Red - Jack Ketchum [52]
She hung up the phone. The police said they were on their way. They were out in the middle of nowhere though. It would take them half an hour to get from town to her house if she was lucky. Her breast throbbed. Her ears rang.
Every last cunting one of you.
Am I next, daddy? Am I?
Momma? Me? Darlin’? In what order?
She was crying, sobbing.
The dogs were barking like crazy. She couldn’t imagine what was going on out there or maybe she could imagine and didn’t want to.
“No more,” she said. “This has got to stop. Not any more…”
She took the keys off the support beam and ran past her mother’s prone body to the hallway and out the back door.
~ * ~
Belle awoke to what she thought was probably at least one broken rib and the sight of her daughter’s legs flashing by. She tried to speak but couldn’t. She tried to sit but all she could immediately do was to get up on one elbow and try to breathe and ease the dizzy feeling. Everything hurt. Her head and ribs most of all — but everything.
She tried again. This time she was able to straighten her arm. There was a damp washcloth on the floor beside her and she used it on her face against the dizziness. It helped.
“Momma? I counted to a hundred. I didn’t know what to do after that. Where is everybody? What’s happening to the doggies?”
Darlin’ stood hunched in the doorway, eyes wide, clearly scared.
But she was right. The dogs were going nuts outside.
She didn’t want her little girl to see her like this and it was painful as hell but she managed to sit and then slowly, to stand.
“Come here,” she said. “Come here, hon.”
Darlin’ rushed to her and flung her arms around her waist.
Her ribs screamed.
“Easy,” she said, “Please, honey. Go easy.”
~ * ~
Brian slammed the double doors.
His father dragged Rat-on to the dog cage and tied her off to a link. The dogs were just on the other side, gnashing, frothing, barking up a storm, lunging at her through the wire fencing. Rat-on kept going no no no trying to keep her distance and at the same time loosen the knot at her wrists. But his father knew his knots.
“Hose!” his father said. “Nozzle it down, son. I want ‘em mean.”
Had he fed the dogs today? Unh-unh. No, he hadn’t.
So they would already be mean.
But he cranked the water and twisted the nozzle down to a single heavy stream which he sprayed half on George, Lily and Agnes and half on Rat-on. She kept trying to protect her face. He drenched her.
The cold water made her nipples hard.
Nice.
“Get ‘em back,” his father said.
So he concentrated on the dogs. Mama Agnes retreated to the doghouse. Growling, snarling at them. Fuck Mama Agnes. Lily and George fled to the back of the cage.
“You keep those two back there.”
“Please,” Rat-on said. “Stop this. I swear I won’t say anything. None of this ever happened, okay?”
She was pleading. He liked that.
His father didn’t seem to give a shit one way or the other. He simply untied the rope from the link, opened the cage door and dragged her short-leashed to the doghouse and pushed her down in front of it. Agnes snarled. Not at Rat-on but at his father. So his father did what he always did. Snarled right back at her and made as though to give the dog the back of his hand. Which she had felt plenty of times ever since she was a pup. She backed off, barking.
His dad threw the cage door shut.
~ * ~
Genevieve watched the dog. Watched the dog watching her. The look in its eyes scared hell out of her. The look was practically feral, as though the dog were a wolf in the wild and not some domesticated animal in a cage.
On the other side of the cage the boy still had his hose on the other two. But not on this one.
This one was stalking her. Slowly closing in.
She knew she could not take her eyes off the dog for a moment. If she did it was going to attack. But what she could do was to try to inch crabwise away, get her back against the doghouse — maybe even get inside the doghouse where she’d be protected on three sides at least. And from there she could maybe kick the damn