Breeds (14 page)

Kirk didn’t like the sound of that. “Show me.”

“They’re gone now.”

“Gone?”

“I let them go. The place they were in, it was too much. Figured it was better to release them and call them back later. Better than where they were. That’s the problem. I tried calling them when you were out but they never came back. Anyway, you’ll see. You sure you can move around? You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit. But you better show me.”

“Hold on a sec.”

Ross pulled back the furniture and a great gale flooded the cabin, nearly flash-freezing Kirk where he stood. The Newfoundlander picked up the shotgun where he’d placed it amongst some wood, an act very much noticed. Both men bent forward as they stepped outside, into a cold that stunned them with its depth. The blizzard buffeted them, shrieked, flung stinging snow into their faces. A ferocious, near constant gust made Kirk’s ruined coat flutter in a rage of dark flames. The approaching night pressed in all around, reducing visibility and casting a blue, deep-freezer hue over the snow.

“This way,” Ross roared, pulling the hood of his snowsuit over his head. Amazingly, Kirk realized he still wore his stocking cap and wished it was thicker. The two men walked through the darkening trench towards a huge storage building rising out of the gathering gloom. Ross got there first and opened it, waving his companion inside.

Kirk smelled it from the cabin’s doorway. He knew then that he was right when he had caught a whiff of it earlier.

But inside, he had to lift his sleeve to his nose.

Blood. Offal. Bodily waste. Soaked hair. A brutal cocktail that smashed into his senses.

“Pretty bad, eh?” Ross said from behind. “Think I almost puked in here myself once or twice.”

Kirk ignored the man and walked between the rows of cages, inhaling ghostly traces of the released dogs. Worse, men had died here, the residual scent of their deaths teasing his acute sense of smell.

“Something wrong?” Ross asked.

Kirk didn’t answer. There
was
something wrong, lingering beneath the telltale vapors of fear and madness, for he could smell that rotten taint as clear as decaying meat.

And yet he hadn’t a clue as to what it was.

Lying on the bottom of a cage, a brass tag gleamed off a length of worn leather. Kirk picked it up, and read the name
Brutus
etched upon the surface.

“Whattaya think?” Ross asked eagerly.

Kirk tossed the collar and studied the floor, the ceiling and the cages before answering. Tufts of hair decorated wire mesh. Teeth fragments gleamed on the floor. Part of him could almost hear the mournful cries of animals trapped and suffering. Something god awful terrible had occurred within these isolated confines, and what bothered him the most was he could only discern a hint of it.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered.

“What should we do?” the Newfoundland man asked, holding the gun across his pelvis.

Kirk just didn’t know. He wished he’d never answered his phone in the very beginning.

Ross fidgeted uncomfortably. “Look, back at the road and halfway up the hill is the old guy’s house. We can head there and use his phone. Sound good?”

It sounded just fine, Kirk thought miserably.

And yet it bothered him because of what he might have to do.

Freedom.

But after being imprisoned for so long, freedom from Borland’s store didn’t just fill them with relief or elation. Not for what had been done to them, the things they’d had to endure. If anything, it only made them… crazier. The wind and snow and cold whipped their rabid enthusiasm to mindless heights. At first, they scampered past the cabin, headlong into the blizzard without a thought other than the frantic, mind-numbing impulse to
get away
. Their paws ripped up pristine walls and mounds of snow. Their voices almost frazzled in the afterburn of their escape. They ran, over the frozen pond and into the tree line, low hanging boughs exploding into falling plumes of white as they sped past.

They smelled each other in the storm, and eventually, each dog ran across another’s trail, until the pack centered on one trail in particular––one that led them all away from the cabin. Max wasn’t sure where he was going, nor did he like the scent he was following through the brush, but all around him he heard the whine of the other dogs who were wondering the same thing. The pack clambered up through a frozen timberland close to impassable. At times, Max saw dogs to either side of him, plodding in the same direction. He didn’t go anywhere near them. Badness lurked within those animals.

The badness lurked within Max, too, for that matter.

