Crossing the Line

by Bobe, Jordan

  Juggernaut and Brute came together in front of the girls. “You stay here now,” Juggernaut said. “Too many dangers upstairs. We finish this.”

  “Fuck that,” Anna said. She pushed away from the walls and her friends. “We owe these bastards for what they did to us and you. I want to help kill them all.”

  Brute gently took her hand and kissed it. “You stay and we come back with Deloris. You help kill.”

  Anna was so shocked by the repetition of her act of comforting from earlier that she allowed herself to succumb to her pain. She collapsed to the floor and Ivy and Tracy dropped down next to her.

  Brute and Juggernaut were the last to climb the stairs. Their enormous forms blocked out the light coming from the second floor landing. In the dark shadow that fell over the women they were somehow all brought to full awareness of their current conditions. They sobbed as they moved to a more secure location. Once they were comfortable that they wouldn’t be ambushed they huddled together and sobbed. Anna held a dish towel over the wound on her chest. Tracy held a second towel over her torn cheek.

  40

  “They haven’t come back yet,” Ethan whispered. He sat with his eyes glued to the barricaded door. “All of that crashing and banging. Those girls must have done something really insane down there.”

  “Fuck it,” Gene said. “We’ve got enough guns in here to bring down an army of trained soldiers. They’re not going to get in here without dying.”

  Deloris sat with a sawed off shotgun laid across her lap. She had loaded it with buckshot. One shell could potentially kill two or three of the dogs if they all rushed in at the same time. She hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, though. She didn’t want to have to shoot the children that she had raised. Some would say that her form of parenting was cruel and unusual punishment, but in her own way she had loved each and every one of the boys that she turned into animals.

  The others rambled on and on. The three young bucks rushing out of the room had been a foolish move. There were now only the nine of them; Oswald, Leigh, Drake, Ethan, Gene, Norton, Leila, Jessica and Deloris herself. Leila and Jessica were probably the best shots in the room. They were the ones that actually went out and did the hunting. Their low-brow husbands were usually too busy getting drunk and fishing to care about learning the art of war.

  Regardless, even with the two fairly decent marks men and Deloris, who had killed many in her day, they were going to have to rely completely on instinct and brute force. When the dogs broke through the barricade they were going to have to light the place up like July 4th if they wanted to live.

  Deloris focused on the door with the rest of them, so when the attack came from a different direction none of them were prepared. After the furious sounds of warfare coming from downstairs a flurry of movement had come from the other side of the door as the dogs searched the second floor. It had been minutes— minutes that seemed like days— since there had been any noise.

  When the wall to Deloris’s left burst open she nearly fell out of her seat with fright. A split second later the wall to her right followed suit. None of the people in the room had time to think, they turned their guns on the walls and opened fire. Shells fell to the floor so rapidly that they seemed to be cymbals adding to the percussion of the gunfire.

  Deloris was the only one in the room to withhold firing her weapon. She looked at the knocked down portions of the walls and knew that the dogs had used dressers to cause them. They had rammed the heavy antiques through the walls to draw attention away from where they actually planned to attack. She turned her eyes back to the door and watched for any sign of the barricade being moved.

  After their clips were empty the others began reloading their weapons and looking around the room like rats in a snake’s cage. Sweat dripped from their brows and every one of them had loud ringing in their ears. The room was thick with gun smoke and it burnt at their noses and clouded their vision.

  “Fucking morons,” Deloris said, wiping tears from her eyes as well as the sting of the smoke. “They’re just feeling us out. Don’t fire until you see them!”

  Her employees nodded. Drake coughed at the thickness of the air. It smelled like a fireworks display in the room. He had always hated the smell of burnt gunpowder. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, but all it managed to do was leave the scent of gun oil to combine with the gunpowder. He coughed roughly enough that he nearly gagged.

  “For fuck’s sake, Drake, grow a pair,” Jessica snapped.

