Breeds (29 page)

The creature, looking as if it had been mauled and left for dead, wavered,
whuffed
, and, with a growl, held up the very dead-looking Flossie Jones. Its arms, spotted with gruesome frostbite, faltered for a moment, then firmed up long enough to ease Flossie onto the deck. That single marble eye blinked away snow, appeared wary, but also sadly exhausted. A tongue licked at its lips for a moment, and in a startling display of affection, the creature leaned in, and nuzzled Flossie’s cheek with its nose. The human onlookers heard a deep, solemn note from the thing’s ruined windpipe, before backing away.

Ross didn’t aim at it, distantly surprised that Roger didn’t, either.

Screams rose off in the distant dark, and the man-thing’s attention split between the sounds, the people with the firearms, and Flossie.

A flood of disbelief coursed through Ross. “Max?” he said softly. “Maximilian?”

The figure hesitated for a moment, as if recognizing its name. Then it lurched off into the night, moving only as fast as its near frozen limbs would bear it.

Jessica and Bertha went to Flossie’s side.

Ross allowed himself to be led into the house.

Max stumbled off into those freezing, swirling, ebony veils that chilled him to his very core. He wanted to sleep, very badly in fact, and despite feeling sad for leaving his owner amongst people, he also felt relief in being able to do so. He’d returned his wonderful owner to her own kind, to relative safety, which was what he’d set out to do since leaving their home. And like all dogs, he sensed his time drawing to an end, but unlike most, he was winding things down the best way he could, with what he had. All he really wanted to do now was perhaps find a place out of the cold. Get comfortable. Perhaps even give his balls one last lick. They certainly earned it. Having something to eat was an idea as well, before closing his eyes for that final sleep. From which there was no waking.

Leaving the warm glow of the house behind, Max lifted one heavy foot after the other, rubbed at his hairless arms, and walked into the heart of the blizzard.

Brutus called out into the night, marshaling his pack while his remaining companion, the bloodhound, with its long and narrow face, led him down the hill towards an unknown destination. Their flesh shivered with the intense cold, but they drove on into the drifting sheets, relying only on their sense of smell. Long Face’s nose was superior to Brutus’s, and they moved through the screaming wind until the cold became far too great for even them to bear. A house rose up out of the night, and Brutus and Long Face stomped towards it. The door was closed, so Brutus smashed out a window before gripping the wood and wrenching it off its hinges. They tore into the house, ran through every room before deeming it safe. Brutus returned to the entrance and yelled again into the face of the storm.

Like echoes in a bad dream, the others shouted back.

And soon, slinking towards him like frozen children, came the remaining breeds. They moved as if in pain and quickly sought shelter within the house, greeting their leader with a quick growl and a sniff before retiring inside. After minutes of this, only Brutus stood outside. He heard no other sounds. His once mighty pack had been decimated to only seven, including himself.

Seven was enough.

In truth, he only really needed one to breed again.

He stomped through the darkened halls of the house, stopping at a comfortable couch and barking at the mongrel shivering upon it. The breed dropped to the floor, and Brutus curled up on its length as the others milled about close together, gelling for warmth. A male and a female grappled and whined at each other before the male finally mounted her, filling the rooms with the sounds of their rough coupling.

Brutus lorded over it all, watching the act with gleaming intellect. More of
that
was needed. And as the mating concluded rather noisily before him, his thoughts turned towards how he might find more females to impregnate.

In short time, he believed he had the answer.

Back at Borland’s cabin, Morris woke and smelled the breed before he saw him.

It reeked of strangeness, alien in origin yet somehow oddly familiar. He’d gotten a whiff of it before. Off Borland, he believed, before the old prick went crazy. Morris cracked open an eye and lay very still. The cabin floor had become a blackboard sprinkled with knobs. The destroyed doorway lay bare, filled with gleaming snow while the world beyond twisted as if dropped out of the cosmos.

Then he heard the scratching. A long, drawn out rake of claws on wood, somewhere around the back of the cabin, taking its time rounding the dwelling. Morris flicked his ears and realized he was still in wolf form. Feeding. He remembering gorging himself on Borland’s remains, didn’t have to look that way to know he’d chewed off both of the man’s legs before dragging himself to a section of the floor where the blood hadn’t pooled.

A growl outside, from human vocal cords but strikingly off. The sound of claws lifted, like a needle coming free of a wobbly vinyl record, before resuming, heading for the open door.

