Pavlov's Dogs

by Snell, D. L.

The moaning began a moment later.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE ALPHA DOG stood panting in the middle of the sparring cage, looking down on the body of his best friend. McLoughlin’s feral yellow eyes never blinked, waiting for the Beta Dog to change back, so he could at least see Samson’s face one more time. The body remained stubbornly lupine.

  “Bravo, McLoughlin!” Dr. Donovan yelled. He had dropped his papers and was applauding. “That was—”

  Faster than the neurotech’s eyes could follow, Mac streaked across the sparring cage and locked his teeth on the fence directly in front of Donovan’s face.

  “That’s no way to be,” Donovan said, wiping spittle from his forehead. “You should be grateful you’re not being punished for disobeying my direct orders.” He turned to the Dogs gathered behind him. The Thetas and Sigmas all looked from him to Mac as if they were watching a tennis match.

  “I am the Master,” Donovan said to them. “Is that not so? Heel!”

  The Theta Dogs looked at each other, unsure of what to do, but the six Sigma Dogs moved forward at once, falling into rough formation before Donovan. Inferior minds, easier to control, and resigned to their status at the bottom of the totem pole. The neurotech raised his eyebrows and turned to look at the Alpha.

  “You should have just listened to me. Did you think you were indispensable? There are graveyards full of men who were indispensable. Look there. I’m sure you never thought you would get along without your Beta.”

  Alpha McLoughlin slashed at the fence, ripping his still-healing forearm back open. His roar bounced off the walls and his feet scraped for traction as he tried to force his way out. But it was as he had said earlier—the cage held.

  Donovan began pacing to the left, following the curve of the fence. “Here’s the problem in a nutshell, McLoughlin. I can’t control you just by talking to you. For whatever reason, you refuse to acknowledge me as Master. I imagine that the pile of meat on the ground over there has something to do with it—”

  The Alpha Dog, following Donovan around the cage, snapped his jaws at the fence.

  “—but the fact remains. If I were sitting in Command right now, with the mere press of a button I could have you standing on your head reciting Chaucer, assuming you know any. But that is an untenable situation, and we both know it.”

  He continued to walk, occasionally placing his hands on the fence, then pulling them away as the Alpha stalked him. They played this peculiar game of Dog and Doctor all the way around to the opposite side of the enclosure.

  “Don’t worry about me, though. I have a contingency plan. To tell you the truth, I never really liked you. I thought you were too good to be true. And now look at you. You’ve killed your second-in-command. He was high on my list as your replacement.”

  Alpha McLoughlin hurled himself at the cage again, impacting it hard enough to make the entire thing shudder.

  Donovan crouched down, and the Alpha pressed his face up against the fence so that he and the director were almost nose-to-nose. Donovan waved his hand, beckoning for some reason.

  In a low voice, he said, “But now that you’ve put Samson out of the running, I guess that just leaves Kaiser. You remember Kaiser. On my first day here, he put the Beta in his place, and—”

  Mac snapped his jaws at the fence again. The sound of his enamel striking the steel was loud, and Donovan turned his head away for a moment. When he turned back, he was smiling.

  “And finally, you insubordinate mutt, your honor guard has arrived, ready to escort you from this life, and out of my hair.”

  The Alpha turned to find the six Sigmas arrayed behind him in the cage, and he suddenly realized why Donovan had made the seemingly meaningless hand gesture. The Sigmas looked at each other and back to the Alpha. They were bouncing from side to side, rolling their shoulders, looking like a set of professional wrestlers psyching up for a Battle Royale. Behind them, still outside the cage, the Theta Dogs looked on with stony faces.

  “By the numbers,” Sigma 37 said. “Just like we trained.”

  Donovan shook his fist in the air. “Sic ’em!”

  The Sigmas dropped to all fours, their backs bowing and their voices raised in agony as the Change swept through them. Since their bodies hadn’t accepted the Dog upgrades as readily as the Alpha’s had, it always hurt more as their bones grew, realigned, and changed shapes beneath the flesh.

