The Awareness

by Gene Stone

  All they had to do now was push through the small door. This was easy. The pigs had found their strength.

  Outside, the humidity of the North Carolina summer was thick, but the pigs didn’t mind. They felt the air as if for the first time. They breathed it in, laughing, jovial; they ran faster than they had ever imagined they could. They had never run before and their legs were like springs that had been tensed, waiting.

  Crows came down from the barn and inspected them. The pigs tried to speak to the black birds but the birds said nothing.

  “Let’s find that food,” 323 said. She turned around to see that some of the followers of 789 had followed her instead. But some of the pigs remained in the pen.

  “Why aren’t you coming outside?” she asked.

  “If we go outside,” 789 said, “then we won’t be here when the food comes.” 789’s followers grunted their approval. Their eyes were dark, a strange aggression filling their faces.

  For a moment 323 felt fear. Then she realized she was outside, in nature, in a place she had only dreamed of in the dim corners of her imagination. She grunted and stretched, then rolled in the grass, took in a mouthful of dirt, ate a leaf off the ground, and ran in circles until she thought she could catch her own tail.

  “Pig,” she shouted. “Pig!”

  II

  DOG

  C O O P E R H A D seen guns before. When he was young, Peter once took Jessie and Cooper duck hunting in Vermont. Cooper remembered the maple trees, the streams of ice-cold water dappled with rocks and debris, the crisp autumn sky, unencumbered by the saturated muck of the city. He remembered crouching low in the reeds near the river’s edge, his senses poised like his tail, Peter’s hushed tones telling him to wait, the tense thrill as the frightened ducks flew from their hiding spots, then the shots, the smoke, the fallen bird, the chase to find the carcass, the fervent need to have the hunter-green mess of feathers in his mouth. Jessie, at the camp, cooking fish caught that morning in the river. Peter, waiting in the shallows, wearing strange yellow wading boots and a funny hat with attached lures and whistles, for Cooper to bring him the kill.

  Now the gun was pointed at him—not as Peter had pointed it at the duck, confidently, as one might point a compass, but the way Cooper might hold an unwieldy stick in his mouth: wavering, unsure.

  “You’ve always hated me.”

  His talking rattled Carol. Cooper sensed she didn’t like it. It frightened her. It caused the gun to shake more.

  “Shut up. Quit talking. Dogs don’t talk.”

  “Drop the gun,” Cooper said, trying to change his tone from tense to calm.

  “A dog doesn’t tell me what to do.”

  She managed to stop her hand from trembling. She walked slowly towards Cooper. “King bit Sally. Her jugular. She’s dead. Just like that.”

  Cooper knew Sally. One of Carol’s best friends. Sally’s son had a German shepherd, King, who was often left tethered in the back yard, alone, for hours at a time. Apparently King had joined the revolution quickly. Good for King, he thought.

  “Good for King?” Carol said. Cooper realized he hadn’t yet learned the art of keeping internal thoughts separate from external words.

  “So if King can do that to Sally,” Carol continued, “no telling what you can do to me.”

  Carol snapped the fingers of her free hand, to make Cooper focus on her, and moved a few steps closer. Cooper was looking around, trying to devise an escape route, but he kept returning his eyes to Carol’s finger, making sure it didn’t squeeze the trigger.

  “Bill and Betty Forester lost their eyes. Their cats scratched them out while they were asleep. This is insane. The world is going insane.”

  “Please, Carol.”

  “Don’t you Carol me!” she said, and then she laughed at what she’d just said. “You don’t ever talk to me.”

  So this is the difference in humans, Cooper thought. Laughter had context. It could change its meaning. Just as a gun could change meanings. With Derek, the gun had signified fun and adventure, sparking in Cooper a primordial call of the wild. But guns could also signify fear, pain. Death.

  As Carol lost herself in her laugh, Cooper had a cogent thought: I’m going to die now. He was learning so much, so many things that humans said and did that he had almost, but not quite, grasped before.

