Lobster Wars by Mark E. Greene

Author:Mark E. Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2022-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The Sweet Tail might have been drifting a half mile offshore when Wade shoved Evan over the side, but at dead low tide, he only had to dog paddle for about three hundred yards. Then he slogged through sucking mud, razor-sharp mussels, and barnacle-encrusted rocks, finally pulling himself up a steep bank and slithering under a split rail fence into the backyard of some rich dickhead’s estate.

Shivering and aching, his head foggy from the pills and vodka, Evan hunkered down in a stand of birch on the property’s edge, watching the house slowly go dark, thinking he’d swipe a car and make it back to the harbor where he had left his van.

Then go kill Wade.

Maybe that restaurant guy, too.

Yeah, definitely.

When all the lights were out, he hobbled along a tall hedge, keeping in its shadow as he worked his way toward the front of the house. Big place like this, rich fuckers, they must have cars out the ass. Probably leave them in the driveway, keys on the dashboard.

But when Evan poked his head around the corner of the garage, he was pissed to see that the driveway was empty. He was feeling his away along in the dark, looking for a way to raise one of the garage doors, when he caught his foot on bicycle leaning against the side of the house, crashing it into a row of metal trash cans.

Immediately, a bright floodlight flared. Then all hell broke loose.

What sounded like about a hundred dogs started barking, and then more and more lights came on, bathing the outside of the house in a bright-yellow glow.

Crouched next to the overturned cans, Evan watched as the front door flew open and a pack of baying, howling dogs streamed out into the dark. An old man in a red-and-blue plaid bathrobe, tufts of gray hair dancing wildly on his head, stalked out of the house, waving a double-barreled shotgun and screaming into the night, “Cock-sucking raccoons! Get ’em, girls!”

Evan grabbed the bike, quickly shoved it through the tangled hedge, and jumped onto the seat. Pain shot from his butt up his spine. Grunting and moaning as he peddled away, he heard the old man’s shouts of encouragement to the wailing dogs, punctuated by the booming blasts of the shotgun.

The white stripe on the road’s edge shimmered in and out of narcotic focus as Evan chased it with his front tire, wobbling along, ass throbbing, peddling with one leg. He heard the pack of dogs wheeling through the thick forest off to his right. At any moment, he expected the snarling beasts to break out of the woods and haul him down like a wounded deer.

Trying to avoid the police, he ditched the bike whenever a set of headlights appeared, diving for cover in the tall grass on the shoulder. Three times, the pack of dogs burst out of the forest only inches from his front wheel, sending him sprawling on the asphalt as they poured across the road in snarling pursuit of something small, dark, and very fast.

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