Hesitation still reigned supreme within Jess. We were headed in the right direction, but she kept looking back. “We have no supplies…no food or water or anything for Zach.”
“We have our lives,” I told her, but I knew without the food and water the time span on even that was limited.
“My feet hurt, Riley,” Ben-Ben moaned.
I was not sure how far we had walked, but I was hurting as well. Patches was stoic even though she would stop from time to time to lick her paws. Jess was getting tired and her footfalls began getting shorter in distance.
“We need to rest, find some shelter,” I said.
Jess went to the side and sat on the heavy metal barrier.
“I’m going to look for water,” I told the group. I crawled under the barrier and away.
Jess said nothing as I left. I could smell flowing water but it was far off and getting Jess to follow me would be difficult. My ears perked when I heard shouting in the distance.
“I see you, bitch!”
Icely, I thought. All thoughts of water were forgotten. I was heading back up to the group when I got a better idea.
“Riley, we have to leave!” Jess cried. Ben-Ben was barking incessantly in warning. I could hear them as they started heading away.
“He’ll catch up or he won’t,” Patches said, as she led them.
There’s the cat I know and loathe, I thought as I stayed off the road and went back towards Icely.
“Don’t run! I want to get this over with!” Icely was laughing. “How far do you really think you’re going to get? How far did you really think I was going to let you get? Stupid bitch, I would have treated you like a queen! A queen of whores!” And then he started coughing.
I got low, almost crawling as our paths came closer and closer.
“I saw your car! You shouldn’t have driven on your rim, that’s real bad for the suspension!”
“Stop following us!” Jess shouted back.
Icely started laughing anew. “Like that’s going to happen. That baby must be getting heavy. Don’t worry, I’ll lighten your load soon enough. I’m not even going to bury you guys when I’m through…I’ll let the birds feast on your eyes!”
“I hate birds,” I said to him as I crawled back out from behind the metal and onto the roadway. Icely’s back was to me.
He turned; he looked horrible—not as bad as the zombies, but not a whole lot better either. His color was ashen and I could almost feel the fever heat radiating off him from my present location. His red-lined eyes flew open momentarily in fear as he turned to see me.
“You’re still alive? That’s not possible. Now I’m seeing ghosts, first Schools and now you.”
“Oh, I’m alive.” I bared my teeth and got low.
He pointed his fire-arm at me with a wavering arm. He closed an eye as he tried to take aim at me. In my anger I had forgotten to take into account the bee slinger. I heard metal on metal as he pulled the trigger. No loud explosion and certainly no bee. He pulled the trigger again and again.
“Seems I’m out of bullets, mutt. So now what?” he asked.
“Now you die,” I told him as I advanced slowly.
“This is the way it should be don’t you think? Mano-to-dog-o,” he said as he laughed again. “I will not lose my fucking empire to a damned dog. I worked too damn hard to let it go now.” He turned his fire-arm and swung his arm out, I guess to test the weight of it to be used as a club.
I circled around.
“Come on, mutt! I’ve got a date with your little bitch! And I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
He staggered as I slowly went around him. I feigned a charge and he swung viciously, the fire-arm making a whistling noise as it cut through the air. He may have been sick, but he wasn’t dead, and he still had more than enough power to inflict some serious damage if I let him. If I did die, I was going to make absolutely certain that he would be in no condition to follow Jess and the rest.
“You’re really starting to piss me off!”
I darted to my right, Icely struggled to keep up. As I dodged back to the left, I went in and bit hard on the back of his calf. I hated that I was using Ben-Ben’s tactics, but this wasn’t about herding sheep; this was a life or death struggle, and I would do whatever it took to make sure I was the victor and he was the loser.
“Motherfucker, that hurt!” he shouted as he simultaneously kicked out with his leg.
I winced and jumped back. He caught me on my sensitive snout. I took satisfaction in the fact that I saw his blood leak onto his fake furs.
“Well I guess you drew first blood.” He had touched his wound with his front paw and was looking at the redness there. “It’s not who draws first, though, it’s who draws last…and I plan on pissing on your dead body.” He lunged at me as he spoke.
I had not been expecting his attack and nearly had my skull crushed when the fire-arm club came dangerously close to my head.
“Ooh so close. You won’t be that lucky the next time. I should have just shot you when you were lying in that trunk. Well, lesson learned. Let’s dance,” Icely said menacingly as he kept a watchful eye on me.
I noticed he would raise a hand up to his head when I barked as if the noise somehow was hurting him. I made sure to do it as fast and as loud as I could.
“Shut up, mutt! My head is splitting!”
“Not yet,” I told him. “But soon.”
Icely kept moving closer to the side of the road. It was when he bent down cautiously that I saw the reason why. He was looking for objects to throw at me. He picked up a chunk of the path. I yelped loudly when it struck me in my hindquarters.
“Next one is going to be in that thick dog skull of yours,” he said, bending down to retrieve another piece.