  Mac stood and threw his head back, roaring at the sky. It was a primitive, primeval sound, and the hairs shivered on the back of Donovan’s neck.

  Here it is, the roar said. Come and get it if you’re hard enough.

  The Sigmas broke off into pairs, two running each way as the middle pair charged ahead. The Sigmas on the left jumped at Mac. He turned with both hands out, backhanding one Sigma away, catching the other by the throat. Immediately, he swiveled back and threw the Dog at the pair advancing up the middle, and then the Dogs from the right were on him.

  Even though the Alpha towered half a foot or more over the Sigma Dogs, the combined attack forced him to retreat. He slashed and clawed as he went, and one Sigma dropped out of the fight, cradling his stomach, trying to hold in his slippery guts.

  The Dog who Mac had backhanded tackled him at the knees, and they both went down. The Sigma held onto Mac’s legs as two others pounced, their jaws snapping for a piece of the Alpha’s throat. Instead, one of them caught the Alpha’s forearm between his teeth, and the Sigma backed away, dazed, pulling the Alpha’s injured limb with him. McLoughlin rolled with it across the concrete, and then another Sigma darted in, sinking his teeth into Mac’s shoulder.

  Kicking and howling in frustration, McLoughlin shook his legs loose from Sigma 37’s hold and then booted the ankle biter in the throat. The Sigma fell back, coughing and spitting up blood. The Alpha knew the injury wouldn’t keep 37 out of the fight for long.

  Mac rolled up, lifting his feet to wrap around the torso of the Sigma who had chomped down on his shoulder. He rolled back down and the Dog let go, flipping with the movement.

  With his other hand free, Mac clawed at the face of the Dog biting his forearm. The Dog let go and Mac scrambled to all fours in time to meet the charge of the middle pair of Dogs.

  The first of them came in high, and as Mac rose up to meet the attack, the other Dog slipped in low and snapped at his belly. Mac smashed the lower Sigma with his knee and grabbed the other one by the throat, yanking the little runt around and throwing him to one side.

  McLoughlin leapt away then, leaving the Sigmas to regroup. All of the Dogs were panting hard now, and the Alpha scanned the six of them.

  Somewhere, deep within his animal mind, the Alpha knew he couldn’t win this fight.

  He charged.

  The Sigmas were bowled over as the hurtling Alpha Dog pushed through. Mac turned and gripped a Sigma’s ears, yanking him down as he kneed, launching the little Dog backwards four feet.

  Pirouetting, Mac slashed out with both hands, catching two of the Sigmas as they approached from either side. As he spun, Mac saw something that ignited hope in his chest.

  The gate.

  They had left it open.

  Dropping to all fours, he powered to the opening in the fence. Dimly, he heard Donovan yelling for the Theta Dogs to do something! With a look between them, the Thetas simply stepped out of the way, letting Mac race from the cage.

  The Alpha Dog glanced over his shoulder, seeing that only three of the Sigmas were giving chase. A very doggy grin bloomed on his face.

  Sigmas.

  Pouring on even more speed, McLoughlin blurred past the fenced-in quarantine area, where the survivors stared open-mouthed at the high-speed parade. He jumped over a small knot of security men, who scattered as the Sigmas barged their way through. One of the guards picked up his radio and began rattling off details into it.

  But then Mac reached the perimeter of the island compound and hurled himself through the air, sinking four sets of claws into the wall. Slamming his hands a
nd feet down, he climbed the inside of the wall and tore through the razor-wire at the top, which tore through him as well. He snarled at the security cameras that swiveled his way.

  A dozen running steps later, Alpha McLoughlin was in the water and swimming for the distant shore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “WELL, OLLIE,” JULIUS SAID, “this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

  Ken snorted, then felt immediately sorry for it. “Ow,” he said, holding his nose.

  Kelly put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  Looking at the blood pooled in his palm, Ken considered the question. “I think it... only hurts when I laugh?”

  “You’re okay, then.”

  He sat with her and Julius at the front of the bus, marooned in a sea of moans.

  “I wish I had some earplugs,” Julius said.

