He looked to the van, and that’s when Tina opened both cages and pointed at him and shouted in a snarl I’ve never heard her use before, “Támadás.”
The world slowed down as two furry bolts burst from the van.
Too slow, he was still turning, and the shotgun started to move up toward the path of Tina and the dogs. I swung my shovel like I was going for a home run. Everything seemed to freeze and then start to move like molasses on a cold Michigan day. You know, they say time seems to stop when your life flashes before your eyes, but it wasn’t my life.
There was about to be a 12 gauge bore pointed at my loved ones, and I could say, time slowed. I had time to reflect.
When I’d come to earlier, I’d pulled the Gerber from my back pocket, and when I’d tried to embrace Tina, I’d dropped it at her side, near where her hands had been bound behind her - unbeknownst to Craig.
I’d seen her acknowledge what I’d done with her look and nod. I’d known then even if I couldn’t make it out of this, she could. Instead, she’d cut herself free, and at the perfect moment, she’d unlocked the cages of both dogs.
Both?
Ophelia hit the ground half a heartbeat after Opus, but she wasn’t turning on Tina, she was following the bigger and older dog who took a leaping striding step, then another. The flat of my shovel hit Craig’s elbow as he was starting to line up the shot. The shotgun pointed up as he fired, the round going over everybody’s heads. I heard him screaming, the dogs panting, Tina snarling the Hungarian command for attack over and over, and then the snarling was coming from Opus, as he took one more bounding leap before Craig could rack the slide.
Opus hit him first, latching onto the elbow I’d just smacked. Ophelia hit a moment later, putting her shoulder into him as she snarled and bit at whatever she could. What I hadn’t seen coming, was the moment Craig lost the grip of the shotgun and the momentum and fury of two hundred pounds of dog pushing him over the edge of the hole.
I too, snarled, as his body glanced off me into the pit. Opus never let go. He ripped and tore, only opening his jaws to work his grip in tighter and higher.
Craig screamed as Ophelia jumped down into the hole on top of him and tore into the inside of his leg. Craig raised a fist and tried to try to punch and kick at the dogs.
I couldn’t see well, but I could see well enough to shove Opus away and start punching with my own fists. So much punching… so much blood… so much rage… so much fear.
“I told you I could take you if you put the gun down,” I screamed, and hit him again.
His eyes rolled up in the back of his head, and Tina gave the command for the dogs to stop.
I stopped too.
I stood exhausted and panting over his limp body, wondering if I had just killed a man. He was bleeding, so his heart still beat, but for how long? I only saw half of everything, but the nausea was leaving me fast.
Getting the dogs out of the hole wasn’t easy. Neither of them wanted me to pick them up, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough left in me to do it, but I did.
Before I climbed out myself, both Opus and Ophelia leaned over the edge, and licked my face in concern, not wanting to leave me in there alone.
Tina had found Craig’s cell phone in the middle seat. It took the police a good half an hour to find us. All the while, I kept the shotgun trained on the hole. I’d even remembered to take the shovel out. It was how I’d been able to lift myself up, by putting it across both ends.
“Oh, Jesus, mister. He worked you over good,” Mike, the ambulance driver and medic, said.
“Yup. Shot, stabbed, kicked, burned, beat, drowned—”
“You’re thinking of Rasputin,” Tina said.
“Oh yeah, and drawn and quartered,” I finished, as Mike worked on cleaning up my face.
“You were beaten pretty badly though,” he said.
“You should see the other guy,” I told him, feeling tipsy.
“I did. He’s lucky to be alive, you and the dogs really worked him over.”
“I didn’t kill him?” I asked in shock.
“No, but he’s going to need surgery to breathe through his nose again if I had to hazard a guess.”
“How bad am I?” I asked.
“Stitches for sure. Probably want to keep you a day or so at the hospital for the concussion, bruised ribs, scrapes…” Mike answered.
I nodded, feeling my brain slosh around, making me dizzy, “Makes sense.”
