Outbreak: The Hunger (26 page)

“We’ll keep the dog out in the garage,” Kim says.  The dog bolts to a standing position, almost as if it understands what Kim is saying.  It’s ready to follow its new friends to their house.

“There’s no way we’re keeping that dog,” Kim and Bryan’s dad, Bob, says.  “Besides, you both know better than to approach and bring home a stray.”  It isn’t that Bob  dislikes dogs. He just knows his kids are too young to be able to handle the responsibility.  There is no way in hell he is going to wake up at six in the morning to take it out for a walk.

They are standing in the garage, watching the dog eat out of the bowl.  They had to resort to giving it some cat food, but it doesn’t seem to mind. 

“I think your original idea is a very smart one,” Bob continues, trying to be positive.  “We’ll take some pictures with the digital camera and make up some posters to put up around the neighborhood.  We’re not gonna kick the little fella out on the streets. We’ll just find his home.”  The kids smile and hug their dad.

They set up a little bed for the dog in the garage with some old towels for the night.  They will take some pictures in the morning.

At midnight, the dog’s eyes shoot open.  It is tired and just wants to sleep, but there is something urging it to wake up.  It is hungry again.  It was used to being hungry before, but this hunger makes it ache.  It couldn’t ignore the hunger.  It doesn’t realize it, but whatever  is inside it needs to eat and feed in order to accomplish its goals.

The dog stands and scratches the garage door that leads into the house.  Its claws seem longer, stronger than a few weeks ago.  Eventually, Bob comes downstairs to see what all the noise is. “This is exactly why I don’t want a dog,” he says.  “Everyone’s asleep and good old dad is down here taking care of this dog.” 

He walks over to the door leading into the garage and bangs on it a little.  “Quiet in there, poochie.  Go back into your bed.”  The dog replies with some whimpers and pathetic  noises.

“For fuck’s sake,” Bob says as he begins to open the door.  “What’s wro…
”

As soon as the door is wide enough to fit through, the dog jumps and sinks its teeth into Bob’s throat.  He makes a wet, gurgling noise as he falls to his knees.  His eyes are wide with fear as he realizes what is happening.

To his left, their cat Booger hisses.  Bob is starting to lose consciousness as the blood sprays from his carotid.  No one can lose that much blood in that little time and stay conscious.  He grabs at his throat only to find that the dog has taken a chunk of it out.  Even if he could stand up long enough to get a dishtowel, he would never be able to stop the bleeding. 

He falls face-first to the kitchen floor.  He feels a coldness he’s never experienced  as the blood continues to drain.  He hears a violent hiss and can see the dog has forgotten  him and has moved on to Booger.  Booger’s eyes are wide with panic as that dog pins him to the floor and tears into his belly.  Booger dies instantly as the shock of being eviscerated hits his system.

Bob’s last thoughts are of his family as he sees the dog heading toward the stairs.

The dog is fast and quiet--too quiet, in fact, for a dog.  It seems as though some primal instinct, some latent predatory memory, has been unlocked from some dormant gene.  It silently walks upstairs and first goes into the mother’s room.  It is over quickly as the dog bites her on the hand.  She makes it easy enough, as one hand hangs off the side of the bed.  It knows it only needed to give her a little nip, but that primal lust takes it over.  It bites down with such ferocity that it removes two of her fingers before she even wakes up. 

Her screams wake the rest of the house.  The kids run into the room to find the dog standing next to the bed and their mom screaming while holding a bloody hand with missing fingers. 

Bryan breaks their silence first.  “Mommy, what’s going on?”   The dog stands there, looking at him and Kim, almost as if deciding who to attack first. 

Its primal instinct tell it to go after the boy.  Like a shot out of a gun, the dog launches at Bryan, its claws tearing through his Lightening McQueen pajamas and deep into his thigh.  He screams in pain as he drops to the floor.

Kim is in shock, but realizes that if she doesn’t move quickly, she’ll be next.  She sees one of her father’s work boots on the ground.  He is in construction and she knows there is something called a “steel toe” in it.  She isn’t sure exactly  that meant, but she knows it is hard. 

