James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

The Doberman stood. Another dog, a collie, emerged from the shadows by the house and joined him. A couple others lay in the shadow, their mouths open, panting.

“That’s a big dog,” said Leda. It stepped toward them. “Nice puppy,” she said.

“Looks well fed.” Eric scanned the ground for a rock or stick, but grass lapped against the sidewalk, and the dead roses in the flower bed sprawled over mud. He shuffled along sideways, keeping his face toward the dog. Sweat beaded under his arms although it was still cool. “What do you think he’s been eating?”

“Gross thought,” said Leda, walking backwards, watching the dog. “Kibbles and Bits?” Growling and stiff-legged, the Doberman crossed the gutter onto the edge of the street. Leda raised her hand over her head and mimed a throw. It ducked and retreated a step, then started barking. The other dogs stood, heads low, growling deep.

Eric said, “They don’t seem too friendly. Maybe we just need to get out of their territory.” He remembered dogs from when he carried papers, and he thought he recognized the collie from the Kissle’s house up the block. It had always greeted him at the door with slobbery licks on his hands when he collected once a month, but it didn’t look playful now with its lips raised off its gums and its tail straight down and still.

Eric kept moving, thirty feet, fifty feet. Heads low, the dogs crossed the street, matching their pace. The Doberman led, still barking: loud, repetitive, explosive, insane-sounding.

“How big’s their territory?” asked Leda. Her low, calm voice comforted Eric. He swallowed dryly. Step by step, the dogs advanced.

Eric said, “No sudden movements.” Then the other three dogs started barking. “Run!” he yelled, and he sprinted up the lawn.

Arms pumping, breath tight, Leda beside him, he headed for the broken picture window above a knee-high growth of shrubbery. Barking stopped, but a frantic clatter of claws on asphalt spurred him on. He thought of his Achilles tendons, unsocked, glaring below the short pants, crying out “Meat, meat, meat.” And he knew the thought should have been funny, but it wasn’t. He dove through the window, trying not to land on the broken glass, Leda right with him, and they slid across a hardwood floor into a gray and blue pin-striped sofa. A Tiffany lamp on an end table, teetered, fell, and shattered on the floor. “Up! Up!” he yelled, pulling on her arm. Barking boomed outside the window, and he saw them hesitating. He thought, maybe going into a strange house was too new for these dogs who’d learned to adapt so fast. The Doberman circled twice, howling, all black gums and shiny teeth, then charged the bushes, the others in tow.

“Shit!” Leda pushed him in the back, and they scrambled into a short hall with three closed doors. Eric tugged at the first door knob, and it didn’t turn, then things began to slow down for him, became almost dream like. Leda reached for the knob when Eric’s hand slipped off. She’d cut her palm; a shallow flap of skin waved free and blood streaked her wrist. Her dark hair hung down, covering her face. Eric thought, we’ll have to get that cut wrapped.

Still, while he stared at her wrist (a drop of blood broke free and floated lazily to the floor), since so many horrible things had happened to him in the last few days, since so many times he’d been running or scared, the oddness of his detachment occurred to him. He thought, four months ago I was going to school, watching MTV, and now I’m hoping a stranger, an older woman I slept with last night, can get a door open in sombody’s house before a man-eater dog can attack me. He thought it almost laughable. A scratching noise in the living room and then a series of thuds told him of the dogs’ progress. Then a distinct metallic sound from beyond the locked door. Leda pulled, and he heard from the other side a semi-loud chink-chink, like someone shaking a bottle full of coins up once then down. I know that sound, thought Eric.

“Get away!” hissed a voice on the other side.

Leda looked toward him in surprise, her hair flying in her face in slow motion, her own teeth bared, her hand on the knob. The Doberman rounded the corner, tensed his thighs and sprang for Leda’s throat. A connection flashed in Eric’s mind, a sound memory from a scene in Terminator II : Linda Hamilton stalking the second terminator, the one made of liquid metal. Mad as hell, she marched toward it, her one arm hurt or broken, and in the other hand she held a pump shotgun. In a real strength move, one that marveled Eric then, she chambered a shell home with one hand. She jerked the gun up and down once. Chink-chink .

Eric caught Leda’s arm and threw himself backwards. Her head jerked. The dog sailed toward them. They fell.

Suspended, the Doberman hung in the air, mouth agape, teeth luminous.

Then a section of the door blasted out, catching the Doberman, throwing it against the wall. It almost seemed to stick for a moment, and Eric thought he saw, in the second before it slid wetly to the floor, a look of profound disappointment in its furious face. Cordite and burnt wood smoke eddied to the ceiling. Cowering, the other dogs stood at the entrance to the hallway. Eric thought, I didn’t even hear the shotgun.

Chink-chink .

Grabbing Leda’s collar, Eric scrambled backwards to the next door, which swung open easily under his pressure. Still on his backside, he pulled Leda after him. She kicked the door shut.

“You’re choking me,” she gasped, and he let go of her collar.

“Get out of my house!” screamed a voice, and the roar of the gun was deafening this time. In the hollow ringing that followed the explosion, the sound of alphabet blocks scattering across the floor seemed unnaturally loud.

“Get away from my baby!”

On the wall adjoining the other room stood a crib, a tightly sheeted bundle resting in the exact middle of a bare mattress. Chink-chink . Another shell in the chamber! thought Eric. A pie plate-sized hole appeared in the wall, knocking a corner off the crib blowing sheetrock dust in on them. Eric stood, picked up a kid’s rocking chair and heaved it through the unbroken window. While Leda flopped a blanket over the ragged knives of glass and went through the opening first, the repetitive metallic cocking of the gun followed by a click beat out a manic rhythm, and a rising wail penetrated the wall. Filled with grief and death, and hardly human, the sound chased them out of the house. Later, after they’d crossed two more lawns, passed through two more picture windows (careful to yell out before entering, “Anyone home?”), down two more bedroomed hallways, shutting doors behind them, and crawled out two more bedroom windows to throw off the dogs. They sat with their backs against a sun warm cinder block garden wall.

Eric said, “Looks like you cut your hand.”

Sweat soaked Leda’s maroon shirt in wide circles from her armpits to the her belt. Her head was back and her eyes closed. “Yeah.” She breathed deeply and when she exhaled, she shuddered. “Guess not everybody’s dead yet.” Quietly she watched as he tore a sleeve off the shirt, then wrapped her hand. Next to them, water dripped sporadically from drooping branches of a willow. Nearly touching the grass, the longest branches appeared to set the drops down as if they were washing the ground, or baptizing it. Silence stretched between them—she sat, cradling her hand in her lap, staring blankly across the grass—but the silence calmed Eric. He didn’t feel awful about her anymore, sad that she hated him, but not upset. They’d shared sex and near death, and of the two, death was more overwhelming. Nearly dying unites people, he thought. “How long do you think we were in that house?” he asked, making small talk. He guessed that the whole incident from the time they dove through the picture window until they hurdled the chain link fence in the back yard was less than a minute.