“Just as soon as animal control comes for the dogs—”
“Wait, they’re our dogs!” Tina shouted, startling the medic.
“Oh, I thought the guy you beat up said—”
“No,” Tina interrupted. “Opus is my protection dog, and Ophelia is his PTSD therapy dog,” she said, pointing at me.
“PTSD, huh?” Mike said, his tone softening.
“After this, wouldn’t you have some sort of issue?” I asked.
“True enough,” he said, and put a heavy piece of medical tape over a spot then gave me the ice pack back, which I put over my eye.
“Listen. Even service animals can’t ride in the ambulance—”
“You can’t let Animal Control take them,” Tina interrupted, anger and tears erupting at the same time.
“But as I was going to say…in this case, I can tell my boss what happened and then I’ll have to sterilize everything again anyway, which I’m already going to do because that other EMT crew needed some supplies. So, if my boss finds out, tell them you put up a big fight, okay?”
“Got it,” I told him.
“Now we’re going for a ride. My partner, Gary, and I are going to strap you in and then lift you up. The three of you,” he said to Tina and the dogs, “will ride in the back with Gary.”
“Thank you,” Tina said and then hugged him, hard.
Gary coughed in embarrassment and Opus whined while Mike strapped me in. I coughed dramatically, and Tina turned to me, a smile cracking her features.
“Jealous?” she asked.
Damn right.
“A little bit,” I said.
Opus chuffed, and Ophelia just looked in at me.
“Going to have to work on your manners,” I told her, and she tilted her head to the side.
“It’s not that you have bad manners, but you’re really sort of shy and you don’t talk to me as much as old Opus here. You gotta get out more. You have to express yourself better.”
“It’s the concussion,” Gary said, trying not to laugh, and then I was lifted into the ambulance.
“You think we should we run fluids?” Mike asked.
“Might as well, they’re going to have him on fluids, probably painkillers, and antibiotics,” Gary answered.
“I’ll get it going, take me thirty seconds.”
“Good, I’ll call it in before we go and give me a shout when ready.
Tina and the dogs climbed into the back after the IV was started, and Opus sniffed at it and was opening his mouth when Tina pulled him back.
“You can’t lick it. It’s not a boo-boo.”
“Boo-boo?” Gary asked her with a grin.
“Oh… go run your siren,” Tina said a moment later, exasperated.
I was laying on my back, looking at the shelves, supplies held in place by plexi-glass doors. Letters covered the different compartments glass, obscuring some things, but when I felt a weight jump up onto the bed, I tried to look down toward my feet.
Ophelia belly-crawled up next to me, squishing me a bit as she laid down on my side, her head resting on my shoulder.
“Good to go,” Gary called out.
Ophelia licked my face.
“Dog germs. I’ve got dog germs on my mouth. She licked my lips—”
Opus sneezed, rather loudly.
“Did he just call bullshit? I swear to God he just called bullshit,” Gary said, as he burst out laughing.
Opus chuffed.
The ambulance drove out of the canyon, slowly.
The prognosi
s was good. I’d gotten there soon enough to get the gash over my eye stitched up, but the temple wound was just cleaned and taped the best they could. Something about it being too long to put the ends together. It didn’t bother me much, just having my bell rung that hard did.
“So,” Doctor Kaleka said, walking in. “Your vitals are good, you’re mostly patched up, and your concussion is pretty mild. I want to keep you for twenty-four hours, but I’d say you’re fine after that. Check back in with your family doctor when you get home.
“Thank you, Dr. Kaleka,” I told her, “What about the swelling?”
“No damage was done to the eye itself. We flushed it out, and the swelling will go down over time. You’ve still got a good ice pack?”
I pulled it out from the side of the bed where I’d put it to give my face a chance to thaw out.
“That’s good. Where did your wife and dogs go?” she asked, looking around the room.
“She took them for a walk. No matter how well-trained they are, you still have to let them go to the bathroom sometimes.”
