The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  Pulling with her broken arm still tightly in the dog's mouth, she managed to control the dog’s head. As long as he didn’t let go, he would follow where she led. So she yanked her arm in close to her own body, and used the tip of the machete, where she’d gotten it between the ribs, and pushed.

  She felt various organs give way under her touch, and she pushed anyway, sinking the blade almost to the handle. Then, with a strength she hadn’t realized she possessed, she used her grip and stirred the blade inside the dog.

  Yes! she thought, as she felt the dog slip for just a moment. The pain flared as the hold on her arm softened slightly. The dog let a whine out around her bruised, bloodied, broken skin, but didn’t quite give up its hold. She wasn’t willing to pull the arm back herself, not confident she’d get the whole thing.

  Kaya was in serious trouble, but she was triumphant. Yes, she thought again, as she pulled the machete out and felt the hold on her arm slacken enough to get her arm back.

  But just as the triumph passed through her brain, she felt the clamp of jaws on her right thigh. They attacked in unison, she remembered, and this one must have bitten and she hadn’t realized it. Turning, flailing, fighting, she used the handle of the machete this time and bashed it into the dog’s skull.

  It had no effect. The dog was too thick-headed, and even the hard hit with the weight of the weapon was not enough to slow it down. Though it let go for a moment, she wasn’t able to slip out of its reach and it bit again, pulling on her. She would have traveled with it, but she felt a second bite on her other leg.

  Both dogs now, she thought, her brain again in full hyperdrive as the adrenaline flooded her again. Her victory over the first hadn’t made them flee. However much need there had been to fight before was now doubled. She breathed in deep and felt nothing, she only saw and calculated and acted.

  She’d learned so many things in her research, and so much that simply didn't work on dogs. She'd made notes on everything. Now, she knew what wasn’t worth her time to try. So she purposefully laid down on the floor.

  Though the dogs had a firm grip on her, the seemingly surrendering move was to her advantage. Kaya rolled. By doing so, she twisted the dogs. They had to let go or roll with her now. And her new position on the ground had them at a position of severe disadvantage.

  She wielded the machete again, hacking at the neck of the dog that held her right leg—the only one she could reach. Kaya swung and chopped, not cutting through his neck. The muscles were far too thick for that, but she was able to make reasonably deep cuts.

  She watched as an artery spurted, and then she took aim for the other side. She could feel and calculate the damage being caused on her left leg, but she ignored it.

  One dog at a time.

  She understood full well that humans didn't stand a chance against the pack—but one dog at a time she could do. She had already proven she could kill one. It lay on the floor, just out of reach, bleeding out, if not already dead.

  One triumph, she thought, now go for two.

  She hacked again at the neck, and again and again, but it didn't slow the dog much. She had read that dogs could circumvent the carotid flow if hit in the neck. Thus, if this dog was like other dogs, it might survive lacerations that would be fatal to humans.

  She felt her own blood escaping her then. Not because she felt blood leaving her system or saw it pooling on the floor. She only noticed that her arm was growing week and her cuts were lacking the force she should have been putting behind it.

  She maybe had one or two good cuts left in her, and she lifted the machete up under the dog and aimed for the inside of his back leg. She hit the femoral artery on the first try.

  Yes, she thought, it would take a minute, but he would bleed out from there. She’d made too many cuts on him, deep enough to add up. The clock ticked, but she counted two dogs down.

  All she had to do was wait him out, but then she felt the teeth sink deeper into her other leg.

  The remaining dog let go of her, grabbed her again, and began dragging her across the floor. Trying again to hack with the machete, she discovered he was out of reach and she couldn’t get closer. She couldn’t sit up to reach at him while he was dragging her. There wasn't much she could do, but wait until she had an opportunity.

  The plan was to act when he stopped dragging her for a moment. Kaya would bolt up and jab her thumb through his eye. But as he stopped and adjusted his hold on her leg, she tried it. She could no longer sit up, her muscles weren’t responding to her commands and so she was dragged across the floor as the darkened room became darker than it had been, and she let her eyes fall closed.

  24

  Cage sat behind the washer, still curled into a little ball, his arms still looped through Joule’s. She couldn't have let go if she wanted to. He was too rigid to move, too tightly wound to let go of her.

  He had been counting the seconds. His father had not moved from the top of the washer, but he understood. His parents had had the conversation with the kids earlier, about “the plan.” He knew his parents: There was always a plan, and they always did their best to follow it.

  The deal was, one parent would go and the other would stay behind, in case a second situation arose. The idea was that the kids were not left by themselves. That had always been the goal.

  But now, Cage thought they didn’t have to plan like they had when he and Joule were little. The twins were almost adults, and the dogs and the mudslides and tornadoes had broken them of the idea that teenagers were immortal.

  Still, his parents insisted. They would split up and always keep him and Joule covered. Right now, he hated the plan.

  But there was nothing he could do. His mother had left to fight the dogs. She had yelled that she had this, and he had begun counting. He heard her yell twice more, but they had been rebel yells, not the screams of someone being tortured. He consoled himself with that fact.

