Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  If only humans were as reliable, as easy to train.

  “Dogs, attack.” The word was quiet, but every dog present was waiting for it. Bentley and Sirius stayed at their positions, but the rest of the dogs surged into the building, the larger ones leaping through the boarded up windows, the smaller ones surging in the front door. Growls and barks that were twisted by the unnatural shapes of their throats overlapped into a single noise.

  She waited outside the building, one hand on Bentley’s neck. He wanted to go, she knew it from the tension, but he was obedient. Good. This was a test for him.

  Another howl sounded, far away, startling her. If her dogs were here with her… oh. Only one dog would be elsewhere. She listened as the howl came again. Yes. Angelica’s howl reflected her size and the degree to which Bitch had used her power on her. More than Bentley, Sirius and Lucy.

  She whistled for them to come back, long and loud, and her dogs came tearing back through the building. She checked, and she couldn’t make out any blood that didn’t belong to the dogs. Good. Better to terrorize and inflict light wounds than to maim or murder. If the people in that building stayed in her territory, she would be surprised.

  She climbed onto Bentley’s back, then whistled twice. Come.

  A jerk of the chain collar around Bentley’s neck and a kick to his sides spurred him into action. The others followed, some yipping or barking with excitement.

  Did other people experience anything close to this? Did Taylor, Brian, Lisa or Alec? She felt like she was one with Bentley as she caught quick breaths between his jarring footfalls. Water splashed onto her skin and his. Her legs pressed against his body, and she could feel the expansion and contraction as he huffed out breaths. She trusted him, and he trusted her absolutely in return. It varied from one dog to the next, but the same was true with the others that were following in Bentley’s wake. They believed in her, and if they didn’t love her yet, she knew it would come in time, with her patience and continued care of them. What did Lisa have that compared to that rush, this security? What did the others have?

  Why, Bitch wondered, are they happier than me?

  Unbidden, the answers came to mind.

  She remembered living with her mother. She couldn’t even remember the woman’s face, but that was little surprise. Mom had worked anywhere from three jobs to none, but she spent little time in the apartment. When she was home, she was either drinking in her room or partying with friends. Little Rachel’s questions or attempts to get attention were met with anger, rejection. She would be pushed away or locked in her room. Better to stay quiet, watch for an opportunity. If her mother passed out drunk, bills could be taken from her wallet, secreted away for later purchases of bread, peanut butter and jam, milk and cereal or orange juice at the corner store. If there was a party, and if she was successful in keeping from getting underfoot, she could often snatch a bag of chips, a box of ribs or chicken wings, to eat under her bed or on the roof.

  So she got by. Until the day her mother didn’t come home. The food in the cupboards had disappeared, even the cans of pineapple, pears and nuts in foul-tasting syrup that had been left behind by the apartment’s previous residents. Desperate, terrified to leave the apartment in case the fifteen minutes she spent looking for food were the same fifteen minutes her mother stopped by, she’d turned to trying to cook the rice, standing on a chair to reach the sink and stove-top. After pouring the rice into the water that had been sitting on the hot stove, she’d accidentally brought her arm down on the arm of the pot, and tipped it all over herself. In retrospect, it was a blessing that she hadn’t known that the water should be boiling. Still, it was hot enough to turn her skin pink and leave her screaming enough to drive the neighbors to call nine-one-one.

  Then the foster homes. Home one, where the parents were kind, but lacked the patience to deal with a little girl who child protective services had labeled a borderline feral child. Her foster-sister there had been a mongoloid that stole things, breaking or ruining what she couldn’t take for herself. Rachel had responded the only option she could think of, attacking the girl who was three years older and fifty pounds heavier, leaving the girl bloody and sobbing.

  They found a new home for her rather quickly, after that.

  Home two, where the parents were not kind, and she had four foster siblings rather than the one. Three years there, a long series of lessons on what she’d done to the idiot sister from the first home, taught with the roles reversed. An education in violence of every kind.

