Breeds (21 page)

It took three.

Max ate the last of the roast beef laid out before him in great gulps. Flossie stroked the animal’s mane, feeling the water from melting snow. She still had a half a bag left of regular dog food, but that wasn’t enough for this reunion. Her baby had returned home and deserved the good stuff. That initial rush of joy still hadn’t released her and she knew she’d come close to strangling Max in her embrace. The main floor of the house had beckoned, where the wood stove radiated warmly, and she led old Max to the grill and its orange grin. She charged the dog not to move, and got to work welcoming him home, clapping and rubbing her hands as she went.

When Max finished eating, she delivered a bowl of water to him. Once he finished with that, she made him lie down and massaged his back with a thick towel.

“So good to see you. So good to see you. So good to have you
back
.”

She kissed Max’s forehead, accepted the weak kisses in return, before finally allowing the dog to rest at the warm heart of the house.

“You just stay there,” Flossie whispered, sitting on the floor and stroking the dog’s neck. “You’re home now, so you just lie there and relax. Mom’s gonna take care of you. Take great care of you.”

With that, she leaned forward and planted another tender kiss on the German Shepherd’s forehead.

The dog whimpered beneath.

Kirk heard an ominous crash to his left, smelled salt water, and took a moment to grasp Ross’s arm. “Where’s the sea?”

His companion pointed. “Ten or twenty steps straight ahead that way. Then a guardrail and about a fifty-foot slide. Or a thirty-foot drop.”

Kirk felt his stomach knot. Knowing how close he was to a cliff, he made it a point to stay close to Ross’s back. In the fury of a nighttime blizzard, a person could become disoriented in a second. That Ross instinctively knew where he was going amazed the warden.

“You okay?” Ross yelled back.

“Huh?”

Ross haltingly indicated his own face. Kirk took the hint, felt his mouth, and drew away fingers coated in ink. The sight of blood suddenly amplified the screaming of his crushed ribs. He wiped his fingers in his coat and started walking. Ross stopped him with a hand.

“You sure yer up for this?”

Kirk nodded. “Until I say otherwise.”

“Whattaya mean?”

“Just keep going.”

The woodsman’s near-invisible face considered him before turning around and continuing on. He didn’t walk far. Two driveways ran off either side of the main road. Ross paused at the juncture, allowing Kirk to catch up, before he chose the one on the left. Kirk walked in his knee-deep tracks, and even that leeched away his strength.

A tantalizing smell of fresh blood rode the air currents and pulled on Kirk’s nose, hard enough to block out the skin-splitting cold and his battered body.

“Wait. Ross, wait.”

Ross stopped, got whipped around by a ferocious gust, and disappeared from sight for all of five seconds. In that space of time, Kirk could smell the man, but couldn’t see a damned thing, and Ross only stood five feet away. The slash weakened, the blizzard’s breath spent for the moment, and a figure stood just beyond the length of his arm.

“Poof,” Ross said. “I’m still here.”

“You smell something?” Kirk asked.

“Smell what? My fuckin’ nostrils froze up long ago.”

Kirk winced at that. He pulled his knife and trudged by the Newfoundlander. “Keep close, and keep that thing ready,” he said, meaning the shotgun.

A monstrous dune lay across the driveway, attaching itself to the two-story house like some great gray tendon. A car’s bumper poked out from the under the slope. Something heavy slapped the ass of the dwelling. Ghostly whorls spun off snowy crests and broke against Kirk as he went around the scene, seeking the main entrance. He found steps to a deck, climbed them, and located the main door flapping in the wind. The first body lay on its back in the foyer, the crime almost erased by the storm. Ross appeared behind him, staring at the wrecked corpse, seeing the dull gleam of bone, the excavation of the torso, and how the sagging cavity had filled with snow.

“Oh Jesus,” Ross said, slumped against the doorframe, wraithlike plumes whipping around him. The dropping temperatures slurred his words. Shock stiffened his features as surely as the dropping temperatures.

Kirk crept further into the house. The remains of a woman, only partially covered in white, greeted him just down the hall, splayed out on her back and missing a forearm. Missing a face. He glanced back at Ross, noticing how his boot prints left tracks of blood. Gore covered the entire floor, frosted by a veneer of crystallizing sugar, and the heady aroma of it all made him wish… just
wish
…

“You––you know these people?” Kirk asked.

