The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  Nodding, Joule turned around then replied absently, “Shoes too.”

  Yes. If it was a tornado warning, they might need to go somewhere. Get out of the way. The knock came at his door just as he was pulling on his jeans. “I’m getting dressed, Mom.”

  “It's a tornado warning.” When he called back that he knew, she continued to give him information he already had. He let her. “Yes, oh, good, your sister’s up.”

  “Yes.” He sat on the bed to pull on socks and shoes. “Be there in a minute!”

  It was less than that. Joule was already in the hallway when he stepped out, hopping into the sneakers that she never bothered untie as their dad pulled a sweatshirt over his head.

  As his head popped out the top, Nate began making announcements. He was the de facto head of emergency services in the Mazur family. Cage watched as his dad did a quick visual assessment of each member and apparently declared them acceptable.

  “All right,” Nate said. “We’ll be meeting downstairs in the bathroom.” He waited for a nod from each of them before continuing. “Water bottles are in the rec room, Joule. You know where they are. Grab as many as you can carry. Use one of the bags that we grocery shop with.” Joule nodded but knew better than to leave until they were dismissed.

  Cage was given his assignment next: Get Joule’s bow and arrow and the gun.

  “Kaya, you’re on food. Get a bag like Joule, pack it up. I'm getting the machete and blankets. Everyone, meet downstairs as fast as you can.” With that, they were dismissed.

  Joule ran to the other end of the house, and for a moment Cage wondered if they were too late. He could hear the wind howling outside. But his father had decided they had time, and there was no second guessing in a command situation. He headed back to their rooms, thinking that his parents had changed quite a bit to allow them to sleep with weapons near their grasp. It was also disturbing that his father was sending him for weapons… in the case of a tornado.

  But if a tornado came through—which was luckily unlikely—and if it blew out the windows, they would need protection from the dogs.

  “Heading down to check it out,” Nate told him in hushed tones from the hallway. He couldn’t yell it to the house. Despite the tornado warning siren, they still couldn’t risk the noise.

  Cage was already in his room with the holster clipped to the waistband of his jeans. Spare magazines he already had loaded were tucked into his back pockets. Heading into Joule’s room, he grabbed the next round of weapons. She had several bows and sets of arrows—not just the one she’d originally gotten, but also the one that he had been given. He’d passed it off to her, since archery clearly wasn't his skill.

  Cage grabbed all of it. Joule had more than one quiver full of arrows. Old wooden ones and a nice batch of new metal ones. Throwing the cases over his shoulder, he headed down the stairs as fast and quietly as he could. Then Joule was coming down into the lower level right behind him.

  The bathroom down here had only one high window. His mother had always commented that she enjoyed the windows and the light of the place, but with the dogs, and now the tornado, the window was no longer safe.

  The house didn’t have a tornado shelter. The closest they had was a closet, and it wasn't big enough for the four of them.

  As the family huddled together in the bathroom—Kaya coming in last—Cage was grateful there were no younger siblings who didn't know how to run a drill like this. There were too many moving pieces, things to gather, noises not to make, light switches not to turn on.

  He was grateful the blare of the sirens was outside the house. Had the alarms been going off inside, it would have attracted the dogs. Although, with the commotion outside, they must be going crazy. He found himself hoping that maybe a tornado would come through and throw the dogs into Oz or something.

  Looking up, he double-checked the window covering. His dad had long ago covered the high window with a piece of wainscoting. Cut to fit the space, it blocked out all the light, and the thick curtain drawn over it made it so anyone who was caught downstairs in the middle of the night could hole up in here and hopefully not worry about activating a dog attack.

  Now Cage saw that the covering was not sufficient to keep out a dog, only to block most of the noise—and it certainly would not keep out a tornado.

  Turning to the activity at hand, he saw that his father had spread out one thick blanket on the floor for all of them to sit on and left several others stacked around. He then pulled out two decks of cards, though there was really not enough light to see them by.

  But as he shuffled, Cage saw what he hadn't noticed before. “Oh, they're luminescent,” he whispered with a smile.

  They still couldn't talk at normal volume. The last thing they needed on top of a tornado—one that was clearly close enough to set off the sirens—was the dogs knowing they were in here. Still, his father had thought this out, and Cage was grateful. He saw Joule’s face as she smiled in the very dim light of the cards.

  Slowly, they played the game until Cage glanced at his watch. It was going on four a.m., but he wasn't tired. They'd be sleeping in tomorrow, he thought, as there would certainly be no school.

  That thought had just passed through his brain when he heard the sound of a freight train barreling down on them. His parents’ heads popped up, looking immediately to the kids.

  “That's an actual tornado,” Kaya said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, though Cage could still hear it. Whether Joule got it from her mother or her panic was her own, she clearly had started breathing more heavily. Cage tried to slow his pounding heart rate, because it was the only thing he could do.

  It was clear that something needed to be done. Now.

  Nate and Kaya nodded to each other.