  His brain flashed back to a memory from childhood. He'd been struggling with his shoes, probably six or seven years old, maybe eight. He had tied double knots and couldn't get them undone. He was panicked because he couldn't get his feet out of his shoes. Joule had found him. He remembered her small, round face, wide hazel eyes, and her deep understanding of her twin’s nervous fear. She had remained calm.

  “Stay here,” she told him. “I'm going to get Mom. Mom can do it. You know, Mom can do anything.”

  He held on to that now—his sister’s tiny voice saying Mom can do anything.

  Mom can fight off the dogs.

  He wasn't sure he didn't hear Joule chanting the same thing right beside him. Low and under her breath, her voice a whisper with no sound, she must be saying the same thing. So he began counting from the last yell.

  He was keeping two separate counts, one from the last time he’d heard his mother and another from the last time he’d heard the dogs. The dogs had been quiet longer. He’d heard them running through the house behind her, but then mom sounded like she was on the other side of their home. He’d heard those two yells, fierce, angry bursts like he had learned while he was in karate class. It was a sharp yell, designed to startle your opponent. Though his mother had not taken karate with the rest of them, she had surely sat through enough classes, and that's what she was doing now.

  He counted again, and when he reached a thousand, he sneaked his hand up and under the blanket on top. Patting around, he searched until his father's hand reached out and held him. He couldn’t see and could only hope no dogs were in the vicinity to see his movement, but he couldn’t smell them, and he’d not been able to fight the urge.

  Nate’s finger wrapped around to tap the back of his hand—a few taps, in a slow steady rhythm. Cage understood—Be patient!— and he wondered how hard that was for his father. As hard as it was for him. Maybe worse.

  He stayed there, unmoving, gripping his father's hand until his own fingers cramped and eventually—far, far too late, he thought—he felt his father’s hand tap at him again.<
br />
  One. Two. Three. Nate was tapping out.

  Cage had to let go. If his mother needed anything, his father would be the one to find out.

  “Stay there,” the whisper slipped through the air, and he felt more than heard his father slowly pull off the blankets, look around, and slide down to the ground.

  Then Cage heard nothing, nothing but soft footsteps, nothing but a long and drawn-out silence.

  Thankfully, no dogs.

  Unfortunately, no sound of his mother's voice, no footsteps that he could identify as hers. And much, much later, when the footsteps came back onto the steps, he made out the sound of the ever-so-soft single tread—his father.

  The dogs must be gone. His father was walking relatively freely around the house, but it still wasn’t quite light out. Soon, but not yet.

  He heard and felt the bathroom door close, then his father slowly climbed back up on top of the washer, and pulled the blanket over him.

  Cage knew then, though he asked dad as softly as he could, “Mom?”

  In reply, he heard a voice that clearly echoed of tears. “There's nothing we can do. We have to stay here until daylight.”

  25

  Joule walked into her bedroom and peeled off the blouse she’d been wearing. She stepped out of her skirt, and yanked off the low heels she’d shoved her feet into today.

  Throwing all of it into the corner, she told herself it would be folded and given away. Later. She would never want to wear it again. It would always be the clothing she’d worn to her mother's funeral.

  Her father had suggested that she wear the pink sweater her mother liked so much, but Joule had refused. If she wore it today, she would never wear it again. And she wanted to wear it again and again and again. Something to keep for later, when she needed her mother close and couldn’t have her.

  Several people from the neighborhood had shown up for the service. A handful of her friends and her friends’ parents had come, as had Cage’s. Nate's friends and coworkers had turned out in large numbers and, of course, her mother's coworkers also came and said how much they’d loved her. Kaya had loved her work.

  They talked about her mother in the past tense, and Joule was not ready for it.

  Extended family had not made the trip. It was too hard to travel in many cases—storms raged between large cities. Gas didn’t always make it to the remote locations, making driving more expensive. Planes were still the fastest, but becoming increasingly more iffy as large, sudden lightning storms kept popping up. People were afraid that if they left home, when they came back, it wouldn't be there. Joule understood.

  So it was only locals at the funeral.

  Joule couldn't say for sure—as she hadn't been to too many funerals—but it seemed the vibe was all off.

  It had taken her a while to place her finger on it. The hushed voices sounded like something one would expect with a casket at the front of the room, but they’d been more like gossip than reverence. Eventually, Joule thought she’d figured it out: Her family had a body to bury, and almost nobody else did.

  Her mother was actually declared dead, not just missing. They’d not had to find a piece of her and try to decide if the loss was survivable. It didn’t matter anyway: the dogs were not survivable. It didn’t matter how much or how little the officials found of a person later.

  Her mother’s body had been there, lying in the game room. She had obvious and fatal bites in several places. So it was clear that she had bled out—but her body was intact.

  Though she was dead, Kaya had been the victor in that battle. That was what Joule chose to remember. That was all she wanted to take away from this day with its stupid clothing—not her mother’s favorite—and its ridiculous handshaking, and all the parts where she and her brother and her father consoled other people about their own loss.

