by Mark Wheaton
“Well, get to it! You heard the man. We’re at the beginning! Your child will be one of the first born ‘after,’ a little baby Jesus.” The doula laughed, though Denny thought it sounded more like a cackle.
Nobody talked much beyond that. Lucille took off when she was done.
As soon as they were alone with the dogs, Carrie looked at Denny with concern. “Do you intend to domesticate all fifty million yourself? That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around.”
“No,” Denny said. “In fact, I’m sure there are a bunch out there that haven’t joined a pack yet. We can feed them, bring them into our pack. We’ll probably have to put down some of them, unfortunately, but I think we have to try to domesticate this pack at least. If there are a couple hundred of us and a couple hundred dogs working with us, we’ll be better hunters, be safer. There’s the emotional centeredness that comes with it. There are reasons our ancestors did this. Good ones.”
“But you’re also asking dogs who are out there leading their own packs, fending for their young and surviving in the wild to effectively enslave themselves,” Carrie replied. “It just sounds impossible.”
“So does everything these days. There aren’t so many alternatives. But if we just start with one dog and move out from there, we could make this work.”
Denny looked over at Bones, who had settled in next to the ridgeback for the night and knew that he was right.
• • •
During the night, Bones stayed beside the ridgeback as she floated in and out of delirium. She had lost a lot of blood and hadn’t allowed anyone to really stitch her wound, so it still bled periodically. Bones, however, pressed his body up against the bars of her cage and eventually the ridgeback lay down next to him and was warmed by the large shepherd.
Slowly but surely, the ridgeback seemed to accept Bones’s presence so when he passed food to her from his own bowl to the cage a few hours later, she was as much grateful as grudging. Eventually, she went to sleep.
• • •
Though he desperately needed the rest, Denny just couldn’t find his way to sleep that night. Aspirin helped the pain, but nothing could make the stitches not itch. He struggled to get comfortable in the bed he shared with Carrie until finally she awoke.
“I’m sorry,” Denny said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Yes, you did,” Carrie replied. “But it’s okay.”
She looked down at him in the dark and kissed him.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I’m just happy,” she said. “I know we’re supposed to be suffering through this, mourning the dead and our past lives, but you make me very happy. I’m lucky to have found you.”
Denny knew how Carrie felt, though he too had been reluctant to voice it.
“I loved my husband, we had a great wedding, we had a fantastic honeymoon and then we had Scott a few months later, but I was still getting to know him,” Carrie continued. “For spouses and then parents, we were still strangers on certain issues. That’s not the case with you. Just think of how much we’ve gone through in only two and a half months. Forget how much I’ve learned about you, I’ve learned even more about myself. I thought my life was going to be all Little League games, company picnics with my husband, a second kid, a third, maybe. Making ends meet. Cooking and baking. I thought a couple of weeks ahead, sometimes a month. Now, we’re thinking a lifetime ahead. I know what’s important to me now and what doesn’t matter in the slightest. I like that feeling.”
As Carrie talked, she was stroking Denny erect under the sheets. “There used to be such a pecking order to things, everything so civilized. I knew what I was supposed to want and what I wasn’t and now that’s all different. I can spend the day working on the water supply system and feel like I accomplished something at the end of the day. If I want to celebrate by getting a little drunk in the evening, I do.” Her voice became mischievous. “And if I want to be filled with your cock in the middle of the night, I roll over and convince you that that’s what you want, too.”
With that, she inserted him into her and he sighed.
“That take your mind off your stitches?” she asked, gently rocking backwards.
“It certainly does,” he replied.
“Good,” Carrie said. “Then take your time.”
• • •
Out in front of the hotel compound, Anna Blackledge was engaged in much the same activity with Gutierrez who had her bent over an unlit “No/Vacancies” sign that stood just beside the long driveway up to the hotel.
“If you stop, I’ll kill you,” Anna said. “And you know I have a gun.”
Gutierrez, having not expected Anna to come onto him when they took their turns at guard duty, had jerked off earlier and now felt like he could shag Anna for hours. He’d had a thing for the sharp-featured, dark-haired forty-something since he’d arrived (well, he’d had a thing for every woman he’d seen since the plague came and took away most of them) but never thought it would result in something like this.
Ten minutes later, Anna was starting to regret this interlude as the older man was now sputtering and panting so she turned around to quickly relieve him with her mouth and a couple of well-placed fingertips that left him wondering why he’d never considered doing or having someone else do something like that to him before.
“Wow, you’re really good,” Gutierrez said as Anna jerked up her jeans and re-buttoned them. She smiled knowingly and nodded. Though she extolled the virtues of her husband at any opportunity, he’d actually been a bit of a drunk who would come home from a bender and demand sex. After years of enduring his fumbling frustration at being unable to keep an erection long enough to ejaculate, she’d learned about the trick she’d just used on Gutierrez, forced herself not to think about the less than sanitary aspects of it, and went to town. Her husband became downright docile after that, to the point that Anna began referring to it as his “off switch” in conversation with the friends of hers that she shared such details with.
“What now?” Gutierrez asked, snapping Anna out of it.
“What do you mean?”
“Are we going to be public about this? Tell others we’re together?”