“Of course,” she said with a grin. “For some reason, I thought she went to get them food or something like that.”
“Oh, she might be doing that, too,” I told her. “I was taking a nap, and she told me she was going out, but I must have missed her exact explanation.”
“That’s good. One more thing, the media…”
Oh crap.
“How many?” I asked.
“All of them, I mean, all the major networks. They want to know if you’d give a statement.”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that something my lawyer should do?”
“You have a lawyer? I can give them his number so you can get some rest—”
“Naw, I don’t have a lawyer,” I told her. “Doc, how about not right now. I’m still frazzled and feel beat.”
“Well, you were beat, rather thoroughly by the man two doors down from you.”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “I hope he gets the help he needs. Guess he had nothing else left to live for.”
“Come again?”
“Doc, he said he has pancreatic cancer. That’s one of those bad ones that they can’t do anything for, right?”
Dr. Kaleka turned and left the room at almost a dead run. Apparently, Craig hadn’t disclosed that on his medical forms when they’d checked him in. If he’d been awake.
I sat there for a moment, looking at the rolling table the nurse had pushed to the side when she’d come in to examine me again. A white Styrofoam cup full of iced water was just out of reach. I sat up and leaned forward. Inch by inch, my fingers almost seemed to stretch. I’d been in the desert earlier, and my throat was parched.
If I was being honest with myself, it was worse than that. With the screaming, puking, yelling and being parched, my mouth felt and tasted like a baby dragon had used it as a potty chair and it’d had bowel issues. I shuddered at that sudden mental image just as my index finger caught the edge of the rolling lap table.
As I pulled it toward me, a man walked in. He was tall and slender, with a mostly gray spiked crew cut. His black suit looked out of place, and if he were wearing sunglasses, I would have asked if he was with the MIB, but everything about him seemingly screamed FEDERAL AGENT. I almost worried for a moment but saw his hands were gripping a grease-stained deli bag, with a Slurpee cup in his other hand.
“Rick?” he asked, never stopping until he was at the side of the bed.
“Yes sir,” I answered and smiled as he pushed the table closer to me.
I grabbed the cup greedily and took a sip.
“So, what was that asshats major malfunction?” he asked, his thumb pointing to one of the walls, in the direction of Craig.
“He was… excuse me, who are you?” I asked.
“The guy. Did he just try to kill you both, or what was his reasoning?”
“Listen, mister. I don’t know who you are, and I’ve had a really bad day—”
“Is everything all right?” A nurse popped her head inside the doorway.
“Sure, it’s all fine. Right, Rick?” the man asked.
“I thought I told Dr. Kaleka no press,” I told the nurse who suddenly looked alarmed.
“I’m sorry, I was under the impression he was family,” the nurse said.
“I am.” The stranger dug into the deli sack and pulled out two sandwiches, tossing one in my lap and putting the other on the table.
“You are? What’s this?” I asked, taking the sandwich off my legs and looked at it.
“The best damned chicken salad on this side of the Mississippi,” he said. “Sarge told me when he was laid up that you’d gotten him his fix. I know how horrible the food in places like this is.”
Sarge!
I laid back in relief. Tina had put out the bat signal to our loved ones so they wouldn’t see it on the news first and think we were both dead. She must have called Sarge and Annette, and he’d made a call to whoever this guy was.
“Sorry, I bumped my head. He’s cool,” I said.
The nurse shook her head, obviously relieved.
“So, what was this Craig’s reasoning?” the man repeated when the door closed.
“Can I eat this?” I asked him, ignoring the question.
“Yeah sure, it really is for you. I didn’t spit in it. Much,” he snickered then put his hands up. “Joking, it’s legit. I don’t actually know Sarge, but one of my friends does and he called me. I drove straight up.”
