by Mark Tufo
Boy cub Daniel was still half asleep as he came to the head of the stairs. He looked like he wanted to go down, so I jumped up the remaining three stairs and knocked him over. His crying only added to the cacophony.
“Dad!” the cub screamed. “Riley is trying to eat me!”
He Alpha came out of the room where he kept his fire sticks. He took one look at me and then down the stairs. “Riley just saved your life,” he Alpha said grimly as he placed the stick to his shoulder. “Stop or I will shoot!” he told the thing ascending the stairs.
She Alpha screamed as she came to the head of the stairs next to her husband. She cub Jessie was behind them both. The cub Daniel was able to peek past my body to see what everyone was staring at. His eyes seemed to grow large with fear, his bladder let loose much like mine and Ben-Ben’s had only moments earlier.
“Dad, it’s a zombie! Shoot it in the head!” the boy cub screamed.
I got off the boy’s chest. This is when I learned the name for the beasts, but I still didn’t know what it meant. It was halfway up to us before the Alpha shot; the noise from the blast was incredibly loud, but the ensuing quiet was among some of the most peaceful I would ever have left. At least until Zachary awoke crying from the shock of the noise, add Ben-Ben’s mewling and the damn cat’s yowling and it was beginning to get very loud.
“My God!” Heather said. “What the hell is going on? You killed that man!” she said to her mate in an accusatory tone.
He was visibly shaking. The thing on the stairs began to stir. “Shoot it again!” Heather screamed.
“The head, Dad, the head!” Daniel yelled to match his mother’s entreaties.
The bee did its work as the zombie’s head ruptured all over the wall behind it. Rotten gray matter rolled down, but some stuck in red bloody clumps. (Yes, I can see color.) Jessie was vomiting behind her mother; it smelled like gummy worms and spaghetti.
“Is it safe now, Dad?” The boy cub asked its sire.
You didn’t need to have dog ears to hear the commotion going on at the back of the house. More were coming.
“Heather, get the kids and lock yourselves in the bathroom. Me and Riley will stay here.”
I was not thrilled I got included in his plan, but I would never abandon one of my pack. That pussy Patches had no such qualm as I saw her dash into the back bedroom where the big human waste room was.
Ben-Ben came out from under the bed, his tail tucked deep under his legs and crap dripping from the tan fur of his tail. “I’ll stay too, Rileeey,” he whined bravely.
His stock went up in my eyes.
“Oh, Christ, there’s another one!” Alpha said.
My fur bristled; Ben-Ben crouched down but did not slink away. One would have been more preferable than the amount that ended up coming up those stairs.
I could hear the cubs and She Alpha cry out after each shot from the fire stick, the problems would arise when the booming stopped. The stairs were choked with the carnage of destroyed human bodies. Blood, intestine and brains mixed in with the remnants of our fallen neighbors. The smell was stifling; I was thankful for the acrid smell of the leaden bees.
Sometime later Alpha looked over to me with resignation in his eyes. “Out of bullets, girl,” he told me. I watched as he turned the fire stick around to use more like a regular stick. The quivering pile of bodies at the foot of the stairs was disturbing. Most were not moving but some were. Add to that the zombie creatures desperately trying to get around or over the putrid pile of their brethren. They hunted like a pack but did not have a pack mentality; they cared not for their fallen. It was a younger she two-legger that made it through first. This seemed to have a debilitating effect on my pack leader. I didn’t see the problem—male, female, big, or little an enemy is an enemy.
I put my front paws down onto the first step, saliva dripping from my maw as a growl rumbled deep in my chest. Alpha was backing up as the zombie girl was advancing.
“It’s Daniel’s friend, Denise,” Alpha choked out between sobs.
She didn’t smell like Denise, I thought as I launched off the step. My jaws encircled her entire face, I bit hard and deep, I could feel the delicate bones start to crumble. I shook violently from side to side. The skin of her face shredded in my jaws. As she fell backward I could feel the tear of flesh from membrane. Red muscle and tendons stared back at me as she righted herself and started back up the stairs, I had ripped her face clean off. The taste in my mouth was foul, way worse than Jessie’s attempt at meatloaf. Who uses tofu to make meatloaf? Nobody ate it, well scratch that, Ben-Ben did, although he was sick the next day. I told him not to touch it, but he wouldn’t listen.
Alpha male was retching; Ben-Ben was at the top of the stairs yelling. “More are coming, Rileeeey!”
I turned and got back to the top of the stairs. Alpha stood up and moved in front of Ben-Ben and me. He was struggling to hold down his gorge as the girl thing came up the stairs, her blood red smile leading the way.
“God, forgive me for what I do,” Alpha said as he mightily swung the club down on top of the thing’s head. With the bones in her face broken and most of the skin torn away it was no surprise when both of her eyeballs popped out with an audible sucking sound. I do not think Alpha was aware of what was going to happen, he dropped his stick and fell to his knees. The thing twitched a few times and then laid still. I still could not get the taste of it out of my mouth as I licked the carpet. I pushed my snout into Alpha’s face, more of the beasts were coming up the stairs and he was still not moving. He pushed me away; salty water flowed from his eyes, misery rolled off him in waves.
