The Thin White Line

Should he try to bluff it out? Nope. Matt took off running across the barren backyard toward the scrub forest at the back of the lot a hundred metres away. He heard the truck skid to a halt, doors slam and shouting. If he reached the trees and bushes at least he’d have some cover if they decided to use him for their target practice. He was almost there when he heard the barking – getting closer and fiercer.

Lungs burning, head pounding, perspiration stinging his eyes, Matt would rather take a bullet in the back than be ripped apart by those dogs.

Blackberry bushes tore at his arms as he crashed through the underbrush. Fifteen metres into the foliage he was confronted by an eight-foot-high chain link fence. Beyond it were the groomed grounds of a townhouse development. He turned to see the dogs, halfway across the yard, racing toward him, their masters shouting encouragement.

Matt ran along the fence looking for an opening. There, a large windfallen tree had come down partially crushing the fence and providing a ramp up and over it. He scrambled on the trunk and shinned his way up.

The first pit bull leaped up and snapped air just below his foot. The other scrabbled over the root and started up the trunk. Matt turned on his back, kicked out with the heel of his shoe and hit the mutt in the face knocking it to the ground. Back on his hands and knees, he crawled along the trunk and over the collapsed fence. Sensing their quarry had eluded them, the dogs chased back and forth along the fence and then ran back toward the house.

He was lowering himself into the flowerbed on the other side when he snagged his right palm on a jagged wire.

“Shit!” A small flap of flesh floated in a gouge filling with blood.

Matt staggered to the front of the complex, sat on a bench near the entrance and tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t believe he was so out of shape, unprepared and stupid. If this was one of the many war zones he’d been assigned to as a foreign correspondence instead of a suburb of Vancouver he’d be dead instead pressing a matted medical mask to a small wound on his hand.