  The wall to the right shook again, knocking dozens of shotguns down from their mounts. A heartbeat later a huge hole was punched through the left wall. Despite their orders everyone opened fire on the walls again. Plaster exploded from the bullet holes and clung in the air like the little white flakes in a snow globe. By the time their second clips were empty they had but been deafened and blinded by their acts of cowardice.

  Deloris narrowed her eyes at the barricaded door. She could vaguely hear the sound of her idiot employees reloading their weapons. Drake leaned over and puked out his supper onto the floor by his feet. He made no gesture of apology as he stood up straight and aimed his gun at the wall of shotguns.

  The barricade moved slightly. Deloris fired a single round at the gun lockers they had set up in front of the door. The steel was speckled with little dots as the buckshot exploded on contact. Norton cried out in shocked pain when one of the pellets ricocheted off of the lockers and tore a hot hole through the bottom of his earlobe.

  The rest of the employees opened fire on the gun lockers. The doors dented and buckled inward as they were repeatedly struck by the automatic firing of the weapons. Now that the rounds were hitting metal the sound was intensified. The deafening effect intensified.

  By the time they emptied their third round of clips the room was so thick with gunpowder that it seemed like the house was on fire. They reloaded their weapons and screamed orders at each other that none of them could understand.

  Norton was busying himself tying a handkerchief around his head to stop his ear’s bleeding. Drake stumbled over to the window and grabbed at the boards that were covering it. He began pulling them away and throwing them aside in a desperate attempt to get some oxygen moving through the room.

  More plaster fell like snow. It seemed to waft lazily down through the thick air, occasionally catching a swirl of smoke and changing directions.

  As the last board came off of the window Drake threw it open and stuck his head out. He once again emptied the contents of his belly, this time down the siding on the farm house. He gasped several times, allowing the cool night air to fill his lungs.

  He wiped bile from his chin. The fresh air made his eyes sting even worse. He felt like he had been swimming in an over-chlorinated pool. Even with his dulled senses and smoke-filled lungs he noticed the piece of siding as it fell from above him.

  He looked up and saw Chewy, his personal favorite of the young dogs, clinging to the side of the house. Above Chewy the attic window stood open. He was about to lean in and announce the news when the dog let go of his grasp on the side of the house.

  The force that the body hit Drake with caused his ribcage to shatter against the windowsill. Blood sprayed from between his lips along with a sound like a tire popping. The dog bounced when it hit his back, but it sank its long nails into Drake’s sides and used his battered body as leverage to pull itself back up. When their faces were within inches of each other Chewy bit deep into flesh of Drake’s right cheek. His sharpened teeth shredded through the flesh with ease. He shook his head from side to side and strips of the man’s face came off in his mouth. He spat the gore out and continued to bite while his legs wrapped around Drake’s waist.

  After the right cheek had all but dissolved in a mess of bite marks Chewy began gnawing at his nose and forehead. The added weight and his injuries made it impossible for Drake to move and when he tried to scream Chewy’s mouth closed over his. In a malicious form of a French kiss Chewy sucked Drake’s t
ongue into his mouth and bit it off.

  Drake— knowing that he had lost the battle and not wanting to go down alone— used the last of his strength to throw himself and the dog from the window. They crashed down on the earth below. Drake’s weight crushed Chewy against the soft earth, but it did not kill the dog. Instead it only seemed to fuel his rage. He bit chunks of flesh from Drake’s forehead, nose and left cheek while his claws tore deep gouges out of the meat of his sides and back.

  The fall might not have been instantaneous death for either of the men, but it had caused his broken ribs to stab into Drake’s lungs. Just as one of his eyeballs was sucked out of the socket he choked to death on his own blood.

  Deloris seemed to be the only one aware that Drake had leapt to his doom. She didn’t dare go to the window to investigate, nor was she foolish enough to shoot. If she had squeezed off a single round her panicked subordinates would have turned the outside wall of the house into Swiss cheese. Instead she moved her eyes from the open window and back to the barricaded door.

