The lead character in this sci-fi yarn is a genetically engineered time hunter from the 24th Century who thinks he is an idiot jock from a West Virginia trailer park. He is based on a couple of Baltimore area fighters I have trained. The situation depicted in this chapter is taken directly from two actual situations involving friends of mine in East Baltimore, and composited into a single scene. Excepting the back story, this is one of the most realistic things I have written. Note that small to medium-sized dogs are very easily thrown great distances, by grabbing the hind legs and whirling them. A friend of mine once threw a dead dog across the street and knocked another man over with it, and he was not much of an athlete.

Jay rumbled back into the ghetto of East Baltimore on Randy’s sportster. As he turned up Biddle past some vacant row homes to the flowered windows and painted porch of T.T. Redbone’s Mamma, a chill played up his spine. The last time he had been in this neighborhood he had been running from the cops, and he was now under a blinking blue crime light.

He did not want to be back here, had no one here that cared about him. But Mister Redbone had been his best fighting man. The storming of Puerto Soto on that snowy night in 1628 would probably have been a disaster if not for that big man with the pole-axe and church-door-shield. T.T. had to stay behind in the past because he was wanted for mass murder in the here and now. But this was a here and now that Jay Bracken didn’t like anyway. So he was glad to drop the big man’s pay off with his Mamma.

He unhitched the saddlebags and stepped up to the door as full night descended on the ghetto. Before he could knock on the door a large light-skinned woman opened it. She was near fifty and wore a blue dress and apron. Two small girls were crowding around behind her. She gave Jay a worried look as he took off his helmet to expose his scarred head.

“Yes, may I help you?”

“Ma’am, I lookin’ fer Mister T.T. Redbone’s, Mamma, Misses Anderson. I’m Jay Bracken en I a coworker a his.”

“I am Olivia Anderson, and you may come in Mister Bracken. I am afraid you are being watched by more than one kind of evildoer just now.”

As he stepped in and the kids ran and hid behind the couch and Mamma Anderson locked numerous deadbolts he said, “Ma’am, I got little time. T.T. is alive, married en well en out a dis country. We was military contractors togetha’ en he stayed on fer some easy garrison duty. He sends his love en all a his pay. Dere a few grand cash here Ma’am. Da res’—mos’ of it by far—is in dis account under yer name Ma’am. He wished dat you buy a country house with it. Our employer can be contacted through dis ‘ere cell phone Ma’am.”

Mamma Anderson started to tear up as she looked at the bank book, debit card, cell phone and stack of bills that Three-Rivers had sent with Jay on behalf of the man who was back in the past guarding his holy town. Jay really wanted to hug the lady but it was not his place. T.T. did not like Jay, and Jay knew it down deep. So he had to go before the hugs and thanks came.

“Ma’am, T.T. were my best man in the field—en a betta’ man den mos’ da res’ of us by far, en gotz hisself a good Christian wife Ma’am—Cathlic dough—can’ ged ‘roun’ dat wit’ Spanish girlz.”

He was soon heading out the door as she bubbled thanks behind him and the kids asked her all kinds of questions. He looked around and the narc was gone.

He fired up the bike, and when he began to roll off three cop cars came roaring up. He gunned the throttle, popped the front wheel, and wheeled her up over the hood of the cruiser straight ahead, let it roll down over the trunk, and then bolted down the street on foot with three slow-ass two-legged pigs trying pathetically to keep pace.

He hurdled the hood rats sitting on the stoop out in the cold—Hillbilly express comin’ through yo!

Despite feeling elated he just knew it would be his luck to have a lurker around the corner. So he shot out a stiff arm as he blew by the corner house and heard the narc’s nose snap on his palm. Another cruiser tried to cut him off and he ran right over it.

As always, incapable of being able to visualize losing a footrace, even to an automobile or pure bred stallion, Jay hurdled on down the street, turned a corner into an alley by wall-running six feet up a tree, and darted on, faster than any black man that ever wore a football helmet!

Jay loved to run and headed heedlessly down a dark alley, jumped onto an over-stuffed dumpster and over a double-high concrete wall and scrap-wood fence down into a small concrete yard.

As he spun to his feet and his hand slipped in a smeared pile of dog shit three pit-bulls converged on him. He stood with one gnawing on each shin and another snapping at his face while he held its neck between his hands and it raked his chest with its paws. He tossed that one high over the fence behind him and heard it skidding and then snarling as one of the cops starting shooting at it.

He reached down and ripped one of the meat-munchers off of his shin. He was relieved when he felt his skin give way and the stubby teeth scrape the shin bone. But when he heard that thing swallowing and chunking down a piece of his flesh he got pissed and threw it over the house above. Now that the pit in the alley was being shot to death by the cop Jay decided to give the cop a little more trouble and just kicked the remaining dog over the fence into the alley beyond.

He had to smile when he heard the firing pin click into an empty chamber and the ravenous pit started ripping into the cop as the other cops came to his rescue. He turned quickly and bolted toward the stairs to the kitchen door above, then slipped in dog shit again as a fourth pit that he hadn’t seen bit into his right arm, and they rolled over and over in the slushy smeared dog shit that covered the cracked patio.

He just picked the thing up with his left hand as it chewed on his right arm and ran through the backdoor of the house. There was no storm door and he just shoulder-barreled through the cheap plywood door as it gave way in a shower of glass and rotten splinters. He trampled a crack-ho who was frying eggs in the kitchen, ran over a skinny Jamaican dude with smelly dreads in the hallway, and blew by two fat rappers playing a video game as he ran right through the living room window and crashed, arm-munching-dog-and-all, onto a wrought iron fence. The dog was impaled on the spiked iron fence and he tore his forearm out of its mouth as it yipped, snarled and wiggled.

He ran straight down the centerline on a busy secondary street only to hear a cruiser behind him and see one bearing down on him from up ahead. He ran straight at it. Seeing this, the big beefy cop pulled up and began to get out while drawing his weapon and using the door as a shield. Jay just ran into the door at 25 miles-per-hour, knocking the cop out cold. He made about a block at full tilt before he heard it overhead.

The eye-in-the-sky was over him now and he knew it wouldn’t be long. He just needed to make them pay so he turned around and ran up on the cop that had stopped to attend to the big wounded one.

The cop rendering first aid was a female. She noticed his approach and began to draw her weapon from a close kneel when he was three paces away. He took one long stride, pushed off hard to the left and slammed his left foot into the side of a minivan and pushed off into the cop with a flying knee that sent her head back through the window of the open car door.

To his right he saw some kids looking out their living room window and cheering him on just as the chopper put him in the lights.

He grabbed both of the two downed officers’ nine millimeters and leaped up on the hood of the cruiser full in the beam of the choppers spotlight. He tried to aim high to catch the pilot in the face as he unloaded both weapons. The pilot was apparently a former combat pilot and took most of the rounds in the hull as he veered off. He did manage to knock out the light though.

He heard shots and dog yelps up the street behind him and he dropped the firearms and ran on into the night—right into a tactical van out of which jumped three pissed-off cops with leveled weapons.

He just raised his hands and obeyed orders while they went through the process.

While they were cuffing him they got in their licks, and dropped him on his face a few times, and of course made sure his already lumped-up head hit the roof of the cruiser when they shoved him in.

It was such a relief to be arrested and have his fate taken out of his hands that he was half asleep in seconds, just snoring away through his broken nose while the cop in the passenger seat got on his cell and started talking to his brother about arranging a boot party for some ‘skinhead-piece-of-shit’.