Then
Wind chimes tinkled somewhere nearby, joining the chorus of birds flittering about in the scratchy, stunted desert trees. Black soot stains made the place look as if a thousand pounds of firecrackers had gone off. The teenager crept quietly through buildings and crumbling concrete walls made up to resemble an Afghanistan village.
Decades ago, before the Army bought it and turned it into an abandoned MOUT range (Movement Over Urban Terrain), Hammertown had been a soundstage for a spaghetti-western movie called The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree, and the buildings around her still somewhat resembled their former glory, even under all the concertina wire and Arabic signage.
When the Army built a better course in the middle of the firing ranges on Fort Hood in 1998, Killeen law enforcement started using that one and left this one to rot. Teenagers made it their clubhouse later, evidenced by all the graffiti, used condoms, and beer cans everywhere, but Heinrich had cleaned all the garbage out and moved into the largest building on the property, a four-story firefighter-training structure. The doors were all kicked in, but Heinrich replaced them with fresh new steel doors, each one with two deadbolts, and put welded rebar grilles over the windows.
Clutched in Robin’s hands was a nine-millimeter Beretta. She moved cautiously with the pistol up in high ready, thumbs overlapping like Heinrich had taught her.
In a window, a wooden silhouette stood up with a creak. Crudely painted on it was a man with a furious, snarling face, his hands up as if he were going to choke you. Robin fired with an ear-splitting blast. An empty casing tinkled against the wall. The silhouette fell.
To her left, another silhouette stood up behind a road barricade. She knocked that one down, bang.
For some reason, he’d made her put on a bunch of armor and pads: a hockey mask on her face, hockey pads on her hands and feet, a catcher’s vest that looked like it’d seen its fair share of fastballs, and her jeans and shirt sleeves were wound about with several layers of duct tape. On top of the IOTV and ankle weights, this extra stuff was making her sweat more than usual. She continued to move through the tangled MOUT course, walking down a winding, narrow street, firing nine-millimeter bullets into man-shaped wooden boards. They appeared around corners and in windows, standing up from behind the chaparral and swinging down from the undersides of balconies. Heinrich ran pell-mell back and forth through the buildings, his boots clapping hollowly in the shadows, pulling ropes.
Three more silhouettes, turn right, head down the corridor, one silhouette, and then.…
Getting faster, her shot placement surer. Squeezing off her shots instead of pulling them now, and practicing proper trigger discipline by taking her finger out of the trigger well when she wasn’t firing. A woman with a crazed grimace slid up from behind a windowsill, eyes wide, hands clawed over her head. Bang! A hole appeared in her chest. The silhouette whirled out of sight.
Hot breath glued the hockey mask to her face with cold sweat. Robin stepped through a doorway into a dark corridor.
Halfway down, a silhouette stood up and she put a bullet in it. She turned left into another corridor where she raised the pistol in anticipation, but the target she expected never came up.
Reloading the Beretta, she passed through a pair of plywood sheets that hinged inward to create a door. Normally, when she got to this part, it would close in front of her and create a picture of a giant creature meant for her to empty the magazine into, but this time, when the plywood swung shut behind her and met with a clap in the middle, painted on the back was a crowd of enraged people leaping in midair and running with their fingers hooked like cat-claws. She spun and fired. Pow, pow, pow-pow!
Black holes appeared in their faces and chests. Click. The slide stayed back. Empty. She dropped the magazine, putting the Beretta on safe, and gently placed the pistol and mag on a little end table.
“I’m out.” A knife lay on the table today, a wicked-looking Ka-Bar combat knife like something a Marine would have carried into Vietnam. “Mind telling me what all this crap I’m wearing today is? Gonna come out here and beat me with a stick? You leave me a knife and you’re gonna get stabbed again.”
Several seconds of silence passed as she waited for an answer.
“You there, old man?”
