by Logan Jacobs
Four sandy-coated canines took the opportunity to rush toward the black-haired girl. Three of them spread out and ran straight toward her in an oncoming wall, but the fourth lopped off to the right before he switched directions and started to run back toward the black-haired girl again.
The black-haired girl fell into a ready stance with her palms out toward the dogs. When she flexed her fingers, I could see a faint blue glow coming from her hands, but she didn’t throw her lightning toward the dogs right away.
One dog leapt for the black-haired girl’s throat, and the other two stayed low to the ground as they raced toward her feet.
The electric Edwardian girl jabbed the fingers of her right hand toward the leaping dog, and a bolt of blue lightning sizzled from her hand toward the dog’s head. Her lightning splayed its blue fingers over the dog’s muzzle and lit up its eyes from inside before the creature fell limp to the ground, but the black-haired girl’s attention was already on the other two dogs. She flung her left hand down and shot a bolt toward the dog on the left, but kicked out her right foot so that the sharp toe of her shiny black boot met the hollow of the dog on the right’s throat. Her shoe sparked when it connected with the dog’s body, and the beast flew backward with a yelp before it collapsed against a tree trunk.
I aimed my Glock at a spot just to the left of the fourth dog’s head as it rushed toward the black-haired girl with its red tongue lolling out of its mouth. When I pulled the trigger, the dog’s head flew back with a shower of dull red specks, and its body collapsed onto the overgrown grass.
A high trumpeting sound blatted through the air, and I looked up from the electric dog’s corpse to see that Fela and Floppy had finally emerged from the Lodge. Floppy galloped through the overgrown grass with his head down, and Fela loped beside him with her spear held downward like she was spearfishing.
The dogs wheeled around and started to bark at the exciting new sound and the exciting new prey.
A brindle dog with a black muzzle and bushy tail launched itself at Fela with its fangs bared. While it traveled toward her, the bushy-tailed dog snapped its jaws and launched a bolt of white lightning at Fela as it leapt through the air, but its lightning just traced a sizzling black path along Fela’s spear before the cat-woman slammed the sharp point of her weapon through her attacker’s chest. The dog’s body crackled as Fela pierced its fur, but then hung limp and lifeless when the red-painted tip of the spear poked out of its other side.
Floppy was surrounded by at least half a dozen dogs who were running alongside him and barking excitedly, like a pack of wolves trying to take down a caribou, but the little mammoth was not intimidated. He kicked one black, pointy-eared dog out of the way as it leapt for his rear right foot, blatted as a shower of sparks sprayed toward him from the dog’s body, but shook his foot and kept on jogging. He brought down one big flat front foot on another dog's head, crushed it like an overripe watermelon, and lifted up his sole to show a flattened mess of red goop, white bone, and brown fur.
I tried to find a good target for my Glock, but the dogs were milling around Fela and Floppy so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I’d actually hit one of them where it counted. I was about to bend down and grab my spear, but then three floppy-eared black dogs broke away from the pack and started to race toward us with their tongues lolling out of their mouths, and I raised my pistol again.
One of the dogs ran straight toward me, so it wasn’t too hard to get it right in the middle of the forehead with my Glock. Blood sprayed out of the back of its head as it died with a yelp, but I didn’t have time to feel bad about how many dogs I was killing just yet, so I turned my attention to the other two canines who’d started running my way. I’d killed three dogs so far, and that meant I only had five bullets left in my Glock. I’d need to be careful how I used my ammunition and make every shot count.
The smallest dog of the three flew backward under the force of the black-haired girl’s electric kick, but the other dog had managed to get behind her. It had turned its back to me as it crouched down in preparation to leap up at the girl, and that gave me an easy shot, but I knew that if I tried to shoot the dog I risked shooting the girl in the back or in the legs, so I grabbed the spear and quickly jabbed it down toward the dog’s hindquarters with all the strength in my left hand.