I launched. He stepped back and stood up as I came in. I fell short of my target—which was his face—but I was still able to strike. I bit down on the inside of his thigh and could feel his blood begin to coat my teeth. His cries of agony were punctuated with a swinging of his fire-arm laden paw. It had enough force that I was jarred loose. He’d caught me in my ribs and hit hard enough to knock the air from me. I rolled away, coughing in an attempt to breathe.
“FUCK!” he bellowed. “You must be a bitch, damn near made me a eunuch!”
I backed up. My entire right side hurt and I still had not caught my breath.
“Riiiiley, are you alright?” Ben-Ben asked, running up.
“Stay away from him!” I told the small dog.
Ben-Ben pulled up short.
“Aw, isn’t that cute. You got fucking back-up. How about I kill that little dog so you can watch?”
“Try,” I told him. Something in my growl gave Icely a reason to pause.
“You’re right, I should kill you first. It would be the smart thing to do. But then again, I didn’t get to where I was with my smarts.” He turned and ran towards Ben-Ben, arm upraised and ready to strike.
Ben-Ben’s eyes got huge as the big man barreled down on him. Fear urine spread out below him. He looked like Jess did sometimes when she watched what she called a ‘scary movie’. She was always careful to make sure that I snuggled next to her on the couch when she did so. I honestly didn’t know what she was afraid of; the images on the box never once came out and harmed anyone. I started to run at Icely, but his lead was too great. If Ben-Ben didn’t move, he was going to get hit and hard.
A blur blazed by Ben-Ben and struck Icely’s paw. He yelled out as I watched Patches jump easily to the side, avoiding his swipe.
“Move dog!” she hissed, making sure to stay away from Icely.
“Fucking cat, you scratched me!” he yelled as he held up his paw. Blood oozed from an angry wound on the back of it. “You’re the one that got me sick.”
“You’re welcome,” Patches said, moving away from what appeared to be clumsy attempts to get her. I’d seen Patches elude the entire family easily in an enclosed space when they told her it was time for a flea bath. How Icely thought he was going to catch her out in the open was a mystery.
Patches had delayed him long enough that I was able to catch up. He let out a loud ‘oomph’ as I hit the back of his legs. He fell hard onto his knees. I heard a loud cracking as he did so.
He struck and rolled, dropping the fire-arm to cup one of his legs. “You broke my fucking knee-cap!” he was shrieking. “This can’t be happening to me! I’m getting my ass handed to me by the animal farm.” He started laughing; it was raspy and during parts of it he coughed, but it was a laugh nonetheless.
Jess and Zach had come up and were now watching.
“Bitch…” Icely started. “I mean, Jess, help me. You get me out of this I’ll let you run Vegas. I was…I was just kidding, I was never going to hurt you.” He paused. “Okay, we both know that’s a lie, I was going to fuck you up good and then let everyone else do the same. I’m a businessman, though, and things change. Let’s make a deal.”
Jess stayed where she was. “Kill him, Riley,” she said evenly.
“Wait…wait! You come to my city, unannounced and uninvited I accept you into my home to make you a queen and now you want to kill me? You ungrateful little cunt.”
“He smells bad,” Ben-Ben said to me as he circled around and came up beside me.
Icely kept turning his head from side to side to keep an eye on all of us.
“Sick,” I answered.
“Dead soon,” Patches added.
“Riley, you can’t kill a man in cold blood,” Zach said.
Cold-blood? I’d never heard of such a thing. All blood was hot.
Jess put Zach down and approached the downed man. She brought her paw up. In it was a fire-arm.
“What now, bitch, you going to shoot me?” Icely spat.
We all flinched from the explosion as Icely’s head slammed hard against the ground.
“He’s dead,” Patches said as she watched something leave the ground. Her head moved upwards to track it then whipped down as if whatever was going up had fallen. Then she walked over to Zach.
Jess stood over Icely’s body for a few moments longer, not moving away until Zach began to cry. Ben-Ben raced to catch up or more likely get away, either way, I didn’t fault him. I waited until they had begun to move away before I went over to Icely’s body and sniffed. I wanted to make completely sure he was dead; when I was convinced of this I moved on. For the briefest of moments I thought about urinating on him much like he had threatened me, but then thought better of it. If that sick bully of a man had wanted to do it, then that just meant it was wrong. Even us ‘lowly’ animals don’t debase those we kill for nourishment or even in defense.
The rest of the day was traveled in near silence except for the grunts of Jess as she readjusted Zach or the licking of paws when we paused—not much was said. Jess was having a difficult time with the killing of Icely. I wished I could tell her how necessary it had been and she’d even done him a favor. The fever that racked his body would have killed him eventually anyway, and it would have been a long, drawn out, painful way to go.
