In admonishment, Tasìa shook her head at a self-realization. The adrenaline made even her thoughts more caustic than what they naturally tended to be.

Ain't that a bitch? Where did that come from?

A dog howled excitedly in the near distance, close by the squat guardpost building.

Ah, there!

The first dog's call to war was joined by several other canines who started barking in response.

Shit. They must be opening the kennels.

As she leaned up to steady herself against a wall, Tasìa surveyed the annex rooftop around her.

Dead in the center stood the radio tower. Beyond it, on the opposite side, was an access ramp large enough to fit a crane bearing truck necessary to service the tower.

She was at an impasse; Tasìa could not risk climbing again even to avoid the coming onslaught until the projectile was removed.

She thought of a story she once read about a doomed couple, a pair of thieves.

Their lives ended after being chased into an alleyway where they were torn apart by a pack of dogs.

Tasìa heard the scurry of their paws on the roadway asphalt as the pack drew closer to her.

Her gun bearing hand shook, more in anger than fear. Tasìa rested the length of her arms against the concrete foundation that the tower set upon to steady her aim as she waited.

She was a petite woman. Even more pronounced was her diminutive stature as a child, until growth spurts caught her all the way up to the smaller end of average height for women of her ethnicity.

Dogs taught to attack humans also tended to bully small women if not controlled for it. She had several bad encounters with them in her youth. There were stitches in the back of her head where one pulled out her hair. A permanent purple blotch on her left buttock where one bit her and would not let go.

Tasìa grew disgusted.

An abomination in the eyes of God. She thought.

It defied the Lord's most Supreme Commandment.

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Tasìa recited it in her head. She held a strong opinion to what to her was a logical conclusion if one accepted the Supreme Commandment as premise.

Those who taught their beasts otherwise were damned traitors to their own species.

Growing angrier, Tasìa stayed attentive to the pack's approach.

She held her aim steady as they raced up the steps. Only two clips left in her fanny pack. She had to make the shots without fail.

She also had a choice to make. Kill them quickly and humanely, or leave one wounded with a gutshot to demoralize the men that followed?

She didn't like the latter choice. The dogs had no moral agency of their own. It wasn't their fault they were trained by uncivilized beasts to behave in defiance of the natural order.

Tasìa decided the choice would depend on the number of rounds she had to spare whether the last dog in the pack would be killed mercifully, or not.

Four Rottweilers rounded the corner, one at a time. This briefly slowed down their approach enough to give Tasìa total surety in her aim. Each of them received an efficient headshot.

No more of the beasts followed after them.

Tasìa scampered over to their bodies and she felt the warm pelt of one.

An ugly business, she acknowledged. An attack dog was a troubled soul bent most unnaturally against its own purpose in the great scheme of things.

By putting them down, ultimately, she was committing a kindness.

Rest in peace, poor things.

The corpses were more than ninety pounds each. That was just at the high end of what she could lift, if she was uninjured.

It would have bought her a little more time if she threw one of the corpses in the way of the guards, as a warning.

Unfortunately, that was not happening. Not in her condition.

The sound of protective gear swished against a body in motion attempting to climb up the ramp.

Tasìa rushed to the corner. Careful not to bend over, she sat on her butt with her legs stretched out at length. It helped her to stabilize her abdomen.

The protrusion, she had yet to find the time to treat, thankfully bled less now.

Tasìa brought the arm of her gun bearing hand over the corner to the wall divider, and she shot once at knee level. With the barrel of the snub-nose tilted down, she shot thrice to create ricochet.

One guard yelled into his two-way radio.

"Fall back! Fall back! Give me a suppressed fire cover. I've got an injured man."

A voice answered back.

"Roger that, Chief. Two are now setting up positions to assist. Call. Call. Status update on the K-9 officers."

"Sorry Saens. All four down. She possesses small arms of unknown caliber and round quantity.

"Call. Call. No more risk of engagement. Get our sharpshooters in position. We'll force her out."

"Copy that, Chief. Anybody who'd kill a dog in cold blood deserves what they have coming."

"It was either her or the dogs, Saens. I would have done the same."

The suppressive fire began as the guards retreated.

