Enter the Apocalypse

by Gondolfi, Thomas

  From the road the grass looked deceptively short; the tops of the stalks were taller than the roof of her car. Well, the fence was a straight shot off the road. She kept the wheel straight and drove forward. Chain link was visible in flashes as the car bumped along.

  Suddenly, the truck shot free of the grass, just feet from the fence, onto the dirt road. Katie stomped the brake and twisted the steering wheel. The tires spun on the mud and the back end of the car fishtailed around, crashing through the fence with a crunch. Katie's head whacked into the steering wheel as the truck jerked to a stop.

  ***

  Katie came to slowly. Her head ached and when she reached up, she had a big goose-egg on her forehead. The driver's side door wouldn't open at Katie's fumbling touch and when her bleary eyes focused enough to see it was obvious why. The left side of the truck was wedged against the fence. Katie tried to crawl to the passenger side but something held her in place. Her seatbelt. She unbuckled it and crawled across to the passenger door, falling out into the mud with a groan.

  She lay there for a moment, recovering, and then pulled herself to her feet to inspect the damage. The rear left of the pickup's bed had slid through the fence, tearing down the chain link and smashing through a pole, shearing it off. That point slashed the tire and came to rest underneath the truck, holding the back end off the ground. She wasn't going anywhere else in her Ranger now.

  Katie looked around, surprised that the crash hadn't drawn the attention of the house's occupants. Or maybe it had. A squirrel stared down at her from atop the barbed wire, its tail twitching.

  "Get out of here, human," the squirrel chittered in a rough approximation of human speech.

  The words sounded incongruous coming out of the mouth of a cute little forest animal. Katie screamed and fell back on her butt, scrabbling backward away from the thing. This was the first time one of these nightmare animals had spoken; she pushed the moose's moving mouth from her thoughts. Until now she'd been able to write off the aberrant behavior of the animals but the talking squirrel, she had no explanation for.

  The chipmunks, mice, and rabbits that had seemed abnormally interested in watching her go about her day had just been curious. Squirrels tearing up the radio in her watchtower had just been hungry and looking for food. The moose, antelope, and deer chasing her had eaten something rotten and become enraged. Now the stress was causing her feverish mind to hallucinate. That had to be it. Hallucination.

  Her hands brushed a rock, and she picked it up, chucking it with all her might at the thing from her nightmares. "Leave me alone! I'm not crazy, I'm not!"

  The squirrel danced away from her clumsy throw and scampered away down the fence, disappearing into the long grass heading toward the house. Katie jumped to her feet and chased it. The house might have a telephone, or even a map and a car.

  She reached the driveway first and turned to run along it. Easier than fumbling her way through the long grass, tripping on unseen obstacles, and she now had her first unobstructed view of the front of the house. The garage door sat open, and inside the setting sun gleamed off the shiny paint of a humongous 4-wheel-drive truck.

  Brody had been right about one thing. She was already thanking him for the endurance she'd built up over the summer. She wasn't even breathing hard as she pounded up the front steps although her head and neck still hurt from the car crash and her arm throbbed under her tee-shirt bandage. As she reached the porch, the front door opened and a bloodhound wearing a loose pair of overalls stepped out on two legs to greet her. The dog held a shotgun leveled at her head in his two front paws.

  "Stay away," Katie stuttered, falling back a step.

  The dog gave a little whuff and lowered the gun. "No hurt you," it barked as it retreated through the door. "Come."

  Katie stood still, frozen with indecision. Could she really trust this dog after the events of today?

  A growl made her turn. Wolves prowled around the corner of the house, yellow eyes staring at her. All three had what looked to be assault rifles slung over their backs. Although they were on four legs Katie followed the bloodhound into the house.

  As soon as she was through the door, the dog slammed it shut behind her and threw the safety bolt. He turned to her, his big tail wagging behind him. Drool hung from one jowled cheek and he licked it back as he propped the shotgun in the corner. Katie backed down the hall as she stared.

  "You hurt," he growled in a way that reminded her of Scooby-Doo.

