Hide and Seek (19 page)

We'd reach a corner and wait and listen, holding our flashlights close to the ground. Then we'd throw the beams around the corner and I'd hit the wall opposite us, pitchfork high and ready, while Steve waited to crack somebody's skull with the axe handle.

I think we got the procedure off cops shows.

But it felt good and efficient anyway.

Four times we did this. Each time-nothing.

I was waiting, hoping to feel it like I'd felt it before -that sense of something out there just out of reach and out of sight. Something big and dangerous waiting for me and ready, just as I was ready for him this time. I had my backup and my long pointed stick. I was ready.

The hell I was.

I hit the fifth wall. I was sure we were close now.

All the beam showed us was another passageway. Empty, silent.

The corridor was as hort one. Six steps maybe. We got halfway down and then stopped. I don't know why we stopped. Butagain.it was simultaneous. There was a moment there where all we did was look at one another. Eyes like black little beads in our heads.

And I think we knew.

Something rough and jagged was happening to my heartbeat. I remember he gave me a little smile. That same curl to the lip as when he was being cute and ironic, only it wasn't that way this time. It was like hello and good-bye all at once.

Just like that.

And between those things lay all life, all time, for both of us.

I turned my light to the ground. The walls loomed with shadows. I stepped into them and threw my beam ahead of me.

And saw what was happening to Casey.

I had a brief impression of a large empty room with high rugged ceilings

Pillars in the soft rock from roof to floor, pulled thin in the middle

I ike strands of taffy Gleaming, dripping.

And Casey.

Propped up against one of them fifteen feet away from us, her bloodied legs spread wide apart, their angle enclosing us within. Her eyes wide, unblinking, flickering like candles in a wind. Seeing her a punch to the solar plexus, a blinding physical shock.

For a moment I simply reeled.

It crouched beside her, its long black bony back to us. I could see its head rise and fall with the lunge of backbone and muzzle and hear the snap of teeth as it worried her.

Her eyes stared through it-through us too-boring back through the tunnel and cellar and house into the woods beyond. At some point she'd put on the army shirt. Now it was torn off completely at the shoulder and dark with blood. There was blood on the blue halter beneath it and more on the cream shorts and across her legs and naked stomach. Her face was very pale.

The huge black dog lunged out of its crouch and snapped at her, very near her face. A sound like the clap of two heavy sticks of hardwood.

Her pale blue eyes skittered like trapped birds.

For a moment we froze there.

The sheer awesome size of him was riveting.

I watched the muscles curl and pulse along his back, and he was fascinating as a snake.

He snapped at her again and tore a flap of sleeve off the army shirt as though it were tissue paper. I saw where it had chewed her, dragged her along by the shoulder. The bare white arm looked useless now.

New blood began to well up where there was none before along the side of her upper arm.

He'd taken more than the sleeve.

And I knew where this particular game was going.

I acted. The hero moved.

"Hey!" I said.

It startled even me. The inanity of it. The hoarse echoing loudnessofit. Hey. Idiotic. But that was what came out. And choked back everything else.

The dog turned.

That is, its head did.

A square black head on a neck as thick as the trunk of a birch tree.

I've seen other full-grown dogs that were not as big as that skull was.

I felt suddenly very frail.

It moved slowly around and stared at us with cloudy black eyes.

Cataracts, I thought. It's practically blind. An old dog, its black coat flecked with white. And I remembered that among the predators there was nothing more dangerous than the old or sick or blind, because they would hunt anything, even man.

Its muzzle pulled back into a grin that growled like muted thunder. I saw huge curved incisors longer and broader than my thumb, easily three inches long. I saw rows of smaller sharp teeth between them for gripping and pulling, and behind them the blunt wide molars. A grim, discolored killing machine was what I was looking at. Long gray battle scars across the muzzle.

I felt its half-blind stare work its way into me like a burrowing worm, leaving me rubber legged, sweating.

He turned completely.

It was slow and graceful, belying his age. His torso unfolded like the sluice of a great black whip. In full view he was enormous-easily

four and a half feet from the tip of the flat black nose to the base of his tail. Standing on his hind legs he'd be seven feet tall, I guessed. As big as a bear.

Of bastard parentage, I think now. Somethingof the Great Dane about the head. Something of the wolf in the set of the shoulders.

The pitchfork and axe handle seemed like toys.

A pair of tin soldiers was what we were.

No axe handle was going to crack that skull. No ridiculous garden implement was about to pierce that hide. My brain computed the heft and sinew of both of us and compared it with an old sick dog's and we came up looking like sparrows.

I could see the mad strangeness in those eyes.

He could crack us like eggs.

My fear of him was almost superstitious. My voice still echoed in the room.

And I thought what if there are more of them? Beside me Steven went rigid.

It stared at us. Head down, eyes rolled high and moving from one of us to the other. Deciding. Black eyes deciding. A casual,

And I knew we were no surprise to him. Downwind or not, we'd been expected. He was in no hurry. We were not a problem. It was a matter of who to take down first. He could do it at his leisure.

The animal drooled.

Pleasure. Anticipation.

I'd seen enough dogs to know how it would happen. He'd drop the tense, stiff-legged stance in favor of a very loose, very amiable-looking, very doggy trot. The trot would turn quickly into a deadly lunge of teeth and claws and muscle.

Nice dog. Watch the spume of blood. Good doggy.