The dog lunges and she raises the boot.  The dog slams into the sole  and falls to the ground.  Without hesitating, she starts beating the dog, making sure she uses the toe part to smash into the dog. 

The dog lays there, not making a sound.  It put its head on the floor.  When Kim is satisfied that no living thing could withstand such a beating, she drops the boot.  She tries to console her brother, but sees that her mom is losing a lot of blood.  She hands her mom a t-shirt lying on the floor and her mom wraps it around her hand.  She starts looking around in a panic.

“Where’s your dad, kids?” she asks, trying to calm down.

Kim suddenly realized that her dad is nowhere to be found.  “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t see him anywhere.”

The mother reaches over to the phone and starts dialing the number for the ambulance.  “Sweetie,” she says in a calm voice to Kim. “Can you go downstairs and get me a bowl of ice?”

Kim looks at her, confused. 

“I need to put my fingers on ice so the doctors can put them back on at the hospital,” she explains calmly.  Then she looks down at Bryan and says, “Come up here, sweetie. Come up onto the bed with Mommy.”  Bryan jumps onto the bed and starts crying.

“Why did that dog do this, Mommy?” Bryan says between tears.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” his mom answers, but is interrupted by a voice on the other end of the phone.  “Hi… yes.  I need an ambulance immediately.  My family was attacked by a dog.  Yes, a dog,” Kim starts to walk out of the room as she hears her mom tell the emergency operator their house address.  As she walks past the dog, she stops for a second and stares at it.  So many questions races through her mind.  When she turns to leave the bedroom, the dog extends its paw and scratches Kim on the heel of her left foot.  She lets out a little gasp, but thinks she will look stupid if she cries out and runs to her mother.  Her mother’s lost two fingers and Bryan has deep gashes in his thigh.  She rubs the spot where the claws got her and walks downstairs to get the ice for her mom, calling for her dad.  It doesn’t make sense for him to be gone.  Maybe he is in the downstairs bathroom.  He often goes there if he can’t sleep.  He would sit there and read so as not to wake up the rest of the family.

She walks through the living room and sees the kitchen light on.  “Daddy, are you in the kitchen?”

Upstairs, Bryan and his mom sit on the bed.  She is able to slow the bleeding with some clothes on the floor and Bryan is beginning to calm down.  She hasn’t yet heard the icemaker and is wondering what is taking Kim so long.  The thought of more animals in the house cross her mind, but she knows it is just paranoid thinking.

“Kim!” she yells.  “Kim! Are you all right?”

She can faintly hear the ambulance sirens.  

As they grow louder, a blood-curdling scream tears through the house.

Kim has found her daddy.

Barton Creek Community, Austin TX.             2:00pm

Daniel pulls onto Wimberly Lane off of Barton Creek Boulevard.  He got a call from dispatch twenty minutes ago that there was a wild animal, possibly feral, in the Barton Creek area--an upscale community with a private golf club.  He figures some rich douche bag had a deer or two eating his manicured lawn and called it in as a wild animal.

Daniel is thirty-nine-years-old and never thought he’d end up in the animal control business.  In his younger years, he was actively involved in Greenpeace and PETA.  In 1985, he ran away from home at age fifteen in order to “fight the good fight,” as he’d called it.  He’d been on the Greenpeace ship
Rainbow Warrior
when it was bombed and sunk by the French government.  His wife keeps telling him he should write a book about those days, but now he drives around capturing wild animals, mostly stray dogs and cats and the occasional aggressive raccoon.  It’s not like the  he’d done at Greenpeace, but, as he tells himself, when you have a family, you need to “get real.”  He’d do anything for his wife and four kids, even if it meant compromising some of his principles.  At least by being in animal control he is still able to help some animals.

He pulls onto Wimberly Cove and drives slowly as he looks between the houses and in the woods surrounding the area.  Being a cove, it dead-ends into the woods, and he figures it is a pretty good area for any animal, wild or not, to hide.  As he passes the last house and approaches the dead end, he sees the tops of three trees shaking.

