Pack (3 page)

Huck knelt next to Oscar. His hands vanished into the dog's thick pelt, and his eyes rolled back inside his head. The trigger halted, because…

Oscar twitched.

My dog's ribs made creaking sounds, snapping out, and he took a deep breath. His eyes opened. He whined, and Huck folded over sideways, curling up like a pillbug.

My dead dog leapt to his feet, blue eyes wide, and barked, sharply, his old familiar
what's up, alpha?
He turned in a clockwise circle, as if chasing his nonexistent tail, danced a few steps, and shook himself. Blood and muck whipped away.

All the air left me in a rush. I eased off the trigger, just a little. The chunk taken out of my thigh throbbed, and now that I was thinking I probably couldn't fault the kid for biting me.

But still.

Huck whined, way back in his throat, and stretched out on the ground right next to the fire. Curled up again, and sagged. His eyes closed. Oscar nosed at him, and began to lick at the boy's smoke-filthy skin.

That's impossible.
I took a step back, my wounded leg threatening to buckle.

Everything was impossible these days. It started with the news getting weird and ended with the cities becoming hunting grounds, and then the smaller towns getting visits from the things in the night.

What are you gonna do, Lydia?
Adrenaline jitters whipped through me, and a fresh trickle of hot blood slid down my shin. I had a short while before the fight-or-flight hormones wore off and I got tired, and I had to use it.

Oscar sat down next to Huck and whined, looking at me.
Make it better, alpha. Decide what to do.

The boy began to snore.

I built up the fire, got them both into the trailer and reasonably cleaned off. Huck was heavier than his skinny ass should have been, but it was probably all muscle. He curled up in my narrow bed, and Oscar hopped up to settle next to him.

“Traitor,” I told him, but not very harshly. I petted him a lot and even gave him a Greenie I'd hit a pet store two towns back for.

The slapdash bandage I'd put on the bite stuck to clotted blood; I peeled it away and rinsed the wound with a bottle of water, hissing through my teeth. The shape of the bite was human, but it was…weird. The toothmarks cut too deep. He could have taken a much bigger chunk out if he'd wanted to.

A human mouth wouldn't do that.

I poured peroxide on the punctures, smeared the whole bite with antibiotic, and did a proper bandage even though it was probably too late. Then I went outside, propped myself against the trailer's step, the sharp edge against the middle of my back likely to keep me awake if I slumped, and eyed the woodpile. We had enough.

I pulled my shearling jacket closer around me, kept an eye on the lights rippling to the north, and waited for dawn.

By the time the sun peeked up over the far horizon in a glory of gold-and-red morning—sailors take warning—I was shaking and sweating with fever. The fire was a low glow blurring in front of me, but at least the
thing
hadn't come back. When the sun was a safe hand's length above the rim of the planet, I got up.

It took me two tries. My wounded leg pretty much refused to hold much weight, and something was really,
really
wrong with me. I banged the trailer door open just like a reeling drunk come creeping home at last and hauled my recalcitrant limb up like deadwood. There were antibiotics in the cabinet above the postage-stamp counter, and I could work out a dosage after…

They looked up from my bed. Huck's mouth a little open, those teeth gleaming wickedly. Oscar, his coat shedding muck and dried blood—Aussies are wash and wear—hopped off the bed, bounding to greet me.

I don't know what would have happened if I'd been able to stay conscious. As it was, I went down hard, and the last thing I heard was Huck making a strange hooting noise as Oscar nosed at the bandage on my leg, nipping sharply to get under it and lick at the wound. Then the boy's hands were on me, pulling and tugging, and I passed out.

Nightmare, leering faces and twisted scraping sounds. I burned and thrashed while outside the fire crackled, and the things, sensing our weakness, pressed close. They did not attack again, though, even when the little one darted out of the trailer's shell to put more wood on the fire. Clouds loomed overhead, delaying dawn and threatening rain, and the dog's low growl thrummed all through me.

Skeins of meaning unfolded. The sound was a warning.
Something out there,
the dog was saying
, nastybad badnasty ugly, alpha wake up, when alpha wake up?

A short yip of a reply from outside, a wash of feral scent.
Warm thing good,
that scent said, a complex tapestry of fear and determination
. Big bad no come, big good better soon. Better soon.

Struggling to make coherent sounds, to get up and protect them, to get to the antibiotics. My voice cracking as I raved, weakly, secrets spilling out—the towns since I'd hit the road, all the death and the terror and the futility, and finally shooting the fat survivalist while Oscar howled in the too-small, filthy cage, the Taser falling from the fat fuck's hand as I swore,
no, not the dog, you sonofabitch, you will not hurt that dog
…

The fever clawed, sweat and sick pouring off me in waves, the sheets soaked and I was going to die here in this tincan hole, the boy and the dog were going to have to make it on their own, die, die in this hole, die, die die die.

Crusted guck gluing my eyelids down. A titanic stink, reeling flashes of color and meaning inside my aching skull. Cool water splashed on my cheek, and the bottle tipped up. He almost drowned me before I pushed his hand away and grabbed at the bottle, drained it. My stomach rebelled, tried to hork it all up, and settled for filling my nose with stinging bile-laced fluid.

Oscar, snuggled against my side, wriggled and licked my face. Licked and licked, as my hand fell away with the empty water bottle. I tried blinking, had to drop the bottle to rub at the matted filth over me.