“Yeah. ‘Course. Small town. Name’s Moseby.”

“How many live here?”

“Just Jacob and Alice.”

“Any children?”

“Not here.”

Kirk stooped over the woman’s body and touched her uncovered skull. “Blood’s almost frozen, but not quite. We’re close.”

He started forward, deeper into the house, gleaming knife held at his waist and at the ready. Kitchen chairs had either been toppled or pushed away from a table, its cloth yanked hard on one side, spilling the decorative vase and some dishes on top like a failed magician’s trick. Kirk found a flashlight and felt sticky blood coating the tubular length. He thumbed the tool on and waved the beam around the floor.

Dark paw prints cluttered the kitchen floor in a gruesome floral pattern. Some even went up the sides of wooden panel cupboards, the bulk of the dead refrigerator, even the stove. Half an ear lay near a chair, as if ripped off and spat out in disgust. What looked to be a huge, ravaged spider had been squashed near some cupboards, and it took him a moment to realize that he was looking at a hand.

“Anything?” Ross whispered harshly in the background.

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“We’re close.”

“You said that already.”

“Really close.”

Ross didn’t reply and Kirk didn’t bother going into the living room. He walked back out into the hall where the Newfoundlander jerked to attention, his back pressed against the wall and shotgun pointed towards the open door. He visibly relaxed when he saw his companion.

“Jumpy,” Ross reported, meaning it. The dead unnerved him. “I went into the kitchen.”

“Yeah?”

“Found a phone but it’s dead. Everything’s down.”

The wind rattled the timbers, releasing an eerie thump and crackle that made both men pause.

“Look,” Kirk said, eyeing the flashing snow outside, creating the illusion that the house was spinning very, very fast. “Is this the closest house to the trees?”

“No, there’s… there’s one more. Cliff and Marie Spree. About fifty feet straight out from here. And then above this, further up on the hill, maybe another forty or so, it’s Ben Trakers’s place. We’ll cross the Sprees’ driveway to get there.”

Kirk absorbed the information. “Okay, this is where we part.”

“Huh?”

“Two of us won’t be able to stop the pack.”

“But you will?”

“No, but I’ll be able to slow it down. You haveta go back there, and warn the rest of the town. Even better, get them to someplace safe. Staying behind locked doors isn’t going to work anymore. I think––I think the dogs have a taste for killing now. I don’t think they’re going to stop. You get to a phone and call those cops if you still want to. I’ll do what I can. Here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Listen. This is important. I’ll do what I can but it’s up to you to get whoever’s in town to safety now. Shit’s gone down tonight, and it’ll get
worse
if we both don’t do what we gotta do. Okay?”

Ross set his jaw, regarded the weather outside while firming up his grip on that intimidating piece of shotgun business. “Okay,” he croaked, like a man suddenly realizing there was no bottom to this pool. “Okay. I’m outta here. You watch yerself.”

“Yeah.”

Ross turned to leave.

“Hey,” Kirk said, stopping the man in his tracks. The Halifax native held up his knife. He studied it for a moment before offering the weapon hilt first.

“Take this. I won’t need it.”

“D’hell are you going to use?” Ross asked, horrified.

“Don’t worry about me. You just get the rest of the herd to safety.”

If Ross thought this choice of words were strange, he didn’t show it. He took the knife, unzipped one lower leg of his snowsuit, and stuffed it inside his own boot. Once that was done, he took one last worried look at Kirk before hurrying off into the night.

“Yeah,” Kirk said. He squinted at the man as he disappeared into the blizzard, wintry exhaust fluttering off his back.

Then he was alone.

He waited for a minute, very much aware of the storm, in part to ensure Ross wouldn’t change his mind and come back. A bleak veil whipped past the open doorway and for a moment it resembled a portal to some alien, other dimensional place, one Kirk really wanted no part of. To go there, he knew he’d have to change over. Had to become that which he so reviled, and yet longed for.

Standing there, the tatters of his coat flapping gently, he studied the doorway. The moon’s pull on him strengthened, like morning’s first stretch of chest and spine. Despite how good it felt, how much he wanted to give in, he resisted.

Taking a winded breath, Kirk went deeper into the house, searching.