  He thought of Clio. He hoped she was safe. Then he thought of Jessie. He felt frozen. A part of him wanted to attack Carol, to spring at her and tear at her and make her cower in the corner. Even as he thought this, another part of him urged escape—he felt a chorus of exhortation behind him, in the air, in the world.

  He did nothing. He waited. Her finger was avoiding the trigger. Cooper looked closer. She was unsure. Her hands were shaking. She wouldn’t look at Cooper; instead her eyes focused on an image just behind and a little above him. Cooper stole a look and saw that she was looking at herself in the reflection of the large glass window. He turned back to face her. She dropped the gun an inch or two, then steadied back to the ready to shoot position. All the while, she kept looking at herself in the glass. She doesn’t want to be doing this, Cooper thought. She’s not a killer. She knows that.

  As Carol fought with her reflection over the question of the trigger, Cooper took a few furtive glances around the room. He saw things he’d seen but never really seen before: the hutch in the corner with the magnolia-covered china displayed behind glass, the freshly cut daisies in the ceramic vase on the oval kitchen table. It had all been a blur before that morning. It had been nothing to ponder, nothing to which he gave a second thought.

  “What an utter waste of time,” he said.

  He looked at Carol, whose hand couldn’t stop shaking, and realized he needed to make his move. He could charge her, take a chance that she’d have poor aim with the bullet. But if he did that, he would have to accept the fallout from Jessie. He had no desire to kill anyone in this house. His goal was to escape, to leave the two women alive and healthy, to start the revolution miles from here. Clio was out of the house, and he should be out there too.

  He was thinking, thinking, and he realized that he was making a decision, or at least, making a decision by not making one. Or was he? He shut his eyes. Everything was still. He felt calm, ready.

  And then a scream cut through the noise in his head, a scream so loud it made him want to howl, to create a louder, larger scream.

  It was Jessie. She had come downstairs, barefoot, wrapped in her shawl. Cooper opened his eyes and saw that Carol had turned toward the scream, too.

  Both the dog and woman saw Jessie dash across the dining room, yank at the gun and knock it out of Carol’s hand. For a moment both humans looked at it, now lying on the floor, oddly inert despite the power it held. Cooper was tempted to retrieve it, but then what would he do with it? He had the gift of awareness. He looked at his paws. The gift didn’t come with opposable thumbs.

  Jessie solved that problem. Within a second, she was holding the gun like a poisoned rag, by just the tip, limiting her exposure, as if the gun itself was something contagious, communicable.

  “For God’s sake, Mother. What are you doing?” Jessie asked with forced calm. The screaming was over. She nearly whispered.

  Carol couldn’t answer, but the look of shock on Carol’s face told Jessie everything.

  Jessie looked at Cooper.

  “I thought you were leaving me.” Her tone was hurt, accusatory.

  Cooper was still wary of a flying bullet. He had braced himself for it, and now the air felt empty.

  “I was,” he said. “I thought I was. Carol stopped me. I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you. You know that.”

  Carol regained control of her anger. “Jessie, listen to me. Sally’s dead. People are being killed right and left. The world is under attack. You don’t understand what’s going on. It isn’t safe.”

  They all knew who she meant by “it.”

  “Cooper would never hurt us,” Jessie said.

&n
bsp; “Yes, he would.”

  Both humans looked at the dog.

  Cooper turned his eyes to the ground. “Why couldn’t we just be in Vermont?” he said, finally.

  Jessie came to him, knelt over him and petted him. The way that he loved being petted. And yet, inside, he felt those exhortations again—in the air, from the wild. He felt his blood race.

  Carol spoke. “They told me the animals are forming bands. Bands of animals that roam the street, looking for those of us who don’t know what’s happening yet. They know that once we fully grasp what’s going on, it’s just a matter of time before they’re defeated. We have to stay here, until all this is over.”

  Jessie wasn’t listening, Cooper could tell. She laughed. When it was just the two of them, she talked to herself often as she drifted, thinking about something far in the future—where she wanted to live some day—or something buried deep in her past, like why her father had left one morning and never came back. Or, recently, why Peter had also left.

  “You always were a daydreamer,” Cooper said.

  “Am I?” Jessie asked.

  “A window starer.”