My stomach flopped as I felt the spear hit the dog’s skin and tear through its muscles. I didn’t feel any better about the way the animal yelped, or even about the way it bit at the wooden shaft of my spear, or the way the dog snapped its teeth at me, or the feeble bolt of blue lightning that arced from the dog’s gnashing teeth to the end of my nose. I snapped my head backwards at the sharp jolt of pain and pulled the spear out of the dog’s body as I did so, but it was too late for the dog. I’d torn a hole in its side, and its red and brown guts oozed out of its furry body onto the ground. I had to breathe through my nose to avoid the whiff of dog insides, but at least now the beast wasn’t trying to attack me or the black-haired girl anymore.
Fela lowered her spear to the ground and swung the end around so that the dead dog’s body slammed against one of the other canines who were circling the cat-woman.
The live dog yelped as its dead pack mate’s skull slammed into its side, but it stopped yelping when the tip of Fela’s spear pushed into the hollow of its throat. Fela pulled back her pink lips in a snarl to show off her fangs, hissed at the dogs who were still circling her, grinned as the confused canines ran off yelping, and then pushed on the dogs’ bodies with her bare foot to get them off the end of her spear.
Floppy tossed his head from side to side as he barreled through the group of dogs. On each swing of his head, he either scooped a dog out of the way and rolled it back under his stomping feet, or he speared a dog who’d been trying to run at him from an angle. He may have been the biggest prey out of all of us, but he certainly had his natural weapons in top shape, and he was obliterating the dogs nearly as quickly as they came at him.
I tried to find a clear shot so that I could take out some of the dogs that were harassing the little mammoth, but the barking pack circled so close to Floppy that I couldn’t take a shot without the risk of hitting him.
The mammoth slapped a big brown dog to the right with his trunk, swung his long brown appendage back to the left to toss a smaller canine against a tree, then curled his trunk under the belly of a little fluffy white dog as it scampered away from him. He plucked the little dog off the ground, waved it in the air as the fluffy beast yapped and scrabbled its uselessly sparking claws in the air, then flung the dog against the brick wall of the Masonic Lodge.
The little dog stopped yapping as its body slammed against the wall. Its fluffy corpse sparked once as it fell to the ground, rolled a few feet, and came to rest against a sapling.
Floppy didn’t even look to see what had happened to his canine missile. He charged forward through the yapping crowd of feral dogs with his head lowered and his tusks out, and soon the dogs were running away from him instead of running around him.
Fela followed with her red-stained spear held at dog-stabbing height. She yowled a war cry at the dogs as she ran, and her snarling song didn’t end until the last of the feral beasts had scampered away with their tails between their legs.
“And stay away, you horrid beasts!” the black-haired girl shouted at the retreating dogs. She bent down, picked up a rock, and threw it after the running pack. Her rock hit one dog on its fluffy backside, but the pup didn’t even yelp or look back as it scampered down the road.
“A strange pack,” Fela mused. “They did not attack all at once, like wolves would do.”
“I don’t know if they’re a pack, exactly,” the black-haired girl said. Her voice was soft and cultured, with an accent like Katharine Hepburn’s not-quite-English affect crossed with a flowery Southern drawl. “I saw a few of those dogs around town during the winter, and I tried to be kind to them, I did! I even put some food out for the poor things, I thought they’d be starving,
and I thought maybe I could make friends with some of them. But ever since it got warm, they've just been after me--”
The black-haired girl’s sky-blue eyes started to glisten with tears. She clapped her hands over her mouth and let out a muffled sob.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” I said. I holstered my Glock, dropped my gory spear, then jumped off the stone step and reached out to pat the black-haired girl’s shoulder. My hand hovered over the puff of her sleeve as I debated whether a touch from a strange man would even be welcome, or if she’d be annoyed at me for deflating her sleeve, so I patted the puff gently as a compromise and started to rattle off a series of comforting puns. “We really sent those dogs packing, right? I’m pretty sure they won’t be hounding you anytime soon.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” The black-haired woman practically collapsed into me. She clutched at my shoulders, pressed her porcelain cheek to my chest, and began to dampen my Omnicorp T-shirt with her hot tears. Her body shook as she sobbed. “I thought they were going to kill me, I really did!”
