Bones Omnibus (49 page)

“I’m sorry, Mom,” spat Ryan as he looked up at the creature, the first two flesh-eaters in the segmented chain being raised in the air, their bodies – arms and legs positioned around like mandibles - freed from the fences in order to be brought down like the jaws of a mantis.

But at the last second, Bones grabbed at Ryan’s shoulder, yanking him towards a nearby open gate. The creature drove its front flesh-eaters forward, a couple more segments along with it making four bodies swooping down together, and smashed itself into the ground where Ryan had just been, the arms and legs of the flesh-eaters churning at the dirt and grass on the floor of the alley in a motion that suggested they would have easily torn Ryan to pieces given the chance. When they spotted his escape, however, the flesh-eaters all hissed in unison at the retreating boy and dog as they clambered through the gate into the backyard of the neighboring house.

“Thanks, Bones!” Ryan cried breathlessly.

The backyard had a pool, and as Ryan got to his feet on the other side of the fence, he momentarily considered jumping in, wondering if this new, efficient construct of flesh-eaters could swim. But Bones had already circled back around to the gate, barking his head off as the creature raised itself over the top of the fence, gazing into the backyard of their escape. As soon as its many eyes fixed on Bones and Ryan, its many arms and legs grasped the fence, and it swarmed itself over like a platoon of fire ants chained together at the waist.

Ryan abandoned his plan to jump in the pool and simply bolted for the back door of the house as Bones followed. He turned the knob but found it locked.

“
Shit!
” he cursed, looking around for other options.

Seeing that the gate extended around the side of the house, Ryan followed a brick pathway to the corner of the home and saw that the fence went the length of the house and ended with a gate that presumably opened up into the front yard. Glancing back to where the segmented creature was now slithering across the ground around the edge of the pool, Ryan figured it was his only chance.

“Come on, Bones!” he cried as the dog did double duty following him but also hurling warning barks back at the oncoming monster. Hearing his name, Bones turned and chased after Ryan, following him down the side of the house with the creature hot on their heels.

It took Ryan maybe thirteen steps to reach the gate, only to find that locked as well.

“
NOO!!!”
he cried, shaking the gate with all his might.

He grabbed onto its wood frame and realized that there were just enough toe- and hand-holds to pull him over, and he began climbing. He was halfway up the fence when he looked back and saw Bones, who was trying to follow him but clearly couldn’t get over the fence in his wounded state. Just behind the dog, the flesh-eaters were skittering crab-style after him, their mouths open and drooling.

Ryan made a decision and climbed off the fence, getting back down to the ground alongside Bones as the shepherd, realizing he wasn’t going to be able to climb the fence, turned and began frantically barking at the creature.

“I won’t leave you, Bones,” Ryan said quietly as he knelt down next to the dog and put his hand reassuringly on the fur between Bones’s shoulder blades.

As Bones’s barks became higher-pitched and more obviously filled with fear, Ryan looked up at the creature as it did another of its cobra-moves, arcing high above the two of them with teeth bared and pseudo-mandibles flared like an owl about to swoop down on a cornered mouse.

Suddenly, the creature exploded in a flurry of sparks, flesh, bone, and black, bilious blood, chunks of flesh, bone, and sinew splattering against the house, fence, and grass. Ryan had to cover his ears to block out the cacophony.

The tone in Bones’s bark changed immediately as if he had called in the mysterious air strike himself. He seemed to be happy, working his jaws as if looking for a way to join the fight but seemingly realizing it was best to stay on the sidelines.

Just as suddenly as it had started, the violent racket came to a halt – at least, some of it did. What turned out to be a barrage of machine gun fire was replaced by the steady
whup…whup…whup…whup…
of an Apache attack helicopter that was hovering just over the front yard of the neighboring house. Ryan stared at it in awe, his jaw almost down to his chest.

“Holy shit, Bones. Are you seeing that, too?”

But Bones just kept barking, even as heavily armored Army Rangers bashed through the gate and hands reached in to extract the pair.