“If this is another goddamn call about a turkey vulture, I’m gonna be pissed,” he says.  He can understand why people would get freaked out. The birds are huge and can have a wingspan of seventy-two inches.  Plus, they aren’t very afraid of humans.  They can stare a person down and make them run in the opposite direction.  If it happened to be a turkey vulture, there isn’t much he can do about it.

He parks his van about fifty feet from the end of the cove and gets some of his equipment.  He puts on some thick foam hand, arm and leg protectors.  You can never be too safe.  He walks to the edge of the woods, whistles, and then waits.  He doesn’t see or hear any movement.  As he lowers his hand to get his walkie-talkie to call dispatch, something buzzes by him to the right, going very fast.  He shoots his head up, but whatever it was is long gone.  He even starts to doubt that he actually saw anything.  He laughs at himself and turns to go back to the van.

This time, something
does
move, and this time he sees it.  He hears weird noises, almost like heavy breathing, and something that sounds like claws scurrying up a tree. 

“Hello!” he yells.  “Who’s out there?”

He is answered by the fading sound of the trees rustling to his left.  He takes a step deeper into the woods, leaving the paved surface of the cove behind him.  He hears more of that weird heavy breathing sound, but can’t tell which direction it is coming from.

He shoots his head to the left and catches a glimpse of what looks to be a skunk.  He shakes his head as he mumbles, “Daniel, you are losing your mind.  Skunks do not climb trees.” 

He pauses, then blurts out, “A tail… it has a black and white bushy tail.”  He scans the trees, trying to get a look at whatever it was.  He guesses the tail was a good two feet long and figures whatever animal is attached to it has to be around five feet tall. 

“What the hell could that be?” he says.  He knows whatever it was isn’t found naturally in these woods.  He walks back to his van and looks in a few books to figure out what it could be.  When he finds nothing even remotely fitting the description of a ‘five foot skunk-like animal with a long tail,’ he turns to his iPhone and Googles it.  As he waits for a result, he walks back to the woods and continues looking for the creature.

“Finally,” he says, looking at his iPhone.  “What the fuck?”  

The only animal that vague fits his description is a Colobus monkey, and they sure as hell aren’t found in Austin, Texas, or even America for that matter.

He grabs his walkie-talkie without taking his eyes off the trees.  As he presses the button to call dispatch, the large, skunk-like looking Colobus monkey comes hurdling from the trees above him, its claws extended and teeth bared.  The last thought he has before the monkey slammed into him is,
Monkeys don’t make that kind of noise.

Daniel wakes up in the grass.  It is dark, he is dazed, and has no idea where he is.  His body is full of aches. His head is pounding, his muscles are sore.  Even his teeth are hurting, but the worst pain comes from his right shoulder.  He reaches over and feels the dried blood on his jacket.

He jumps to his feet as he remembers being attacked by something.  He looks around to make sure he is alone and that the creature isn’t still here. 
Colobus monkey
, he remembers.  The thing that attacked him sure as hell looked like the picture on his phone.

He suddenly realizes that he is standing in total darkness.  He looks around and sees where his van is parked near some of the houses down at the other end of the cove.

He looks at his watch.  11:47 P.M..

“What the fuck?” he says.  “I’ve been out cold for over nine hours.” 

He slides his shirt off his right shoulder to take a look at the wound.   Judging by the puncture marks, it must have bitten him deep.  He touches the bite and expects pain, but only feels a dull throb.

Great,
he thinks.
It’s infected and going numb on me already. 

He could understand passing out from the shock of being attacked by some large monkey, but for over nine hours?  He feels a warmth throughout his body, kind of like drinking hot coffee after being outside on a really cold day. 

As he stands there, the warmth inside of him turns into a faint hunger. 
I’m starving,
he thinks as he realizes he hasn’t eaten anything since noon.  As he walks back to the van, he hears the walkie-talkie on the ground over by where he passed out.  The dispatcher asks where the hell he is and if he is all right.