by Mark Tufo
“Riley.” Patches prodded gently. She knew I was having a hard time with this, but I had to think of Zach and Jess and even Ben-Ben now.
The man was stumbling towards the door, a strange strangled gurgling noise issuing forth from his mouth. He was trying to call for help, but the blood loss was too much and was clogging his airway. I was hoping that the vital fluid would leak out and he would just die, but it did not appear that was going to happen fast enough. He was possibly less than seven steps from the doorway when I ran after him. He turned once to look when he heard me coming, and it looked like he was going to try and move faster. I didn’t give him the chance.
I bit down on the small rubbery feeling piece above the man’s ankle. He fell face first; bits of his teeth broke free as his face smashed into the hard ground, and then thankfully he was still. Blood still pumped from his throat, but it was not coming out as fast as it had been. I was breathing heavy even as I watched the man take his final breaths.
“Wade! What the fuck is going on in there!” the other man yelled. He was approaching. I stopped watching the spread of red and turned around to Patches.
“Come on!” she said in alarm. “I know another way out.”
“Am I going to fit?” I asked as I started to follow her. That cat could get into some pretty tight places. I should know...I’d gotten my head stuck in more than a few of them when I’d chased her. She jumped onto a cabinet in the corner and then through an open viewer that I thought I just might be able to get through or I would die trying.
“Holy shit! Wade? Fucking zombies!” Isaac screamed as he ran out of the large building.
Where are they? I thought as I jumped onto the small cabinet and then wrapped my front paws onto the front of the outside viewer. I pulled myself up as I put my head through. I was looking down to the ground which seemed pretty far away.
“Come on, dog, I’ll catch you,” Patches said, looking up at me.
I was so scared I nearly believed her as I jumped through the viewer, the ground thankfully was the soft kind and not the stuff the two-leggers put down and called ground.
“I thought you were going to catch me?” I asked Patches as I stood, making sure nothing had been hurt.
“I lied, get used to it,” she told me. “Come on, when the humans realize that wasn’t a zombie attack they’re going to kill every dog they see.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
We were hiding in the shadows of a house when a loud sound went off, it sounded like what the humans called a fire alarm, I knew the sound from when Alpha-male sometimes cooked. I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough as great big billowing clouds of smoke would pour through the house. She-alpha would laugh and they would go out to eat, many times bringing back what they called ‘doggie bags’ although I very rarely got to eat them, so I never figured out why they called them that.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ten heavily armed men entered the kennels; they were a part of Icely’s elite guard. Most of them were either prior military or had been actively serving when the zombie apocalypse started. A few were part of SWAT teams in Vegas, their leader was a vice cop from Miami. He had been on vacation when he found himself cut off completely from all he had known. It had not been that great a loss, his wife had left him three years previous and his mother—his only remaining relative—had been locked up in an old age home. Last time he’d seen her she hadn’t known who he was and then proceeded to squat right in front of him as she loosed her bowels. For a moment he thought he caught a flash of recognition as she stood, then she had begun to cackle wildly. Detective Schools had decided to leave before she began the feces tossing portion of her routine.
The other nine men on his team fanned out as he carefully leaned down over the body.
“Clear,” his second in command yelled. He spoke softly into a portable radio. “Zombies, boss?” Mannie asked.
“Not even close,” Schools said. He looked at the wound on the man’s leg, then he flipped the body over, not concerned with disturbing the crime scene. He studied the wounds on the man’s face and neck.
“We got infiltration?” Mannie asked, preparing to talk into his radio again; this time about to get the whole settlement on high alert.
“Dog,” Schools said as he began to cross the floor towards the open window.
“What?” Mannie asked, following his boss.
“A dog killed Wade,” Schools answered.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mannie asked, looking back to the still form of Wade.
Schools walked over to the cabinet, he moved it out of the way and stuck his head through the window, but the dog was long gone.
“How?” Mannie asked.
“Well for some reason it looks like Wade opened that kennel and the dog that was in it decided he wanted out. Bit Wade’s face first, damn near ripped his jaw off. Then he went in for the kill and tore through the poor bastard’s carotid artery. And then Wade must have still been able to somehow stumble away when the dog figured out he hadn’t finished the job. He hamstrung him by tearing his Achilles tendon in half. This is one efficient killing machine.”
“Holy shit,” Mannie said, rubbing his throat.
“Get Isaac in here.” Schools sat down on the cabinet.
Isaac was escorted in a few moments later. He was looking around wildly, possibly for zombies to come flooding out from their hiding spots.
“Relax,” Schools said as he watched the nervous man. “There aren’t any zombies,” he said as he stood and walked back over towards Wade’s body.
“You...you’re sure?” Isaac asked, temerity still lined his voice.
“What kind of dog was in that kennel?” Schools asked, pointing back to the only empty one in the warehouse.
Isaac’s eyes opened wide at first, taking in the detail he had missed earlier, and then quickly narrowed as he perceptively put the pieces together.
“Damn dog, I knew I should have put her down,” he said angrily, his teeth grinding as he spoke. “Bitch killed my Thorn.”
