by M. D. Massey
He looked back and forth at us again and stuck his hands on his hips. “Well, aren’t you going to say something about how brave she is?”
I looked at our werewolf in residence and chuckled. “Bobby, methinks you have met your twin chachalaca.” Gabby stifled a laugh with the back of her hand. I stuck a hand out to the kid. “I’m Aidan, but most folks call me Scratch. Gabby has saved my skin more than once, so I’m well aware of her bravery.”
The old man Kate had pointed out earlier glanced over at me after I introduced myself. He puffed on his pipe and watched us with interest.
Bobby frowned at me before addressing Raleigh. “I’m Bobby.” He pointed sideways at Gabby with his thumb. “Gabby’s alright, most of the time. She likes weird music, but she’s fun to have around.” The girl punched him on the shoulder, hard. He rubbed his arm, feigning pain that I know he didn’t feel.
“Totally uncalled for! That’s two demerits on your quarterly performance report.” Gabby reared back to punch him again, and he shied away with his hands up in surrender. “Alright, chill already! Sheesh.”
He turned to Raleigh again, whispering and pointing at Gabby from behind his hand. “Anger issues,” he stated smugly.
Gabby simply shook her head at him and crossed her arms. “Pinche payaso,” she mumbled under her breath, which got a rise from the old man.
He called to us from his bench, motioning for us to join him. “Gabby, mija, come and introduce your friends.” He looked at Raleigh, who was obviously about to feel very left out. “You can come as well, chavalo, but please remain quiet and respectful while we speak.”
Raleigh nodded with enthusiasm. “I will, Mr. Paco.” He whispered to Bobby as we walked over to where the old man was sitting. “He hardly ever speaks to me in English, so he must really want to talk to you guys. Mostly he just cusses at me in Spanish. Hey, do you know what a ‘cool arrow’ is?”
Bobby nodded. “Gabby calls me that all the time, probably because I’m so smooth and fast.”
Raleigh screwed his mouth up and chewed on his lip. “Huh. Maybe the old man likes me after all.”
As we sat down under the tree, Gabby made introductions all the way around. “Scratch, Bobby—this is Don Paco, a hunter from Mexico City. Don Paco has helped me out in the past. He’s—he’s a friend.”
I heard Raleigh whispering from my left. “Wait a minute, Paco’s a hunter? Oh man, now it all makes sense!” Don Paco gave him a sharp look, which silenced him immediately. I was starting to like this guy.
“Don Paco, this is my friend, Bobby.” Don Paco nodded to him. “And—”
The old man cut her off, in the politest manner possible. “And this is Scratch Sullivan, the famous protector of the Central Texas safe zones.”
I got up and shook hands with him, and he stood to do the same. His grip was surprisingly firm for a man of his age, although I noticed he moved stiffly, favoring one leg.
“Mucho gusto, Don Paco. Any friend of Gabby’s is a friend of mine.”
He looked me in the eye, noting the old scars over my eye and the fresh cuts and bruises on my face. “Likewise, Señor Sullivan, likewise.”
I waited for him to sit again before reclaiming my seat. Gabby sat politely while Don Paco cleaned his pipe out, quietly and carefully repacking it with fresh tobacco before he lit up again. Bobby and Raleigh could barely contain their impatience, and each let out a sigh of relief when the old man spoke.
“So, what brings you to visit, mija?”
“Perros diablos, Don Paco.” He nodded, and listened quietly while Gabby related the story the punter had told us.
After she finished her account, Don Paco blew lazy smoke rings while he considered the information Gabby had shared. He pointed the stem of his pipe at her. “Have you seen these ‘devil dogs’?”
“No. We only know what we’ve been told. But do you think it’s possible that punter was telling the truth?”
Don Paco puffed on his pipe, and his eyes narrowed as he nodded slowly. “I have seen these things before—at least, something similar to what this person described. In Central America, they are called Los Cadejos, evil spirits in the shape of large black dogs. Very dangerous, very hard to kill. But typically, El Cadejo hunts alone. No, what I think you are dealing with is something else—the work of a bruja, perhaps.”