  "I'm fine, really. I just got lost, and I crashed my car into the fence." Katie figured she might as well roll with her hallucinations and placate the talking dog.

  "Not good."

  This voice came from behind her. Katie spun and stifled a scream. A Rottweiler stood there on two legs, naked except for her black fur. She held a plate in one paw, raw bacon piled high on it.

  Katie stared at the plate and the dog cocked her head, following her gaze. She held out the plate to Katie. "I share food with master."

  "Star, we need to get master out. Remember old masters?" The bloodhound squeezed past Katie in the narrow hallway and pushed the Rottweiler, Star, away into the kitchen. For lack of anything better to do Katie followed them.

  All the cupboards were open, the dishes, pots, pans, and silverware spread about the floor. The fridge door lay on the ground and brown paw prints covered the shelves and tracked through the spilled condiments.

  "We need to get out of here, the wolves..." Katie shuddered and hugged herself as she sunk down into a chair. "What is going on?"

  "Don't know. We try help old masters, but wolf and fox come kill them. Star and Tank alone." The bloodhound's ears drooped, if possible, even more, and he looked at her with his liquid brown eyes.

  "Tank, thank you for helping me. But what are we going to do about the wolves?"

  "Wolf not get house, house bunker," Tank explained, wagging his tail as he pulled aside a curtain. Thick iron bars laced the window.

  Katie closed her eyes and laid her head on the table. "What is going on? Why are dogs and squirrels talking to me?"

  Tank leaned over and licked the side of her face. "Tank not know. Just one day Tank understand masters."

  "What happened to your masters?"

  "Come, we show." Star put down her plate of bacon and grabbed Katie's arm, tugging her to her feet. The dogs led her upstairs to a room overlooking the back of the house. Tank crouched, as did Star, so Katie followed suit. Tank nodded at Star then Katie before lifting the bottom of the curtain. Katie peered up. Small round holes punctured the glass in several places, bullet holes.

  Underneath them lines of wolves and foxes milled about, each one with some kind of gun strapped to its back. The pop of gunfire came from somewhere out of her sight. Smaller animals dashed about underfoot of the others, squirrels, rabbits, and mice, carrying ammunition. She saw a group of mice off to the left all gathered around something open on the ground. It looked like a book, but she was too far away to guess more than that.

  Both Star and Tank's gaze fixed on something and Katie shifted to see. Three dead humans lay off to the side of the barn, tossed in a pile out of the way of the milling animals. Katie sat back and covered her mouth. No wonder Tank and Star had been so eager to see her.

  Tank motioned her away, and they moved into another bedroom.

  "Where did all the guns come from?" Katie asked, pacing back and forth.

  "Masters," Tank said, licking another big slurp of drool up. "Masters keep for end times. But mice crawl in, take guns, kill masters, and let in wolves."

  "Why didn't the wolves kill you two?"

  "Wolf want us help them, tell plan to kill other masters. But Tank and Star good boys, not hurt masters. Masters give pets."

  "And bacon," Star piped up.

  "We need to warn someone." Katie smacked her head. How could she have forgotten her original reason for heading for the house? "Where's the phone?"

  Tank and Star took her back downstairs to the living room. But wh
en Katie picked up the old handset nothing but silence greeted her. Not even a dial tone.

  "Damn it, they must have figured out where the phone lines are and cut them." Just like her torn up radio. "Or just cut every line they found."

  Katie flicked the switch on the living room wall, but nothing happened.

  "We can't stay here," Katie said, remembering the empty fridge and the ransacked cupboards. "We need to make a break for Bonner's Ferry. Do you know where the car keys are?"

  Star wagged her tail and bounded off, her claws clicking on the hardwood floors. She returned a few moments later, a ring of keys dangling from one paw, which she presented triumphantly to Katie with a big doggy grin. Katie took the keys and had to resist reaching up to pat the big dog on the head.

