Breeds (26 page)

“Lard tunderin’ and Joseph. What in de fokkin’ hell is ye doin’ out in dis shitstarm?” he said, putting effort into closing the door. Caramel, her hair colored so, sat in the kitchen nearby, leaning back from a rusted kerosene lamp. Candles, killed by the wind, smoked in strategic places all about a surrounding counter.

“Roger,” Ross gasped.

“D’fok ye gots the gun fer? See a sick cow out dere ‘er sump’in’?”

“Listen, you two have got to come with me now. I’m gathering up everyone and moving them to Tom Dawe’s place.”

This stunned Roger and his Irish-Scot lineage. He scrunched up his balding brow and bared a rack of teeth too perfect to be his own.

Ross took a breath and said the only thing he could think of. “A crowd of crazy folks shot and killed Walt Borland, Jacob and Alice Moseby, and I’m pretty sure they killed the Sprees and Ben Trakers, too.”

Roger Moore’s eyes widened, shocked.

“And whoever the hell they are,” Ross said, staring hard, “they’re coming this way.”

“Who’ll watch de house?” Caramel screeched.

“Don’t worry about the house. As far as I can tell, they ain’t after money or whatever. They’re just bent on killin’ people. The plan is to move over to Tom’s place, shore up, and when they come for us, we blast the bloods-a-bitches.”

“Blast?” Roger squeaked.

“
Blast
. Shoot the fuckers stone cold dead. I mean it. I can’t tell you what they did to old Borland or the Mosebys but it was bad. They’re using the storm as cover. Probably be well away from here by the time anyone comes along and clears the roads. Or gets the phone lines up. Kill them and let the cops sort them out in the end.”

“Is dey terrorists?” Caramel squeaked, all set to move right there.

“Yeah,” Ross answered her. “They’re terrorists.”

Roger exchanged looks with Caramel before they both scurried off, preparing to abandon their home.

Ross hung back at the door, shaking his head at nature’s fury. He suddenly thought of Alvin, regretted leaving the guy, and decided to head back for him when he got the chance.

“Hurry,” he shouted, and both Roger and Caramel popped into sight, moving at best speed and clothed in thick pants and sweaters. Roger carried a long-barrel shotgun, which he placed on the kitchen table before leaning over with a curse and hauling on his boots.

“De phones are gone,” Caramel said, pulling on her own gear.

“Yeah,” Ross said, glancing nervously outside. “I know.”

When they finished, they resembled a pair of winterized bowling pins, complete with goggles.

“Leadondiniffinyergonna,” Roger blurted through a thick homemade scarf, and swung his arm in the direction of outside.

“Stay close, stay together,” Ross instructed them. “That thing loaded?”

“Goddamnrightshe’sloaded.”

“All right,” Ross said, and rubbed warmth back into his cheeks. “Let’s go.”

Feeling none too good about what he was about to do, Sammy bundled up in his winter gear under the fretful eyes of his wife, Mary, standing in the archway of the kitchen, her new hairdo slightly off kilter. He’d said he’d check on Harry, and by God, he meant to check on the old bastard. Sammy didn’t have many friends left in the world these days, since most of his good ones finally succumbed to the relentless march of time, so checking on one of the last ones didn’t bother him in the least. He should’ve done so as soon as Ross and his buddy had left the house instead of screwing around for an hour. Sammy scoffed at that. He wasn’t really screwing around, but shoring up the old homestead for the worst of the blizzard. The years on his frame just made the work go slower.

Mary, however, was worked up about him heading out into nature’s gullet. “He’s a grown man. I don’t see why you have to check on him. Why can’t he check on us? He wouldn’t do this for you.”

Sammy rolled his eyes at this logic.

“You’re really going out there?”

“No, I’m just dressin’ up for fun.”

“Don’t you sauce me, Samuel Walsh. Don’t you
dare
sauce me.”

Sammy huffed, his patience wearing thin, but knowing full well the pointlessness of getting into an argument with Mary at this stage of life.

“You come back to me,” she said, voice trembling and eyes moist. “Hear me?”

“I hear you, mudder.”

“Don’t give me that mudder shit,” Mary scolded with heat. “You tuck that away. Be careful out there in that mess. You’re not twenty anymore. Be careful and come back to me.”

He straightened while pulling on a stocking cap. Once done, he faced her and let his arms drop to his sides.