  “Blankets,” was all his father said, and Kaya immediately opened one up and chucked it into the closet in the bathroom. She let it settle into a small space tucked beside the washer and dryer. “Kids,” she motioned with one finger, “up and over. Get down in the space.”

  “What about you?” his sister whispered back, louder now, to be heard above the raging winds.

  But Kaya shook her head. “We’re the parents, you get the best space. No worries, we're coming, too. We’ll be bundled into another blanket.”

  As Cage watched, his parents climbed on top of the washer and dryer. They threw a blanket on top of the kids and pulled yet another one over themselves as the freight train sound got closer and closer.

  Cage waited it out, his arm looped through his sister’s. Side by side, they sat with their backs against the wall, their knees under their chins, the only way they fit. It wasn't an outside wall, so he assumed it wouldn’t blow away behind them. There were no windows in the tiny laundry cubby. And even if the window burst out, the flying debris shouldn’t get them.

  They heard the windows shuddering around the house as the pressure outside changed rapidly. The freight train sound went by incredibly close. Cage knew when they went out of the house in the morning, they would easily be able to see the damage. He could hear it happening and considered that they would be lucky if it had not destroyed part of the house.

  Without speaking, they all waited as the noise reached a crescendo and eventually began to fade away. The fact that the house had not shuddered and shook harder was the only thing that convinced Cage that a corner of the place had not been bitten off by the passing tornado.

  Slowly, much slower than he would have liked, the noise got farther away.

  “Stay put,” his mother said. “There could always be more of them. I think we're here until morning.”

  All four Mazurs huddled down, staying low and out of range. Cage’s legs cramped from the tight space and he might have even eventually dozed off. They hadn’t heard another tornado go through.

  He was just beginning to breathe easier when they heard the window shatter.

  22

  They all heard the breaking glass. For a moment, Kaya was able to pretend it wa
s just the storm, just the wind coming in. So she waited with fingers and toes crossed and prayers sent up, even though she wasn't quite sure where she was sending them.

  Beside her, Nate’s whole body went rigid. He was listening, the same as she was. She hadn’t heard anythi—

  There. The scrape of nails on hardwood floor.

  Shit, she thought. They had been prepared to be upstairs at night if the dogs came in. They were not prepared to be down here. There was no real way out of the lower portion of the split level house.

  Out the window? Into the lawn where dogs most likely waited. Out the back door to the patio? Into a pack of dogs and chances she wasn’t willing to take. They had planned to go out onto the tin patio roof, but they hadn’t planned for this.

  They had planned for extreme weather and they had planned for dogs, but not both in one night. The tornado was gone, but it had somehow led the dogs inside, and Kaya and Nate and the kids were merely waiting, under blankets. There wasn't even a door between them and the intruders now. The closet was just the open space protected only by the curtains they pulled in front of the washer and dryer.

  She stayed perfectly still and clutched at the machete her husband had brought under the blanket with them.

  The dogs seemed to have a poor sense of smell, which was lucky. If they had a decent one, they would walk right down here to them. Instead, she could hear them exploring around the main floor of the house, their nails clicking on the hardwood floor. Then they walked farther away, into the extension that had been built on before they moved there. The game room had a tile floor, and the sound the dogs made was different.

  Slowly, not ready to feel the relief her body was forcing on her, Kaya let her lungs deflate. Though the noise of the dogs on the tile was louder, it was also at greater distance. Still, the small noises rang out in the bone chilling silence the tornado had left in its wake. There were no cars driving by, no animals rustling in the woods, no birds chirping in the dead of night, only the sound of the dogs prowling her house looking for food.

  Kaya couldn't see the kids, and none of them could afford to have her look. She couldn't see the room. It was dark, and they were under the blanket. The kids were smart enough not to move and she was suddenly very, very grateful that she had put the children down in the corner.

  Cage and Joule were almost adults. If anything happened to orphan them, they would be okay. She had done her job as a parent and set them up well to live on their own. Though it was a little early to be thinking such morbid thoughts, she wasn’t able to fully push them away. In a sick way, they were comforting.

  After a little while, the click of nails faded, and she was almost beginning to take a breath.

  Then she heard them on the stairs.

  Fuck.

  There was no doubt, several of the dogs were coming down here. The curtains were pulled in front of the washer and dryer. She and Nate had done it thinking it might protect them if the window gave way and any debris went flying through the room. They would not be worth anything against the dogs. But she hoped against all hope that the dogs might just walk by. There was every possibility that they would come in and poke at them but smell nothing and leave.

  If she could just stay quiet and still enough—even if the dogs came into the room or even poked around—they might just walk away. Could she get lucky enough that their sense of smell was that bad?

  Kaya didn't know.

  While she counted the seconds, she wondered if any of the neighbors down the street had lost their homes. She and Nate had installed plush, thickly padded carpet down here. She’d wanted to sink her feet into it when she came out of her bedroom in the morning. Now it muted the sounds of the dogs coming closer. It ended what she could hear, a thin layer of false hope she’d been clinging to.