Tasìa sat still for a moment to wonder about the strange new world she inhabited.

K-9 Officers?

The utter perversity of the concept caused her mouth to tingle in the taste of bile on her numb tongue.

Tasìa stood up and she shook these concerns from her thoughts. She now had the extra time she had sought.

She looked down at her abdomen and pulled up the t-shirt once more.

With the adrenaline surge flowing through her, Tasìa did not feel anything. It was an odd feeling, or absence of feeling, as it were, to witness a piece of metal sticking out of her own gut and, yet, to experience no pain.

She might as well have been watching a movie starring someone else.

The piece of metal protruded out a little over an inch; it appeared to be a thin rod. Like an antenna, but split into two halves and shivved on one side.

Tasìa reviewed the accident in her mind. The angle of penetration made no sense to her. She kept her back towards the crash as she fled from it.

Then she had her answer. Warm liquid drizzled down her back and it dripped uncomfortably into her buttcrack.

That explained it. She was hit from behind with the puncture wound piercing right through her.

Aie... Aie . . . Jesus!

Tasìa twisted her head back as far as it would go. The entrance wound was outside of her line of sight. She carefully felt the surrounding flesh of the piercing.

Thankfully, nothing extruded from the wound, meaning she had not been truly impaled. Just pierced.

Just pierced. I'm just so relieved.

The thought made her queasy. She never so much as had her ears pierced given her dislike of needles. Thoughts of the rose thorns returned in a brief respite of revelry.

Where were these new interests of hers coming from?

She had not even realized she was giggling to herself until a sharp pain jolted Tasìa back to the here and now.

Can't afford to lose focus.

She concentrated on her inventory. Tasìa had built up a good cache of stolen first-aid equipment that she had swiped from the floors and stored in her stash locker.

She brought out several gauzes and a six-pack of heavy-duty napkins pre-soaked in sanitizer. Also in her fanny pack were her sewing kit, a pair of tweezers, and liquid bandage.

The entrance wound on her back did not bleed much, now. Fortunately, it was an uncomplicated straight ahead wound. The piercing through her could not have been cleaner if it had been committed by a sharpshooter.

No zigs, no zags.

In preparation, Tasìa took a gauze out of its packet. She split it in half and rolled one side of it tight. She also opened the packet of sanitized wraps and a second gauze. She lay the wound sealant beside the rest of the first-aid assembly.

Tasìa leaned back and she lay flat on the annex rooftop. She breathed in to stretch out the area of her tummy. This firmed-up the protrusion more steadily as it poked out of her flesh.

With everything now set in place, she kept her breath held in. With her right thumb and index finger, Tasìa pinched the top of the shivved rod.

It bit back into the meat of her thumb. This pain Tasìa could feel, but she ignored it.

She counted to three before she lifted the rod carefully up, straight and vertical. It was nearly three and a half inches in length.

Blood gushed up from the wound. Tasìa forced herself to breathe in and out at a slow and steady pace.

She cleaned off the blood with the sanitized napkin. Holding it in place to prevent any more gushing, Tasìa had to force herself to stay patient.

After wiping the blood away once more, she took the tightly coiled strip of gauze and placed it into the wound. The tube for the liquid bandage was shaped like a magic marker that had a pressure gauge on its top end.

She set it to half strength before rubbing the dispenser back and forth on her wound until the seal was set in place.

With another gauze spread across the wound, her first task was completed.

The entrance wound on her back did not take as much time to treat. Tasìa nixed using any more of the gauzes as she had no visibility to gauge the effectiveness of her treatment.

After cleaning up the wound with a second sanitized napkin and applying the liquid bandage, she was done.

To test the success of the procedure, Tasìa lightened her own mood with a line from a favorite old action-comedy movie.

Alright, then. Now to deal with those pesky, pesky sharpshooters.

The giggles this caused brought to her no pain in her gut. To her relief, likely no fragments remained, or else she would be doubled over in pain.

A bullet smacked off the lattice girders a few feet above her. Tasìa crouched down behind the concrete foundation support as she tried to gauge from which direction the shots originated.

Pesky, pesky sharpshooters, indeed.