James Smith - The Flock

Denny nudged the dog with his right knee, barely a touch on the canine's heavy ribs, and both moved forward. The pair, part of a larger pack, was roaming their territory. Nothing could stop them from it. God save whatever threat tried to prevent them from claiming their space. Dog moved stiffly, powerfully on, his Leader backing him up.

Something was shadowing them. Something was moving toward the asphalt trail, but coming in from the forest side, testing the edges of where the town had come out to meet the trees.

The Scarlet had not been able to take the man that day. He had wanted to. He had even smelled blood, tasting it on the wind. The blood had not smelled, had not tasted so different from that of a deer, or of one of the savage little pigs that rooted about in the recesses of the high grounds around the swamps. He had wondered how the flesh would taste, how it would feel to take the man and eat him. In all likelihood, the meal would be a good one, he surmised. It would be filling and would sustain him as well as any.

But he had been prevented from discovering if he were right. At the last moment other men had appeared. The Scarlet had felt foolish when that had happened. Perhaps Mother and Father were wrong in some ways, but they were right in others. He had forgotten himself, so absorbed had he been in breaking such a primal rule. Even a pig could be dangerous. Even a pig could tear with tusks and several could form a defensive circle when they were hard pressed. Perhaps men could do the same. The Scarlet had peeled away from the chase, moving in a burst of speed that he knew was faster than that of anything that ran in the forest, and it had left the men to do whatever it was that they did. For a while, it had let the ways of men remain a complete mystery to it.

But only for a while.

Under cover of night, the Scarlet had returned to the verge of the forest, where the trees met the places where men pushed up their stony burrows and their ludicrous paths. Spying on them, the Scarlet supposed that men hunted as the Flock hunted, and so made their ranges in such a way that made it easy to run down the deer and the snakes and the other animals on which it was good to feed. Coming close to where men lived in the past, he had seen deer lying dead and broken upon the earth, left there to ripen by the men who had killed them. The Flock had consumed some of this carrion, and had seen that the deer had been shattered within, as by a great killing head strike. The Scarlet had thereafter imagined how a man might do such a thing, with its tiny head that seemed ill equipped for such a use. Still, the world was strange. Perhaps men could do this thing alone. Who was to say?

In a clump of young pines, he came up and stopped, peering out at the two, the man and the dog. The Scarlet enjoyed dogs. He liked the flavor. Despite what Egg Father had taught him, he had discovered that the dogs who lived side by side with Man were easy to kill. For weeks he had been coming to this place, where the men teemed, and had lain back, out of sight of their poor eyes, and had watched how the dogs lived and where they denned. These dogs were stupid creatures. Even a turtle was wiser in the ways of survival than the dogs who lived with Man. The Flock had been deprived of an easy prey by their refusal to come to where men lived and eat the dogs who stayed in such great numbers. There was food waiting to be taken.

The Scarlet hunkered down, making his moves in complete silence. And he watched the man and the dog come closer. When they came within two steps, he would burst out of the cover and run them down. He looked at them, gauged their mass. He was easily twice as heavy as the two of them combined. The dog's tiny mouth, full of teeth though it was, could not harm the Scarlet. He laughed to think of those fangs trying to tear at his tough skin, trying to bite back as his own great maw closed down on the dog. His feet braced beneath his bulk, his legs tensed, ready to sprint, prepared to sprint.

By chance, the wind suddenly changed direction, corkscrewing down like a dust devil and swirling around a copse of oaks, blowing through a patch of young slash pine and oleander on the north side of the trail. On that wind, Number One Dog smelled something that was completely unfamiliar to it. Something hot, something whose blood flowed even warmer than Dog's own. Something whose scent was sharp, edged, like that of a hunter.

Number One Dog stopped short, like a rolling sphere of granite that had suddenly lost momentum. He held up and every alarm in his mind sent out warnings. The Doberman went into a mode of perceiving the world that was reserved for preparation, for protection. The pack, two though it might currently be, must be defended. The hair all along his back bristled, displaying a creature more massive than he truly was. His legs splayed out, slightly, bracing for a number of options: defense, attack, and flight. He looked forward, toward the source of this strange scent.

Out of his huge throat issued a low growl. Challenge or warning. The noise was flat, but could be altered to be either. For now, though, there was more of warning in it than challenge. He acknowledged the movement of his master as the man reached forward and released the chain that tethered them together. Permission to attack or defend was what the action told him.

And though he felt that his pack leader wished it, he waited for the command. The man's hand came up, found the place where the leash met with the collar, and there was a tiny click as the dog was released. "Get 'im," said the man. "Go, boy," he was beginning to say, but the Doberman was already gone.

Dog exploded away from where he had been. His thick, dull claws gripped the asphalt trail for just a split second, and then he was dashing across it and into the brush. His eyesight was good, even in this dim moonlight. The earth was revealed to him in contrasting shades, perceived in far greater detail than was allowed by the poor eyesight of humans. He could see the trees and branches and obstacles. He could see forms and the layered nature of the forest. He could see from where the strange scent emanated.

Plunging into the underbrush, he barreled through it, vanishing between the drooping leaves and limbs, clattering across dried sticks and the other detritus of the forest floor. Ahead, there was the mass of vegetation: bear grass and oleander. Something was hiding back there. Something was waiting.

The dog roared a challenge; to spook whatever waited, threatening the pack. He roared, expecting anything there to be spooked by the loud explosion from his throat, fleeing in fear so that the Doberman could run it down and tear it. This is what it supposed must now happen. This is what it knew must occur.

One of the last things the dog would have expected was to be suddenly kicked.

The Scarlet had not thought that dog or man could have detected where he was lying in wait. Of course, hunting Man was a new experience, and there was much to learn. But being detected had not been part of the possibilities for which he was prepared.

He was still waiting to attack when the dog was coming through the underbrush. Confusion reigned in him when the big mammal crashed through to where the Scarlet was waiting. And for just an instant, the two were face to face.

But, the Flock had not survived evolution's test by allowing confusion to dim their kind into inaction. The instant passed, and the Scarlet reacted.

He stood.

The dog saw the thing, his own mind full of the need to protect the urge to kill. He, too, hesitated. This was something new. This was something different and completely unexpected.

While he paused, even for that bare moment, the other creature rose up. The great head went from the ground, where it had been almost resting against the forest loam. And up, and up. Until the head-roughly the size of a man's torso-was raised ten feet up, eyes staring down from the lower limbs of the live oak behind it. There was a hissing sound as the mouth opened wide. The dog could see a stiff tongue jutting out of the razored mouth like a thick, pointed stick. His eyes were locked on that tongue, on that mouth that presented infinite possibilities of death.