Tom Schreck - TKO

I heard myself yell “Shit!” and Al stopped to look up at me while the pit charged him with its jaws wide open. At the last split second Al started to run again and for whatever reason, maybe his own sense of flight or fight, he started running all crazy zigzagging around the stone garden. The pit bull was athletic and mean but it didn’t have Al’s ability to change direction and Al had him baffled with his open-field maneuvers. Unfortunately, this just fueled the pit’s anger.

I knew there was no way Al could keep this pace up for long and I struggled to the razor wire, slicing my index finger pretty good in the process. Al was barking and his ears were flapping as he barely evaded the pit’s charges. I looked close at Al as the razors got caught in my jeans, and it dawned on me that Al didn’t look scared and he didn’t look angry. The crazy-ass hound looked like he was playing a game.

Al stopped suddenly and skidded on the stones with the pit bull dead straight ahead of him at a distance of less than ten feet. Al barked, almost baiting him, and waited for his charge. I screamed to Al to run and he waited to the last second, taking off with the pit literally right behind him. Al was heaving for air as he switched directions, and the pit bit the very end of his tail. He was closing ground on Al and snapping his jaws when Al ran around the Buddha.

It appeared Al was losing his breath and starting to slow down on his third trip around the Buddha. I pulled hard to free a leg and the razors cut through one leg of my jeans. It cut me but I had one leg free. My heart felt like it was in the back of my throat as Al started another trip around the Buddha at a much slower speed. He was tiring out.

The pit bull wasn’t and he got past Al’s tail and jumped toward Al’s shoulders to bring him down. There was no way Al could survive a dogfight with this animal. The pit bull jumped to tackle Al and Al leaped too, but as he did, he took a mid-air, ninety-degree turn like he would in the Moody Blue. The pit bull tried to follow but as Al ducked his low-flying frame under one of the stone benches in front of the Buddha, the pit bull came in high.

The pit bull’s head cracked just like my shin on a coffee table, except he was flying from a distance of ten feet and the bench was made of solid granite.

The pit bull’s head split open and the dog collapsed a few feet from the bench that Al was now safely tucked under. I pulled my second leg through the razor and I was now cut all up and down my legs and over my hands, but I pulled myself through and fell the fifteen feet down to the stones, landing on my back. I got up and charged the door to the steel building to find Harter. The door flew open before I could get there, and there stood Harter in front of what looked like some very sophisticated lab equipment.

He was holding a gun and had it pointed at my head.

“I have to admit, Duffy, you impress me,” Harter said. “Of course, now I’m going to kill you.”

“The thing I want to know is how much you knew about Gunner,” I said.

“Gunner?”

“Abadon. He went by the name Gunner when he was doing this in other places. Did you know he was the slayer and didn’t care, or was he able to keep that from you?”

“That’s not for you to know, Duffy-man you’re an inquisitive pain in the ass.”

“As long as you got your steroids.”

“Shut up-I’m tired of listening to you. Move!” With his gun, he motioned me inside the steel building and shut the door. I could hear Al barking from outside.

“Your dog doesn’t ever fucking shut up, does he? After I take care of you, I’ll quiet him down forever,” he said.

“Al’s got more balls than you’d ever dream of having-you fucking pussy,” I said.

Al kept barking and barking and barking.

Behind Harter there were blinking lights, heaters, refrigerators, and all sorts of equipment. This wasn’t your average bathtub crank lab. Gunner had thrown some cash into his operation.

Harter moved over to a beaker filled with a cloudy liquid.

“You know, Duff, this is hydriodic acid, and it burns skin all the way down to the bone.” He paused to smile. “It will give your face a distinctive look in the casket.”

He carefully placed the gun down on the counter and picked up some long rubber gloves. He picked up the beaker of acid and smiled again. Then, with the gun in the other hand, he walked toward me.

I scanned the room and saw the door that led to the meditation garden and the single smoked window on the other side of the building. To get to the window I’d have to somehow get past Harter, the gun, and the acid. To make it to the door I’d have to outrun a bullet.

Through it all, Al kept barking outside and it kept annoying Harter.

“I hate that fucking dog. I’m going to enjoy pouring acid on him,” he said.

Then a loud bang rocked the other side of the building. Harter’s head snapped around and he put down the beaker but held on to his gun. A few seconds passed and another bang came on the same side of the building… then another.

“Don’t move,” Harter said, and he headed to the window.

Another metallic bang slammed the side of the building.

Harter raised his gun in his right hand as he waited by the window.

Another bang.

Harter’s attention was on the banging, and it gave me a second to think. He cocked his right arm and readied it to fire. He unlocked the window just as another bang slammed the building.

Harter threw open the window with his gun drawn but was startled by another face staring straight at him from a six-inch distance. The startle was all the delay the man needed, and he raised the steel spear and jammed it with all of his force through Harter’s throat. The gun discharged over Harter’s head and the bullet smashed through a series of lab bottles.

The spear went through one side of Harter’s throat and came out the other end. He spun around, his face a horrible mask of pain as blood curdled out of his mouth and throat. In the window was the redheaded face of Howard Rheinhart.

A smell rose in the room and I didn’t want to hang around for the chemistry lesson. I opened the door and scooped up Al, who was still barking himself hoarse, stepped over Harter, and stuffed Al through the window on the other side. I climbed through the window to see Howard and Billy waiting for me. Billy had a pile of rocks in front of him.

“Let’s go! It’s going to blow!” I screamed and the four of us ran as hard and as fast as we could to the marsh. In less than thirty seconds we had made it a couple of hundred yards when the series of cascading explosions started. There were four or five little ones that ripped into a final big one, and the whole steel compound blew up in a fiery greenish-yellow ball.

The night lit up with a series of fireworks and the air was filled with a putrid stench.

“Fellas, this is going to be one of the biggest understatements you’ll ever hear,” I said. “Thanks.”

I took turns hugging the two of them while Al howled in song.

Howard smiled for the first time ever in my presence.

“It’s nice to know I still got it,” he said.

The three of us laughed so hard it hurt.

It wasn’t long after the fireworks that the police came… and the FBI… and the U.S. Marshals. Then, within seconds, it was the news and the media with satellite trucks and reporters and camera people. There was crime-scene tape, there were detectives with notepads, there were crime-scene investigators-you name it. If they had a badge, a pen, or a camera, they were there. Thank God, Kelley pulled up in his cruiser.

They got Mitchell off the tree Billy taped him to and took him away in a paddy wagon, and they interviewed the three of us, first separately and then together. We talked to federal guys, state guys, and the local guys. Kelley stayed with us during each of the interviews and helped with the questions. For a short period of time, they had Howard in cuffs and were reading him his rights, but after a lot of explaining and, I mean a lot of explaining, they uncuffed him and told him to stay in town and check in with parole later that day.