Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [81]
He held the knife firmly in one hand and grabbed the dog’s head with the other. He needed to pull its head back far enough to reveal the animal’s throat. Then, one quick cut and it would all be over.
The terrier was butting at him, chewing at his chin. The thing was trying exactly the same tactic. If it could get Creed’s chin up and expose his throat it would be the winner.
Blood was running freely from Creed’s scalp wound now, trickling into his eyes. While he could still see what he was doing, Creed stabbed for one of the dog’s eyes. But it twisted its narrow skull and the blade slid off a hard ridge of occipital bone. Instantly the dog lunged for his knife hand; Creed pulled it back just in time to avoid those sharp teeth sinking into his wrist. Now the thick blood was running down either side of his nose in quantity, pooling in his eyes.
He blinked but his vision only cleared for an instant. He tried to shake his head but immediately the dog was digging for his throat. He knocked it away and held his head still, locking his chin down again. There was nothing else for it. He kept his head still, let the blood gather in his eyes and continued to fight blind.
He felt the hot rank breath of the dog as it kept twisting in the darkness, hunting for an opening so it could finish him.
He groped for the dog’s head with his free hand and grabbed it, trying to force it back. He needed to get the knife under its chin, that was the only sure way for a kill. But it was no good.
The wound in his arm was telling on him now and he didn’t have the strength to force the animal’s head back.
Then suddenly, magically, the dog’s head began to bend back. It was as if some other force was helping Creed lift it away. He couldn’t see what was happening and the terrier seemed to be as puzzled as he was. It gave a bemused little whine as its muzzle was forced upwards. Creed sensed that he had enough of an opening now and he blindly drove the knife upwards, twisting it as it went in.
There was an immediate hot flood of liquid on his fist and down his arm, splashing into his face. The dog shivered and struggled but it was all over now. Creed kicked it off him and the terrier thrashed on the concrete, dying as Creed gouged his knuckles into his eyes, wiping his face clear.
When he got the blood out of his eyes the first thing he saw was the stewardess kneeling over the dead dog and he knew that she had helped him, grabbing the dog’s head and forcing it back.
She’d saved his life. The woman turned to look at him; her pupils were pin-points in the moonlight as a result of the morphine. The drugs must have given her enough strength to pull herself together. Luckily for him. Lying sprawled on the concrete the terrier looked pathetically small and helpless in death. She looked at it for a moment then up at Creed.
‘Scooter,’ she said sadly as if remembering something.
‘Whatever you say, darling,’ said Creed.
‘Perhaps Ms Forrester could show us where she saw the White King?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop calling me Ms Forrester,’ said Roz. ‘My name is Roz.’
‘Fine. Show me where you saw the White King, Roz.’
Norman Peverell followed Roz out of the sitting room and up the hallway. The stewardess’s house was a surreal stage-set which went from war wreckage at one end to domestic normality at the other. They’d entered through the hole in the garden wall, a huge ragged gap fringed with shattered bricks and twisted metal reinforcing rods exposed by the armoured car’s brutal entry. They’d picked their way across the desolate garden with its shattered urns and ceramic decorations. Cracks in the concrete had allowed the small pond to drain into the surrounding ground. It was now a bare, plastic lined cavity, dry and smooth, somehow disturbing.
Like an empty