Join the new world

Part 1.

BD knew before I did. His name is a combination of (usually) Best Dog and (occasionally) Baddest Dog. If you know dogs, you understand that they know things we humans do not.


It was around midnight, just a week ago (only that long?). We had our first really hard freeze, with temps down to single digits Fahrenheit. I had just fed the fire in the woodstove and dampered it down for the night.


BD suddenly jumped straight in the air from his bed and howled like I’ve never heard him howl. Then he set up a ferocious barking and would not stop.


He has three barks. One is for friends (human or canine). One is for annoyances like the neighbour’s cat, or the local coyotes coming too close to his territory. And one is for real trouble.


My usual response to the third bark is to grab my hatchet and my flashlight and go outside with BD. But it just didn’t make sense to me: Too cold for burglars, bears already asleep in the mountains, nothing around to draw a mountain lion.


So I blamed his bug-out on a nightmare. Foolish, foolish human…






Part 2.

The next couple of days got weird. The town I live near is small, and people talk about everything and everyone. So I don’t go there much, though I know pretty much everyone.


I got some food in the little co-op market. The usual people were there, and they said hi and all the usual weather chitchat. But there was something going on; there was something big they weren’t saying, and they looked at everyone- including each other and me- with fear and suspicion.


I figured I’d hear all about it soon enough and went home. Early the next morning, we I heard our page tone on the fire radio and put on my boots while I listened. “Manzanita Fire and EMS, Central Dispatch. Fire and EMS needed at xxxx County Road xxx. Stage and wait for law enforcement.”


We hate to hear that last bit. It could mean anything or nothing. I went. We staged and waited, with a bit of gallows humour to pass the time. A county car with two deputies showed up. Tony, who I know from a few traffic accident callouts, told us to stay in the vehicles until they gave the all-clear.


Yep, weird and weirder. Tony went in the trailer, came back out, puked by the stairs, then came and told us to stand down, we were dismissed.


One thing I thought was, “Someone in there is obviously dead.” Then I thought, “Tony doesn’t puke. At anything.” That was our last callout.







Part 3.

The next morning when I went out with BD, it was silent, but he was agitated, sniffing all around with his hackles up. We walked down to the arroyo that forms part of the driveway, and BD went nuts, barking and running across the arroyo toward my nearest neighbour’s house.


“Shit, I hope Stevie’s all right.” I followed BD up the track, wishing I’d brought my phone or my radio. I stopped short when I saw the arm.


It was just an arm, but it wasn’t Stevie’s, or any normal arm. It was hard, but light, like it was carved out of balsa wood. But it was flesh- I could see the shreds of skin where it was ripped from the shoulder. But there was no fresh blood, only a gooey, gluey, dark red stickiness.


It’s funny how your mind works, sometimes. I flashed back to a slightly drunken dinner with friends, when we’d gotten on the topic of what apocalypse we should expect.


Daniel cracked me up, swearing it would be zombies. “Remember, I forget who said it, if you can think of it, sooner or later it’ll happen.” Heaven help me, I had laughed my arse off at that.


Both my doors are bolted. I’ve boarded over the windows. The house is adobe and the walls are over a foot thick. All possible weapons are close at hand. We have food and firewood for maybe a week, but I don’t think we’ll need it. I hear the scratching and grumbling while the dog howls, all night, for the last 3 nights.


I saw what they did to Stevie. It won’t be long now…