HE CLAIMS TO have hellhounds and there’s no reason not to believe him, but still. Hellhounds kill with single-minded purpose and in turn they are nearly impossible to kill. They have no problem breaking off parts of their bodies to slip through things like fences, gates, and prison cells. The Federation had no success at taking much less keeping one alive and whenever they tried, humans died.
Six months before the end of the war—maybe I should call it the first war since the hounds are returning—a hellhound broke into the underground compound where I worked. It killed twenty-three people. Twenty-one of them were heavily armed. Three of my co-workers and I made it to a reinforced steel closet and closed the door with the hellhound inches from destroying us. I’ve had nightmares about them ever since. Now King is saying he can take me to see a hellhound.
Before the war, I had a nice busy life going to school, hanging out with friends, and dreaming about my future. Just thinking of my friends hurts my chest. Hailey, Brittney, Corey, and Kaitlin didn’t make it past the first year of the war. I know they’re gone even though I didn’t witness what happened to them. I held out hope for years, but they never straggled into the safety zone. Eventually reality shut down any hope I had.
I’ve estimated that less than a million humans survived. I hope I’m wrong and there are more, but my co-workers in analytics agree with me. Having my father for as long as I did was a miracle. Brian, a guy I worked with, lost everyone he loved. He told me the only way to survive was to stop thinking about them. He died at the claws of the hellhound who broke into the compound. I still hear his screams at night when I try to fall asleep.
No, I don’t want to see one of the monsters that killed so many people I loved. Just knowing it’s here scares me senseless, and this time the shivers running across my skin have nothing to do with King.
“Follow me,” he says after rising from his seat.
The fresh food might make me feel physically stronger but seeing hellhounds will not help my mental stability. If the Federation told me I’d be visiting hellhounds, I most likely would have shot myself in the head and ended it there. Sadly, suicide is something we practice regularly. No one wants to be killed by one of those terrifying creatures and it’s where all my nightmares center.
King reaches the door leading to the outer hallway and still my feet haven’t moved. “Come,” King snaps impatiently.
I suck oxygen into my lungs and follow him like a lamb to the slaughter. I’m in a compound of Shadow Warriors, I tell myself when my feet only shuffle slowly. The last thing I want is the Neanderthal in front of me carrying me. I manage to skip a few steps to catch up without tripping. Maybe that darned half-ball can work miracles.
King takes me through long hallways of left and right turns where everything looks the same and I’m quickly lost. Same white walls, same wooden doors, same Spanish tile flooring. I’ll never find my way back. He doesn’t look behind him because I’m sure he can hear the slow clomp of my feet. My father told me during one of his rare talks about Shadow Warriors that their eyesight and hearing is ten times that of humans.
I never quite understood my father’s willingness to actually appreciate what Shadow Warriors were capable of beyond helping us kill the hellhounds. He seemed to have some deep-seated connection to them. He made it absolutely clear I could never repeat anything he told me. He understood the distrust humans have for the Warriors and he suspected our relationship with them would go downhill after the war ended. My father respected the Shadow Warriors, including their animal forms. I asked many questions he never answered, but often I could see he wanted to. There were times he was unsettled, and I tried to talk it out of him, but he said for my protection, he had to stay silent.
King leads me downstairs and I recognize the pool area. We pass it and keep going. At the end of another long hallway two guards are stationed at a different type of door than what I’ve seen in the rest of the compound. It’s heavy metal with a large bar secured in front of it. King pushes a button beside the door without greeting the two men. A crackling sound comes over the speaker of a small intercom.
“Coming in,” he says abruptly before lifting the large bar and handing it to one of the guards. I look at the guard and then follow King with only my eyes. He opens the door and steps through.
“Will you lock us inside once we enter?” I ask the unsmiling guard holding the metal bar.
He doesn’t bother looking at me. King grabs my hand, causing me to trip forward when he pulls me through. I barely have time to gasp before the large door closes. The thud of the bar settling into place sends undisputable fear through me and more than anything I want to run. I close my eyes instead.
King’s voice is surprisingly reassuring. “They can’t hurt you. We have security measures in place.”
I slowly open my eyes and glance at King seeing his blue eyes focused on me. Even scared to death, I remember his warning about eye contact and allow my eyes to travel the room instead of holding his gaze. The walls are reinforced with steel if I have my metals right. The floor is the same.
I hear the angry zap of electricity and my head swings around in the other direction. It takes a moment for me to realize two hellhounds are suspended from the ceiling with wire cables attached to their bodies. One moves and the zapping sound fills the room again before going eerily quiet. The thing I’m looking at is hideous. One of these monsters killed my co-workers. They also killed my mother and father.
King walks forward and nods to one of the inside guards who immediately lowers his head. The guard gives me an unhappy side eye.
King takes my focus off the guard when he speaks. “We use Neodymium super magnets charged with electricity to keep them from moving more than a few inches. What we find interesting is they seem to know and don’t fight it. They almost go into a coma-like state after they realize they can’t escape.”
It’s time to look at the reason for my nightmares. Their flesh is a dark gray with twisted muscle for arms and legs that doesn’t look like it should twist in those directions. Patches of short dark hair cover most of their bodies. Long, lethal claws extend out at the end of all extremities. The genitalia is gone on both or they’re female or they had none to begin with.
