Crossing the Line

by Bobe, Jordan

  As Buck fell over dead Lonnie suffered a fatal blow from the meat cleaver. Mort managed to hit him directly beneath the chin. The blade went straight from the top of the neck to the bottom. Mort got to his feet with a cry of outrage and lunged for Deloris. The kitchen filled the loud boom of a gunshot. Deloris’s aim had been dead-on. The top of Mort’s head flapped open and skull and brain fragments dotted the floral wall paper behind him.

  Anna dove out of the room as quickly as she could. The seat of the chair made it impossible for her to run upright, but she dashed hunched over to the front door of the farm house. Her hands shook as she twisted the knob and stepped out onto the porch, knowing that the surviving men would not be far behind her.

  As she stepped out onto the porch a dozen lightning bugs took flight in the front yard. Their beautiful green glow seemed a complete contrast to the ugliness of the night.

  The bugs buzzed around a small army of ragged looking men. The barbarians were coated in blood, a few of them even held torn appendages. Standing in the center of the group were Ivy and Tracy. Between her friends were two giants. They were so big that it seemed like they belonged in some kind of fairy tale.

  Naked women crawled around on the grass behind the bloody warriors. With the exception of Ivy and Tracy the army looked at Anna with unsure eyes.

  “She’s my friend,” Ivy said.

  The smaller of the giants stepped forward and said, “You move to safe. Brute finish this.”

  “No,” Anna said. She walked down the stairs and over to the big men. “We finish this together.”

  Brute smiled at her. “You dog now too.”

  37

  When Leila and Jessica came in through the back door of the farm house Deloris realized the levity of the situation completely. They were closely followed by their husbands, Gene and Drake, and a few more of the men. Everyone in the small group of survivors told the same story. The dogs had all gone feral. The remainder of her employees had been slaughtered before they could make it to the relative safety of the farmhouse.

  With less than a dozen men to fight against the dogs the chances of survival were slim to none, but Deloris did not allow this grim reality to change her demeanor. She refused to claim defeat. Even when Ethan reported that Juggernaut was with the pack in the front yard she still remained calm.

  The gruesome scene in the kitchen made it worthless as a strong hold. The openness of the first floor made it seem foolish to remain down there. Deloris barked orders at her remaining employees, telling the stronger of the men to barricade the windows and doors while she and the rest of her family of sorts moved up to the upper level of the farm house.

  One of the eight bedrooms of the house had been converted into an armory that would have raised some serious flags had the government known what kind of guns she had bought on the black market over the years. The AK-47s and fully automatic pistols were enough to put her in jail for a long time, while the three RPGs and the Bazooka would have trumped it up to a life sentence. There were several lockers full of thirty-ought-six, twenty-two and sniper rifles. And an entire wall had been dedicated to shotguns of all varieties.

  She had always expected the guns to be used during a showdown with the ATF or DEA, but she was confident that with the right strategy they would do the trick against her pack of enhanced humans, too. After all, the dogs were uneducated and unfamiliar with guns. They had never needed to be trained to gunfight as their enormous size and taught ferociousness made it so the most simple of weapons were extremely deadly in their hands.

  As it stood— at least in her opinion— the dogs were all bringing knives to a gunfight. Even if they were fast and strong they would not be able to withstand an all-out assault from the heavy firepower.

  As she began formulating her plan of counterattack the remainder of her crew talked amongst themselves while loading their weapons.

  “We left Gloria and Kendra with the kids,” Drake said. “The dogs don’t seem interested in attacking women and children. They are after us, the ones they considered their masters.”

  “Where are they holed up?” Ethan asked.

  “The back house. Its windows and doors were already all boarded up, so we just pried the front door open and set them inside,” Norton said. “It seemed like the safest place for them.”

  “Did they have any guns?” Leigh asked.

  “Two pump action twelve-gauges and a couple of .357s. They should be fine,” Gene said. “I’m a lot more concerned with what we’re going to do when the dogs come for us.”

  “There are a total of twelve rooms on this floor. If we spread out in them we should be able to ambush the little fucks as they come up the stairs and down the halls. We will have the advantage of more open areas,” Deloris said. “Whatever we do we have to make sure that their only option is to come up those stairs, though. We need to make sure the windows are shuttered up and locked. Most of the rooms have bureaus in them, we’ll use those to reinforce the blockade.”

  “What if they catch the place on fire?” Oswald asked.

  Deloris looked at the balding man as if he were mentally challenged. She ran a hand through her short, greasy hair and shook her head. “We raised them as animals, Oswald. They’re not going to try to burn us out. They’re brutal halfwits.”

  “But they have those damn girls with them!” Ethan said. “We can’t underestimate the situation, Deloris. There’s no telling what those women are going to do now that they have back up.”

  “Oh, I can tell you what they’re going to do. They’re going to die. Every last fucking one of them is going to die. Now stop wasting time and get your asses to work!”

  38

  The pack impatiently stalked around the house. Their minds were racing with the urge to kill. Each and every one of them had been abused beyond that which any human deserved. The attack that would soon begin was to be retribution for all of the years they had been treated like filthy animals. The only reason they hadn’t rushed directly into the fight was because of Brute and Juggernaut. The older dogs seemed to smell trouble, and had refused to begin fighting yet.

