The Golden Goose of Los Angeles Extended Edition
Page 40
maybe I should go?” She tries to play stupid and moves toward the edge of the bed.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rory orders as he climbs on top of her, clutching her wrists with a steel grip and pushing her tight against the bed. “Why is tonight the perfect night? What money do you need so bad? How much is he paying you to kill me?”
“I’m not killing anyone,” she says with sincerity. “Tonight is the perfect night because… I’m ovulating.”
“Holy shit!” He says with a sudden, intense level of understanding as if a commercial jet just flew three feet over his head. “Holy fucking shit!” He repeats in amazement as so many things start to become clear. “How much did he offer you to get pregnant?”
“I’m Type O Negative, so I would get a million dollars.” She says with a soft smile as she removes the blanket and opens her legs, trying to convince him to finish the job.
“You need to leave now!” Rory demands as he jumps off of the bed and reaches for a pair of boxer shorts. “Leave now, and keep your mouth shut unless you want me to tell Anthony it was you who spilled the beans on his little secret.”
As these words hit her perfectly formed ears, she jumps out of bed and starts to get dressed; begging him not to tell Anthony all the way up until she is fully dressed and Rory sends her out the door of his bedroom. After she has left, he breathes in heavy gasps, putting his right hand against his face. Rory swallows hard and shakes his head, trying to understand what’s really going on with Pezzloni. When a few moments have passed, he looks out the window of his bedroom down at the heavily secured, two story concrete building. At this moment, he is wishing that Anthony hadn’t taken away his pistol from the previous night. He closes his eyes briefly, knowing that the truth is less than a hundred yards away.
A few minutes later, Rory is dressed in black sweatpants, a matching sweatshirt, and dark brown hiking shoes. He moves stealthy in the blind spots of the security cameras, which he had seen Dimitri do on several occasions. Soon he reaches the familiar chain link fence of the security building and removes a fresh steak from his pocket. Almost immediately, one of the bigger dogs comes trotting over to the fence to meet him, its Pavlovian response kicking in with the smell of the meat.
When the dog dips its head to feast, Rory reaches for the collar around its neck, but the dog snaps its jaws immediately forcing him to pull his hand out of the fence. His hand trembles and he swallows hard as he realizes that the shepherd nearly took it from him. He looks down carefully, surmising that the holes in the fence are too small for his hands and the dog would never stay long enough for him to get the collar. In desperation, he searches the ground and finds a long stick which he snaps off at the end to create a sharp point. Rory then pierces the steak with the sharp end of the stick and pulls it away from the large dog. The German Shepherd growls menacingly, and Rory’s heart starts pounding as he realizes this dog has killed and ate people before.
Over the past few months, the dogs have become friendly to him, but when it comes to their meals, they will kill anyone for trying to take their food. He continues pulling the steak away until it is wedged halfway inside the fence. The big shepherd snarls in frustration, turning its body prone against the fence to get better leverage. Now with the collar pressed against the chain link, Rory delicately slides it around the dog’s neck in a clockwise motion, looking for the spring that releases the collar. The powerful dog growls from deep inside its body, and Rory can feel the vibrations from its powerful throat on its skin and fur. This growling grows louder and more threatening as he continues to look for the spring. When he sees the little black release, he grabs the dog’s collar with his left hand and undoes the lock with his right thumb before yanking the undone collar out of the fence. The dog immediately lunges at the fence, snarling and biting at the steel chain link with more intensity than a wild animal. Rory uses the stick to push the steak into the fence and the dog snatches it from the ground, running to eat it somewhere in peace.
With the collar in hand, he moves quietly along the grounds where the cameras are blind until he finds the first tunnel door that is closest to the security compound. When he passes the collar in front of the large dog door, he notices that the red light turns to green. Rory immediately pulls the door up allowing it to rest on his head as he peers inside. To his dismay, the tunnel is pitch black, and crawling inside would mean not being able to turn around. His heart starts pounding again and droplets of sweat are forming all over his body as his adrenaline is flowing heavier by the second. He belly crawls through the open dog door and into the darkness of the tunnel, feeling cold cement under his arms and through his sweat pants.
