Free Doomsday Warrior 01 by Ryder Stacy Page A

fanged jaws slamming shut like a vise on the sleeve of Rock’s dark green field jacket. He smashed the animal so hard in the face that bloody teeth fell to the ground. It slunk away, yowling. Wild dogs, a pack of them. He’d been attacked before, but never surprised like this. Never so many. Orange eyes glowed at him from everywhere, burning with the flames of death. Of blood. Of throats ripped out and arms torn off, dragged away into the bushes. Rockson had seen what these packs could do to a man. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
    Three of them approached out of the darkness, from about ten feet away, moving in slowly, in a half crouch, lips pulled back revealing rows of dagger-sharp teeth. They were huge, almost two hundred pounds apiece, covered with matted, dank hair, and those jaws, big as shovels, foaming, dripping with thick saliva in anticipation of their next meal. Two suddenly shifted to the left as the other approached from the right. Strategy, Rockson thought, going to try and outflank me. He stepped back, raised the shotgun pistol and fired at the two big shepherds as they prepared to launch themselves into his space. The .12-gauge lead load tore from the muzzle of the big gun and spread out in an x-shaped pattern. It caught both of the killer dogs square at the neck and ripped through the heavily muscled hide like butter. Both dropped like dead meat to the bloody ground, their rib cages ripped open like a carcass of butchered beef.
    His hand moving back in an arc to take the recoil of the pistol, Rockson let the force swing it up and instantly forward again. The third of the attack group, a mutant Doberman with a jagged red scar along its entire body, leaped at Rockson, its jaws open wide. The pistol spoke death again and the would-be killer fell to the earth, its brains blasted from the top of its head, hanging out in dribbles of pink putty. Rockson moved backwards quickly now. They were closing in from out of the darkness. From behind trees and rocks and shadows, their eyes filled the whole night. Everywhere was death.
    He kept his eyes on them, moving continuously backwards at an even, almost unnoticeable pace. If he turned and ran they would be on him in a second. His will must tame theirs. He stared at them and aimed the gun at the pack, showing them the weapon that had taken three of them out. “Back! Stay back or I’ll kill. I’ll destroy you with this.” The approaching killers, snarling and snapping at the air with increasing frenzy, smelled the dead members of their pack and stepped over them toward the retreating creature with the glowing fire in his hand. Somehow they knew the gun was poison. It held them back—for a moment. Almost forty of the dogs closed in on Rockson in a semicircle, growling and growing angrier by the second, frustrated at not making the kill. They wouldn’t hold much longer, Rockson could see that.
    A large Doberman with canines nearly six inches long suddenly charged him from twenty feet away. Fast—a blur of fur and teeth. But Rockson was faster. He blasted the dog from the air, bloody pieces of black fur floating slowly above the shattered body. The rest approached closer, now completing the circle around him, coming in from behind. He was cut off. There were five shots left and then . . .
    A shrill sound filled the air. A blinding blue-white light lit the sky, bathing the rock-strewn field with a daylight brilliance. Rockson and the killer pack were caught frozen for a split second as if by a camera—suddenly the dogs ran. Yelping, tails between their legs, they had had enough. The flare floated slowly down, dangling from a small parachute, burning like a sun, sending out waves of purifying light. Within seconds the dogs had bounded back into the darkness from which they had come.
    Rockson turned as the rest of the Freefighters came forward from the woods behind him. Detroit stepped up to him, eyes taking in the ripped carcasses on the hard ground.
    “We couldn’t see