  Another attack on the walls caused the same reaction from the terrified people locked in the small confines of the extra bedroom. The gun smoke wafted toward the open window, but it still remained thick in the air. The ringing in their ears became completely deafening. None of them could hear anything other than the high-pitched wail of their wounded eardrums.

  Plaster was everywhere in the air now. What little protection the walls had held against the horde of angry killers had been ruined by the dozens of gunshots. The armory was nothing more than a holding cell on death row now. And worst of all none of them knew where the actual attack was going to come from.

  They reloaded once more. They were reduced to using hand signals to communicate. The only sound that any of them could hear was the beating of their hearts. Deloris saw the barricade at the door shift inward. Both walls were attacked at the same time. In her terror even she emptied her gun this time around.

  No one had enough time to reload. They had fallen for the crude plan. The weakened walls imploded around the terrified people as they scrambled to reload their weapons. Filthy, inhuman looking men crawled through the holes in the walls. The door shoved open fully, sending the wrecked lockers spilling across the floor. One of the lockers landed on top of Norton’s legs. He screamed in pain at the initial crushing, but the scream became a screech when a large dog landed on the locker and snarled in his face.

  Deloris reached into the pouch on the side of her chair and grabbed two buck shots. Her hands shook as she loaded them into the slide. She drove her hand in for more rounds, but involuntarily jumped when the ceiling collapsed. Brute landed on all fours on the floor mere feet away from her. The first thing that she noticed was that he wasn’t wearing a mask. He never went on a hunt without putting something over his face. A bit of relief tried to creep up into her then. Perhaps her most loyal dog hadn’t gone feral after all. But that relief and the fleeting thought did not last long.

  Oswald jumped on Brute’s back and jammed the hot barrel of his AK-47 into the side of Brute’s neck. The dog did not scream out in pain. In fact, he seemed completely immune even as the skin sizzled and blistered up around the hot muzzle.

  Brute merely stared at Deloris. His eyes were squinted in such a way that she thought he might be trying to make her head explode with telekinesis. He absently reached over his shoulder and grabbed Oswald by the face. Without removing his eyes from Deloris he flipped the man over his shoulder and drove his head into the hardwood floor. Oswald’s body went limp either with death or lack of consciousness.

  Leigh managed to load a new magazine into his assault rifle and dodge the attacks of the dogs as they flooded into the room. He pulled the slide action, preparing the gun to fire, and released a spray at the backs of three of the younger dogs. Their bodies thrashed as the rounds tore through them. Leigh released the trigger and trained his aim at the back of their heads. The dogs didn’t even have time to release death moans before their heads were reduced to plumes of gore.

  Leigh dropped the empty magazine from his AK-47 and prepared another. He side stepped closer to one of the sections of wall that was still mostly intact. As he grabbed the slide action the wall exploded next to his head and a huge hand wrapped around his cranium. He was yanked through the wall into the next room and tossed through the air. He crashed into the vanity beside the window in the unused bedroom and fell to the ground with mirror shards raining down around him.

  Juggernaut stomped across the room and grabbed him by the back of the neck and his ass. His fingers dug into the meat and muscle of Leigh’s buttock. The giant lifted the dazed man high above his head, smashing him into the ceiling and then threw him down into pieces of broken glass. A long, sharp piece of the mirror tore through Leigh’s chest and broke off against his shoulder blade. He felt blood rush into his lung as the glass shifted inside his chest. He gagged blood out onto the back of his hands as he tried to force his limbs to move just enough that he could crawl away from the beast.

  Juggernaut stomped him back down onto the floor. More glass dug into his body, sending an overload of pain reports to his brain. The enormous foot ground into the small of his back, causing the slivers of glass to dig into him in dozens of places. The giant’s weight strained his spine, but the bone did not snap.

  His functioning lung struggled to keep his wounded body alive even as he began drowning on his own blood. He raised his head up from the ground and coughed blood. It sprayed a full foot out of his mouth. He imagined that he probably looked like a tube of toothpaste being stepped on.

