Chapter 34

Two hours before that, while his wife was introducing the innocent teenager to one of the dogs he sought, Rodney found his feet near to exploding, so far had he followed the black sheriff through the fields and wooded hills around Pickford's Meadows. But Clete's diligence in seeking out the wild dog pack had increased proportionally to the size of the reward that Jim Devereaux had offered him just a few days before. Though Clete was obviously no great tracker, he did show wonderful conditioning. The man was a mountain of well-hardened muscle, and Rodney knew that he had spent several years in the marines, and had seen combat somewhere. He was a good pistol and rifle shot and he seemed to laugh at the idea of fatigue, carrying his weapons and field gear, while Rodney's slender frame struggled along lugging his recording and camera equipment.

Still, he was not sure where all this effort was leading them, or him. Back home, the bank was sending nasty letters about missed mortgage payments, a situation that had not originated with their coming to Pickford's Meadows but had rather been exacerbated by the unproductive time spent on this wild goose chase--or rather, wild dog chase. Things had been bad for Rodney and his young wife for several months and their home was near foreclosure. It was their dreadful financial state that had driven him to pursue this story about dogs that raped women, but the rumors had not been born out. None of the women rumored to have been set upon sexually by this Lobo and his canine companions would talk about it. Priscilla Devereaux was in the mental ward of the county hospital with injuries no one would talk about either, and there was no reliable way to document a dog attack, though her father had raised the reward sky high the day after she had been admitted. And, damn it all to hell, the dog sightings had nearly ceased completely the day he and Tanya had come to town, as if something about their presence had sent them into hiding. (Of course, he had no way of knowing that many times when he and Clete were out hunting them, the dogs were in the warm and hospitable company of Tanya and Liz Clark.)

The pressures of his disorganized life had left him exhausted, and he hadn't had time for days to visit Liz Clark and keep their little clandestine affair spinning. He knew it was wrong and that he should be giving his all to his lovely young wife, but Liz's pure sexual expertise kept him going back for more. Just thinking about her blowjobs caused him to shiver.

But today, Clete swore they were getting close, up here in the hills behind the Mitchell ranch. The big sheriff, tireless for all his size, kept his nose down, seeming to sniff the ground, almost like a dog himself.

Clete had learned a lot in the last couple of months about tracking, through trial and error, though mostly error. He had assiduously avoided bringing in a professional hunter, for he had no desire to share the reward with anyone else, especially now that Jim Devereaux had made it fifty thousand a head. He was positive that one of them had raped Priscilla, and it made him smile to think of how she had had a taste of her own degrading medicine, after hoping for the worst for Desirée, and doing the most to foster it.

But he had to get results now, he knew, for the town council was pressuring him, Devereaux was calling him two or three times a day--Priscilla wasn't out of hospital yet--and several citizens had called him up complaining. John Proctor's ugly old wife had been scared by the beast, and his daughter had been raped in plain sight of her three female companions one night after a movie when they had taken a shortcut across a meadow. Though he deemed Proctor's daughter Darla lucky for the attention--with her looks it was probably the only cock she would ever know--he still had to answer the calls. Still, he was not sure that the four girls had not invented the episode just to get attention and excitement into their dull, wallflower-girl lives.

Rodney was just about to begin complaining about his feet, when Clete suddenly turned, whipping his finger up to his lips. The young reporter stopped still as a statue, his whole body quivering with excitement. Clete had never done this, but Rodney had never seen the sheriff gesture him to urgent silence before. He had to admit that the tracks they were following did seem to be fresher and easier to read than any he had yet seen.

The black man was glad that they found themselves downwind, for were it otherwise they would never manage to find the dogs before they were detected. The late summer breeze would carry away their scent and the small sounds of their approach. They avoided stepping on any dry leaves or twigs, keeping their feet on rocks and bare earth as they moved with the utmost slowness through the trees. Rodney kept his camera poised for action, for one good picture could get him a commission to cover the full story for a national newspaper or magazine.

It was as much a surprise for them as for the dogs when they suddenly moved into a clearing where the four wild animals were sharing out the meat from a lamb they appeared to have killed. Clete's rifle was not even at the ready when they surprised the four oversized German Shepherds crouched savagely over the carcass, their jowls smeared with blood and their yellow eyes blazing, like something out of an atmospheric horror film. Each one of the combatants, four dogs and one man, froze in a galvanic pose, a pose that Rodney caught perfectly on film from behind and a few feet to the right of the sheriff. The tableau was fixed on the film forever, the bloody lamb, the snarling dogs ranged around it in a way no artist could hope to devise, and the hulking, powerful form of the black sheriff, just bringing his rifle to bear.

