A New World: Untold Stories

by O'Brien, John

  He flopped casually on to his side and tried to look as innocent as his conscience would allow. His People didn’t come down. Instead, he heard more thumps that quickly escalated into an erratic pounding. Sam was getting up to check the cause of the noise when he heard something that nearly made his skull crack and caused the fur along his entire spine to raise. A piercing shriek echoed down the stairs and across the family room.

  The sound wasn’t human, nor was it animal. Whatever it was, Sam knew it was bad. Very bad. Maybe even worse than the person his People call Michael Vick. Sam was well aware of what people say about his breed. Yes, golden retrievers are the friendliest dogs around, but he also had a fierce protective side when it came to his People.

  He brought forth a deep, threatening growl as he bared his teeth. Ears back, body low, Sam sped up the stairs and down the hall. A strong feeling of aggression had taken hold of him and, like all good dogs, his instinct compelled him to protect his People. He expected to find the shriek-maker near the room belonging to the Mom and Dad people. As he reached the closed door, however, he realized the shriek had come from behind it.

  The stench that leaked out from under the door of the room was one of sickness, death, and rage. They weren’t separate scents. They were triune—an unholy combination like nothing Sam had ever smelled before. Unaware that he had tucked his tail down behind his hind quarters, Sam backed away. Somehow, he knew it was too late to help his People behind the door. One was alive, but changed. The other dead.

  In the few seconds it took for Sam to process this information, another rage-filled shriek erupted. Sam had never been so terrified of anything. He tore off to the other end of the hallway, away from the door, to the Boy’s bedroom. As always, the Boy’s door was open. It was where he liked to sleep when his People left for the day and wouldn’t be around to “shoo” him off the bed. The room smelled of Andrew. Any other day, the familiar scent would make him happy. But now, there was little comfort to be found as he cowered under the Boy’s purple and gold banner with the face of a husky in the center. Sam, the food-loving dog, forgot all about his hunger and the promise of butter-smeared pancakes. His only thoughts were of what was waiting behind the closed door.

  As the late afternoon turned into early evening, Sam noticed a change in the outside sounds. It started with the complete cessation of the occasional car passing by. There were no voices, no music, and no dogs barking in the neighboring yards. It was eerily quiet, as if the earth was holding its breath, waiting for an unconquerable evil to be unleashed upon its occupants.

  When darkness finally cast its ominous blanket over Spokane, Sam noticed more sounds. They were far from usual. First, the shrieks started. One here, two there, until eventually the shrieks joined together. It reminded Sam of the coyotes that often ventured into the neighborhood. As the outside shrieks grew, so did the ones coming from behind the closed door.

  Sometimes loud pops joined the chorus of shrieks. Sam recognized those from the times his Boy and the Dad took him along on duck hunts. Those combined noises were bad enough, but the screams were the worst. Screams of pain and terror could be heard coming from the houses near his. These brought unspeakable sadness and fear to his heart. Some of the screams belonged to people; some from animals. Sam quickly realized they were the final, agonizing screams coming from victims being ripped apart while still alive.

  Sam didn’t sleep at all during the night. He stayed as sheltered as he could in his Boy’s room, barely breathing for fear of becoming one of the hunted. As the sun came up, the grisly sounds of the night became less frequent and then disappeared entirely.

  Sam was tired, but more than that, he was thirsty. Sam thought longingly of the big bowl of water that was never empty in the little room next to the Boy’s. Quietly and slowly, he padded the few steps it took to get to the little water room. He quenched his thirst from the big white bowl. Never before had water tasted so good! His People didn’t like him drinking this water. It disgusted them for some reason, but Sam was sure they would like it if they tried it.

  As Sam pondered the strange ways of his People, he realized sadly they may never have the chance to enjoy this water. His thoughts turned to Andrew. Was he out there somewhere, needing Sam’s help? And what about the Girl? She rarely stayed gone overnight. Did one of those screams he heard in the night belong to her? No, he would have recognized her. These thoughts depressed him. He was alone, hungry, scared, and confused.

