

  “AHHHHH!” I screamed. I held up my forearm toward him, just as any decoy would in bite work, and yelled with all the authority I could command, “MAX…PACKEN!”

  Max saw the Alpha land at the wall and watched as it disintegrated and he fell backwards. Max’s first reaction was to leap for the Alpha, to save him, but the genetic Pack Drive within him held him back. With the Alpha gone, he would assume control of the Pack.

  The Alpha’s arm came up and he screamed the attack command. A very tiny part of Max, way down deep, tried to tell him no, that it was the Alpha, the one who saved him from the dog fighters, the bear killer, but the panic and the flames and the burning drive of genetics took control of him. The Alpha wanted him to attack? Max would obey.

  The roof collapsed, fires jetting upward, but Max was already on his way. I saw fury and rage and death in his eyes and his powerful jaws sprung open like the maw of some prehistoric monster. He soared up and over and straight toward my outstretched arm. “PAKEN!” I yelled again and raised it just a little to try and give him every chance to find the mark. My speed was mounting, increasing the angle between us and it was anyone’s guess which would win. His limbs stretched, perfectly balanced and streamlined with his head, body and tail. He flew like an arrow and never had I seen a more perfect aim, but still I could see he wasn’t going to make it.

  Max ran, his powerful muscles compressing and stretching, gaining speed on the short narrow runway that still remained. He gathered all his energy in one perfectly placed compact ball of power and launched off the roof and straight toward his prey… The Alpha.

  The night and the smoke and the noise blew past him like a dream from another reality. All that mattered was engaging the Alpha. Now, finally, he would show The Alpha who was superior. He would show him who should be the Pack Leader.

  Max’s front and back legs worked in perfect unison as he stretched to his furthest, his body exquisitely aligned, even his ears and tail streamlined, his eyes locked like lasers on his target. Across the heavens and the horrible drop below he flew, in a timed arc that would have taken a super computer longer than it took his brain to calculate the exact formula to execute. The wind caressed him as he made the impossible journey. And he was close, but the distance was great and his lead up too short. He was going to miss and fall to his death.

  The arc was too much. I gritted my teeth and let loose my
grip. The rope slipped through my hands, singeing my flesh as it burned through my fingers. My heels hit the grappling hook and I regripped; the pain nearly unbearable as friction ate at my flesh.

  Max saw that he could not make the target and there was nothing he could do to change it. But then the Alpha dropped several feet on the rope and Max stretched his neck and turned to the side, allowing a fraction of an inch more, and at the last instant, bit down with all his strength, feeling the familiar texture of flesh and tasting blood and then the incredible impact as his body whipped into the Alpha’s. He heard the Alpha grunt and felt the acceleration as the combined weight and momentum sent the two of them spinning along the rope’s trajectory.

  Max hit like a Cruise Missile, clamping down on my upraised arm, his scimitar-like canines slicing through the muscles and skin as though they weren’t there. The awesome, crushing force of his bite, as he closed, stole my breath. It felt like the bones had been crushed. Maybe they had. And then came the impact of his body’s weight, momentum and angle of attack. I turned my shoulder, trying to absorb as much as I could, and still he swung into my ribs and hip, spinning us viciously… and it wasn’t over. I saw the wall coming at us with terrible speed.