Breeds (22 page)

With a scream, long talons burst forth from his fingertips.

Flossie came awake with an odd feeling that something was not quite right. She lifted her head from the circular rug and realized that, in the warmth of the wood stove and the joy she’d felt for Max’s return, she’d fallen asleep with her head against the animal’s side. Her pet had gone, however, waking her up.

“Max?” she called, searching the room. “Max?”

The wood stove’s fire burned low and she made the mental note to throw a few more junks into its mouth after finding out where Max had gone. Feeling sparkling needles in her knees and hips, she stood and made yet another promise to herself to get to a doctor and ask about joint replacements.

“Max?” she called again, but the kitchen area and foyer were empty. The front door surprised her, as Max made no qualms about letting her know when he had to go outside. The sound of snow raking against a nearby window caught her attention, and she watched it for just a considering second before wandering through the house, wondering if she’d been sleeping all along, and her missing companion had only been a dream.

A short hall off the living room led to carpeted stairs. A window spilled ghostly light at the top, illuminating the landing. The glass trembled and hissed from the attacking storm system, reminding her of mouthfuls of moon rocks. Her husband Rufus had been a sugar hound himself. It broke her heart when the doctor had informed them both that he had developed type two diabetes. The cancer followed only three years later.

“Max?”

Nothing. She stared at the dark beyond the top of the stairs, listening to the house groan under the constant pressure.

Thumpthump.

The sound tumbling along the floor rooted her in place.

“Max?”

Another stroke of winter hit the house, leaning it to the north.

“Max?”

Then the softest whimper. That got Flossie moving up the steps. “Max? You okay?”

She hauled herself up one step at a time, the old wood squealing with dissonant chords. Halfway up she heard another thump, which made her twist around at the hips, eyes level with the second floor. She gazed towards the spare bedroom at the end of the carefully handcrafted banisters, glowing in the absence of light. The beige door had been closed to only a pitch-black crack.

“You okay, boy?”

A distressing whine got her moving at top speed. She whirled around on the second-floor landing, eyes on the door.

Then a sound stopped her in her tracks, as solid as if she’d run into the wall of a root cellar. Sinews ripped, an eerily earthy sound, slow at first but quickening towards the end, followed by another
thump
not unlike a boot. Or a limb. Then a subtle squeal of something stretching to its fullest.

A dog’s panting, choked by another nerve-twinging whimper.

Flossie’s old heart ramped into overdrive. Her body above the waist lurched towards the room, but the rest of her refused to go any further. Rufus’s thunder gun hung downstairs and she knew how to use it, but the rational part of her mind overruled this. Not in her house that her husband had built for her. And certainly not because of Max.

This pair of thoughts moved her feet forward. Her hand gripped the nearby banister as if worried about being swept away. She shuffled to the door, hearing the barest rumble, a rattle of bone, and placed her hand against the wood. Pushed.

“Max?”

In the darkness, what looked up from the floor, near the edge of the spare bed, wasn’t entirely Max.

It was a dog.

But a dog whose grinning snout was retracting
back
into its head to the sound of crackling seashells, while chunks of flat blackness split apart, revealing ivory underneath, and dropped to the carpet in a dull cadence. Fluid dribbled. The jaws opened with the creak of twine stretched to its limit and the eyes, wide and horribly insane with fright, fixed on Flossie.

The room whirled, Flossie felt her legs go boneless, and the last thing she carried with her into the whirlpool of unconsciousness was an oil-soaked hand––half human, half paw––grabbing for her as the carpet rushed up. And her last received signal, before her brain went offline, was that of an explosion at the back of her head, where it hit the floor with all the force of a falling body.

Like a final nail being hammered into a coffin.

Kirk almost missed the lane leading to the Sprees’ house, but the coy scent on the wind stopped him from going any farther. He stood there, on the snowy road, swaying and shying away from the storm’s fury. A long-barreled shotgun, found in the last house and loaded with twelve-gauge shells, was clutched to his chest as if he were about to present arms. After finding those dead people, he decided that every little bit would help.

