Free An Axe to Grind by Hope Sullivan McMickle Page A

often cattle made their way onto the roads, and the idea of hitting one at that speed made his skin crawl. He retrieved a Kevlar vest, thick leather gloves, a utility belt, riot helmet, a pair of handcuffs and foot shackles, and a catch pole from the trunk. The catch pole he had discovered in the back of an overturned animal control van, and had found it to be imminently helpful. He donned the Kevlar vest, not that it would do him much good - it was designed to stop a bullet, not prevent a set of gnashing teeth from ripping his throat out or taking a massive chunk out of his forearm or thigh - but it did make him feel safer. He tugged on the riot helmet and hurried across 12 th Avenue to properly introduce himself to the girl.

    Her halter top had fallen forward over her head as she swung and thrashed in the snare, exposing perfectly rounded breasts that would have once been attractive but were now little more than sallow grey lumps. John gazed at her with clinical detachment; up close, he noticed more extensive damage. Tatters of bloodless flesh dangled from her palms, and bone gleamed from within a deep gash just above her elbow - clearly post-mortem damage. As John approached, the girl ceased struggling and stared in his direction, tracking his steps. Her eyes burned, not with any kind of cognition or intellect, but with hunger. She bared yellowed teeth and hissed. John hissed back with a wink and a grin. They were so easy to toy with.
    He held his breath as the smell of decay enveloped him. He had never quite become used to the smell of them; the tolerable ones smelled like a gassy dead skunk baking on the highway in the Kansas summer heat. The bad ones emanated a sweet, cloying stench of rot and putrefaction that was nearly unbearable in close proximity. This girl smelled more like dead skunk. John drew in one last breath of clean air and stepped forward, focusing on the task at hand.
    The girl resumed thrashing in her snare, fingers hooked into purple sparkle claws, reaching for him. The movement of her body swung her toward him, and John chose that moment to act. He swung the animal catch pole and deftly slipped the vinyl coated cable loop over her head and around her neck, then released the brake to tighten and lock the noose into place. The vinyl coating in the cable kept it from cutting too deeply into her flesh. The catch pole was six feet in length, but could be telescoped to eight feet, and was perfect for controlling feral animals and keeping them at a distance. John held onto the catch pole and as it shuddered in his hands, eased behind her and released the snare in which she’d been suspended. As he did, her body plummeted awkwardly to the ground and hit pavement with a sickening thud. She immediately began growling and crawling toward him. The whole operation had taken less than a minute but John glanced up and down the alley to ensure that the commotion, or more likely his scent, had not attracted more of her kind. He had been distracted and caught unaware several times before - most recently while helping himself to the Liquor Locker’s stock of Patron, when four adults, a half-grown boy, something that had once been a toddler, and a wolf, a fucking zombie wolf for crissakes, cornered him - and since that last near miss John had been vigilant almost to the point of compulsivity. The alley was clear, the parking lot vacant, and there was no sign of movement or sound other than the growling and hissing of the bag of flesh at his feet. Reassured, he stepped toward her and used both hands to leverage his considerable weight to flip her onto her stomach and drive her head - and most importantly her teeth - into the hot blacktop. He took another step forward and pinned her to the ground with a heavy leather boot caked with dirt and old blood.
    In a single fluid movement, he let go of the catch pole and leaned forward, roughly cuffing her wrists behind her back. He then dropped to his knees and slipped a black