Dead Things (27 page)

And then she allows herself a release like never before. The tears fall in torrents.

**

“Ira?” Chaplain Cadavori asks, anxiously.

It is always a bad idea to interrupt Ridge when he’s working out, especially when he’s trying to blow off steam. And lately, Ridge is always blowing off steam.

Ridge is bench-pressing his weight, plus nearly half more.

The weight room is Spartan, just like the cells, devoid of any posters or photos or anything else conveying individuality or revealing a sense of self to another.

Ridge ignores the chaplain. He grunts through another set, finishing with a climactic yawp, and rests the bar on the rack. He huffs once, twice, then sits. He is, despite his diminutive size, a brick, thick across the chest and arms. “What do you want?” he finally demands.

The chaplain can’t make eye contact. He stares at Ridge’s knotted hands, the very hands that strangled Connor in his sleep. “Can I talk to you about the prisoners?”

It is a funny question, one that could invite a query:
Which, them or us?
But it invokes no such response from Ridge. He knows exactly who his prisoners are. “They will be executed.”

Ridge cannot bring them along, not even the women. They know the truth, and he must return to society something other than an inmate. He has concocted an elaborate back story to ingratiate them into their new society. They are missionaries, helping the indigent and the homeless and the lost by spreading the word of God in post-Katrina New Orleans. The story goes: they fended for themselves with other survivors until another hurricane struck. They are all that’s left, and they were forced to move north per God’s will.

They will rehearse this story over and over and over. Those who can’t learn and stick to it will find their trip cut severely short.

Cadavori is uncomfortable with Ridge’s answer. “But they haven’t done anything wrong, per se. How can we execute women and children and expect to stay in the good graces of God?”

Like some search party finding their twisting, writhing bodies hanging from the parapet. Wouldn’t it be better to simply imprison Wright and her companions for eternity, thus resolving two issues? First, they avoid killing innocents and slandering Christianity. They would surely curry favor with their Lord and Savior for their blessed trip by showing such mercy.

Second, they would ensure their bodies are never found should a search party find its way to their remote neck of the woods. “Rescuers aren’t going to investigate a prison for survivors. They will be entombed in their cells forever.”

Ridge considers this for a moment. He likes the second part. “I’ve made a decision,” he says. “We let them live and rot to death and back in the prison.”

“Very good,” Cadavori nods. He beats a hasty retreat. He doesn’t wait for Ridge to change his mind.

It was an ugly word, a word they would yell. A word they would shout like an accusation whenever she wet the carpet or chewed on a shoe.

Wrigley!

But it wasn’t her fault. Usually they would sleep very late into the day. When they did eventually wake, they wore pained expressions and grumbled at each other. They would ignore her, stepping around and over her, the male sometimes giving her a slight kick and sending her scurrying. Then they would debate about whose turn it was to walk her.

Oh, how her small bladder would ache!

And then they would leave again, only to return as the birds started singing, just before the break of dawn. They would smell acrid, like yeast. Then they would inevitably fight, the human female’s shrill voice baiting the male, telling him to “get a job,” calling him “worthless.” When she was really angry, she would say worse, insulting the size of his manhood.

During these moments, the female would call the larger male “Lennie.” His name was Phil, and he would ask why. The woman without a name would say, “Because you’re a big, dumb fucker who has never read a book.” He would ask why again. And she would say, “Because you ask questions like that, you obtuse asshole, that’s why.”

So the puppy called Wrigley would have the occasional accident. She knew it was wrong—they would put her nose in her own urine and smack her about the face with a rolled newspaper—but the pain in her belly was excruciating. She could not help herself but go. She would seek relief behind the couch or a chair, areas she hoped they wouldn’t find.

Because she was often left to her own devices. She would explore and tug and pull and chew. Her brain was developing, and she needed sensory input. Everything was new to her. Everything foreign. Without human hands to pet her coat, to rub her belly and scratch her chin, she was left with her mouth as her primary means of tactile stimulation. She had one toy, a stuffed bunny, but she had grown bored with it. So she would chew, gathering information on an object’s density, its elasticity, and, unfortunately, its sturdiness.

This hadn’t been a problem when she was still suckling from her mother and wrestling with her brothers and sisters. They had only taken her from her home and family two weeks before, after she had turned two months old, but it felt like an eternity.

She wondered how long she would have to continue like this.

She didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

One night Phil/Lennie and the female came home early (at least early for them). They were quarreling…again. But this fight was unusual. It was the male who was the aggressor.

“I can’t believe you, you fucking bitch!” He slammed the front door after they entered. It hit with such force that it bounced from of the frame, remaining wide a few inches. Phil left it like that. Part of him wanted to close it again, but it would be like replacing an exclamation point with a question mark.

“Phil, look at me. That guy bit me!”

