The Cutthroat Cannibals (19 page)

And now the second one with the wounded leg: they would take him next. Ah, the amusement was over too fast. The Three who
ruled had been bored lately. They ruled their little kingdom, twenty miles of the river shoreline, like a harvesting ground
for anything that was unlucky enough to stumble along. But the animals hadn’t had a challenge, something to get their juices
flowing, in a long time. They had thought perhaps Stone was the one. But as he sat there on one leg, hardly able to run as
they closed in for the kill, they could see that that was not the case at all.

Stone searched frantically around for the brave’s machete and saw it lying there on the other side of his twitching body.
He started for it, crawling over his fallen traveling companion, but not fast enough. The Doberman shot forward, launching
itself from a good twenty feet away like a screaming artillery shell of foaming teeth ready to take his heart out.

Suddenly from the right, moving with equal if not greater speed and certainly more ferocity as his lips were pulled back and
a horrible high-pitched sound was erupting from his throat, shot Excaliber. The pit bull slammed into the Doberman’s chest
at a ninety-degree angle, snapping his teeth around the cords of muscle, the bone, whatever was waiting to be bitten. Both
dogs tumbled from the air like two geese who had forgotten how to fly, and rolled around on the ground in a snarling blur
of teeth and flying fur.

Stone took the extra second the pit bull had bought him to crawl toward the blade. Just hefting it in his hands gave him a
shot of adrenaline. Between him and the pit bull they might just be able to wreak a little havoc. The Labrador took his shot
at Stone, taking a running start and shooting up off the ground with legs the size of a rhino’s. The sucker was big, maybe
250 pounds heading up to 300. It looked more like a bear or something, but the shape of the face and body structure was pure
Lab.

Not that Stone was planning any detailed anatomical charts of the descending canine. He ripped the two-foot blade up, straight
at the hurtling shape, at the same instant pulling his body to the side. The animal took a deep cut along its flank and a
six-inch-wide streak of red coated the animal’s thick black fur. The dog landed past Stone and turned on a dime. If it was
hurt it didn’t seem to know it. With blood soaking right down to its feet, the Labrador let loose with a most intimidating
snarl, spreading its jaws to gargantuan proportions. Stone looked over at Excaliber, trying to face off both the Doberman
and the Pit Bull as they circled around in front of him, trying to confuse him.

Stone suddenly had his own ass to watch out for. The Labrador shot forward, coming toward him like a lion at a wildebeest.
He tightened his grip around the machete and set himself on one knee, waiting for the animal to come to
him
. He knew that standing up, with just one leg, he was a dead duck. But at least down here he was centered, could perhaps get
a good thrust in with the blade. Of course he couldn’t get out of there for shit. But he’d worry about that later. The dog
came charging at him like a bull, the great jaws inside the black-furred face open like a steam shovel trying to take out
a whole fucking skyscraper at once. Stone half closed his eyes and thrust forward with all his might. The blade was ripped
from his hands and he threw his face to the ground, covering his head as he rolled to the side, so if the thing started biting
on him he’d at least protect his eyes.

But when he dared look after rolling three times to the side Stone saw the dog lurching backward away from him, with the long
Indian knife sticking clear through its throat and coming out the back. The dog looked peculiar because the blade had entered
so cleanly and poked out at just the right angle, so that it looked for a moment silhouetted in the moonlight, like a horn
that had grown a little low. But though the animal stumbled around making all kinds of howls, the damned thing still wouldn’t
die. Stone knew it would be only seconds before the crazed carnivore would come at him again. Only this time he didn’t even
have a blade to defend himself with.

Excaliber had his own paws full just ten feet to the left. The attacking Pit Bull circled around him one complete time and
then shot in for the kill. It was as if Excaliber was looking at himself, a mirror image coming right at him. Yet the pit
bull knew that his opposite number was just as deadly as he was. He wondered if the animal would use the same tactics as well.
And as he dove down toward the killer’s legs he saw that the other dog did the same thing. They met jaw to jaw, their chins
scraping along the rocky ground. The pit bull had finally met his match—a dog that moved and thought exactly as he did.