After about ten feet, he smells something awful and realizes there is a large pile of dog feces right in front of his face. His stomach churns with disgust as he uses his upper body to methodically maneuver over the feces, but just as he thinks he is free of them, he feels a disgusting, warm smoosh against his right hip, and is instantly greeted by the stench of freshly broken dogshit. Rory’s fingers cringe and he swallows hard at the disgusting feeling of something being wiped on his body that is typically wiped off. He puts it out of his mind and keeps moving forward in the darkness, trying to count how many feet he has traversed from when he first entered the tunnel. After what seems like an hour, he can finally see a bit of light less than twenty feet from his position. But this little victory is cut short as he hears an ominous growl from only four feet in front of his face. Rory stops and remains still, feeling terrified to even breathe. One of the large German Shepherds has been waiting for him in the tunnel. The dog growls again, and goes silent. It seems to know who he is, but also that he is not supposed to be here. Rory’s mind is suddenly overloaded with thoughts, wishing he had brought something to protect himself or at least his face. In this tunnel, with him lying on his belly, the shepherd has every advantage. The dog growls a third time, snarling as it senses his fear and smells his perspiration. Rory tries to think of something he might have in his pocket to defend himself: a knife, a screwdriver, a set of car keys, but he has nothing except his chubby little fingers. Suddenly he recalls a phrase that Dimitri and Anthony would use on the dogs when they got too aggressive, but he can’t remember exactly how it goes. His body is instantly trembling with fright as the dog growls louder, but this time from only two feet away. Rory clears his head thinking hard on that phrase he had heard so many times…
“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE BEFORE I SPLINTER YOUR ASS!” He shouts just as the dog is about to strike.
The large dog wines suddenly, feeling it is being confronted by its master, and scampers backwards as fast as its legs will go until it is safely out of the tunnel. Rory breathes a heavy sigh of relief, and with renewed fervor, he belly crawls quickly until he reaches the end of the tunnel.
When he finally pulls himself out of the tunnel, he sees more dog excrement and a network of eight other tunnels all joining together at a hub in this concrete pit that is sunken into the floor. He moves quietly over to the corner of the pit, leaping a bit to make his body easier to lift as he uses his hands to climb up onto the main floor. As he begins to emerge from the pit, he is immediately frozen in horror. All six German Shepherds are in this main area, and his blood goes cold when he sees the body of the man he shot the previous night just twenty-five feet from his face. He grimaces in disgust as he notices that three of the shepherds are devouring the body, starting with the soft, meaty sections of the upper body and various parts of the legs. Rory instantly turns away as the macabre is more than he can bear; those malicious, huge fur covered heads dining on a man. The room has a copper odor and there is the smell of rot everywhere. In the eve
ning heat, the place looks like a theater of death with incandescent lights shining down a pale yellow, and the hounds of hell feasting heartily in this twisted kennel.
He begins to look around this dimly lit dog compound that resembles a small warehouse for some means of escape. Rory’s arms are beginning to shake from the effort of holding his body suspended on the edge of the large cement pit. In the east corner of the room, behind where he is standing, he notices a pale green door just fifteen-feet away from him on the left. Wasting no time in his urgency to escape, he silently pulls himself out of the large concrete hole onto the flat cement surface of the main floor. His body remains prone until he is all the way out, then he gets to his feet slowly, moving cautiously toward the door, but after only two steps, he hears a snarl. Rory turns to see one of the shepherds standing near the right side of the man’s body, growling at him; the fur around its mouth covered in blood.
“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE BEFORE I SPLINTER YOUR ASS!” Rory shouts in desperation, but the shepherds don’t respond as they can see in this lighting that he is not Anthony or Dimitri.
His shouting awakens the dogs that were sleeping and he is soon facing a room filled with snarling, black and brown faces,