Bobby raised his hand. “What’s a broom haw?”
Raleigh slapped him lightly on the arm with the back of his hand. “I was going to ask the same question!”
Gabby rolled her eyes at them both. “A bruja is a witch. In our culture, the word almost always refers to an evil person who messes with the supernatural. The good ones are called curanderas, and they usually only deal with herbs, healing, and such. Brujas, on the other hand, are known to cast curses and give people mal de ojo, the evil eye.”
Having grown up hearing my mom’s folk tales about brujas, lechuzas, and the like, I was familiar with the concept—but skeptical. I decided to make sure I understood what the old man was implying. “Don Paco, you’re saying that if these ‘demon dogs’ are roaming around the area, they might be controlled by a human?”
“Sí, although you can hardly call most brujas human. And if this one is letting her familiars kill indiscriminately, well—she must be a very bad witch. Very evil.”
“Great,” Bobby replied. “Now we have to worry about the Wicked Witch of the Southwest coming for us.” He wriggled his fingers at Gabby and cackled menacingly. “I'll get you, my pretty, and your little werewolf too!”
I frowned at Bobby, while Raleigh looked around, confused. “What werewolf? I thought Don Paco killed him.”
Bobby realized his mistake and tried to cover for it. “It’s just a saying, kid, from a movie before the War.” This seemed to satisfy Raleigh, and he settled back down to listen to our conversation.
I let out a long, heavy sigh. “Don Paco, if this is really the case, how do we deal with these dogs and the person who controls them?”
He tapped his pipe out on the side of the bench. “My best advice? Kill her, before she kills you.”
GNAWED
While Don Paco’s advice wasn’t exactly helpful, it did shed some light on the punter’s tale. At least we knew what we might be dealing with, should we run into the same things the punters were running from. It made me wish I had some silver ammo handy, but supplies had been scarce since we’d left Austin. Half my gear had gotten blown up, and the other half had gotten lost along the way.
And while we had plenty back at the Facility, our supplies would begin to dwindle once we started running patrols and watch duty. We’d have to start making scavenging trips to military installations and outposts to find more guns and ammunition. Either that, or I’d have to take a trip out West to my cabin and dig up some of my caches. Not that I wanted to do that, since I preferred to live off what I could find in the wild; those caches were for rainy day use only, as far as I was concerned. But this might qualify, what with having all the settlers and Colin’s group of LARPers moving into the Facility.
After we got everyone settled in and things were running smoothly, we also needed to find a way to take it back—all of it. The first step was establishing a base of operations at the Facility. It was a lot to think about, and I honestly didn’t have the juice to face it at the moment. After stewing on it for a few minutes, I mostly zoned out as we humped it back to the Facility.
We were ten miles south of the farmstead where we’d spoken with Don Paco when we came across the slaughter.
And a slaughter it was; that was the only way to describe it. Bobby was on point, and he whistled to let us know something was up. Gabby and I hopped off the road and into concealment, where we waited for Bobby to return and tell us what he’d found. He popped out of the woods to my left and called Gabby over from the other side of the road.
Bobby’s face blanched, and his voice shook slightly as he spoke. “You guys gotta see this for yourselves.”
We followed him
south along the road for about a hundred yards. When he stopped, he didn’t need to say anything to indicate what he’d found. A fresh corpse was scattered in pieces, all over the blacktop.
Bobby squatted next to the largest piece of the body and pointed out several details. “This is the first one, and there are more that way,” he said, tilting his head in a westerly direction. “There are both teeth marks and claw marks on the body—it’s been chewed up pretty good.”
“Is that our guy, from back at the greenhouse?” I asked.
