by Megan Berry
“I partied on the weekends with my friends,” his voice catches, but he clears his throat and continues. “I hunted with Dad and my little brother, we lived on a great parcel of land that sat at the edge of some woods…” He trails off and then looks at me.
“What about you?” he asks, and I’m kind of disappointed. I wanted to learn more about Silas, but that was a lot for him to share though, so I don’t push.
“I was a junior,” I say, picking through my life in my head, trying to think of what to share. “Head cheerleader,” I add, and, predictably, Silas laughs.
“Figures,” he says softly, but I don’t detect any disdain in his voice.
“You saw the house I grew up in,” I tell him, and he nod.
“Yeah, it was nice,” he agrees, and I start to feel like I actually like the person lying beside me.
“My Dad is…was an investment broker, and my Mom was a house wife. We had these huge dinners every Sunday night—we were always so busy during the week—but we always came together on Sunday, usually Abby was there too.” A tear leaks down my cheek, and Silas reaches up and brushes it away.
“Do you think we would’ve been friends before?” I ask to change the subject as much as for my own curiosity, and Silas chuckles.
“Definitely not, Blondie,” he says honestly, and I know he’s right. Silas is the type of badass that good girls like me were warned to stay away from. I fall asleep with a smile on my face, remembering the good times even though they’re gone.
I’m having a great dream about my parents, life is back to normal, and we are happily planting a garden out back in our yard… A scream rips through the night. At first I think it’s part of my dream, but when I hear it again, it startles me awake.
For a second my confused brain teeters between wakefulness and sleep, trying desperately to hold onto the image of my parents—but they’re gone. I struggle to sit up, glancing blearily around. The lantern is still on, and the room is lit up like a Christmas tree. I accidentally elbow Silas in the stomach, and I hear him groan.
“Sorry,” I whisper automatically, “What’s going on?” I spy my weapons belt pushed down near the end of the bed and lunge for it, strapping it around my waist by muscle memory as my eyes adjust to the light, and I scan the room.
Silas jumps down off the bed and, after grabbing my vest, I scurry down to follow him. Sunny is sitting up in the bed, tears falling down her cheeks, and Ryan is sitting beside her, trying to comfort her. “What’s wrong?” I whisper, and Ryan shrugs helplessly.
“I think it was just a bad dream,” he says, but Sunny shakes her head.
“I heard them,” she sobs harder, and I start to get the creeps. Silas walks towards the door like he’s going to throw it open to prove there is nothing outside, but Sunny screams, and starts freaking out when he gets too close. “NO!”
“Silas, don’t,” I warn him, not sure if I’m siding with Sunny because opening the door will upset her further, or if I’m now just as scared as she is. Silas pauses outside the door, and then we hear it.
There is a sudden flurry of scratching at the door. In the quiet room it’s overly loud, and we all stop and stare at the door in shock, unable to look away. Sunny opens her mouth to scream, but Ryan slips a hand over her mouth. I look over at Silas, but suddenly I can’t see him because the entire room goes dark as the flame from the lantern flickers and dies.
“What just happened?” I whimper. I feel something brush past me and jump.
“It’s just me,” Silas murmurs, and I can hear him digging around. I can’t see anything, but I still pull my pistol from my hip. It makes me feel a little less helpless, even if it probably won’t save my ass in the dark.
The light from a flashlight beam cuts through the oppressive darkness. With the bag over the window, there hadn’t even been light from the moon.
Ryan still has his hand over Sunny’s mouth, and the scratching at the door hasn’t stopped.
Silas stops to check out the lantern. “It ran out of kerosene,” he tells us, and I’m only slightly relieved that it wasn’t some sort of ghostly intervention, just good old fashioned bad luck.
“Put the kid in the closet,” Silas barks out orders, and I half wish I could go hide in there too.
I watch Ryan carry Sunny, wrapped up in the pink blanket, and sets her in the closet, urging her to close her eyes and be very quiet. She whimpers when he shuts the door, but other than that, she stays quiet.
