Intensity

at a slightly better angle, it might be able to bite her chin, would be able to bite her chin, and at any moment it was going to realize this.
        She heaved with all her strength, and the dog clung, but she was able to hitch a few inches closer to the spray bottle. She heaved again, and now the bottle was just six inches beyond her grasping fingertips.
        She saw the other Doberman limping toward her, ready to rejoin the fray. She hadn't damaged its lungs, after all, when she slammed it between her and the motor home.
        Two of them. She couldn't handle two of them at once, both on top of her.
        She heaved, desperately hitching sideways on her back, dragging the clinging Doberman with her.
        Its hot tongue licked the underside of her chin, licked, tasting her sweat. It was making that horrible, needful sound deep in its throat.
         Heave.
        Spotting her point of greatest vulnerability, the limping dog scudded toward her right foot. She kicked at it, and the dog dodged back, but then it darted in again. She kicked, and the Doberman bit the heel of her Rockport.
        Her frantic breathing fogged the inside of the visor. In fact, the breath of the clinging Doberman fogged it too, because its muzzle was under the Plexiglas. She was effectively blind.
        Kicking with both feet to ward off the limping dog. Kicking, heaving sideways.
        The other's hot tongue slathered her chin. Its sour breath. Teeth gnashing an inch short of her flesh. The tongue again.
        Chyna touched the spray bottle. Closed her fingers around it. Though the bite hadn't penetrated the glove, her hand was still throbbing with such crippling pain that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to hold on to the bottle or find the right grip, wouldn't be able to work the lever-action trigger, but then she blindly squeezed off a stream of ammonia. Unthinking, she had used her swollen trigger finger, and the flash of pain made her dizzy. She shifted her middle finger onto the lever and squeezed off another blast.
        In spite of her kicking, the injured dog bit through her shoe. Teeth pierced her right foot.
        Chyna triggered another thick stream of ammonia toward her feet, yet another, and abruptly that Doberman let go of her. Both she and the dog were shrieking, blind and shaking and living now in the same commonwealth of pain.
        Snapping teeth. The remaining dog. Pressing toward her chin, under the visor. Snap-snap-snap . And the eager hungry whine.
        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