The day had darkened up as thick brown-black clouds covered the sky. Rain threatened to fall, and it gave the light a murky quality. The burning-disc was once again starting to hide. It would be difficult for the Wolf-Disc to shine through the cover. I felt nervousness and fear from Jess. This wasn’t the excitement-fear she felt when she watched the image box, though. This was closer to terror. We were stuck out in the approaching dark, in the open, without shelter or a wheeler. The lack of light meant little to Patches; Ben-Ben and I, we’d be okay, but Jess and Zach would be nearly blind. Two-leggers feared the dark like no other animal. Many creatures thrived when the burning- disc went down…they weren’t one of them. Of all the things the two-leggers can do, it still amazes me how much they can’t.
They can’t see in the dark, they can’t run very fast, they have small teeth, small noses, and no claws. It makes sense that they make the world as tame as possible, because they are ill suited for the wild. The higher power they believe in has a strange sense of humor. He (or she) creates a world full of animals that are completely adapted to their surroundings and then he (or she) drops man in the mix. No wonder they sought out wolves as companions early on—without them they would have never stood a chance. It was a funny thought to help get through the mundane and the pain of the long walk but it would do little to get us out of our present situation.
“A dealership!” Jess exclaimed.
Patches looked over at me with a questioning expression. Holy dog biscuits there was something the smug little feline didn’t know. It mattered little to me that I didn’t either.
“They have wheelers there!” Ben-Ben yapped.
How he knew was beyond me, all I knew was that Jess walked off the hard ground and onto the much softer grass and towards this ‘dealership’. Zach was beginning to get irritable, he was uncomfortable, hungry, and I believe his skins were dirty—at least that was what the smell indicated. The baby was being brave, but even he had his limits. Jess stepped on every noise-producing object she could. Fallen twigs, old liquid holders…didn’t matter to her, she was completely unaware of how dangerous her surroundings were.
“You and Ben-Ben are almost ghosts compared to how noisy Jess is,” Patches said as she moved away just a bit. “She’s going to garner some unwanted attention.”
The cat was right, it was just the way she said it. Not as if we should try to make Jess and Zach quieter, but rather, we should leave them before ‘we’ all got attacked. Luckily, Jess did get quiet and down on her haunches as we came across what I could only describe as a wheeler farm. They were all stopped in neat rows, any and all of them looked fine to me. The light was nearly completely gone, but I thought there was enough left that Jess would also be able to see all the wheelers. However, her hesitation led me to believe otherwise soon enough.
“Do they put gas in new cars?” she spoke barely above a whisper.
“Tell her to hurry up,” Patches said. “I can smell the foul ones.”
I also caught a faint whisper. They were either very far away or inside the building all the wheelers were parked around.
“Riley, you ready? I want to pick out a car; hopefully the keys will be in it. If not, we’ll spend the night in it and find them in the morning.” Jess rose into a half crouch.
We got into what Jess called a ‘cross-over’. She fumbled around quickly, looking for the janglers, but the small light in the car seemed to unnerve her and she kept looking up at it. She was right to be concerned; anything out there would be attracted to it.
“Sleep it is.” She doused the light.
“The baby needs water,” Patches said as Zach slept restlessly.
I did not sleep well that night. I was concerned for Zach and sniffed at him repeatedly to make sure he was all right. I kept a vigilant watch as well. I did not want to get surrounded by the zombies in a wheeler that would not move.
Ben-Ben was in his traditional spot on the floor. He spoke just as I began to hear the morning birds. “There are no floor-fries, Riley. I sure would like some.”
“It’s a new car, stupid dog,” Patches said.
“They still should come with floor-fries.” Ben-Ben scraped at the fake fur flooring, hoping some were hidden deep within.
Jess’ arms stretched out. “Well that was an uncomfortable night. Time to find some keys. Riley, you keep an eye on everything,” she said as she opened her door.
I almost folded her leg over as I rushed out to be by her side. “Not a chance.”
“Okay, I guess you’re coming.” She stuck her head back in. “Patches, keep an eye out.”
“Whatever,” Patches replied.
I glared at her, but she was busy pretending not to notice me as she licked her side.
The closer we got to where Jess thought the janglers were, the more nervous I became. There were definitely zombies in there. Jess walked up to the large viewer and cupped her paws around her face to look in.
“Zombies,” she said so softly that someone without my ears would not have heard. She backed away quickly. “I saw two of them, Riley. Now what? I need those keys. I have got to get Zach some formula and new diapers. This sucks.” She looked down and opened her fire-arm up, making sure she had enough bees. “Two zombies that I can see and four bullets. I can do this, I can do this.”
“We can do this,” I told her. At least I hoped.
“You ready, Riley?”
She began to walk to the door. She let out a startled scream when a zombie banged up against the glass. It had been a small adult female before it became a zombie. She looked like she really enjoyed floor-fries before she started eating people. Her brown dress was in tatters, her teats hung low on her belly, round scabs covered most of her gray skin. A blue-black tongue licked over her bloodstained teeth. Hair hung from her head in clumps. Her calf muscle flopped down onto the ground with each halting step she took to keep up with us.
