Chris Pourteau - Tails of the Apocalypse

He sniffed to make sure he could no longer smell them. When he was sure they’d gone, he stood and stretched. His fur was soaked. His legs were stiff, despite their dream-running. The leaves clung to him with the night’s dew, sealing in the cold.

But he waggled off the leaves and dropped to his belly again and began to gnaw. The rope was bitter and stringy and rough against his tongue. It tasted like hay smelled. But he thought of finding the boy again, and that gave him strength.

He chewed. Time passed.

Once he thought he heard one of the creatures, but it was only a cat. The cat walked by him and watched him gnawing and he growled at it without stopping. The cat had simply turned away as if he weren’t worth her time and, mewing, walked on.

By the time the moon was full overhead, he’d eaten his way through the rope. His harness remained, but he didn’t mind that. It reminded him of the boy and their walks. Of the day they’d stood down the stray together. And that gave him courage. And hope.

He went inside the house, through the hole the creatures had made. His pack’s scent was everywhere. It mixed with the stench of the invaders. And something else. The smell of food. Real food.

His eyes followed his nose around the room. Whenever the Man or Woman wanted him to do something, they’d bark their strange sound, and he’d come running to this room. After he did the thing, they’d give him a reward. Next to the boy’s room, this was his favorite room in the house.

There were treats all over the table. His pack had been feeding when the attack happened. He stood up on his hind legs and sniffed. He began to salivate. The smorgasbord of smells almost overpowered the lingering, wormy reek of the creatures. He looked around left, then right. An old habit. But the Man and the Woman weren’t here to bark a warning at him. He was glad and sad at the same time for that.

He leapt up on one of their seats and stared at the table. Food covered it in wide, flat bowls. He was famished, he realized, now that the danger had passed. As hungry as the creatures seemed to be.

No, not like them. Never like them.

Placing his front paws on the table’s edge, he looked around one last time, then leapt up on the table and filled his jaws. He ate for the pure joy of eating while standing on the tabletop. He’d dreamed of it many times. He looked around again, just to make sure he wouldn’t get into trouble, then remembered: they were gone. The boy was gone. His sadness found solace as he gorged himself.

When he was finished, he tumbled down, first to the chair, then to the floor. His belly was fat and he felt sleepy. So he went back to the hole in the side of the house, looked left and right to make sure none of the creatures were around, then pooped in the backyard. Eating from the table was one thing. Pooping in the house? That just wasn’t right.

He walked back inside and to his favorite room in the house, where his twin runt slept, and clambered beneath the boy’s furs. He buried his body in them, just as he’d burrowed beneath the leaves. He wanted to absorb the boy’s scent into his own fur. He wanted it to be all he could smell, ever again. As he inhaled deeply and his belly spread full beneath him like a fat pillow, the sorrow returned. If he left here, he knew, eventually the boy’s scent would leave him. Especially now that the heavy odor of the Storm of Teeth lay across everything. He fell asleep, buried in the furs and painting a permanent memory of the boy’s scent into his nose.

Dawn brought more of the creatures. He awoke to them moving through the house. As he had the night before, he inhaled deeply to stamp the boy’s smell on his brain one last time. Then he poked his nose from beneath the covers.

One of them dragged a foot aimlessly down the hallway as it passed the door to the boy’s room. Eventually, he knew, he had to move. The longer he delayed, the further away the boy was. There was no rope binding him now. He must move soon if he were ever to find the boy.

He stood, ready to hop down, and his stomach roiled with his earlier feast. The creature’s shadow hesitated. He stood stock still, the boy’s furs around his head and shoulders. The creature grunted as it turned to come back up the hallway.

Fear coursed through him. His brain prepared his body for combat. He wanted to growl, to warn the creature away, as he and the boy had warned the stray away. But they were too big, much bigger than the stray, and they never stopped until they fed. Even after they fed. His growl would only bring their attention to him, he knew.

He had only one choice, then.

Leaping from the bed, he darted through the doorway, ignoring the groan of hunger behind him. He waddled down the hall, last night’s binge weighing him down.

Shambling shadows appeared in the living room, attracted by the first creature’s frustration. One of them was small like the Baby, only crawling. It dragged itself across the floor of the living room toward the hall. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for a path to freedom.

The crawling creature reached for him, and he was tempted to nip at the hand like he had the Baby’s. But he thought before acting. He wasn’t sure what biting one of the creatures would mean. Would he change too? Would he become one of them, no matter who bit first?

He feinted left, then jogged right and past the crawler’s clutching hands. Another creature stood between him and the open front door, but he darted between its legs and tumbled outside.

Creatures moved randomly in the street as the others in the house turned to pursue him. He could see bodies of the members of other packs sprawled around in death. At least some of them had stayed dead, as they should.

Now that he was out in the open, it was easy to avoid the creatures. His leg muscles bested the weight of his stomach, and he moved from body to body, making sure they were not the boy or the other members of his own pack. When he was satisfied, he moved into the woods behind the neighborhood and began his search.

His strategy was simple. He hid when the creatures were around and tracked when they weren’t. But tracking the boy was difficult. His scent was almost impossible to find.

As the Storm of Teeth grew in ferocity and size, as its biters spread their plague, the stench of the dead was everywhere. They were everywhere. Always hungry. Always eating. His fur was up more often than it wasn’t. He began to feel awake, even while sleeping.

The first day he spent going to the places he and the boy had always gone. The dog park. The route they walked, where the stray had attacked them. The fishing hole. But each time he failed to find the boy, his sadness deepened, his desperation grew. For three days he searched and tracked and found nothing but danger and grief.

On the third night, a bat attacked him, and he ran into cover on instinct. The bat carried a disease like the creatures. He could smell it. Only this disease was older, one he knew to avoid without thinking. He knew that if the bat bit him, he’d die. Death would be agony. He knew this. And he’d try to spread the bat’s disease to others, too.

Maybe the plague of the creatures was like the bat’s disease, then. He’d seen it turn members of other packs rabid after they were bitten. They joined the Storm of Teeth and became spreaders of the plague. Deep in his bones, he knew if a creature bit him, the plague would take him too. The same as would happen if the bat bit him. At last, the answer to the question. Whether he bit a creature or it bit him, he’d become a plague carrier. And go mad.

He resolved in that moment never to become like them. Not just for himself, but for the boy too. What if he found the boy after becoming plagued? He knew he’d try and hurt him, try to spread the sickness. Like the bat had tried to hurt him . And hurting wasn’t love. Not even runt love. And he didn’t want to hurt anyone, not ever.