Pack (2 page)

It took a little while. Finally, he sidled forward. Snatched the can from my hand and started sucking at it, greedily. It was one of the little ones, so he probably wouldn't sicken himself on it, but still. I backed up and turned around.

There wasn't time to lure him. If he came along, that was fine, and I'd do what I could.

There was doing the right thing, and then there was being stupid.

Oscar took care of it, circling back to get the boy and hurry him along. Something other than me to herd just about did the dog in with sheer satisfaction. We took the road out of town, and I longed to glance back. Didn't.

It was sort of how I'd led Oscar home the first time, away from the burning wreck of that fat fuck's shack and the cages. Most of the animals there had just vanished into the undergrowth, but not Oscar.

The freeway was clear for miles in either direction; it only got clogged around major cities with rusting hulks sitting back on their springs, the drivers fled or bleached, picked-clean skeletons draped in weird attitudes they had probably died in—it was better to go around the edges. It bothered me, how the bones would just sit there, naked and cold, not scattered as if animals had been at them.

No, they were just…left, like used toothpicks. One of the many mysteries since the end of the world, I guess.

Anyway, I liked the empty space all the way around the cloverleaf, scrub bushes not yet creeping up to the concrete. The forest was petering out into plains, and the edge was the best place to be. Might even be time to turn south for the winter, but dry south instead of wet. I hated the damn humidity.

Still, I scanned with the binoculars as Oscar brought the kid up. I felt more than heard them—the kid was quiet, and Oscar, well, you spend enough time with a dog and you end up just knowing where he's likely to be.

Nothing stirring around the trailer, not even a shimmer of heat off the pavement. Clouds coming in from the north, it meant misty mornings. The cloud cover was good, but it also meant sunlight wasn't the usual insurance. The truck sat placidly, and none of the traps had been disturbed.

I looked down to find Oscar pressed against my leg. “Well?”

He gave me a big doggy grin. Nothing out of the usual, so it was safe to approach. If he'd been tense, or even perk-eared, it would have been time to be really, really careful.

Now I let myself look back. The kid was crouched by a clump of blackberries, watching me with the sort of intensity only children are capable of. He still clutched the can, and raised it hopefully as our gazes locked.

Those dark eyes were huge. Snot greased that scarred upper lip, and he scratched with his free hand under his filth-stiffened rag clout.

I hitched the rifle higher on my shoulder. “Come on, then.” I didn't think he'd follow me.

But he did.

The solar panels had done their work, and pretty much everything had a full charge. The kid submitted to a washcloth scrubbing to get the first few layers of grime off. Stippled thornscars crisscrossed his skin, and he would have made himself sick on water if I hadn't firmly taken the bottle away. He looked ready to snap at me, but Oscar made a low sound, not quite a growl, and the boy subsided.

“Do you have a name?” I was going to have to shave his head to get the mats out, if I couldn't get him to dunk his head in the trailer's tiny kitchen sink. That or a lukewarm shower was about all I could manage, after a week of sunny days to charge everything to the max.

The kid shook his head.

“Parents? Do you remember them?”

Another shake, he sucked on another small can of evaporated milk. He didn't betray any curiosity at the water, or at the bunk, or Oscar's lolling grin. I took a couple bites of an energy bar, on the principle that the alpha ate first and Oscar really did need to know who was in charge, and then fed the damn dog, which meant I had to step over him again and again to check the soaked rice. The hot plate would cook it just fine, and by the time it was done Oscar would want to trot outside, and I'd make the fire.

So I kept talking. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

I expected another headshake, but instead I got a slow, very definite nod and a gleam in those big dark eyes.

“Good.” Kind of at a loss now, I poured another scant measure of bottled water into a battered enamel cup. “And you don't have a name.”

Another shake.

Well, great. I'm going to civilize yet another a nonverbal fourth grader.
“I'll call you Huck,” I muttered. “Short for Huckleberry Finn. Do you know how old you are?”

That one got me a shrug.

“Fair enough.” I got down a can of green beans, and another of Spam—hey, it never goes bad. “So, Huck. You ever had potted meat before?”