I dug into it. Before I had always been disgusted with processed chicken salad, but this smelled and tasted good. I took two or three bites before taking another sip of water. So, who was this guy? The food was so good… I decided to trust him for now. If he was somebody Sarge or one of his friends trusted, I should too. Sarge had one time told me about his informal network of friends who had stuck together after they were out of the service. They would look in on each other, or in odd situations, send somebody to help if they were unable to do so themselves. I’d have to remember to thank him later, when I got out of here.
“When Tina and I got together, we had no idea we both knew him. Craig, that is. I grew up with him, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, we were friends and hung out, but over time, we just drifted apart.”
“I see. You want this?” he asked, tipping the cup he held in his other hand toward me.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“A Monster Slushee made special by the boys’ downstairs.”
My stomach flipped, but in a good way. I had been refused my drug of choice and my lamentations for coffee had thus far been denied. Monster? A Slushee made of Monster Energy drink? Score!
“Oh yeah, caffeine,” I said, and he smiled for the first time and gave me the cup.
I took a couple long pulls but remembered to stop before the icy drink sent bolts of pain through my head.
“Tina knew his little brother. I did too, but I had no idea what he’d done. They dated, and things went south. The little brother, Lance, turned out to be a psycho. Lance went to jail, where he died. That’s about all I know. The whole situation is really sort of crazy.”
The man stood there a moment then sat on the edge of the bed. I clutched the cup and sandwich and scooted a bit, not only to give him a little more room but to give me a little more room, too.
“Who are you again, anyways?” I asked him. “How do you know Sarge?”
“Sarge was my friend’s DI years and years ago. He was his ‘war daddy.’ My buddy didn’t put two and two together until he got Sarge’s phone call and started looking up old soldiers who lived near here. I just got in. Plus, I wanted to meet you in person.”
“Put two and two together? I’m lost,” I said confused.
“Well, you see—”
“Daddy!” Tina shrieked from across the room.
Opus barked, and I lost track of who did what as everything blurred and the stranger stood up abruptly. When Tina got close, she launched herself, and
her father (oh, crap!) caught her and hugged her hard, spinning her around before putting her down. Opus let out a happy bark at half volume, and Ophelia danced around near my side of the bed.
Ophelia put her head on the edge near me, and I patted my leg. She hopped up gently, turning and then laying at my side, where Tina’s father had been.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?” Tina said, tears coming down her cheeks.
“I just got your momma’s message as my plane landed. I was golfing the new course when my buddy got ahold of me. I forgot to call your mom until it was too late. I just hopped on the plane and here I am. Your mom is on her way too, but she hasn’t gotten my message yet. Her plane hasn’t landed.”
“Oh, crap,” I said, aloud this time, pulling the sheets up a bit.
Ophelia grumbled something, then laid her head across my legs. I pressed the button on the bed to get me sitting up better, and she startled, then went back to relaxing when she realized she wasn’t going to be squished.
“How come you weren’t—”
“The golf tournament had me out of my usual spot, so the boys and I had driven north to find a new place. Hell, maybe your momma did call, but I didn’t have a signal. She’s going to skin me alive.”
They talked for a while, and Opus came to the foot of the bed then around to the side where Ophelia was. He grumbled, then rubbed his head against Ophelia’s side. She turned to him and licked him on the side of the face, and he shook his head. Dog cooties. I knew it was a thing.
“So, are you going to introduce me to your dad?” I finally asked.
“Nope,” Tina said and smiled sweetly.
I didn’t quite fume, because I was suddenly tongue-tied. As far as how I’d pictured meeting Tina’s parents, being covered in nothing but a hospital gown after being beaten, pistol whipped and made to dig my own grave… none of it was how I’d envisioned it. At all.
“Actually, Sarge has already filled me in all about you, son,” Tina’s dad said in a serious tone, gone now was the happy-go-lucky man, all around his daughter, he was all business now, “We talked on the phone while I was waiting to board the plane.”
Crap, had Sarge told him how long we stayed out in the woods alone together? Or how about—
Opus Odyssey: A Survival and Preparedness Story (One Man's Opus Book 2) Page 18