“That makes at least three zombies,” Jess said as she did her best to avoid the zombie’s gaze much like Patches had only moments earlier to me. I would not have been overly shocked if she began to lick her side or paws. “I need another weapon.” She moved away from the building and to the nearest wheeler. She opened up the rear and after a few moments pulled out a metal stick.
I didn’t like the metal stick—that meant she had to get close. It was always better to send the bees; they traveled far.
“Here we go again, Riley.”
We went back to the front doors. Jess didn’t immediately enter as I thought she would. She waited until the first zombie came to us before opening the door and quickly stepping back. The zombie did not hesitate as it came at a direct line for her.
“Bees,” I whined as the zombie came closer.
Jess stood her ground, the fire-arm in one paw the stick in the other. When I realized she wasn’t going to shoot I advanced on the zombie.
“No, Riley.”
The damaged leg made the zombie slow; she was still coming at us, though. When she came into range, Jess swung the stick, the sickening sound of shattering teeth breaking through the still of the morning. Bits of blood-red bone fell to the ground. The zombie kept moving forward. Jess swung again, hitting it on the side of the head. She had ruptured the skull, but not deeply enough to make the zombie stop its forward progress. Jess was backing up as the zombie kept moving in.
I wanted to bark to scare the zombie off, but I’d learned that didn’t do anything good and would only notify other zombies or people that we were around. Jess stumbled a little as the back of her legs hit the front of a wheeler. She recovered in plenty of time as she had put some distance between herself and the shuffling zombie. She swung again, hitting nearly the same spot on the side of the head. This time the zombie did go down. It landed knees first, much like Icely had, and then rolled to the side, head whipping down onto the hard packed earth. It shook for a few moments and was still. Jess poked it with the stick, making sure it wasn’t playing dead, I suppose. I knew better. Jess had put much of her body weight into both of those killing blows.
“One down,” she said grimly.
“Bees next time,” I pleaded.
We went back to the front door. I made sure to go in first. The smell was overpowering. I could smell little else except for the death and decay. Jess was gagging. Dead bodies had been dragged around the entire floor. Entrails and bones were everywhere.
“Oh, God, this is horrible,” Jess said, bringing her forearm up to her nose.
A zombie had noticed the light coming in from the opening, and when its eyes settled on us, it came running. This one was not hampered with an injury. I barked because Jess was not looking in the right direction; her gaze was on the floor. Harm was not coming from there.
She turned and fired. Her bee smashed into a flower holder. Her next shot hit the zombie in the chest, his steps slowing for a moment as he received the bee. By the time Jess took her third shot, her fire-arm was nearly touching the zombie’s head. Gray brain matter littered the floor, adding its own to the putrid mix.
“One shot,” Jess said more to herself. The third zombie was having a difficult time getting towards us as it repeatedly slipped, not able to get traction on the slippery organs. Jess’ paw was shaking as she held the fire-arm up. “Wait,” she was saying over and over.
“Wait for what? Shoot it,” I begged.
“Another one?”
We both saw as a zombie came out from a back room. Jess was alternating her looks from one to the other. The zombie that had come from the back was further away but was moving quicker towards us. The floor must have been cleaner where it was. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like they were going to get to us at about the same time.
Jess was looking from the door to the slipping zombie to the running zombie and back again. We could not walk any further; Zach wouldn’t make it. The janglers were the most important thing. I moved into the pathway of the running zombie.
He was running too fast for me to feel confident that I would be able to get a bite in that would debilitate him. I could not take the chance that he got by me. His eyes were fixated on Jess, so much so that he did not run around things so much as into them until they yielded, sending desks and chairs flying. That would be my chance. I turned so my side was facing him and his right leg struck it. I howled in pain as my back end began to spin. His left leg came up and hit me under my jaw, sending me up off the ground for a moment. The pain I felt was momentary though as I celebrated. I had achieved what I had desired. The zombie was falling to the floor, fast and hard.
This one had the smarts enough to brace for his fall to keep his face from smashing into the hard ground. When I stopped moving from the impact, I lunged for the zombie. For one horrifying second, I did not think I was going to get the traction I needed. He was already starting to push himself up when I landed all four paws on his back, pushing him back to the earth. I heard Jess’ shot just as I bit deeply into the back of the zombie’s neck. I shook back and forth until I started to hear the muscles and tendons tear. I ripped back when I was confident I would take a significant part of him with me.
I let the rotten meat fall from my mouth. The zombie had moved enough that I fell to the side. He pushed up quickly and gained his feet. He tried desperately to hold his head upright. It kept falling forward so that his chin was hitting his chest. Then he did something I wasn’t expecting—he braced his head with his hands to keep it straight. He swiveled his head with his front paws until he was once again locked on Jess who was staring down at the body of the zombie she had just killed.
Jess’ gaze came up to see the living scary-night pictures coming toward her. I ran and hit the back of his legs, causing him to once again go to the floor. This time he couldn’t move his paws and his head hit hard. I heard bones break; I did not know if they were facial or skull.
