All during the preparations, we had taken turns standing at the vents, watching the sky, the surrounding landscape, the horizon. We had seen crop-dusting planes and tracks speeding on a highway far in the distance, but that was all. Most of the time the skies and surrounding countryside remained empty, and the lack of any kind of pursuit on the part of Luther Zelezian and his backers was becoming quite a mystery.
Not that it really made much difference, since the job ahead of us was more than enough to command our full attention.
Finally, we were ready. Garth and Harper stepped back into the tunnel that connected the first and second silos, positioned themselves on either side of the doorway. I walked across the silo to Mabel, who was standing near the double doors, using her vacuum cleaner of a trunk to idly pick through the grain on the floor. I stroked her trunk, then gently tapped her left tusk with one of my sticks. “Back, baby. Get back. I don’t want you to intimidate our guest. Come on, now. Be a good girl.”
Mabel dutifully backed away to the opposite wall of the silo. I went to the double doors, loosened the chain holding them closed, opened one a crack, and peered out. The lobox was lying on a patch of grass perhaps twenty-five yards away, off to the right. As always alert to my comings and goings, it immediately got to its feet, pricked up its ears, and stared intently at the small opening between the doors.
“Robby, please be careful!” Harper called after me.
Garth said, “Careful, Mongo.”
Making as little noise as I could, I unwrapped the length of chain from the wooden pegs on each door. Then I took a deep breath and yanked the door on the right open at the same time as I spun around and sprinted toward the doorway on the opposite side of the silo. I wasn’t about to break stride to look back over my shoulder, but I could imagine the lobox’s virtually instantaneous reaction as it sprang forward, its legs churning, its body flattening out as it bounded after its elusive prey. As I ran, arms and legs pumping, I could hear it behind me. Then it screamed, the sound piercing in the closed confines of the silo, and I knew it was about to spring.
I reached the doorway and dove through it not a moment too soon. The lobox’s killing scream was in my ears, and its saliva spotted the back of my neck as I left my feet. However, Garth and Harper’s timing was perfect, and the animal’s scream changed to a roar of surprise as the old, rotting net we had patched together out of rope and burlap bags dropped down from the top of the doorway and caught it.
I hit the ground on my right shoulder, rolled, and came up on my feet. I whirled around in time to see the lobox, its muscular body churning in a paroxysm of blind fury, tearing at the improvised net with its fangs and claws. But it was too late, as Garth closed the door firmly on the animal’s neck, then leaned against it with all his weight. Harper hurried around to Garth’s side and placed a measured length of two-by-four between the floor and the doorknob, wedging the door shut.
“He’s all yours, Mongo,” Garth said tersely as he stepped back from the door. The front of his shirt was covered with foam. “Show the furry fucker who’s boss.”
I paused to give Harper, who was white-faced and trembling, a quick hug, then stepped forward until I was only inches from the writhing lobox’s fangs. I stared hard into the golden eyes, which were clouded now with shock and fear, as well as fury. I whacked it hard on the side of the skull with one stick, then followed that up with another hard whack on the opposite side. It yelped in pain, then began to thrash with renewed enthusiasm. The door and wedge both began to show signs of giving, and Garth leaned hard against the wood. I hit the animal a third time, on top of the skull; as it cringed and closed its eyes, I shoved a stick between its jaws to wedge them open, used both hands on the stick to shove its head back, then quickly leaned forward and bit hard into the fleshy center of its hot, foam-coated nose, drawing blood. Then I pulled the stick from between its jaws, stepped back, and waited.
The lobox, blood running from the wound in its nose where I had bitten it, stared at me, pain and fear swimming in its eyes, which had suddenly grown bloodshot. I decided that I’d certainly succeeded in getting its attention. Froth coated its fangs and flecked its lips, and its struggles were growing weaker as it became exhausted. I cracked the sticks together, and it cringed. It was the effect I wanted. Luther had his revolver, but—short of actually killing the animal—there was nothing he could do with it except cock the hammer. The weapon I used to produce sharp sounds could also inflict pain, which I had demonstrated to the creature. That circuit, I thought, might well be overridden.
It was time for the next step.
“Harper, love, turn around, will you?”
“Why, Robby?” Harper asked, puzzled.
“Modesty precludes me from allowing you to watch the next phase of my animal-training act.”
“What are you going to do, Robby?”
“Oh, that,” Garth said, and stepped in front of Harper.
I unzipped my fly, loosed a stream of urine over the beast’s face and head. The lobox closed its eyes, tried unsuccessfully to turn its head away. When I had emptied my bladder, I zipped up my fly, brought the nunchaku sticks very close to the animal’s eyes, and banged them together. Again, the animal cringed. A low whine escaped from its throat.
“All right,” I said to Garth over my shoulder, “let it go.”
Garth didn’t move. He glanced at Harper, who seemed just as puzzled as he was, then back at me. “Say what?”
“Let it go.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all, brother,” Garth said quietly.
“Who’s in charge of the animal training around here?”