As Anna stared at Gutierrez, she realized that even though the man was easily in his mid-fifties, he was as smitten as a sheltered nineteen-year-old. “No, I think we should keep it to ourselves for now. Don’t want to upset any apple carts. I’ve seen how the girls look at you.”
As Gutierrez’s face filled with surprise, Anna internally rolled her eyes. Plague or not, men could still be controlled with a combination of flattery and a finger up their asshole.
“We should take a look around,” Anna said. “I haven’t heard anything but just in case.”
Gutierrez agreed and they walked towards the front gate. That was when they heard the first distant yipping out in the night. It wasn’t a howl like you’d hear from a dog but a quiet, coyote-like baying, as if calling out to a friend.
“Oh, shit, they’re here!” Anna said with surprise, suddenly embarrassed at the idea of having to explain herself to Lester, who she’d also slept with, or any of the others.
But as the pair peered out into the night, neither could actually see any of the dogs.
“At least they’re on the other side of the fence,” Gutierrez said, looking around.
“You don’t think they can get in?”
“It’s fenced, right?”
“Yeah, but dogs can…” Anna trailed off as she saw a single dog approaching the fence a little ways down to her right. She raised her rifle and wondered if she should shoot it. It was on the other side of the chain-link, of course, so her fear was that if she shot it through the fence, it might just rile up the other dogs and stir them into action.
But as the dog got closer, illuminated only by the generator-fueled lights that had been rigged overhead and then the handful of stars, she realized there was something strange about it. In fact, it wasn’t on the outside of the fence
at all, its movements being an optical illusion.
No, the dog was already inside the gates and trotting right for them. Anna had instinct enough to look behind her and saw the silhouettes of three more dogs approaching and knew it was too late for either of the two humans.
“Dammit,” she said, raising her rifle and firing off four quick shots into the air to warn the others as Gutierrez stared at her in surprise. When she’d stopped at the fifth bullet, the last in the magazine, she looked at the man querulously. “I don’t know how you feel about being torn apart, but it isn’t this lady’s cup of tea.”
With that, she placed the muzzle of the rifle between the teeth, the heat from the iron just beginning to burn the roof of her mouth in the half-second before she pulled the trigger.
XI
When Bones heard the gunshots, he scrambled to his feet. The ridgeback was still out cold, but Bones knew that he was needed elsewhere. Though the door had been closed to the kitchen where the dogs were sequestered, Bones knew how to get out of it fairly easily and made haste through a side door leading to the ballroom whose broken latch pre-dated the plague.
He hurried through the room and was soon out in the lobby, where he came face to face with a rifle muzzle.
“Don’t shoot, that’s Bones!” cried Denny as he came down the stairs.
The rifleman, one of the survivors from the reservation, looked as if he might shoot anyway but then turned and headed out of the hotel in the direction of another round of gunfire. Bones hobbled out to the lobby with Denny close behind until the pair could see what was happening outside.
What was happening was madness.
What looked like an entire army of dogs had descended on the grounds of the hotel and were tearing through the human guards like they were made of cheesecloth. A number of the Flagstaff survivors had begun shooting at the dogs, but this time the animals didn’t flinch much less run away. Instead, even as their comrades went down around them, the surviving members of the great pack kept running at the humans without fear.
“Bones, get back inside,” Denny whispered, figuring the wounded shepherd wouldn’t stand a chance.
But Bones didn’t hear him as he was already out in the courtyard, heading for the fight. He neared a Doberman that was mauling the face off one of the young women who had shown up with the doula and, without thinking, launched himself at the animal and tore its throat out in one move. Within minutes, Bones had repeated this action four more times, the blood of his victims soaking his snout and pooling at his feet.
It took the other dogs a few moments to realize that one of their own was tearing their numbers, but once they did, they turned on the shepherd. At first, it was a couple of Akitas that attacked, but after Bones tore the two dogs in half, several of the others began prioritizing the one-time enforcement dog in their attacks.
“Look out, Bones!”
Bones turned in time to see a mastiff coming at him from the left side of the building. He pulled himself into a confrontational stance, but just as the dog leaped, a bullet whined through the air and entered the animal’s right ear and blew its brain out the left. Bones glanced around and saw Denny standing nearby with a rifle.
“Yeah, you’re welcome. We’ve got a lot to go.”
Denny continued firing his rifle while Bones kept going for throats. The human had a handful of magazines in his pants pocket but still endeavored to conserve his bullets, while the shepherd just got angry and sank his teeth into everything that moved. But as far as Denny could tell, even then they were barely making a dent. Dogs seemed to be coming in from every corner of the yard, far more than they had seen outside the sporting goods store.
“How they’d get in?” cried Lester as he made his way out of the hotel, still barefoot but carrying a pump-action shotgun.
“Hell if I know,” called Denny. “But there are a lot of them!”
That’s when Denny saw a number of the dogs racing inside the hotel itself. “Carrie,” he whispered.
Bones caught a glimpse of Denny hurrying back into the building from the corner of his eye and wheeled around to follow, springing away from one fight to get into another.
