Hair of the Dog by Gordon Carroll (classic novels to read .txt) 📕

men and woman earlier, we pegged them for being on the eighth floor, about midpoint to the northwest end. We duck-walked to the farthest southern point and I took out the grappling hooks, ropes, carabiners, and harnesses.

“What’s all that?” asked Jerome.

I spoke as I worked, setting up the gear. “This is how we get across.”

He looked from the building to the ropes to me and back to the other building, his usual blank expression stamped to his face. “No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry, it’ll be easy.”

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s perfectly safe… well… as perfectly safe as swinging through the air, ten floors up, with guys who want to kill you, armed with lots of guns, can be safe.”

I looked up at him, grinning.

He didn’t grin back.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Do you want to save Keisha?”

He stayed quiet long enough for me to finish rigging the equipment and harnesses.

“Wait here,” I said. I pointed toward the target building. “Make sure they don’t shoot me.”

Each building had a fifteen-foot sheet metal structure that housed the elevator gears and motors and pulleys and electrical stuff. I climbed to the top of ours, and using a battery-powered drill, attached the linkage for the ropes which would be connected by carabiners. I attached the mountain climbing ropes, both lines, hopped back down and waddled in a crouch back to Jerome.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I don’t like heights.”

“I don’t either, but it’s the job and the job has got to be done, so… yes.” I held a harness for him to step into.

Jerome looked at me, blank… but not completely blank now. I saw a twitch in his lower eye lids that I hadn’t seen before. Pretty tame for fear, but that’s what it was. Good to know he could feel fear, because I sure could. Jerome stepped into the harness and I hooked him up. I called Max over and strapped his K9 harness, which I always keep with me in the car, around him; making sure the Velcro straps were snug around his chest and under his legs. He would be riding with me, just like my days in the Corps when I’d parachute in, holding my dog.

We walked back a good five feet and I pointed to where the rain squares were located on our wall at the bottom edge. There were five, evenly spaced the length of the barrier.

“If you look across, you’ll see they’re in about the same location over there. You don’t have to hit right on, just get close then we can drag the hooks over till they’ll lock in.”

I hooked the looped climbing rope through the carabiner, and rope attached to the top of the elevator shaft, and ran them through our harnesses.

“I don’t know how to do this,” said Jerome.

“There’s an app for that,” I joked.

Jerome didn’t get it. He gave me pure blank.

“I’m going to show you, don’t worry. It’s easy. But first you get to throw that hook over there. Chuck it hard. If you miss, it’ll make noise and they might notice. That would be bad.”

“Bad for them,” said Jerome. “I would kill them.”

“You know, you remind me a lot of Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy,” I said.

“I don’t know that either,” he said.

“Throw,” I said. “Hard.”

I was going to tell him to give it a good wind up first, but before I could, he swung the pound and a half three-pronged hook in a single graceful loop and let her fly. The roped barb zipped across so fast I heard it zing. It landed just across the wall and clinked on the floor of the roof about two inches from the portal. Jerome pulled back and its prongs sunk perfectly into the little one-foot square perfectly.

I gave the line a tug and it held fast, not even budging.

“Pretty good,” I said. “For a first try. Of course it was probably beginner’s luck.

Jerome tossed the second line and it landed and locked in as perfectly as the first. I looked at Max. He looked back, unimpressed. I shrugged… pretty impressive actually.

“Good,” I said. “Yeah, good.”

I gave Jerome the crash course on riding a zip line, mostly consisting of holding on and braking with the correct hand at the right time.

Now for the hard part.

“You have to go first,” I told him.

He gave me blank again, only this time it somehow seemed darker.

“You go first.”

“I can’t,” I told him.

“You go first,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, you have to go first. If I go, you might chicken out, and once I’m over there, I can’t get back up here to make you go. Not from over there. The difference in height won’t allow for it.”

He looked at Max. “Him first.”

Again I shook my head. “He’s riding with me. No opposable thumbs to use to brake the rope at the end of the ride.”

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “and no argument. We’re wasting time we don’t have.”

I pointed to the elevator shaft and cupped my hand into a foot hold. “Let’s go, now.”

Jerome hesitated, and for a second I thought he was going to back down, but then he stepped forward and put his considerable weight into my hands. I hoisted and he made the top easily. I climbed up beside him and stretched the lines tight; so tight they vibrated like guitar strings as I tied them down. I hooked the saddle rope over the zip line and through the harness.

Below, beyond the safety of the roof and the wall, lay the depth of the darkness. I showed him one last time how to hold and brake and patted his shoulder, telling him it was time to go.

He looked at my hand on his shoulder and for the first time, he didn’t look at me like something he was fixing to kill. He didn’t look scared, not like a normal human anyway, but he looked different.

I had him sit on the edge of the little structure, told him to