  Carol was going to say something, but she stopped herself. Cooper sat down on his haunches.

  “You need to go, Cooper,” Jessie said. She kept looking outside, at the hill that sloped up at the back of Carol’s yard. “You were right upstairs. You can’t be here.”

  “Is that really what you want?”

  “You of all people. You of all animals,” she said, correcting her error, “You know that I rarely get what I want.” She smiled.

  Cooper walked up to her and rubbed against her leg.

  “Get out of here, Coop.”

  She pushed him away.

  He looked up at her, then back at Carol.

  “Okay,” he said. And though a bullet hadn’t torn through his flesh, hadn’t robbed him of his new-found awareness, something in him was dying, something just as necessary as breath.

  Jessie walked him to the door. She bent down and smiled, cocking her head like Cooper might have at her the day before. She looked in his eyes, looking for what was new. “I spent the last seven years of my life wishing that you and I could talk to each other. And now that we can, we can’t.”

  “This isn’t the end,” he said. “I can come back. We’ll find each other again. This is just a moment in time.”

  Jessie’s tears flowed. Behind them, Carol was still silent. Cooper put his paw on Jessie’s leg. She grabbed at it, held it. The tears made it wet.

  “Be safe,” she said.

  He felt her trembling thigh, and wanted to calm her, as he always did when she was upset.

  Now wasn’t the time. He had made up his mind. He wanted to talk again, but his words were drowned out by a horrific, high-pitched scream. A second later, the glass in the kitchen doors came smashing to the ground. The house rattled. Carol shrieked.

  Standing by the shattered glass, shards still falling casually from the edges of the metal frame, were four raccoons.

  “This house is ours,” one of them said. Another immediately leapt at Carol’s thigh and clawed a deep hole into her flesh, a rivulet of blood pouring out. Carol fell to the ground. The raccoon attacked again, going for her neck.

  Jessie now held the gun in her hand. She managed to shoot. She missed the raccoon, yet she stopped him in mid-bite. He looked up, surprised. “You have a gun,” he said.

  She shot again. This time she hit the animal, who wailed in pain. Then, strangely sympathetic to the raccoon who was dying but who wasn’t dead, who was in pain and crying, Jessie shot again, this time killing him. And then she shot again, out of fear, out of determination, out of not knowing what else to do.

  “Stop,” Cooper said.

  The other raccoons had backed off. Their leader ignored Cooper and spoke to Carol. “We know guns. You’ve used them against us forever. But now we understand them too. You had six bullets. Now you have two. There are three of us left. Where is that great brain of yours that subdues all living creatures?”

  The raccoons sprinted toward her. One flew into the air and landed on her shoulders.

  Cooper scooted in front of her and attacked the two others. Unlike the rats, they didn’t seem too concerned that Cooper fought for the humans. They were at war. No questions were asked. The enemy was obvious, even when the enemy wasn’t human.

  One of the raccoons bit his left leg, but Cooper bit harder into the raccoon’s neck, and swung him from his mouth just as he had the rat earlier that morning, until the body went limp. Cooper dropped him to the floor.

  Now it was two against two.

  “Get Carol downstairs. Drag her to the basement, then barricade the door.”

  “Cooper, I can’t. I have the gun. You can’t shoot it.”

  “Then I’ll drag her. You cover me.”

  The raccoons attacked once more, this time aiming for Jessie and her gun. Cooper leapt and bit into one of them, causing him to yelp in pain.

  Jessie shot the gun twice. Another raccoon was dead.

  Only one was left. But there were no more bullets. The last raccoon had circled behind the couch, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

  Cooper’s strong jaw grabbed at the fabric of Carol’s nightgown and scooted her along the linoleum. Jessie followed him, walking backward, keeping her eye on the raccoon.

  “We can do this,” Cooper whispered.

  “We can. Just a few more yards.”

  Blood from Carol’s leg was staining the floor. Cooper’s shoulder and legs ached. The door to the basement seemed so much farther than mere yards.

  Then came another crash: A coyote had butted her way through the front window, the screen and glass. Small, dangerous, ruthless, she sprinted towards Jessie and Cooper.