  And he needed to pee. But in order to get to his doggie door downstairs, he would have to risk placing himself mere inches from the bad thing behind the door. His gut told him the door wouldn’t stay closed if he tempted it for too long. He made his way into the room almost directly across from Andrew’s, the Girl’s room. He knew it was even worse than digging through his People’s scraps, but he didn’t know what else to do. So, with the guilty expression he had perfected years before, he relieved himself on a tee shirt with the words “Abercrombie and Fetch” written across the front. It was sitting on top of a pile of clothes that smelled dirty, so Sam was hoping the Girl wouldn’t notice what he had done. Assuming she came home.

  Now that some of his basic needs had been met, all Sam wanted to do was sleep. He wasn’t a puppy anymore and was feeling the effects of staying awake all night, watchful and afraid. He jumped on the bed in the Boy’s room, thinking that getting caught on the bed would be the least of his worries. It wasn’t long before Sam’s eyes closed heavily and he fell asleep.

  His sleep was fitful and filled with frequent bursts of paw twitching as he dreamed. At first, the dreams were a jumbled mix of squirrels, pancakes, squeaky toys, and the warmth of his sunny patch. Then they wound their way into more sinister kinds of dreams. In these, he was chased by something, someone. But it wasn’t really a ‘someone’, it was a monster. He ran as fast as he could, but the monster caught up with him every time. In all the dreams, except his final one, Sam would jerk awake before he found out what happened next. It was the dream in which he did find out what happened next that kept him from falling back asleep. In that dream, when the monster caught up with him, the last thing he saw before the creature ripped him apart was his Boy’s face. Andrew had turned into a Shrieker.

  The second night was a repeat of the night before. First, there was the horrible shrieking that haunted his nightmares. Then came the loud pops and heart-wrenching screams that played out in a macabre encore of the previous night’s performance. It didn’t escape Sam’s notice that the Shriekers seemed to hunt at night and stayed away in the day. He tucked the information away in his head and became as small as possible as he tried to shut out the horrors taking place outside.

  Again, the rising sun came hand-in-hand with a small amount of relief. It was short-lived however, as Sam made a surprising discovery, the perpetually-filled bowl in the little room was almost out of water. His hunger had increased past the point where he could ignore it. Sam knew he needed to leave the semi-security of his Boy’s room or he would die of thirst and hunger. Should he sneak by the closed door as quietly as possible and hope the Shrieker wouldn’t hear him? Or would it be better to fly down the hall like a bat out of hell, dash down the stairs, and make a bee-line for his doggie door? The latter option seemed to be the best.

  So, with ears back, tail down, and hackles raised, Sam took flight down the hall as quickly as his four legs could take him. As he passed the room, the thing behind the closed door shrieked and flung itself against it. This made Sam pick up the pace, almost causing him to tumble down the stairs as he made his way to his doggie door. Upon reaching it, he squeezed his frame through the flap and found himself shielded by the morning sun. The stillness of the morning was like stepping into another dimension. If Sam hadn’t known better, he would think the last two days had been one long, terrifying dream.

  The first thing he needed to do was find a way out of the backyard. Sam knew that it wouldn’t be too difficult. Like many of the houses in his older neighborhood, the gr
ound along the fence-line was pocked with rain-eroded pits. He had every weakness along the backyard fence memorized and knew of one such spot near where the gate latched.

  Ten minutes later, Sam was covered in dirt and making his way to freedom. His nose stopped him before he got to the narrow sidewalk in front of his house. There was a familiar aroma in the air, the same coppery smell he picked up periodically while trotting through the woods. It was the smell he associated with hunting, fresh road kill, and mortally wounded animals. It was always associated death. The thickness of the odor that morning spoke volumes of the horrors that came with the setting sun.

  With his nose lifted slightly, Sam tried to filter out the death scent as he sought the air for signs of life. His concentration was suddenly broken by a loud, stuttering hiss that popped up a few feet behind him. Whatever it was, it caught him off-guard, causing him to nearly jump out of his fur with a yelp. Exhibiting the speed of a much younger, more aggressive dog, Sam shifted his body into ‘fight’ stance as he spun around, ready to spring at the threat.

