Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

The frantic barking of the dog, as much as anything else, brought him around; deep massive pain threatening to split his head apart, eyes opening to stare into tall weeds inches from his face, long seconds before he realized he’d been rolled off the road into the deep watercourse, longer still before memory tiptoed back tentatively, feeling its way through the pain, and when it did, panic took over. He tried to scramble to his feet, pitched forward. Tried again and again, until he reached the fence and used it to pull himself erect.

The dog was barking and furiously trying to claw her way through the aluminum panel of the storm door.

They’re inside, thought Roback. Around the dog and through the rear. But Shelley would have heard the dog, known something was wrong, and been ready—

Using the fence for support, he reached the gate, reeled through, and released the dog, staggering after the bitch as she flashed around the house, dimly noting that the phone wire snaking down the side had been cut; made it to a stanchion supporting the patio roof in the rear where he sagged and clung with both hands, fighting nausea and gaping at the nightmare of a double-imaged, screaming, blood-covered Fred bursting through the door pursued by the dog; watching as the bloody, out-of-focus figure dived into the blurred shed where he kept some of his light tools just in time to slam the door in the face of an airborne, indistinct brown fury whose hurtling weight shook the shed with a dull boom.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision, pushed away from the patio stanchion and through the door, the screen flapping where it had been cut to get at the inside latch.

Inside, Con was on the floor to the left, back propped against the base cabinet, T-shirt stained with blood.

On the other side of the kitchen, Shelley sprawled on the floor alongside her overturned wheelchair, the Ladysmith just beyond her hand, the cordless phone she always kept with her under one bent knee, her transceiver a few feet away.

Clinging to the cabinets for support, Roback made his way to her side, knelt, and tenderly fingered a massive bruise on her face, taking in the small pool of blood under her head.

She would have heard the dog, but not known what was going on because he and the men couldn’t be seen from inside the house; tried to call him on the radio. No answer, so she’d probably tried to dial for help on the phone, not aware they’d cut the wire. While she punched frantically at buttons, her confusion had given them enough time to get through the door. Still, she’d had time to shoot Con, but Fred must have reached her before she could shoot again. He’d hit her, knocking the wheelchair over and driving her head into the sharp corner of the base cabinet.

He’d been somewhere in the house when the dog found him.

Roback felt for a pulse, found none, wasn’t alert enough to tell if she was alive or dead, couldn’t make that decision. He had to get her to the medical center, let someone whose brains hadn’t been scrambled take that responsibility.

And Roback, normally a stoical man who took things as they came, showing neither overwhelming excitement at good news nor extreme sadness at bad, threw his head back and roared with an ancient fury... a battle cry of rage and hate that promised death to the enemy... but no time now to run to the toolshed and empty the gun into Fred...

He scooped up his wife. Head pounding, double vision back, room swimming, nausea churning his stomach, gelatinous knees threatening to give way with each step, he zigzagged out the door and toward his pickup, wondering if he could manage to keep it on the road. Staggering like a drunk who’d had three too many, eyes fixed on the distant, gleaming medical center where they had saved Shelley once and had to do so again, he sank lower and lower until he pitched forward on top of his wife, legs scraping uselessly at the gravel of the driveway until they quivered and stopped.

The dog was snarling again nearby. He opened his eyes and lifted his head to stare into the flat-eared, fangs-bared, bloody, foam-flecked face two feet from his.

An atavistic fear bubbled. No mistaking the menace there. The prey was down, but this was no food kill by a wild animal. This was revenge. As far as the dog was concerned, he was just as accountable as the other two for the still form pinned beneath him. And he was. The primary responsibility to protect her had been his. He’d failed. Denied vengeance on the man in the shed, she’d extract it from the next on her list.

“No!” he croaked, hoping the dog wasn’t beyond listening to him. She couldn’t know that at this point he was the only hope that Shelley had.

The haunches sank, the body a spring about to uncoil.

Shelley moaned softly, the sound magic; the lips lowered over the fangs, the body softened, the ears rose questioningly, and the tail moved in delighted anticipation. The dog settled with her nose an inch from Shelley’s face, tongue flicking out to lick her cheek.