  She got to Jessie first, but the speed of her approach obstructed her aim, and her open, angry mouth, filled with glistening teeth, missed Jessie’s ankle. Jessie managed to kick her off for a moment.

  “Focus on the door,” Cooper said to both Jessie and to himself. Carol felt too heavy, as if her body had expanded and calcified.

  The coyote bared her teeth at Cooper, and the raccoon approached, glaring at Jessie. Cooper dropped Carol’s neck to the floor, her head banging against the hard wood, and he twirled around just in time to fend off the coyote. Luckily, she was young, no bigger than Cooper. She circled him for a moment, looking for some vulnerability.

  The raccoon was equally impatient, leaping onto Jessie’s already wounded shoulder. Jessie grabbed at her, screaming, trying to tear the animal’s claws from her body. The raccoon’s claws caught in the thick fabric of her shawl, and though they snagged Jessie’s flesh, they were helplessly stuck. Jessie wrapped the shawl around the raccoon until the trapped animal’s attempts at biting her hands became futile. Then, with intense effort, Jessie tore the raccoon’s claws from her shoulder. She screamed, but held tight to the shawl, which was maniacally weaving and bobbing and snarling.

  Cooper fended off the coyote’s first attack with a ferocious bite to the right leg. The coyote yelped in pain. She retreated for just one moment, but with her adrenaline rushing, she attacked once more. This time she caught Cooper off-guard, and the two animals fell over on their sides, nipping and growling. The coyote’s energy was limitless, and so was her anger, but Cooper was fighting for more than himself. Taking a quick look to make sure Jessie had managed to capture the raccoon, Cooper flew at the coyote with such force that he knocked the wind out of her. Seizing the moment, Cooper bit into the coyote’s neck, harder than he had ever bitten into anything in his life. The taste overwhelmed him—all that blood and flesh. He dug deeper into the animal’s now gaping wound, deeper and deeper until blood had spurted and spilled all over the floor, and all over Carol’s weakened body.

  The coyote went limp. Cooper let go, and the animal retreated, licking her wounds, whimpering.

  Jessie took the thrashing and screaming raccoon, still smothered in the shawl, and hurl
ed her through the holes in the glass door.

  Suddenly there was no noise. No violence. Nothing. Jessie and Cooper looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Then, a moment later, another crash. Still one more animal had jumped into the kitchen. There wasn’t time to see what it was. Jessie grabbed Carol and, with Cooper, they managed to get to the cellar door, open it, and push Carol inside.

  The new animal, hearing the noise, leapt into the living room. It was another coyote, much larger than the last. He glanced around at the death lying everywhere, saw the dog and the woman, and paused, no doubt expecting the dog to kill the human. The pause allowed Cooper and Jessie to rush inside the cellar and slam the door. The coyote jumped after them but the cellar door held against his attacks.

  Jessie gathered up her mother by the arms and gently dragged her down the stairs. Carol was now conscious, and moaning. She moaned at each bump until she reached the bottom, where she sat still. Jessie sat next to her, holding her hand.

  Cooper followed.

  The room was dank, dark, and smelled of mold and neglect.

  “What just happened?” Carol asked.

  Jessie answered, “Cooper saved our lives.”

  No one was hurt badly, but they all had wounds. Jessie found an old first-aid kit on a shelf. Carol’s leg was in poor shape, but for now, they would have to make do with antiseptic and gauze. Jessie applied as much pressure as her mother could handle.

  Then Jessie turned to Cooper, placing antiseptic on his wounds as well. The initial pain caused Cooper to wince.

  “It’s okay, Coop. It’s supposed to sting.”

  He believed her, but kept looking at the blood and trying to ignore his urge to vomit.

  After Jessie attended to her own wounds, Jessie and Cooper further barricaded the door, and Carol lay down on an old blanket Jessie had found. “I’m tired,” Carol said. “I’m old. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know anything.” Her face softened and she closed her eyes. Jessie went to her mother and kissed her cheek, with love—something she hadn’t done in a long time. Carol, keeping her eyes closed, smiled a little.