took the axe from his shoulder and jumped onto the back bumper of the car.
The car sagged under his weight.
Maintaining his balance, he grabbed the handle of the axe with both hands, one near the blade and one near the bottom, and bending forward placed the weapon neatly in the trunk of the car.
I plunged the knife into the exposed nape of his neck.
He grunted.
Then his heels lost their support on the bumper and he fell backward, landing bewildered, seated on the garage floor.
I walked around him and took the bear spray out of the trunk, removed the safety—
"John... Grousewater?"
And sprayed.
Dogor sniffed at the air, then started clawing madly at his face.
I grabbed the shovel from the trunk and retreated.
There was pain in Dogor's voice, not only physical but emotional. "John Grousewater, help me!"
"I can't help you because I'm the one doing this to you," I said. Although I didn't feel that I was crying, tears were dripping down my cheeks. Holding the shovel as I would a baseball bat, I measured my swing—and smacked Dogor flush in the side of the head.
He keeled over.
He was breathing heavily.
I bent over him and jerked the knife free from the back of his neck. He groaned. The wound spat blood.
I tossed the knife to the work bench, measured another line drive with the shovel, and this time victimized Dogor's back. But the shovel clanged off Dogor's armour, sending stabbing pain up my forearms instead. I let go of the shovel handle, which fell to the garage floor, and made fists until the feeling in my hands came back, as Dogor crawled forward, whispering words I couldn't understand.
I tried stepping on the back of his leg.
He kicked out.
I dropped my keys, then slipped on the pool of Dogor's blood while trying to pick them up, landing on my side on the garage floor. Before I'd managed to gather enough of my wits to push myself up—I saw Dogor's eyes, red and watery—and felt his fist connect with my jaw.
It was like getting clobbered with a brick. Instinctively, I covered up. When a few seconds passed without another punch, I lowered my hands and heard:
The garage door opening, Dogor's boots hitting cement.
He'd taken my keys.
I got to my feet just in time to see him sprint through the open garage door, onto the daylit street.
I took a step to follow, confident that I could outrun a dwarf who was wearing metal plate armour, and almost fell over again. A pain shot up my right leg that made me yelp. I'd hurt my ankle. I thought about getting into the car, but realized that without my keys that was rather pointless. I took a second, more careful, step, grabbed the curved knife off the work bench and hobbled outside while fishing my phone out of my pocket. There wasn't any more need for secrecy or guerillamail accounts, so I called Wayne.
"Dude, you're calling me? Won't that jeopardize the whole plan?" he said immediately.
"Plan's off. New plan," I said, managing to keep Dogor in plain view about a hundred paces in front of me. He must have been groggy from my shovel to his head because he was weaving down the sidewalk like a drunk. "I tried taking him out in my garage but he got away and now I'm chasing him down the street. I gassed him and winged him pretty good, but he got me in the jaw and I think I sprained my ankle. It's a pathetic chase but get over here as fast as you can."
"Sure thing. And guess what I found?"
"What?" I asked.
"Cross-motherfucking-bow!"
I hung up and tried to keep a cool profile. Dogor was a weird sight, granted. But I was just some guy going for a walk down the street. That's what I wanted to be. The last thing I wanted was to raise any suburban suspicions that would result in the police being called. They'd ask for an explanation, and what could I say? They'd catch me in a lie and the truth was unbelievable.
Based on the direction we were walking, it was obvious Dogor was heading for the library, but there was no way he'd make it before Wayne showed up. All I had to do was keep him in sight. I focused on every part of my body save my ankle. I hobbled along.
About ten minutes later, Wayne's truck appeared on the horizon. He was doing way more than the speed limit while also holding a loaded crossbow out his driver's side window. When he was close, he let the bolt fly.
It missed Dogor and nearly hit me.
But Wayne reacted to the situation like any gamer would. He pulled the crossbow inside, put both hands on the steering wheel and slammed into Dogor with two-and-half tons of gas powered truck.
He also hit a hydrant.
Water began shooting out like from a geyser.
An old woman in slippers ran out of her house, screaming, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! A child. They hit a child!"
