Already it feels like she’s a scarecrow with the straw torn out, tired and floppy and without anything left inside, but that cry spurs her forward—and once again she runs, this time toward the fight, not away from it.

Ahead, the crowd masses around the octagon. She can’t see in; she sees only the throng. Bodies and the backs of heads. She hits the crowd like a crashing wave, pushing through and throwing elbows—someone shoves her, and she shoves back and keeps pushing. A hand yanks at her hair, and she kicks out with her boot and catches someone in the knee—right person, wrong person, she doesn’t know, but the hand relinquishes its grip.

She slams against the plywood side.

She sees—

Red blood on a white coat.

Whitey’s blood. On Whitey’s fur.

His shoulder’s bitten. And bleeding. Ellis stands behind him, spurring him forward with red cheeks and bulging eyes—gone is any semblance of cool, now it’s all rage and spit and the vigor of the fight. An erupting volcano instead of a calm and tireless mountain.

From the other corner rushes an animal that might as well be the love child of a dump truck and a pit bull—cigarette-burn eyes and trailing drool and hell blazing in its heart. The beast’s handler is a middle-aged, clean-cut Nazi with a tight, pockmarked face and fists jabbing at the air.

The dog known as Panzer charges Whitey—but Whitey, unfazed, just lowers his head and tosses the Nazi dog aside. No bite, no blood, just derailing the freight train. Panzer rolls into the dirt, kicking up powder, but lands back on his feet. The bull bolts forward with renewed fury.

This has to stop.

Atlanta climbs up over the plywood. Worst idea ever. And the only one she has.

Ellis sees, splits his attention between her and the two dogs.

Holds his hands up—starts yelling for the ref, “Charlie! Charlie, goddamnit!”

Again the two dogs clash. This time Whitey fails to turn the beast aside.

They rise together, standing on their haunches—Panzer tries to bite, but Whitey holds the Nazi hellhound at bay with his paws: pushing, dancing, shoving. A gnashing canine waltz.

Atlanta runs toward the dogs.

Ellis moves to stand in her way—tectonic plates shifting, an earthen wall in the shape of a man pointing at her.

“He’s not your dog!” he growls, as much a beast as the two dogs in the ring.

Panzer’s jaws go wide, about to clamp down on Whitey’s muzzle. Whitey’s not cut out for this, not a fighter, that part of his bloodline is dammed up and pinched off.

She can’t abide it.

Atlanta points the Luger in the air and fires.

One two three, bang bang bang.