Squeaky-squeaky-squeak, pulleys in the walls labored to open the plywood door again, revealing the dark hallway inside. Something clapped open in the shadows, a brittle metallic sound like that of a birdcage. Tick-tick-ticka-tick-tick. Sounded like water dripping on plaster. Heavy breathing.
“Pick up the knife, kid,” said Heinrich.
Something moved in the darkness beyond.
German Shepherd. Absolutely huge—eighty or ninety pounds by the looks of it. White fuzz rimmed his eye sockets and lips. The dog growled, sending a thrill of fear through her.
As the growl deepened, the dog’s head lowered, his ears folding back. He stared up at her from under his eyebrows.
“Pick up the knife,” said Heinrich.
“I’m not stabbing a dog, asshole.”
“Name’s Luke. Lucky Luke, but his previous coworkers called him LT. Retired police dog. Ten years old and can’t see out of one eye. Got a bit of a waddle ’cause some tweaker stuck him in the shoulder with a screwdriver. Bought him off a dogfighter that stole him out of a cop’s backyard.”
“You what?”
The dog charged at her. Robin turned and ran. Lucky Luke gave chase.
The hallway ended in a door. She shoulder-checked through without pausing, stumbling down the stairs on the other side. She found herself in a sort of plaza surrounded by building façades. Didn’t make it twenty feet before she got ahead of her feet, overbalanced, and went down, skinning the heels of both hands. The dog was immediately on her, clamping sharp teeth on her padded left wrist.
“Get him off me!” Robin shrieked, pounding on Lucky Luke’s face with her free hand. “Get him!” He was immovable, inexorable, invincible, jerking fiercely at her arm. Didn’t even flinch at her blows. Each jerk was accompanied by a hideous growl like a violin being played with a hacksaw.
“Get up, stupid!” yelled Heinrich, coming outside.
Dimly thankful Luke had grabbed her wrist and not her fingers, Robin wallowed around until she could get a leg underneath her. As she got to her knees, the dog pulled and jerked and yanked on her padded glove. She braced herself with her other hand and rose to her feet.
“Punch him!” shouted Heinrich. “Punch him in the face!”
“I AM!” she screamed at him. Like a nightmare, even her hardest of blows couldn’t fend off the growling dog, as if she were underwater and her fist just wouldn’t move fast enough. “Call it OFF!”
Something clattered across the concrete and bounced off her foot. Combat knife.
“Gonna have to do something,” said Heinrich. Luke gave a hard jerk and pulled her down to one knee. “Won’t stop until you’re dead or he is.”
“Why won’t you call him off?” Robin cried in a rising panic.
“Won’t be anybody to call that witch off when she latches on and starts eating you. They gone drag you down like a dog in the street and tear you limb from limb, and then they’re going to fucking eat you! Witches eat people, Robin! They’re cannibals! That’s what they do! Kidnap kids, put ’em in cages and boil the meat off their bones!”
The knife was behind her at this point. Luke had succeeded in pulling her away from it. Robin pulled back, starting a deadly game of tug-of-war. Only way she was going to be able to save herself. It was going to have to be the knife.
“If I have to walk over there and put the knife in your hand myself, I’m gonna take you to Killeen and put your ass out by the side of the road!” Heinrich ranted from the top of the steps. “You can hook for your dinner for all I give a shit! I bet that’s about all you’re good for anyway!”
Heat rushed into Robin’s face and she envisioned herself snatching up the knife. But instead of sticking the dog with it, she wanted to rush Heinrich. She gave a good hard jerk and gained some ground. His gums left bloodstains on the glove. The dog growled venomously, planting his feet, and Robin pounded him in the ear as hard as she could.
“Do it!” Heinrich yelled, applauding slowly. “Prove you can win, little girl!”
To her surprise, the dog let go. She dove for the knife, frantically trying to pick it up with her thick, mittened hands. Got it. She rolled over and the dog bit into the hockey mask.
