Hair of the Dog by Gordon Carroll (reading strategies book TXT) 📗

the guard, but Max hadn’t attacked yet… at least I didn’t think so. A scary thought hit me. What if he had already attacked and he was waiting down there for me in the dark, with the guard’s throat in his teeth. A little chill ran up my spine-bone.

And then I heard the man scream. It didn’t even sound like a man scream. It sounded like something out of a nightmare. Horrific, high-pitched and from the depths of the soul. Taking the steps three at a time, I made the eighth floor in record time. What I saw stopped me cold.

Max jumped and his four large canines bit down into the man’s face. The front two took him through the mouth, the bottom two coming through the chin, breaking out teeth and snapping bone as he clamped down with titanic force.

Tyrell reached up with both hands, the gun completely forgotten, the very idea blanked out in a white sheet of pain and horror that he had never imagined possible. His fingers gripped fur and his mind went instantly to the thought of bears. He’d teased a bear once in the zoo when he was seven. Pointing at it and laughing and slapping at its face through the glass that separated the two, and suddenly the bear had turned and charged straight at him, hitting the glass so hard that it shook the entire enclosure, its giant teeth scraping the glass, making a horrible sound. Little Tyrell jumped back, falling on his butt and biting his tongue. He thought he was hearing that same sound of teeth scraping glass now, only it was actually Max’s teeth grating against his broken jaw, magnified threefold within the confines of his skull.

Max jerked hard to the left; harder to the right, then back to the left again, his thick neck muscles dragging the screaming man back and forth like he was a child.

Tyrell’s body flopped to the concrete, his face still trapped by this monster from the pit. Blood filled his mouth, and the taste of it made him think of the old woman’s bloody nose. It didn’t bring a smile to him now. This time it made him think that maybe he was feeling a little of what she felt that night; her hands bound together behind her back, her mouth taped closed, her eyes wide. His lower jaw was being wrenched from his face and the blood poured down his neck and down his chest. He screamed and screamed and screamed, begging for someone to come, and still the monster bear thrashed him around and around, smacking his head and limbs against the cold hard floor and walls. He heard blubbering and choking sounds from what seemed like far away, but then realized it was his own voice, changed somehow and seeming to come from outside him. And then the darkness grew darker until his vision squeezed into a tight pinprick and then mercifully went out completely, as consciousness fled and his body went limp. Max’s bottom canines had severed the right jugular on its way through the neck and floor of his mouth.

Max dropped the deflated, lifeless creature and turned toward the stairwell. More targets were coming.

What was left of the guard lay just to the right of Max. Blood drenched the walls and floor and Max’s face. He looked like the scariest werewolf of all time. The man’s face looked worse. His nose had been eviscerated, his lips pretty much gone. Gaping gouges were torn through the front of his throat and up into the soft underbelly of his chin. I saw a chunk of what I could only describe as maybe a piece of tongue lying on the floor a few feet away. Broken, bloody teeth were scattered about like shattered bits of porcelain. The man’s eyes were open so wide they looked like swollen grapes and his fingers were curled into gripping claws, as if rigor had already started to set in, which I knew to be impossible.

I’ve seen a lot of horror in my time, both in the war and since, but this… this was bad. I turned away as quick as I could, knowing that some sights could never be forgotten and the less you had to see them the better.

Max was facing the door and I heard the sounds of feet running towards us from the other side. It sounded like a lot of them.

I took up a position to the side, back in the dark, and waited. Hoping my timing had worked out right.

The elevator door opened. Jerome stepped out, seeing no one there and turned to the left. A group of about seven Bloods were running full tilt toward the far stairwell and were almost there. He also saw at least two black faces peeking from the room where he’d seen the woman and men earlier. Hefting the AR15 up a little higher, he saw the red dot and placed it on the back of the last man in line running to the door. The weapon hardly bucked at all against his shoulder as the first bullet spit effortlessly out of the barrel, hitting the running gangster just to the right of his spine, next to the shoulder blade. He dropped in a tangle of feet. Jerome thought he could easily get used to this little rifle. He took out the next man in line, and the next, before the first man reached the door. About the same time, the men in the room looked his way and started pointing guns at him.

Jerome fired three times at them and they ducked back inside very quickly. Jerome turned his attention back to the men headed for the stairwell as a bullet hit the floor a few yards in front of him. The remaining four men were all facing him and firing. He ducked back into the elevator just as he saw the stairwell door open up behind them.