Crossing the Line

by Bobe, Jordan

  Anna crawled over to her friends and picked up Marcy’s discarded weapon. She handed it back to her forcefully. “It’s not who we are that you two are thinking about, it’s who we were. We would’ve said no this morning because before tonight none of us had been raped and beaten. We hadn’t been kidnapped by the fucking Donner Party in the back of a goddamn ambulance. Forget about what classes you’re taking next semester and start thinking about getting out of this fucked up situation without losing any more of your soul to these worthless animals!”

  Marcy shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about it. We don’t even know how long we’ve been in here, do we? Well, I’ve been thinking about it since we decided we were going to fight back. And I think I figured out the secret to it all.”

  “Enlighten me,” Anna said. There was a snide tone to her voice, one as sharp as a razor. It was obvious that she had succumbed to the idea of murdering their captors completely. Lynne wondered if there was any of the old Anna left. It was hard to believe she had been the peppiest of them all. Now her voice sounded like the snarl of a caged animal.

  “If we kill them we’ll become them. I mean, if we seriously bash their heads in we’re going to be cruel animals like them.”

  Anna grew silent. After a moment soft noises started coming from her throat. At first Lynne thought she was laughing. Laughing her way to the loony bin, as the saying went. It wasn’t until she let out a loud sob that Lynne realized she was crying.

  Lynne threw her arms around Anna’s narrow shoulders and gave her a tight hug. Marcy followed suit. The three of them sobbed openly together. After a moment of this, though, they all broke apart and sat in silence. An onlooker would have thought that they were posed like defeated warriors. In reality, though, they were each searching themselves.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to hurt anyone,” Anna said. “I have been trying to convince myself I would be able to, but I honestly don’t know. I mean, I can probably hit them a couple of times, but I don’t think I could finish the job.”

  “We’re not killers,” Marcy said. She sniffled for a moment before wiping snot away from her lips with the back of her hand. “We’re not even cat fighters. I don’t think I’ve ever even come close to going beyond a verbal argument.”

  “I did once,” Lynne said. She smiled in the darkness, the memory floating up from her subconscious to warm her like a thick blanket. “It was the third grade. This little boner Lyle Billings kept pulling my hair. It had been going on for like two weeks. I asked the teacher to move me to a different desk because the jerk sat right behind me, but she just acted like I was retarded or something. Then one day we were all playing kickball and he came up and grabbed a handful and pulled as hard as he could. He ripped my new barrette out and a bunch of my hair went with it. I turned around and socked him right in the mouth. Only hit him one time, but it busted his lip. I got detention for three weeks and when he asked to be moved away from me in class the teacher assigned him a new desk.”

  “I punched my brother in the balls once,” Anna said. “I can’t remember why, but I uppercut him right in the junk.”

  “So that’s the extent of our fighting experience?” Marcy laughed. Her laughter was hollow and full of sorrow. Her voice sounded twice as weak as she felt. “One busted lip and a swollen set of testies— I have a feeling that these sick asses have a lot more experience than that.”

  “But we have an advantage,” Anna said.

  After a moment of waiting for Anna to elaborate Lynne asked, “What’s that?”

  “These sickos all think we’re defeated little girls that are crying for our mamas right now.”

  “We are defeated little girls crying for our mamas,” Marcy said.

  “Maybe, but we can change that. We all agree that we’re sophisticated, educated women, right?” Her friends muttered agreements. “Well the key word there was women. We’re not little girls, we’re grown women and despite the fact that we don’t have biceps the size of an action star we aren’t weak, either. In a fair fight we would get our asses handed to us, but it doesn’t have to be a fair fight. We can stick to the plan and attack after reaffirming to them that we are weak little girls.”

  “The element of surprise,” Lynne said. “That did seem like a good plan when we came up with it.”

  “What if we hit them and it just pisses them off?” Marcy asked.

  “Then we die knowing that we gave it our best. It’s better than going out like the girls you see in the movies. I don’t want to be a damsel in distress offering sexual favors only to be served up as a loose meat sandwich to a family of Hannibal cannibals.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Ivy,” Lynne said. She grinned thinking about the conversation she had with her friend on the way to the lake house. If only she had known had close to right Ivy had been she would have been all for turning around and hauling ass back to campus.

  Marcy sniffled a little more, but she seemed to have regained some of her composure when she next spoke. “I don’t want to be remembered as the girl that couldn’t fight for her life.”

  “Then keep hold of your weapon and bash the fuck out of whoever opens those doors,” Anna said. She gave Marcy another hug and then pulled Lynne in for one, too. “We’re not just friends, guys. We’re sisters. And after tonight we’ll be sisters who survived the village of the retarded inbreds.”

  “Or the sisters that beat the troglodytes senseless before they became someone’s stew,” Marcy said. She gripped her piece of the gurney tighter than ever before.

  “Man, I hope they just cut off my feet. I paid fifty bucks for my last pedicure,” Lynne said. After a moment of silence all three of them laughed.

  Marcy groaned. “I shouldn’t have laughed,” she said. “I’ve really got to pee.”

  “Me too,” Lynne admitted.

  “Yeah, liquor does that to everyone,” Anna said. An idea came to her then. “Now you guys are really going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I think I have an idea.”

  30

  Mort dashed into the house in a huff. His sudden entry scared Deloris so badly that she nearly stabbed herself with one of her knitting needles. She calmly folded the arm of the sweater she had been working on in her lap and stared at the young man.

  “What is the problem, Mort?” she asked.

  “Ma’am, Brute has arrived. He didn’t come alone, neither. There are women with him, I think from the house,” Mort said.

  “How is he behaving himself?”

  “He killed Carey and Otto.”

  Deloris sighed and grief filled her features. She moved her chair away from her resting spot near the fireplace and moved over to a bookshelf full of photographs. To anyone else the framed stills would have seemed grotesque, but to her they were beautiful family portraits. All of her dogs at various ages, in various states of their decline into their animal nature. They were beautiful, magnificent creatures, each and every one of them. Brute had always been one of her favorites, though. The HGH treatments had given him such strong muscles and unique features. And unlike the dog before him he had seemed to be more capable of human thought. Of course that had been the problem and she should have known it. If they were to be dogs they shouldn’t have been capable of retaining human thought.

  She picked up a photo of him standing over his first kill. He had only been six when he had managed to strike down the pit bull. With his bare hands he had ripped the canine to shreds, tearing out its innards and twisting them until the dog’s whining ceased. The photograph was of the child, who looked closer to fifteen because of his size, holding the corpse of the dog above his head in victory.

  She forced back tears and set the photograph back on the shelf and lowered her head. “I think it’s time that we release Juggernaut. None of the other dogs or men stand a chance against Brute,” Deloris said. “It’s the only way we can put him down.”

  “Deloris, you can’t be serious,” Mort said. “Juggernaut is more dangerous—”<
br />
  “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 crudely. 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. He 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. The 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 t
hree, 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.