Mary hesitated for a moment, then embraced him in an emotional hug. “You heard me, right?” she asked, her mouth muffled by the insulated material of his coat.

Sammy hugged her back. “I heard.” He kissed the top of her head, smelling the apricot scent of shampoo.

He released her then and waddled to the door. The snow scraped like knives at the glass, eager to welcome another soul into its blustery fold.

Looking back once at his worrying wife, Sammy took a breath and cracked open the door.

He heard the gunshots halfway to Harry’s house.

That
pop… pop-pop,
swallowed up by the wind, rattled Sammy’s nerves, rooting him to the spot faster than the slop Mother Nature was slinging into his face. His bifocals matted with sticky fluff, Sammy stood and thought for a moment before carrying on to Harry’s house. A gust nearly bowled him over a third of the way through the walkway, but he arrived safely at the front door.

Light flickered beyond the window and Sammy saw his friend moving inside his kitchen with a flashlight. He hammered on the door with his fist, startling Harry enough that he whipped around. His friend’s shoulders drooped and a second later he strode over to unlock the door.

“Whattin’ the hell is you doin’ out in this?”

“You hear them shots?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Get ready and get over to the house. Bring your gun just in case. Wild dogs are loose.”

“Wild
dogs
?”

“Yeaup. Ross Kelly and another guy stopped by the house. Told me to getcha. Which I’m doing. Them shots fired were for the dogs, I bet.”

“Wild dogs?” Harry repeated in disbelief. “In Amherst Cove?”

“Worse, they gone and killed Walt Borland.”

That silenced Harry.

“C’mon then.” Sammy waved. “We’ll hole up at the house til’ this all blows over and the cops get here.”

“Let me get my rifle,” Harry muttered. He disappeared inside his house.

Sammy stood inside the porch area, glanced nervously at his snow-covered boots, and
humphed
. Wild dogs. Something about that story wasn’t sitting well with him.

A weird vibe of menace overtook him in that instant, turning him towards the door.

Framed in the window and colored by night was a man.

A naked man.

Sammy blinked as a hand spiked the pane and fastened tightly about his neck.

Harry Shea heard the glass shatter and shuffled back into the kitchen at best speed, lifting his polished Lee Enfield rifle with as much self-assured grace as a competitive shooter. The stock firm against his shoulder, he signaled his deadly intent by working the bolt and chambering the first round of a ten-round magazine, making the gunmetal crack. He knew his weapon just as well as the curves of his dear departed missus, eight years in the grave, and knew what it could do.

A frigid stream of air smacked his face as he stood in his kitchen, squinting in astonishment at the missing window in his door. Sammy was also gone. Harry didn’t call out to his friend, and he suppressed the flare of frightened concern, knowing it would do neither of them any good. With a hunter’s step, he gravitated to one wall and sidled up to the ruined window, barrel first, peeking outside. Broken glass shone like smashed teeth, coated with blood and snagged pieces of woolly material. Harry swallowed. It was tatters sliced from Sammy’s coat.

Grimacing, Harry saw tracks in the snow and though he knew he shouldn’t, he opened the wrecked door and stepped outside anyway. The blizzard struck hard and cold, rendering him momentarily breathless. The tracks disappeared into the night. Splotches of what could have been paint drizzled drifts. Harry firmed up his weapon.

A naked woman and man materialized out of the storm like a macabre couple kneeling in prayer. Except, they weren’t requesting heavenly guidance.

They were feeding.

On a man-sized clump of pale flesh, runny with curds as bright as pulped raspberries.

“You…” Harry whispered, morbid shock morphing into undiluted rage. “Bloods-a-
bitches
.”

The woman glanced up, her eyes like dead headlights, mouth opened in an angry question, chin dripping.

Harry shot her through the head, exploding the skull like an old whiskey jug and dropping her flat. The man screamed before lurching towards him, revealing a set of chompers Harry had only previously seen in a late-night vampire flick. The bolt clacked and his rifle barked back, punching a hole through a good chunk of his attacker’s gut. Harry primed his weapon again and fired three more times with devastating cadence, blowing meaty chunks out of the monstrous cannibal on the first shot and drilling two more into him just for spite.

Harry glanced at the flayed body that had been his friend Sammy, sadly realized these things had murdered him with their hands and teeth. Feeling increasingly evil himself, Harry decided right then to demonstrate just how surgical he could be with a rifle.

He took aim at the man’s face, only faintly interested at how the jaws bit at air, and readied his rifle with an executioner’s authority.

