STAGE ZERO

           “Thus far any and all vaccinations attempts have proven unreliable.”

                                       -Sentinel News Network, seven years ago 

          We fretted over the Wavering up North, but it was the Skulks who shook the world. Same creature to a degree, different name based on region. I felt in my marrow we had escaped the hell of New Jersey. She died, from Jersey City all the way down to Cape May. Thousands upon thousands fled below the Mason Dixon to keep our children safe, keep hope alive as the internet glitched from orbital gloom and highways congested.

          But dogs are everywhere. Dogs, and people.

          I hear DC and Virginia are crowded with desperate people. People with guns and fight or flight mania. Hearing the military had to step in sobered me up. Middle class America is gone. We’re a shattered mirror.

          Conspiracy nuts go on forever about how it all began. The loudest wrap their red threads around Livo, an Asian pet care company of all things. Their Groom Soothe was popular for five years. Everybody used it after animal bathing. Removed excess shedding. Animal dander seemed like a thing of the past. Asthmatics and allergy sufferers found relief. 

          But the same folks who bleached their veins were hot to blame a new product that came from a foreign power and was ‘too good to be true’. 

          I don’t know and don’t really care. It’s here and that’s enough. I shot and flamed whole mounds of dogs. Demolished kennels. Watched people sob and spit on me. Liv said we needed a change right after the Wavering flipped over to affect humans.

          Columbia, South Carolina had beauty but little else to my eyes when we arrived two years ago. Olivia had the shakes and gave up guns. The kids were unhappy but the forest on the drive down offered a glint of peace. We found a house, sort of a bungalow on Center Street in West Columbia across the Congaree River from the old looking streetlights on the bridges that led into the state’s capitol. Whitecap waters. Nature bumping against the solitude of a small city. 

          We had a year and a half. Peace. The National Guard up in Rock Hill kept watch. Liv got the kids into DVDs and VHS tapes, hooked on the adventures of long dead movie stars and musicians who might as well be by now. Or worse. Pleasant days turned brief echoes amidst the screams of what awaited outside.

          Six months back, the Guard sent out Water Alert, first one south of Maryland. 

          No one could go outside during rainfall. Mandatory. Dogs were beginning to stare. Two days after a squall rolled up and over the Midlands and dogs were washing down the Congaree. Guard sent down a dozen trucks plus a hundred personnel to lock things down. Too late. Canines were wandering from home, slipping out of their leashes from weight loss, wobbling. Wavering. Biting and scratching. So many crying, lonely people tried to save their furry family members. 

          Columbia had been skulked. 

          I had to take up the offense again, but Hell, I had no idea. Who could?       

          This is where we are now.  

                                                 STAGE ONE

          “We are receiving very little, I repeat, very little media, news or social, coming from the following countries: Estonia, Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey…”

                                            -whathappenedjustnow.com, 2 years ago

          The kids and Liv were holed up in West Columbia, too far to hold. I sat in the house of Elmwood Funeral Home, set in a gorgeous cemetery that no longer offered much peace for the dead. Duty Bound, basically a streesweeping militia crew, called and I answered. They grew while the Guard shrank and Armed Forces faltered. Long hours. Fast food. Lots of goofy boys trying to play Army getting in over their heads.

          “I volunteered.”

          “Ma’am?” Cade Sterling looked at me with a barren expression. His normal state, a blank young man whose greatest trait was blind loyalty. He had more guns on him than a vigilante, a level of overkill comforting only to someone in this situation. 

          I remember when we talked about getting rid of them. People killing people was abominable. I thought this while holding three firearms on my person and a bag of ammunition. Bullets and energy bars, vitamin water and bandages.

          I stopped flipping through personal records of funeral plots and glanced around. Sterile surroundings. Thick curtains. Air conditioning on modest hum. “I said I volunteered for Skulk detail.”

          “Good you did. More’n half the Midlands is still traipsin’ through life like ain’t a thing’s gone wrong. Keeping the mutts indoors. Burying bodies.”

