Chapter Nineteen
Arty pushed the last branch aside and led Carolina into the clearing. He felt tiny tremors running through her hand and into his. He clutched her hand tighter, but it wasn’t enough to slow her rapid heartbeat, and it only served to increase his. No matter what happened, he had to protect her.
He bit into his lower lip, letting go of her hand to wipe cold sweat from his forehead, but there was nothing he could do about the sweat running down his back, cooled by the river of chills that started low down and zapped him high in the back of the neck. He was wiping his hand on his shirt, when lightning jacked through the sky and thunder rolled down from above. The wicked laughter again pierced the night, followed by an angry, deep throated roar that reached deep, and started him shivering from the inside out.
He bit harder into his lip, but all the lip biting in the world wasn’t going to deaden the icy current sparking along his spine. This wasn’t a little kid fight on the playground. He was going up against the Nightwitch.
“ Over there,” Carolina said. Arty turned in time to see Condor, his happy friend, charging across the clearing with slicked back ears and lightning black speed.
“ No!” he screamed, “Condor, stop!” But the dog was shooting over the ground, strong legs propelling the black locomotive on its collision course, foam flying from its mouth like steam, gleaming fangs bared, as he roared across the clearing.
“ Stop!” Arty yelled out again. Then he turned toward the direction of the charge and saw the twisted looking black hyena stick its head out of the tent, raise its face to the three quarter moon, and let out that laughter one more time. Then it was out of the tent and charging toward the Doberman.
Arty wanted to scream as the two canines collided, bared fangs tearing into each other’s flesh as they rotated like a tornado. He ran toward the swirling animals, stopping when he’d closed half the distance. He raised the gun, but every time he had the hyena in his sights it was gone before he could pull the trigger and Condor was there instead. He couldn’t shoot the dog.
He kept the gun pointed at the snarling animals, afraid to shoot and afraid not to. The hyena was huge, but Condor was a giant of a dog, and fast. The Doberman kept going in low, snapping and ripping away at the hyena and getting out of the way of its razor fangs only at the last instant. And every time the dog’s teeth sank into the other animal it let out a roar that made Arty want to run, but he stood firm, holding the gun, waiting.
Then he saw Miss Sadler raise a pistol and aim it at the swirling cyclone of Condor and the hyena, but she didn’t shoot. She moved toward the raging animals, holding the gun thrust forward with both hands, like a policeman, yelling, “Condor, get away!” But the dog couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have obeyed anyway. So, like Arty, she didn’t shoot, because she was afraid of hitting the dog.
He’d never seen Miss Sadler like that. Her smile was gone, replaced with granite-tight lips and deep dark wrinkles on her forehead.
“ Get out of the way, dammit,” she yelled at the dog. She was pissed and Arty hoped she could save Condor. She turned away from the fighting animals for an instant and yelled at him, “Get back, Arty,” and suddenly she was between him and the warring canines.
He lowered the gun and scooted back a little bit, with Carolina right behind him. Then he moved aside, just enough so that he could follow the fight as the animals swirled through the clearing.
But all he could do was stare as the battle unfolded in front of him. For a few moments it looked like Condor was winning and Arty breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The Doberman was going to end it right here, right now, and Arty’s hands white knuckled the shotgun as he silently prayed for his dog friend.
The fight couldn’t last forever. Condor’s head down lunges at the hyena didn’t seem to be hurting it. The dog would rip into the beast, tearing into its flesh, exposing bloody wound after bloody wound, but after a short while his lunges were less frequent and his retreat under the snapping jaws a fraction of a second slower. The beast was winning on endurance alone.
Then as quickly as it had started, it was over. The hyena had Condor’s right foreleg in its powerful jaws and the snapping sound of the leg breaking tore into Arty’s heart as he raised the shotgun again. But he still couldn’t fire, because Miss Sadler moved back in front of him. He shifted to the side, still with the gun up and aimed, but then he was blocked by Condor trying to get out of the way of those huge jaws.
He shifted some more, and was about to tighten his finger on the trigger, but again he had to hold back, because Carolina’s father was storming toward the two animals with a long knife in his hands, and just as the hyena was coming in to finish off Condor, John Coffee dove into the fray, sinking his knife deep into the hyena’s belly and another twisting typhoon tore through the clearing.
Coffee had a strong arm wrapped around the midsection of the hyena and he repeatedly jabbed the silver blade into its back and sides while the snarling animal fought to get its powerful jaws into the man, getting closer with each tumble, until it snapped onto Coffee’s right arm and once again the snapping, cracking sound of breaking bones bore into Arty’s soul.
“ Daddy!” Carolina screamed. She started to run toward her father, but Arty dropped the gun and tackled her.
“ Stop it,” he yelled, as she fought to get out from under him, and for once Arty was glad he weighed a lot, because she was a fighting whirlwind, struggling to get up.
“ I have to help,” she wailed.
“ No,” he screamed as loud as he could, his mouth touching an ear. She stopped struggling and Arty pushed himself off of her. “You stay back,” he commanded. Then he rolled away, grabbed the shotgun and climbed back onto his feet.
The hyena had Carolina’s father by an arm, and it jerked him off its back, sending the man flying like paper in a hurricane, and there was another loud crunch as Coffee’s collarbone cracked on impact. He was bent, broken, bleeding, still holding the knife, and trying to get up as the hyena came in for the kill.
“ Quick, Arty. It’s gonna get him.” The sound of her begging, pleading voice sent a jolt of white hot courage through him.
Arty brought the gun back to his shoulder and aimed. He’d loaded plenty of shells in his young life, however his father had never let him fire the gun. But he’d seen him shoot it often enough to know how, and to know that it had an awful kick. He hoped he could keep the gun pointed straight. He hoped the kick wouldn’t break his shoulder and land him on his ass, and he hoped the barrel wouldn’t blow up as soon as he pulled the trigger and take his face off.
“ I can’t shoot without hitting the man, too.”
“ That’s my father,” she wailed.
The hyena, damaged and bleeding, leapt at John Coffee as Arty pointed the shotgun and pulled the trigger, and was blessed with the luck of a first timer. The silver dimes scorched into the haunches of the animal, spinning it around, its rear end flying off the ground as Arty was propelled off his feet by the thunderous kick of the shotgun.
The hyena’s rear end landed where its front used to be and now it was facing Arty. He thought he saw its red eyes fade for an instant. Then it started toward him.
“ Get up Arty. It’s coming,” Carolina yelled. Arty scrambled up again, struggling to raise the shotgun.
The laughter ripped the night open again as a flash of lightning lit up the sky and they saw it. Big, black, baring its fangs, eyes glowing sharp red against the dark, black hair bristling. And it saw them. Arty knew they were done for. The monster would be on them, before he could get the gun up again.
A thunderclap tore through the moonlit night, and the hyena howled in pain as it went down. Arty and Carolina were frozen in place and another shot of thunder rang out and the hyena jerked. Then another, followed by still another and Arty realized it wasn’t only thunder booming through the early night as a second crack of lightning lit up the sky and he saw the angelic face of his all time favorite teacher, blasting away with the forty-five, pumping all eight rounds into the beast.
It should have gone down, and it should have stayed down, and it should have been dead, and it should have stayed dead. Instead the hyena’s hindquarters writhed and twitched. It lost its footing with the first shot, but its whirling legs quickly found the ground again and it was gaining purchase, when the second shot hit it in the chest, jerking it sideways. The third, fourth and fifth slapped its hindquarters, jerking the rear end of the beast up and off
