Strays (434 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: -0.5 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Just_me_and_the_cats (View user info) at 2004-08-04 14:22:42 EDT
STRAYS 8/4/04
(Hey everyone. It's a quiet morning at work and my coffee's kicking in like a sumbitch, so I just fired off this story. Enjoy!)
Balantine was halfway across the vacant lot between 6th and 7th streets when he saw the ragged man. Something had made him stop walking and look back the way he had come.
This side of the city, between South Beach and the Financial District, was undergoing a conversion from light industrial facilities and warehouses to small businesses and expensive condos. Yet there were still vacant lots like the one Balantine was using as a shortcut on his way to work, after an early morning appointment with the dentist.
The ragged man was stumbling and staggering. He may have been trying to talk as well, but he was so hoarse Balantine couldn't understand a word. The man was wearing shredded clothes and his face looked like it was smeared with dirt.
The streets around here were laid out so each block was quite big. Even though Balantine and the ragged man were only a five minute walk from the downtown core and crowds of tourists and shoppers and countless people taking a coffee break or grabbing a smoke on the street, they could have been in a wasteland outside the city. Rush hour was over, and they were all alone.
Balantine wasn't the most compassionate guy alive. Most of the homeless in the city pissed him off. They stank, they were obnoxious, they were parasites. Every once in a while Balantine might give a few bucks to an old man or a kid with a cat or dog, but that was rare. There was something different about the ragged man, though.
The ragged man was still running towards Balantine, about a hundred feet away.
"Rahhh!"
Balantine wondered what the fuck that was supposed to mean. Rah? Was the guy trying to do a Godzilla imitation? Was he an out of breath cheerleader? What—
The ragged man sucked air and shouted again. "Ruuun!"
Balantine looked around. Was this guy threatening him? All he could see was bare earth and weeds, and as he was standing near the center of the lot, the distant fencing circling the block. The ragged man must have slipped through the same hole in the fence he had used a minute earlier.
The ragged man stopped and stooped, hands on knees. He took a few deep breaths and said quite clearly, "Run, you idiot, and if you have a cell phone, dial 911!"
Balantine took a few steps toward the man and got a better look at him. That's when he began to feel uneasy. This guy wasn't a bum. His hair was a mess, but his face was clean-shaven, and covered in blood. His torn clothes were dusty from a fall, but not caked with months of grime. He was wearing leather shoes. And a suit coat. Clean him up a little and hand him a briefcase, and the ragged man could be the VP of a local mutual fund having one hell of a bad day.
The ragged man straightened up and grimaced, one hand to his body like he had a stitch in his side. With his free hand he pointed back the way he had come.
Balantine looked beyond the man and squinted. Something was coming through the fence. It wasn't men, a bunch of gangbangers looking to lift a wallet and a watch. Too small. Kids? The squat shapes were low to the ground. There were three of them on this side of the fence now. Four. Six.
When the shapes started sprinting in his direction, Balantine knew what they were. Dogs. Big dogs. Strays.
The ragged man looked over his shoulder and suddenly burst into tears. This shocked Balantine more than anything else, and for the first time he was genuinely afraid.
He took his cell out of his pocket and flipped it open. The battery was dead.
"Fuck," Ballantine said.
The stray dogs were moving fast. They acted as a hunting pack. Two flanked left, two flanked right, and two went for the ragged man.
Even as the impulse hit him, Balantine knew he could never run to the ragged man, grab him, and help him to safety.
"Jesus!" the ragged man cried.
The pairs on strays on either side of him had stopped, and were panting, watching their prey.
He turned and faced the two dogs racing toward him. "Jesus!" he said again. "I don't want to die like th—"
The first dog hit the ragged man in the chest. As the man fell the dog rolled away, just as the second dog darted forward and clamped its jaws on the man's throat.
The ragged man began to thrash. The two dogs to the ragged man's left joined the two that had taken the man down.
Balantine was expecting to see one of the dogs trot away with a hand or a foot, as if this was a movie.
It wasn't a movie. It was real life. And in real life, hunters go for the soft parts first.
The dog gripping the ragged man's throat began to chew. The ragged man waved his arms. One dog bit into the man's crotch and began to twist its head from side to side. The ragged man thrashed again, raising a little dust. The fourth dog stepped forward in an almost reverential way, sniffed the ragged man, licked his forehead, and then bit into his face.
Balantine could hear traffic two blocks away. He could hear car horns, squealing brakes. Music playing. A teenage girl squealing laughter. He could hear all of this as he watched the stray dogs begin eating the ragged man alive.
A little rooster fan of blood colored the air as the ragged man's throat was opened up, and soon two of the dogs were lapping up the warm liquid. The dog at the man's crotch was still working on freeing its portion of the feast. Expensive wool ripped softly. The man had stopped moving.
The dog standing over the ragged man's head pulled, adjusted its grip, pulled once more, and most of the man's face came away, slipping out of the dog's mouth and spinning over its shoulder. It slapped the dry earth like a raw steak.