Rodney's camera whirred efficiently, advancing the film, capturing the whole thing twice a second, changing position as the dogs moved toward their most hated human, the rifle coming up, the fire jumping from the muzzle. The second largest, and huge he was, darted to the right of the men, but the rifle had discharged accidentally, without proper aim, and it was only blind luck that the bullet penetrated flesh. Blood flew and Dusty yelped, superficially wounded, but Clete wasted no time and slapped the lever of the 30 caliber Winchester down and back, raising it to aim again for a kill shot. Rodney's heart leapt as he contemplated the violent death of the dogs, one by one, to be taken into his camera. The film was spending fast, but he always carried two cameras as a precaution.

Dusty should have been a corpse worth fifty thousand dollars, but Lobo, darting out from the men's right, closed his powerful jaws over the barrel and wrenched it from Clete's hands. Clete's grip had been relaxed for the shot or even Lobo would not have been able to tear it from his iron fingers, but the delay gave the dogs a chance to get away, Dusty trailing drops of blood from a painful flesh wound under his belly.

Clete's eyes were blazing as he turned, then pursued, and Rodney followed in his own, slower way. The big sheriff disappeared from sight into the bush, but within a few minutes, he returned.

"Fuck it! They got away!" he growled. "Fat lot of help you were!"

Rodney was taken aback. "What could I have done? No bullets come out of these cameras."

Clete's eyes narrowed. "Did you get any pictures?"

The reporter nodded. "You bet your ass, and they're some good ones too. Worth a fortune."

The sheriff nodded. "Yeah, yeah, and I want copies of all of them. The council will want to see them. And Jim Devereaux."

Rodney drew back, his face showing his shock. "These are mine. They belong to me. I have copyright." He clutched his camera tightly. "My livelihood depends on these photos. My story--"

Clete's hand shot out and closed on the other man's slender throat. "I don't give a fuck about all that. Just get them developed and show them to those people. My livelihood depends on that. Understand, shutter bug?" And he gave Rodney a shove.

The young reporter rubbed his throat where the sheriff had left red fingerprints.

"Yes, I understand. But--but I keep possession."

Clete was already retracing their steps back to his car. He was furious at having lost the dogs without a single kill, without a single check for a five with four zeros. The reward for just one of the raping animals would change his life forever, and the whole two hundred thousand would completely make it for him, his marriage with Nancy and his affair with Desirée on the side. How he wished it could be the other way around, but right now, Desirée was chained to Mark Denning, body and soul, even though her body had betrayed her several times.

He dropped Rodney at his own car, and said a brief so long, not waiting a moment. He was disappointed, but excited. He had actually, really truly, tracked the animals, and he knew he could do it again. After so many weeks of hunting them, he had finally drawn first blood, and suddenly the reward looked like much more than a dream. A nice house, a good car, fine clothes, and Nancy on his arm.

Damn, but he was horny all of a sudden! That taste of success and the excitement of the blood lust that was natural to him had sparked a flame centered in his giant male member and heavy, swelling testicles. If Nancy didn't get pregnant today, then there was something wrong with her. He was so hyped up, so frustrated, yet elated. He had to fuck a woman, and fuck her good.

He sped over the dirt road in the direction of Nancy's house, his cock itching for the irresistible caress of her tight, hot pussy. And then, as he crested a hill, he almost crashed into a car sitting askew in the road. It was easy to recognize the cute little German car that Desirée's father had bought her for her twentieth birthday. But where was the darling girl? He looked in all directions, and then began to follow the road. She was out here somewhere, and he was worried about her.

Billy Canning drew his thoroughly spent and sore cock from Desirée's quiescent vagina, feeling Sam's flop out at the same time. The girl had been an incredible fuck, and he had enjoyed her body more than any other, ever. Her body was cooling now as she slept the sleep of the dead, her sweat drying on her without odor, while millions of his and Sam's sperm invaded her vulnerable womb. Shakily, he got up from the bed and looked down at her, seeing Sam coming around himself. It was time to finish their business here and get going.

The video tapes had long since played out, so he stored the used ones and inserted new. He didn't want to miss catching what would come next, for that was what they had come for. From the leather bag he took the big hunting knife with the razor-sharp blade. It would be beautiful, cutting her throat while she was in a stupor of sexual satiation, slumbering innocently. He would draw the blade across her throat, making it bite deep, severing the arteries and windpipe while her hot blood pumped out onto the same old sheets where she had just been bred like a prize heifer. Then she would be cut up, and her head hid in the sheriff's office.

Billy moved forward slowly, hefting the heavy knife, so big that it resembled a scimitar.

Sam was waking up, rubbing his eyes, his hand resting on Desirée's breast. He saw Billy beginning to bend over her, bringing out the knife to lay the blade against her tender throat. Suddenly Sam understood that Billy, in spite of the joy the girl had given him, still meant to kill her. Sam, now strangely emotionally tied to the lovely girl, forestalled Billy.

"What, you mean you're going to do it with me here on the bed, cover me in blood?"

Billy looked taken aback. "Uh, uh, no, uh, I was just getting ready."