“Ben-Ben, we need to stop these things!” I barked.
Ben-Ben took one look at our fallen pack leader and stood paw to paw with me. Three of the things were fast approaching us. I leaped again, and I’ll give him credit, so did that damn little Yorkie. We fought savagely. Thick black blood flowed from our enemies; I thought we might be able to hold them off. They seemed much more interested in Alpha than in either one of us; they did not defend against our bites. All that mattered to them was to press on. I ripped calves open; I tore throats out and watched naked Adam’s apples bob up and down. I attacked and crushed genitalia of both genders. I ripped more than one belly open to have many feet of intestine spill loose and still they advanced. Ben-Ben was lost at some point in the fray; I could no longer hear his battle yipping. Even as I fought on I found myself mourning his passing, for all his bad traits he had stayed true at the end.
“A wolf’s heart after all!” I howled. I had been pushed back up to the top step. Alpha was gone. I could smell his scent heading to the back of the bedroom where the human waste room was. I did not feel betrayal; Alpha’s actions are not for me to question, a little help would have been nice, though. I had nothing left; I had burned through all of my energy, zombies streamed past me on their way to the rear of the sleeping chambers. I bit at a few as they went by but my jaws hurt so bad I could not apply enough pressure to dissuade them from their course of action. More than seven were in the bedroom, but not many more than that. I could hear my pack screaming as the zombies started to hammer on the door. I was so hot; I could not close my mouth for fear if I interrupted my panting I would overheat.
I took a quick glance down the stairs to see if anything alive or dead was still coming, the pile of strewn body parts twitched a bit but it did not appear that anything was going to dislodge itself from that mountain of human remains. The zombies were pushing up against the door. The wood was not very strong—I should know, I used to chew it as a puppy. It was very thin and if I remember right it did not taste good, either. The door was splintering under the assault, I barked at their backs but none of them turned.
“Riley, run!” I heard Jessie shout.
Where would I go? This was my pack.
“No, Charles!” I heard She Alpha yell.
“They’re going to break in soon, at least some of us will be safe,” I heard him answer.
> Jessie was full on crying. I pulled my ears back and started tearing at the dead two-leggers. Meat sloughed off some of the ones that had been dead longer. I had dropped my third one when the door to the water pourer room finally gave out. Alpha fought hard for a minute or more but when a zombie bit two of his fingers off he again dropped to his knees, blood pouring through the stumps where a moment before his fingers had been. Another zombie bit down hard on the top of his exposed scalp. I did not think two-leggers had enough force to bite through bone. I thought wrong as I saw the exposed brain of Alpha glistening wetly in the harsh light. Alpha’s arms and legs began to twitch violently as the zombie bit even deeper into the pink goo. She Alpha Heather was shrieking violently as another zombie got to her neck, it tore out a fair portion of her throat. The screaming stopped suddenly but not the violence of the will to exist. She fought valiantly for her survival as her life-blood leaked onto the floor. Another zombie had torn through her shirt and like a suckling infant went right for her teats, unlike a baby though, it tore the breast clean off. The pain of existence became too much. She Alpha fell.
No matter how hard I tried and how much damage I inflicted on my pack’s killers I could not get through the doorway. Daniel was trying to get out of a window Ben-Ben would have just barely fit through. The top half of his body was outside, the other half was still in, his legs were thrusting violently but with nothing to seek purchase on he was wedged tight. I had always tried to get him away from the game playing picture box and throw the ball with me and now I regretted not trying harder. His screams as a zombie tore open his thigh had thus far been unrivaled. The zombie clenched onto a strip of flesh and pulled, a piece of Daniel about the size of a good steak sheered free, and blood pooled on the bathroom floor. The legs that a moment before were going a mile a minute fell still. I had failed; all of my pack was dead. I was about to do as much damage as possible before I fell but then I realized Jessie and the baby cub Zachary were not visible, neither did I smell their remains. They had to have come in here with the Alphas.
“Mom?” I heard from outside. “Dad? Help!”
The Jessie cub was outside! I ran down the stairs and over the pile of death and out the backdoor. Jessie was holding her baby brother; tears flowing freely down her face. I was almost to them when I was attacked.
CHAPTER TWO
Something landed on top of me, a razor sharp claw narrowly missing my eye. I rolled over onto my side and the pain in the ass cat Patches fell off my back.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were attacking the children.”
“You talk?” I barked at her.
“Of course I do, I just never had anything to say to the likes of you,” she stated matter-of-factly.
I had been wrong on two counts tonight, Ben-Ben’s bravery and Patches’ willingness to protect the pack. What else would I learn I was wrong about before the night was out? Hopefully, I would figure it out before it was too late, the four of us were now the pack and even animals know there is safety in numbers. If I could find enough living beings to make our pack more than seven, then all the better.
