Their target was on the outskirts of the city to their north, about as close to the fetid population centre as he dared go.
Jimmy and Mark were in one lorry, with Laura and one of the Bronson survivors in another. Dan's feelings of shallowness returned briefly as he again realised he didn't know half of the people who relied on him and his team for protection.
He told Leah that she was on the protection team for the operation, making her day but trying to sound casual about it so as not to be seen to be throwing her a sympathy party. He justified the additional firepower by making a point about the proximity to the city.
She loaded up her G36 and took three spare magazines. She tried to be casual about it too; hiding her excitement at a live deployment well. Right up until Dan threw her the keys to his discovery.
She drove well, leading the convoy north with the huge head of a slobbering dog over her left shoulder. Dan had to tell her to keep her speed down to take the pressure off the following heavy trucks. It took them almost an hour to reach the target and on instruction she drove slowly into the car park. No recent signs of activity were evident, so Dan called in the others to wait as they cleared the shop.
They forced open the sliding doors and stalked in, crouching low. Even Ash mimicked the search pose, dropping his body weight like a panther as he sniffed the ground. He was restless. He didn't like something he smelt. His low growl interspersed with a throaty whine which Dan hadn't heard before.
"What's the matter with you?" He asked the uneasy dog as they checked each aisle and finding the shop devoid of life.
Ash continued to whine and even let out an uncharacteristic bark. Dan wasn't impressed as he'd worked for hours on keeping Ash silent when on the job. His instincts were to trust the animal, but his eyes told him there was nothing there. Literally, no sign of human life at all.
He ignored his instincts and put him back in the Discovery after they had cleared the shop floor. They returned to do another sweep and found a fire exit wide open after they passed through the plastic curtains leading to the stock room.
Dan and Leah came back outside and called the others in to clear what was left. Only about a quarter of the contents were of use any more; the rest having spoiled way beyond salvage.
The four scavengers moved fast. Most bizarrely, Jimmy used a handful of pound coins to release trolleys for them to use. Why he didn't just cut them away with bolt croppers amused Dan greatly. Jimmy liked those small intricacies of life.
Ash barked again from the inside of the 4x4 and the muted sound made Dan turn.
"What's wrong with that bloody dog today?" He asked Leah. She shrugged and turned back to the shop.
Ash whined and scratched at the windows, unseen by the absent Dan. Movement in the car park made him turn and watch in sudden silence before his frantic barked started again. Dan came back out into the car park, striding angrily onwards the car and the ill-behaved animal.
A scream rang out from inside the shop. A scream of pain and fear. Somehow guttural and primeval. Ignoring his ballistic companion, he turned in his heel and sprinted for the entrance.
GONE TO THE DOGS
Leah was unsettled by Ash's behaviour. She had never seen him act like that but Dan had locked him away so obviously it wasn't an issue. She trusted Dan's instincts.
He should have trusted them too.
She walked along the aisles, looking for anything of interest as the others worked hard stacking tin cans into the bags for life in the trolleys. She reached the section where the bakery had been, expecting to find the bread and cakes rotted away as in the other shops she had seen.
Only they weren't. They weren't there at all. The packaging had all been ripped open, leaving a mess of torn wrappers on the floor. She froze, trying to figure out what she was seeing. She could t make sense of it; why would people have ripped it all up like that when they could've just opened it.
The scream cut through her pondering. It cut through the very air like a serrated blade.
She hoisted her weapon and sprinted the three aisles to where the noise had come from. She was met with three of the team all looking terrified.
Jimmy was the only one to be switched on.
"Mark!" He said aloud, counting the k lay one of them not there. He automatically discounted it being Dan, unless he was the one to have elicited the scream from someone else.
Another scream, slightly further away and this time it continued in panic and pain.
Leah ran towards the sound. She later realised that, deep down, she was that kind of person.
People always said, "oh if that happens I'd do this..." They reeled off their actions to any given scenario, not realising that they would probably do the complete opposite.
Very few people had the natural instinct to run towards danger when every fibre of your body wants you to flee and protect yourself. She reached the end of the aisle and turned. What she saw would stay with her forever.
Mark was bleeding heavily and jerking like a float on a fishing line. The jerking and the bleeding were caused by the four or five - she couldn't be sure because they moved too much - dogs that were ripping him apart.
They were ten metres away, and as she let out an involuntary cry of shock, two of them looked up at her. They were filthy, mangy, cruel looking creatures. The one nearest her was a thin Staffordshire bull terrier, and it still wore a ragged collar once put around its neck by a loving owner.
The yellow eyes fixed her as it let out a savage snarl. Along with another rangy looking mongrel it launched itself at her; feet scrabbling desperately for purchase on the shiny floor.
Leah reacted. Most people would freeze, or scream in terror. Most people would get killed by the pack of wild dogs. Most people weren't carrying weapons, however.
She dropped to put her right knee on the floor as she raised the weapon and flicked off the safety all in one fluid movement.
BANG. BANG.
BANG. BANG.