“It’s okay, we’re here now, we got you,” I soothed. I slid my arms around the black-haired girl’s shaking back and patted her gently between the shoulder blades. I really wasn’t used to strange girls sobbing in my arms, especially cute girls who could zap me with lightning if they decided I was taking too many liberties with their person. I glanced over at Fela to see if I could glean some guidance from my feline friend’s reaction, but the cat-woman was busy inspecting Floppy’s feet for damage, so I just focused on soothing the scared girl in my arms. “We’ll take care of the dogs if someone let’s them out again, okay? Uhhh… sorry about all the puns.”
“You’re so kind,” the black-haired girl sniffled and looked up. Her eyes were ringed with a touch of red from her crying, but those sky-blue orbs and dark lashes were still as entrancing as the moment I’d seen them. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ve soiled your shirt.”
“Really not a problem,” I assured the girl. I’d been so focused on tracking the dogs during the fight that I’d barely noticed my own body’s reactions, but now I was very aware of the way my heart was jumping around in my chest like a frog trapped in a mason jar. “I just want to make sure you’re alright.”
“It’s just that I haven’t seen any other people in such a long time,” the girl sighed. “I really thought I might never see another human being again. And now here you both are--”
“I am not a human,” Fela interrupted without even looking up from Floppy’s front foot.
“Well, whatever you are, I think you saved my life, the both of you.” The black-haired woman stepped back from me and put a hand up to straighten her bun. Her blue eyes darted from me to Fela and back again. “And your... hairy elephant?”
“His name is Floppy,” Fela said. She nodded at Floppy, who put his foot down on the ground and snorted. “I am Fela. And that is Dave Meyer.”
“Hi.” I held my hand out to the black-haired girl. It felt a little silly to bother with that kind of formality when the black-haired woman had just been pressed against my chest, but I was pretty sure that someone dressed like a Gibson girl was likely to have some firm personal boundaries when it came to etiquette, even if she was wandering round in a post-apocalyptic small town in a clean dress and shooting lightning at dogs. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Emma Newbold,” the black-haired woman breathed.
She reached out and clasped her delicate fingers around mine. Her hand was warm and soft, but I could feel a few tiny callouses along her thumb and forefinger that suggested manual labor. She pumped my hand up and down once slowly, but didn’t pull away, so I didn’t either. “It’s lovely to meet the both of you. Thank you ever so much.”
“Floppy is not hurt,” Fela announced as she rose up from her crouch. “We cannot trust that those dogs will not come back, even if they do not usually hunt as a pack. And I want to make better spears than these. Emma Newbold, where can we find some better shelter than this dark cave with mold all over the inside?”
“Oh, yes!” Emma snatched her hand back from mine, then pointed past the Masonic Lodge toward the cluster of Victorian houses on the northwest side of downtown. “We ought to go to my house. I think we’ll all be much safer there.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I agreed. I bent down, grabbed my spear by the blunt end, and winced as the coppery smell of dog blood hit my nostrils. “Ew. These things feel kind of one-use-only,”
“Take it,” Fela said. “We do not know what we might encounter on the way. I will make better spears when we get to Emma Newbold’s cave.”
“Just Emma will do,” Emma said. She flexed her fingers, winced, then started off over the grass toward the cluster of half-collapsed houses. “Ooh, I hate doing that. Perhaps you could see your way toward making a spear for me as well, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“I will make a spear for you,” Fela agreed as she started to follow Emma. “Come, Floppy. Safety waits for us.”
“Spears all around!” I held my spear out sideways so that the bloody end was as far away from my nose as possible and started off after Fela, Emma, and Floppy.
