him through as he drove past.
What now?
Where would Owen go?
What a stupid question. There was no logical place a wild animal would go during a killing spree. He just had to follow the trail of bodies until he got lucky, or until the police took Owen down first.
“Owen!”
He turned into the next subdivision. It was a much wealthier neighborhood than the first, one that Toby occasionally liked to drive through at Christmastime because of their rather spectacular display of lights.
He continued to shout Owen’s name.
“What’s wrong?” asked a man walking along the sidewalk. “You lose a dog?”
“No. And you need to get inside.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Just get inside. It’s not safe.” Toby turned the corner. Was this a complete waste of time? Maybe he would be better off just turning himself in to the police and telling them everything?
“Owen!”
And then Owen was there.
He stood between two homes, his whole body slick with blood. Toby slammed on the brakes, put the car into park, and got out, taking the gun with him as he left the running vehicle in the street.
“God, Owen, what have you done?” asked Toby, stepping onto the lawn. “Why do things always get so screwed up with us?”
Owen signed: Scared.
“Me, too.”
Toby wanted to apologize, to beg for forgiveness from his friend before he did what needed to be done, but instead he silently raised the gun and pointed it at Owen.
Owen turned and ran.
Toby fired.
Missed. He was pretty sure he’d done it on purpose, and cursed himself as he hurried between the houses after Owen. He felt like he might die of a heart attack if he didn’t bleed to death first, but forced himself to move as quickly as his pain-wracked body could handle.
Another row of homes shared the backyard space with the homes Toby was between now. As he reached the backyard, he saw a woman standing in an open doorway on her back porch, most likely peering outside to see where the gunshot had come from.
Didn’t she know that there was a wild animal on the loose? Didn’t she know that when you heard bullets fired you stayed the hell inside your home?
Toby’s heart took another big step toward a coronary as Owen got her, pouncing like a lion. The two of them disappeared inside the house.
Toby screamed. He could feel his body trying to shut down around him. Couldn’t Owen see that there was no happy ending to this madness?
He walked over to the house and staggered through the doorway. The woman lay flat on her back, covered with blood, insides exposed as her body twitched. Owen hadn’t even tried to eat this one. He was just killing.
Yet another death on Toby’s conscience. How many was that, now? It was hard to even keep count.
A trail of blood led through the living room into the kitchen, but the scream of terror would have alerted Toby to where Owen was even without the visual cue. He stepped over the woman’s body and ran forward.
He got into the kitchen just as Owen bit the throat out of a teenage boy. The boy was in front of Owen, blocking his shot. Toby knew it was absurd-the boy was dying if not already dead-but he couldn’t risk hitting him.
“Owen, please!” Toby shouted.
The boy’s body dropped to the tile floor.
Owen pounced at Toby.
He hadn’t expected this, and he wasn’t able to fire off a shot before Owen knocked him to the floor, jaws open wide. The gun popped out of his hand and slid along the wet tile, out of reach.
Owen gnashed his teeth. A large blob of bloody foam fell onto Toby’s face. The monster raised his claw, then hesitated.
Toby tried to say the kind of thing you were supposed to say in this situation, something like “Owen, it’s me, Toby, your best friend!” but he was paralyzed with fear.
Would he be Owen’s final victim, or just one more corpse in the series of deaths in what the press might dub the Night of the Beast?
Owen looked down at him, lowered his claw, then leaped up and ran from the kitchen, back into the living room.
Toby remained motionless for a few seconds, trying to catch his breath. Then he retrieved the gun and started to race out of the kitchen, but his foot shot out from underneath him as he slipped on some blood. He landed on his side, hard, knocking the wind out of him.
He lay there in a daze.
He wondered if Sarah would curse him to his face, or to his tombstone?
Would he have to speak to Marianne?
Hannah?
Maybe he was better off dead.
No. That was cowardly. Pathetic. The thoughts of a loser. He couldn’t leave this unfinished.
He got up, shook off the dizzy spell, and ran out of the house. There was no sign of Owen outside.
He walked around the entire shared yard, calling out for Owen and listening for sounds of distress.
Nothing.
Finally he got back in his car and resumed the search in his vehicle. Owen could be hiding, licking his wounds, or he could still be on the move, seeking more prey. Toby had to assume the latter.
The next news report, two minutes later, was about the deaths Toby had just witnessed. There were also reports of a gun-wielding man in his seventies running around the area, so citizens should be concerned about an armed maniac as well as a wild animal.
Seventies. Jesus.
For fifteen minutes, there were no new deaths-at least no reported ones. Toby passed countless police cars as he drove, but none of them stopped him. Obviously, no witnesses had described the maniac’s car.
Then a report of a possible sighting in a park. Toby had been there a few times with Garrett and Hannah, a nice place with a few shops and restaurants around it. He could just imagine Owen running loose amid dozens of shoppers and diners.
Where was he? Where would he go?
Then, suddenly, Toby thought he knew the answer.
The ice-cream shop wasn’t particularly good, although Garrett had always wanted to stop there after a hard day playing on the slides and swing sets. But it was shaped like a giant ice-cream cone, complete with a swirl on the top.
Toby parked next to it, got out of the car, and waited, calling Owen’s name every few moments.
Lots of sirens in the background.
He didn’t even see where Owen came from. He just looked over and Owen was there, staring longingly at the ice-cream cone.
Owen signed: Ice cream.
“Yeah, ice cream. I’d buy you some if they were open.”
Bad.
“Very bad. Both of us. Neither one of us deserves ice cream tonight, buddy.”
Toby pointed the gun at him. Owen didn’t move.
Maybe it didn’t have to be this way. He could coax Owen into his car, and just drive away. Get as far out of this town as they possibly could. Nobody would be watching for an old man with a monster in his car, right?
They could start over. It was a huge forest. And there were other forests.