  Unable to keep the feelings bottled up within her, she screamed until she couldn’t breathe any longer. Then she took a deep breath and screamed again. Even though she screamed until it hurt, it was tiny and insignificant compared to everything she wanted to convey.

  Home three had been the breaking point. Two foster siblings, a single foster-mother. She’d overheard her caseworker saying that the new foster-mother would be a disciplinarian, the only person that might be able to turn Rachel into a civilized human being. Bitch’s opinion, years later, was that this had been a retaliation, a punishment inflicted on her by the caseworker for the countless trips to school or the home to deal with Rachel.

  She hadn’t believed that her foster mother could be more of a disciplinarian than her second set of foster parents. Realizing the nature of her situation had been unpleasant. The foster-mother brooked no nonsense, and had a keen eye for every failing and mistake on her children’s part, quick to punish, quick to correct. If one of her children spoke with their mouths full, she would snatch that child’s plate away and dispose of the contents into the trash can. Never the carrot, always sticks. Rachel was made to attend school, then after-school make up classes, with piano every other day, as if she couldn’t be bad if she didn’t have the time.

  But Rachel hadn’t been equipped for these things, would never be equipped for school or manners or piano. She fought back, challenged her foster-mother’s authority at every turn, and when she was punished for this, she fought back twice as hard.

  She might have gone insane if it wasn’t for Rollo. She’d stumbled onto the mangy, hostile puppy in an alley between her after-school classes and home. After earning his trust with scraps of her lunch over the course of days and weeks, she brought him home and chained him up at the very back of the expansive backyard, out of sight of the house.

  She had stayed quiet when her foster-mother complained about the neighbor dog’s barking, feeling a confused mixture of smugness and terror every time it came up. Her lunch money went towards buying the dog scraps of food, guessing at what he needed, and this sacrifice of her lunches coupled with the frequent lack of dinner left her getting headaches and her stomach growling constantly during school. She would wake up at four in the morning to visit him and play with him, and the lack of sleep left her so tired she would drift asleep in the middle of class.

  But a dog couldn’t be chained to a tree, not for twenty-two hours out of every day. She’d seen him grow increasingly agitated and unhappy, to the point that she couldn’t play with him without him hurting her. So she’d untied him to take him for a walk. He’d slipped free and headed for the house. Her blood running cold, she’d chased after him.

  When she caught up to him, she found him in the pool; she couldn’t swim, and he couldn’t climb out. She’d pleaded with Rollo to come out of the pool, tried to run around the pool’s edge to get to him so she could pull him free, but he’d been scared, and swam away from her.

  Then the plastic cover of the pool began to slide closed. When Rachel had looked to the house, she’d seen her foster-mother standing on the other side of the sliding glass door that opened into the backyard, her finger on the switch. Slowly, gradually, despite her screams and banging on the locked door, the cover had slid over Rollo’s head, trapping him. For nearly a minute, there was the bulge beneath the cover of Rollo’s head as he swam in tight circles, his sounds of distress muffled.

  Her foster-mother’s punishments always matched
the crimes. There could be no doubt Rachel knew the dog from her pleading and shouts, and having a dog was against the rules. Or maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was the fact that she was making a disturbance at five in the morning, or the realization that the barking that had plagued her foster mother for so long was Rachel’s fault. Whatever the reason, the dog was to be disposed of, much in the same way as a plate of dinner was thrown out for holding a fork the wrong way or sitting at the table with her legs too far apart.

  She’d woken to her power in that moment of panic. Fed by her power, Rollo had grown enough to tear through the cover. He’d then torn through her foster mother. The shrill screaming of her foster siblings indoors had drawn his attention, and he went after them too, pouncing on them like any excitable dog might do with a mouse or rabbit. He’d torn through door frames and walls, and an entire section of the house and collapsed in on her foster family. In one fell swoop, she lost the closest things she had to a home and family. It hadn’t been perfect, it had been nightmarish at times, but she’d had so little for so long, she found herself clinging to the scraps she did have. She ran, then, and she kept running for a long time after that.