“What in the fuck is out there?” Silas demands when the scratching stops and a low chorus of growling takes over.
All three of us stand with our weapons out, pointed at the door, not sure what kind of monster is out there.
A bark interrupts the quiet, and all three of us stare at each other in surprise. “Dogs,” I whisper, my heart sinking. “There were more of them?” I ask, and the guys shake their heads. They don’t know any more than I do.
“It makes sense,” Silas says after a moment, looking pissed off. “We were so stupid. How didn’t we think this through?” he demands, pacing back and forth in the small room. I’m not following, and, by the look on Ryan’s face, neither is he.
“What?” Ryan demands, and Silas turns to us with an ill look on his face.
“One dog couldn’t have taken out that family we found downstairs,” his words sink in, and I start to shiver. It had been a family?
“Can they get in here?” I ask, not feeling as reassured as I should at finding out it isn’t zombies outside our door. The dogs are just as bad; they will still shred us apart, we just won’t turn into zombies after.
Silas nods his head. “Eventually,” he confirms all our fears.
“How’d they even get in here?” Ryan asks, and the glass wall flashes through my mind before I dismiss it. The dogs probably didn’t smash a window. We would have heard it break. Something tugs at my memory, and I suddenly remember the doggy door.
“The dog door,” I say out loud, remembering now that I saw one that led into the house beside the blood-stained dog house.
“We need to get out of here,” Silas says, staring at the door, thinking.
Ryan presses a button on his wristwatch and it lights up. “It’s almost dawn,” he tells us, and my heart pounds harder at the thought of facing these things in the dark.
“Do you think we can hold out until its light?” I ask, and Silas nods his head.
“It’s probably best not to go out there shooting blind. They aren’t dumb like the zombies. They have a pack mentality, even though they’ve been domesticated.” Silas warns.
The dogs growl and snarl outside the door; the sound of their claws chipping away at the bottom of the door makes me shake as I run around gathering up our supplies. We pull the blackout bags off the windows since we’ll need the light, and then Ryan grabs Sunny from the closet and we all climb up on the top bunk to wait for the sun.
I feel a bit safer up here, if the dogs break in, they probably won’t be able to reach us before we can shoot them—though that depends on how many dogs are out there. I do worry about the bunk bed not being made to hold all our weight, but since none of us are overly large, I push the thought to the back of my mind. Having a bunk bed collapse underneath me is not even in the same category of scary as being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.
We sit uncomfortably squished together on the twin-sized bed like sardines, guns out, backpacks and sleeping bags rolled up and strapped to our backs, ready to move out the second we get an opening.
Ryan tries to entertain Sunny by bringing up a few of the dolls, but she still starts crying every time the dogs do something especially noisy. I know that I should be helping Ryan with Sunny, comforting her in some way, but when the dogs break out in a loud chorus of growls outside, I’m just as paralyzed with fear as she is.
“They’re fighting,” Silas whispers, and amid the growls I hear a dog yip and cry out, and then a thud. The scratching stops at the door for a bit and we all listen, straining our e
ars to hear more whimpers of pain and then a loud chorus of growling.
“What the hell are they doing?” Ryan asks, but Silas only shrugs.
“I’m not the fricken dog whisperer,” Silas snipes, adjusting his gun.
Light finally starts to creep into the sky and just in the nick of time. The bottom of the door is starting to wear away, and for the last ten minutes we’ve been able to see a large canine snout with massive white teeth as the dog gnaws persistently at the hollow core door.
Sunny lets out a squeal, which only seems to spur the dogs on faster. More growling, and the black snout is pushed out of the way to be replaced by an even larger dog. Judging by its nose, it looks like a German Shepard. Great.
We sit for another half an hour, our muscles getting stiff, until the room is flooded with sunshine. “It’s time,” Silas tells us, picking up his AR-15 from beside him on the bed. The gun looks massive and out of place in this princess themed bedroom, but I’m really glad he has it.