Denny entered the building and just realized that the screams he’d been hearing for the last minute or so weren’t solely contained to the exterior of the building. There were dogs in the lobby, dogs on the stairs and in the offices, and, Denny had to assume, dogs wherever Carrie was. He slammed a fresh magazine into the breech of his rifle and was halfway to the stairs when he heard Carrie’s voice calling from the kitchen.
“Denny! DENNY!”
Bones caught sight of Denny as he made his way back towards the kitchen and went to follow even though several dogs were already close at his heels. Lester and another of the survivors were following in after them, shooting their guns at the dogs, but Bones also felt the hot breath of the bullets as they whizzed by overhead, chips of plaster splintering out of the walls upon impact.
When Denny got to the kitchen door, he found it blockaded but managed to push his way through, only to see a gun pointed at his face. “Carrie, it’s me! Don’t shoot!”
He stumbled the rest of the way in and saw that Carrie, Lucille and a couple of others had locked themselves in with the still caged ridgeback who, detecting the members of her pack, was bounding about in her cage. Denny quickly went to re-blockade the door but then saw Bones coming, too, and allowed the shepherd in before slamming the heavy kitchen tables Carrie and Lucille were using as barriers back in place in front of the door.
“What about the ballroom entrance?” Denny asked.
“Closed that one off, too,” Carrie said. “There’s more than two hundred dogs out there. I looked out the window. I think there’s at least twice that.”
“They’re just tearing through everybody out there,” Denny said, catching his breath. “And now they’re inside.”
As the humans discussed their next move, Bones moved over to the ridgeback and saw that she was actually substantially better. She calmed herself for a moment and exchanged a quick couple of sniffs with Bones, who sat down next to her. The shepherd sniffed at her wound and gave it a few licks though his tongue could barely reach through the bars.
Denny watched all this, knew the time had come but was reluctant to act.
“How is this supposed to work?” Carrie asked. “We just take her out of her cage and kind of hope she doesn’t tear us to pieces?”
“I have no idea,” Denny said as he walked over to the cage.
Upon seeing the man approach, the ridgeback immediately jumped to her feet and bared her teeth at Denny, growling low. As if hearing their alpha’s distress, the sound of the pack scratching and beating on the kitchen door only got louder.
“Easy, girl,” Denny said, but the ridgeback only backed up and lowered her head, increasing her look of ferocity.
“Shit,” Denny muttered, the memory of an attack at the hands of this dog still fresh in his mind.
That’s when the ridgeback, cage or no cage, flung itself forward at the bars as if figuring they would give way under her assault. She was almost right. The cage rocked forward as she hit the metal. The hinges of the cage door buckled under the vicious attack. Denny decided it would only take two more strikes like that for the ridgeback to break through.
“Okay, so maybe this was a stupid idea,” Denny admitted as he raised his rifle and prepared to shoot the ridgeback.
The caged dog moved to the back of her pen to launch a second attack, but it was at that moment that Bones came around and stood in front of Denny. Just as the ridgeback was about to spring, Bones began barking like a demon. He bared his teeth, which could plainly be seen under his curled lips throughout his vocal assault. The ridgeback halted her attack but then began barking back at Bones and then growling at Denny.
That’s when Bones did something that no one in the room expected. He suddenly stopped barking, yawned, and lay down at Denny’s feet. The ridgeback continued barking, but Bone
s didn’t seem to give a shit. His eyes were still on the ridgeback, but his head was now resting on his front paws. Outside, the rest of the pack continued their angry cacophonous roar punctuated by the occasional blast of gunfire or human scream.
But Bones just lay there. There was a break in the ridgeback’s vocal assault. That was when Bones made a small woofing sound. The ridgeback looked as if it might start snarling all over again, but then it didn’t.
After a moment of quiet, Carrie looked over at Denny with a questioning gaze.
“Fuck if I know,” Denny said.
Slowly, the ridgeback began moving towards Bones. The shepherd held back for a second but then slipped forward a little bit as well. When the ridgeback’s nose reached the cage door, Bones took the last step and touched his nose to the other dog’s nose. Then the ridgeback lay down, too.
Denny looked at this and then up to the ceiling. He thought that if they could climb up onto the stove, they could reach the crawl space between floors and get into the higher levels of the building from there. He hastily suggested this to the others, and though they weren’t sure of his plan, they agreed that the kitchen was soon to evaporate as an option, so they had to go somewhere. The dogs in the hallway were already starting to claw through the door and their combined weight would easily push aside their hastily stacked kitchen equipment.
“Let’s do it,” nodded Lucille as if they had simply decided on which color to paint a bathroom.
With a little bit of help from each other, the assembled group climbed up and out of the kitchen with Denny being the last to go. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the ridgeback the entire time but now he moved towards her cage. She leaped to her feet and began snarling at him, but he didn’t flinch. He just kept staring at her, reached his hand down to the door latch and unhooked it. He then turned his back on her and walked over to the stove, hearing Bones getting to his feet to defend him as the ridgeback nosed her way out of the cage.
Denny didn’t take his time, but he didn’t run, either. He was no prey to be run down. He had the added confidence of a pistol in his hand that had been handed off by one of the others who had gathered in the kitchen with Carrie and Lucille.