  His readiness to fight was countered with a cold spray of water. By the time he had turned around, the sound of the stuttering hiss had transitioned into a steady shhhhhh. Sam had almost gone for the jugular of the neighbor’s automatic sprinkler. The congenial retriever didn’t swear often, but as he waited for his heartbeat to settle into something closer to normal, he may have spewed a few f-bombs in the direction of the spraying water. And then he remembered his thirst. Forgiving its previous transgression, he rushed to the sprinkler and lapped up all the water he could manage. It wasn’t as tasty as the water he got from the big white bowl, but it would do.

  His ears perked as the sprinklers shut off, listening for any sounds of normalcy. Some of the usual morning sounds were present; the cheerful songs of early birds, the buzz of the bees going about their queen’s business, and the breeze rustling the leaves. What was not normal was the complete lack of people noise. No voices carrying across the yards. No car doors slamming shut as children and parents set off for school and work. No sounds of vehicles driving past, on their way to wherever the occupants needed to go.

  Feeling marginally better after his encounter with the sprinkler, Sam made his way cautiously along the tree-lined sidewalk. There was no life to be seen on the quiet street. There also didn’t seem to be any threats. For the next hour, Sam quickly worked his way through the neighbors’ front and side yards, trying to piece together the events of the past two days. One wouldn’t need a super sniffer or keen hearing to understand the horrors. There was blood; lots of it, trailing up and down walkways. There were footprints of it, drips of it, and in some places, congealed, sticky puddles of it. The morbid scene was a mockery of what would have been a beautiful sunny morning.

  It was curious to Sam that some houses had open doors. Those showed visible signs of violence along the ground and on the outside walls. They also had The Smell, as he was starting to call the stench he first noticed at the closed door inside his house. He stayed far away from those homes. There were a small number of houses with windows covered in wood, metal, and other materials. These houses had The Smell, but it didn’t seem as prominent as it had at the other houses. Sam stored this information to contemplate later and continued his trek through the neighborhood.

  Sam discovered his first body outside of the blue wooden house on the corner, less than a block from his own. Whoever it had been must have been trying to flee in their car sometime during the night. The door of the small SUV was open, lights still glowing dimly from the fixtures above the windows. The body was heaped over the curb, broken and barely recognizable as a person. It was sickeningly obvious that the predators, who were on the winning end of the race to escape, had devoured the poor soul. A cell phone, set of keys, and a bloody hunting knife lay scattered on the ground. Sam did not investigate the gory scene long enough to figure out if this was a person he had known. He wanted to get as far away from it as he could.

  As Sam continued to search the unnaturally quiet neighborhood, he realized he wouldn’t be able to avoid the horror, no matter how much he wanted to. Coming across torn up, unidentifiable bodies and body parts became a common occurrence. Less common, were the bodies that were not torn apart. Most of these were oozing thick, dark blood and gray matter from missing parts of their skulls. There was something different about them. They had The Smell. Even though it didn’t look like they were going to be moving around anytime soon, Sam stayed far away from the whole bodies.

  Two hours later, Sam returned exhausted, lonely, and hungrier than ever. He knew he couldn’t go in the house, so he found a shady spot at the edge of the lawn and dropped down. He tried to piece together all that he had learned the past two nights and from his exploration of the neighborhood. The sun rising to its zenith was a reminder to the old dog that he needed to find a safe place to spend the night.

  As he rested his tired head on his front paws, a plan began to materialize. He would retrace his route and check out more closely the homes that were boarded up. Maybe some of those homes would be empty and maybe, if he were lucky, one of those places would have a doggie door he could fit through. He knew it wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only one he had. Sam’s achy hips complained as he rose from his resting position.

  I’m getting too old for this, he thought.

