Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga (39 page)

He shook his head wondering what she must have thought his reaction would be. That’s when Denny heard the barking of a dog.

“Shit,” he whispered as all the humans in the warehouse suddenly became extremely alert, like deer who’d heard that distant twig snap.

He hurried to the front of the store and grabbed his rifle, slinging it over his shoulder as he peered out the front window. Anna and the others quickly joined him and saw that the barking had come from a familiar German shepherd who was now dancing around in front of the closed doors of the supply warehouse. Bones paused for a moment, glanced inside at his audience, and then continued to bark.

“There’s no way that’s the same dog,” said one of the men who had been at the edge of the trash pit the day before.

But Denny caught a glimpse of Bones’s collar and shook his head. “That’s him,” he said simply.

“He’s going nuts,” Anna said. “Think he’s just excited to see us?”

Denny didn’t think this at all. There was real alarm in the dog’s bark and as he scanned around the street, he spotted a couple of other dogs racing straight for Bones.

“No,” said Denny, his pulse starting to race. “He’s warning us.”

•  •  •

“And yeah, there’s that one chick, Anna? Holy shit, is she hot for it. Never seen a chick so much in heat, particularly an older broad.”

Pepe, cradling four shotguns in his arms, considered what fun it would be to just shoot Ches to shut him up but knew he’d get busted by the others. Ches was popular. Shoot him, and there’d be consequences even for an old convict like himself, a fact he’d been keeping on the down-low. Still, it was a nice thought.

Pepe was contemplating this very thing as the gun group exited the sporting goods store to an empty parking lot. They had checked it out pretty thoroughly from the windows and had seen no sign of any dogs or other threat, but now Pepe was hearing a sound coming from above him. As he stepped out from under the store’s porch roof, he saw an angry-looking Rhodesian ridgeback looking back down at him.

“Oh, shi…,” he started to say, but in the time it took him to get those two words out, the ridgeback had already leapt off the roof and had Pepe’s head firmly in its jaws.

Ches whipped around in surprise as dogs started coming around both sides of the building.

“Oh, fuck me,” Ches cried as he fumbled around for his pistol just as a wolf hybrid clamped its jaws on his wrist and violently snapped the bones within. Ches screamed as his hand was torn from his arm while a second dog went for the meaty part of his right calf.

The attack was over in seconds.

•  •  •

Back at the medical warehouse, Denny’s first attempt to shoot down one of the dogs coming at Bones failed when the shot went wide, the dogs moving too fast. He fired a second time, missed again but then remembered something he’d heard a million times about shooting a moving target: lead the animal with the muzzle, keep the barrel a couple of feet out ahead. He did just that, pulled the trigger, and the dog’s skull exploded in a lingering mist of shattered bones and blood, looking like he’d shot a water melon rather than an animal.

He turned the gun on the second of Bones’s would-be attackers and shot that one clean through the chest.

“There are more coming!” cried Anna.

And sure enough, there were. What looked like a hundred dogs were now coming at their location from every direction.

Denny thought fast. The dogs were in hunting mode. Even if the group of surviving humans stayed in the warehouse to weather any potential siege, the dogs would assuredly find a way inside. Worse, if they were missed back at the Sheraton, Lester would probably send a search party that wouldn’t be any better prepared for a fight against this number of dogs than they had been.

Basically, this wasn’t going to end well for anybody unless they moved out
now
.

“Come on,” Denny exclaimed. “Into the trucks. We’re leaving before they can get pin us in.”

Everyone remained still for a heartbeat, but Denny was already halfway out the door. He was still lugging a couple of bags of medical supplies and quickly threw them in the back of the nearest SUV, which had been left unlocked. He then climbed up on top of one of the SUVs and began shooting at the incoming dogs.

Seeing what he was doing, Anna led the others to the SUVs, where they quickly threw in the harvested medical stuffs but then clambered in and shut the doors. Riley, who had been in the group as well, got up on top of the second SUV with a rifle and joined Denny in his turkey shoot.

