Coyote (3 page)

She didn’t think of it as her house. She had never really felt the warm, fuzzy things everyone told her she should feel about a home. The house had been a place of strained silence, and her parents, though kind, had been nervous strangers to her. There was no attachment here.

Ever since her parents had brought her home at the age of four, overlooking her difficult background in favor of the sparkling blue eyes peeking through her dark bangs, it had been their one dream to see the love they gave returned in kind. And if not that, then at least to foster some feeling of caring, of attachment to their home, to their family, to them. That dream had gone unfulfilled.

These emotions were not a part of her. She didn’t remember if they ever had been, but if they had, they had been burned out by the time she arrived at her new home in America.

At first it had been “love will conquer all,” “give her time” and various other platitudes disguising their irrational hope. Later it had been counselors, psychologists, even an attempt at medicating her that went nowhere because she wouldn’t swallow the pills. She had no interest in being somebody else. In later years, the attempts to bond her into the all-American family unit had grown half-hearted at best. Eventually, she spent most of her time at her school, just coming back here for the occasional holiday visit or sometimes a few weeks in the summer.

She wasn’t sure why she had worked so hard to get to this house, to see this wreckage. But what else was there to do when the world fell apart? Maybe she just had to be sure there was truly nothing tying her to her old life.

Now the home she had grown up in was just the same as the others on this street. It was mostly collapsed, with splintered boards and roof tiles scattered across the street. She stood contemplating the ruins of the house for a moment.

Suddenly she spied movement out of the corner of her eye. She snapped her head that way, back in the direction from which she had come. Down at the end of the block she saw dog again. It was walking up the sidewalk towards her. When she looked at it, it stopped, looking back at her.

She turned away, frowning, and regarded the house again. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the approach of the dog. It came all the way up the sidewalk to her. She kept her hand close to her knife, but made no other moves. For a moment she feared it was going to sniff her, or lean against her, but it didn’t. It sat down next to her, a few feet away, also looking at the ruins of the house.

They both kept that position for a few minutes, until she turned to the dog and spoke.

“This is not how things are done.”

She wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but it seemed sufficient. It broke the stasis. They looked at each other for another moment, then both moved into the wreckage of the house. The dog padded carefully over things, sniffing them, satisfying its curiosity, and she followed more slowly, digging through scattered clothes and lifting broken boards to look under them and see if she could find anything useful. The one advantage of having visited here so often was that she knew what her parents had owned, and where in the house things had been.

It was surprising how many things were either torn and mangled beyond use, or buried too far under the wreckage to be accessed. She did find a pair of sturdy leather hiking boots that had belonged to her adoptive mother. She put them on, replacing the ragged sneakers she’d been wearing the day she left her school. She also found a pair of cargo pants in what remained of a dresser reserved for the clothes her parents kept buying her even though she didn’t want them. They would serve better than her jeans, which already had several rips in them, so she changed into them.

She found her adoptive father’s gun safe, crushed under a section of roof along with the rest of the closet the safe had been in. The door had sprung open, so accessing it was no problem. The insides were somewhat disappointing. Most of what was left was damaged, and therefore useless, but a few of the best long guns were gone, as were both of her father’s pistols. She supposed her father had taken them out, probably when the Fall began. There had been gunfire all over the city in those first chaotic days. She guessed this meant that her parents had gone somewhere else, and were not buried here in the wreckage of their home. She was not sure how she was supposed to feel about that. It made no effective difference to her—all that mattered was that the most useful guns were not here.

Amid what was left, she managed to pull out a shotgun, a .22 target rifle, and a 30.06 hunting rifle. All three looked to be in working order. Scratching around the bottom of the safe, she managed to find two bullets for the .22 and nine for the hunting rifle. There were no shells for the shotgun. She loaded the hunting rifle and put the extra bullets in her pocket. She left the .22 and the shotgun behind. It wasn’t worth the weight to carry a weapon she didn’t have ammunition for.