The force of the launch had given the squat terrier a terrible momentum, which served no purpose other than to propel its dead body across the ground where it slid to a bloody stop against her left boot. The mongrel had been stopped in its tracks metres away by her second double-tap, but the other three paused in their attack of the now silent Mark and stared at her.
Dogs weren't supposed to do that she thought, losing valuable seconds of reaction time. They were supposed to be scared of loud noises.
These dogs weren't.
They had banded together, more natural a reaction than the cohesion of their own group of survivors. The reason this area was devoid of signs of looting was because of this vicious pack of killers. They tolerated no intrusion into their territory, and they also wasted no meat.
The two dead dogs represented a significant change in opposition number to Leah, she reasoned as she lined up to kill the other three.
What she didn't know was that the five she saw were only the advance party.
She heard growling and the noise of claws on the floor, making a swarm of clacking noises as more of the pack attacked from behind her.
She flew to her feet.
"Climb!" She screamed at the three dumbstruck scavengers. They scrambled up into the shelves, her last trailing limb only just getting out of reach of the snapping jaws.
"DAN! DAN!" Leah bawled, not out of panic but to warm him to get off the ground.
They were trapped on wobbling shelves, a horde of ferocious teeth hungrily flowing below them and making attempts to jump to reach the intruders.
Leah tried to turn and kneel up, but the shelf wobbled too much. Afraid of falling into the mass of murderous teeth below she carefully shifted her weight in an attempt to bring the weapon to bear on the wild animals, all the while bawling Dan's name.
CRY HAVOC
Dan ran in, hearing the two controlled double reports from Leah's gun.
How could I have missed something? He thought angrily to himself; cursing his mistakes for put
ting the others in danger.
He heard strange noises as he ran through the shop. The snarling, snapping and barking from a multitude of canine mouths was unmistakable.
Leah's voice calling his name cut over the cacophony.
"I'm here!" He yelled back.
"CLIMB!" She screamed "GET OFF THE FUCKING GROUND!"
Bizarrely, he wanted to admonish her for the language. That such a thought could force its way to the front of his mind was ludicrous given the situation. He leapt onto a low freezer and used his hands to pull himself to the top where he could stand.
The scene below him was hideous. He guessed about thirty dogs swarmed en-masse around the next aisles, desperate to reach their quarry. He could see Leah wobbling on top only a stack of tins, pushing them to the floor in an effort to stand up without falling. The others were similarly perched in a precarious way, trying to stay flat and not fall to a terrible death.
He flicked the safety catch to automatic and stitched the mass of dogs with four long bursts, killing maybe ten and emptying the magazine. He reloaded and looked for more targets but was blocked by the shelves between him and his friends. He moved to the end of the refrigerator into he was on, twice slipping in the dust and grime out of sight from ground level. As he reached the end he saw Mark - not that he could tell it was him from the blood - crawling away with difficulty.
Three dogs peeled away from the pack and made their way towards him, excited by the movement. Dan fired into them, not wasting time by picking individual targets but just firing until they stopped. He was trapped, he couldn't reach the others without getting down, but to do so would invite more targets than he could fell.
Desperately, he looked over to see Leah finally gaining purchase and pushing up into her knees.
Leah's heart was pounding her blood around her body with more force than she had ever known. Her hands shook from the adrenaline, making her movements ungainly and clumsy as she manipulated her weapon to bring it to bear on the besieging pack.
She fired bullet after bullet into the pack, just as Dan had without picking targets. She fired the remainder of the magazine and almost fell as she twisted to free a replacement from her vest.
She righted herself, breathing as steadily as she could before resuming her methodical execution of the animals. She fired, aimed at another dog, fired again and switched her aim to see a dog flinch and snarl in pain as it was struck by a tin can. She flicked her gaze sideways, following the reverse trajectory of the missile to see Jimmy hurling cans at the monstrous dogs before resuming her executions.
After she had killed almost half of them, a single loud bark sounded. As one, the pack turned and fled through the plastic curtains and out of sight.
Dan had emptied his magazine on full auto into the fleeing dogs, taking down another eight or ten as they ran.
"Are you ok?" He shouted blindly to her in desperation.
She looked at the other three with her, two still frozen in fear on top of the shelving.
"Fine here" she shouted back, her voice cracked with terror. "Mark's down" she said.
"He's alive" Dan yelled back, unsure how long his condition would remain that way.
A few stragglers still roamed the shop, growling as they paced angrily having been denied their kills. Before the thought could make its way to Dan's mouth, Leah shouted to him.
"We need to move before they come back"
He couldn't agree more.
"On me!" He yelled as he jumped down and dropped to his knee to cover the door where the pack had gone.
Tins cascaded to the floor as Leah marshalled the others down. Jimmy came first, now holding Leah's sidearm with wild eyes. Leah held the rear, scanning for the marauding animals and walking backwards in a semi-crouch as they approached the bleeding mess of their friend.
