Annie of the Undead by Varian Wolf Read Free Book Online

fence. The dogs were after him now. I
climbed the fence and dropped into the brown weeds on the other
side, nearly tumbling into an in-ground pool lying dry and empty in
the backyard of the homeowner unfortunate enough to have his
property backed up against a scrap yard. The weeds stalks, encased
in ice, snapped like glass.
    The vegetation wasn’t the only thing that
smashed on contact. My ankle did too. A stabbing pain filled the
joint, and when I tried to get up that pain knocked me back on the
ground.
    “Jesus fuck!” I yelled, realizing I was
doomed.
    But it didn’t look like Short John was having
such a nice day either. I looked back to see him surrounded by
lunging, slathering dog monsters. He nailed one of the beasts in
the muzzle with his shoe. The thing didn’t yelp, just came back up
again as if it’d never been touched. There were four of them, and
they were all around him –One had even climbed onto the cans.
Another sunk its teeth into his ankle, causing him to discharge his
weapon wildly. The dogs didn’t even flinch at the noise, but he did
finally hit the one that was making hamburger of his leg. The thing
yelped and went down, flailing crazily in the freezing mud.
    I crawled away, rose, hopped a few steps, then
went down again, my ankle seriously Jesus-fucked. I just didn’t
have any fight left in me. If the dogs didn’t finish him…
    Apparently they didn’t.
    “You fuckin’ bitch! You crazy fuckin’ cunt!”
called Short John, who had extricated himself somehow from the jaws
of death and climbed the fence. “You just stay right there, you
hear me?”
    He fired his gun, but missed again, and cussed
as the dogs leaped for his feet. He got himself tangled in the
barbed wire at the top of the fence and fell much as I had.
Unfortunately he didn’t break his neck.
    “You stay…you stay right there. You just
wait…for Short John,” he panted over the din of the raging
dogbeasts. He had his .45 trained on me.
    I had crawled to the opposite end of the pool
patio, but it wasn’t far enough. Short John came limping toward me.
By floodlight I could see that his pant leg was soaked with
blood.
    Lights had gone on inside the house. A head
peeked out the window then jerked out of view upon seeing the
craziness going on in the backyard, and the lights went out again.
I couldn’t expect any help from that quarter. Although the
occupants would probably call the police, I would be finished
before they arrived. Short John was about to make short work of
me.
    “See, you damn ho? You can’t get away. You can’t
get away from Short John, no way! Short John is the man! You don’t
mess with the man!”
    Short John liked to talk about himself in the
third person.
    “No dogs go messin’ with the man, and no damn
hos oughtta go messin’ with the man. He ain’t gonna put up with it.
He gonna bust a cap in your ass, you go messin’ with him.”
    “It’s a good thing he’s not here,” I answered
between breaths, “‘cause he won’t hear me call him a dickless cat
humper.”
    “I told you to shut the fuck up, cunt bitch! You
the man’s property, and you will do what he say. So when Short John
says shut the fuck up, you shut the fuck up,” he advanced on me,
took aim, “and when Short John says fuckin’ die, you fuckin’—”
    “Grrrrrraaarrrrrr!”
    That said by the most massive of the dog beasts,
which had gotten up on the pickup truck, onto the fence, and
catapulted onto Short John’s back with wild glee.
    The weight of the substantial animal bowled him
forward, knocking the gun out of his hand and all two-hundred
pounds of him sprawling into the nearly empty pool.
    The gun skidded across the ice-slicked patio
like a hockey puck, and, like a good goalie, I scooped it up.
    Talk about a save.
    “Get offa me! Fuckin’ animal, get offa me!” came
echoing out from the depths, accompanied by the enthusiastic snarls
of the creature in the black lagoon.
    I looked over the edge to watch the party