          “Which is why we’re here,” I noted and, on that statement, moved to the nearest window. I bit my lip, grabbed the shotgun. “Speaking of.”

          He was on his feet and right behind me as I stomped out the front door. Outside a vast expanse of green glory, marble stone effigies to the dead went on forever. You could look around and almost forget this place slithered along a city with small skyscrapers. Heat and bugs slapped us silly. Sun shone scornful so the sunglasses came down off my cap. Not much time to miss the AC. 

          A man wandered through the cemetery, arms swinging slow from side to side. Head bent, neck swollen. He had on a black suit, one wet even from this distance.

          “Smith was right,” Cade spat out a hock of tobacco, “Wavering. Damn it’s unnatural motion. Like he’s limp, washin’ in the creek.”

          “Stay calm. It’s one. But for every one there’s a mutt lying in wait. You take him head on. I’ll flank right.”

          We went into the work fast, a boon to us being together for so long. He walked fast, practically a sprint, while I took it slow, looking behind every headstone, fenced in tomb and mausoleum, gun barrel out, looking for canines.

          “Hey!” Cade yelled, drawing the Wavering’s eyes his way. The man. No, the Used-to-Be-Man, reared up on the balls of his feet. The mouth opened. Stomach bloated. Mouth opened up, showing off two rows of teeth. The front were human, but fractured, some hollow. The rear were long, conical. Fatal. 

          He charged, in a haphazard gait, back hunched over, arms flowing backward.

          Cade pulled up a Glock and let her cry out four times. The Wavering took blows in the right knee, left shoulder, and the jaw. Wavering hit hot asphalt, bestial squealing. It flopped about as Cade ran up to finish the work.

          “Wait!” I yelled out, but he was stubborn from that damnable loyalty to get the job done. I should have shutup. Maybe. Maybe not. For right after, the mutt came up out from its rest area behind an old headstone. 

          She, I chose to term the thing as a girl, might as well have been a revenant from old stories. I’d never seen a Wavering mutt so decayed. Skin on bones, literally. Eyes nothing but black holes, lips curled up to show parched gums and bleeding teeth. The fur pale as clouds. I guessed she was a Doberman, but hard to tell.

          She leaned right, left. Hissed like a serpent. Cade caught her on the periphery but was too busy locking sights on the twitching man body. 

          I jogged up, never been one for the humidity, and let off a bang. I missed. She turned the skeletal head to glance my way. Sniffed. Then, she ran at Cade while he took another three shots at the body.

          I ran, firing on the move, missing, cursing up a storm. She-mutt never lost her speed despite the thinning, and she was on Cade right as he put her in the Glock’s sight.       

         She skid to a halt and foul fangs on a blind head found flesh and clamped down as Cade screeched and began to flail his afflicted arm all around. You could hear the erratic sucking sounds as she began to drain Cade dry. I tripped on a broken, overgrown headstone right before I got her in my sights and fell while firing. 

          Thank God it hit home. Blew her sideways. Didn’t even cry out, just kept hanging onto Cade while her bottom half dry split like month old roadkill.

          Big toe throbbing. I got up. Reloaded while two beings grunted and fought. 

          As the Sun burned the day, I blew off the mutt’s head.

          “Damnedest thing,” Cade said mumbled, sweaty, sinking to his knees. I reloaded and shot him through the heart. Patrolled the cemetery. By sunset I had the incinerator going in Elmwood and watched it scorch while I smoked one Camel after another and welcomed insomnia back into my nights.

                                             STAGE TWO

          “Cloud cover over the Northern Hemisphere has increased by a factor of two, then three. Many have sited this phenomenon as the source of the current woes. But now, sources in the UN can no longer deny that, beyond the blockage of satellite signals, precipitation plays some as yet unidentified role in the spread of the Wavering pandemic. They now urge everyone to not only avoid the now common heavy rains, but also mornings of fog and dew, until proper preventative measures can be attained.”

