Anybody Want to Play WAR?
Brutal injuries can leave scars.
As the teenage survivor of a savage dog’s rampage, it’s a lesson Bryce Gallo will never forget.
Struggling to cope with his damaged appearance, along with a newfound fear of dogs and mounting anxieties at home and school, he flees his suburban home into the moonlit streets of St. Charles.
Struggling to cope with his damaged appearance, along with a newfound fear of dogs and mounting anxieties at home and school, he flees his suburban home into the moonlit streets of St. Charles.
Along the roads of suburbia and through the shadowed heart of the city, he encounters Wheels, a maintenance worker for a series of apartment buildings; Paloma, known to some by the moniker of Lady Luck; and a woman in a dark house who is, as far as Bryce can fathom, like no one else he has met before.
His new life is not without obstacles or enemies, he learns. The future is a battlefield. Fire and smoke loom on the horizon, and his dangerous course may see the lives of his family and friends forever changed.
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Excerpt
For several seconds, Bryce Gallo stared back at the dog until it shot toward him and lunged.
It drove him to the street on his back. With a flurry of spittle, its teeth latched into his face, digging in deep. The beast fought to rip the flesh away.
Bryce’s senses spun. He struggled for survival, pummeling the dog with his arms, pushing against the daze consuming him. Grinding its teeth in, the hound wrenched its head back.
Bryce’s flesh tore. He gasped. Blood, tears, and canine saliva leaked down his face.
It required a true effort of will to cram his hand into his right pocket, withdraw the pocketknife, and unfold its four-and-a-half inch stainless steel blade. Desperate, he stabbed it deep into the dog’s rage-quivering neck.
The dog reeled, grunted, and squealed. Its jaws slipped free. The canine staggered aside and darted across the street.
With a screech of brakes and a blasting horn, a white Cadillac struck the dog and smeared it across the street in a mess of red, white, and brown.
The hound’s death broke the fog of fear stalling everyone around. A woman screamed. Her boy stood transfixed.
A diminutive older man shouted, “Call an ambulance!”
Bryce pressed his hands against his bleeding face. It hurt, it burned, and that was his base assessment of the pain through his shock. Blood seeped between his fingers. He couldn’t restrain a choked cry. Wild dizziness consumed him.
The hard street, the blood, and the pain fell away in another instant, swallowed by minutes and hours of incomprehension.
About the Author
Tommy B. Smith is a writer of dark fiction, award-winning author of The Mourner's Cradle, Poisonous, the short story collection Pieces of Chaos, and the new coming of age novel, Anybody Want to Play WAR?
His presence currently infests Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he resides with his wife and cats.