“Move, Riley!” Jess was coming. She had her stick raised high and hit the exposed glistening bone, shattering it into fragments. The zombie’s front paws splayed out by his side and it was dead. “Wow that sucked,” she said through heaving breaths. “Well, if there were any more zombies, they definitely would have come out by now unless they’re scared.”
“Well that would make two of us.”
“Alright, let’s do a quick check around to make sure there’s no cowering zombies. Then the keys, and if God is really looking out for us, a vending machine or two.”
The building was plenty big. We checked a place Jess called the service center, parts department, and employee lounge where Jess let out a small squeal of delight as we looked at a row of big boxes made of viewers.
“We’ll come back here for sure. Let’s find the damn keys first, though.”
We had entered into another room she called an office. She walked over to a metal box. “Please don’t be locked.”
The door to the box swung open, seven times seven (and maybe more) janglers were hanging on small hooks.
“Jackpot!”
Then she was quiet, her merriment quickly melted away to consternation. “How am I going to tell which keys go to which car? I just figured they’d be marked with the name of the car, not all these damn numbers. What the hell do all these numbers mean?” She sat down hard in one of the chairs. “It’ll take me hours to try all these damn keys.”
“Then we’d better get started.” I nudged her paw with my nose.
“You’re right, Riley. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Jess. Okay let me get the others. We’ll at least eat and drink while I figure this out.”
“Sounds good to me.” I couldn’t wait to get the taste of that zombie out of my mouth and the grumbling of my stomach let me know that even floor-fries would be welcome right now.
“Nice décor,” Patches said as we walked back in.
Jess had left every door and window open that she could. It had helped some, but nothing short of Alpha-female’s ‘spring cleaning’ was going to help this. I actually enjoyed those times. Alpha-male would take us to the park for the entire day. He said it was much more fun being away with us and not having to do any of the cleaning. I agreed, not that I was going to do any cleaning, but being with him and George had been among the most pleasurable days of my life.
The group had moved deep into the building while I was looking at the ‘ago’ pictures in my head. I caught up just as Jess was throwing a chair at one of the viewer boxes. It bounced off and clattered loudly on the floor.
“Well I wasn’t expecting that.” She grabbed Zach from where she had placed him and moved him to the furthest corner of the room. “Okay…everyone back.” Patches was next to Zach, and of course Ben-Ben was right underneath Jess’ feet.
“Ben-Ben, move,” Jess and I said at the same time. He moved closer to the box.
“Dog is as thick as a hamster,” Patches said.
“Come over here, Ben-Ben,” I told him. I was standing in the doorway to the employee lounge.
We ate until our bellies were full once Jess broke through the viewers. There was a lot of sweet and salty stuff and something that the cat called beef jerky—Ben-Ben’s personal favorite. It took the gnawing away from my stomach, but it wasn’t satisfying. I wanted real meat, but this was still a nice respite from the hunger pains. We drank water from one of the viewer machines—even one that had vitamins, that one was a little strange, but it was wet and cool and both of those were things I very much wanted at the time. There wasn’t much that Zach could have. However, Jess did get some fluids in him and he perked up a bit. Jess found a box and filled it with everything she could get. Once the wheeler was full she went back and put all the janglers in the box as well.
“I guess I’d better get started,” she said as she placed the box of janglers in the seat next to her.
She smacked the steering wheel after she tried way more than seven sets of janglers. Patches had perched herself up on the hood right next to the front outside viewer. She was peering intently at something and then to Jess, she did this constantly until she spoke to me.
“Riley, can you make the girl come out here?”
“She is busy and mad, I’m not so sure I want to bother her,” I said honestly. “She looks like that one time when she was going out and was having a difficult time deciding on which fake furs to put on. I told her she should just go out without them, but she didn’t listen. Two-leggers are funny like that, they don’t like to have their genitalia exposed, although how are other two-leggers going to smell them properly if they don’t?”
“Have her come out to me.” Patches was ignoring me.
“How do you expect me to do that?”
“Think of something,” was her terse reply.
So I did. “You want her to come out by you?”
“I said that. Didn’t I?”
I was tempted to press down on the wheeler noisemaker and see if I could scare the obnoxious tone from the cat.
“Smack your paw on the viewer.”
She looked at me like she wanted to say something rude again and then maybe she figured out it was actually a good idea.
Patches touched the viewer like it was water, so basically hardly at all.
“Smack it,” I chided her.
“I’ll smack you,” she mumbled, but at least this time she hit the viewer harder. Jess ignored her. Patches kept doing it, harder and harder until there was actually blood on the viewer.
“What are you doing, Patches?” Jess and I said simultaneously.
Jess got out of the car. “Are you alright?” Jess lifted up Patches leg. “You poor thing.” Patches hissed until Jess let go, she then once again smacked the viewer.