  Turning her thoughts again, she wondered if only the windows had been broken or if the house might have taken more damage. Maybe there was no roof anymore. The place had shuddered so much with the high winds, she couldn't be sure. The tornado had been so loud that it might have been right on top of them.

  She waited again, counting slowly in her head. And then she heard it: nails on tile at the doorway to the bathroom.

  She hadn't closed the door when she’d rushed in here. In fact, they had needed it open. If the windows had blown and the tornado had come through, having the door closed would have created pressure problems.

  She wished now that she had gotten up and shut it once the tornado had gone. But she cut herself a break. That wasn't fair. It was more than possible a second or third tornado could come through, and closing the door would have been a bad idea.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  She could smell the dog now, even if it couldn’t smell her. It was so close it took all her willpower to keep her nostrils from flaring. Wet dog. Rotting leaves. Fetid breath.

  Even if it couldn't smell her, she was stuck smelling it.

  Ever so slightly, Nate's hand gripped hers more tightly, but they didn't dare move. She could only trust that her children understood the same.

  Low growls let her know that there was more than one dog in here and that they were discussing something in whatever language they understood.

  Fuck, she thought again. The last thing she'd wanted to learn was that they communicated more than she’d already guessed.

  Then she felt it, the weight of the dog. The front paws up on the edge of the washer. Now inches away, the nose nudging at the blanket. She felt the first brush against her leg. Then her side. She held still, trying to be furniture, but it didn't work.

  Maybe they could smell well enough to know that she was a person and not a thing. In a moment, a growl came and the dog jumped up onto her.

  In that split second, she made her decision. The dog needed something—someone—and it wasn't going to be her kids. It wasn't going to be her husband, either.

  “Nate, stay.” She hissed the words to him, even as she threw the blanket off, startling the dog standing over her. Grabbing the machete tightly, Kaya raised her hand, wielding it like an avenging angel, and she jumped away.

  She wanted to ask Cage for the gun, but didn't dare risk exposing him.

  With a hard jab of her elbow and a body check, she tossed the surprised dog onto its side and offered a rebel yell to her family. “I’ve got this. I've been studying up. Don't worry.”

  But the last words came as she ran up the stairs, three dogs too close behind her.

  23

  Kaya ran like the world was on her heels. In a way, it was. If she didn't make it out of this, she would never see her family again. She wasn't afraid of a painful death; she was afraid of not leaving anything behind.

  With a deep breath she thought about it as her feet pounded through the kitchen and toward the other side of the house. Three dogs right behind her.

  She would leave Joule and Cage behind, but what a legacy they would be. She would leave Nate, and that would be a tragedy. The two of them were truly better together. Kaya only hoped she had made Nate's world richer.

  The soles of her feet felt as though she had been running for so long, but it had only been a few bounding steps. Considering a hard turn, she could run directly upstairs and go out onto the reinforced tin roof. If she did that, she could evade the dogs. But she didn’t actually want to evade them. Leaving the dogs in the house might end with them wandering back downstairs and finding her family again. She had to end this.

  So she ran, knowing the dogs were following her. With a quick turn of her head, she counted that she had all three, and could only pray there weren’t more. But that had been her calculated move when she jumped. Nate was still with the kids in case more were coming.

  Kaya bolted across the main body of the house to the other side, as far away as she could get without going outside. She led the dogs into the game room, where they would likely smash the electronics as they fought, but the things weren't worth as much as her family. She led the c
hase around the large couch and then, jumping over it, headed back around and slammed the door to the kitchen. The dogs could no longer get back into the main house without breaking down that door.

  There Kaya stood her ground.

  She had to kill them. Actually, she had to kill at least enough of them to make the others leave. The three circled and growled at her. She growled back as she mentally checked that she hadn't seen more. She could only hope that this was the total that were in the house.

  The veterinary texts had been truly enlightening, though she’d needed references for her references. She’d watched videos online, and though she had zero practice, she had her brains and she knew what to do now. And even if she didn’t really know how to do it, she at least had a plan.

  When they stared her down, she did the opposite of what was expected. From what she had learned, dogs had tremendous fighting skills. They had superior jaw strength and an ability to pull with brute force, but if you pushed the dog, it lost some of its power.

  Not wanting to lose the machete, Kaya clutched it tightly in her right hand. With her left arm out in front of her as a small shield, she wished she’d thought to wrap a blanket or towel around it first, done something to protect herself. But it was too late, and she held her arm out with her hand in a fist, jamming her forearm into the dog's mouth as she ran at it.

  At least her bold move startled all three of the dogs. Using the machete, she then jabbed at the dog’s body. The first time, she missed. She didn’t get the tip of the machete in, and wound up cutting the dog’s skin and making it bite down harder.

  She heard her bone crack, but didn't feel it. Her adrenaline must be far too high to know what was truly going on. But her brain was working at hyper speed, so she thought through her moves. Then, using her right hand, she pulled back and took advantage of the machete’s length. Rotating it ever so slightly, Kaya tried to make up for the error on her last hit.

  She had to get the blade between ribs. She tried again, and finally, on the third try, she did it.