Free Futile Efforts by Tom Piccirilli Page A

Shepherd followed him out the front doors.   His guts were on fire but the pain didn't impede him at all.   That was surprising.   He looked down and saw he was covered in blood, but still it didn't feel all that bad.   Shock.   They always talk about shock at times like this.   He didn't really know what it meant, but he realized when it wore off all that agony came flooding back in.
    "Ah, shit."
    He kept a stiff stride without any real notion of where he was headed.   The dog kept up, panting and looking around, maybe searching for his master.   In a couple of blocks Vin started to stagger a little, bouncing along parked cars as they picked up speed, as if heading towards something, maybe the purpose he'd been after.
    The sound of breaking waves on the beach became clearer and clearer, but they were leaving the neighborhood lights behind.   It grew darker, and now it was as if the German Shepherd were leading him.   He felt the boardwalk beneath his feet, the heavy resounding thump of his footsteps bringing him back to when he was a kid.   When the pier was alive with families and laughter and his father making those silly seagull noises.   When he had more ahead of him than behind.
    Another noise strengthened beneath the pulsing sound of the ocean, and it took a second to make it out.   Steadily it escalated.   Sirens.
    So I'm a fugitive now?   Well yeah, of course he was.   You slap around a cop and a pregnant lady and steal a killer dog, and sure, they're gonna want to come after you.
    Vin felt it now, burgeoning within him.   A boiling agony that was about to break free.   He champed his lips against it and tried not to cry out.   Held his hands tightly over his belly and felt the rip there.   The crescendo of crashing waves broke over him with a roar and Vin turned and turned, unsure of his direction.   That was nothing new.   Sweat stung his eyes and the darkness had a weight that bore down.   The German Shepherd barked an instant too late and Vin found himself falling.
    He was underwater.   It snapped him awake and brought him back into himself.   He'd gone off the pier.   Man, when you start down a fucking dangerous, ludicrous path you really go all the way to the end of it.
    Gasping, he rose and broke the surface and felt the German Shepherd swimming and scrambling along with him against the moorings of the pier.   There was more light now.   It was nearly dawn, and the horizon bloomed with a mounting orange.   He saw a slime-covered, rotting ladder but the waves bounced him against the pilings and he kept getting beaten back.   The dog in its terror started to bite him.   It snapped at his throat and missed, then locked its jaws on his forearm.   Another scream worked up Vin's throat but he felt it was important to keep it in, to keep everything inside.   Letting it out now would prove he'd been wrong, that the dog was a killer and should be gassed, injected, burned.   Once he started screaming he'd never stop.
    "Hold on," he whispered, talking to the German Shepherd and himself, imaging his father just above on the boardwalk, leaning down and trying to help.
    It hit Vin then that he didn't know the waitress's name.
    Or the blind man's.   Or the pregnant woman's.   Or the dog's.   Or even the three tough guy jocks who'd let the loss of their ambitions drive them to such foolishness at the wrong time.
    Exactly like him.
    Another bellowing siren somewhere nearby, but not near enough.   Reaching for the ladder again he managed to grab hold of the bottom rung.   He slipped off but dove and managed to clench it.   He thought of the way Dad's arms had bulged with power.   It gave Vin a moment of fire where he managed to heave himself up a bit, but the weight of the dog held him down.   The tear in his belly opened wider.   I am weak, he admitted, so goddamn weak, and it's brought me to this.
    He didn't want to shirk the animal free.   You don't kill your last friend.   He