The only way to go was to move before he did.

I used my smallest voice. "I'm going to move on him," I said.

It took Steven a while to respond. Then he told me okay and I knew he was as ready as he was going to get.

I watched the slow drift of the animal's eyes from Steven back to me.

When they returned to Steve again, that would be the time.

I'd have to try for the heart. The eyes would ideally be better, or the soft, sensitive nose, but both those targets were too small for me at this distance and I knew how fast and well he'd move them.

I looked down at the massive bony chest and then back to the eyes. I knew where the tines would have to go. I tensed to put them

The growl was loud as a buzz saw in that space. The teeth snapped.

Impatience. Display. And knowledge, too, of what we had in mind. I know that now.

The eyes held on me. Through the cloudy white lenses I sensed a recognition. Yes, it's me. We've met before. You know me.

Arrogantly, they shifted.

I rushed him, arms and legs moving like machines in fine order. No missteps. No faltering. My arms drew back the pitchfork and plunged forward with power and accuracy. I surprised myself. I was good. I was very good.

And not nearly good enough.

I was prepared for bone and muscle. There was every bit of me behind it, one hundred seventy pounds. He'd be hard to kill, so it had to be that way there'd be no second try. So I gave it everything. And felt a sickening scrape along his backbone and a tug of resistance at the hip joint of the right hind leg, and then there was nothing but air.

I fell forward hard, the flashlight skittering out of my hand. I heard it crack and saw it die against one of the vertical columns next to Casey. I still had the pitchfork. I rolled as I fell and hit shoulder-first and kept rolling, over on my back, and pulled the tines up close, expecting to see it looming over me, knowing it would go for the neck.

But it wasn't there.

His flashlight beam slid erratically over the ceiling. I looked up and heard the heavy thunk of his axe handle and sighted him in time to watch it bounce off the animal's skull as though it were lightweight plastic.

I heard him wail as the head came up at him and he tried to hit it a second time and it moved so that he overshot his mark, and saw the jaws clamp down on his arm just above the wrist. His scream went higher, shriller. Beneath it the awful crunch of bone as the jaws ground down and through him and the hand crumbled away, falling off his arm, falling slowly like the limb of a tree under a chain saw.

I got to my feet.

Light swung wildly around me as he battered the dog with his flashlight. His bad hand, I thought idiotically. I could see the gout of blood pulsing, pouring off his other wrist, the long slash mark on the animal's back where I'd hit him.

I ran toward them, off-balance this time, and reached them just as the flashlight flew out of the bandaged hand in a wide arc and the animal moved again. The light guttered out, clattering against stone, and then went on again, its beam playing over the floor to the right of me.

My second stab at him had been darkness. The pitchfork jarred against solid rock.

When the light went on again there was just a gurgling sound.

Steve was facing me, sitting, his back to the wall beside the entranceway. His eyes were rolled up so only the whites showed. His head lolled off to one side. His mouth was open, and something dark spilled down across his chin.

The dog was at his stomach.

Pulling.

I froze.

The dog's haunches tensed as it tugged again.

He seemed to fold and sigh, his body sliding down the dark wet wall.

Ismelled urine and feces. In his lap everything turned a ghastly white.

The dog let go. Its jaws continued working something. Its head turned slowly and looked at me.

I backed away.

The animal just stood there, watching me. Its eye catching a beam of light. The room was filled with the stink of us. I backed away further, slowly. There was a column just to the left of me. I wanted to put it between us. I wanted to hide.

I watched his eyes.

My hands clenched the c<

The animal turned, its old dark body full of luxurious power, and stalked me.

It crossed the beam of light. I saw the tongue slide along its chops.

Its mouth was bright with blood. I saw the calm assured ness in every move.

When the easy trot began, I turned and ran.

It was ludicrous, impossible.

Just as impossible not to try.

I ran for the column.

He caught me high on the calf and I went down. The pitchfork tumbled from my hands. I felt the fangs go through me almost painlessly, like razors through soft butter. There was a moment of shrieking terror.

Then my head slammed hard against damp, slimy rock. I saw something move far away in front of me, against the farthest wall.

I heard laughter. Female laughter.

It was not Casey's. It was old and clogged and choking.

And then I felt nothing at all.

^^^^^^^^Am . m

When I woke, the room was running red with blood.

I lay in a small pool of it. It had run down the side of my head from just above my left ear. It was caked over my eyelids, in my lashes. My vision was a dull red too. That seemed to mean I still had some blood left inside me. That was nice.

The red was flecked with yellow. Starburst. Tiny explosions.

Something huge and awful was gnawing at my leg. I looked down at it.

It seemed to contain its own cruel, throbbing heartbeat. A match for the one in my head. I had three heartbeats. Undisputably I was alive then. I had no right to be.

The leg looked wet and horrible.

Thank god for Steven's flashlight, I thought.

I looked around. No black shapes beside me. None anywhere that I could see.

I looked where I thought Steven's body should be. It wasn't there anymore. For a moment I hoped I'd imagined the entire thing. But no.

I looked for Casey. I was disoriented now. I knew she'd been up against one of the columns. Somewhere over there. She ought to have had her back to me. I couldn't see her.

I tried to stand up. It was still too painful and I was much too dizzy. I groaned. It didn't seem to sound as though it came from me.

I settled for pushing myself up. Hands to the floor, head dangling. It hurt less that way.