  “I wish I had some...”

  Water was what Ken had meant to say, but he stopped himself. Looking around the bus and seeing all of the panting and puddles of sweat, he decided nobody needed to be reminded. The ones who’d dropped the garbage bags felt bad enough as it was.

  The sash of every other bus window was open precisely one inch, just beyond the reach of the zombies’ fingertips. The rooftop hatch was open, and most of the passengers lay either in the walkway or between the seats, the communal idea being that heat rises, so best to stay low.

  Had Ken known they would get stranded out in the summer heat, he never would have suggested they travel by light of day. His rationale had been, “We want to see them coming,” and everyone had agreed. They hadn’t been thinking of the weather.

  During those hours when the sun had burned directly overhead, Julius had rigged a tent-like shade under the roof hatch, using a couple of button-up shirts fastened together and strung up with belts. But as soon as the sunlight had started slanting, the heat had climbed in through the windows with them.

  Julius, Ken thought. What would we do without the old man?

  He looked at the lock that the repairman had rigged to secure the bus door. A piece of wire rope was tied to the door lever and threaded out and around one of the door hinges, where it was tied again. The zombies’ own strength was now turned against them.

  Ken had gotten a glimpse into the old man’s satchel while he worked. In there he saw another roll of wire rope, as well as duct tape and electrical tape; a crescent wrench with a reversible head, which would also act as a pipe wrench; and a Leatherman multi-tool. And that was just the top layer of stuff. Farther inside was a battered leather journal, full of drawings and schematics, notes and ideas.

  The baseball bat was still lodged in place between the bottom of the door and the top of the stairwell, and Ken was pretty sure all their bases were covered.

  Except for the water.

  When the survivors climbing down had panicked and had dropped the garbage bags full of toilet water, Ken hadn’t been too worried. Julius had assured him that the machine shop wasn’t far from the water tower. Plus, Ken knew the old man had a way to gather humidity out of thin air.

  He peeled his shirt away from his skin and closed his eyes, wishing that whatever had reanimated all these corpses had also taken away their voices. They sounded like old people suffering in a hospital. Like his great grandmother, groaning from all the bed sores and arthritis. She had begged for euthanasia, but state law at the time had prohibited it.

  Her begging for death sounded just like the zombie pleas from outside.

  Idly, he began scratching at the faux-leather cover of the driver’s seat. His thumbnail, hard from use and broken in spots, didn’t make much headway through the material, but from the looks of things, he had all day.

  If I can get through, I can take some of the seat stuffing and fill my ears with it.

  From his earlier tours of the bus, Ken had decided that this was the best-maintained school bus in the history of school buses. Not one seat or seatback had a single hole in it. All the nuts and bolts were tight. Everything worked like it was supposed to. It was an older bus, which kind of explained it; on the school district’s shoestring budget, it was paramount to keep everything in working order.

  There was also no air conditioning.

  So, they left the windows open just a touch, which let the heat out, but also made the moaning twice as loud as it had been when everything was closed up tight. Ken looked around outside, and for a second, the faces, all the sorrowful, pale faces begging to be let in because they just hurt so much, blurred as if he were still turning his head.

  They all looked like his great grandmother. Her ragged breathing, her sunken-in face.

  “Mmm,” he said, just to get a feel for it. If they were moaning, maybe he could do it, too. Yeah. And if he kept on moaning, maybe everybody else would start moaning, too, and they could all moan together. And maybe the zombies outside would think, “Hey, there’s just more of us in there,” and go away. It was a matter of timing, really. And maybe, if they were going to moan together, they could just be together and moan for real. All it would take was a quick jerk on the—

  “Hey, you all right over there?”

  Ken looked up into Kelly’s eyes and gave her a wan smile. “I’m peachy.” When he said that, his nail popped through the covering on the seat. “See?” He dug out a piece of foam and held it up. “Earplugs.”

  “Yeah, well I hope you’ve been busy thinking of something. We need to get out of here before someone loses it.”

  Ken tittered for a second before clearing his throat.

  “Quite.”

