Hide and Seek

The sheer awesome size of him was riveting.

I watched the muscles curl and pulse along his back, and he was

fascinating as a snake.

He snapped at her again and tore a flap of sleeve off the army shirt as

though it were tissue paper. I saw where it had chewed her, dragged

her along by the shoulder. The bare white arm looked useless now.

New blood began to well up where there was none before along the side

of her upper arm.

He'd taken more than the sleeve.

And I knew where this particular game was going.

I acted. The hero moved.

"Hey!" I said.

It startled even me. The inanity of it. The hoarse echoing

loudnessofit. Hey. Idiotic. But that was what came out. And choked

back everything else.

The dog turned.

That is, its head did.

A square black head on a neck as thick as the trunk of a birch tree.

I've seen other full-grown dogs that were not as big as that skull was.

I felt suddenly very frail.

It moved slowly around and stared at us with cloudy black eyes.

Cataracts, I thought. It's practically blind. An old dog, its black

coat flecked with white. And I remembered that among the predators

there was nothing more dangerous than the old or sick or blind, because

they would hunt anything, even man.

Its muzzle pulled back into a grin that growled like muted thunder. I

saw huge curved incisors longer and broader than my thumb, easily three

inches long. I saw rows of smaller sharp teeth between them for

gripping and pulling, and behind them the blunt wide molars. A grim,

discolored killing machine was what I was looking at. Long gray battle

scars across the muzzle.

I felt its half-blind stare work its way into me like a burrowing worm,

leaving me rubber legged, sweating.

He turned completely.

It was slow and graceful, belying his age. His torso unfolded like the

sluice of a great black whip. In full view he was enormous- easily