Another grave head shake. He drank the water and held out the cup for more. Oscar, head down in his food bowl, decided to make some more room, and let out a whopper of a fart.

The kid laughed even while I swore, my eyes already watering. Bright, unaffected laughter, the scar on his lip flushing, and his teeth were white and straight.

Fire is always the best insurance. I've seen trailers opened like tin cans, but flimsy tents with a banked campfire left standing. Whatever fuckery from the stars the Others were, they didn't like flame. Electric light didn't bother them one whit, I guess, given how they went through the cities like a hot knife through butter. The rural areas fared better; a bunch of crackpots and survivalists made it too. Most of them were of a biblical bent, and a lot of them decided it was Judgment Day and they might as well get going while the getting was good. Which meant families, neighborhoods, even whole compounds doing a Jonesboro. They were a great place to hunt for supplies if you didn't mind having to bury folk.

The sense of being watched inside them, those compounds, though…that I mind. Animals, not Others, got at the corpses, which was thought provoking. Maybe the religious had just bugged out in time.

Anyway, I had a load of tolerably dry wood, and we ate at the fire. The boy wolfed his rice and Spam, even though he made a face over the potted meat. There's only so much you can do with Spam, I found that out when I went to Hawaii before shit went down.

No more trips to the islands for me. I'd saved for a decade to take that vacation, and came home six months before the news reports started to get weird.

At least I'd had that much. Lucky me.

Huck ate with his fingers, and I gave him seconds once I was sure he wouldn't throw up. With his face scrubbed and dusk falling, he could almost be mistaken for a normal kid.

I chewed each bite the regulation thirty times to make it last longer. It turns the food into a kind of slurry, but it keeps me occupied. Huck crouched near the Boy Scout–approved fire, staring with rapt fascination.

Just like a little caveboy at the dawn of time.

Oscar stayed at my feet, hoping to lick the bowl, and when I put it down for him he actually wriggled with delight. The kid rocked back and forth a little, and after a while started to make a funny humming noise.

Dusk deepened. I watched the sky. Oscar loped off to do his nightly business, returning to lean against my leg while I stroked his head. The nightly ear-scrubbing and talkies were his favorite part of any day—that is, if he hadn't herded anything. If we ever ran across a bunch of sheep I'd probably lose him for good.

Full dark spread like an ink stain. The nightly buzzing and burring began, and still I watched.

Oscar whined, deep in his throat.
It's bedtime, human.
I patted his shoulder. “I know. Soon.”

They started in the north, shimmering cascades moving against the stars. You could mistake them for aurora borealis, except for the queer
wrongness
of the way they moved. And the colors—shades your eyes couldn't really define because as soon as you decided they were red they'd switch to green, or violet, or colors there aren't names for.

They were far away, though. That was a relief.

Huck shifted nervously, made a small whining noise Oscar echoed.

Okay
. “I don't think they're close,” I said. “Go on inside, kid, I'll build up the fi—”

That was when they hit.

“
Oscar! No!
” The rifle barked, jolting against my shoulder, and Oscar didn't growl. He was all silent business, darting around the campfire and nipping at the
things
as they reached into the circle of firelight.

They never attacked at dusk, and they didn't usually attack campfires, and normally the lights preceded them. Which made it my fault, because I'd gotten too comfortable.

Huck snarled, his teeth champing together. I squeezed my knees together—he had tried to dart between my legs, and instinct had clamped down on him. He was wiry-strong, and his thrashing was going to throw my aim off, but the alternative was him running straight at the goddamn
things
, their ropy arms flickering and smoking as the firelight scored them. Were they desperate? Starving? Who knew? It wasn't one of the quasi-human-shaped Others. It wasn't an Other wearing a human skin.

I'd never seen one like this before.

The kid wriggled and bucked, and the sounds he made would have chilled me if the Others hadn't been shrieking much, much louder. I yelled for Oscar to “
cut it out and come here, dammit
,” thinking we could retreat inside the trailer and have at least some shelter, but the damn dog had picked that moment to stop listening to me.