"Get him up. Move!" Dan said, the panic making his tone more threatening than he intended. They dragged Mark to his feet. He groaned in pain but didn't seem to be bleeding out; pure luck that they hadn't ripped open an artery.
They moved towards the entrance in a bubble; Leah looking forwards and Dan looking back towards the stock room.
Moment flashed all around them as the wild dogs slipped between the aisles to stalk their progress. They had lost most of their pack and were wary.
Wary but hungry.
"Hold!" Said Leah as they reached the threshold to the outside world. She took careful aim and fired a series of calculated shots at the few animals who had made it out the back to cut off their retreat.
More movement showed at the rear of the shop as the dogs poured back into the aisles.
"We need to move!" Dan called to her without taking his eyes from the targets. He was forced to aim along the barrel as the distance was too short to use the optic. He fired at shapes only hitting one as they stalled in the entrance.
"As one, keep together" Leah answered as they crept painfully slowly towards the safety of their vehicles. To break formation and run would be to invite the animals who hunted them to attack again. Sticking together was the safest way to move, but was also the most frightening.
They reached the rear of the first truck, and Jimmy hoisted the roller door for the other two to load the blooded Mark inside. They could climb through the window into the cab, and were told to start the engine and wait. The remaining three made their crab-like way to the other lorry where Jimmy climbed in first.
Dan and Leah followed, giving instructions to drive them close to the Discovery to save a panicked dash across the tarmac.
Ash was beside himself with impotent fury. His spittle had soaked the inside of the window and steamed up the can as he had barked with intensity watching the scene unfold. Dan couldn't risk him getting out; as good as he was even the remaining dogs of this pack would tear him apart.
Dan forced his way in, keeping a tight hold on his livid dog. Leah climbed behind the wheel and took off at speed, the two lorries following suit. The pack chased them for a few hundred metres until outpaced by the machines.
Another loud, resonating bark brought the pursuers back into order and return to their Alpha.
After a mile of Leah setting a fast pace and checking the mirrors she stopped abruptly. She grabbed her bag and piled out, telling Dan to drive. She climbed into the back of the first truck and pulled down the shutter as the convoy got underway again.
It took three quarters of an hour to get back, as Leah worked on cleaning and dressing Mark's wounds in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Not a single limb had been left without deep puncture wounds; the worst being on his hands and his upper left arm. She staunched the flow of blood as best she could, talking to him the whole time to try and keep him conscious. She held his legs high in spite of being constantly buffeted by the moving van.
By the time they got back he had faded. The grey pallor and clammy feel of his skin denoted his descent into shock.
Unbeknownst to her, Dan had the sense to put the medical team on alert via radio.
His message of a dog attack didn't even begin to convey the severity of the near miss they had just experienced.
Laura drove straight to the entrance and stopped hard, sliding both Leah and Mark along the bed of the lorry. The shutter burst open to reveal Kate with a stretcher. Hands grabbed at Mark and pulled him out where he was wheeled away for treatment.
She sat back on her feet and stayed kneeling for a minute as she caught her breath. Blood soaked dressings littered the truck, and as she followed the blood trail in reverse from the door she saw her hands and arms were red with sticky blood as it congealed on her skin.
Disgusted, she got to her feet and felt the pins and needles tingle her legs in pain. She jumped down, almost losing her footing as she landed and falling into Dan. She was exhausted from the adrenaline, as well from the stress and the physical effort.
Not in the mood for talking she pushed him away without making eye contact.
"Next time, listen to Ash" she said as she walked towards the h
ouse, cuffing away tears of anger.
IT'S ALWAYS WHEN THE DOG DIES
Mark survived. He was in medical for a fortnight and needed fluids and a significant donation of blood. The injuries weren't too severe on the whole, but the infections rampaged through his body leaving him skeletal and weak. His eyes were sunken and his skin took on an unhealthy tinge but he lived, albeit horribly scarred.
Sera's knowledge was as important as Kate's when it came to his treatment. Knowledge of the diseases that feral dogs would carry probably saved his life as she suggested the best ways to counteract the illnesses he suffered.
He didn't blame anyone, despite Dan blaming himself as was his manner. Mark never even knew the dogs were there until he was pulled to the ground. Most of what followed seemed like a bad dream to him now.
Leah's mood evaporated quickly. The first thing she did was to go straight in the shower as she stood, washing the blood from her clothes and equipment as well as scrubbing it from her skin. She dressed in clean clothes and sorted her gear out before finding Marie and crying her heart out.
People were fine. People were the enemy; bad people anyway. She wasn't at all prepared for the primeval fear of being hunted for food, and that had scared her badly.
What had upset her more was that she had killed so many dogs.
"They were pets, or at least they used to be" she had said after the tears had stopped.
She joked that Dan had said in films, the bit that always made people cry was when he dog died. Not the people; that was part of life.
She reasoned that it could've been much worse, reeling through a long list of 'what ifs' before she stopped.
"It happened though" she said as much to herself as to Marie "we could have all died, Ash too, but we didn't and it was down to me"
Humanity: After It Happened Book 2 Page 17