Jessie was crying uncontrollably and barely acknowledged my presence. She was looking up. I followed her line of sight. Daniel’s dead body hung limply from the window, blood dripping from his mouth and landing not three feet from where we stood.
Patches walked over to the growing puddle of viscous liquid. “He has the disease,” she stated.
“The dead disease?” I asked her. “You can smell it?”
“Can’t you?” she asked disdainfully.
I walked over to the blood and sniffed around. I didn’t know what the conniving cat was talking about. I could only smell the fat-soaked iron rich blood smell the humans produce.
“I thought as much,” she said as she licked a paw.
“How’d you like me to rip that paw off?” I growled at her.
Jessie finally seemed to take notice as she heard my threat to the cat. “Riley? Oh, God, Riley!” she cried as she got down on one knee and wrapped her free hand around my neck.
I licked her face, the bitter tears washing away the vileness of my opponents.
“Riley, they’re all dead!” she cried again. Zachary shifted some in her other arm but did not awaken.
“And we’ll join them if we stay here,” Patches added.
I would have liked to help the cat along on her journey to the afterlife, but not just yet.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, you big dumb dog. It’ll have to wait.”
“Wow, you really aren’t as dumb as you look,” I told her.
Jessie had put the baby down and looked like she wanted to lie down next to it. I nipped her arm.
“Riley, stop,” Jessie said without much force. “I’m so cold and they’re all dead,” she cried.
Now I know human females, unlike any other animal on the planet, have a tendency to get overly upset for the least reason. Daniel had once told her her pants made her look fat and she had cried and had thrown things around for two days. I thought it was funny that he wasn’t even looking her way when he said it. And maybe if she had shared a little more of her food with me, he wouldn’t have had to say it. I’m just saying. But this was not one of those times. Our pack leaders and pack mates had been killed and it was cold out. Even I was feeling the effects and Jessie did not have her cold protective clothing on.
I nipped her arm again. We would not be safe here long or at all.
“Get them moving, Riley. They’re coming,” Patches said as she came back around the corner of the house. I hadn’t even noticed she was gone.
Jessie pushed me away as I went in for another more vigorous warning.
I knew the zombies were coming and stealth right now was the best option, but Jessie was angering me, I had never seen her just give up. I barked loudly once in her ear. The sound should have conveyed to her the danger we were in and that we had to get moving to survive. I don’t know why she didn’t understand it. I had spent the first year of my life learning their language; I don’t know why the two-leggers didn’t feel the need to do the same.
“She wishes to die, Patches,” I said disparagingly.
“Grab the infant,” Patches said, coming up beside me. “We should go into the house with the big wheeled machines.”
“She’s part of our pack,” I said to Patches mournfully.
“Are you including me in that?” Patches asked, looking up at me.
I looked down. The cat was within biting distance. I had been waiting for this moment almost my entire life and that all seemed like wasted time now. “I guess I am,” I said, bowing my head and grabbing the infant’s swaddling. “How will we get in?” I mumbled, the words difficult to get out around the bundle in my mouth.
“Watch,” Patches said as we started to walk over to the machine house.
“Riley, Patches, where are you going with Zachary?” Jessie asked, raising her head from the ground.
“Don’t turn around!” Patches hissed at me. “Keep walking, maybe even a little faster.”
“She’s one of us, Cat!” I said as loud as I could whilst not waking the baby.
“Does that squished-in face of yours affect your brain?” Patches asked with an evil grin.
“I will eat you!” I told her. “And I don’t even like mangy food!”
“You’ll wake the infant and the noise will bring the dead ones.”
“Riley, you come here now!” Jessie yelled.
“Is she getting closer?” I asked Patches. The need to pay heed to who was now the pack leader was like a physical pull.
“See, I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, she’s following us!” I yipped excitedly.
“There’s hope for you yet,” Patches said derisively.
“I will still eat you, but later.”
“Fine, fine. Hold onto that thought if you can, but you had better move faster or it won’t matter.”
“Dead ones?” I asked as my
lips pulled back. “I can’t smell them through this one’s waste, smells a lot like broccoli and those delicious sweets in the foil packs.” I took another sniff to be certain. “Strawberry, I believe.”
Patches got to the door first and begin to caterwaul loudly. “Hurry, human!” seemed to be the loose translation. She usually only reserved this for the most dire of situations, like when her yarn was tangled or it was din-din time or pretty much anytime the little princess felt like she needed something quickly. I’d let it slide this time.
Jessie caught up to me just as I got to the door. She opened the door without any further prompting from Patches. Her will to live beginning to return, she would need to tap into her survival instincts if she wanted to make it through this night and the next. She grabbed Zachary from my jaws, I was thankful to let the bundle go. My mouth still hurt from earlier.
No sooner had the small door shut when Patches turned to me. “This shouldn’t be a problem for you, but you need to relieve yourself.”
“What? Indoors? I will not do such a thing,” I said indignantly.
“I remember when you were a puppy, you used to do it all the time.”
“I did not know any better,” I said ashamedly.