  “Hey!” St. John shouted, alarmed by something he was seeing outside. The former cop pointed. “Is that one of them?”

  Ken and Kelly stood, looking in the direction that St. John was pointing. They saw a Dog loping toward them on all fours. Grime and grease and gore streaked its coat, as if the monster had just torn its way out of someone’s nightmare.

  The Dog threw its head back and howled, luring the zombies away from the bus into a funnel formed by wreckage.

  “Bottleneck,” Julius commented as everyone stared out through the glass.

  Only able to squeeze two or three at a time through the wreckage, the zombies wedged themselves in at the Dog, who stood and roared and swiped talons at their necks. Two swings of each mighty claw was all it took to decommission each zombie, and for the next ten minutes, the Dog busily removed heads from stalks, like a macabre meat thresher.

  Every once in a while, a zombie would come flying out of the funnel, knocked back by one of the Dog’s powerful kicks.

  “I’m not sure I believe what I’m seeing,” Ken said. “Somebody pinch me—ow!”

  “You said.”

  “Kelly!”

  Julius waved them off. “Get a room, you two. I think he’s done.”

  The gory Dog climbed its way over the mountain of corpses, sniffing the air. It approached the bus slowly, sniffing at the ground and the windows around the entire vehicle. It stopped at the shredded tire and cocked its head.

  Three more times, it went around the bus, smelling everything.

  “What’s it doing?” someone asked.

  “Hey!” the man with the hook hand yelled out as the Dog passed his side of the bus. He clanked his metal pincher on the glass to get the thing’s attention. “Hey, help us!”

  The Dog glanced at him, but then continued his final round. With a grunt, the thing launched itself onto the hood of the bus, sniffing the windshield, the windshield wipers, the gasket around the glass.

  Then it lifted its leg.

  “Is it...?” Julius asked.

  A yellow stream hit the window and ran down, coating the glass and wipers.

  “It is,” Ken said.

  Chuffing once in pleasure, the gory Dog hopped off the bus and loped away.

  “This day,” Ken said, “just does not stop.”

  Kelly wrinkled her nose. “Was it marking its territory, or...? I’m not sure if that’s gross,
or what.”

  “It’s gross,” Ken said.

  Julius hit Ken’s shoulder, pointing to the back window of the bus. “Check it out. Another one?”

  Indeed, a new Dog stalked toward them, looking around and sniffing.

  “How many of these things are there?” Kelly said.

  The new Dog sniffed the row of cars leading up to the bus, slinking from one vehicle to the next. The hackles on the back of its neck were up, and its nose kept twitching.

  “That thing is on the hunt,” Julius said.

  The new Dog suddenly looked up at the bus and perked its ears. It moved straight toward them, its gaze moving back and forth as it sniffed everything. It stood tall to look in the windows, and the people shied back. Then the beast’s head whipped around and suddenly it was running for the front of the bus.

  It leapt up onto the hood and sniffed the yellow splashes, clearly excited by its discovery.

  “Oh, shit,” Ken said.

  Everyone turned to look, forgetting the heat of the day, forgetting that they were stranded on a bus in the middle of a zombie-infested hellhole.

  The gory Dog from before sprang up out of hiding in front of the bus and wrapped furry arms around the newcomer, then sprang backwards with his prey. The creatures turned in the air, and the newcomer landed on his head in a perfect suplex. Disoriented, the Dog wobbled to his feet.

  Then the gory Dog was on him, punching and clawing. Blood arced up and splattered on the windshield, and Ken scrambled for the wiper switch so they could see.

  By the time the blood was clear, the gory Dog had its jaws clamped down on the other Dog’s throat, and both of them were snarling and jerking. They ripped apart from each other, and the gory Dog held a bit of gristle in its teeth.

  The other Dog fell, holding its throat, and the victor fell on it, rending and ripping with its claws, eviscerating its fallen prey, making sure it would not come back to plague him.

  Outside the bus, the gory Dog rose up and looked in on a wide-eyed Ken. In fact, all the survivors on the bus were staring at the animal with the same mix of revulsion and awe.