Excaliber knew he had to be careful with this dude. The slightest miscalculation, the slightest misstep and it would be all
over. He pulled back sharply so the attacking bull terrior snapped wildly at the air for several seconds, its eyes closed
like a shark, not even realizing that the would-be victim was gone. Excaliber lunged toward the Pit Bull in the second or
two it took the animal to get its bearings. He didn’t want both the Pit Bull and the Doberman on him at once. It was going
to have to be fight and move, fight and move. Because if they both got him at the same time, both sunk their jaws into his
body at the same instant, it would be instant death. The pit bull, as tough as he was, was also a realist. And he knew his
only chance was to stay on the offensive and keep attacking
them
before they could do the same.

Suddenly he hit like a striking fist and snapped down hard on the Pit Bull’s right leg before the animal could do anything.
Bite and move, bite and move, he fought like a pro boxer, using the tricks, the feints, everything that his breed had in their
repertoire. Again the Pit Bull closed in, coming in fast. Excaliber waited until the last possible second, then dove down
under the animal’s chest. He stood up suddenly, helping the attacker to get airborne, so it slammed into a tree about eight
feet behind him, cracking its head into the hard wood with a resounding bang. But pit bulls are not known as the iron-headed
dogs for nothing. The animal merely picked itself up, snarled a few times just to remind itself what it was, and then came
charging back again at Excaliber.

Stone watched from the side, with a respite of a few seconds while the Labrador turned for yet another attack, the machete
buried through its throat. He knew that he and Excaliber couldn’t go on like this for very long. Something would have to give,
and what would give would have to be them. Even if they could hold off this crew the rest of the pack would be here pronto.
And then they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in a microwave of getting out of there.

Suddenly he felt the lighter in his hand. He was still holding it tightly in his left hand—hadn’t let go since Cracking Elk’s
death grip deposited it there. Stone had a sudden crazy idea. It had only a chance in a. thousand of working. But then he
didn’t have a hell of a lot to lose. He swept his eyes across the Three. They were all off to one side with the mountain wall
at their backs about thirty feet behind them. All around their feet were low, dried bushes. Yes, it could work. There was
only one fucking way to find out. Stone waited another second or two as he saw Excaliber charge toward the two snarling attackers
who were crouched down readying themselves. The pit bull’s feint pushed the two back, and Stone saw that at least for an instant
they were all together near the mountainside.

“Excaliber,” Stone screamed at the top of his lungs as he flicked the lighter and held it to the brittle brown grass about
knee length all around him. The lighter caught the first time and the dry brush caught in a flash. He moved ahead a yard keeping
the lighter going and touched off another mini blaze, then another. Within ten seconds there was a whole wall of fire sweeping
straight toward the mountain wall.

“Excaliber, jump, you bastard, jump!” Stone screamed, seeing that his plan was working only too well as all four dogs were
trapped behind the rapidly moving curtain of orange and yellow. The pit bull stopped his battle growling and mouth snapping
as he saw the Three staring over his head. He turned, and seeing the wall of flames and Chow Boy on the other side calling
his name, did what any good pit bull would do—he dove right into the wall of fire. With his eyes shut the animal emerged on
the other side and Stone grabbed him, throwing the animal down in the sand, rolling and half kicking the dog around to put
out a few sparking places on its fur where its hide was on fire. But within seconds they were extinguished, and Stone turned
to see what his scheme had wrought.

The plan had worked perfectly. The Three were trapped as the tidal wave of fire, leaping up six, seven feet in the air, swept
toward them. They backed up howling with terror right to the edge of the mountain wall, and then tried to climb up the side.
But it was too steep, their paws only clicking against the rock with loud scratchings like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard.
The wind suddenly gusted and the flames moved right to the dogs like a tsunami of yellow death. The animals screamed out with
sirenlike shrieks as their pelts caught on fire.