  The stress of the past couple of days was starting to make him feel his age, plus some. He lumbered down the sidewalk, following the same scents he had a few hours earlier. He couldn’t live like this too much longer. Part of him thought it might be wise to move on, maybe to the woods where he could catch squirrels and where there weren’t a lot of places for the monsters to hide. On the other hand, he wanted to stay near the house in case his Boy came home. If Andrew didn’t show up soon, however, Sam would be forced to make a decision. If he survived long enough.

  Sam made his way to the first boarded up house on his street. He sniffed around the yard and on the front porch. The Smell was there, but very faint. There was no fence surrounding the property, so it was unlikely they had a dog which would mean they wouldn’t have a doggie door. Sam worked his way around the perimeter, just in case, but found no way into the house and there was no indication that anyone was inside.

  At the next barricaded house, The Smell was quite strong. Sam hesitated to continue to the back of the property, but curiosity got the better of him. The gate to the back of the property was open. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. He decided on “not” when he saw the sliding glass door, or what was left of it. It had been shattered, shards of glass scattered on the ground. Bloody drag marks marred the cement patio just outside the door and the carpet inside. Sam moved on.

  The third house Sam went to was across the street from his own. It was a small, 1940s style structure with a neatly maintained front yard and a restored Acapulco Blue 1968 Mustang parked at the curb. The man who lived here was friendly, as Sam had discovered during outings around the neighborhood. He always took time to scratch him behind the ears while he called him names like Furry Face, Big Guy, Sir Wags A Lot, and sometimes even by his full name — Sampson Obi Wan Kenobi Brennan.

  In spite of himself, Sam wagged his tail as he approached the tiny porch. That the Man was alive, well, and home was too much to hope for. The Smell was mostly absent here and as he got closer to front door, Sam noticed something he hadn’t at the other houses. There was the smell of what Sam could only describe as ‘life’. His tail started to wag with slightly more enthusiasm as he waited for the Man to open the door to him. Nothing.

  Sam ventured to the back of the house, past the Man’s vegetable garden and huckleberry patch. All the windows were covered with what looked like a type of metal sheeting. The back door was intact and there was no blood to be seen. He detected the same underlying scent he had on the porch — life. Here, it was stronger. Fresher. The Man had been outside of this back door recently! In his joy, Sam barked at the door. To him, the volume of his v
oice was amplified a hundred times as it broke the surreal stillness of the late morning air. The Man’s door opened a crack, his surprised face broke out in a big grin when he saw who his visitor was.

  “Haha — Sampson?” he half exclaimed, half inquired. The Man opened the door wider and knelt down so he could get a closer look at the dog and tag attached to his collar. “Sampson O. Brennan,” the Man read aloud to himself. “Well, I’ll be damned! It is you.”

  When the Man stood and moved aside, opening the door wider, Sam knew this was an invitation to enter. He brushed past his friend’s legs, smacking them with his wagging tail. This elicited chuckle from the Man along with a friendly scratch behind the ears. As he closed the door and locked it, the Man was shaking his head in disbelief. He explained to Sam how he had been mostly shut off from the outside world since the day the ‘shit hit the fan’. Sam had never heard that expression before, but he was a smart dog and it wasn’t difficult to figure out what it meant.

  The Man spoke to Sam almost like he was a person who could respond. Sam liked people who did that and showed his appreciation by displaying the signature golden retriever smile. As he talked, the Man pulled a couple of big bowls out of the cabinets and filled one with water from the faucet.

  “Enjoy it, Furry Face, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to get water this easily,” he said while he placed the bowl on the floor in front of the thirsty dog.

  Sam gratefully lapped the water as the Man searched his cupboards. Finding nothing suitable for a dog, he opened the refrigerator, pulled out a package of raw beef, and opened it. To Sam’s surprise and great delight, his friend cut the meat into smaller pieces, placed them in the second bowl and set it on the floor in front of him.

  “Might as well eat up, Big Guy. It’s only going to rot with the power going off last night.”

  Sam didn’t need any convincing — he was ravenously hungry! He practically inhaled the meat. The Man must have thought it was funny because he let out a long laugh and tousled the fur on Sam’s head.