  She changed into jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt. The weather was starting to get warmer and time was now moving on without her mother. The day was wearing. It almost felt wasted spending it at a funeral, especially when her mother had died getting them the information they wanted.

  They had spent the first day cleaning up. Joule and her brother bagged the bodies of the two dogs Kaya had killed. They’d found them on the tile floor beside her. Her dad had not been able to look at them. But Joule had said, “It’s okay, Dad. We’ve got this.”

  She and Cage had cleaned the bodies. There had been at least three dogs in the house, but the third must have run off. Despite following a blood trail, they hadn’t been able to find it anywhere. She shrugged at Cage. “Just the two.”

  “Two is plenty,” he’d replied as they figured out what to do with them.

  Their father had taken care of the other major task: boarding up the windows for the night. Even before he’d gone to bed, he’d gotten an appointment and an order to have the windows replaced the next morning. The work crews seemed to understand the importance of getting that job done quickly.

  The man installing it had said as he hung the window, “This one’s really expensive, but it's a double-pane window, with argon between. The panes aren’t glass. It's a nearly indestructible polymer.”

  Joule had thought the word “nearly” was a legal loophole, because the dogs had made “nearly” as close to definite as a product could be.

  Nate had only nodded his response, not speaking unless he had to, and the men had gone about installing the new window. When they finished, they sprayed it down with something from a pressurized can and the installer returned to explain. “It's a repellent. Keeps things away.”

  He didn’t say what things. Joule looked back and forth between the man and her father.

  “Would you like me to spray all the windows?” he prompted.

  Nate had nodded and the man headed off to tell the crew to do the whole house.

  And that, Joule thought, was the extent of it. They should have done that before. If a dog repellent existed, they should have sprayed all the windows long before this. She had said as much to her father, but he shook his head.

  “We hadn't heard of it before this. But don't you think we would have, if it worked?”

  “You're paying for it,” Joule pointed out.

  “Can't afford not to, but I don't have faith in it.”

  They stood there in the living room, watching as the workers headed around the house, dousing each window in turn with their spray gun.

  The dead dogs remained in large plastic storage tubs on ice. They’d gotten the ice from the grocery store and left it in the bags, not wanting to let their specimens get wet or float in a puddle as the ice melted. They’d already replaced it twice.

  Now, Joule knocked on Cage’s door. She had to get this day moving. She had to get anything moving. “Are you ready?”

  “Give me a minute,” he hollered back, and she wondered why she was the fast one.

  Heading downstairs, she started working. There was a job to be done.

  No one had touched the table since her mother had been there. They were eating directly from the refrigerator as they could. No one was hungry and they’d left everything as it sat. So now she was the one who closed her mother's laptop for possibly the last time and picked up the textbooks and the notes that were laid out around it.

  But as she went to move the pieces of her mother’s life, she noticed something. These weren’t work texts.

  “Cage!” she called, “Dad! Look!”

  Her father came running. He, too, was still tying up his shoes, having obviously changed his clothes. Maybe none of them could handle wearing the things they had worn to the funeral.

  “Notes.” Joule smiled as she held them up. “Remember, Mom said she had a research project. She left it out for us. I guess we were all too busy with our own things to see what it was.”

  Nate began thumbing through the loose pages, frowning at her mother’s handwriting, but it was Joule who put it together. “It’s veterinary texts.”

  Cage already had one in his hands and Joule
held another one. There were sticky notes protruding between the pages, and Cage quickly flipped from cover to cover, looking at each tagged note.

  Joule thumbed through the heavy book she held. The twins looked up at each other almost simultaneously. “She was trying to figure out how to kill a dog.”

  Nate's voice was far too calm for the situation, but still he said, “I'd say she figured it out.”

  “She left them for us,” Joule replied. Something struck her then. She’d been low, despondent, and afraid since the night that she'd been outside. She'd been scared, but here she was: still standing, when even her mother wasn't.

  If she died, she’d only be the same as her mother. Being like mom wasn’t a bad thing, so there was no longer any reason to fear it. If she went, she was going to go out like her mother did, with a machete in her hand and a win on her chart.

  There wasn't time to grieve but, suddenly, Joule didn't feel the need for it.

  She closed her book and grabbed the one out of Cage’s hands, closing it, too. She took the notes from her father and set them all aside. “We’re going to look through these later. We can read them at night if we huddle in the middle of the house—in the upstairs hallway and use small flashlights.”

  Both of them looked at her almost as though she were insane, but she’d stopped caring. So what if a dog saw the lights? They couldn't anyway, not from the upstairs hall—and if they came in, she would kill them. Just like her mother had.

  “Right now, while we have daylight, we have to examine those dogs.” Moving everything aside, she pulled at the tablecloth and threw it into the corner before heading into the kitchen to grab trash bags. “You two go get the bodies.”

  26

  Cage looked at his sister, as though to question her. But she only looked back at him. “Go. It’s going to take both of you to carry each dog. And you need to bring both of them in.”