The last thing she did was to look into what used to be the kitchen of the house. The dog had already found this area, and was chewing through a packet of ramen noodles with great gusto. She bent over next to the dog to search for things that were easily totable. The dog paid her no mind.

She found two packets of sunflower seeds, and four cans of food that had survived intact. Kidney beans and canned corn. It wasn’t hard to find food in the wreckage of this world, but it was never tasty food. She put it in a small backpack, originally full of somebody’s schoolbooks, which she had picked up along the way.

Convinced that she had found all she needed in the house, she turned away. She looked about in the wreckage of the house a bit more, not sure what she might be looking for, finding nothing useful. After a few moments she wandered out to the large, concrete slab that had served as a patio in the back yard. The last time she was here, this space had been her adoptive parents’ pride and joy. They called it their outdoor entertainment space. The concrete patio had sported a gazebo, wired with speakers and ornate lamps, with wooden chairs arranged around a large metal and glass table. On the far side, wicker lawn furniture had stood artfully arranged around a brick fireplace.

Now the patio was completely bare, all but the brick fireplace swept away. It was an odd sight, to say the least. Stepping to the edge of the patio, she saw that the gazebo and furniture had somehow been lifted off the patio and tossed down the hillside behind the house. How had that happened? And why had the fireplace stayed where it was, now perched alone on the patio? She would never know.

Looking up from the wreckage, out across hills and valleys that the owners of this house had once paid a considerable amount of money to have a view of, she pondered what she saw. In all the miles she could see, nothing moved. No cars on the roads, no airplanes in the sky. The only things to break the unchanging view were a few plumes of smoke, here and there, serving as reminders of the patchy destruction that had been visited upon the city of Portland and all that surrounded it.

She heard the clicking of the dog’s paws on the concrete as it came to stand near her. The dog pricked its ears forward, looking out at the view as she was. She wondered what it saw—what it thought. That, too, she would never know.

She briefly wondered what she was doing here. She wasn’t usually one to stop and take in the view, preferring to deal with what was more immediately in front of her. But it didn’t take much self-analysis to know what made her linger. She had reached her destination, and now she wasn’t sure where to head next.

In the distance, Mount Hood loomed on the horizon. A vague notion had been growing in her mind about heading east, out of the populated areas, and toward the forests surrounding Mount Hood. That made more sense now that she had a rifle and could hunt game, though having only nine bullets would be a problem.

She fixed her eyes on the mountain. It would do. It was as good a destination as any in what remained of this world.

She headed up the street, feeling like she might as well get started now that she had a destination. And at least moving further away from the carnage she had witnessed last night would be smart. As she began to walk up the sidewalk she heard a scrabbling and a clicking in the wreckage behind her. She saw the dog, standing on top of an overturned door, watching her, ears pricked. She stopped and looked at it. It looked back at her. Well, she supposed the dog could do what it wanted. She continued walking.

Reaching the top of her block, she turned right, intending to tread familiar paths on her way out of her neighborhood. Soon she heard the dog’s footfalls behind her. It trotted past her, then stopped a few steps in front of her, standing sideways across the sidewalk. She stepped toward it and its ears laid back and she heard the familiar low growling again. She turned onto the lawn of the next house, intending to go around, but the dog moved to block her with a snarl.

Standing, she watched the dog. It was looking down the street, in the direction she was headed, as much as it was looking at her. It was still growling. She looked down the street herself. She didn’t see anything different down there.

If she went the other direction, it would mean going up and over a large hill, instead of around it, but that made no real difference to her. Both paths would lead her in the general direction she was thinking of, and a person couldn’t walk around the Portland area without going up and down hills constantly. Perhaps that was why Portland had never become the bicycling mecca that its eco-conscious citizens had wanted it to be.

But again, no matter. She was on foot, and in shape, and for every uphill there was a downhill on the other side. She turned left instead and began walking up the steeply rising street, satisfied that this road would meet her primary goal of keeping her from being anywhere near the school she had seen last night.