I think the events were just too much for the furry feline. She’d finally gone bonkers; not that cats were all that far away from that line to begin with, but still, it was painful to watch in someone I sort of had respect for.
“What, Patches? I don’t know what you’re trying to say or do?” Jess asked.
“I’m not trying to say or do anything, you silly human, I’m trying to show you something.” Patches smacked the glass again.
Jess watched as the cat’s paw came down again, small patters of blood sprayed out from the impact.
“Stop…” Jess started and then paused. She looked a little longer at the blood.
What is she looking at? I thought.
She moved her face closer and then wiped some of the life fluid away. Suddenly, her head whipped up and looked directly at Patches. “How…how could you possibly know? You beautiful, wonderful cat.” She picked Patches up and hugged her tight, twirling her around.
“Do you think if I make myself bleed she’ll do that to me?” Ben-Ben asked.
Jess kissed Patches face repeatedly. I don’t know which of us was more disgusted, the cat or me.
“Put me down and start the car, human.”
Jess twirled around a couple of more times before gently putting Patches down. She got into the car and quickly started looking at the janglers’ tags. She didn’t even try to put them in the wheeler before she discarded them outside.
“What did you do?” I asked the cat.
“Cars have identification numbers much like your dog tags. It’s in case either one of you gets lost, you can get returned to your owners.”
“That’s what that was for?”
“They have to put those numbers on you both, because you and cars are about equally as smart.”
“Did she just say dogs were stupid?” Ben-Ben asked. He stuck his head up from the floor; I would imagine he was still looking for the elusive floor-fries.
I nodded.
“Yeah, well if we’re so stupid why do we get to wear leashes?” Ben-Ben said triumphantly.
“I’m not even going to answer that.” Patches began to lick her wounded paw.
“I won,” Ben-Ben said as he dove back down.
I just shook my head. “He’s not representative of all dogs.”
“Whatever.”
Jess let out a triumphant scream as she held a set of janglers high. “Let’s go, Patches,” she said happily. Once she got the wheeler started, she strapped Zach in as well as she could without his special seat.
“Three quarters of a tank, that’ll work.” She locked the doors and started to drive. “We find some stuff for Zach and then my next stop is to see Justin. Please be there.”
It seemed whoever this God person Jess was praying to often was finally delivering on her pleas. Jess found a place she called a ‘Wholefoods Market’. The front viewers had been smashed in, but it looked more like from a battle with zombies than from people taking things. At least half of the shelves still contained stuff and more importantly, formula for Zach. Jess said the diapers weren’t the right size but they were close.
No zombies, and the wheeler was stuffed with enough food and water to last for many burning-disc cycles. It was time for me to catch up on some much needed sleep. I have no idea how long I slept, but I felt very refreshed when I was awoken to Jess crying.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking around wildly for any signs of danger. Zach was looking at me, but he appeared fine. Ben-Ben was on the floor snoring and Patches was looking out the viewer at something. I didn’t see any approaching zombies or two-leggers so I did not understand why Jess was so upset.
“We’re here.” Patches pointed with her paw.
“Where?”
“Read the sign.”
“You can read?” I asked.
“It’s actually very simple,” she said with disdain. “Oh, that’s right, I should have known a dog would not be able to.”
“Not the time, cat. Why is Jess crying?” I growled.
“This is Little Turtle.”
“Where Justin lives?” I asked excitedly. And then I looked around, taking my time. Many of the buildings around us were burned to the ground; some even had smoldering smoke rising up from the ashes. “It can’t be.” Dead zombies and torn apart two-leggers littered the ground; a great battle unlike anything we had seen so far had been waged here. And it did not look like the two-leggers had won.
Jess opened her door and left it open. I don’t think on purpose, though. She was just lost in her distraught feelings.
“Where’s she going?” Ben-Ben asked through a yawn.
“Don’t know, but I guess I’ll find out.” I hopped out after her.
Jess was walking back and forth as she avoided the dead. “One-oh-three, this is his home,” Jess said as she walked through the shattered front door. The inside looked much like the outside…destroyed. The dead were strewn about. The smell had a physical presence it was so overwhelming. Jess seemed not to notice.
“Justin?” she asked tremulously. She called his name out again and again. Jess looked to the right of the opening. Some of the go-uppers had been removed.
“No stairs? That’s genius,” Jess said. “Could they still be up there?”
If they were, they were dead, I thought. I smelt none of the living.
“We need to get up there.” She pointed excitedly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I gave her a nasal whine response.
Jess looked around the floor we were on. She grabbed a small table and wrestled it over the obstacles to get back to the go-uppers. She let it drop over the hole; it barely covered the opening.
“You’re going up that?” I asked her.
She answered my question when she went up. She leaned most of her weight on the handrail. She was most of the way over when the table slid down and came hurtling for me. I jumped off the small landing and away as the table hit the wall.
“You alright?” she asked.