The forest grew colder as the sky pressed further down upon their flattened ears and skulls.

Then a cabin appeared. A different cabin, situated in a patch of woodland where tree stumps poked up through the wintry surf like dead volcanoes. Old and decrepit, with cheap plastic curtains that fluttered in smashed windows and long-graying planks that might have been someone’s first attempt at building a dwelling. Max saw the lifeless place from its rear, smelled the decay, and powered through the deep snow leading to it. He was far from home, weak, and nowhere near his full potential, in desperate need to find shelter from the night. Fear gave him energy and his heart burned with it.

Cold
, everything was so cold.

Dogs barked and gathered around the sides of the cabin. As much as he loathed to, he recognized strength in a pack. Max approached the structure once realizing that no one lived there. He searched for the entrance desperately, to escape the dropping temperatures.

He rounded a corner and halted in his tracks. There, standing directly in front of the open doorway stood a dog. Max had never seen the animal before, but it was large and powerful, and it snarled at the assembling pack like a gatekeeper ready for war. Some of the bigger dogs barked and snapped at the black beast with orange flares about its jaws and paws, but Orange hunched over and stared them all down, threatening them with a gnashing of its frightening teeth, warding most away from the entrance.

A husky breed with beige and white fur crept forward, tired of the snow and the cold and seeing Orange as nothing more than a fleshy barrier to be pushed aside.

The growl from Orange’s throat made Max back away, sensing something sinister about the dog.

His owner called him Brutus, and to that name he answered. He didn’t care for his owner, an ungentle sort who would punch him at times, for no reason other than to beat him into submission. His owner fed him scraps from the table whenever he felt like it. Sometimes Brutus would go a week without being fed at all. A few instances, Brutus could even remember being fed pans of animal fat, which, in his hunger, he gladly scoffed down. In the winters, he would actively hunt rats or rabbits and devour them, when he had free run of the outside. That didn’t happen very often as most times he would be tied to an outdoor post. He remembered that dreadful stump of unyielding wood, a six-foot long chain that ended in barbed wire, and nothing more than a strip of cardboard as a bed. Even in winter. Rarely was he warm in winter.

When Borland took him in, it wasn’t a kidnapping.

It was a rescue.

Brutus was used to pain. Used to suffering. From his owner. He would take what his owner gave and try harder to please. That mindset didn’t extend to strangers, however. Or other dogs. Brutus saw no need for such efforts towards any of his own kind or any of the lesser species. Other dogs had it much better than him, and he knew it.

He hated them for that.

Borland wasn’t so bad. The cell was small, but the store was warm. The other dogs irritated Brutus. They frightened easily and they never stopped making noise.

Now that they were free, Brutus sensed things were different. Something had changed him while in Borland’s store.

Something… for the better.

And there, on the step of a deserted cabin, Brutus decided that he wasn’t going to be owned ever again. He hunched over and growled, staring down the biggest of the lot with murderous intent.

The husky with the beige and white fur didn’t back down.

That suited Brutus just fine.

Other dogs backed away, not wanting any part of what was about to transpire, allowing Brutus to focus on the approaching husky with its fangs bared. Brutus had found this cabin on his own and the others had followed his trail, drawn by forces none of them understood or ever would. Drawn to
him
. Unlike the mongrels before him, Brutus knew he was a Rottweiler as plainly as he knew his given name. He’d heard his owner repeat the word enough to make the association. Knew instinctively what he was capable of.

Knew only he could lead this pack.

The dog, a thick-haired animal, leaped for his face. Brutus sprang off the threshold of the cabin and crashed into the challenger. A whirl of savage wrestling ensued, much to the excited chorus of the others.

Then Brutus clamped down and yanked back, ripping out the other dog’s throat in a vicious fan that dappled the snow surrounding the front door. The challenger died slowly, on its side, legs kicking weakly. Steam rose from its raw gullet.

Brutus backed away from the dead and stared down the others, baring a snout colored scarlet, showing teeth traced in dark lines. Sending a message.

That’s one.