When I caught up to the accident scene, pretending to be just a regular guy on a regular stroll, Wayne was already knee deep in a lie about blacking out behind the wheel, and he and the old woman were pulling Dogor—moving and moaning—from under the front of Wayne's bumper. I helped and we put him on the back seat of the truck. "We should call an ambulance," the woman was saying. Wayne was gesticulating. Dogor was slowly coming to. "Ma'am, there's no time. We need to get this man to a hospital."
The woman pointed at Wayne. "But he blacked out! He's in no condition to drive. My God!"
"I'll drive," I said, getting in the truck.
The woman crossed her arms over her heart and called me a hero. What she didn't know...
I reversed over the curb and onto the road, did a mediocre u-turn and sped off, my ankle killing me with each tap of the accelerator. "Make sure he doesn't try anything," I said.
In the rear view, I saw Wayne punch Dogor in the face.
I cringed.
"I could put a crossbow bolt right through his neck," Wayne hissed. "I bet it wouldn't even kill the little fucker, just make him squirm like the snake that he is."
"Don't," I said.
"Why the fuck not? I thought the whole point was to get him out to the factory so that we could kill him."
"It is, but you wouldn't understand. I'll kill him."
"John Grousewater," Dogor said—gurgling through his own blood, "you are... member of the Hooded Rat Brotherhood?"
I ignored a stop sign, then turned into the road that would take us to the abandoned factory. What could I say? That there was no Hooded Rat Brotherhood, that Dogor had spent his years fighting an enemy that didn't exist. Or that, yes, I was a traitor, a dirty, no good rat working toward the destruction of Xynk?
"John Grousewater..."
Wayne punched him in the face again.
"Cut that shit out!" I yelled.
Wayne's stare met mine in the rectangle of the rear view mirror. "Have you lost your damn mind? This monster wanted to kill me. He would have killed Annie. You said yourself he needed to be eliminated. I'm just fucking helping you."
Everything that Wayne was saying was true, but the truth didn't change the fact that there was honest terror and confusion on Dogor's face. He was suffering. "He's not real. He came out a video game, remember?"
"Just shut the fuck up for five minutes," I said.
I pulled into the factory parking lot.
I shut off the engine.
Dogor's throat was making a hideous, repetitive popping sound. I wanted to smother and silence it. I didn't want to imagine what Wayne's truck had done to the inside of his body. I wanted my ankle to hurt more than it hurt. Wayne opened the door, exited the truck and slammed the door shut.
"John Grousewater..."
It was just me and Dogor now. "It was a ruse from the very beginning," I said, turning around to face him. He was lying on his back, staring at the dull light on the ceiling. I wanted badly to explain that I was protecting my world from him. That he was dangerous and murderous and because he couldn't see that he needed to be stopped, but I knew his counter-argument, his sincere belief that Wayne—and now I—were enemies of Xynk. Just as Tim Birch h
ad been an enemy. We were both convinced of our own righteousness. So I said nothing more. I don't know if I felt that I owed him anything, but who was I to rip apart his worldview at the very foot of his deathbed? Let him go to his text-based grave knowing whatever he wanted to know.
He grabbed Wayne's crossbow.
But it wasn't armed and he didn't have the strength to lift it. "Traitorous pig."
I got out of the truck, then pulled Dogor out, too.
I wanted to help him to his feet, but my ankle refused to support my weight and I dropped to my knee, dropping Dogor to the cracked asphalt below. He collapsed like a bundle of unbound sticks before raising himself to a kneeling position.
"You murdered Tim Birch," I said.
Dogor spat blood. "Just as I will murder you and all the other enemies of Xynk."
Wayne had retrieved the crossbow, inserted a bolt and was aiming it at Dogor's back. "I don't think you're in any position to be making threats, you three-foot freak."
Dogor's body appeared to sway in the breeze. Pus was seeping out from under his armour. "You think you can end me but I'm immortal. I'm persistent, unfinished. Tim Birch screamed that to me in a pathetic attempt to be spared. And do you know what I did? I cracked his skull in half and took his brain back to Xynk."
"I'll give you one chance to kill yourself," I said. "I'll help you take off your armour. I know you have knives in your boot."
Wayne squeezed the crossbow. "The hell are you doing? You're going to let him have a knife after what he just said?"
"Do it honourably," I said to Dogor.
"Honourably? This isn't a goddamn Kurosawa movie!"
"I can't kill myself any more than you can fly, John Grousewater," Dogor said, slumping forward