Teeth jabbed through the eyehole and holes, jagging her across the nose and scratching her lip. She screamed, almost forgetting the knife in fear. Luke ripped the mask off her face. The nylon straps popped like gunfire, whipping her ears, and he backed away in what seemed like confusion.
Spitting the mask out, he lunged at her again.
This time she held out the knife.
The tip of the blade went in directly underneath his collar, sliding through the hard muscle of his chest all the way to the hilt.
Didn’t stop him, though. Luke continued to snap at her face, slavering and growling, throwing cold ropes of saliva, absolutely apeshit, trying to bite every available appendage and surface she gave him access to. Her arms were extended out straight, elbows locked, muscles trembling. One mistake and she’d have teeth in her throat. She turtled, tucking her chin under the catcher’s vest.
Abandoning her face, he latched on to her arm and growled, flexed like a dying snake, coiling, stiffening. Angry growls became higher-and higher-pitched until they were more like squeals.
He coughed through his teeth, spraying her glove with blood.
No, no, no.…
Tears filled Robin’s eyes as the dog started losing spirit.
Heaving and panting in pain, Luke’s legs buckled and he knelt next to her. Finally, he lay down in the dust and blood, and looked up at her with dark honey eyes.
Robin got up onto her knees and pried her fingers free of the knife. The Ka-Bar’s handle throbbed with the beat of the dog’s heart, blood streaming out from under it into a puddle.
She toppled forward onto her hands.
She cried her eyes out. Tears plopped into the dust between her bloody gloves.
She sobbed until she retched, and then she retched until she threw up acidic yellow bile. Heinrich didn’t say anything, he just lit one of those coconut cigars and sat down on the stairs, smoking and watching her cry.
Stab that son of a bitch, said the lamp-eyed warhawk.
Robin wheeled on the dog and wrenched the knife out of his chest. Blood ripped out of the wound, pattering across the ground. She strode toward her cigar-smoking mentor with every intention of gutting him.
“He limps ’cause he’s got osteosarcoma,” said Heinrich.
Robin hesitated.
“Bone cancer. Extensive, all up in his spine and hips. He was gonna die anyway, Robin Hood. Only had a couple months, half a year at the most.” Heinrich spoke out of the corner of his mouth, the cigar hanging from his lips. “You don’t know it, but you did him a favor.”
Sick, impotent rage built inside of her. Robin glared at him. “What the hell kind of favor was that?” she growled through gritted teeth. Wanted to jump on him, claw him like a monkey or a fucking chupacabra or something, bite him, bite his face, bite his nose off, bite his neck open. The rage was all-consuming. Of all the things he’d made her do in the name of her revenge, this was the worst. It was one thing to shoot at cardboard targets and let him knock her around, but.…
Every fiber of her being wanted to rush at him. She knew he could put her down without breaking a sweat. Probably wouldn’t even have to toss his cigar. Goddamn coconuts.
“You gave him a warrior’s death,” said the bastard.
Robin stared in incredulity.
“FUCK YOU!” she bellowed, throwing the knife at him. Heinrich ducked and the blade went whirling over his head, clanging across the steps. “Fuck you and your manipulative bullshit—” She charged him, meaning to hit him in the face, but he caught her hands and twirled her in an awkward pirouette, then shoved her back the way she came. She went down face-first, stumbling to her hands and knees next to the dog.
“I can get you to do anything in the world,” Heinrich said quietly, in that desolate, commanding tone of voice that told her he was done joking. “Climb any mountain, swim any sea. All I gotta do is piss you off.”
“FUCK! YOU!” Robin shrieked one last epithet and stormed away.
When he’d smoked as much of the cigar as he was going to smoke, Heinrich reached up and took one last draw off the cigar, stubbing it out.
Standing up, he loped down the stairs and over to Luke, where he pulled a revolver out of his cross-draw rig. Robin was in her makeshift bedroom packing her stuff when the gunshot came rolling out to her.