I
t took some convincing of the Special Forces response team, specifically a Captain Willingham, for Bones not to be left behind to fend for himself in Gainey or, worse, shot. But after Ryan showed them Bones’s collar and explained that he was a trained Pittsburgh police K-9 who now had more experience sniffing out and fighting against the flesh-eaters than any dogs they might have brought with them, the captain realized how valuable such an asset might be.

“All right, kid,” Captain Willingham had said. “We’ll treat you like a matched set.”

After a visit to the company medic, who patched them up as best he could in the field, Bones and Ryan were loaded onto an Army CH-47 transport helicopter and whisked out of the combat zone. As soon as the helicopter was aloft, Bones fell asleep. He may have still been hungry but only accepted a quick drink from a soldier’s canteen before closing his eyes.

The longer they’d stayed on the ground, though, the more antsy Ryan had become. His debriefing by the captain, who wanted to know in detail where he’d been and what he’d experienced, had repeatedly been punctuated by machine gun fire from both the Apache’s forward cannon as well as troops on the ground exterminating flesh-eaters both near and far. So, when the helicopter was finally airborne and putting serious miles between himself and Bones and the scene of so much death that morning, Ryan was finally able to relax. His first reaction had been to break down and cry, but he was too dehydrated, and no tears came. Instead, his body merely racked with sobs as he tried to hide the fact from the soldiers in the chopper.

“We didn’t know how wide it had spread until we started rising above the action,” a Sergeant Lopez told Ryan, handing him a pair of headphones, figuring conversation might help the troubled kid. “It seems to have started around Duncan but quickly spread to Gainey, past Scottsburg, and into Hammond, Warsaw, and Belton. They’d turned the city into Fortress Pittsburgh, thinking that was the next place they’d go, but then
nada
. They’d all changed direction and started heading back out to the north.”

Though he had winced at the mention of his town, “Duncan,” Ryan liked that the man didn’t talk down to him, and when he said as much, Lopez smiled.

“Judging from what you told the captain, you’ve had a lot more experience fighting these things than anybody else in my unit. You and your pal there have earned the respect of a lot of American servicemen today.”

Ryan liked how that sounded. He glanced over at Bones, who was tethered to one of the seats of the helicopter by a nylon web belt a soldier had attached to his collar. The shepherd looked half-dead, so exhausted was he.

“What were those things that attacked us?” Ryan asked Sergeant Lopez. Sgt. Lopez sighed, as if Ryan was bringing up the one sore subject on the day.

“That’s just it – we have no idea,” he replied. “We’re calling them ‘Stage 3s’ or ‘MBNS’ – Multi-Body Non-Sentients, which is one of the most laughable bits of bureaucratic-speak I’ve heard. We just call them Multipedes, just, well…because. Whatever the virus or parasite or whatever it is that’s been infecting people has been mutating throughout the day, causing their hosts to mutate as well. Tissue samples they took off the first Stage 2 bodies that came in are night-and-day different from ones they took off Stage 2s that came in as little as an hour later. What they’re really afraid is, well, these multipedes might not be the end of it. No one knows what they’re looking for out there.”

Ryan nodded and looked out the window of the helicopter as they flew over first Allegheny, then Butler, then Armstrong Counties. He could see smoke rising from a couple of fires in the distance, as well as a great number of helicopters heading off in multiple directions, some in lines of six or seven, like great aerial convoys.

As they went, they also passed over a great many neighborhoods just like the one — until a few hours ago — Ryan lived in. When he looked down into them, he couldn’t see a single moving vehicle, a single person, or a single flesh-eater, just empty houses, streets, and yards as far as the eye could see.

Pretty soon, the sun began to set, and Ryan grew tired. It wasn’t long before he joined Bones in sleep.

Some hours later, Bones awoke on a metal table. Everything around him was white, and the air was heavy with the scent of antiseptic cleaner meant to mask a lingering smell of blood and tissue, all human. A hand was laid gently on his neck and, though groggy, Bones immediately twisted to bite it but didn’t have the strength.

“Easy there, Bones,” came the voice of a tall, wispy-haired man in a military uniform who stood alongside the table. “I’m a friend.”