"Holy Christ," Balantine said.
He had forgotten about the two dogs that had flanked right. They hadn't noticed him. He had been standing completely still, and all they could smell even before they took down their prey was the ragged man's blood.
The dogs ears pricked up and swiveled in Balantine's direction. One dog looked like a German Shepard mix. The other looked like a cross between a Rottweiler and a goddamned horse. The Shepard raised its nose and sniffed.
Balantine felt the slightest breeze. At his back, carrying his scent to the dogs.
Oh man, Balantine thought. I may be fucked.
The Shepard yipped. It began trotting in Balantine's direction. The Rottweiler waited a moment and then lumbered along behind the Shepard. One of the dogs lapping up blood, its muzzle dark and gleaming, began walking slowly in Balantine's direction.
Balantine didn't really have any choice. He started to run. And pray.
The Rottweiler barked twice. Balantine nearly shit his pants. The barks were so deep and loud they sounded like shotgun blasts.
Balantine had never run so full-out in his life. Not in high school, when trying out for track, not when running for a bus when he was late for work, never. He could hardly feel his feet touching the ground. He glanced over once shoulder. The Shepard was closing on him like it had been fired out of a goddamned cannon. And it was wagging its tail. Jesus!
He dodged around a low pile of lumber and saw the Shepard in the corner of his eye. It was racing away and ahead to his right. His left was still clear, the Rottweiler moving slower, but maintaining its pace.
"Fuck!" Balantine cried. The hole in the opposite end of the fence was now unreachable. He had to get to the far end of the lot and start climbing the fence just a few yards away from the hole before one of these dogs tore a piece out of his ass.
His left foot came down of an empty soda can and he slipped, nearly going down. He screamed, as vague a sound as the one he had first heard from the ragged man. He looked back again. The Rottweiler wasn't much of a threat right now, but the dog with the blood-slick muzzle was. It was long and wiry, all muscle, and moving like a sonofabitch.
Fuck this, Balantine thought as he pushed himself to go faster. The fence was close. Real close. I can make it, he thought. I am gonna make it.
He took a running jump, astounding himself when he realized he'd be able to grab the top of the fence and just roll over. Then the wiry dog landed on his back and bit into Balantine's left shoulder, crushing his collarbone.
Balantine hit the fence and started scrambling for the top. His fingers were bleeding. Blood was washing down the left side of his chest, under his shirt. And the wiry dog was still clinging to him.
"Fuck off!" Balantine screamed, driving his left elbow into the dog's stomach. Without a sound the dog dropped away.
Christ, Balantine thought, getting one arm and then the other over the top of the fence and smiling even as he felt a length of steel puncture his right armpit, I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make it.
*
Arturo Guerrero, of Guerrero Plumbing Repair & Renovation (as stated on the side of his van), lit a smoke and started cursing a Spanglish blue streak as he pulled over to the curb.
He climbed out of the idling van and looked at his watch. He was gonna miss his next call, and this goddamned piece of shit van was gonna make him look like a pendejo. Guerrero walked a slow circle around the van. The left rear tire was flat, and bluish smoke was coming from something, somewhere. He kicked the rear bumper. "Chinga tu madre, you shitheap!"
The fuck, he thought, looking up and down the empty street, I'm a plumber, not a mechanic.
He patted himself down. He'd forgotten his phone again. His wife had bought it for him a year ago and almost every day he left it sitting on the little table inside the front door, even though the last thing she said to him each morning as he left for work was 'don't forget your phone.'
I wish they could implant the fucking piece of garbage in my asscheek, he thought. Then I'd never leave home without—
Guerrero heard a noise. He looked up and down the sidewalk. Nothing. He heard it again, an almost musical sound.
It was the chain link fence behind him, jangling softly. Guererro looked over his shoulder. The cigarette fell out of his mouth.
There was a man hanging on the fence. From the waste up he was a normal guy, way too white, but normal. From the waist down he was a shredded horror. There were three dogs lying on the ground at what remained of the white guy's feet. They were eating bloody chunks of... white guy?
"Ruhhh," the white guy said.
Guerrero's breakfast burrito did a little dance in his gut and he fought it down. "Mi Dios," he whispered.
The dogs looked up. Looked at him. One started trotting toward a hole in the chain link fence, not far away. Another got to its feet and followed.
The white guy took a breath and screamed, "Ruuun!"
(I blew through this in about ninety minutes, so I apologize for any typos I may have missed.)
User Reviews
Submitted by Just_me_and_the_cats (user info) at 2004-08-04 17:02:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
What the fuck are you talking about? Thanks for the uncalled for -2.
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-08-04 16:46:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Brianthecocksmoker is a god!
Submitted by boomslang (user info) at 2004-08-04 15:16:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
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'Rosebud' is his sled! I just saved you two boring boobless hours"
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