“You are—but it looks to me like you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. You’ve got the damn thing under control.”
“No. I’ve got it trapped, helpless, hurt, humiliated, and temporarily cowed. There’s a difference. It isn’t enough.”
“It looks good enough to me. Why let it go when we had to go to so much trouble to trap it? How the hell do you know what it’s going to do?”
“I don’t know what it’s going to do; I do know that it’s going to do us no good the way it is. We have to find a way of getting it out of here. That cheesecloth net certainly won’t hold it. Even if we could manage to hogtie it, we wouldn’t be able to keep it up on Mabel’s back. We have to take the next step.”
Garth shook his head. “It’s too risky, brother. Kill it. A dead lobox is just as useful to us as a live one, and a lot safer.” He turned to the woman. “Harper, find me a rock or a wrench or something, will you? I’m going to beat its brains out.”
“I don’t want to kill it,” I replied as I abruptly kicked the wedge out from under the doorknob.
The lobox seemed momentarily confused by the sudden easing of the pressure on its neck. I nudged the door open even further, then knocked the sticks together in front of its bleeding nose. The Creature started, then wheeled around, its claws tearing free of the improvised net, and raced beneath the menacing tusks of the trumpeting Mabel, out of the silo.
“That was stupid, Mongo,” Garth said in the same soft, even tone.
“It’s basically after me. It was my call.”
“And it was a stupid one. We should have killed it when we had the chance. I know how you feel about animals, and I appreciate that it’s only following its instincts and training, but I can’t believe you could be so sentimental about an animal that’s determined to kill you.”
“It’s not sentiment. I say a live lobox is more valuable than a dead one. If Luther gets away with the others and they end up as assassination weapons, it might help if the good guys had a live lobox to learn from.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have let the damn thing get away. All you did was beat the shit out of it, and now it’s going to run right back to Luther.”
Harper moved closer to me, and I put my arm around her. “I don’t think so, Garth,” she said. “Robby hasn’t wiped out its training program or its instincts. He hasn’t cr
eated a cowardly lobox, just a very confused one. It won’t go very far.”
“Right,” I said. “It won’t go back to Luther unless it kills me—or chooses to believe that it can’t, or shouldn’t.”
Garth looked back and forth between Harper and me. “So what happens now?”
“What happens now is that I want the two of you to go up to the cheap seats by the vents and watch my next trick,” I said, and stepped out through the doorway.
“Mongo?! What the hell—?!”
“You said I should make it mine,” I said, waggling one end of a nunchaku stick at my startled brother. I took the broken padlock out of my pocket, glanced at it, then tossed it away. There was no sense in trying to lock up my brother, because he would be through the door just about in time to distract me from what I had to do. And probably get himself killed. “Well, I don’t have time to explain to you how I propose to do that, or why it has to be done this way. But I have to go now. I’ll be all right. You wait here. If you want to watch, you take Harper with you and go up to the vent at the front.”
Without waiting for a reply, I wheeled around and started walking across the silo floor, pausing to pat a very skittish Mabel on the trunk. I edged carefully up to the slightly open door and could feel Mabel moving up behind me. Standing just at the edge of a wedge of sunlight that streamed in through the opening, I took a series of deep breaths, trying to relax and steady my nerves.
If the lobox was waiting for me just on the other side of the silo wall, I was a dead man. Yet I had no choice but to go out and face it. I sucked in one last deep breath, slowly exhaled, then stepped out of the silo into the bright sunlight.
So far, so good.
The lobox was lying on the patch of grass about twenty yards away, to my right. It sprang to its feet when it saw me, but remained where it was. I spun my nunchaku sticks, first one and then the other, then gripped them and smacked them together. The hide of the lobox began to quiver, its ruff suddenly expanded, and it charged.
It might have been wishful thinking, but in the second or two I had to evaluate distance, speed, and angles as the lobox rushed at me, it seemed to me that the animal was not moving with its former speed. Since I had not really hurt anything but its pride, I had to assume that its relative slowness represented a newfound uncertainty and lack of confidence on its part. It was a beginning, I thought as I leaped to my left at the same instant as the creature screamed, left its feet, and came flying through the air at my head. For one terrifying second I thought I had misjudged, and that its claws would tear off my right arm, but it missed—and I swung my sticks-on-a-chain, caught the lobox on its right flank. It yelped in pain, landed, screamed, and spun around to face me.
I smacked the sticks together again, took two quick steps toward the animal, stopped and crouched, ready. The lobox backed away a few feet, then abruptly stopped and stared at me.
“Come on, furball,” I said, banging the sticks together. “Want to try again?”
It most certainly did want to try again. The creature suddenly sprang forward, its claws slipping in the dirt at its feet. It seemed even slower now—or I was gaining confidence. This time I was easily able to sidestep the animal’s leap, and as it passed me in the air I swung a stick down hard on the top of its skull, then managed to whip the stick around again and catch it on a hind leg. The lobox yelped loudly. This time it stumbled when it landed. It went down, rolled over, got up.
