It was there and it was strong. Victor was out cold, which begged Albert perform a basic search for a wound. Expecting to find taser wires in the man’s back or a stun gun mark on his neck, Albert instead found an egg-shaped lump on Victor’s skull. His attackers hadn’t been precious about taking him in one piece; they’d whacked him on the head with something and knocked him out that way.
Albert almost admired the old-school brutality of it. Provided they hadn’t caved his skull in, which Albert didn’t think they had, Victor ought to recover and regain consciousness soon. At least that’s what he told himself with optimism. Sitting back on his heels and feeling very weary, Albert heard sirens in the distance and shouted for his dog.
Rex couldn’t hear his human, there was too much noise where he was as humans came from all over, stopping their cars in the middle of the road to tend to the body in the gutter. He was out of breath, panting hard despite the cool air and his soaked coat. Hans was hurt, his front left paw torn and bleeding, but his attitude had changed.
‘You saved me,’ he said, looking up at Rex. He was holding his front left paw in the air rather than put it down, but he knew it wasn’t badly hurt. When Rex knocked him over, the sudden change in direction ripped the centre pad away from the skin along one side. It was bleeding a lot, but it didn’t hurt half as much as his face. Where the human kicked him, a tooth broke, his upper canine on the right side of his face. That whole side of his head and his shoulder were one big bruise. Adrenalin had carried him through the pain, but now that they were stopped, he could appreciate just how much it hurt. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ Hans murmured.
Rex lowered his head so it was close to the dachshund’s. ‘It was that right thing to do. As was chasing and tackling the human. I was impressed. You did an amazing job of bringing one down. I wouldn’t have been able to get both by myself.’ Rex was being generous, he thought he probably could have taken them both, but he hadn’t needed to find out and that deserved some praise. Would he have wanted to tackle a fully grown male human if he were the size of a haggis?
Hans limped forward a step on three paws. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about your mother. I’m sure she never got it on with a skunk, a marmoset, and a vacuum cleaner at the same time. I was just being unkind.’
Rex lifted his head to look at what was happening a few yards away. The rain continued to fall, running off the buildings through the gutters and downpipes where it gurgled and spluttered. Sheets of it ran across the pavement which gently sloped toward the road where a stream ran along the edge to vanish into drains. Close to the nearest drain, three humans were kneeling over the broken body of a fourth. Rex didn’t know who it was that he’d been chasing, only that his own human thought it a good idea.
Rex had tried to tell his human about these men while they were in Hans’s house, but maybe now it would be possible to make him listen. Whatever was going on in this town had the two men he and Hans had chased at its centre. The two were reduced to one but the other had escaped. Looking down again, he asked, ‘Can you walk?’
Hans licked his lips and bit his teeth together. ‘I’ll manage. You want to check on your human?’
‘I think we should.’
But as Rex tried to set off, a police car swung into the side road they had chased the men from, cutting off their route and more police were arriving from their rear.
Rex still had his lead attached to his collar. His human had simply let it go when he told him to chase. Hans had lost his at some point complete with his collar, but the police swarmed the two dogs, and before they had a chance to realise what was going on, Hans was scooped into the air and a male police office grabbed Rex’s lead and held on tight.
‘Hey! What are you doing?’ Rex span and pranced, trying to get free.
‘I think this one is hurt,’ said the cop holding Hans. The dachshund had cried out in pain when the cop grabbed him, though it could have been any one of a dozen wounds the cop touched by mistake.
Yet another voice called out to get their attention, this one farther up the side road where he had found Albert in the courtyard. Behind them in the street, paramedics forced their way through to the mess that remained of Eugene and cops attempted to clear the traffic while the rain continued to sheet from the black sky above.
Albert heard Rex coming before he saw him. Or, rather, he heard the poor cop trying to control him swearing at Rex as the headstrong oversized German Shepherd pulled the man along behind him like a kite.
He was cold now and weary, the rainwater soaking his clothes carrying his body heat away faster than he could replenish it. Albert didn’t think it was cold enough out for him to need to worry about hypothermia, but his fingers were numb now and he wasn’t sure he could get up. Cops arrived, followed swiftly by paramedics, everyone getting soaked as the rain refused to let up.
‘Is this your dog, sir?’ asked a male officer. He had hold of Rex but needed to brace and lean the other way to keep the dog in check. Rex wanted to check on his human, the ambivalence
