Read The Sound and the Furry for Free Online

was legit.”
    “As legit as anyone in our business,” Mitch said.
    “Now I’m scared,” Bernie said.
    Mitch was still laughing when he hung up.

    Bernie got out his old Army duffel bag, started throwing things into it. “Twenty-hour
     drive, give or take,” he said. “Or we could fly and rent wheels on the other end.
     Flying means a crate.”
    He looked down at me. I looked up at him. Crate? That brought back memories, almost
     totally faded away. But not quite, amigo.
    “We’ll drive,” Bernie said. He zipped up the duffel. “Lie down, big guy. Get some
     shut-eye. We leave at dawn.”
    I lay down at the foot of Bernie’s bed and closed my eyes, followed his movements
     by sound as sleep came fuzzing all around me. He picked up the duffel with a soft
     grunt, carried it to the front hall, let himself out, walked onto the driveway, his
     foot crunching on something crunchy, maybe a twig. Then came a squeak from the trunk
     opening, the thud of the duffel getting tossed in, and—another footstep-on-a-twig
     crunch? I’d kind of been expecting the thump of the trunk closing. There it was: a
     thump. But not a trunk-closing-type thump. This was different, a thump I didn’t like
     at all. The next thing I knew I was charging out the front door.
    Oh, no! Bernie was on his knees behind the car, blood drippingdown his face. A man with a ski mask covering his own face stood over him, a tire
     iron raised high. He didn’t see me coming until it was too late. Too late for him,
     not for me. I caught his forearm between my jaws as he was swinging that horrible
     tire iron down at Bernie’s head, caught it good and bit my hardest, my top teeth and
     bottom teeth meeting up deep inside his arm. He screamed, tried to twist himself free,
     and hey! Somehow got his other hand on the tire iron and whipped it sideways at my
     head. Whack! A black hole sprang up out of nowhere in my mind and started growing.
    Fight it off, big guy, fight it off. That was Bernie’s voice talking inside me. It hardly ever happens, but when it does
     I pay attention. I rose to my feet in the driveway—Bernie was rising, too, wiping
     blood from his eyes—and saw the masked guy running down Mesquite Road, supporting
     his bitten arm with his free hand. A motorcycle was parked next to my fire hydrant
     down the block; not actually mine, I suppose, but no time for that now. I took off.
    The man mounted the bike, glanced back, and saw me coming. The engine roared. I dug
     in, my claws tearing into the pavement, still hot and soft from the day. My heart
     pounded like some huge engine of its own, driving away all traces of that black hole
     in my mind. The man’s hand—the only useful one now—squeezed the throttle and the bike
     rose almost straight up in a wheelie, back tire screaming. I sprinted my very fastest,
     came real close to catching up, and at the last possible moment leaped the very most
     powerful leap of my whole life. I hit him on the shoulder, hit him hard. The bike
     went spinning across the road and the man flew high into the air, his mouth—visible
     through the mouth opening in the mask—a big round black hole of its own. He landed
     on his head and lay still.

FIVE
    F ritzie Bortz, a highway patroller pal of ours—a pal even though he’d written us up
     once to make his quota, whatever that was, and then had done it again!—was the first
     cop on the scene. He pulled up on his bike, had some trouble with the kickstand, almost
     fell over. Fritzie was a pretty poor bike rider, had caused lots of accidents.
    He dismounted, came over to us, his belly stretching his shirt and hanging over his
     belt in a friendly sort of way. The biker lay motionless on the road, mask ripped
     to shreds and face exposed. It was a face we didn’t know. I did know that the smell
     of the living leaves very quickly and the biker’s was totally gone already.
    “What’s with your forehead?” Fritzie said.
    Bernie had his T-shirt in his