Bones Omnibus (87 page)

Bones dug his nose into the unopened box of jerky.

“That? Okay,” Jess said, tearing open the cardboard and removing the plastic wrap from a few sticks.

Bones devoured everything she handed him, so she unwrapped five more sticks of jerky and dropped them on the ground. She then opened one of the bottles of water, but, finding no bowl, emptied the contents of the first aid kit into the chest and poured half the water into the tin box. The shepherd momentarily eschewed the jerky for the water, lapping up the entire contents of the tin in seconds.

“You must’ve been thirsty.” Jess grinned, pouring the rest of the bottle in the tin before worrying that she might regret her decision later. “
Shit
.”

Turning her attention to her own wounds for a second, she popped the lid off a second water bottle, torn open three of the packs of ibuprofen, and popped six pills right away. She washed them down with a long drink of water, stopping herself before she finished the bottle, but then finishing it anyway. She opened the box containing the energy bars and ate two of those, opening the third bottle of water to wash them down, but this time was careful to only drink about a quarter of the contents.

Taking quick stock of her injuries, she attended the cuts first, pouring liberal amounts of hydrogen peroxide across them, and holding her breath as it bubbled and stung. She then used the hand sanitizer to clean away as much of the dried blood as possible before smearing a topical antibiotic on the wounds to keep them from getting infected. Bandages and Band-aids were next, though she took a quick break to open another half dozen jerky packets for Bones. Returning to her wounds, she used up the Band-aids on her legs and stomach alone, using the bandages on her shoulder and head.

When all of this was done, she eyed her broken toes, already bruised black and yellow, and considered taping them to the middle toe as she’d seen done once to her little brother after he broke his toe playing soccer.

Can’t really do much for a broken toe, the doctor had said.

But Jess was worried that she’d do it wrong and the bone might begin to set in a way that would them to be rebroken and reset later. She decided to take her chances that a rescue was soon in the offing. As for her ribs and/or lung, there was nothing to be done there except continue to pop painkillers. By the time she’d finished with the bandages, the ibuprofen had kicked in, and even the thudding headache she’d taken for granted began to ease.

The one unfortunate side effect of all this was that it allowed her mind to wander back to the night before. She thought of Dan, Ruthie, and Patrick; two she’d seen ripped apart in front of her, and the third she assumed dead as well, with a definite case to be made that it was her fault.

For a moment, she thought about what it would be like to face those charges in court and how her white-shoe corporate law firm experience and training would either be a help or a hindrance. At the end of the day, she doubted any prosecutor would pursue such a case, but then remembered her explanation of events would sound like the ravings of a crazy person.

She might be in trouble after all.

Jess had fallen asleep less than five minutes after she’d finished bandaging herself up, having forgotten all about the quills in Bones’s nose. After he’d gorged himself, the shepherd had settled in to sleep as well, but found the needles too sharp to get comfortable this time and tore into a couple of energy bars instead. After these proved less than appetizing, he moved on to a bag of potato chips, popping it open with one stomp of his left forepaw before digging in. He wolfed down the entire bag within seconds.

He’d also managed to unscrew the cap from the third water bottle, which Jess, in her haste, hadn’t sealed tightly. As the contents splashed across the tower floor, Bones quickly lapped up as much as he could before it dribbled between the slats to the ground below.

Now he was ready for sleep.

He settled again on the trapdoor, the one place in the tower that seemed to draw sunlight no matter what time of day it was, and rested his head on his paws.

But that’s when a new smell invaded his nose. It was something he’d encountered more than once out in the woods, a heavy, dank, odor that combined the sweaty musk of a human with the thick fur of a bear. The shepherd had instinctively known to avoid this creature’s path and stayed away, though he’d never come face to face with one. That wasn’t hard, however, as the man-beasts tended to keep to themselves far to the north in the densest part of the wilderness. To pick up their scent this close to the human campsites was rare indeed.

Bones got to his feet and circled the trapdoor, sniffing around the edges. Opening it was an easy process the shepherd had learned ages ago; claw the worn area near the latch until it raised up, then jab a snout into the opening. But he didn’t do this now. Rather, he continued to pace, alerting to the new odor without making noise.

