Intensity

motor home, now the weight of it and its furious squirming dragged her away from the vehicle. She almost toppled backward, but she knew that the advantage would go to the dog if it managed to drag her to the ground.
         Stay up. Stay tall.
        Lurching around a hundred eighty degrees as she struggled to keep her balance, she saw that the first Doberman was no longer on the porch. Astonishingly, the creature hanging from her neck must be the small one that she had squirted on the muzzle. Now it was able to get its breath again, back in service, undaunted by her chemical arsenal, giving its all for Edgler Vess.
        On the plus side, maybe there were only two dogs.
        She still had the spray bottle in her left hand. She squeezed the trigger, aiming several squirts over her shoulder. But the heavy padding in the jacket sleeves didn't allow her to bend her arms much, and she wasn't able to fire at an angle that could splash the ammonia in the dog's eyes.
        She threw herself backward against the side of the motor home, much as she had hurtled into the fireplace earlier. The Doberman was trapped between her and the vehicle as the chair had been between her and the river-rock wall, and it took the brunt of the impact.
        Letting go of her, falling away, the dog squealed, a pitiful sound that sickened her, but also a good sound- oh, yes -a good sound as sweet as any music.
        Buckles jangling, padded chaps slapping together, Chyna scuttled sideways, trying to get out of the animal's reach, worried about her ankles, her vulnerable ankles.
        But suddenly the Doberman no longer seemed to be in a fighting mood. It slunk away from her, tail tucked between its legs, rolling its eyes to keep a watch on her peripherally, shaking and wheezing as though it had damaged a lung, and favoring its hind leg on the right side.
        She squeezed the trigger on the spray bottle. The creature was out of range, and the stream of ammonia arced into the grass.
        Two dogs down.
         Move, move.
        Chyna turned to the motor home again-and cried out as a third dog, weighing more than she did, leaped at her throat, bit through the jacket, and staggered her backward.
        Going down. Shit . And as she went, the dog was on top of her, chewing frenziedly at the collar of the jacket.
        When Chyna hit the ground, her breath was knocked from her in spite of all the padding, and the spray bottle popped out of her left hand, spun into the air. She grabbed at it as it tumbled away, but she missed.
        The dog ripped loose a strip of padding from around the jacket collar and shook its head, casting the scrap aside, spraying her face shield with gobs of foamy saliva. It bore in at her again, tearing more fiercely at the same spot, burrowing deeper, seeking meat, blood, triumph.
        She pounded its sleek head with both fists, trying to smash its ears, hoping that they would be sensitive, vulnerable. "Get off, damn it, off! Off!"
        The Doberman snapped at her right hand, missed, teeth clashing audibly, snapped again, and connected. Its incisors didn't instantly penetrate the tough leather glove, but it shook her hand viciously, as though it had hold of a rat and meant to snap its spine. Though her skin hadn't been broken, the grinding pressure of the bite was so painful that Chyna screamed.
        In an instant, the dog released her hand and was at her throat again. Past the torn jacket. Teeth slashing at the Kevlar vest.
        Howling in pain, Chyna stretched her throbbing right hand toward the spray bottle lying in the grass. The weapon was a foot beyond her reach.
        When turning her head to look at the bottle, she inadvertently caused the bottom of her face shield to lift, giving the Doberman better access to her throat, and it thrust its muzzle under the curve of Plexiglas, above the Kevlar vest, biting into the thick padding on the exterior of the segmented hard-plastic collar, which was her last defense. Intent on tearing this band of body armor away, the dog jerked back so hard that Chyna's head was lifted off the ground, and pain flared across the nape of her neck.
        She tried to heave the Doberman off her. It was heavy, bearing down stubbornly, paws digging frantically at her.
        As the dog wrenched at Chyna's protective collar, she could feel its hot breath against the underside of her chin. If it could get its snout under the shield