  Her breath hitched as she drew in a breath. She shook her head violently, to shake away the tears. She had stopped screaming, but her dogs were making up for it as their voices had joined hers and continued long after she’d stopped, almost drowning out Angelica’s howls.

  So many bad memories. Memories she wished she could purge from herself, scour from her brain with fire and bleach and steel bristled brushes.

  She was unhappy because humans were pack animals, she decided. Taylor and Lisa and Brian could smile and laugh because they had their pack, they had their family members and they had each other. Alec was more of a loner, but he could still joke and laugh with Brian. They had their pack, their dynamic. She wasn’t really a part of it.

  Bitch knew that she wasn’t a lone wolf by choice the way that Alec was. There was a void there, some part of her that craved that human connection because she was a human and that’s what humans needed. The way things had played out, things she had no control over, she’d never had a chance to figure out how to deal with people, how to invite them in to fill that void. Friendships and family, conversations and jokes, being close to others and knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet? They were treacherous things, littered with complicated nuances, bad associations and worse memories. Even if she somehow got something right, she always managed to fuck it up sooner than later. Easier to leave it alone, easier to stay back and not try. And if they got in her face, if they challenged her and didn’t let her keep them at arm’s length? It was easier to fall back on what worked and what she knew than it was to try to guess how to respond. Violence. Threats. It earned her respect, if nothing else.

  Then Taylor had made overtures at friendship. Taylor had invited herself into that place, that void, and had stayed when Bitch fucked up. The scrawny kid had stood her ground instead of running when Bitch called her out on something. And maybe, just a little, in some small way, Bitch had gotten a glimpse at what she’d been missing out on.

  Only to find out it was a ploy. An act, so that Taylor could get the group’s confidence.

  And now the others had forgiven her? So easily? She could see them fawning over the little traitor. And there was nothing she could do about it. They liked Taylor more. They would keep Taylor on the team and make Bitch leave if it came down to it. She knew it in her gut.

  So she’d done something stupid. She’d tried to get rid of her teammate, and she’d done it in a way that haunted her. More than anything, more than all of the people she’d hurt, the people she’d accidentally killed, or the days she’d scrounged in the trash for food when she’d been homeless, wandering the cities on her own, she hated herself for what she’d done to Taylor. She had acted like the people who haunted her memories, using what should have been a position of trust to try to hurt someone.

  And she didn’t know what to do about it.

  A gunshot startled her from her thoughts.

  “Go!” she shouted. ”Go!”

  More cracks of gunfire echoed through the night as her pack arrived on the scene. Angelica was there, her form hulking and rippling with muscle to the point that she couldn’t move as fast as she otherwise might. That was fine. Angelica couldn’t move as fast these days, anyways. Not since Fog had hurt her. She was more comfortable like this; she was big, strong and able to move without pain.

  Angelica flinched and backed away as the shots came, striking her flesh.

  There was another shot, and Bitch saw a flash from the window, a glimpse of a face. Her face twisted with rage. ”Attack!” her voice was shrill. She leapt off Bentley’s back so he could go too. ”Fetch them! Fetch! Go, go!’

  As they’d done at the previous location, her dogs tore through the building. This time, though, they came back with people in their jaws. Arms, legs and torsos in fanged grips. Men, women and children. Some screamed where the dogs didn’t know their own strength and bit too hard.

  She found the man she’d seen in the window and stalked over to him.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the man repeated the word.

  “You insulting me? You trying to act big?’

  “What?” The man’s eyes widened. Was he staring at her, challenging her? Was it a fear response? Was he rallying to fight, trying to get a wider sense of his surroundings? She could only guess.

  “No,” he said, his eyes moving around, as if searching for help.

  Defiance? Sarcasm? A lie?