Why is he showing me this? It’s wrong and they should be killed.
This will be at the top of the report to the Federation when I return home.
If I return.
King has found a way to capture the monsters and study them. Even if I don’t agree, I need to pull my big girl panties up and discover everything I can about them. I walk closer almost mesmerized and for some reason my fear recedes.
We call them hounds because they run on all fours. That’s the only resemblance these creatures have to any type of canine. Their jaws are enormous, the teeth made for biting and shredding, the jaw itself made for pulverizing bone, wood, and even concrete. Our only protection has been steel sheets welded into the walls and floors of our compounds. With enough hellhounds they can break through, but it usually gives us time to try to escape. The attack that killed my co-workers was a strange case because we still don’t know how the hellhound got in.
I cautiously approach the one closest to me. One black eye turns in its socket and follows my movements. Yeah, that isn’t creepy. My chills get goosebumps. It’s studying me.
“Not too close,” King says quietly, causing me to stop in my tracks. “Bring him upright,” he commands one of the Shadow Warriors.
A motor whirs and the monster in front of me slowly moves. The magnetic whatever-they-are sparks and the creature goes from a four-legged position to an upright two-legged one. It’s odd really. The body structure looks very different in this position.
I continue studying and notice the neck is shorter than that of a dog. In this position the arms jut out at an almost weird angle because they don’t tuck beneath or in front of the animal like a dog’s would. My brain is having trouble deciphering what I’m seeing. It’s King who brings reality to a crashing halt.
“It’s human, not a hound at all.”
I hear what he says and it finally triggers my brain. The short neck, arms extended to the sides not under, legs extended straight down. How the neck meets the spine and continues downward almost fluidly. The rotated pelvis. My gaze travels back to his head. The skull isn’t human, it’s elongated to hold the number of huge teeth in its mouth.
A twisted thought almost sickens me. “A dog bred with a human,” I say out loud. Just thinking it was bad enough. Giving voice to such a travesty is almost more than I can handle.
“No, but we had that thought too. This is a man-made genetic monster.”
“Man-made?” I ask in disbelief as I keep my eyes on the thing in front of me.
“We don’t believe it happened on purpose. The largest chemical concentration we can find in the bodies is formaldehyde.”
“That makes no sense.” I take the smallest step forward and look into the creepy eyes.
“Genetically modified formaldehyde,” King says from behind me.
I know what GMOs are, I just have no idea why he’s telling me this. “Your point?” I ask.
“Your government passed GMO formaldehyde through the FDA. Originally the cost to make paraformaldehyde used in embalming fluid was relatively cheap, about $10 per 500ml and sold for $50. Genetically modifying it turned 500ml into 50 times that.”
I turn slowly and look at King. His gaze burns into mine and I don’t look away. “You’re saying this,” I look over my shoulder and wave at the creature, “is a man-made monster.”
“It’s not just man-made. It started as human.”
There’s no way. My mind is not comprehending his meaning, surely.
“What we’re facing is not a hound at all, though we continue to call them hounds. It’s a dead human quadruped with four-inch razor claws, jaws ten times stronger than a pit bull, and a toxic secretion from claws and teeth that kills everything in its path.”
His words jumble in my brain as I try to grasp the enormity of what he’s saying, but one thought won’t let go. “Did my father know?”
“He died before we discovered what they are, but there were a few things he told Greystone that left us believing he may have known.” King’s eyes shift to the monster behind me, studying it.
My father couldn’t have known. For all of his military training, he was a peaceful man. If he knew the truth, he took the information to his grave. Another thought crosses my mind. “If there’s any chance my father knew, it means the Federation would know?”
King’s eyes snap back to mine, the blue of his irises flaring. “We believe they’ve known since the first wave.”
I unsuccessfully try to draw air into my lungs. I don’t want to be here any longer, and the walls are closing in on me. That thing is closing in on me. There is no way our government caused this. It can’t be true. It doesn’t matter that it makes perfect sense. Our pharmaceutical companies were always looking for cheaper ways to poison our citizens. The government and food processing companies were involved too. From the UC Berkeley demonstrations I attended, they also believed farmers were in on it.
Another thought floods my brain. President Barnes was a synthetic biologist and agricultural scientist. The pieces of the monstrous puzzle start sliding into place.
“Did your people know what was happening?” I ask King, trying to keep my lack of oxygen a secret.
“I don’t believe so,” he answers honestly. “Commercial farming was not our thing. For the most part our people switched to organic farms when GMOs, pesticides, and chemicals became the norm.”
He steps forward and rests a hand on my upper arm. “Are you okay?” Spots appear in front of my eyes. I sway, and King grabs me. “I need to get out of here,” I strangle out, unable to breathe and knowing I’m about to pass out.
King lifts me in his arms, my eyes wide as one of his men presses the intercom and the door is unbarred. I swivel my head slightly and look at the hellhounds. The one is watching and waiting. If I didn’t know better, I would think he understood every word King just told me because as odd as it sounds, I see intelligence in those dark creepy eyes.