She jammed the bottle in its face, pulled the trigger, pulled, and the dog scrambled off her, screaming.
A few drops of ammonia penetrated the visor through the series of small holes across the center of the pane. She wasn’t able to see through the fogged Plexiglas, and the acrid fumes made breathing difficult.
Gasping, eyes watering, she dropped the spray bottle and crawled on her hands and knees toward where she thought the motor home stood. She bumped into the side of it and pulled herself to her feet. Her bitten foot felt hot, perhaps because it was soaking in the bath of blood contained in her shoe, but she could put her weight on it.
Three dogs so far.
If three, then surely four.
The fourth would be coming.
As the ammonia evaporated from the face shield and less rapidly from the front of her torn jacket, the quantity of fumes decreased but not quickly enough. She was eager to remove the helmet and draw an unobstructed breath. She didn’t dare take it off, however, not until she was inside the motor home.
Choking on ammonia fumes, trying to remember to exhale downward under the Plexiglas visor but half blinded because her eyes wouldn’t stop watering, Chyna felt along the side of the motor home until she found the cockpit door again. She was surprised that she could walk on her bitten foot with only tolerable twinges of pain.
The key was still sewn securely to her right glove. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger.
A dog was wailing in the distance, probably the first one that she had squirted in the eyes. Nearby, another was crying pitifully and howling. A third whimpered, sneezed, gagged on fumes.
But where was the fourth?
Fumbling at the lock cylinder, she found the keyhole by trial and error. She opened the door. She hauled herself up into the copilot’s seat.
As she pulled the door shut, something slammed into the outside of it. The fourth dog.
She took off the helmet, the gloves. She stripped out of the padded jacket.
Teeth bared, the fourth Doberman leaped at the side window. Its claws rattled briefly against the glass, and then it dropped back to the lawn, glaring at her.
*
Revealed by the light from the narrow hallway, Laura Templeton’s body still lay on the bed in a tangle of manacles and chains, wrapped in a sheet.
Chyna’s chest tightened with emotion, and her throat swelled so that she had trouble swallowing. She told herself that the corpse on the bed was not really Laura. The essence of Laura was gone, and this was only the husk, merely flesh and bone on a long journey to dust. Laura’s spirit had traveled in the night to a brighter and warmer home, and there was no point shedding tears for her, because she had transcended.
The closet door was closed. Chyna was sure that the dead man still hung in there.
In the fourteen hours or longer since she had been in the motorhome bedroom, the stuffy air had acquired a faint but repulsive scent of corruption. She had expected worse. Nevertheless, she breathed through her mouth, trying to avoid the smell.
She switched on the reading lamp and opened the top drawer of the nightstand. The items that she had discovered the previous night were still there, rattling softly against one another as the engine vibrations translated through the floor.
She was nervous about leaving the engine running, because the sound of it would mask the approach of another vehicle in case Vess came home earlier. But she needed lights, and she didn’t want to risk depleting the battery.
From the drawer, she withdrew the package of gauze pads, the roll of cloth tape, and the scissors.
In the lounge area behind the cockpit, she sat in one of the armchairs. Earlier, she had stripped out of all the protective gear. Now she removed her right shoe. Her sock was sodden with blood, and she peeled it off.
From two punctures in the top of her foot, blood welled dark and thick. It was seeping, however, not spurting, and she wasn’t going to die from the wound itself anytime soon.