“It will be so good to entertain guests,” Emma chattered as she led us through the narrow side streets of the town’s residential area. “I’ve missed company ever so much. I don’t think I’ve spoken to another person since Mama passed a few winters ago.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I said.
“She’s with my father and grandmother now,” Emma sighed. “At least she is at peace.”
“So you’ve been living here all by yourself since then?” I asked. “Or is there anyone else in town?”
“I’ve only been here since last fall, but I’m quite certain I’d have met any humans in town by now,” Emma said. “I haven’t seen anyone since I left Toledo, and they were really quite unfriendly over there. I had to leave right away. I even walked all the way through Detroit, but there are so many electric carriages running amok on the streets that I barely got away with my life. I don’t imagine anyone survived around there at all, and I certainly haven’t been back since.”
“What happened in Toledo?” I asked.
“Cannibals.” Emma shook her head, then turned right down a narrow, tree-lined dirt road. “Down this way, please. I really don’t wish to go into much detail, if you don’t mind, but suffice it to say that the state’s gone almost entirely savage.”
“It was really only a matter of time,” I shrugged.
“I barely escaped with my life,” Emma continued. “I thought I might find some kind of civilization in Michigan, but if Detroit has fallen to the machines, then I can’t imagine where else I might find anyone at all. What about you folks? Where did you come from?”
“Uh, that’s a complicated question--” I began.
“I am from the Valley of Pride Blacktail in the Prairie of the White Flowers, far to the south of here,” Fela said. The blunt end of her spear clunked on the ground as she strode down the dirt road next to Floppy. “It has taken several winters to get here. Except for the lightning-dogs, it looks like a hospitable place.”
“It has been quite kind to me so far,” Emma said. She stopped in front of a little brick bungalow that didn’t look very different from the rest of the abandoned houses on the block except for the intact roof and the stone porch and steps. “Here we are!”
“Good score on the roof,” I commented. “Place looks nice,”
“I know it’s a bit raggle-taggle still, but I didn’t want to spruce it up too much from the outside in case someone unfriendly happened by.” Emma strode over the overgrown grass, picked up her black skirt as she clacked up the stone steps, and opened the creaky, wooden front door. “Do come in, do come in. I’m afraid you might have to leave Floppy out here, though--I really can’t see him fitting in through the door, and I’ve worked awfully hard getting it to just stay closed.”
“I will honor the rules of your house,” Fela said. She patted Floppy
on the trunk, then pointed to a spot on the overgrown front lawn. “Stay and watch for danger, Floppy. Trumpet if you see a creature.”
Floppy nodded, patted Fela on top of her head with the end of his trunk, then lumbered off to an overgrown sumac bush and started to strip the leaves away.
I followed Emma over the grass, laid the spear against the stone porch, and went inside the crumbling little bungalow my pretty new friend lived in.
I’d been expecting Emma’s house to be as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside, with peeling wallpaper, moldy velvet furniture, and a musty smell, so the living room I stepped into was a pleasant surprise.
The walls were painted over with something white and chalky, and even the fancy molding around the ceiling had been freshened up. There was a simple brick fireplace on the right side of the room with the remnants of burnt logs in it and a pile of split logs next to it. A colorful rag sofa was spread out in front of the fireplace with a long, low table on top of it, and a wicker sofa with quilts piled on its seat sat facing the table and hearth. Two more quilts were slung over the curtain bars on top of the front window, and they let in a crooked shaft of light that gleamed across the wooden floor. A bookshelf that looked exactly like the short wooden shelves from the library sat against one wall with a pair of tarnished silver candlesticks on top, right next to a couple of rectangular wooden boxes with leather straps on them. Even though the room was sparse, it was clean and cozy in its own way, and it wasn’t hard to imagine Emma sitting curled up on that couch reading a book from that bookshelf while a fire crackled merrily away in the hearth. The room smelled of wood smoke and herbs.
“This is cute,” I observed. “You really fixed the place up, huh?”