I poked my head back around to make sure nothing else was coming my way. She had gotten her back paws onto the step above her. She was pushing up with her arms on the rail until she was standing the funny way two-leggers do.
“That was close…getting down ought to be a lot of fun.” She went up the rest of the stairs.
“Not without me.”
I ran up and leaped. I had not figured out just how big the hole was. My front paws landed all right. My backs paws, however, were dangling in open space. I barked in panic as I kicked out, trying to gain traction on something, anything. My front paws were sliding; I was about to find out how far the drop was when Jess came back down and grabbed my paws.
“Riley, you’re crazy.”
She pulled me towards her. When enough of me was on the step she wrapped an arm around my waist. I licked her face and went up the rest of the way, happy to be away from the hole. The upstairs looked much like downstairs—dead zombies were everywhere.
“How did they get up here?” Jess asked as she stood next to me.
She moved back quickly and shrieked when her foot struck something. We looked down to see a wet skull. It was not that of a two-legger, though. The teeth were much too large.
“That’s a dog,” Jess said. “Oh poor Henry.” She began to cry again.
I did not know Henry, but from the torn up zombies, it was easy enough to see he had died in defense of his family. He was a brave dog and I would mourn for him.
Jess reached down and grabbed a piece of material. There was a tag much like mine hanging from it. She turned it over. “Bear? Did they get another dog? Where’s Henry?”
We walked straight ahead and into a room where the two-leggers slept. A large hole was in the wall with dead zombies stuck in part of it. That explained how the zombies had gotten up here. We checked out the entire upstairs. There was no sign of any other people, living or otherwise.
Jess had picked up a small go-upper. “Well, this will help us get back down…maybe.” She was looking at it and then up.
“Why would they have a ladder in the middle of a hallway?” She stood it up and climbed quickly. With her front paws, she pushed open a small door in the ceiling. She jumped up and pulled herself into it. I barked in anger. There was no way I could follow her, and if she got into trouble, she would be all alone.
“They got out!” She poked her head back out. “There’s a hole in the roof, they got out! Now I just need to find them!”
She turned around so that her back paws were coming out of the hole. She hopped down and was again by my side. We got back down the missing go-uppers—thankfully easier than I had got up. When we got outside, Jess looked around. A strange mixture of excitement, fear, and sadness all radiated off her body. We had arrived where the boy Justin lived and he was not here.
“Now what, girl?” Jess asked, gently rubbing my head. She looked back to the wheeler. And that’s where we ended up going.
“He not there?” Patches asked.
“No.”
“So then why is she driving into the complex?”
The wheeler was rocking back and forth. Jess tried her best to not hit any of the fallen but it was impossible. The stench was nearly unbearable every time she ran over the bloated body of a zombie. More than once she had to stop so she could evacuate the contents of her stomach.
Thankfully we didn’t go too far, even the trash-eating Ben-Ben wasn’t looking so good.
“Well, the clubhouse is still in pretty good shape. Riley, you want to come check this out with me?” she asked pleadingly.
She didn’t even need to pose the question; she merely had to open the door. The large tree-built structure in front of us was quiet, nothing moved. The front doors had been completely smashed in, which I was finding out was a good thing. It usually meant any zombies that would have been trapped inside were now out and hopefully gone. We went up the stairs and inside. There were more scattered remains of humans and destroyed zombies. It was hard to not step on the discarded casings of the metal bees, there were so many of them.
“What happened here?” Jess asked as we moved slowly throughout.
To the left was a large room where once many chairs had been set up. The two-leggers liked to get together and talk; I think most of them just enjoyed listening to their own voices without ever really having anything to say. Two-leggers were the only species I knew that talked the most without actually saying anything.
We went further in, almost all the way back when we found what looked like an entire two-legger store.
“Oh, my God.” Jess said as she looked at the boxes and containers of food and drinks. “There’s enough here for us for months.” She got closer and started rooting through the different packages. “Formula and…and diapers!” She turned and grabbed my face. “Riley, look at all this stuff! It’s incredible!”
“Any dog food?” I asked.
I welcomed the cardboard meat bits after our last meal of saltiness and sweet. I don’t know if she actually understood me, but her next words were of great comfort.
“Dog food and even cat food, too!”
That was reason to celebrate—the first part at least. Cat food was horrible; my stomach gurgled just thinking about what the feline feasted on.
“Let’s get everyone and eat and then I’ll figure out what we’re going to do. Dad always used to say it was easier to make a hard decision after a good meal.”
I ate more than I can ever remember, even Ben-Ben, who ate like he had a tapeworm, seemed sated. He laid a few paces away from me, on his back with all four paws up in the air, his eyes half-closed.
“I can’t move, Riley,” was all he managed to get out.
Zach seemed much better after a thorough cleaning and his fake milk. Even surly Patches had stopped taking verbal swipes at every one.
“We can’t just leave all this here,” Jess said after we’d all rested for a bit. “I can’t fit this in the car though, no way. Riley?”
