Pavlov's Dogs (36 page)

OMEGA KAISER STRIPPED off his shirt as he walked down the corridor. He caught a glimpse of himself in a darkened office window and stopped.

“Idiot,” he said. “Child.”

You get what you want, after all this time, and it isn’t until you’re about to lose it that you realize...

He kicked off his canvas shoes and undid the buttons on his BDUs. Stepping out of them, he leaned his forehead on the window and stared into his own eyes. Killer’s eyes. He’d wanted to be a leader, but he hadn’t been able to put the killer away. Couldn’t achieve that balance that the Mutt—

No. McLoughlin.

He couldn’t achieve the balance McLoughlin had achieved. The Alpha had been feared, but he’d been respected. He had inspired instead of coerced. Kaiser smirked at himself in the glass.

“Learn something new every day.”

He straightened up and walked out of Command. Outside, bright halogen lights illuminated something that might have been what Hell looked like. The ground was awash with corpses spilling blood and entrails, and the entire gladiator seating section was now peopled by screaming, bleeding zombie upgrades. Screaming as if just the act of existing caused them pain.

The large shaggy lumps of his Dogs spotted the landscape.

Baring his teeth, Kaiser cursed himself again. He laughed once, a harsh sound; he had been right to call himself the Omega Dog.

“
McLoughlin!”
he shouted. He had no clear idea whether the former Alpha remembered his old name, or whether he would even respond. There was only one way to find out.

He shouted again, the word twisting into a scream at the end. A couple of shamblers came his way, and he reached out to them, gripping their heads and twisting, one at a time.

“Where are you?!”

He looked around. The lumps of meat on the ground were wriggling, trying to get up on the remains of their stunted limbs. Most of them were missing from the chest down.

The Alpha has feasted.

Kaiser heard it and stopped: the sound was both a howl and a moan, as if somehow the old Alpha Dog’s throat was producing two notes at the same time. Kaiser looked around, squinting through the dark smoke of a recently-started fire. In the drifting smudges, he saw him.

McLoughlin waited in the sparring cage.

“Perfect,” Kaiser said. He dropped to all fours and arched his back, staring up at the full moon. The Change rippled over his body, taking him faster than it ever had before. Faster than he had ever seen any of the other Dogs do it.

Except for McLoughlin.

The Dog replaced the man, and Kaiser looked into the sparring cage with yellow eyes full of hate. Black, dead pits stared back at him. The two beasts stood immobile, each reaching out with that extra sense the Dogs had, probing the other. As they did, Kaiser and McLoughlin flinched back.

There was something wrong with both of them now.

Running, Kaiser made for the sparring cage door, tearing through it. It bounced off the I-beam of the cage and slammed shut behind him. The Dogs paced inside, eyeing each other. There was no growling, no snapping. No shows of dominance. Just two animals, waiting for the perfect moment.

When it came, nothing else mattered.

The Dogs rushed at each other like freight trains on the same track. They crashed together, clawing and punching, kneeing and stomping. The Alpha snapped his jaws at Kaiser’s throat, forcing him to pull back. McLoughlin continued to bite, his teeth gnashing together in the air as Kaiser moved away.

The Omega Dog reached up and clamped a hand around McLoughlin’s snout and pulled their faces close. His other hand came across McLoughlin’s cheek like a missile, breaking the bones in his jaw and snout, scattering teeth.

Unleashing another dual-note howl, the Alpha staggered back, sneezing dark brown blood and shaking his shaggy head. The golden fur from healthier days was now matted with gore and mud, and patches of it were missing completely. The skin beneath was oozing something. Not quite blood, not quite pus.

Kaiser knew that biting this diseased creature, this vector, would be the death of him.

He rushed forward, swiping a clawed hand at McLoughlin’s stomach as the Alpha howled. Four gashes opened in his midsection, and dark blood poured from the wounds, but Kaiser was not rewarded with a gush of entrails.

Laughing, the Alpha brought his fists down on Kaiser’s head and shoulder. The Omega buckled and knelt on the hard concrete, immediately lashing out with his own fists, hammering the side of McLoughlin’s knee.

