Fear Nothing

emerged. This nightmarish metamorphosis had been underway for some time but had culminated before my eyes. The last of the former chief was gone forever, and the person whom I now challenged eye to eye was driven entirely by need and desire, uninhibited by a conscience, no longer capable of sobbing as he had sobbed only minutes ago, and as deadly as anyone or anything on the face of the earth.
        If he carried a laboratory-engineered infection that could induce such a change, would it pass now to me?
        My heart fought itself, throwing hard punch after hard punch.
        Although I had never imagined myself capable of killing another human being, I thought I was capable of wasting this man, because I'd be saving not only Orson but also untold girls and women whom he intended to welcome into his nightmare.
        With more steel in my voice than I had expected, I said, “Let the dog out of the car now .”
        Incredulous, his face splitting with that familiar rattlesnake smile, he said, “Are you forgetting who's the cop? Huh, freak? You forgetting who's got the gun?”
        If I fired the Glock, I might not kill the bastard instantly, even at such close range. Even if the first round stopped his heart in an instant, he might reflexively squeeze off a round that, from a distance of less than two feet, couldn't miss me.
        He broke the impasse: “All right, okay, you want to watch while I do it?”
        Incredibly, he half turned in his seat, thrust the barrel of his pistol through one of the inch-square gaps in the steel security grille, and fired at the dog.
        The blast rocked the car, and Orson squealed.
        “ No !” I shouted.
        As Stevenson jerked his gun out of the grille, I shot him. The slug punched a hole through my leather jacket and tore open his chest. He fired wildly into the ceiling. I shot him again, in the throat this time, and the window behind him shattered when the bullet passed out of the back of his neck.

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    26
        
        I sat stunned, as if spellbound by a sorcerer, unable to move, unable even to blink, my heart hanging like an iron plumb bob in my chest, numb to emotion, unable to feel the pistol in my hand, unable to see anything whatsoever, not even the dead man whom I knew to be at the other end of the car seat, briefly blinded by shock, baffled and bound by blackness, temporarily deafened either by the gunfire or perhaps by a desperate desire not to hear even the inner voice of my conscience chattering about consequences.
        The only sense that I still possessed was the sense of smell. The sulfurous-carbon stink of gunfire, the metallic aroma of blood, the acidic fumes of urine because Stevenson had fouled himself in his death throes, and the fragrance of my mother's rose-scented shampoo whirled over me at once, a storm of odor and malodor. All were real except the attar of roses, which was long forgotten but now summoned from memory with all its delicate nuances. Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood , said Chazal. The smell of that shampoo was my way, in my terror, of reaching out to my lost mother with the hope that her hand would close reassuringly around mine.
        In a rush, sight, sound, and all sensation returned to me, jolting me almost as hard as - but less mortally then - the pair of 9-millimeter bullets had jolted Lewis Stevenson. I cried out and gasped for breath.
        Shaking uncontrollably, I pressed the console button that the chief had pressed earlier. The electric locks on the back doors clicked when they disengaged.
        I shoved open the door at my side, clambered out of the patrol car, and yanked open the rear door, frantically calling Orson's name, wondering how I could carry him to the veterinarian's office in time to save him if he was wounded, wondering how I was going to cope if he was dead. He couldn't be dead. He was no ordinary dog: He was Orson, my dog, strange and special, companion and friend, only with me for three years but now as essential a part of my dark world as was anyone else in it.
        And he wasn't dead. He bounded out of the car with such relief that he nearly knocked me off my feet. His piercing squeal, in the wake of the gunshot, had been an expression of terror, not pain.
        I dropped to my knees on the sidewalk, let the Glock slip out of my hand, and pulled the dog into my arms. I held him fiercely, stroking his head, smoothing