Morris studied the dark interior, tracking the noise. Something cleared its throat, and the raking lifted once again. The smell grew stronger.

A shadow of a man stepped into the doorway, the wind frazzling his hair as if a million volts coursed through it. Eyes twinkled in a face of black. A slit of a mouth unzipped in a hiss. He was big, lean and powerful looking, and wearing not a stitch of clothing. A hand gripped the frame and he pulled himself inside, over the threshold.

Morris growled, letting his visitor know where he was.

The man-thing, spawn of Borland, and reeking of that offensive half-smell of dog and human, tensed. It centered its focus on the wounded wolf lying on the floor. The thing’s chest expanded and deflated, fearless, flexed knives atop its fingertips. Brimming with confidence.

That was the creature’s first mistake.

The second mistake came when, instead of retreating for the hills, the breed actually zeroed in on the motionless wolf in the cabin.

Morris waited until it was close enough.

Then lashed out with all the force of a sprung bear trap.

“All right me son, you’re inside now,” Tom Dawe reassured a shivering Ross Kelly. He was sitting at a kitchen table and surrounded by what looked to be everyone still alive in Amherst Cove. Two of the men carried a still unconscious Flossie Jones into the living room, while the women fluttered about for blankets and hot tea. Heat flooded the house and, for a moment, Ross just closed his eyes and let himself thaw. He’d said it many times before, how he’d much rather come in from the cold and warm up than come in from the heat and cool off.

“What the Jesus was that thing, Ross?” asked a gruff Leo Tucker.

“I wanna know if’n there’s more of the hairless bastards,” Phil Crout said.

“Them the crazies y’talk’ about?”

“Oh, she’s froze, she’s froze,” one of the women folk wept from the living room.

“What is she, dead?” Tom called out.

“No, she’s alive. Just froze.”

“Don’t mind her,” Tucker said in that old voice of iron. “You just gather your thoughts and let us know what’s going on.”

“Tha’s right.” Tom spoke with a voice that could still carry a baritone note.

Mutters of agreement.

Ross faced the old men of Amherst Cove, ranging from the mid-sixties to their eighties. Tradesmen most, with the exception of Leo Tucker. Fishermen and carpenters, farmers and sea hands. All of Irish, Scots, or English lineage. Some with little accent, and others with various degrees of thickness meshed into something altogether unique. Tom Dawe leaned in, holding his semi-automatic shotgun by its long barrel, the stock firm on the floor. Only then did Ross realize the lights in the place were on. Tom had a back-up generator tucked away in his shed, and a blazing wood stove in his living room.

“Now then,” Leo muttered with an investigative tone. “Start talkin’. That thing that dropped off Flossie Jones. Contrary to what I’ve heard, that didn’t look like some crazy fucker shootin’ the place up.”

“And what’s this about wild dogs and then terrorists?” Tom asked. “Cause that thing out there was neither.”

“No,” Ross admitted, feeling both mental and physical exhaustion take hold. “Look, I don’t know much, but the crazy fucker part I made up. Had to, because that thing out there is one of the reasons to get you moving. You wouldn’t have gone anywhere if I’d said there were monsters out there in the snow.”

The gathered men, Tom, Leo, Phil and Roger, somber in the lit kitchen, supposed the younger man was right.

“So what is it?” Leo Tucker asked, holding his semi-auto shotgun by the neck.

“I dunno,” Ross answered. “The guy I was with––he knew, but he wasn’t saying much. They’re shaped like men but they have teeth. Like dogs. Wolves. Fuckin’ claws, too. You saw that thing that brought Flossie over. You saw the eyes on it. They’re all like that. And I wasn’t lying about Walt Borland. They killed him. Practically ripped him apart. Him and the Mosebys. Maybe whoever else who isn’t here right now.”

Ross didn’t see the need to tell them he was the one who released the dogs into the wild. That was one mistake he meant to quietly correct if he could.

“The worst thing is,” he carried on, “that I don’t think guns will kill them. It hurts ‘em, but doesn’t kill ‘em. This does.”

He pulled out the Bowie knife, the silver shining.

“Jesus, Jesus,” Roger Moore whispered.

“What’s so special about that?” Tom asked. “Besides being a big-ass knife.”

Leo Tucker held out his hand and Ross handed the weapon over. Leo hefted it, inspected and scratched its surface. “Silver.”

The others regarded each other with growing trepidation.