Phil walked over to her, pulled her hand away from her neck. He roughly tugged her towards him, then spun her under the hallway light. He pushed her chin to the side so he could get a better look.

Their argument moved into the bathroom. The puppy called Wrigley inched toward the door, watching them from the safety of the hallway. In the back of her maturing mind she wondered if someone was going to feed her.

The female looked into the mirror, craning her head up and to the side for a better view at the purple welt on her throat. Phil started to brush his teeth.

“Motherfucker,” she spat, with a pained sneer.

Phil wanted to ignore her, but couldn’t. He’d never been the one on top, the one with control in their relationship. Heck, any relationship. But now, his chance was here. No more taking his frustration out on the dog.

“Phil…” She couldn’t muster anything else. She stared at herself in the mirror, and a stranger stared back. She was sweating. She felt weak and sick to her stomach.

She couldn’t believe this was really troubling her so. She had made out with boys behind Phil’s back before. There was the bartender, the cop, and that guy and his buddies in the club. Oh, and Phil’s best friend, Ryan. Hell, she had blown Ryan. Twice.

No, she couldn’t be sick with guilt over this.

It must be the alcohol.

She looked at the mark on her neck again. A bite. A love bite. No, she corrected, a
lust
bite.

But it was more than that. The puppy called Wrigley knew it. She could smell the infection. She could smell the poison in the female’s bloodstream.

The puppy heard a voice. It was a voice from inside her.

When the humans had taken her from her mother and siblings, she had rushed to her mother’s side and tried to burrow beneath her. Her mother nudged her forth and kissed her, telling her not to be afraid. She told her of a voice that would always be with her, a voice called Instinct.

“Instinct?” she had asked.

Yes. “When I was your age, I was taken from my mother. I was scared, too. But my mother told me that she would always be with me. ‘Although you will be far away,’ she said, ‘I will never leave you. You will hear a voice called Instinct, and when you do, you will know that I am speaking to you, too.’”

The puppy had looked confused, and her mother smiled and continued. “You will hear the voice of Instinct even when there is no body to project it. Instinct is like a ghost in that way, walking with you wherever you go. But don’t fear. Instinct is collective, and when you hear its voice, know that your ancestors—every dog who has come before you, me, my mother, her mother, and so on—are guiding you. My voice will be added to theirs, and I will never leave you.”

Instinct spoke to her now. It said, “Hide, Little One. Hide and wait. I will speak to you again soon.” So the puppy called Wrigley lowered her head and tucked her tail between her legs. She scampered to the safety of the kitchen and laid down next to her stuffed rabbit. She licked the toy, lapping at an area where the stuffing was starting to show.

She hoped the female would continue to forget about her.

But the female didn’t.

The puppy was woken hours later by the deep coppery smell of blood. Somewhere in the apartment a butchering was underway, somewhere down the hallway.

The bedroom.

The scent penetrated the little dog to her core, grabbing her and shaking her senses awake, just as she would shake her bunny toy. It rattled her, told her to whine and stay put. Fear told her to expose her belly.

But Instinct said otherwise. “Do not listen to Fear,” Instinct whispered. “Go forth and investigate. Go forth and do not be scared. You are a Dog. You are the embodiment of Loyalty, true, but you are more. So much more. You are the very form of Cunning and Intelligence. You were designed by the Gods to survive and add your voice to Ours. You will pass Our voice forward. Do not listen to Fear. You can assume the shape of Rage. You are lightening fast. Your hide is thick. You are Bark and Bite, Claws and Fang. You can be the stuff of nightmares.”

The little dog known as Wrigley stood up. Her head high, she trotted across the linoleum, her little nails clicking. She stopped at the end of the hall and listened.

All she could see was the foot of the bed, Phil’s leg dangling over the edge. And the blood. The tan comforter had turned a dark burgundy.

She needed to see more, but the angle wasn’t sufficient. She pressed forward, her little head wedging the door open.

The room was dark, the sounds of gulping growing louder. The rug before her was wet and soiled. The female was on top of Phil. She was naked and hunched over him, her face tucked into his neck. The boxer pushed ahead.

The door creaked.

The female spun, gasping, her eyes like saucers. She looked right, left…then down. She grinned, her teeth full of rot. She purred with satisfaction and stretched her scabbing hands towards the dog.

The female had never tried to pet her before. Yet this was not the clue that made the hair on the puppy’s back stand on end and her muscles tense.

It was the smell. A stink that her forebears had come to know. A stench they learned from failed births, from the carnage of the hunt, from the trenches of war.

But a moment was all the little dog needed. She turned tail and was down the hallway and out the front door before the monster could grasp what was happening…or her.

**

Peter Sumner watches the creature. It paces outside the McDonald’s in Alsip at dusk. Most of them retreat from the light of the day. This one is out early.