The Echo

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The shepherd hit Rachel high, knocking her flat on her back.

She was dimly aware of the other two dogs closing in, but her world narrowed to the stinking, slavering mouth snapping at her.

She thrust her forearm into the dog’s neck and pushed, yellow fangs clacking inches short of her face, the steaming pink tongue lolling against the black maw of the throat.

Up close, the glittering eyes were hellfire. It was easy to think of the dog as a demonic creature shot from the land of myth, but its moist, putrid breath was all too real against her skin.

She rolled, something in her backpack digging into the base of her spine. She debated the pistol, knew there was no time, and kept rolling as the dog’s paws skidded painfully across her breasts. She made it to her knees and, as the shepherd fell away, the beagle lunged for her midsection.

During the roll, her pack slid from one shoulder and she shrugged it the rest of the way down her arm. Rachel punched at the only soft point she could find, the dog’s quivering, slimy nose. The blow landed flush and the dog yipped, backing away and howling in surprise.

The dogs circled her, keeping out of reach, apparently finding her more challenging than their usual prey.

How many people have they slaughtered? Or is this their first taste of warm blood?

She shrugged free of the backpack and held it by one strap. Slinging it before her, its fifteen pounds of weight was like a sledgehammer. She’d quickly grow weary, but for the moment, the threat kept the dogs at bay.

The retriever made a play for her ankles and she whipped the pack against its ribs. It yelped and hobbled away.

“That’s right, Cujo, I’ll kick your ass back to Maine.” The bravado felt hollow, and the shepherd’s attack had driven the wind from her lungs, but at least she was standing.

Four legs good, two legs better.

Stephen had made it safely around the truck, so Rachel began backing away from them, using the truck as a wall so they couldn’t surround her. She swung at the beagle when it snarled at her, and when it retreated, she was able to gain a position by the truck’s front tire. She thought about climbing the driver’s-side runner and trying the cab door, but if it was locked, the backs of her legs and buttocks would be exposed to attack, and she doubted she’d get a second chance.

The dogs barked, hissed, and howled in a sickening mix, like coyotes strung in an electric fence. As the dogs paced back and forth, searching for an opening, Rachel found the backpack’s zipper and worked it down, never letting her gaze stray from the dogs. Their glittering eyes were both mesmerizing and repulsive.

If fear encouraged them to attack, maybe arrogance would drive them away. So she shouted at them, channeling gangster movies and tough-guy clichés, figuring the dogs wouldn’t give a damn if she mangled a few lines.

“Are you looking at me? Wanna piece of this? You can’t handle the truth.” The rant was silly but it gave her courage, and she scarcely paid attention to the stream of inanities she spewed. “I’ll tear your leg off and beat you into a pile of Alpo. You want some doggie style?”

Her words, or perhaps her animated delivery, caused the dogs to retreat even further. She dug frantically through the backpack, feeling for the cool steel of the pistol. Her heart sank when her fingers came away empty.

Damn. Must have left at the last stop.

As if sensing her panic, the dogs closed in again, hiss-barking as they came.

“Rachel!” Stephen called from the other side of the truck.

“I told you to get in the car and close the door.”

“I can’t. There’s dead people in here.”

“Just…just pretend they’re sleeping.” Right. Resting in pieces, that’s all. Perfectly ordinary day in After.

“Are you coming?”

The retriever growled, baring its teeth. The shepherd circled around toward the front of the truck as if responding to Stephen’s voice.

“In a minute,” Rachel said, gripping the backpack’s strap again, grateful for the cans of food that gave heft to the makeshift weapon. “But I need to make sure you’re safe first.”

“They smell bad,” the boy yelled. “Real bad.”

“I know, honey. But you can do this for me. Close the door and I’ll be right there.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.” Just like I promised Chelsea I’d always be there for her. Until water got in the way.

Thinking of Chelsea renewed her determination. Despite occasional suicidal thoughts, she really didn’t want to die, especially not by the fangs and paws of filthy beasts, going down like an animal. Rachel had no way of knowing whether Chelsea would have survived the solar storms, or if she would have mutated into a Zaphead. But as long as Rachel was alive, she’d live for both of them.

As long as she was a human, she’d fight like a human—the only animal intelligent enough to be aware of its own mortality, and the only animal capable of measuring its own will to survive.

I am a survivor.

“Close the door,” she shouted, still monitoring the dogs. “Now.”

The door slammed closed, clipping off Stephen’s wail of exasperation or perhaps a sob. Now free to act, Rachel turned and ran around the front of the truck, intending to climb the bumper and scale the truck’s hood. It was only when she was calculating the first foothold that she realized the bumper was set into the engine compartment, the shiny chrome extending only a couple of inches.