The dog seemed satisfied. At least it had stopped growling. As she walked, it came up beside her, sometimes looking at her, and sometimes looking around at the ruined houses they were passing.

After about a block, she stopped, looking at the dog.

“You shouldn’t come,” she said.

The dog looked back at her.

“You shouldn’t follow her. She will never be anything to you.”

The dog continued to stare. Well, the dog could to what it wanted. She began to walk again.

And the dog began to follow. It seemed they were together now.

She left the neighborhood, headed generally south and east, aiming for a highway she knew of down in the next valley. She thought she might follow the highway east into the countryside. Perhaps outside of these densely populated suburbs of Portland there would be less devastation, or more survivors. It seemed as good a way to go as any.

The dog still followed her. She still didn’t know why. Three times during the day the dog had again stood in front of her, growling, seeming to warn her off from a threat it sensed ahead. She had taken wide detours around the areas the dog had mistrusted. Perhaps the dog had saved her some trouble. Perhaps it had made her walk several extra miles because it was frightened of shadows. There was no way to know.

Afternoon was beginning to fade into evening as she was walking down the middle of a lonely, twisting road. The road swept in a long curve down a hill, through a gloomy tunnel of trees, to arrive at the highway she had been aiming for all day. Once again the dog stepped in front of her, growling, this time looking off the road, up the hill, to her right. She stopped, following the dog’s gaze. She saw nothing. She looked up and down the road, as well as off the other side of the road, where the hill dropped steeply to a small canyon. Nothing. Still the dog looked up into the forest.

This time it was too far to turn back or go around. She had no desire to go crashing down the slope into the canyon on her left, or climbing up the hill to her right and into the forest. Neither did she want to go back the way she came, adding several more miles to her route. Not when she was within 500 yards of the highway. Furthermore, it was time to think about where to spend the night. She generally hid and slept at night, preferring to travel during the day when she had a better chance of seeing things before she stumbled into them. She should be looking for shelter instead of being given the runabout by a panicked dog.

Twice she made moves as if to go around the dog, and twice the dog moved to block her, snarling a warning. As she stood in indecision, staring into the dimness of the woods and wondering whether or not the dog would really attack her if she tried to run past it, she began to hear something. There was a crashing coming from the woods up the hill, on her right. It was getting closer.

She crouched in readiness. The crashing was coming on quickly now, the sound of a large animal running or stumbling through the brush. It was too late to move—she would not be out of sight before it was upon her. The dog’s growling grew in volume as it, taking its cue from her, also crouched, ready to meet what was coming.

The noise grew and grew. Suddenly she saw a blurred shape come crashing out of the trees and begin to tumble down the hill right at her. In a moment, the shape resolved itself into a man, all windmilling arms and legs, alternately stumbling and rolling down the steep slope toward them. He had obviously been running for a long time, and was exhausted. His breathing was ragged and he sagged, almost falling as he got to the road.

As soon as he hit the road the dog leapt forward, snarling and snapping, and the man took several frantic steps backward, landing on his rear at the bottom of the dirt slope.

“Jeez, girl! Call… Call off your dog… Call off your dog!” His words came in short bursts between his labored breaths.

She looked at the dog, deciding. Maybe the dog had the right idea.

“Come on, man… Christ! Look…” She looked at him as he pleaded. The dog continued to snarl but was no longer advancing.

“I’m a human! … Just me! … One man… no… threat.” With that he threw up his hands, and lay back, panting.

“They’re behind me, man! They’re coming…”

When the man lay back, the dog backed off a few steps as well, reverting to a lower growl. She looked up the slope.

“They’re coming?”

“Up in the woods, behind me, yeah.” The man’s breathing was coming under control but he still looked wiped out. “They been chasing me for like two days, man. I got nothing more in me. I can’t go no further. You gotta help me.”

She frowned at him. “She does not help,” she began, but then she saw them.

