Too stunned and frightened to come to either man’s aid, the third of the yellow house’s exploratory group yells for help and backs down the slate stone walkway toward the drive. He does not move quickly enough. The dog and the infected man converge on him. Fangs, hands, and teeth.
The truck is stopped. Everyone is shouting, including Ramola. Luis and Josh bounce on their heels, asking if they should jump off the truck and help, but the attacks are so one-sided and final the outcomes are decided as soon as they begin. Ramola grabs one of each of their arms, anchoring them to the truck bed for a moment, telling them, “No!” and “Stay here,” and “You can’t help them.” Then she crouches by the open cab window and shouts, “Go, go, go!”
In two strides the German shepherd bounds from the walkway and into the drive. It leaps against the truck, clawing and scratching at the metal. The dog lifts onto its hind legs, its bloody front paws and barking, snarling head hanging over the side panel. Josh swings his wooden staff and connects, but it’s a glancing blow the dog shrugs off. If anything, the staff strike antagonizes the already-frenzied animal. It hops up and down on its rear legs, trying to push its bulk over the side and into the bed.
The truck’s engine finally answers with its own roar and lunges forward. Only Ramola is prepared for the sudden acceleration as the teens are sent backward. Luis smartly goes low and down, squatting in next to the bikes and in front of their gear. Josh fights to remain standing, using his staff as a balancing pole. Ramola holds on to the open frame of the rear window and watches out the windshield.
The truck charges into Bay Road going too fast for the change in pitch (from elevated drive to flat road) and for such a tight left turn. Two men, including the one with the hunter’s rifle, are unexpectedly in the truck’s path, either caught in mid-retreat or running to the aid of the others at the yellow house. The surging front grille clips the rifleman, sending him rolling onto the opposite shoulder, and the swinging fishtail of the truck bed slams into the second man, batting him airborne. He lands bonelessly on his back.
Dan jams on the brakes. Ramola is pressed flat against the cab’s rear window. The bikes, gear, and Luis slide up the cargo bed. Josh cries out as he tumbles over the driver’s-side wall, his dropped wooden staff drum-rolling on the pavement. The stopped truck is a diagonal slash across the road’s center lines. Dan opens the door and gets out of the cab. Luis grabs both loops of the water bottles and climbs over the side of the truck to Josh, who is on his knees, rubbing his chin and checking his hand for blood.
Natalie’s door flies open, recoiling to halfway-closed on its hinges. Ramola reaches through the rear window, grabs a fistful of sweatshirt at Natalie’s shoulder, and yells, “No! You are not going anywhere. Close the door.”
Natalie turns her head and offers Ramola a dismissive, completely out-of-character sneer. She twists out of her grip, leans out of the truck, and pulls the door closed.
The dog is already biting, shaking, and thrashing about the prone man in the middle of the street. It quickly moves on to the rifleman on the road’s shoulder, gnawing at the hands and arms bunkering around his head. The man’s groans turn to high-pitched screams. The rifle is strewn between the truck and the man. Ramola puts one foot on the sidewall, considering a mad dash for the gun. The dog turns and unleashes a volley of barks as though it hears her thinking.
There’s a high-velocity whoosh and an arrow chunks into the rifleman’s right hip. His screams increase in volume and are pitched at a frequency that rattles the truck’s loose rear sliding window in its frame. He reaches for his leg, and as the dog takes advantage of the opening, burrowing into his unprotected face and neck, his cries quickly weaken to watery gargles.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” shouts the other camo man, Richard or Stanley, Stanley or Richard; he holds his aimed crossbow in front of his body as though memorializing the ill-fated shooting pose.
The Tree is ten feet behind his partner and engaged in a struggle with the larger coyote. He swings his crossbow like a cudgel at the animal’s head, which is clamped down on his pant leg. Despite the arrow sticking out of its left shoulder, left leg limp and dangling, the coyote’s ferocity and the effectiveness of its attack are not compromised. The Tree is in danger of being chopped down. The smaller coyote is twenty or so paces beyond them, lying dead in the road, three arrows sticking out of its pincushion body.
Having quickly dispatched the rifleman, the German shepherd, its dark coat gone darker with blood, sprints for the other man in camo. Its speed and might is as mesmerizing as it is frightening. Teeth bared, focus singular, there’s almost a sense of joy or freedom in the bounding, athletic attack; it is finally fulfilling a long-ago animal promise, one that will not be broken.
There is