Schools was not a fan of the dog fights and never watched. On occasion he would stay on the outskirts of the crowd, if only to keep the peace, but even that was too close for his liking. He knew why Icely allowed the sport; it kept the growing populace’s blood lust at bay. The people that had survived the apocalypse thus far were usually the loners, the preppers, the über-mililtary types. These were not a broad sampling spectrum of the human population before the zombies came. For the most part, the survivors were the fringes, the outcasts of the previous society. They did not play well with others, and it was all Icely could do to keep them together as a cohesive unit. The people here were like over-dry kindling, and it would not take much more than a spark to set the illusion of community ablaze.
“Thorn? He was that huge Rottweiler right?” Schools asked.
Isaac nodded.
“What kind of dog are we talking about?” Schools was interested. He was trying to figure out what could have taken down the beast that seemed to have been part bear.
“Boxer, I guess,” Isaac replied. “Short snouted little bitch!” he spat.
“You guess or you know?” Schools asked for clarification.
“How the fuck would I know? I’m not a damn vet.”
“You do know who you’re talking to, right?” Schools said, asserting his authority.
“I’m sorry, man, I loved that dog.”
Yet you sent him to fight to the death almost every night, Schools thought. Glad you don’t love me, he completed in his head.
“Boxer’s are kind of spindly, fawn colored with a short black muzzle,” Schools said.
“Naw, this mutt had the short muzzle but was brindle colored…thick chested.”
“How tall?”
“About up to here,” Isaac said, holding his hand about midway on his thigh.
“Sounds more like an American Bulldog.”
“I don’t give a fuck, I want in on the hunting
party. I want to catch that thing, shoot it, hang it upside down, gut and skin it, and then I’m going to use its fur for a throw rug where I can wipe my dirty-ass boots every day until it falls apart.”
“You done?” Schools asked of the other man’s tirade.
Isaac nodded.
“Alright then, you tell Icely what’s going on here, and then you’re in on the hunt.”
“You want me to tell Icely what happened?” Isaac gulped.
“Yeah this building is under your supervision…right?”
“Yes,” Isaac answered reluctantly, “but I didn’t let that thing out of its kennel,” he said, trying to deflect the blame. “That idiot Wade did, and it got him killed.”
“I don’t care if the dog somehow let herself out, go tell Icely we don’t have zombies, and do let him know we have a man-killing dog loose. And before I forget, shut the damn alarm off.”
Isaac looked liked a shady mob accountant heading into an IRS audit.
Schools told his team what they were looking for; the order was to shoot on sight if the opportunity presented itself. He figured it would never come to that, though. The dog was probably long gone. Any dog that valued survival enough to kill a man had reverted back to its wolf heritage and was even now attempting to make as much distance from the settlement as possible.
CHAPTER FIVE
The fire alarm had finally stopped. My ears still hurt from the noise of them. What I wouldn’t do to curl up on She-alpha’s lap and fall asleep. My throat hurt, and I wanted to stop for some water, but Patches kept pressing on.
“How much further?” I asked.
“Riley, I’m running to save your life. The humans are not going to shoot their metal bees at me. And what are you complaining about? Your legs are longer than mine.”
I didn’t see what the length of legs had to do with anything, but the cat said it, so it was probably right—or she was lying. But then I didn’t understand the lie either, so what was the point?
Patches stopped by a row of hedges as a wheeler full of men rode past. “That was close,” she said as she dashed across the street. “Come on that’s the house.”
I followed her; another wheeler drove past soon after.
“I think they’re already looking for you,” Patches said.
“Cat, I’m scared,” I told her. I didn’t want the two-leggers ‘looking’ for me. They meant me harm after I had killed one of their own. The most trouble I’d ever been in had been when I’d torn through the Alphas’ garbage for a perfectly good turkey carcass, and even then, Alpha had merely laughed at me as he picked up the spilled contents of the bag. She-alpha had been madder because I got everything all over her fake fur flooring, but even she laughed as I chased and barked at the small loud pushing machine she used to ‘pick’ stuff up. I didn’t trust that thing she called a ‘vacuum’. I was protecting her from it as it followed her around the house, always one step away.
“We’ll get out of here, Riley.”
“I wish you were a dog, cat,” I said to Patches.
She tilted her head in a questioning expression.
“It would be so much easier to say thank you if you were a dog,” I told her.
“I think that’s a compliment, and coming from you that’s good enough. Let’s get Ben-Ben,” she answered.
“What about Jess and Zach?” I asked her.
“The humans will realize they’re missing and come after them sooner. The person that has Ben-Ben is probably wishing he’d leave.”
I snorted in laughter. Patches was a good ally to have, she was smart. It really was just too bad that she was a cat. We came up to a small two-legger home.
“He’s in there,” Patches said, looking at the house. She turned to keep an eye out on the wheeler path.
I stood up on my hind legs, my front paws were up against the viewer, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I looked in.
“We need to leave Ben-Ben here,” I said as I hopped down.
“Is he hurt?” Patches asked, turning her head just enough to look at me.