The Alpha wasn’t healing quite right. The slashes in his stomach gaped and suppurated.

Kaiser hit him again and leapt away, catching the Alpha’s face with the talons on his feet. McLoughlin fell, and Kaiser landed half a dozen yards away, crouching to see what was coming next. A savage light came into his eyes as the Alpha got up. The damaged knee wouldn’t completely support his weight, and his snout was still crooked and mushy and all out of sorts.

Roaring, Kaiser charged again.

McLoughlin reached out, stumbling after Kaiser’s streaking form, missing and falling again as the Omega’s claws tore the muscles loose from his thighs. The Alpha went down, pounding the concrete in frustration.

Kaiser landed heavily on McLoughlin and began tearing away, flaying skin and muscle from his back with black claws.

The Alpha turned, swiping with his own talons and removing a hunk of Kaiser’s chest. With a bark of glee, McLoughlin threw himself after the discarded meat, forcing it between his broken teeth. He swallowed and shuddered, immediately feeling the effects.

Kaiser watched as the bent and broken snout straightened with the muffled crunching sound of moving cartilage. Small black points emerged from the Dog’s gums. Not quite full teeth, but they were making a comeback.

All the Alpha needed was more fuel.

More meat.

He turned to Kaiser, still favoring his injured knee, and then lurched after him, jaws snapping. The Omega Dog backed off, slashing out to keep the Alpha at bay. The savage bloodlust from just minutes before had turned cold, an icy weight in Kaiser’s gut as the implications became clear.

Not only would a bite from this monster turn him into the same thing, but the meat would restore his adversary as well.

Keeping low, Kaiser darted in and away, striking at McLoughlin’s leg again, claws seeking out tendons and cartilage. The parts Kaiser knew took the longest to repair. Each time in, the Alpha clawed down at the faster Omega. Each time, Kaiser bounded away with a different set of wounds.

He feinted and McLoughlin dove down, hoping to catch him. Holding back a split second, Kaiser got a clear shot at the back of McLoughlin’s neck.

He took it.

A touch of cold at his knee was all the warning he got, and then Alpha McLoughlin’s teeth were wrapped around Kaiser’s calf. The bigger Dog wrenched his head back, removing a large chunk of muscle and gulping it down.

Kaiser staggered back, eyes wide in horror. He glanced at his wound, which was itching like it normally would, but it was not closing. A smear of brown at the edge of the gash caught his eye, and he knew that was it. He was done.

Bounding in, Kaiser attacked. With no further need to hold his teeth back or dodge McLoughlin’s, everything had changed.

The Dogs tore at each other. Kaiser bit and slashed, howling as one of McLoughlin’s eyes burst under his claws. The Alpha sunk his teeth into Kaiser’s shoulder haunch, then pulled back. The Omega stumbled away, screaming, but then dove in again, breaking McLoughlin’s ribs. Hairy arms wrapped around him, and both Dogs fell to the ground.

McLoughlin jumped up, catching Kaiser’s right leg in both hands and biting at the knee. Twisting, wrenching, biting, McLoughlin split Kaiser’s leg in two. He bounded away, the lower part of the leg in his teeth, mad joy dancing in his one good eye. Greedily, McLoughlin cleaned the shinbone of meat and went back for more.

Kaiser’s hand swatted out but the Alpha caught the wrist in his teeth, which had long grown in, black and white fangs crowding his gums. He crunched down and the hand fell away from Kaiser’s arm.

The other hand came across, swiping at McLoughlin’s throat. It left gashes behind, but no blood flowed from the wound. Instead, it bubbled out slowly, like a gravy. Undaunted, the Omega stabbed McLoughlin’s chest over and over, sinking his claws in and tearing the muscle away.

As if he didn’t feel a thing, the Alpha began chewing on Kaiser’s middle, gnawing through his stomach and organs until his teeth closed on backbone. Shaking his head violently, McLoughlin worried at Kaiser’s spine. The Omega fought, slashing at McLoughlin and trying to drive himself away with his feet. A sharp snap filled the air, and the Omega Dog’s kicking legs went still.