Bobby nodded. The punter’s trench coat was torn to shreds, but the boots were untouched. Jagged white bone and macerated flesh stuck out from a dirty tube sock inside one of those boots. I guessed he’d hauled ass to catch up with his group after I’d let him go, only to get mauled to pieces. He’d have been better off heading the other direction, it seemed.
Bobby walked a few paces away to examine some smaller pieces of the corpse, which included more limbs, the lower half of a torso, and the head—or what was left of it. He pointed around the scene at various bits and chunks.
“Look at this, Scratch. It’s all here, every bit of it. Sure, the body is chewed up a lot, and it was torn to pieces, but as far as I can tell nothing’s missing. Whatever killed this person wasn’t doing it out of hunger.”
I looked off into the brush, where I could see a trail of blood and gore that led away from the road. “How many more are there?”
He tilted his head and counted silently on his fingers. “At least a dozen.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed and she scanned the area, sidearm already in hand. “Whatever did this could still be around.”
I nodded. “Keep your head on a swivel. Bobby, what else are these bodies telling you?”
He shrugged. “Scent-wise, I am definitely picking up a canine odor. But it’s muted or altered or something. And there were signs of a struggle. I mean, there are bullet casings everywhere. These punters fought back. But whatever it was that killed these folks? Either the punters took shooting lessons from Stormtroopers, or these things don’t bleed.”
“You mean to tell me that the only blood you’ve found is human?”
Bobby stood up and brushed his hands off on his shorts. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Gabby reacted to that revelation with a pronounced “Huh.”
I turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “That mean something to you, kid?”
She shook her head, slowly. “Naw—well, maybe. That thing that Don Paco helped me kill? It didn’t bleed, either. You could shoot him, and instead of bleeding he’d leak this black, oily stuff. It was like he was filled with liquid night, you know?”
Bobby and I shared a look. “Funny that this is the first time we’ve heard about this,” he said.
Gabby flipped him off, but her heart wasn’t in it as her eyes scanned the trees. “Yeah, well, it’s funny that we didn’t know you’d been adopted by the Coastal Pack’s alpha until a few days ago.”
He raised his hands in supplication. “Hey now, no need to get defensive. I’m just saying, it sounds like killing this thing was a pretty big deal. I’m just surprised you never talk about it.”
She continued to nervously scan the area around us, looking for threats. “I don’t like to talk about it. Truth is, it still gives me nightmares.”
Bobby frowned. “Oh,” was all he said, as he wisely clammed up for once.
I tapped Gabby on the shoulder to get her attention, and she jumped slightly. “Whoa, settle down, kid. There’s nothing around for miles, or Bobby would’ve heard or smelled it.”
She shrugged. “You weren’t there, so you didn’t see what I saw. And you don’t know what these things might be able to do. They could be watching us right now for all we know.”
“Okay, fair enough. But I’m curious—how did you manage to kill this thing, if it was so hard to hurt?”
Her gaze continued to slowly pan from left to right. “With fire. I torched that hijo de puta like a Roman candle. Then I watched him burn.”
We weren’t far from the Facility when we found the bodies, so we double-timed it the rest of the way home. About five miles out, Bobby spotted something following us, maybe a mile back as it crested a high ridge. Now, we were the ones being hunted.
We sprinted down the roads and jeep trails of Camp Bullis, hoping that the pest control system was still working to keep the way ahead clear of any deaders we might have run into otherwise. It was, but the signal frequency generated by the Facility’s zombie deterrent system didn’t seem to slow these “demon dogs” down at all. I looked back and spotted them on our trail about a half-mile behind us—a group of about two dozen largish animals, loping along together in pack formation.
For some reason, the sight of them reminded me of Cesar the dog trainer. I’d used to watch his show before the War, and seeing the pack of whatever was chasing us made me think of him running along with all the adopted dogs he had on his ranch. But these creatures moved together with a single-minded purpose, like a true pack on the hunt. And they were closing in on us, faster than I might have liked. I reached up and loosened the katana in the scabbard over my shoulder.