“Worse,” I told her as I began to move away.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Patches said as she began to follow.
It was then we both stopped when we heard the fast staccato burst of Ben-Ben’s yipping.
“Riley - Riley - Riley - Riley - Riley - Riley!”
“I thought you said he was dead,” Patches asked, looking up at the window as Ben-Ben was jumping up and down.
“You said he was dead. He was doing tricks for the two-leggers for cookies,” I answered her.
“You can’t leave him, look at that face,” Patches said as her head went up and down watching Ben-Ben while he tried to get a view outside, by jumping up and down.
“He’s an idiot. We’re fighting for our lives…we have no idea how Jess and Zach are doing, and he’s amusing the two-leggers for snacks,” I said hotly.
“He’s doing what he needs to do to survive. Do you think he could have won a dog fight?” Patches asked.
Before the night the zombies came I would have said ‘no way’ but I saw how ferociously he fought. And he had nothing but our pack’s safety in his heart as he did so.
“Besides…he’s your friend,” Patches added before I could rethink my stance.
“Biscuits,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am, dog, the sooner you realize that the better off you’ll be.”
I got closer to the window.
“Riley - Riley - Riley - Riley - Riley!” He was yipping crazily. “They have no bacon,” he said softly and with a noticeable hint of sadness.
“Come out here,” I told him as quietly as I could.
“I don’t know how to open a door,” he said, looking down at me.
“Scratch at it like you have to relieve yourself. The two-leggers know what that means and they’ll open it for you.”
“I already went,” Ben-Ben whined.
“You went in the house again, didn’t you,” I accused him.
He looked down and whined.
“Two-legger - two-legger - two-legger!” he yipped.
At first I had no idea what he was barking about. “Hide, cat!” I said in alarm.
The light coming through the viewer was blocked as a male two-legger was looking out. “Whatcha see, boy?” the male asked as he kept peering out.
“There ain’t nothing out there, Creighton!” another male yelled. “Come on, man, it’s your bid.”
“You shut up now, dog, you hear?” the male said to Ben-Ben. “Come on.”
The man and Ben-Ben left the viewer.
“What’d he say? Is he going to come out?” Patches asked, getting up from her hiding spot.
“Says he already relieved himself.”
“Inside?” she asked. I nodded. “What is wrong with that dog? He’s dumb even for a canine.”
“Watch it,” I told her.
She knew I was playing. “We can’t wait forever. Once it’s light out, we need to be out of this place. We may have to leave him.”
I nodded in agreement, even though now I had decided I wanted the dumb dog with me. Our pack was already too small; we couldn’t afford another loss. Although that wasn’t all of it, I cared for the mangy little guy. Too many feelings, I didn’t have the time to sort them out now; sometimes it was still difficult to realize I wasn’t trying to eat the cat.
“Riley?” Patches asked as I was trying to figure things out.
“I know. Let’s go get Jess and Zach.”
“Again, I’m sorry for your loss,” Patches said as we began to move away from the house.
“I noticed you said ‘your’ loss,” I said, looking for Patches to elaborate.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked back. “Jess had a hamster once that I was closer to, and I had wanted to eat that rodent.”
I snorted again. “Goodbye, Ben-Ben,” I said. I would mourn his loss later.
We were four or five of the huma
n dwellings away from Ben-Ben’s new home when I heard his yipping.
Patches stopped and put her paw to her face; it was a very human like gesture.
“He’s like sticky kitty litter you can’t get off the bottom of your paws,” Patches said sadly.
“The dummy is going to give us away.” I was torn between running to get him and shut him up, or run and get away from him. But the dog would probably get lucky and follow us, yipping the whole way.
Patches must have been thinking the same thing when she asked her question. “Can he follow our scent?”
“Only if we were covered in bacon, and maybe not even then.”
This time the cat snorted. “Go hide, Riley. I’ll go get the pain in the behind.”
And there it was, I still didn’t completely trust the cat to do what she said even though she’d already saved my life a couple of times over. Old habits die hard. “Bite him once for me,” I told her as I got underneath a large wheeler.
Some time passed before Ben-Ben’s yipping finally ceased, and to Patches’ credit I actually did hear him yelp. I could see pictures in my mind of Patches sneaking up behind the small dog and biting his tail, probably sent him running! The funny thought was a happy reprieve from the stress I was feeling. My legs were starting to cramp as I waited for the two to come back. It was taking so long that I was getting certain something had happened. It was possible that the male two-legger had taken Ben-Ben out with a tether, and if that was the case, there would be nothing Patches could do.
I could, though. The thought scared me, but there it was. I had killed a two-legger, and I would do it again for my pack. I started to ease out from under the truck. I banged my head on the bottom of the wheeler when the cat spoke.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Riley - Riley - Riley!” Ben-Ben yipped.
“Dog!” Cat hissed loudly.
“Riley - Riley – Riley,” Ben-Ben whispered.
I was mad at the dog, but it was impossible to stay that way, his enthusiasm was infectious.
“You alright?” I asked as I got out and stretched my legs.