The plan is to pepper the door with high velocity shots, and hope it will take out most of the dogs, before we make our run for the truck. We carefully climb down from the bed. Ryan carries Sunny. I hear him whisper for her to cover her ears, and I do the same. Silas stands, legs apart and with the AR held up to his shoulder, he aims for the bottom half of the door. The Shepard has enough of its head in the room now that I can see the whites of its eyes. They are either rabid or starving, and as much of an animal lover as I am, I don’t care at this particular moment. These dogs want to kill me, so I am okay with killing them first. They’re very obviously out of control and need to be put down.
Silas presses his finger to the trigger, letting the machine gun go full auto as he empties half the rounds out of the magazine. The bottom of the door is a mess. The thin wood is shredded by the bullets far worse than anything the dogs accomplished in the last two hours.
Silas lets go of the trigger, and I pull my hands off my ears and hold my gun up, ready. Silas creeps forward to push open the door, and I follow him like a shadow. Ryan takes up the very back because his arms are full juggling Sunny and her pink blanket.
The scene outside the door is total carnage. Four dogs lay dead, punched full of bullets, and a fifth dog lies further back, its bones almost picked clean.
“That must have been the fight we heard earlier,” Silas tells us, “they ate the loser.”
I shudder, and Ryan tells Sunny not to look.
We make our way down the hallway towards the stairs. We have no idea if we got all the dogs, or if the survivors ran off.
The stairs are still dark because there aren’t any windows in the stairwell, but I can see the light at the bottom, so I just tell myself to breath. Silas snaps around the corner, gun up, doing a sweep like some kind of well-trained military guy, and I’m impressed. We freeze when we see the dog standing in the kitchen in front of the huge plate glass window. It’s a massive black dog that looks like a mixed breed. He lifts his lip exposing ultra-white teeth as he growls at us, his hackles rising, and Silas squeezes off two quick shots. The first one hits the dog, and he goes down. The second bullet goes right through the window, making the entire wall of glass crack and fall to the floor with a loud clatter.
I stare at the gaping space in the wall. “Holy shit,” I mutter, “Shouldn’t that have been safety glass or something?” I ask, and Silas shrugs.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he says, and we make our run for the garage. The door is still shut tight like we’d left it, so we don’t have to worry about dogs in the garage.
I let out a sigh of relief as we burst into the garage unscathed. It must not be as well insulated as the rest of the house because the dip in temperature is noticeable.
Sunny and I jump into the back of the truck, and I’m shocked at how nice the truck looks and smells. It smells like bleach, which kind of reminds me of being at the swimming pool. Silas and Ryan did a great job.
“Nice job,” I tell Silas, and he shrugs casually as we wait for Ryan to open the garage door. He gets the door up about a foot and half when I see something that makes my blood run cold. Four legs are standing just on the other side of the door, and they aren’t zombie legs.
Silas sees it too and jumps from the truck to warn him. Ryan doesn’t need his warning though because he’s already gotten the door up high enough that the dog has his head through the opening and has clamped his sharp teeth around Ryan’s knee.
Ryan lets out a scream of pain, and Silas leaps on the door handle, driving the heavy garage door down with all his weight. The dog lets go of Ryan, and I jump out of the truck just as the dog is struggling to get free from the door, but it’s pinned down. Half of its body is outside and the other half is inside the garage with us, and despite the fact that this dog just took a chunk out of Ryan, I wince.
Silas pulls out his pistol and shoots the dog point blank behind the ear, and its struggles cease.
“Are you okay?” I ask Ryan, and he nods even though I can see blood starting to seep through the leg of his jeans.
“Get in the truck!” Silas yells at us both. “Jane, you drive,” he adds, and I help Ryan limp into the back of the truck with Sunny before climbing behind the wheel.
Silas yanks the door up, letting the momentum pull it the rest of the way as he runs into the passenger seat and slams the door shut. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he tells me, and I pin it out of the garage.