When I could open my eyes, blinking against weak cloudy sunlight coming through the trailer's half-pulled blinds, Oscar shoved his nose further in my face and began assiduously cleaning me. “Ugh,” I managed. My mouth felt funny. Every muscle aching-weak, like I'd had influenza or something.

Antibiotics.
A deep croak came out of my throat.

The boy loomed above me. His wide dark eyes were the same, and he hunched uncertainly on the back of the dinette booth, perched just like a vulture.

Now
there
was an uncomfortable thought. “P-pills,” I managed.

He tilted his head, his hair moving uneasily. “Piz,” he mimicked, trying out the word. Pointed at Oscar. “Piz?”

“That's Oscar.” I moved, impatiently. I was hungry, and sore all over, but I didn't feel that bad. My upper lip was crusted with something hard.

I felt for the bandage with my free hand. My fingertips wormed through the hole I'd cut in my jeans, and met cool, unmarked flesh.

“Ozzz-cur.” The boy nodded. He pointed at me. “Piz?”

“Lydia,” I corrected, and succeeded in rolling over. How long had I been out?

“Leeee-dah.” He nodded again, pointed at himself. “Piz?”

“Huck.” I pushed myself upright on shaking arms. The trailer wasn't a wreck, like it might have been if I'd been out of commission for longer than overnight. “Huckleberry.”

“Huck.” He could say
that
with little trouble. A satisfied smile dawned on his small face. “
Huck.
”

It stank in here, but the reek was comforting. So many smells my head reeled, flashing through me and telling me all sorts of disconnected, jumbled things. Boy-smell, me-smell, Oscar-smell, all clearly distinguishable, and ghosts of the former owners of the trailer, as well. The ugly stink of things outside that sent a shiver up my back, a prickling rasping against my filthy shirt.

The boy hopped down. Amazingly light on his feet, but the whole trailer rocked. He was heavy because of muscle packed onto his skinny frame.

I peered through the hole in my jeans. No trace of the bite. Nothing. Smooth, unmarked flesh.

What the hell?

Oscar buried his nose in my hair. The ecstasy of licking continued, and when I started shoving his nose away so I could run my hands over him he thought it was a game and rolled onto his back, his fluffy belly exposed and his ribs whole under his skin. Not even tender, given by how he begged for a good scratching all over.

That wasn't a dream.
I scrubbed at the crust on my face while Oscar wriggled, trying to induce me to keep up the petting. The stuff on my top lip would not budge.

If it wasn't a dream, then what was it? I looked at the kid, he looked at me, and my nose twitched.

Those eyes, the iris and lids swallowing the whites. His shoulders bulking out as he lowered himself, fine fur racing over his narrow, blood- and mud-spotted chest as his bones crackled.

The air left me again.
Not human.

But he wasn't Other either, was he? He'd driven them off, and bathed in the fire. Saved Oscar.

Was
he Other? Or had the world been weirder than anyone guessed even before the lights in the sky and the claws in the dark?

Did it matter?

“God,” I whispered, and put my head down between my knees. Nausea roared through me, but at least I didn't throw up.

Whatever he was, the kid was mine now. And by the prickling all over my arms and legs, fur poking through skin with a wild-sweet pain, I began to get an idea of what had actually happened.

I couldn't afford to go crazy-hallucinating, and I couldn't afford to go batshit trying to deny what my own eyes were telling me. If I could teach Huck to talk, I could maybe ask a couple questions, and figure all this out.

Which would be nice, but it didn't change the basic fact I'd woken up with while my hometown rocked with screams and wailing and crunch-slurping all around me one cold winter night.

Survive first. Figure out the rest of it later.

By the time sunset came we were miles away and moving at a steady clip on the deserted freeway. I was guessing that the lights in the sky would be coming a lot further south tonight. There was a campground an hour or so away, or we could just keep moving.

Oscar sat next to me on the truck's bench seat, as usual, tongue lolling. The kid had his face pressed against the wind coming through his half-open window, and snuffled deeply every so often. I didn't blame him; the smells were concentrated, hitting the brain like a mainlined drug, and I had to keep my window up and my hand cupped over my mouth to filter out some of the distraction.

The ridge of scar on my top lip, as if I'd had a harelip, too, was sensitive. The tear healed quickly, but I was guessing something happened to the shape of the mouth when the…fur…came. Other things shifted around too, but I didn't have time to experiment now.

The plan was simple, once I really started thinking. Head south where it was warm and the sun was out all day, and use the desert to test the limits of this new body, find out exactly how strong and fast I was. How strong and fast the kid was.

Maybe we'd find survivors, maybe not. Maybe there were more like us out there. Huck had to come from somewhere, right?

If there were other people who could fur up, stand in fires, and drive off the Others, well. The Great Fuckery from the Stars was going to get a surprise.

I began to laugh, my breath a confused medley of scents. Oscar just grinned his doggy grin, and the cone of headlamp shine in front of us flashed gold with sunset's last gasp. Thistles and grass forcing up through the cracks flattened under our tires, and we drove on into the night.

The Iron Wyrm Affair

The Red Plague Affair

The Ripper Affair

Working for the Devil

Dead Man Rising

Devil's Right Hand

Saint City Sinners

To Hell and Back

Dante Valentine
(omnibus)

Night Shift

Hunter's Prayer

Redemption Alley

Flesh Circus

Heaven's Spite

Angel Town

The Hedgewitch Queen

The Bandit King

Strange Angels

Betrayals

Jealousy

Defiance

Reckoning

 

Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old.  She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington. Find out more at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

Photo Credit: Daron Gildow