The
things
made sounds too—dry bristling scrapes, the steaming as their long, flexible, claw-tipped tentacles darted into the fire's flickering circle, their shrieks as Oscar nipped. The kid howled, I yelled, and the rifle barked again, just as one of the arms did the impossible and looped over Oscar, dragging him out into the dark. He gave one amazing, earshattering
yipe
as he disappeared.

“
NO!
” I screamed, and a bright bolt of pain lanced up my thigh.

It was the kid. He'd
bitten
me, teeth lancing my jeans and puncturing a mouthful flesh just above the knee, grinding down. I jerked away and he skittered forward, clearing the fire in a skimble-legged leap, and hurled himself after Oscar.

Growling. Snapping. My own voice, screaming “
Oscar! Oscar! Oscaaaar!
” Fury smoking red hot all through me, I got the rifle steady and cracked off another shot at the hulking of the
thing
the tentacles were springing from, was rewarded with a screech. Dropped the rifle and grabbed for the fire, coming up with a smoke-flaming wood, ignoring the tearing pain in my hand as I leapt in the direction Oscar had vanished.

Maybe it was the flames. Maybe it was…something else, I didn't know. Another shattering shriek, and my brain refused to hold the shapes I saw. The
thing
—a colony of ropelike excrescences coming together in a horribly wrong-shaped clot, the tentacles lashing, towered over me, the hot wind of its breath stripping my sweat-soaked hair back as I waved the flaming chunk of firewood. There was a long, liquid, furred shape, so still on the ground, and another darting in, a flash of something red-gold, a blossoming like the fire I held.

The Other-thing backed off. The shape on the ground was Oscar. I pressed forward, screaming.

“
Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck off!
”

Yeah, it wasn't the most eloquent, but it got the job done. At least, the thing slunk back even farther.

I found myself standing over Oscar, waving the wood. The other shape dancing around was the kid. A hot slick of blood down my leg from where he'd bitten me, soaking into my jeans, and somehow the kid must have caught some of the fire too, because he lunged like a dancing candleflame and the thing howled, cowering away.

I got a fistful of Oscar's slick fur. Had I bled on him?
Please let it be my blood, please.
I hauled, and he was so heavy. Tripped, landed on my ass with a jolt, my teeth clicking together painfully and almost taking a chunk out of the inside of my cheek.

Got a firmer hold. Scrabbled back, still waving the burning wood. Someone was repeating Oscar's name, and
no
, and vile obscenities, at top volume in a cracked, hoarse howl.

So much blood. Deep punctures, and one of the
thing
's tentacles had been severed and lay with its toothed circle of clawmouth fingers buried in Oscar's shoulder. I brought the flame closer to it and it squirmed, letting go and wriggling away, disgustingly fat and rubescent. Gorged with blood, even as it leaked foxfire-luminescent fluid from its severed end.

Oh Oscar no no no—

Heaved him back into the circle of firelight. Oscar twitched, and his entire left side had been stove in just like a trashcan hit by a sledgehammer. My eyes burned, snot slicking my upper lip, gulping sobs.

A rushing sound, wind in the treetops. I grabbed for the rifle, but the
thing
's passage faded in the distance—it sounded big,
too
big—and the only thing moving on the border of firelight was the boy. He was covered in foul guck, reddened in places, and his eyes sparked with yellow deep in the pupils.

“Stay back.” I scrabbled for the rifle, but he crouched, cocking his head, hands flat on the dirt. “Don't make me—”

Darting forward with eerie speed, the boy leapt
into
the fire. My garbled exclamation didn't stop him, and I sat there with Oscar moving weakly against my knees as the kid turned in the flames as if he was taking a shower.

And remained unburnt.

Oscar twitched. The bite on my leg throbbed, still welling. It hadn't hit an artery, thank God. The kid stepped out of the fire and shook himself, smoke spattering like water. Then he darted for us, and I lunged for the rifle.

“You're one of them!” I got the gun and whirled, socking it to my shoulder, the bite on my leg tearing and sending another hot jolt all through me.