The Labrador with its full mat of hair went up like a gas tank, just blazing all of a sudden as it shook violently. The Doberman
and the Pit Bull followed close behind. Suddenly both of them were flaming as well, the tails first, then the ears, then the
whole bodies, burning, burning bright like an Ntani in the night. They joined together in one deafening death howl audible
to other creatures miles off, making them scurry back to shelter in their nests and burrows.

Then it was over. Fire is as quick as it is painful. The Three were still upright, their burning carcasses standing where
they died, skeletons now visible as the outer layers burned to charcoal and then exploded into hundreds of blowing sparks
that filled the stiff wind.

Stone didn’t have time for self-congratulations, for he heard a sound and looked up to see the whole fucking invasion force
of mutts, all of them barking and snarling up a storm like the goddamn canine cavalry coming to the rescue. But it wasn’t
his rescue.

“Come on, dog, we’re taking another bath. And to tell you the truth I don’t particularly care if I drown this time,” Stone
said with disgust as he dragged himself to the river’s edge and started wading in like an old man setting his toe into the
tub to make sure it’s not too hot. The pit bull stood on the bank for a few seconds looking at the advancing ranks now only
fifty yards away and coming in hard. He thought about how many he could take out, and decided not all that many. The dog too
jumped straight into the river as if it was practicing bellyflops for an upcoming contest.

Within seconds they were both moving out toward the center of the river. The dogs saw their flaming masters and raced along
the shore, howling out their anger and fear. What would they do, what would they be without the Three? The Trio had ruled
them for years now. Many of the pack had known only their leadership. Already some of the dogs that had stopped in their tracks
were eyeing each other, wondering what the hell to do next. Fights started breaking out all along the shore as the glue that
had held the pack together began dissolving.

But Stone had other things on his mind than the contractual dissolution of a pack of dogs. For as the river whipped them forward
with increasing velocity, he swore he heard a sound like a jet engine ahead of them. Stone wondered if somehow someone could
have gotten hold of one, though it was hard to believe that there were even runways to handle a plane like that anymore, or
men still left alive who knew how to pilot them. But as the river suddenly whipped him and the dog, floating about twenty
feet away, around a bend, Stone saw that it wasn’t a jet at all. Ahead was a great curtain of steam and mist rising up high
into the sky hundreds of feet. And the roar wasn’t coming from above but from below.

It was a waterfall—one of the biggest Stone had ever seen—that just seemed to drop forever as if they had come to the very
end of the earth and below were the mist-shrouded lands of another world. A great dark arching rainbow a good mile long curved
over the dropoff. It damn sure was a beautiful sight. If you were a newlywed, that is. But if you were Martin Stone and traveling
pit bull, it was just about the most horrible thing you had ever seen in your lives. Especially since the two of them were
heading right toward the falls.

I
T was as if Stone were looking down over the edge of the world, into the fountains of the origins of life. They roared and
pounded below him like a thousand dragons breathing foam and uttering screams that pealed across the sky. There was a vast
lake below into which the falls emptied, and Stone could see as he looked down that the smashing blast of water churning up
the lake for several hundred feet looked as if it could grind metal into scraps. There was no way, no way on this merciless
planet that he was going to survive.

As he got to within about thirty feet of the lip of the falls, Stone felt the river speed up with a sharp pull. He could feel
his head snap back as his body was caught in the inescapable grasp of the final drainlike currents. And then he was out there,
shot out into space so that for a few seconds it seemed as if he might fly, just hanging up there with the lake below and
the falls all around him, the dark clouds rubbing across the sky as if trying to steal the patina of the stars.

Then he wasn’t flying at all but shooting straight down like a piano dropped from a twelve-story building. He felt remarkably
calm as he descended, even turning his head around to see if he could spot the dog. He couldn’t. Then he was hurtling into
the foaming waters boiling below like a thousand lobsters cooking. He hit hard, not quite aimed at the right angle, so that
his chest and broken leg took most of the blow, creating a huge splash that rose for a fraction of a second above the ten-foot-high
wall of foam and bubbles everywhere.