At first she thought it was the bushes moving, but when they got to the top of the slope, she could see them more clearly. Some kind of small animal, perhaps, and there were a lot of them. Already she could see at least twenty, and more were emerging all the time. They seemed somehow rounded, and her brain’s first guess was “armadillo” but she knew that wasn’t going to be right.

One tipped over while traversing the slope and actually started rolling down the hill towards them. It picked up momentum, going faster and faster, until it hit the road, coming to a stop.

Now she could see it looked much more like a crab than anything else. Like a crab, but definitely not an actual crab. The top was a rounded shell, almost the shape of a bowling ball, with a flat bottom. It had legs all the way around its circumference, and claws on all sides, too, all covered in a hard, dark brown shell. This one was cracked and damaged from its tumble down the hill, missing several legs and several claws. It could no longer walk, managing only a few vague skittering motions with its remaining legs.

It looked like the legs and claws went all the way around the body, pretty much evenly spaced. She saw no sign of eyes or a mouth. She flipped it over with her toe, carefully touching only the side with no remaining claws. It was surprisingly heavy.

When it rolled onto its back, she was treated to a view of a hungry, sucking mouth, right in the middle of the bottom shell. She was bending down to look at the mouth when the thing got two of its remaining legs underneath it and gave a sudden pop, flipping itself into the air and landing upright again.

The movement startled her and she brought her knife slamming down onto the center of the thing’s shell. It skittered off the rounded shell, finding no purchase, and she ended up stabbing the road next to it. Frowning, she grabbed a fist-sized rock from the ditch by the road, and slammed it onto the shell. It was hard—the rock bounced off, doing nothing more than making the thing skitter its legs more quickly in agitation.

She gave a worried look up the slope. There were many more of these, making their own careful way down the hill, and if they were all tough like this, she had a problem. The man and the dog were both alternating between watching her investigations and looking up the slope. Neither looked like they had any suggestions.

With her knife in one hand, and the rock in the other, she used the knife to flip the thing over again. As soon as it was on its back, the brought the rock down again, aiming for the mouth on its underside. The rock crashed through the underbelly with a satisfying crunch, and gore sprayed out, coating her hand and spattering her clothes. It was a sandy brown, and gave off a foul stench. The thing stopped moving. She smiled, and stood.

“Připravit,” she said.

The dog came to stand next to her. The first of the crab things were arriving at the street.

“What?” said the man, giving her a puzzled glance. Then he took in her stance, as well as that of the dog. “Oh Jeez, no way! Shit no!” He went around behind her, giving a wide berth to the dog, staring up the hill. “There’s bunches of ‘em!”

Both she and the dog ignored him. She saw no future in running until exhausted, like the man already had. She would fight. The dog and the man could do as they wished.

The first one hit the level surface of the road. It came right at them with no hesitation. On the slope, they moved at the speed of a man crawling. On the level pavement the crab-thing’s speed increased to that of a slow jog. That seemed to be their top speed. Not too fast.

The first one arrived, and she flipped it with her knife, bending down to crush it quickly, before it managed to flip itself back over. On her knees now, it was inches away from her, reaching out with its claws to take a chunk form her thigh when she brought the rock down. One good crunch, and it was done. But by then, the next one was in range. She stayed on her knees there, flip, crunch, and splatter, dealing with each crab-thing as it arrived.

Glancing over, she saw the dog dancing around, trying to bite the crab-things. Each time it tried, it got nipped by the nearest claw and its nose was now bleeding from several small cuts. It was quick, though. It didn’t let any of the crabs get a good grip on it.

“Come on, dog! Bite it! Kill it!” she yelled, “Zaútoč!”

The dog looked at her, ears pricked.

“Dělej!” she yelled. “Zaútoč!”

Seeming to respond to her urging, the dog latched onto the body of one crab and gave it a vigorous shake. As the dog shook, limbs came flying off the crab. Then the dog bit down hard, and she could see the dog’s lower jaw crushing into the softer underbelly. When the dog let go, the crab-thing dropped to the ground, feebly twitching its few remaining legs. It was out of commission.