  Ivy and Tracy hadn’t ever heard them speak their own language before, but when the two alphas spoke to the rest of the pack they did it in a series of grunts and growls. The younger dogs understood them completely and began moving around the house in accordance to their orders. The bitches were addressed in the broken English and told to seek cover near the porch. They did not object.

  Tracy, Ivy and Anna took inventory of the guns they had collected from the fallen men. Anna who was almost as afraid of holding a gun as she was of the people inside the house, finally agreed to carry a pistol. She handled it like a poisonous snake, though. Ivy considered telling her to go hide along with the bitches, but knew the friendly advice would be taken as an insult.

  Brute and Juggernaut drew closer to the house when the windows upstairs began being boarded up. The girls followed their lead. Tracy suspected that the masters were planning some kind of sniper attack. Being out in the open was not an option.

  More and more the women were beginning to think that they were in over their heads. Not only had they all been members of normal society before their stay at the lake house, but they had been strongly opposed to violence. Ivy enjoyed horror flicks, but not movies like Saw where the focus was completely on the kills. She liked the movies with clearly defined heroes and gory, but quick death sequences. Anna and Tracy had watched an occasional fright flick, but the genre was not their favorite by any means. If they were going to be caught up in a movie-like scenario they both would have picked a Nickolas Sparks story. Hell, even a Bruce Willis movie would have been more appealing than the nightmare they were living.

  Brute looked at the front door and shook his head. “We no go inside,” he said. “They wait for us and shoot us inside.”

  “We need to draw them out,” Juggernaut agreed. Anna was surprised at how much more civilized and articulate the enormous man was than his brot
her. She wondered what the difference between the two was. Something in their upbringing had separated them marginally.

  “We could set the house on fire,” Tracy suggested. She had no idea that the people inside had expressed fear over the notion only moments before.

  “No, fire no good. Other dogs scared of fire,” Brute said. “If they get scared they run away.”

  “Yeah, fuck that, we’re going to need all the help we can get,” Ivy said. She sighed and looked at the visible windows in her line of vision. The house looked like the setting for the original Night of the Living Dead. The funny thing was the people on the inside were the monsters, not those planning their demise.

  “Were there any kids inside?” Tracy asked Anna.

  Anna shook her head. “No, there were a couple of women and a bunch of dudes, but no kids. I think the dogs are their kids.”

  Brute shook his head. “No, the masters keep their puppies. Dogs come from bitches.”

  “Well, either way there weren’t any kids in the house. Not that I saw anyway,” Anna said.

  Juggernaut snorted and leaned heavily against the porch’s railing. “They take their babies to the back house. They would not put them in danger,” he said.

  “Okay, so we don’t have to worry about their being any kids inside, right?” Anna said. “So we can ram right through one of the fucking walls and bring this place down like a house of cards.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Tracy asked.

  “The ambulances. Those guys we killed in the garage had the keys to open the back door to the vans, surely one of them has the ignition key on him. We go get the ambulance, put a couple of the dogs in the back and drive right through the side of the house. They won’t be expecting it. The element of surprise will give us a fighting chance.”

  “It’s the best idea I’ve heard so far,” Ivy said.

  “It’s the only idea we’ve come up with so far,” Tracy said. “And I’m not sure it would work. If they’re waiting inside with a bunch of guns they’d just wipe out all of the dogs and whoever is driving the ambulance.”

  “Not if we synchronize an attack,” Ivy said. “While Anna breaks down the side of the house we can have separate groups come in from the front and back. We may all die in the process, but we could take out enough of them to get our point across.”

  They all fell silent while they considered the plan. From inside the house they heard more hammering and heavy objects being moved. It was obvious that they were running out of time to come up with any better of a plan.

  “Juggernaut will take some dogs in from the back door, Brute will lead some through the front and Anna will tear down the side of the house. That’s the plan, right?” Tracy asked.

  “It’s the best I can come up with,” Anna said.

  “What do you think Brute?” Tracy asked.

  He looked at the house and growled. “Want to kill Deloris,” he said. “We do what you think.”

  “Alright… Goddamn it. I wish there was a different way.”

  “So do I. It’d be nice if they had a propane tank attached to the house. We could just shoot it, blow the whole fucking thing up and be done with this bullshit,” Ivy said.

  “I’ve wished for more shit tonight than I think I’ve ever wished before. None of it has come true yet, but we’ve got to get moving,” Anna said.

  Brute looked Anna directly in the eyes. His hard, scarred face searched her soul. He held out a hand and gently pressed it to her chest. “You have heart of killer now,” he said. “You do what you think.”

  Anna grasped his hand and smiled. “Thanks, Brute. I just wish I had as much confidence as you do. I hadn’t ever even punched someone before tonight.”

  “No matter. Once you become a dog you stay a dog.”

  Anna brought his big hand up to her mouth and kissed it gently. He jerked it away and looked at her with horrified eyes. “No one kiss Brute since mama,” he said. “Brute kill many. Brute bad dog.”