She was asking if I wanted to go exploring again. I didn’t want to do much more than let my full belly scrape the ground, but I got up with her.
“Patches, you keep an eye on things?” she asked hesitantly.
“Sure, sure,” Patches barely managed. Her mouth was nearly as closed as her eyes.
Jess shut the door to the food room and we went back out, past the meeting room and outside.
“I wish I knew where they went.”
She shielded her eyes from the sun. We went around to the back of the building. “Locked,” she said as she pulled on a heavy wooden gate. We walked around the whole fence looking for a way in. “That might be a good place to stay for a while.” She peered through to the other side.
All I saw was hard packed ground and another door into the building on the other side.
“Riley, we could be safe in there. This fence is still intact and so are those doors. I could bring the food down here, and who knows, maybe Justin is still around and they’re using that food as well.”
I wanted to tell her that I smelled no signs of the living. Even over all the dead I would have detected something.
“What do you think?”
Anything that was going to get us out of the wheeler for a while was good with me.
She went back to the gate and used her back paw on the handle to help her climb up and over. Once inside she opened the doorway and let me in. She placed a rock so the gate would not close again.
“Shit, these are locked too,” she said as she pulled on the doors. “Think, think, Jess. Okay…I know there is not a way in from upstairs, the windows on the side are barred. It’s this way or no way.” She tapped on a small viewer next to the door. “This leads into a small office and then the basement.”
She grabbed a rock, stepped back and threw it. She missed. Her next throw hit, the smash of the glass sending a crow squawking away. Jess cleaned out the sharp bits and then started climbing through.
“I don’t know if I’m going to fit.” She grabbed a chair and brought it over. She was about midway through when her legs kicked. “I’m stuck!” There was panic in her voice. If there were any zombies on her side she wouldn’t have a chance. “I can’t reach anything!”
She struggled for a while longer, her legs kicking back and forth until there was a thud and a loud ‘oomph’ as she fell through the window and to the floor. She was unhurt, though, as a few seconds later she opened the back door. She twisted something on the handle and also found something to make sure that this door would not shut.
“When did they put a jail down here?” Jess asked as we walked around the entire floor.
There were two of the two-leggers’ bathrooms—one male and one female, which I also found funny. Why did they care so much about not doing elimination in front of the other sex? Besides eating and breathing, it was one of the most basic of living-being functions and they sure didn’t care about doing those two things in each other’s company. I’ll say it again, and not for the last time, what a funny species. According to Jess there was also a pool table—although I didn’t see any water in it—and a racquetball court on this floor.
“This will be perfect. We have plenty of room to sleep down here and this is pretty safe. The only weak spot I can see is in the racquetball court.”
“And the viewer you crawled through,” I added.
“If it wasn’t for those stupid windows in the racquetball court, we’d be all set.”
I’d also noticed how dangerous they were; the cat had been looking down at the both of us. The vision still scared me.
“That’s really the only way in,” Jess said, looking up. “Hi, Patches. Okay let me think about this. I can only lock the door while I’m inside the court and then I wouldn’t be able to get out except by going through that window up there. I’d need a rope or a ladder. I could do that. Lock the door, climb up a ladder, and come back around. That’ll work.”
And that was exactly what she did. First though, she grabbed Zach, brought him down and placed him in the waterless pool table room. Ben-Ben and Patches had followed. The small dog began to look around and sniff everything. I was determined to stay by Jess’ side.
“Do NOT mark anything inside here, Ben-Ben,” I said sternly. He gave me that downtrodden look that let me know that was exactly what he had been preparing to do. “We’re going to be staying for a while, and I don’t want to have to smell you constantly. You can go outside, but stay inside the fenced-in area.”
“We’re staying here?” Patches asked.
“Seems that way.”
I bounded off to catch up to Jess. I don’t know how many trips she made to get the food and supplies, but we were both exhausted by the time she called it a day.
“That’s not even half of it,” she said, looking at the small mountain of materials.
Ben-Ben was guarding it with glazed over eyes, his tongue hanging out, and a strange cocked expression on his face. “Is that all bacon?”
“Found some candles.”
Jess lit them. The room, which had been losing light quickly, was once again illuminated.
“I don’t like that.” Jess was staring at the windows, which were beginning to blacken. They were level with the ground, but had heavy metal bars over them, making entry impossible.
“Let’s cover those up. Just because I feel safer doesn’t mean I want anyone to know that we’re here. The light from the candles could attract all sorts of unwanted visitors.”
“Yeah, and they might want to take our bacon,” Ben-Ben said, wrapping his paws around a chew toy Jess had given him.
It was a somber night; on one end, we were all safe, and we had eaten to our hearts content…except for maybe Ben-Ben. On the other, we had lost friends and family along the way, and our original reason for coming here was nowhere to be found. We could stay here for a good long while…and then what? At some point, Jess would want to once again seek out other two-leggers and we would be back on the ever-dangerous path.