Out of nowhere, a hand seized Harry’s throat, crushing his windpipe in a dazzling burst of pain. It lifted him off his feet. Choking, Harry struggled to bring around his rifle, only to have it slapped twenty feet away. His vision dimmed, focusing on the polished, volcanic rock of his killer’s eyes.

Brutus didn’t like guns. Didn’t like the noise. Didn’t like his prey using them. Blood from the man’s ruined flesh ran in rivulets down his arm, the steam blown asunder. Cartilage crinkled like plastic. He brought the face in closer, noting the light quickly fading in the noisemaker’s eyes.

Life.

To be
savored.

Brutus held the man’s face to his set of formidable teeth and chewed it off.

Once finished, he tossed it away and heard the eager yipping of the Shih Tzus jumping at his scraps. He considered the headless torso of what was once the Golden Retriever, and while her loss didn’t upset him, it did ignite a very dangerous train of thought. The matter of a dwindling pack. Several had gone off on their own, though he suspected not far, but the notion of strengthening their numbers,
adding
to them, took a firm hold.

Brutus stood, his powerful physique unmoved by the blizzard’s fury, lording over the fresh kills, and smelled the air. His senses pulled him away from the house with the two men, across a road, and down a short driveway, following tracks being filled with snow. He stopped at a closed door.

A light winked from inside, compelling Brutus to place his weapon of a hand against the glass, feeling its cool surface.

Mary Walsh had seen some strange things in her life. Once, when she was a girl on the lower beach, her father and his fellow fisherman had hauled onto the shore a thirty-foot eel as thick as a man’s thigh. She’d witnessed glowing lights over the bay, watched them seemingly pirouette in the sky as if on a cosmic stage before blazing trails towards the heavens. Even saw silhouettes in upstairs windows of a King’s Cove house suspected to be haunted––same house had all possible entry points at ground level entirely boarded up.

But nothing was stranger, or more frightening, than watching a naked man with a bodybuilder’s physique emerge from the swirling folds of the night, pushing towards her front door. It wasn’t Sammy, and for a moment her heart fluttered as if dunked in a vat of liquid nitrogen. His dim outline marched by the kitchen window and around the corner.

She stood there, aware of the trembling in her limbs, and covered her mouth. Who was he? And more importantly, why in God’s name wasn’t he
dressed
––

Something bumped against the front door and Mary’s breath caught in her throat. She stopped herself from moaning and placed her back against a wall. For seconds, nothing happened, and she hoped that the guy had simply wandered off. Perhaps he was drunk on some sort of wicked, mind-altering drug the kids had these days. All her thoughts dispelled when she heard a brittle tapping from the direction of the front door window. Mary held her breath, and against her better judgment peeked around the corner, into the porch area.

Near total darkness, broken by a window frame of night.

A face with angry eyes of coal appeared outside the glass. It grimaced with the cold, exposing a set of teeth no human being should ever possess. Mary barely suppressed a squeak of terror, her own eyes nearly swelling out of her face, and jerked her head back when the face beyond the glass froze as if hearing her. Her muscles seized up, and for seconds, she stood, staring, as rigid as a rabbit caught in the glare of oncoming headlights.
Oh Jesus
, her mind shrieked,
Oh Christ Jesus our Savior.
Oh shit…

Another bump from the front door, stronger this time, and Mary took off for the living room. When she bolted, there was a skipped beat before an ear-cringing clatter erupted from the doorway. Mary shrieked. The thing behind her shrieked. She ran through the darkened living room, powered by fear and flight, and smashed her shin into the corner of the coffee table. The impact drove her to her knees, and she sob-squealed into the dark, before crawling at best impulse power towards the archway leading to the upstairs.

Monsters. There were such things as monsters. And one was in her kitchen, sounding as if it just bounced a table off a wall. The jingle of falling utensils made her flinch.

“Oh no, oh dear,” she sputtered.

A diesel truck of a man charged into her living room, kicking furniture out of its way. She glanced over her shoulder to see the mountainous frame. Mary squealed and leaped to her feet, the pain of her shin muted by endorphins, and ran through an archway, turned a corner and thundered up a flight of steps. She reached the top and glanced back to see three figures scampering up the steps in pursuit. Another piercing shriek left her, and she fled to the remaining refuge of her bedroom. Once inside, she closed the door and pushed a chest of drawers across to barricade it, sobbing all the while.