With the luxury of seconds, she would have been able to dig her hands into the rungs of the grille and make the climb, but already the paws were pounding into full gallop behind her.

She didn’t have seconds,

She made a sudden circle, swinging the backpack and flinging it toward the closest dog—the shepherd. The dog swerved and nearly dodged the blow, but the pack glanced off its rear flank. Something snapped and the dog went down, yowling and hissing but still slithering toward her by digging the ground with its front paws.

The retriever and beagle didn’t slow at all, and Rachel sprinted toward the Subaru with her heart beating the insides of her ribs like a prizefighter working a punching bag.

The Subaru was only twenty feet away, and Stephen’s forehead was pressed against the driver’s-side window, his breath fogging the glass. At least he’d obeyed her. Chalk one up for counseling school.

Rachel slipped, and a rush of corrupt stench wafted over her, and she realized she’d stepped on one of the corpses. The lost momentum allowed one of the dogs—the beagle, she suspected, because it hit her low—to dig its teeth into her right calf.

She kicked, hearing her jeans rip, a current of electric acid pain screaming through her veins.

The dog tumbled away but then the retriever caught her, snapping at the hem of her blouse and yanking so hard that the top two buttons popped free.

Trying to drag me down, to go for my throat.

She kicked out with her good leg, nearly losing her balance as the agony of the bite wound roared in on a massive red wave. The rubber tip of her sneaker drove into the retriever’s ribs but it didn’t let go. Its four paws dug at the ground as it pulled backwards, snarling and growling wetly in its throat.

The beagle leaped at her injured leg and she couldn’t dance away. The attack was rushed, though, and instead of finding purchase, the sharp teeth raked across her kneecap, tearing fabric and flesh with equal ease.

As it scurried past, the Zaphead dog’s eyes radiated ever more brightly, as if the scent of blood and weakness had amplified its terrible appetite.

Stephen screamed from inside the car, but the sound was mercifully muffled. She was afraid he’d open the door and then she’d have the double duty of protecting him while saving her own neck.

Then the retriever jerked backward and Rachel fell on her hands and knees, roiling in the desecrated offal of the dogs’ earlier meals.

And God threw her a bone.

Literally.

Her hand scraped across a smooth, dense object and she clutched its roundness. It was a human femur, licked mostly clean, a big knot of gristle on one end where the ball joint was still attached.

Like a mad Samson slaying Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, she swept the bone like a mace and struck the retriever right between its odd, glittering eyes. The animal’s skull crunched and it dropped like a rock, ripping a large swatch of her blouse as it collapsed.

The beagle brayed, as if realizing it had underestimated its prey. The shepherd wriggled forward, dragging its shattered hindquarters, but it no longer posed any real threat. It whimpered through its nose, blowing bubbles of bloody mucus, but she had no sympathy.

She waved the femur at the beagle. “Wanna play fetch?”

The beagle’s sagging jowls crinkled and its incisors showed over the black folds of its lips. The orange-and-gold specks in its eyes grew darker, as if its smoldering bloodlust had cooled.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said, limping toward the Subaru, bracing for the beagle to lunge again. Instead, it trotted over and sniffed at the shepherd, then licked its face with a long, slobbering tongue.

When she reached the Subaru, Stephen’s eyes were wide with shock. He opened the door for her and the stink hit her with renewed power.

“You’re right,” she said. “Smells bad in here.”

“You… you…”

“Move over,” she said, and he scrambled into the passenger’s seat, pushing the mutilated body parts into the floor. Death was omnipresent in After, but usually they’d managed to keep it out of sight.

He pointed, and she thought he was showing her where she’d been bitten. As her adrenalin rush faded, the pain dug in teeth of its own, and one leg of jeans was wet with blood.

“Yeah, guess I better take care of that,” she said. She started to unbutton what remained of her cotton blouse, planning to rip it into strips for a tourniquet and bandages.

“They tore your pretty blouse,” Stephen said.

“Yeah, but now it’s my turn to tear it.”

“Here,” he said, peeling his own T-shirt over his head. Whether he was being helpful or whether he was embarrassed to see her in a bra, she couldn’t tell. Darkness was falling, and she’d eventually have to take off her jeans and tend the wound, but as the endorphins drained from her body, she felt washed away beneath a great, pressing wall of water.

“Thanks,” Stephen whispered, reaching for her hand.

She gripped it in return. “You’re welcome. Just promise me you won’t ask for a pet anytime soon.”

“Not even a goldfish,” he said.

The beagle was still licking the dying shepherd when she fell into a restless sleep.