  Juggernaut moved his foot off of the man’s back and used it to roll him over. Leigh looked up at him and tried to make his eyes apologize to the scarred face that glared down at him. If his message was received by the malicious giant it was ignored.

  Juggernaut knelt down and tore at his gut with his long, thick fingernails. His arms became a flurry of movement much like a dog’s legs when they were digging a hole in the yard. The hole being dug was into Leigh’s gut, though. Leigh’s lungs continued to fill with blood, but not quickly enough that he did not feel the agony as the layers of his fat and muscle were ripped away from the sac protecting his innards.

  Juggernaut tore the layer of film protecting the guts open like a plastic garbage bag. He began scooping out Leigh’s innards while the terrified man watched. His offal was being flung around like dirt as the dog continued to dig the hole. After the guts were out of the way he tore into the flesh on either side of Leigh’s spine.

  Juggernaut stood, blood dripping from his fingers and torso. He positioned himself so that one of his feet were pressed against Leigh’s exposed hip bone and wrapped his hand around the man’s neck. With a loud cry of fury he pulled the man into two pieces. Leigh’s spine remained attached to his upper half. He felt every bit of pain as his spine slid out of his buttock. Juggernaut lifted Leigh’s torso up from the floor. Some of his innards rose up along with his upper half.

  The last seconds of Leigh’s life were spent facing the dog that he had helped create. The abuse he had inflicted upon the giant and his pack had all been wrapped up into a single brutal act.

  “No more masters,” Juggernaut said. He shoved his hand up into Leigh’s chest and pulled his lungs and heart out with a single jerk.

  The dog dropped the top half of Leigh’s body onto the pile of his organs. He stomped across the room and kicked the rest of the wall down with a single thrust of his leg.

  The armory was a mess of bloodied bodies. More of the pack had been wounded and killed. The people were huddled together in two small groups with deep gashes all over their bodies from the teeth and claws of their former guardians. Brute was still facing off against Deloris. Neither of them had moved. Oswald’s legs and arms were thrashing, but Brute hadn’t released his hold on the pinned head.

  Deloris moved her hand down and grabbed two more shells from her pouch. She slid the shells into the gun. Brute snarled at her. “You kill girl pupp
ies,” he said.

  “Is that what this is all about?” Deloris asked. “You’re a bad dog, Brute. Girls cannot make good dogs. We need dogs that are strong like you.”

  Brute’s eyes narrowed. There was a loud crunching noise beneath his hands. Oswald’s arms and legs began kicking more violently. Blood seeped out from between his fingers.

  A gunshot rang out in the room. The top of a dog’s head exploded off. Gene pushed the body off of him and got to his feet. He fired a round at Brute’s back. The well planned assault caused Brute to lose his balance. He fell sideways off of Oswald. Oswald crawled away from the big man and reached for a shotgun and a box of shells.

  Deloris cocked her shotgun and aimed it at Brute as he tried to pick himself up from the floor. Juggernaut realized the peril his brother was in and rushed to intervene. The first round tore an enormous hole in his chest and abdomen. The second took out his left shoulder, a bit of his thick neck and the side of his face all the way up to his bottom earlobe.

  He was thrown back and stumbled over Brute’s battered frame. He landed on his brother, pinning him to the floor. Deloris grinned wickedly as both of the injured dogs cried out in anguish.

  “You see what happens when you forget your place in the food chain, boys? You’re dogs, not humans! You don’t have the right to decide who you kill. If I tell you to kill them you fucking well do it.”

  More gunshots sounded around the room as Gene and Oswald opened fire on the other dogs. Though the masters had been grievously injured more of them were alive than their trained killers. The pack’s numbers were so few that the remaining dogs surrendered to the masters, humbling lying on the floor and whining for forgiveness.

  Brute shoved Juggernaut off of him and turned around so that he could face his brother. Juggernaut’s throat pumped blood out in thick spurts. His complexion had drained of color. He was so close to death that Brute was not sure he was even still alive.