He was galloping straight toward Savannah. His dark eyes were as big as chestnuts. His mouth was filled with teeth and foam.

And then he was on her, leaping the last six feet. Rex’s jaws closed on her thigh, and then he started violently shaking his head. He seemed determined to tear her apart. Somehow, probably thanks to kung fu, she was managing to stay on her feet, her free leg dancing back and forth as she tried to stay balanced.

Finally, I remembered the boom box. I stabbed at the button to play the tape of Sir’s commands. Before we left the RV, I had turned the volume to its highest level.

Sir’s voice suddenly boomed out. “Platz! Hier! Hier! Fuss!” Even though I knew it was just a recording, the sound of him so close caused another wave of terror to crash over me.

Rex abruptly released Savannah’s leg. My knees went weak with relief. Her plan was actually working.

He raised his head. He looked from me to Savannah and back again.

Too late, I realized what the word in the middle of our recording of Sir was. Hier. Pronounced slightly differently, probably spelled differently, but it must have meant “here.” As in “Come here.”

And then Rex abandoned Savannah for me.

Cease negative mental chattering. If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible.

—BRUCE LEE

SAVANNAH TAYLOR

After Jenny broadcast his owner’s voice through the tape player, Rex let me go. Relief flooded my veins, but it was short-lived. He had abandoned me for Jenny. Her eyes went wide as I think we both understood one of the words Sir had meant.

Frantically, she rewound the few seconds of tape and hit the play button again before throwing the recorder a dozen feet away. She must have hoped he would run to it, rather than her.

But Rex didn’t swerve, didn’t even hesitate, as he hurtled toward her. When he was still six feet away, he leapt.

Jenny screamed then, a wordless sound of utter terror. Rex barreled into her chest, knocking her onto her back. I staggered as fast as I could toward them.

My blood chilled when I saw that he had Jenny’s wrist in his mouth. Growling, he shook it back and forth. I was on them now. I hit his nose with a right hammer fist as hard as I could. It was wet with his spittle, and I felt it give under my blow. But it was as if I had done nothing.

Jenny looked like she had fainted, loose and boneless. Her head lolled back, exposing the top half of her throat, which wasn’t protected by the Bruce Lee book.

I needed to try something else. Frantic, I broke off a car antenna and brought it down on the dog’s back like a whip. It didn’t even give him pause.

It was hopeless. I would never get him off her. Soon Rex would drop Jenny’s wrist and go for her throat. And she would die here in the frozen mud, only a few hundred yards from freedom.

I couldn’t let that happen.

The wooden spoon was still in my back pocket. I pulled it out and tried to poke Rex in the eye with the handle. But it just landed on his cheek.

Still, it was enough to make him pay attention to me. Letting go of Jenny, he turned and nipped at the spoon, catching it in his powerful jaws. There was a cracking sound. In a single bite, he reduced it to splinters.

Then he turned back to Jenny, his open jaws dripping spit on her slack white face.

I slapped the dog’s butt. “Come get me! Come on!” I stuck my face close to his.

He lunged at me. I smelled his rotting breath. His jaws snapped closed a few centimeters from my face. I took a step back. As I had hoped, he followed. Weren’t predators hardwired to scan for movement and then chase it? An unmoving Jenny wasn’t as much fun as a person who screeched and ran and leapt.

So I did, running away from Jenny as far and as fast as I could.

But Rex’s four legs were faster than my two. And my path had led me into a tangle of cars from which there was no other exit. I turned to face the dog, my back against the rear end of a big green sedan so old it had fins. If he tried to knock me over, maybe the car would hold me up. I held my arms between him and my face. When he attacked, I would try to give his jaws the splint.

I knew all those moves would only buy me time. In the end, they wouldn’t save me.

There had to be another way.

The front passenger door of the old car stood open. I threw myself back on the bench seat and started frantically scooting away. My heels alternated digging into the rotting upholstery and kicking at the snarling dog as he followed me. I was thankful for the hours I had practiced kicking the heavy bag in kung fu.

When my back hit the door, I groped behind me until I found the handle. I opened it while at the same time giving one last kick to the dog’s chest. It not only pushed him back, but it also propelled me out the door. I landed on my butt. I rolled under the door and then, lying flat, kicked it closed. Barking, Rex lunged at the window, single-minded in his pursuit.

I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain in my wrist. Putting my face close to the glass, I taunted the dog with my proximity. As Rex threw himself against it, I hoped the window was as unbreakable as the one in the RV.

And then before he could turn around, I ran to the other side of the car and slammed the passenger’s-side door shut.

The dog was trapped.

Rex’s growls began to alternate with barks. They were only partly muffled by the confines of the car. We had to get out of here before Sir showed up. I turned back to find Jenny.

She was sitting up, looking dazed. With my good hand, I reached out for her. “Come on, Jenny! Get up! We need to go. Now!”

JENNY DOWD

“You’re bleeding,” Savannah said.

When Rex attacked me, I’d stopped thinking. Even now that he was penned up in the car, every bark made me flinch. My whole body was coated with sweat, my heart was thumping in my ears, and my mouth tasted sour.

Savannah was wiping blood from her good hand on her pants. But it wasn’t her blood. It was mine. It was coming from my right wrist. The white skin just past the layers of clothes now had a dark hole in it, about as big around as a pencil. Blood was steadily leaking from it. When I turned it over, on the other side was a matching bloody hole.

Looking at it, I could sense my wrist was throbbing. At the same time, it didn’t really feel like my wrist or hand. It was now just this weak, useless appendage attached to my body.

With her good hand, Savannah pulled the towel from around her neck. “Here, help me tie this around your wrist to stop the bleeding.”

Together the two of us managed to tie a bulky knot directly over one of the holes. I barely registered the pain as she snugged the towel taut.

“Try to hold your wrist above your heart,” she said. “That will slow down the bleeding.”

I knew enough to nod at her words, but they were more a jumble of sounds than anything that made sense.

“We need to get out of here! That dog won’t shut up. He’ll wake up Sir for sure.”

Sir! That did get through to me. Cradling my wrist to my chest, I began to stagger forward in my best approximation of a run. I hadn’t walked more than a few steps in ten months, and I was already exhausted from getting as far as we had. Soon my muscles were trembling again, my lungs protesting.

As fast as we could, we traversed the graveled, potholed road toward the fence. A squat cinder-block building sat just on the other side. The junked cars were beginning to be in neater rows, and they looked newer and more complete.