  Katie found a flashlight and went through the house to gather supplies. In the basement she found a pantry as yet untouched by the dogs that contained what looked like years’ worth of food. Still, she couldn't just hole up here and hide. She needed to get to town and warn them about the gun-wielding wolves and foxes. Either that or Katie would get to town and check herself into the nearest mental hospital. She still half suspected that the talking animals were a hallucination. Despite them walking on two legs and talking to her, their every action was still very doggy like. Like they would be if they were just regular dogs and her mind played tricks on her. She'd know for sure when she reached Bonner's Ferry. If the townsfolk could see and talk with Tank and Star, then she wasn't crazy. With that in mind, Katie carried upstairs only enough food for that night and the next day, leaving the rest.

  In the kitchen, Katie opened a can of chili and out of force of habit from long years feeding her parents’ dogs, dumped it into the doggy bowl on the floor.

  Tank glared at her. "We like you now. Feed proper."

  "Oh, yes, sorry." Katie blushed and opened a new can which she divided up onto three plates, setting them out on the kitchen table, along with forks.

  They dined on cold chili and green beans in the light of the flashlight. The dogs used the forks, mostly, although Star needed some prodding from Tank. The implements looked odd in their paws, but it gave her an opportunity to study them. It appeared the dog's dewclaws, the vestigial fifth claw on their legs, had grown longer, giving them a proto-thumb.

  Between the bump on her head and the throbbing gash on her arm Katie had little appetite, but she forced herself to eat. Occasionally a wolf howled outside.

  "We'll leave in the morning," Katie announced when they finished eating.

  Her head needed a chance to rest, and she wanted to search the house for a first aid box to clean and bind her arm. A household like this must have one around here somewhere. Plus, wolves and foxes were nocturnal hunters. Despite the changes she'd seen in Tank, Star, and the other animals, their base nature hadn't changed, so she suspected early morning hours would be their best chance to escape. Tank insisted she should take the masters’ room upstairs. She understood why, when after she'd changed into a pair of pajamas borrowed from the dresser and crawled under the covers, Tank and Star both curled up in the bed with her.

  ***

  During the night Star crawled onto Katie, pinning her to the bed with her massive Rottweiler body. So when Star got up as the sun rose, she woke Katie. Outside birds sang, and the sun shone. A normal day, and a perfect one at that, until Katie, unthinking, pulled aside the curtains. A wolf walked by below on two legs, a pistol held in its paws. Its ear twitched, and it looked up at her. Katie gulped and pulled the curtain closed again.

  Breakfast consisted of cold franks and beans with Tank and Star. Tank still wore the overalls and Katie debated if she should ask Star to put on clothes too. After several minutes of watching the dogs eat, Tank with a fork and Star by licking things directly off the plate, she decided not to. If she was crazy, there was no need to buy more into the hallucination, and if she wasn't then it was Star's choice whether to dress like a human or not.

  Katie changed into a clean pair of clothes from the dresser upstairs. They were a little big for her, but much better than her mud-and-blood-splattered ranger uniform. When she was ready, she gathered Tank and Star by the locked door to the garage. Katie gave Tank the backpack filled with food.

  "Tank, your job is to get this backpack, you, and Star, into the back of the pickup truck."

  Tank licked his jowls and nodded, setting his long ears flapping.

  Star gave Katie a doggie smile. "What I do?"

  "You follow Tank and hold on," Katie said, holding up the keys. The pickup truck had an automatic lock which meant no fumbling around with the door trying to get inside. "I'll drive. Tank, you sure you can give me directions to Bonner's Ferry?"

  "Bonn Fair, yes, yes. We go with masters many times. Tank good dog."

  Katie sighed. If Tank was a product of her hallucinating mind, she was in big trouble, but since she hadn't found a map, he was her only option. "All right, on three."

  The two dogs looked serious while Katie grabbed the bolt. "One, two, three." Katie twisted the bolt and flung open the door. The two dogs raced past her, claws squealing on the linoleum. Katie dashed after them, not bothering to close the door behind her. She pushed the unlock button on the truck's key-fob and the driver's side door clicked. Tank tossed in the backpack then pushed up Star as Katie reached the door. The truck was so big that she couldn't even reach the door handle without standing on the door runner.

