Black House

Beezer’s haggard face turns to Sonny, and the whites of his eyes are crimson. "You hit that f**king animal, didn’t you?" Through the wads of cotton in his ears, Beezer’s voice sounds small and tinny.

"Shit, yes. At least twice, probably three times."

"And Doc and I hit it once apiece. What the hell is that thing?"

" ‘What the hell’ is right," Sonny says.

Weeping with pain, Mouse a third time repeats his cry of "Help me!" and the others hear him at last. Moving slowly and pressing their hands over whatever parts of their bodies hurt the most, they hobble up the road and kneel in front of Mouse. The right leg of his jeans is ripped and soaked with blood, and his face is contorted.

"Are you ass**les deaf ?"

"Pretty near," Doc says. "Tell me you didn’t take a bullet in your leg."

"No, but it must be some kind of miracle." He winces and inhales sharply. Air hisses between his teeth. "Way you guys were shooting. Too bad you couldn’t draw a bead before it bit my leg."

"I did," Sonny says. "Reason you still got a leg."

Mouse peers at him, then shakes his head. "What happened to the Kaiser?"

"He lost about a liter of blood through his nose and passed out," Sonny tells him.

Mouse sighs as if at the frailty of the human species. "I believe we might try to get out of this crazy shithole."

"Is your leg all right?" Beezer asks.

"It’s not broken, if that’s what you mean. But it’s not all right, either."

"What?" Doc asks.

"I can’t say," Mouse tells him. "I don’t answer medical questions from guys all covered in puke."

"Can you ride?"

"Fuck yes, Beezer — you ever know me when I couldn’t ride?"

Beezer and Sonny each take a side and, with excruciating effort, lift Mouse to his feet. When they release his arms, Mouse lumbers sideways a few steps. "This is not right," he says.

"That’s brilliant," says Beezer.

"Beeze, old buddy, you know your eyes are, like, bright red? You look like f**kin’ Dracula."

To the extent that hurry is possible, they are hurrying. Doc wants to get a look at Mouse’s leg; Beezer wants to make sure that Kaiser Bill is still alive; and all of them want to get out of this place and back into normal air and sunlight. Their heads pound, and their muscles ache from strain. None of them can be sure that the dog-thing is not preparing for another charge.

As they speak, Sonny has been picking up Mouse’s Fat Boy and rolling it toward its owner. Mouse takes the handles and pushes his machine forward, wincing as he goes. Beezer and Doc rescue their bikes, and six feet along Sonny pulls his upright out of a snarl of weeds.

Beezer realizes that when he was at the curve in the road, he failed to look for Black House. He remembers Mouse saying, This shit doesn’t want to be seen, and he thinks Mouse got it just about right: the Fisherman did not want them there, and the Fisherman did not want his house to be seen. Everything else was spinning around in his head the way his Electra Glide had spun over after that ugly voice spoke up in his mind. Beezer is certain of one thing, however: Jack Sawyer is not going to hold out on him any longer.

Then a terrible thought strikes him, and he asks, "Did anything funny — anything really strange — happen to you guys before the dog from hell jumped out of the woods? Besides the physical stuff, I mean."

He looks at Doc, and Doc blushes. Hello? Beezer thinks.

Mouse says, "Go f**k yourself. I’m not gonna talk about that."

"I’m with Mouse," Sonny says.

"I guess the answer is yes," Beezer says.

Kaiser Bill is lying by the side of the road with his eyes closed and the front of his body wet with blood from mouth to waist. The air is still gray and sticky; their bodies seem to weigh a thousand pounds, the bikes to roll on leaden wheels. Sonny walks his bike up beside the Kaiser’s supine body and kicks him, not all that gently, in the ribs.

The Kaiser opens his eyes and groans. "Fuck, Sonny," he says. "You kicked me." His eyelids flutter, and he lifts his head off the ground and notices the blood soaking into his clothing. "What happened? Am I shot?"

"You conducted yourself like a hero," Sonny says. "How do you feel?"

"Lousy. Where was I hit?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Sonny says. "Come on, we’re getting out of here."

The others file past. Kaiser Bill manages to get to his feet and, after another epic struggle, hauls his bike upright beside him. He pushes it down the track after the others, marveling at the pain in his head and the quantity of blood on his body. When he comes out through the last of the trees and joins his friends on Highway 35, the sudden brightness stabs his eyes, his body feels light enough to float away, and he nearly passes out all over again. "I don’t think I did get shot," he says.

No one pays any attention to the Kaiser. Doc is asking Mouse if he wants to go to the hospital.

"No hospital, man. Hospitals kill people."

"At least let me take a look at your leg."

"Fine, look."

Doc kneels at the side of the road and tugs the cuff of Mouse’s jeans up to the bottom of his knee. He probes with surprisingly delicate fingers, and Mouse winces.

"Mouse," he says, "I’ve never seen a dog bite like this before."

"Never saw a dog like that before, either."

The Kaiser says, "What dog?"

"There’s something funny about this wound," Doc says. "You need antibiotics, and you need them right away."