But now its ruff was down.
“Come on,” I said, furiously clicking the sticks together. “Come on!”
I inched forward, to within a yard, again crouched and waited.
Suddenly the beast seemed to collapse—or the front end of it seemed to collapse. It dropped the top of its head to the ground, pushed with its hind legs. Its rear end went up, and for a moment it balanced on its head, before toppling over on its side. It got up, once more appeared to try to stand on its head, toppled over. This time it didn’t get up. It rolled over on its back, thrust all four legs stiffly into the air, and extended its head back, exposing its throat.
It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
And then I remembered that I had seen it once before—or a depiction of a lobox trying to stand on its head, in the photograph Nate Button had shown me of one of the Lascaux paintings. Button had said that the painting had been done by a poor artist who had been unable to capture the terror Cro-Magnon felt before the lobox. Button had been wrong.
The Cro-Magnon artist had painted a lobox displaying a posture of submission.
Well, well, well.
I suppressed a nervous, near-hysterical giggle and backed off a few steps to ponder the meaning of it all. Behind and above me, from the direction of the silo, I heard the sound of clapping. I turned in that direction, using my peripheral vision to keep track of the supine lobox, looked up, and saw Harper standing at the edge of the vent halfway up the side of the silo.
“My hero!” Harper called.
“You did good, Mongo,” Garth said in a low voice that nevertheless carried clearly to me. I lowered my gaze, saw that Garth was standing next to Mabel just outside the open silo doors. “You did real good.”
I waved my nunchaku sticks in their direction, resisting the impulse to make an elaborate bow. In fact, I knew that the real test of just what I had actually accomplished was yet to come, and I saw no sense in further delaying it. Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I unhesitatingly strode over to the lobox, which was still lying on its back with its legs thrust stiffly into the air, looked down into its golden eyes, which now seemed curiously veiled, clouded.
“Be careful, Mongo,” Garth continued in the same low tone. “Don’t press your luck.”
Very carefully, and also very gently, I touched the animal’s rib cage with the end of one of my sticks. “Up,” I said. I waited a few moments, then applied slightly more pressure. “Up.”
Damned if it didn’t get up, and stand with its great head slightly bowed. Up close, with things temporarily at a standstill, I was reminded of just how big this creature was; its shoulders were at a level with my head. Now, a single, even half-hearted swing of its great maw with its saber teeth would have stripped my face, and probably my head, away. And yet, suddenly, I was no longer afraid. I sensed what it sensed, that I was in control.
I gently applied pressure with the end of the stick to its hindquarters. “Uh … sit?”
Damned if it didn’t sit.
“Bravo, Robby!” Harper shouted from her perch, clapping furiously. “You’ve done it! He’s yours!”
“Garth!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Bring me a rope, will you?! Make it a long one!”
“No need to shout, Mongo. I’m right behind you.”
His voice was so close that it startled me. “You’ve got balls, brother,” I mumbled.
“Not as big as yours, brother.”
I tentatively reached out, laid my hand on the lobox’s flank. It didn’t move.
“I was about to tell you to throw me the rope, so that you wouldn’t have to get too close. What the hell do you think you’re doing? This thing and I are just getting to know each other.”
“Oh, it looks to me like you’ve got the situation well in hand,” Garth said casually. “With Mongo the Magnificent on its case, what chance did this poor, dumb beast ever really have? I just wanted to get a close-up view of the fruits of your labors.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want you to get lazy on me now. I still need you to bring me a rope.”
“Why? There’s no need to tie it up.”
“I don’t plan to tie it up. The rope is to use as a leash.”
“I’ll be right back,” Garth said, and started walking toward the silo.
As Garth, with Mabel patting him on the back with her trunk, disappeared inside the silo, Harper suddenly cried out in alarm.
“Robby, there’s somebody coming! It looks like one of those big circus tracks!”
Chapter Twelve
The door of the dusty cab opened, and Luther, dressed in brown leather pants and boots, and a leather jacket with long fringes, got out. He looked like Buffalo Bill with a shaved head, and he appeared to be alone—which was my second surprise. I had hoped to bluff my potential killers into simply taking me captive, but Luther didn’t look in the mood to take prisoners. There was an air of desperation about him. He was wearing his Magnum in a holster strapped to his side, and he carried a Smith & Wesson 30–06 pump action rifle with a ten-round clip. He’d obviously come loaded for elephant as well as dwarf.
Luther slowly walked toward me, then stopped when he was about twenty yards away from where I sat perched cross-legged on top of Mabel’s head, in front of the open double doors to the silo. He glanced to his right, toward the lobox, which was back lying on its patch of grass perhaps fifteen yards away, with its red tongue lolling out between its saber teeth, looking thoroughly inscrutable. Having no reason not to believe that the lobox was still patiently waiting for a chance to tear me up into bite-size morsels, Luther simply rested his hand on the bolstered Magnum, but did not draw it. Then he turned his attention back to me.
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