As the men blasted away, dog after dog after dog went down in a halo of blood. Denny exhausted three five-round clips in a row, each bullet finding flesh. Riley, who had claimed to have learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts but hadn’t fired a round in the thirty years following, was almost firing with the same level of accuracy putting down dogs one right after another. Some flipped over in the air like a marlin on a fishing line, such was their forward velocity when hit.

For his part, Bones stayed between the two SUVs and barked his head off. He could smell the blood of the pack as they were killed only feet away, but he knew where he would be safe and stayed there.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Though Denny had fully expected to drain himself of ammunition and then be forced to drive through a mess of oncoming dogs, the animals ended up retreating after about a third of their number had been slaughtered. He thanked Providence for small favors and then nodded at Riley before climbing off the roof.

“Okay, everybody in?” Denny asked as he got into the passenger seat of the SUV he’d been standing on. “They might be coming right back.”

He found everybody staring back at him with a new level of respect. It was a surprising reaction, but he liked it nevertheless.

“What about the dog?” one of the women asked.

Denny looked out and saw Bones still standing there on the other side of the vehicle. He hesitated for a moment, but then nodded before clambering out and opening the back of the truck.

“You know I’m the one who threw you out earlier, right?” Bones just stared up at Denny with a confused look on his face. “Well, I thank you anyway.”

B
ack at the Sheraton, everyone listened in disbelief to the stories from Denny’s party. Carrie had almost passed out when she’d heard but kept herself from sending “I told you so” glances to everyone that had earlier pooh-poohed bringing in Bones.

“He saved our lives,” Anna said. “We wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

Lester praised Denny, Lester praised Bones, the group accepted the dog, and Denny got more than his share of reappraisal from those who had earlier judged him so harshly.

But Denny’s redemptive makeover was becoming increasingly overshadowed by the fact that Ches’s team was staying gone for longer and longer. Lester and a couple of others went to the roof and tried to raise him on the battery-operated walkie-talkies that had been issued to the parties beforehand, but everyone knew in reality that the range was barely even four blocks. They were unable to get any kind of response.

By the middle of the afternoon, the prevailing belief was that they had either skipped out, however unlikely or been attacked by the dog pack and were somewhere between the sporting goods store and the Sheraton, possibly in need of assistance.

No one was sure what to do, least of all Lester, but then Denny came to him with an idea.

“I’ll go find them,” Denny announced. “One truck, a couple of guns, and Bones. We’ll drive there and back. Won’t even get out of the truck. We get into trouble, we floor it right back here, but we’ll know what happened.”

Lester thought about this for a moment, but then shook his head. “It’s going to be dark soon. Then what?”

“That’s why we have to go now,” Denny pressed. “If they’re injured, they’re not going to make it through the night. If they’ve been killed, we need to know.”

“And if they’ve gone rogue and are thinking about coming back here to shoot up the place or some silly shit, we’ll know that, too, right?” Lester replied making it sound like he hadn’t completely dismissed that as a possibility.

“Right.”

Lester sighed. “If that’s the case and you see them, feel free to shoot them. But after what befell you guys, I’m pretty sure I know what happened to them.”

Bones was with Carrie in back of the hotel when Denny came out.

Bones had had a big meal and was currently drinking a second large tub of water. Having been around dogs most of her life, Carrie knew that despite his healthy appetite, something was the matter with the shepherd. His teeth seemed fine as were his ears, but when she went to stroke his back, he moved away, obviously tender in a couple of places. She could see traces of blood dried in the fur near his haunches and had a good idea where that had come from and even his tear ducts were leaking pus. Even worse, she saw him limping around a little, all of which added up to a dog that wasn’t in great shape.

“I don’t think you should take him,” Carrie said, nodding up to Denny. “He’s sick.”

“Sick, ate something bad-sick? Or, sick-sick?”

“I think he’s an old dog. I think something happened to him after he left here yesterday maybe.”

“Really? Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Carrie replied. She stroked the hair between Bones’s ears and looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Bones,” she said.