  “No, the people that made you kill were bad. Brute is a good dog,” Anna said.

  Brute took her hand gently and pressed his cheek into its warmth. “Anna good dog.”

  Anna smiled and looked at the house. The people inside had turned this gentle giant into a living monster. She hadn’t thought she could hate them more than she had when they killed Lynne, but she was discovering that the levels in which she could hate by far surpassed any she would have imagined capable.

  A gunshot rang out in the middle of the silence, making everyone jump. Anna and Brute looked in the direction of the gunshot and saw a young dog crawling across the grass. Blood was running freely from a wound in the side of his neck. He whined like a dog and looked at Brute for some kind of support. Brute moved to help him, but a second gunshot made it a worthless endeavor. The boy’s head came open and his body fell limp.

  Brute’s gentleness was forgotten. He glared up at the house and howled with rage. His muscles flexed and he let out a battle cry. His height seemed to shrink as his muscles grew more pronounced. He sank down into a crotch, his huge fists tightening until the scarred knuckles were pale.

  Anna laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “We will avenge them all.”

  Brute snarled and glared at the house. “Brute kill.”

  39

  When the assault on the house happened no one inside was prepared. They had expected some disarray and brutality, not the calculated ambush. The van struck the side of the house at full-speed and tore straight through the concrete foundation and thick wall. The ambulance’s front end was at an upward angle, with its wheels buried in the hardwood floor. The engine block had shrunk and looked a bit like an accordion. Shrapnel from the destroyed wall and the wrecked floor rose up around the smoking hood like tombstones.

  Three men came down the stairs with their guns drawn. They moved cautiously until the van came into view then they slid the bolt on their AK-47s and emptied their clips into the wreckage. Sparks flew as the rounds smacked into the wrecked vehicle. The sparks caught the broken fuel line and sent the engine block ablaze.

  The men reloaded their weapons as they stepped down onto the main floor. None of them noticed the lurking shadows in the grand hall of the house. When the dogs fell upon them they were completely caught off guard.

  Juggernaut grabbed one of the men by the side of the throat and the hip and slammed him into the hallways wall. Plaster exploded around the man as he broke through the wall and landed in the room with the burning vehicle.

  The other men turned their attention to Juggernaut as he smashed through the wall after his victim. They opened fire, but he did not seem to notice the shells as they punched through his flesh.

  A young dog ran from the shadows and landed on the staircase a few feet above one of the gunmen. He dropped down, wrapping his legs around the man’s shoulders. The gunman tried to turn the weapon up at his attacker, but did not have time to fire before intense pain sounded in his head. The young dog jammed a finger in either of his eyes, driving them deep into his cranium. The man fell to the ground pulling the trigger wildly. More rounds struck the van and the remains of the walls around it.

  The young dog pulled his fingers free and grabbed the man by the hair. He lifted the head until the spinal cord snapped in the man’s neck. In a flurry of movement that belied his humanity the dog beat the man’s head into a pulp against the floor, cracking the hardwood with his fury.

  The third man turned his gun onto the young dog and pulled the trigger. The boy yelped with pain as his body was shredded by the fast-firing rounds. He scrambled off his victim only to suffer a headshot the next moment.

  The gunman’s chest exploded open and he was thrown from his feet. Ivy cocked the shotgun a second time and shot him in the head as he lay twitching on the floor.

  Juggernaut grabbed his victim up from the floor and tossed him through the air. The man smashed through a glass case of photographs. He did not even attempt to move as the hunkering form fell upon hi
m. Juggernaut punched his hand into the flesh of the man’s lower back. He tightened his grasp around the man’s spine and jerked with all of his might. The spine came free all of the way up to his shoulder blades.

  He howled with agony, but did not die. Juggernaut lifted him from the ground by the back of the neck and punched him in the mouth. Almost all of his teeth broke off at the gums with the single blow. The second punch flattened his nose against his face. The third crushed his cheek bones and drove the upper plate of his mouth back into his brain. Juggernaut dropped the corpse and stomped on the head just to watch it collapse.

  He turned to the burning vehicle and walked over, the gunshots finally causing him to slow his pace. Blood ran freely from the half dozen wounds riddling his body. He winced as he reached the burning vehicle and pushed past the crushed front end. The driver’s door was hanging by a single hinge. He pulled it off and tossed it aside.

  Anna was sitting in the pilot’s chair with blood running from a wound in her cheek and another in her chest. Juggernaut grabbed her and pulled her free with such might that the nylon seat belt snapped. He carried her away from the vehicle and laid her down on a clear spot on the floor.

  Ivy came to her side and tears ran from the corners of her eyes. “How you feeling, Anna?” she asked. She knew it was a stupid question, but she didn’t know how else to approach the situation.

  “I’m ready to kick some ass,” Anna said. She sat up and clutched the wound on her chest. “Tit for tat, right?”

  Juggernaut helped her stand. She limped toward the door to the hallway. Ivy and Tracy met her and appraised her wounds. Dogs rushed past the carnage and began scrambling up the stairs. They seemed to move at a speed that would be impossible for a person. While most of them scrambled on all-fours up the stairs they still reached the top landing within seconds of beginning the ascent.