“This thing’s silver,” Tucker declared. No one questioned Leo Tucker, the man who’d made a life of studying rock.

Tucker passed the weapon back to Ross. “You could’ve said it was a werewolf.”

“A what?” Tom Dawe exclaimed. “What did you just say?”

The group heard some scuffling from the entryway, breaking the discussion. “S’up, my buddies,” a short Burt Hill said, with an equally short Chris Hallet in tow, coming through the archway, leading deeper in the house. Both men waddled, as if they’d had surgery to bow their knees. “The women folks’re all straightened away.”

“Ross here says we gots a werewolf problem,” Roger Moore announced.

“Not a werewolf,” Ross said.

“Well, what is it then?” Tucker asked. “The damn thing’s killed by silver. That sounds like a werewolf t’me.”

“Can’t be a fuckin’ werewolf.” Tom Dawe waved a hand in exasperation. “That was a goddamn man. Buck-ass naked and with big fuckin’ falsies.”

“A breed of wolf, then?” Phil Crout asked, rubbing his chin.

A loud hammering on the kitchen door snapped everyone around, sending more than just a few heartbeats through the roof. Tom Dawe and Leo Tucker both brought up their weapons with a speed defying their years.

A figure was at the door, cupping a hand to the glass. Man-shaped, and wearing a hockey helmet.

“JESUS
CHRIST
don’t shoot!” Alvin bawled loud enough to be heard all the way to Newman’s Cove.

“Christ almighty,” Tom breathed, lowering his gun. “Sure as fuck
somethin’s
out there to get his ass outta the house.”

Phil Crout allowed a frosty Alvin to enter. He slapped a broadsword on the kitchen table, pulled his partially-melted helmet from his head, and collapsed in a chair across from Ross. The man’s winter clothing had been terribly burned, as if someone had doused him in gasoline, ignited it, and then proceeded to stomp the flames out only after a full minute of cooking.

“Howya doin’ b’ys?” he huffed at them all. “Jesus Lord our Savior, me nuts are froze off.”

“No fuckin’ wonder yer boys are froze,” Tom accused. “Look at how yer dressed. Y’look like yer chemistry set blew up on ya. Y’been on some of that medicinal wacky tobaccy from upalong?”

“Could use some of that right now,” Roger Moore said from behind. Phil Crout nodded in mute agreement.

“Wish I had, me son,” Alvin said. “Just blew me fuckin’ shack up.”

“Saw that,” Ross said grimly. “Sorry to see it go but glad to see yer all right. What happened?”

“Fuckin’
gremlins
is what happened!” Alvin pealed, his face freckled with soot. “Stocky little shits about yea high, cocks swinging and balls a danglin’. Little fuckin’ bareback bastards killed…” At this, Alvin uncharacteristically choked up, shocking everyone, even Ross who couldn’t remember ever seeing his friend become emotional. “They killed Harry Shea. And Sam and Mary.”

Stunned silence.

“I told them to stay… inside,” Ross muttered weakly, remembering asking Sammy to check on Harry.

“They did, but those short shits tore the doors off the houses. Gutted them like…” A gasping Alvin trailed off at that point, shaking his helmeted head while his portable air tank puffed exclamations. “They’re dead. I went down to their houses to check on ‘em. The three naked cocksuckers were at Mary’s house. Then they chased
me
to mine and fuckin’ almost had me too before I blew the back-up air tanks in my room. I had to jump through me own goddamn bedroom window and when I came to, the whole house had gone up. And you know the freaky part? The sure as shit, ball-grabbing freaky part?”

The enraptured townsmen waited.

“When I got to me feet I looked around. The whole place was lit up like a deadly fireplace. Deadly wicked! Daresay they could see it on the other side of the bay. Well, one of them pricks that was on my tail was hanging out the window. I figured when the tanks went up, they just started running anywhere to get away. One got to the window but only got halfway out before dying. It was a man first. A man. I want to make that clear ‘cause I know ye’ll think I’m off me medication. But as I watched, sure as God is my witness, that bare-assed, strung up fucker, he… he fuckin’
morphed
into a little fuckin’
dog
. A tiny goddamn poodle, and he dropped off the window down into the snow like a big fat flanker. Then I heard
other
voices screechin’, just fuckin’
screechin
’, all over the goddamn place, and that was enough to pucker my asshole. Fought through that bitch of a blizzard to get here and I tell ya b’ys, that was no pork barrel of pussy either. I’m
shitbagged.
”