“That’s right, dog. Now all of them! Zabij je všechny!” She was surprised to hear the fierce joy in her voice, but there was no time to ponder that. Again the dog responded.

The dog lunged for another, shaking it and then crushing it. Now that it had the technique it began to tear through the crab-things in a frenzy.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the man to her left and behind her. He had picked up a stick and was poking at them, and sometimes flipping them over and trying to hit them with the stick. He didn’t seem to be doing a lot of damage, but at least he wasn’t allowing them to come around behind her.

After that, there was no more time for thinking or watching the others. The main body of the crab-thing army had arrived, and she was hard-pressed. Each crab-thing itself was no real threat, but there seemed to be an endless supply of them. Flip, crush, and splatter. Flip, crush, and splatter. She would glance up the slope once in a while, and see that there were still more of them coming from the forest. The gore from the crab-things continued to splash onto her as she crushed them, sometimes getting into her eyes, where it stung, and sometimes into her mouth, where it left a foul, sandy taste.

The pile of dead or disabled crab-things in front of her grew, so that the others started going around and coming at her from the side. She crawled sideways, meeting them head-on at one end of the pile. She gave no ground.

Soon her left arm, the one with the rock in it, was tired. The muscles burned. She quickly switched hands, resuming her pattern. Flip, crush and splatter. She became lost in it. Softly, through ragged breaths, she began to laugh. Still more crab-things came.

She was lost in the fight, softly laughing and panting, flipping, crushing, feeling the gore splatter all over her. Several times the arm with the rock got tired, and she switched. Always there were more crab-things to crush. She continued.

She lost track of time, floating in her own personal haze of bloodlust. She realized that this is what she was made for: to fight, to crush, and to kill. She had never experienced this feeling, such an intimate immediacy to everything. Everything was sharper, clearer, better. She felt the crunch of the rock going into the crab-things. She heard the crackling noise of their under-shells giving way. She felt the viscera splashing up her arms, across her chest, and sometimes on her face. There was a fierce joy in her heart. Is this the joy that the counselors had been talking to her about, the missing thing that her parents, her teachers, and other adults in her life had tried to instill in her? Were these the feelings coursing through others every day? She floated on the joy of the fight, reveling in it, loving it.

In time, she began to notice that some of the crab-things she came to were already flipped, and moved to crush these, as well. Many of these were slow. They weren’t moving. Why weren’t they moving? Soon the only ones she saw were the already-flipped crabs, the ones she had dealt with long ago. Stopping, she looked up to the slope and saw it was clear. There were no more crab-things.

She rose to her feet on shaky legs, holding her rock and her knife. Her arms burned in exhaustion. Her knees and ached from being pressed to the pavement as she had fought. She was covered in the gritty brown viscera of the crab-things. It was on her pants and her jacket, on her hands, on her face and in her hair. She wiped a hand across her eyes and spat sandy gore from her mouth. She lowered her hand, watching the brown sludge drip down her fingers and patter on the pavement, already slick with the stuff. She was still smiling.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled but she was smiling now, covered in gore and standing amidst the broken husks of these things that had tried to take her down. They had tried, but they could not take her down. She laughed again, looking toward the man. He stood back from her, staring, frightened. He did not understand.

She looked to the dog. Its face and muzzle were covered with the same brown ichor that coated her. It dripped down the throat and chest of the dog. The dog was looking her in the eyes, ears forward, mouth open and panting. The dog understood. She looked to the sky, laughing again.

---

They all took a few minutes to clean themselves up. She began to wipe the gore from her face and hands using leaves from the bushes by the road. The man wiped his own much cleaner face and hands, then gathered a fresh bunch of leaves in his hand and approached the dog, reaching out to wipe off its chest. The dog growled when he approached, and he quickly backed off.