Screams coming from the Sprees’ house had hooked his attention. The same screams had him staring off into the dark, up the hill, while winter thrashed all around. The sickening feeling of being too late seized him. Kirk wasn’t even certain as to what he could do, but knew his non-existent plan had just changed. Though he resisted the hidden moon’s magnetic draw, feeling it right down to the roots of his teeth, he contained it. Ability not easily learned. Being able to control the change, even stave it off if needed, was all part of his high status in the grand pack. What felt no more than an electric buzz to him was probably more than enough to turn two dozen or so dogs.

Into something more.

Borland’s grinning, canine jaws came into Kirk’s mind. He remembered the feral eyes blazing with cruel intensity and evil mirth. Then the dogs at his house. Those in particular. Animals that had become men. The haunting song of the blizzard joined with an even more horrific chorus of voices, like a coven of banshees being exposed to daylight.

Or freakish
Weres
transforming for the first time.

Run
.

The one word whispered at the base of his skull caused the length of his backbone to shiver. Even worse, part of Kirk admitted it wasn’t a bad idea.

Then, like a grim portent,
her
eyes floated before his own in his pain-racked mind. Soft, staring, with the barest hint of scolding reproach. It was enough of a reminder to make Kirk feel a twinge of shame. His fingers, wrapped tightly around the shotgun, felt only one icy breath away from falling off, but he held the weapon with newfound conviction and waddled through the thickening drifts. The gun would slow down this new breed until…

He struggled through the thickening snow, following his nose. The blizzard slowed time like blood in a dying man’s veins. The black steeple of a tall A-frame house loomed in the sorcerous folds of the storm, surprising Kirk by how close it was. He pumped the shotgun and damn near dropped the weapon when he braced the stock against his shoulder and felt the crackle of hot pain. His strength left him and he lowered the gun, stooped over as powerful gales washed over his frame. A moment later he pushed forward, the cold working its murderous poison deep into his being.

The door to the house slapped in the wind.

That brazen clap of wood on wood startled him, caused him to halt in his tracks and gaze ahead, scrying what he could out of the northern dark. A protective railing rose above a snow-smothered deck. The doorway beyond appeared as a black rectangle set into a face swathed in gloomy ice. Then he caught the smell. Strange, but not new. The same aroma wafting from Borland when he’d changed. From the dogs that had become men.

Kirk stopped, the deep freeze of the night suddenly balmy compared to the fear rooting him in his tracks.

A shadow stood in the doorway, a malefic black against the surrounding dark. A man stepped forward. A
naked
man, chest heaving but otherwise still, sheltered by the house, and no doubt every bit as aware of Kirk as he was of him. The wind rose in a blast, obscuring the figure in a dusky hail of granular white.

Kirk took the time to raise the shotgun, felt his cheek freeze on gunmetal when he lined up the sights.

The man-thing roared and slammed a heavy arm against the doorframe. Perhaps twenty feet back and Kirk could hear the splintering of wood as if he’d been slammed into it.

“C’mon then, y’fucker,” Kirk seethed, breath exploding past clenched teeth. “I’ll make it all better.”

The wind dropped, enough to allow the curtain to sag.

Kirk’s finger froze on the trigger.

Outlines detached themselves from the house, oozing forward like phantoms blurred by the swirling dark. The pack crouched, stooped, or otherwise stood, knee-deep in the drifts and leaning into the wind. Their naked shapes trembled, no longer protected against the elements with the coats they’d been born with. Mutters and squeaks of voices, attempting to growl warnings. Faces cowled by the dark, but here and there, haunting glimmers of light where eyes lurked.

All
faced his direction, easily outnumbering him.

Limbs flexed and flapped as if being tested. One shade took a step forward and nearly toppled over, entirely unaccustomed to a two-legged gait. But learning.

A new breed of
Were
.

Kirk brought the gun to bear on the nearest target just as one screamed, unleashing the full extent of its altered vocal cords. That piercing shriek caused Kirk to jerk his aim towards the screamer––and he blinked. Small, quivering breasts dotted the thing’s chest. Short bristly hair covered the head. The female took two unsteady steps towards him, its long legs sinking to its knees, and let loose a caterwaul of hellish ferocity. Protruding eyes fixed upon him. Claws hung from the thing’s fingers, and a mouth craggy with canines gnashed the air. On the third step, the rest of the shadows screeched and advanced like drunken children.