This changed when he felt the tower gently quake, the vibration of someone or something putting weight on the lowest rung.

Bones began to whine.

The intruder either didn’t hear or didn’t care as it continued to ascend. Bones circled faster now, prancing left and right in giddy anticipation of the newcomer poking their head up through the trapdoor. He yipped as well, then added a couple of low woofs. Behind him, Jess didn’t move a muscle, her face suggesting it might take a lightning strike to pull her from slumber-land.

Now the metallic ping of a shoe or claw on the steel rungs echoed up to Bones. The intruder was only a few yards down. The German shepherd inhaled, taking in the full bouquet of the creature’s aroma. In addition to the scents the police dog had smelled before, urine, blood, raw meat, and shit were added to the mix. The shaking of the tower had grown in earnest, the ladder-climber’s weight being obviously greater than the sum of Jess and Bones.

When it was only a couple of rungs from the trapdoor, it stopped, as if listening, perhaps smelling as well. The hair on Bones’s back rose, and a growl so low it almost couldn’t be heard rumbled up from the blackest pit within the shepherd’s torso. It was a sound of anger, sure, but also one filled with violence, assuring whoever was unlucky enough to hear it that they were seconds from having their throat torn out by a vicious canine that didn’t make threats it couldn’t back up with horrific savagery.

The cessation of movement now felt less like a quick investigative beat and more like a hesitation or stall. The intruder had plainly not only heard Bones’s growl, but had received the message within it. Though by now the shepherd had smelled the several other members of the intruder’s party waiting down below, this did nothing to assure the one on the ladder that it would be anything but dead the second it raised the trap.

A few seconds more, and the smell retreated. Bones could hear the would-be invader descending back down the rungs to the forest floor and relaxed a little, retiring the growl even as his stance remained tight as a coiled spring, all potential energy waiting to be launched at an opponent with a barbarity the shepherd reserved only for moments of life and death.

When even the scents on the ground had returned to the woods, Bones finally calmed, sagging back down to the floor to lie down. The dog’s eyes were soon closed, but he’d always been a light sleeper. If so much as a mouse passed by within twenty yards of the fire tower’s ladder, the shepherd would be on his feet all over again, ready for war.

J
ess was having one of the strangest dreams of her life when she was violently awakened by the sounds of vicious barking. In it, she was in some kind of affair with Dan, but couldn’t figure out at what point in their relationship timeline it was. Her dream self had slept with Dan and regarded the experience as positive, one she’d like to repeat. But even as they walked down the street or the farmer’s market or the outdoor mall, whatever the dream location was, she could only see the back of Dan’s head. He was wearing a gray sweater, jeans, and a baseball hat. When she said something, he turned around, and she found herself suddenly reliving his decapitation. He would begin to turn, a sly smile on his face, but the flesh around his neck would tear like a popping seam, the head would fall away, and she’d be regarding the bloody stump.

Only, it wasn’t bloody, not like in real life. No, in her dream, it was as if his body was perfectly whole and animated, just with a horrific wound between his shoulder blades that looked like the round slabs of lunch meat waiting behind the deli counter. Instead of being cut by an impossibly sharp blade that allowed turkey to be sliced so fine it was translucent, this looked like someone had taken a ragged chainsaw to the bologna log. It was a mess, a dog’s breakfast, and as she looked at it, the little flaps of torn flesh around the windpipe blew up and then fell back as the body continued to inhale oxygen into its lungs and exhale carbon dioxide back into the air.

Every time she saw it, she was alarmed, but something in her mind told her she had to play it cool, not call attention to her boyfriend’s odd appearance. She’d smile and say something she couldn’t hear, and, after slowing to take in the comment or even reply, Dan would face forward again, and the back of his head, ball cap on top, would reappear in her line of sight.

Inexplicably, she inspected the skin around his neck for signs of scarring or even stitches, but saw nothing. The head had completely regenerated.

She was just trying to come up with some way to negate any further attempts at communication between the two, which began with considerations for the bedroom. She guessed he could fuck her from behind, but it wasn’t like she’d forget what was back there, the little flaps of skin bouncing up and down as his breathing increased with a nearing orgasm.