Bones licked his chops, his mouth desert-dry. The man removed his hand and walked over to a sink, where he filled a kidney-shaped metal tray with water. He brought it back to Bones and placed it on the table. When Bones couldn’t raise himself to get his tongue into the tray, the man put his hands under Bones’s head and lifted it up enough for the shepherd to drink.

“To hear your buddy Ryan tell it, you’ve had a heck of a day,” the man said. “Unfortunately, that included being exposed to a lot of pathogens. We had to run some tests on you, which is why you were knocked out. The anesthetic is why your mouth is so dry.”

Bones continued lapping up the water and then tried to move again, this time attempting to get to his feet, but his already-clumsy paws couldn’t get a grip on the slippery table and slid out from under him.

“Careful, boy,” said the man, placing his hand on Bones’s torso to discourage movement. Ignoring this advice, Bones immediately tried to get to his feet again with a similar result, this time almost tumbling off onto the floor. The man’s voice turned grave.

“If you keep doing this, I’m going to have to put you under again.”

Finally, Bones sank back down on his side, panting a little as he recovered his bearings. The man stroked his fur, gingerly avoiding Bones’s wounds as he rubbed the dog’s head, then patted the fur along his back.

“You’ll be all right, boy. Just take it easy.”

It was less than a minute before Bones fell back asleep.

When he woke up the second time, Bones found himself in an animal cage, lying on a towel. In a different room now, this one with windows that revealed it was the dead of night, Bones picked up an entirely new range of smells. Instead of human ones, these were all chemical and emanated from literally hundreds of plastic bottles lining rows of shelves alongside the cage. The combined scents were so heavy that Bones almost threw up as they pounded at his nose. Whoever stuck him in there had no idea what they were inflicting on him.

Bones
woofed
a couple of times but then lay back down and buried his nose in the towel. The towel, at least, had the smell of a geriatric old man, which was better than the pharmacological attack he was currently weathering.

Outside the room, he could hear a great deal of activity, people hurrying back and forth through the hallways with confusion and panic in their voices. Nothing sounded business as usual, even when someone was just asking directions to an office or particular wing. Bones kept his eyes on the translucent window in the door where the shadowy silhouettes of people could be seen. Having slept for hours and hours, Bones wasn’t tired anymore, though his muscles were aching more now than they had. On top of that, he was pretty hungry by now but didn’t bark, preferring to stay silent and sink his nose into the towel as he waited to be discovered again.

It was about an hour later that a group of silhouettes came right up to his door, talking fast as one of them fumbled with keys to unlock it.

“He’s in here unless they moved him,” said a young soldier who entered the room first, followed quickly by four officers; no sign of the wispy-haired man. The soldier spotted Bones and smiled. “Here’s your man, sir.”

The ranking officer walked past the soldier and stood over the cage, his hands on his hips as Bones looked up at him, his wounds seeming to give the officer pause.

“He looks like shit.”

Bones’s eyes flitted from the officer to his cohorts, then back down again.

“He’s probably starving,” offered the soldier.

The officer squatted down and looked closely at Bones. The German shepherd got slowly to his feet and met him at eye-level, then stuck out his nose and gave the fellow a sniff.

“You think you can help us out?” the officer asked Bones. “A lot of my officers think you’re our best shot, ‘the little police dog that could.’ While you’ve been out of commission, well, things have taken a turn for the
fucked
, and we’re hoping you might be able to help us
un
-fuck it.”

Bones stared at the officer expectantly, still wondering if this contact would result in food. After another moment, the officer turned back to the soldier.

“Get him fed. Check his wounds. Get him out to the helipad in five minutes.”

As the sun began to purple the eastern sky, Bones found himself on the move yet again, this time airborne and headed north-northeast. He was accompanied by a four-person team of MPs that obviously had a lot more experience with law enforcement dogs than anyone else Bones had run into since the death of his handler twenty-four hours before. More than anything, this was meted out by the fact that they’d simply treated him like a dog instead of a person, a confidante, a savior, or a soldier.

With them, in twin cages, were two military police dogs - a Belgian Malinois named Asra and a second German shepherd, Thor - but Bones was enjoying the privilege of flying cageless at the feet of a Sergeant Mickey Celek, a square-jawed, sandy-haired farm boy of an MP who had assumed primary control of Bones.