Kirk shot the bitch in the chest, flinging her backwards to practically disappear in a snowbank like a gunned-down angel.

The uproar ceased, shivering forms suddenly paralyzed from the startling report of the weapon.

Kirk swung on another, pumped and fired, disintegrating a shoulder as if an invisible yeti had risen up behind the
Were
and chomped a huge section out of its flesh. The blast punched the owner through the gathered pack. Not waiting for applause, Kirk racked the gun once again, working fingers and hands made clumsy from sub-zero temperatures sharpened by North Atlantic winds. He took aim and the shapes scattered, vanishing into the storm. He fired at the thing in the doorway, exploding part of the frame into splinters and shards, driving the creature out of sight.

Cries of pain cut the night air. The female rose from the snowbank, torso shredded, unrecognizable gobs of pulped flesh dangling. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, heedless of her crippling wound, and moved forward.

Right at Kirk.

The warden backed up as the breed staggered closer. A glistening clump sloughed from her chest cavity and plopped into deep snow. The female got within an arm’s length of him when he heaved the shotgun into her face. She flayed it aside, black eyes beholding him with a coldness only spiders might possess. He planted a boot against her chest and pushed her off balance, just as the second
Were
rammed into him, driving him onto his back. A claw flashed down, shredding his forehead to the bone. Blood drizzled his vision. A mouth gnashed at his polar-bear collar, the breath scalding. Something wet grazed his ear. The breed yipped into the fabric and Kirk seized the chin and twisted until bone cracked. The man-thing went into a violent seizure, its head flopping on its shoulders.

Kirk kicked it off. He staggered to his feet and away from the pair. Blood seeped into his eyes and he wiped at the gruesome barcode in his forehead, wincing at how the flaps of skin hooked into his sleeve and got pulled apart farther.

“Shit,” he panted, attempting to catch his breath without disturbing his shattered ribs. Blackness dripped from his head. A gust of snow covered his face, and he squinted and sputtered against its force. The blizzard swooped in, masking everything, but Kirk could smell their alien tang. Heard them yelling in the dark, wondering what happened to their once majestic voices. The blasts from the shotgun had frightened them, but they hadn’t run far.

Kirk’s head began to spin and he stumbled to his knees. Snow kissed his cheek while a haunting screeching pressed in, sounding both near and distant. He reared back, woozy and only dimly aware of the slowing of time. The cries became distorted, echoing, confusing him. His hands buzzed miserably from the cold. Kirk plunged his face into the snow, bellowed into its smothering depths, and let the shock pull him back to his senses. Something clawed at the bottom of his boot and he kicked it away. He stood, nearly fell once again, righted his stance and got moving. Shapes circled the edges of his vision––
Weres
adjusting to their new bodies. He limped towards the house from which he’d taken the gun. The oddly human cries of predators surrounded him. Kirk didn’t remember his own clumsy baby steps when he’d first changed, as the transformation had overwhelmed his mind utterly.

He reached the house and crashed through the open door. More shouts, cutting through the din of the storm, and Kirk felt his breath quicken. He placed a shoulder against a wall and pulled the door shut. It wouldn’t close. Snow and the near-devoured foot of one of the corpses prevented it. More harsh roars, closer now. Kirk cleared the threshold with a boot and hooked a knee, pulling the foot inside. He slammed the door and locked it, felt for and found some old hook locks at the top and bottom, and fastened them as well. A thick inlaid pane of glass, cut in the shape of a sickle moon, was just below eye level. He stooped and scanned the blackness beyond, leaning against the wall for support, feeling lightheaded once again. Gritting his teeth, Kirk pulled his stocking cap down, covering his bleeding forehead and
willed
himself to remain conscious.

He spaced out anyway, losing all sense of time and just struggling to keep his legs underneath him. The moment passed and he rewarded himself with a deep breath before looking to the window. The face of a
Were
filled the glass, mouth open in a horrific display of fangs, feral eyes riveted upon his own.