A mongrel, thick with muscle and possessing a long, black head and narrow eyes, separated itself from the pack. It lunged forward in a flash of teeth. Brutus stopped it in midair and bore the animal to the ground with muzzle and claws. They rolled in the snow, snapping for each other’s throats. The remainder of the pack watched and waited.

The new dog was powerful, and soon bore the Rottweiler to the powdery ground. Brutus twisted out from under the challenger and counterattacked, his jaws crushing the throat of the animal. Brutus forced it down, shaking his head, working his teeth in deeper.

Until bone cracked.

The strength bled out of the mongrel, and Brutus regarded the others while he finished killing his adversary, black eyes daring them all. When the dying dog finally grew still, Brutus released it and backed up, red tongue lapping at his blood-spattered muzzle, this time out of necessity rather than spectacle, but sending a second message to the curs before him.

That’s two
.

The tall one in the rear bolted. Brutus didn’t care. He’d made his point. He barked several times, snapping reports as clear and frightening as gunshots. The other dogs were now curiously solemn. No other dog would challenge Brutus’s claim that night. Another barrage of barks burst from the Rottweiler, laying the law down thick.

No reaction from the cold-weary audience.

Sensing no further threats to his leadership, Brutus turned his back and plodded inside the deserted cabin.

The others piled in after him.

They padded and thumped about, tails wagging, seeking the most comfortable spot before lying down on bare wood floors. Before too long, the need to feed came upon them.

Brutus would never have considered eating his own kind, but something had happened to him during his imprisonment with the man-thing and his cages. He didn’t understand what it was, and the meat was right
there
, outside, in the snow.

The others watched him when he went outside. The snow wrapped around Brutus, absorbing him, making him disappear. The Rottweiler appeared seconds later, dragging the carcass of one of his challengers.

The other dogs lifted their heads in curiosity.

Brutus didn’t see the dead dog as anything else but meat. He’d changed, somehow, that much was clear to him, as clear as the food lying just outside in the storm. Ignoring the others, Brutus pulled apart the dog, stretching out hairy flesh until it snapped, gnawing it free from bones. The smell intoxicated him, as did the taste, and he gulped down his fill. Other dogs approached curiously while he gorged himself on meat and cracked bones, but he put them in their place with a growl.

One of the pack went outside and dragged in the second body. Several of the bigger dogs tore into it while the smaller ones circled, waiting for scraps.

When Brutus had eaten his fill, he backed away from the ravaged dead, and lay down in front of the threshold of the door. He gazed at the storm with the air of a weary soldier on guard duty, narrowing his eyes at the darkening tempest, barely hearing the sounds of the pack devouring the bodies in the background. Bones cracked. Marrow licked out. Growls punctuated the air.

Brutus knew it wasn’t enough, would never
be
enough. They needed
more.

Staring out at the storm, the Rottweiler wondered where he could find it.

He eventually stood up, earning the fearful attention of the others. Without hesitation, the lead animal walked out into the blizzard.

The pack followed.

The blizzard parked itself directly over the peninsula, weaving a mighty spell of snow that blew and blustered around the two figures shrouded by the dying light of the day. The temperature plummeted. Flesh and bone stiffened and slowed. One man staggered under the brutal gales summoned by the storm overhead, bare hands plunging into snowbanks that froze his unprotected skin. He floundered to his knees and squinted ahead. Though only separated by five paces from the other man, the attacking snow intensified to a maelstrom of bewildering white, erasing all existence of a world.

“
Jesus Christ
,” Kirk swore into the blizzard, fighting an external and internal battle. Never had he been outside in such voracious elements. And never had he been so utterly smashed in a fight. The after-effects grated more on his nerves than anything else. His battle with Borland would leave him pissing blood for at least a day, and now this frigid bitch of a winter storm was stomping on him.

A hand gripped his shoulder and he looked up to see first the shotgun, then the Newfoundlander’s cringing face.

“You okay?” Ross bellowed, making himself heard over winds seeking to suck the breath out of his lungs.