Bones, as if understanding her words, gave her a quick lick on the hand. But then he glanced up at Denny, saw the look of uncertainty on his face, and left Carrie’s hand to rise to his feet. He squared his shoulders and faced Denny as if literally rising to an unspoken challenge.

“He looks okay to me,” Denny scoffed. “Or, at least it looks like he’s not ready to throw in the towel.”

Carrie eyed the dog and had to agree.

•  •  •

Moments later, Denny and Bones were back in one of the two SUVs they’d taken to the medical supply warehouse. The sun was setting and there’d be no telling what was out in the night, but Denny cracked the window a little anyway to allow Bones and his impeccable nose access to the various scents passing by outside the vehicle in the hopes he’d get an early warning if there was trouble ahead.

All the way to the sporting goods store, Denny kept an eye on the road to make sure he didn’t drive right past one of the trucks Ches and his guys used, but seeing nothing only confirmed what Denny felt he already knew: They were all dead.

He knew why he wanted to prove this, though, and it only partially had to do with an attempted rescue. A real rescue, a rescue where there was any belief whatsoever that folks would be found alive, would’ve likely required at least two people. But Denny had taken up the mission to prove to himself and everybody else that, in the end, he was better equipped to survive out in this world than Ches. Yes, this was petty and small, and if it wasn’t for Bones, he probably would’ve been with Ches’s group.

Also, if it wasn’t for Bones, there’d be two groups out here dead, so he felt he’d been more than proved right.

But a small, primal part of him couldn’t let go of the fact that Ches had insulted him, and now Denny would be standing over his dead, arrogant body, able to literally piss on the man’s grave if he so wished. He did not wish and he didn’t even like to admit the impulse, but there it was, and here he was driving to the scene.

When he reached the sporting goods store, it was just dark enough that Denny had to turn on the headlights to see the two trucks. As he got closer, he saw that the front door of the store was wide open, suggesting that no one had managed to get back in and attempt a barricade if they were attacked, but a second later he saw the remains of one of the dead men on the ground.

It looked exactly like what the dogs had been trying to accomplish at the medical supply warehouse. The men had gone inside, collected their weapons and were on their way out when the animals attacked. The surprise had somehow been complete and the men were all dead, probably without getting off a shot as Denny didn’t see any sign of blood out in the parking lot, only up by the human carcasses. He looked for Ches but couldn’t differentiate one fallen man from another in the dark.

“Should we get the guns while we’re here?” Denny asked Bones.

The shepherd hadn’t so much as woofed on the drive, so Denny figured the dog pack might well have been long gone. He eyed the guns spilled out in front of the store and was starting to think that maybe he’d take his reputation up another notch by bringing back the weapons.

Ches? Oh, yeah, he had ten armed men and couldn’t manage to get the guns back to the hotel in broad daylight. Denny Edwin Tallchief? Went out alone and got them at night.

Denny parked alongside one of the SUVs. He glanced over at Bones, who was sniffing the fresh corpses from the window.

“Is it safe out there, Bones?”

Bones glanced over to Denny at the sound of his name but didn’t bark, so Denny took this as a positive sign and slowly opened the truck door with one hand as he awkwardly held up his rifle with the other. He took a cautious step out of the cab and glanced around, aiming the gun in every direction. So far, so good.

“C’mon, Bones,” Denny said and the shepherd hopped out of the vehicle as well, sticking close to the human as they both carefully walked over to the front of the store.

Denny peered into the building but almost lost his footing when his shoe began to slip around on the slick surface below. He looked down and realized from the color of the shirt that he had inadvertently stepped on a chunk of Ches’s body that had fallen directly onto the store’s welcome mat.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” Denny said, without thinking that he was apologizing to a corpse.

He took a step back, reached down and grabbed two of the shotguns that had fallen alongside the man, and piled them in the back of the SUV. Still hearing nothing out in the night, Denny got a little braver and started picking up more weapons and then baskets full of ammunition, which he loaded into the truck as well. The men had spilled some of the bullets and shells onto the concrete when they’d fallen, but Denny scooped those up as well and soon had an SUV full of enough guns and ammunition to supply a full company of soldiers.