McLoughlin dragged Kaiser’s lower half away, snacking on the meat there. Kaiser screamed at the uncaring moon.

Licking his chops and almost fully healed, McLoughlin came back for more. Kaiser beat at him with his stump of an arm until the bigger Dog caught the Omega’s bicep and plucked the limb straight from the socket as easily as dismembering a fly. Kaiser screamed again, but not in agony; his Dog system had shut down pain receptors long before.

He screamed in frustration.

Stripping the meat from the arm, the Alpha kept his new eye on Kaiser’s, making sure the other Dog saw how much he was enjoying his hot meal. Then he dug his head into Kaiser’s middle, feasting on glistening organs.

Kaiser tried to pull himself away with his good arm, and the Alpha rose. He paused over Kaiser’s neck, and the black, black eyes rolled up to look into Kaiser’s.

Then his mouth sprouted a silver blade and vomited thick blood.

Looking up past McLoughlin, Kaiser saw Ken standing there, pulling Crispin’s sword out of the Alpha’s neck. The big infected Dog went to turn, but Ken swung the blade. It sliced through McLoughlin’s cheekbone, almost removing the top of the head, exposing the cavity of his mouth, his lower teeth. His tongue wagged as his sinuses gurgled and sucked, then began to pour out that same dark-brown sludge the Alpha had for blood.

Ken pulled the blade out and swung again, this time cleaving through the Alpha’s neck.

The body fell and the head bounced away. It landed sideways, staring in a silent snarl at Kaiser and Ken Bishop. Ken kicked it with his boot, and it went flying, colliding with an I-beam with a loud
kerrang!

He stood over Kaiser, sword in hand.

Kaiser couldn’t draw in breath; his solar plexus was shredded and torn and useless. His voice came out in a sad croak from the back of his throat. “K-kill... me,” the Omega Dog said.

Ken considered it. He thought he should just leave this bastard for everything he’d done, for all the pain he had caused. For turning regular people into animals.

“Kill me!”

“The messed up thing is,” Ken said through gritted teeth, “before this, I would have never met you. But seeing what you’ve done, I don’t have to know you to know that you’re a monster.”

Sparks on concrete.

The heat drained out of Ken’s face.

“New world. Maybe we’re all monsters now.”

Looking down at Kaiser, Ken gripped the handle of the sword in both hands and raised it up.

“JORGE!” KEN YELLED OUT. He had been wandering the island compound for an hour. After seeing the mess in and around the sparring cage, he branched off to check the other buildings. The first had been the Dog barracks. On his way out, there was one uniformed zombie, a fast one that was oozing blood.

Ken took it out with an easy swing of the sword. He cleaned the blade with the leaves of a tree, wondering what the hell a weapon like this was doing in a high-tech facility, but grateful for it anyway.

He called out for Jorge, but kept thinking of Kelly. He had been busy wrestling with his friend when she had turned, and he hadn’t known about it until she had come rushing out of the shadows at him earlier. Hurling herself forward, she had impaled herself on the silver blade. Unable to look at her face, Ken had dragged her around by the sword until he’d picked up one of the guard’s discarded shotguns.

Come on, Jorge. Don’t do this to me.

The fire had spread from the medical tent to the original quarantine area, making things hard to see, even with the bright lights. He had seen people running back and forth, fighting off the half-zombies dragging themselves around. But no sign of Jorge.

Before Ken’s team had started the island assault, Mac had told him about the yacht that the Dogs had used on their rescue attempts; where the keys were, and how to start it. Ken had half a mind to just head for the pier and start the yacht up, then leave it running while he sought out his friend. Speed up the getaway. But Ken didn’t want any overzealous survivors taking off without him.

Not until he had found Jorge, one way or the other.

A tightness in his arm got his attention. There was blood there, coming from a thin cut he hadn’t noticed. Ken frowned. The way the new zombies had been flinging blood everywhere, he was amazed he hadn’t gotten any on him.