Gabby spotted one of the LARPers standing watch. I figured Colin must’ve started posting them on patrol and guard duty since they’d arrived. Thankfully, it was the kid we’d rescued from that nos’ a while back, Christopher. Instead of issuing a challenge, he waved as soon as he recognized Gabby.
She yelled at him without breaking stride. “Run, you idiot! Get back inside now—and you’d better hold that hatch for us!”
Christopher’s eyes widened when he saw the huge pack of hounds on our tail. He turned and sprinted for the nearest entrance, a trap door that was hidden under a fake tree stump. Christopher flipped the stump over to reveal a hatch that had been left ajar. It was lazy OPSEC, but there’d be time to bitch about it later. Truth was, his laziness was going to save our bacon.
That chubby kid could move when he had to, that was for sure. Even so, the hounds were practically on top of us by the time Christopher threw the hatch back and dropped down the tube. Gabby went down behind him, and I pushed Bobby into the hole before he could argue. I figured if he broke anything, he’d heal faster than any of us.
As I climbed down the ladder, I paused to spare a glance at the creatures that were in the lead, maybe twenty-five yards away. They were a motley mix of larger dog breeds—Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds, and the like—along with some hunting breeds and a few mutts. But they were misshapen and ill-formed, mutated somehow into larger, darker things. Their coats were black as night, and each dog had its lips pulled back to reveal slavering rows of unnaturally large teeth. The hounds foamed at the mouth, every last one, and even in the daylight their dead-looking eyes glowed with a dull shine from within, like a wolf’s eyes reflect light at night.
But the strangest thing about them was how silent they were on approach. They didn’t bark, howl, snarl, or growl as they bore down on me, every eye focused on their prey. Before they closed the gap, I pulled the false tree stump over me and closed the hatch, sealing it tight.
The kids were all sprawled out on the cold concrete floor below, staring up at me with looks of mingled fear and curiosity. I stayed on the ladder and listened for signs that the hounds were outside the hatch. I thought I heard some scratching and sniffing, but it could have just been my imagination. I waited and listened a few more minutes, then climbed down the ladder.
Christopher spoke up first. “What the hell was that? I’ve seen some wild dog packs before, but nothing like that. What were those things?”
I held a finger to my lips and gave him a stern look. “Ssshh. Not a word to anyone about what we just saw, until I have a chance to speak to Colin about it. Got it?”
He nodded and rubbed his face.
“And put the word out to pull everyone on watch and patrol. Get everyone inside—but do it quietly, because I don’t want to cause a panic. I want this plac
e locked down and zipped up tight within the hour.”
Christopher stared at me with a blank expression. “Go, now!” I said as I shooed him off, and he went scurrying to follow my orders.
I glanced over at Gabby and Bobby. “Same goes for you two—not a word until I speak with Colin and we figure out how we’re going to deal with this threat.” They both acknowledged my request, and we three headed off down the corridor to find food, baths, and cots—and not necessarily in that order.
I left them at the entrance to the living quarters and stumbled around looking for Colin. I was beat, but figured I needed to speak with him about this new threat first; a bath and food could wait. Unfortunately, Nadine assaulted me before I could even get past the mess hall.
“Scratch! Scratch Sullivan! It’s about time you showed your face around here. I’ve been going round and round with those heathens from that castle mansion, as well as that person who calls herself Captain Perez. She acts like she’s in charge around here, but I keep telling her we’re civilians and we don’t take orders from her—”
I thrust a hand out to stop her in mid-sentence, nearly palm-striking her in the process. “Nadine, I don’t have time for this right now. I’ll set up a work rotation and community duty roster later, but at the moment I have urgent business that I need to attend to.”
Ducking around my hand, she stepped in front of me and blocked my way, hips cocked to one side and arms crossed. “Oh, you’re so important now that you can’t take time for the people you brought here? And what makes you think you have the right to tell us what to do? I say we should be able to vote on who’s in charge, and let them decide…”