"You still want to snuff her? After all this, you still want to snuff her?"

"Well, yeah, why not? There's the buyer for the film in Europe. Lots of dough on that."

Sam was grasping at straws. He, like many men that knew the lovely, young woman, had fallen for her, loved her. Now Billy wanted to kill that love, as impractical as it was. "But, man, like, you've probably knocked her up. You'd be killing your own baby."

Billy shrugged. "Yeah, so what?" he had aborted enough of his own girlfriends' babies that he would not be worried about this one.

"Man, her husband's going to the top in politics. You could have a baby in the state capital or the US congress."

Billy paused. His hate for the world and for politicians had not begun with his brother's murder, and Mark Denning, whose actions as a local lawmaker had hampered his drug peddling business, was a man he particularly hated. The idea of planting a strange baby in his wife's womb, like a human cuckoo, appealed immediately to his perverse and selfish nature. To Billy, Mark Denning needed to be punished for hampering his private enterprise in pharmacopoeia. Then, something else occurred to him.

"But what if it's your baby?"

"Well, there's no real way of knowing until the kid gets big enough to resemble its father, but wouldn't it be a kick to plant your seed in Denning's garden?"

Billy thought, his unbalanced, drug-riddled mind going over the possibilities. "But the buyer in Europe wanted a snuff film."

"You'll have to disappoint him. We don't need the money that bad, do we? Just tell him the girl OD'ed before she could be set up. I'm sure he's had girls get away from him before."

Billy thought some more. "Don't we need the money?"

Sam shook his head, thinking fast, for Desirée's sake. He saw her lying there, pretending to be asleep but now hearing everything. He saw the tears running from her eyes as she tried to prepare herself for death.

"We don't need it that much. All we gotta do is get out of town, go over to the Falls for a few nights and sell some shit. We can snuff someone later. There's always more bitches."

Billy looked down at Desirée's lovely form. "She is one beautiful bitch, isn't she?"

"She is. Be a shame to kill her. A girl like this isn't born every day."

Billy was still not convinced. His mind was unhinged from his brother's death and overuse of his own product. He had wanted to spill blood today, and this girl was available and close to the source of his personal irritation--Clete. "But--I still want to cut her up."

Sam saw Billy's jerky eye movements and knew that it would be almost impossible to appeal to reason. And, at that last sentence, he saw Desirée's body flinch and start to quiver. He cast his gaze about for something that would inspire him, but found nothing until he looked out the open window.

"Fucking hell, look at that!"

Billy looked out the window and saw the plume of dust behind Clete's car as he moved at speed up the road toward the house. "That son of a bitch! We can kill him now."

Sam shook his head. "No way, man. All we've got is that little Walther and you can't hit anything with that if it isn't standing next to you. He's a good shot, and you aren't. Hell no, count me out if you want a gunfight. Let's sneak out of here and get to the car."

Billy was indecisive, but the adrenaline of fear was clearing his mind. "What about all this gear?"

Sam thought quickly, watching the approach of the car still two miles away. Clete would be here soon and there was no way they could explain their being here with Desirée in bed. The jealous Clete would make short work of them surely. "Hide the tripods in a closet and take the cameras with us."

"What about her? She'll talk. I've got to whack her."

"No, no, no, man," Sam hurried to say. "We can't kill anyone here today. We've left too much physical evidence already. Sperm, hair, pubes, prints-- Do you want to clean up all the fingerprints here? Can you remember everything you've touched? He's the sheriff, her husband's a politician. It'd be manhunt of the year. Let her live, man. She's only a girl, nineteen or twenty. You can catch Clete some other time, with his pants down."

Billy fidgeted, and Sam took his arm. "Come on, man. He'll be here soon, and then you will have a gunfight on your hands, and I promise you'll lose."

The two fleeing rapists picked up the larger equipment and hurriedly stashed it in one of the closets, then turned with their cameras and started toward the stairs.

Clete parked in front of the house and looked around. He couldn't imagine Desirée being anywhere else in the vicinity, after finding her car just down the road. Other tracks in the dust showed that another car had driven her away, but he had lost those tracks on the harder surface nearby and saw no other vehicle here. What was going on?

Clete tried the door, found it locked, and used a credit card to open the old lock. The entry hall was empty and appeared undisturbed since he had last been here, the day Nancy had been raped by Lobo. Then, he heard a sound upstairs, a female voice, he thought.

What the hell was going on?

Because they had spent so much time arguing about Desirée's fate, the two young men had delayed their escape past the point of no return. As they saw the sheriff begin to mount the curved staircase, Sam motioned to Billy to go the other way. They moved silently past the first bedroom where Desirée was coming slowly to life, moaning sorrowfully, thinking that they had gone. A few doors down, they closed themselves into another room and waited. And while they stood there in fear, Billy fumbled with the small pistol he had brought.