  “I don’t think you realize how badly you fucked yourself. You. Shot. My. Dog.” She looked at Angelica. Her baby wasn’t acting too hurt, but he’d shot her. He could have killed her, if the bullet landed in just the right place.

  She kicked him in the face, and his head rocked back. Blood fountained from his nose.

  “I didn’t know,” he managed, huffing out air, blood spraying at his words, where it had run down to his lips. ”Didn’t know she was yours. She was scary, I- I reacted.”

  Was he lying? She couldn’t tell. She’d grown up with so many good liars, it felt like everything that sounded honest was a lie. If he was lying, and it was obvious, she’d look weak if she fell for it. Others might not get the message about this being her territory, about her dogs being off-limits. If he wasn’t lying… well, he’d still shot Angelica.

  “Nobody hurts my dogs.”

  “Please. I have a wife, kids.”

  As if family somehow made you better than someone else? The idea nettled Bitch. Life experience had taught her that it was all too often the opposite. People were assholes, people were monsters. The exceptions were all too rare. Far too many of those same people started a family just because they thought it was what they should do, and then they were assholes and monsters to a captive audience.

  She kicked him again, in the stomach. He screamed as the kick made his arm, still in Ink’s jaws, wrench the wrong way.

  “Angelica,” she ordered. She kicked him in the stomach again. ”Paw!”

  Angelica stepped forward and placed one paw the breadth of a truck tire down on the man’s pelvis. He howled in agony, his words rapid, desperate and breathless, “Heavy oh god please stop please let me go make it move itscrushingme!”

  She looked at him with distaste. It bothered her that the only time she could be absolutely sure what someone meant, what someone wanted, was in circumstances like this.

  “Angelica,” she ordered, ducking beneath Angelica’s outstretched limb, kicking him in the kneecap, “Take it.”

  Angelica bent and gripped the man’s legs in her teeth, twisting his body further. His body was pressed to the ground by her paw, his arm and legs pulled up and away from it.

  She stepped close to Angelica, burying her face in the slick muscle and hard tissues that layered the dog, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around Angelica’s shoulders and neck. Just as her dogs came to trust her a
s she cared for them, fed them, and nurtured them, she grew closer to them as they shared experiences with her, as they learned and accepted their training. Angelica was one of the dogs she was closest to. The only dog she was this close to. Brutus and Judas had passed, the only dogs she had been with for years.

  Her heart broke a little every time she thought about it.

  And this man? This family man? He’d thought he could take Angelica away from her?

  Without looking at him, her head still pressed to Angelica’s neck, she gave the order, “Hurt him.”

  She felt the vibration rattle through Angelica’s head and neck as bone snapped and crunched between her teeth. The man shrieked, there was no better word for it, and others in the vicinity echoed his shrieks with their own.

  She gave the hand signal and an order, “Drop him. Dogs, drop them!”

  Angelica let the man drop. His shins were cracked, the ends of his legs bent at odd angles. One by one, the other captives were dropped to the ground. Each of the man’s noises of pain was a little smaller and quicker than the last.

  “Why can’t you fuckers get it through your skulls?” she called out. ”This is my territory!”

  “We didn’t know,” someone said. A woman who was clutching a bloody arm to her chest. Her daughter beside her.

  “You fucking challenging me on this?”

  “No! No. We- we just… how were we supposed to know?”

  “Are you retarded or something? It’s obvious,” Bitch couldn’t believe the woman’s stupidity.

  “How were we supposed to know!?” the woman raised her voice, sounding plaintive.

  “The howling. If you can hear the howling, you’re too fucking close. Leave.”

  “You could probably hear that halfway across the city!”

  “No fucking shit,” Bitch retorted. The woman was challenging her authority. She had to respond to it, or the woman would keep talking, Bitch would say or do something that made her look stupid, and others would stand up to her. Best to stop that sooner than later. ”Socks! Come!”