“Stop!” he yells, and I look around in confusion as I slam on the brakes, making Silas bump his head on the windshield.
“Sorry,” I mutter, and he ignores me, rolling down his window and firing two shots in quick succession. I follow the direction of his barrel and see another dog slumped into the grass over by the trees. How many of them are there?
“Okay,” Silas says, rolling the window back up. “Now, let’s get out of here.” I go to put the truck in drive, but he puts his hand on my arm to stop me. “I’m driving,” he says, opening the door and getting out, coming around to my side.
I give him a dirty look, but I slide over to the passenger seat. I’m woman enough to admit that I’m not the best driver in this group.
“Are you okay?” I turn around and ask Ryan, and he nods. He has his pant leg pulled up. The bite looks painful, but there wasn’t any tearing at least. I stare at the perfect impression of a bite while he disinfects it, sucking in a deep breath as it burns and bubbles away the germs.
He hands me the bandages when I hold my hand out to help him.
“I’ll live,” he assures me and Sunny as Silas slams the door and puts the truck into gear accelerating a lot smoother than I’d done.
“Man, I can’t believe our shitty luck!” Silas vents as we get back on the road.
I nod my agreement. I mean, I can understand zombies, it’s the zombie apocalypse, but man-eating dogs…it just seems unfair.
I gently wrap Ryan’s leg, and he smiles his thanks before carefully pulling his jeans back down. “I was lucky back there,” he says, letting out a sigh, and I can’t help but admire him. I don’t know many people that would consider themselves lucky after being used as a chew toy.
“It could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure,” Silas agrees.
After making sure Sunny is okay and handing her a juice box from our supply, I pick up the map and stare at it. Despite all our problems, we’ve been making good time. That detour Silas took the other day, through the town where we found Sunny, saved us at least one hundred miles.
I start to feel a hum of excitement. We could reach the cabin tomorrow or the day after, at the latest, if this pace keeps up. I close my eyes and visualize Abby in my mind’s eye. We’re almost there.
Chapter Twelve
“You would not pay a million dollars to eat McDonald’s again!” I snort with laughter at Ryan’s crazy exclamation. The road is a long, boring place to be, especially without an iPod, or the radio—I’m almost even sorry I tossed Silas’s CD! Without technology or
radio, we’ve actually resorted to talking to each other.
“How do you know?” he challenges, but there’s laughter in his eyes.
“I’m not gonna lie,” Silas chimes in from the driver’s side, “I miss me some Mickey D’s.”
I roll my eyes at them both. When I’d asked Ryan what meal he would go back and eat again before the world ended, I had expected something a little more sophisticated than a Big Mac with super-sized fries.
“What about you then, princess?” Silas asks, and I’m surprised that he’s getting into our game. The miles fly by outside the window. We haven’t had a problem since we left the house that Sunny has dubbed ‘the bad puppy house,’ and it’s nearly noon. We are all in fairly high spirits now that we are finally back on the road.
“Beef dip and fries with a Caesar side salad…oh, and chicken wings,” I say, my mouth watering at the very idea, and both of the guys gape at me.
“Geez Blondie, wouldn’t all that stuff be against your cheerleader diet?” he teases, and I laugh. I was never overweight, but like the typical teenage girl I am, I deprived myself of everything good tasting in an effort for true perfection. I let out a very Silas-like snort and shrug. The apocalypse diet has taken care of any extra softness I might’ve had. Diets be damned, these days I’d probably eat an entire cow myself if we ever came across one.
I stick my tongue out at Silas, making all three of us laugh. “Hey,” Ryan warns us, holding his finger up over his lip, and I look back and smile at Sunny. The little girl is fast asleep with her head leaning against the window.
I’m kind of jealous of the simplicity of children. I didn’t get much sleep last night either, and I’d love to be able to lay my head down and rest, but I have this unshakable feeling that bad things will happen if I’m not awake to monitor the situation—it’s crazy, I know, but that’s what the apocalypse will do to a person.