I kept choking him, but it didn’t seem to be bothering the bastard. I didn’t get it. This guy was half my size, not overly strong-looking, and I knew what the hell I was doing.

Up he came, and out of the choke, and wheeled on me. I started kicking his shins and inside his thighs and his groin, but he kept struggling.

I kicked him one last time and decided I liked the gun after all. If just to discourage him. I pulled it, an automatic. It didn’t slow him down. He charged and I jammed it forward into his face, hitting him with the barrel. I struck him with such force the barrel slide was knocked back and it ejected a shell, but still he came, trying to get the gun. I should have shot him, but didn’t. I avoided him and tossed the gun over the fence.

He bellowed like something out of hell, came on hard again, and I wished now I hadn’t been so ethical. In that moment, had I had the gun, I would have emptied it into him. I was so frightened I thought of trying to break away and climb the fence for the automatic. But there wasn’t time for that now.

I hit him with a slipping elbow to the side of the face, dropped my arm and hit him with a hammer fist in the balls, went for a hammerlock, but that was like trying to put a lock on a rubber hose. I couldn’t hold him. I jabbed a finger into one of his eyes, and for the first time I got the right response. He went back, holding his face. In an act of desperation I leaped up sideways with both feet and hit him in the chest with the force of my entire body.

I at least succeeded in knocking him down. I got up, scared. In this rare moment of breathing room, I considered again going for the fence and the gun, but he went for it instead, leaped, grabbed the links, began to climb over.