  The door opened smoothly at her touch. Katie slid inside and jammed the key into the place. A howl rose up from the driveway, but she ignored it and slammed the door shut as the truck roared to life. In the rear-view she watched Tank climb over the truck bed, and as soon as he was inside she threw the truck into gear.

  As they shot forward a group of wolves moved into the driveway, leveling weapons at the truck. Katie slammed down on the gas, flooring it straight at them. A few shots whizzed by the truck; one slammed through the windshield and shattered the rear-view mirror. Katie flinched away from the broken glass and plastic shards, but kept the truck heading steady. At the last second the wolves scrambled out of the way, and the truck barreled through where they'd just been standing.

  Katie sped up as they approached the closed gate. The big truck hit with a scream of metal, tearing the chain-link right from its moorings and crushing the remains without even slowing down. The tires squealed for purchase as they swung out onto the blacktop and sped away. Tank crawled forward and stuck his head through the back window; his drooping ears flopped onto the back of the seat next to Katie as he gave her directions.

  Several hours later they chugged into Bonner's Ferry and straight into a war zone. Dead deer, raccoons, rats, wolves, and more littered the streets, rotting in the summer sun. From the smell they hadn't been there more than a day. Bullet holes pockmarked the buildings and smoke wisped up from somewhere farther up the street. Here and there through the wreckage she could see a hand, or shoes sticking out. She hadn't been hallucinating after all, but it was too late. Katie averted her eyes and drove, looking for any signs of life.

  Look for the next installment of our post-apocalyptic anthologies in Enter the Aftermath available September of 2017.

  Author Biographies

  Nick Barton

  Nick Barton is a speculative fiction writer living in Somerset, England. His horror short story, THE LAST RESORT can be found in Wicked Tales anthology, 'Muffled Scream: Corner of the Eye.' If Nick has gone missing, chances are high he is living as a wood elf in Skyrim, dancing to The Beatles or watching The Lord of the Rings, again. Visit him at nickbartonauthor.co.uk or on Twitter @NickBarton101.

  Matthew Buscemi

  Matthew Buscemi is a speculative fiction author and founder of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press. He grew up in Illinois, but left to explore the world. He has taught English in Japan and Thailand, and has studied linguistics in Hawaii.

  Nowadays he lives with his husband in Seattle, Washington, where he types code by day and prose by night. He dreams of exploring the
multiverse himself, but until humanity gets around to inventing a means of inter-dimensional travel, his imagination will suffice.

  Jessica Conoley

  Jessica Conoley was raised on 80’s action films, Jem and the Holograms, X-Men, and big-brother mandated Star-Wars. Sitting in the back of class she never felt like she fit in with the other kids and escaped reality by reading. Three decades later she started writing fantasy novels, flash fiction, and essays to help other readers escape their own realities. In 2012, she became the Managing Editor of Kansas City Voices arts and literary magazine. In 2016, her short piece “I Am Descended From Giants” was awarded 1st place in creative nonfiction by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville. Get a free sneak peek of her work at http://jessicaconoley.com/

  Lana Cooper

  Philadelphia-based writer Lana Cooper doesn't usually talk about herself in the first person, but makes an exception when writing an author bio. In 2014, she published her first novel, Bad Taste In Men, a humorous coming-of-age tale for awkward teens who grew up in the '90s. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, with her short stories steeped in horror-humor and urban fantasy. Cooper has written extensively on a variety of pop culture topics for PopMatters and her own blog, DelightfullyDysfunctional.com. She enjoys communicating with stuffed animals and avoiding eye-contact with strangers on public transportation.

  Lisha Goldberg

  Lisha Goldberg started her professional career as a technical writer, then switched to teaching science to elementary children. She enjoys writing short stories and poems. Her hobbies include playing piano and creating artwork with mosaic tiles. Her short stories have appeared in Mad Scientist Journal, The Blotter, and Chicken Soup for the Soul.