by Mark Tufo
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning I awoke not because the burning disc was shining in my eyes but rather the heat inside the wheeler. I was panting heavily and my mouth felt like I had the cat shoved in there. Jessie was still sleeping but she was again bathed in salty water. Ben-Ben’s tongue was hanging out and he was looking directly at me.
“I’m sorry, Riley, I really had to go,” Ben-Ben said apologetically.
“What is wrong with dogs?” Patches said, moving even closer to her door if that was even possible.
“Ben-Ben, really? You did that in the car?” I would have berated him further but the baby cub looked even more unwell, his skin color looked bad, his breathing was shallow and instead of leaking water like Jessie he was shivering with cold. I was about to bark and warn Jessie, but Ben-Ben’s stink had at least the benefit of that.
“What is that? Zombies?” Jessie said, looking around wildly.
Ben-Ben had turned so his face was in the rear of the seat and his backside was pointed toward Jessie as she turned to see what was causing the smell. She immediately opened the door when she discovered the origin of the stench.
I hopped out after her, the smell of the Ben-Ben processed stew was bad but not as bad as the heat. Patches was immediately behind me and headed off for the brush, at least she knew where to go. Why did Ben-Ben have to give dogs such a bad name?
Jessie ran to the other side of the car and got the baby out. “Zach?” she asked. “Baby, are you okay?” she asked, looking at him. The baby was not responding to her.
“Get in!” Patches screamed, bolting for the door. She deftly jumped in and into the back making room.
I wanted to find out what was going on, sometimes cats can be drama-infused mischievous vermin, but she didn’t look like she was acting. I barked wildly, but Jessie was busy examining the baby cub.
“Rileeeeey, they’re here!” Ben-Ben was yipping wildly from the backseat. He charged at them across his seat, smacked his head hard into the outside viewer, and he fell over onto Patches. I would have enjoyed the whole scene if not for the three zombies making their way through the brush.
Jessie was still ignorant to my pleas. She might not know the zombies were there, but they knew she was. I ran to get between her and them. My aggressive display did nothing to stop their advance, I didn’t think it would after our last encounter, but it was difficult to not try what has worked for so many of my ancestors.
The smell was zombie, but there was something else too, there was a familial relation. The zombies that were coming were a pack. It appeared to be a sire and two male offspring. All were larger than my alpha had been.
My flight instinct was in high gear, but Jessie was slow to the realization of what was happening. I sprang onto the closest of the three. Jessie’s screams of alarm nearly drowned out the snapping of my teeth as I bit deeply into the flesh of the zombie’s putrid arm. He paid me almost no attention even as I tried to drag him down to the ground. My teeth were sunk deep and I had my hindquarters braced on the ground trying to halt his forward progress.
The skin and meat on his arm were sliding down as they came loose from his bones, I was left with what Ben-Ben would’ve called wet-meat hanging from my mouth. White bone shone in the light as I stripped his arm clean. Not once did he scream in pain or rage. I spat the bad meat out and grabbed onto the back of the man’s leg, his calf muscle, this time it did have the desired effect as he fell face forward into the hard pathway.
I yelped as one of the other zombies stepped on my front paw and his leg caught the side of my face. I staggered back, my thoughts clouded and unsure of what was going on. The fire stick changed that; it knocked the fuzziness I was feeling right out of me. The zombie cub that had run into me was now falling back over; I quickly dodged out of the way as his body went crashing to the ground. Half of his face looked like a bloodier version of what we had eaten last night, but I don’t think even Ben-Ben would touch this.
“I don’t know how to reload this damned thing!” Jessie screamed as she was using the fire stick to physically keep the last standing zombie at bay. But she was losing ground and the sire was now getting up. I remembered Daniel’s words. “The head, Dad, you have to shoot them in the head!”
I hadn’t figured out how to make the metal bee shooter work yet, but I knew how to bite. I wrapped my jaws around the back of the sire’s skull. My jaw popped as I applied more pressure, the zombie was still trying to stand, my front paws were off the ground before my teeth began to crack through the creatures head. I could feel his skull beginning to move under the pressure I was applying. I didn’t know how long I could support my weight and try to kill it as we arose.
Black fluid leaked from around my mouth, I was salivating like Ben-Ben had been last night but this was in an attempt to wash away the taste of the horrible creature. I was completely off the ground, the zombie within arm’s length of my Jessie, I bit down harder. I thought the creature’s head bones broke, but it just as easily could have been my jaw. We fell to the ground, the thing dead like it should have been all along and me buried underneath it. I was exhausted, I couldn’t move, my jaw hurt so bad I whimpered. I heard the fire stick roar one more time before my eyes started to close, the cat would later tell me it was from lack of oxygen, whatever that was.