She had just come to the staggering realization that the man in her dream wasn’t Dan, but Scott, when Bones’s bloodthirsty barks woke her with a start. At first she mistook the sound for a rifle shot. As her eyes adjusted to the low light and saw the German shepherd jumping up and down on the trapdoor, its lips angrily pulled back to reveal rows of bright white teeth, the memory of her horrific circumstances washed over her like a cold wave. Was she really in the woods, her body a wreck, her friends dead at the hands of something that didn’t exist, and her one companion a dog she’d just met?

Indeed.

“What is it, boy?!” she cried.

But Bones didn’t stop. There was a wild look in his eye, as if the dog had just realized that his barking was useless. The intruder coming up the ladder wasn’t retreating. In fact, as Jess could just now make out its steps above Bones’s oral assault, it kept coming.

Jess climbed back into the rolling chair and pushed herself to the supply chest. The fire tower hardly maintained an arsenal, but she hoped to find
something
to use as a weapon should one of the creatures pop up through the trapdoor. A fire axe would’ve been ideal, but with none forthcoming, she looked for a hammer, a screwdriver, a spade, a flare gun,
anything
.

Still nothing.

In the first aid kit, however, she spotted an EpiPen, designed to shoot epinephrine into anyone having a serious allergic reaction to a bee sting, for instance, or going into anaphylactic shock. Realizing this would be her best bet, she stripped the wrapper off the auto-injector, twisted the cap off the needle, and placed her thumb on the trigger button. Climbing out of the rolling chair, she crawled to the trapdoor and cocked her right arm, ready to fire the needle into the creature’s neck. She wasn’t sure what would happen and was leaning toward “nothing at all,” given how hard she imagined it would be to pierce the beast’s thick hide. Still, she hoped it might at least throw the creature off balance, off the ladder, and to the ground below.

Jess’s ears rang, so close was she now to the raging German shepherd. She’d never heard a dog bark that loud, and certainly hadn’t been so close to one so angry. What she did know was that without him, she’d be curled up in the bathroom, terrified for her life. That she was instead fully prepared to fight for her life even if that meant taking another was due to the courage the animal lent her by example.

Then something unexpected happened.

“Hey!! Is anybody up there?!” The voice was accompanied by a rapid-fire knocking on the trapdoor. “We need help!
Please
! Open up!”

Bones’s verbal barrage didn’t change one iota, which threw off Jess. He hadn’t reacted like this to her, had been downright friendly, in fact. Did he sense something she didn’t? Or was this just his way of protecting what he saw as his territory and, perhaps, his wounded human companion?

Jess made a decision. She pushed Bones aside and looked him in the eye.

“Quiet! Stay back!”

But Bones was in no mood to comply. He kept barking, and a bad thought occurred to Jess. If the person on the ladder was, perhaps, another camper in trouble, couldn’t the shepherd’s volcanic uproar unintentionally serve up their location to every Bigfoot in the woods?

“QUIET!” Jess said, shushing Bones with a finger. “No barking!”

The shepherd woofed a couple more times, but retreated a few feet back toward the bathroom.

“Who’s there?” Jess asked, EpiPen quivering in her hand. “I’m armed.”

“Good!” returned the voice. “My name’s Alex! I’m with my girlfriend, Christy. There are all these
creatures
in the woods. They already killed…a member of our party. We need
help
.”

Jess hesitated a single second longer, then unlatched the trapdoor. It was immediately pushed upward by a dark-skinned twenty-something with close-trimmed black hair, a chinstrap beard, and a dim LED headlamp illuminating his face from a clip on his backpack strap.

“You’re a lifesaver!” he exclaimed breathlessly, climbing into the fire tower. He turned back to the starlit emptiness below the trapdoor. “Christy! Come on!”

A second later, a brown-haired girl with a dark tan and athletic frame appeared at the top of the stairs. She had a wide, wicked gash extending from the bottom of her short shorts all the way to the top of her sock. When she saw Jess staring at it, wide-eyed, she shook her head.