his victim’s crotch, slamming and slamming. Palmer glanced once at Freeman, and a slick mass of bloody saliva slid from his mouth, across a curve of grinning teeth, his fierce glare bright with animal eyeshine.
With no clear shot, in the clutches of fright, Freeman returned to the patrol car, grabbed the cattle prod, which would deliver a high-voltage low-amperage charge, enough to dissuade a bear or bull, maybe enough to kill a man if applied relentlessly. He was back at the scene in three seconds. Colt was still screaming. Department rules forbade the use of the prod on a human being. Fuck the rules. He jammed the copper prongs into Palmer’s back.
In contact with his attacker, Walter Colt would receive a hard but less disabling subsidiary shock, but there was no helping that. The maniac howled, and Freeman stung him again, and Palmer fell off his victim, facedown on the dirt track.
Gasping, groaning, Colt tried with only a little success to overcome the shock, to hitch away from his assailant.
Palmer should remain paralyzed for twenty to thirty seconds and be disoriented, largely helpless, for a minute or more after that.
Freeman slipped a thick plastic zip-tie handcuff from his utility belt. He dropped to one knee beside the prostrate attacker, intending to bind the bastard’s wrists tight together behind his back.
Palmer flailed, rolled over, tried to sit up, hissing with the fury of a taunted serpent.
Heart knocking so hard that it shook his arms, zip tie slipping from his sweat-slick fingers, Freeman scrambled backward, snatched up the cattle prod. He jammed the copper terminals into the maniac’s abdomen. Palmer clawed the hard-packed earth, scoring it as if his fingers were talons and the ground mere sand. Freeman shocked him again, again, and Palmer tossed his head, the cords in his neck standing out like steel cables, and Freeman gave him yet another jolt, a longer one. At last Palmer collapsed, unconscious or dead; Freeman didn’t care which.
He knelt and rolled Palmer facedown and zip tied the man’s hands behind his back. He drew the plastic straps tighter than regulations allowed, then used a second zip tie, even though he’d never heard tell of anyone breaking free of one. He tightened a zip tie around each of the man’s ankles and connected them with a third.
At last, he felt for a pulse in Palmer’s neck and regretted that he detected one.
During all of that, Walter Colt had managed to crawl to the patrol car and sit with his back against the front fender on the starboard side. He was bleeding from both hands, and the little finger on his left had been bitten off. The forefinger hung loose but was still attached by a shred of flesh. The ball of his chin had been bitten so severely that it wobbled as though it would fall off the bone. He was crying like a child, maybe in physiological shock.
Freeman Johnson hurried around to the driver’s door and got behind the wheel and grabbed the mic. He called for an ambulance—“officer down, critical wounds”—gave his position, and asked for backup—“as much damn backup as you can get me”—because the batteries in the prod must be nearly depleted. The plastic cuffs would hold; they always held. But someone was going to have to get a bite block in Palmer’s mouth before they transported him, and Freeman wasn’t going to do that without plenty of assistance.
He got out of the car, retrieved the emergency medical kit from the trunk, went around to Walter, and knelt at his side. The hands were bleeding but not so bad that a tourniquet was required before the EMTs got here. He gave Walter two spools of gauze to squeeze lightly in his fists, to apply pressure to the wounds in his palms. Nothing could be done about the chin.
“Ambulance in route, buddy. They’ll be here in a five minutes, not long, sooner than five.”
“Jesus God,” Walter said, his voice breaking.
Already, Palmer was stirring. He cursed and tried to turn over. He strained his bound wrists and kicked his shackled legs. He arched his back impossibly, as if he might be able to lock his vertebrae in sequence, like a snake, and curl his upper body erect, but he could not, and so he cursed more furiously.
“For God’s sake, what is he?” Walter asked. “Shoot the freak, kill him while you can.”
His partner’s uncharacteristic fear further chilled Freeman. He rose to his feet and retrieved the cattle prod