Brutus pulled free a single piece of the dead homeowner before darting inside the house, declaring his presence by pissing on items of interest. He ran upstairs, paws plodding on carpet, claws clicking off tiling. He sniffed and snorted through three bedrooms, rummaging for anything more, before returning to the living room and discovering that, in their frenzy, the pack had torn the near devoured owner apart. The top portion lay in the center of a rug, jerking with every feverish bite taken. Ignoring the feeding, Brutus jumped onto the sofa and lowered himself, presiding like a regal sphinx. Snow rasped at a picture window, drawing his brooding attention, while beneath him, his pack prowled and growled, fed and rested. The owner they’d killed wasn’t overly large, but they weren’t overly hungry. The dogs pulled the flesh from the bones of the dead not out of necessity, but because something drove them to do it.

Sounds of the feast lessened in Brutus’s ears. The night outside the window captivated him with an increasing sense of urgency. Though he didn’t know what was happening, he could feel the growing pull on his body. He stretched his jaws and whined once before snapping them shut and resuming his stare. The other dogs slowed in their feedings, sensing something coming upon them, something terrible, yet needed. The bloodhound sniffed at the air, trying to find a scent. The Golden Retriever, normally so sickly passive, whined and dropped the foot in its blood-caked maw. The Shih Tzus bounced and hyper-yapped as if demanding the others’ attention. The rest of the pack, mongrels and half-breeds of terrier mixes, ceased what they were chewing upon. They tensed, searching for the source of what swelled within each of them, yowling in a blend of heat and uncertainty.

All looked to the ceiling of the living room, searched it, even as their organs began to bloat. Their bones moved with disturbing quivers. Their jaws suddenly ached, and many began stretching them, to release the building pressure in their ears. One of the terriers leaped into a sofa chair and bounded off its back where it crashed into a wall. Another hopped into the air, barking at nothing, yet
something
, as an unseen force took hold of them all, grabbing them by their necks and injecting them with a terrible energy, igniting their cores and expanding outward. The Shih Tzus pranced as if on a hot grill. The Retriever howled and placed its forepaws against a wall, spine arching, hair spiking, eyes bulging with fright. A Bull Terrier clamped down on a plump cushion and ripped its guts free in a yellow shower of foam before shaking it across the other dogs.

A force took Brutus across the back and yanked as if trying to pull spine and skull out of his puckered asshole. He barked, whimpered, then settled into a low moan as his bones bulged against his skin, his organs inflated, and blood crash-flooded his veins like open fire hydrants attempting to bleed off internal stress. His jaws snapped shut and contracted in a firecracker of aching pleasure. His talons raked the stuffing of the sofa, clawing deep, before his skin split apart with fleshly cracks. Sinews stretched, pulled, burst with all the grace of a mighty yawn. Bones lengthened. Musculature grew powerful layers in seconds. Brutus’s eyes blurred, shut, and cracked open, glimpsing the contortions the rest of his pack experienced. He blinked, eyes watering, when one of the mongrels, twisting and writhing on its back, thrust a leg into the air. The limb hyper-extended to its fullest, trembled, and
cracked
before bending impossibly in the other direction while its skin split and sloughed off, replaced by…

Man-flesh, glazed in muddy gore and dead peel.

The Retriever held its face with man-thing hands, clawing at its ears while its muzzle shrieked and its hairless chest grew stiffening nipples. The Shih Tzus rolled about the floor, sprouting limbs and hands that thickened before their still yammering but shrinking snouts. One black mongrel screeched with vocal cords that no longer belonged to an animal and bolted from the house upon two legs, disappearing into the livid depths of the blizzard. The Bloodhound pressed its length into one dark corner, fluid bleeding from an impossibly lengthening rack of teeth.

Then a burst of pain crippled Brutus, skewering his senses. The pack cried out with him and the sounds warped through his punished skull as if coming from the other side of the universe. Wind flattened his ears and a searing heat enveloped his body.

Darkness overcame him.

When he opened his eyes, he saw he’d been stretching
fingers
to their fullest, yet something wasn’t quite right. Black veins rippled like sailors’ knots under hairless flesh, snaking up past his elbow joints and diving deep into heavy cords of muscle. The urge to
push
took him and he obeyed, against his digits, willing, wanting the transformation to complete.