The Pack Paperback - 2009

Over the years, there have been literally hundreds of attacks by pit bull terriers in the United States, many resulting in death and virtually all in severe trauma.

What if? What if a reclusive, hate-filled owner of a family of pit bulls knows the authorities are going to take them from him, and will go to any length to keep it from happening. When old Jimmy Hankins, an anti-social misfit who lives only for his dogs and his beer decides to take his pit bulls from their rundown Phoenix home into a remote wilderness area of Arizona's Sierra Ancha mountain range, he sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of all who live in the high country, man and animal alike.

Already possessing the aggressive nature needed to kill, both from years of breeding and from training at the hands of old Jimmy, the family, abandoned high up in the rugged wilderness miles from civilization with only enough food for several days, quickly learns to adapt and learns to kill small prey first, then moves up to deer and elk. As they evolve into an efficient hunting pack, they go beyond just killing to survive and find basic, instinctual pleasure in the kill, ripping and tearing their quarry far beyond what they need for mere food.

Fate steps in and changes everything for the pack when a lone hiker unknowingly makes his way into the lair where they had been left on their own. Cautious at first, recognizing the hiker as human, but not the human they had relied on, the animals make their first man-kill, unleashing a wave of never-ending blood hunger. Once they had trusted and relied on a human, and that human had betrayed them. All humans would now pay the price for the decision old Jimmy Hankins made.

Once the pack tastes human blood, it doesn't take long for them to seek out their new prey, and they stalk and savagely kill victim after victim while evading large-scale searches with ease in the dense forests. Moving inexorably closer to the Harper ranch, one of the largest cattle ranches in the high country, drawn by some irresistible call, the pack, with no conscious thought of what or why, heads toward a final confrontation in the early high country winter. Somehow, they sense, on a primitive level, that revenge against their old master is at hand. That something, something human awaits them. Not their master, but like their master. They can now live for only the final kill.