                          -translation from Chinese social media site, 1 year ago

          “So it’s done?” I asked my phone. You could get local service with the rise of HAMlet digital radio expansion bouncing off somebody’s VPN since the atmosphere had given smartphones the middle finger. Internet was painfully slow, like the AOL days and your phone tended to whiz-bang-banshee squawk while you waited for updates. Good thing outlets still work down this way. New Jersey had to go all solar right before we got out, a dicey move under these skies. 

          Email inbox was full. No more spam or ads at least. National Guard warnings. Lockdowns. Midlands body count at fourteen thousand. Population down thirty-eight percent as folks fled to Atlanta, Orlando, or a ‘pity ship’ bound for a random spot in the Caribbean. Which hospital was overfilled and best avoided. Seen it all, heard it all. But the post I inquired of should have moved me more than it did.

          126, 378, & BLOSSOM STREET BRIDGES DETONATED AT 0640AM

          West Columbia had been cut off. Sure, an adventurous soul might brave the rapids to cross the ravine separating the burbs and country from the capital, but few would. Everybody feared water these days. Liv and Bobby and Moira were over there. I was here. Just me, set adrift in a dwindling island of strangers.

          I sat inside a defunct food joint on Hampton Street as warm, unflattering, troublesome rain flooded the outdoors. Doors and windows locked. I made a pork sandwich slathered in Carolina barbecue sauce. So good. I didn’t wipe my lips clean. Liv flashed though my mind, those casual, smiling scoldings she would give me about my eating habits or lack thereof. She’d bust a gasket seeing how much worse I got. 

          Her emails were full of photos. Bobby cutting his own hair, and Moira’s when Liv wasn’t looking. The bungalow house. A new cake baked every Sunday. I read every one but all I looked for were signs of mutt burnings, pet wakes, where were they building pyres for the deceased, and so on. Liv evaded all those. Never answered my questions on those matters. But she did ask me why I rarely asked about the kids, or how she might be holding up. 

         With ‘what else can we do’ as out motto, why bother?

          I recalled once being the softie in the relationship. Was that me though?

          I dodged her inquiries just as I never told her my twelve-years of freedom from smoking ended at Elmwood and how I had backslid into a comfortable two packs a day. Storefronts weren’t getting many customers, and Guard air drops provided ever more supplies. Packs were free most times. Camel cigarettes were my secret affair as the Duty Bound higher ups reassigned me to some volunteer guy over here, two survivalist gals over there. All died. 

          Too much wandering around. Looking for kills, get them before they get you swelled head thinking. I learned in Jersey. Enjoy the stillness. Let them come out on their own. Then get them. 

          Paul State. Norma Fields and Stephanie Jackson. Folks living on Busby Street. I came and went in tall fires and tears, Mets ballcap and filtration mask on, checking the air dropsites. Marking off locations. Bodies found. Pyre set. Two mutts Sunday. Fifteen Monday. Husband and wife tried to suck me dry Wednesday. Clear. Clear. Clear.

          I taught Liv how to bake thirteen years ago on our fifth date. We were drunk and staggering into her place (my place?) after a night in Newark raving at QXT’s. Doubt I could care enough to pour chocolate chips into a bowl nowadays. If you’re not safe you can’t enjoy leisure cooking. And I can’t live with myself sitting at home while the mutts are skulking. Besides, I’m good at it. Most aren’t.

          The sandwich filled me. I moved over, slowly, to a window to tweak one of the blinds open. Columbia had a hundred shades of sullen gray, potholes turned to ponds. Peaceful, in the way a riptide appears right before it drags a swimmer out into the depths and pulls them under. Inundation pounding the roof.

          My ears caught splashing, and a hand was on the shotgun by instinct. Running.

          “Who the hell?” Nobody, and I mean nobody went out in the rain anymore. Nobody knew what linked it to the mutts or their sick human buddies, but the fact remained. Not long after the first dogs went foul and mutt became a word only for those of Man’s Best Friend after they turned sour, the rains hit hard. Roll in climate change and the lack of God in our lives with the pet grooming conspiracies. Come the rain, the mutts would come crawling out from wherever they rested, staring at windows. Sickly. Sad. Like they were silently begging their old pals to come out and play.

          Those first weeks many did, only to get bitten, fumble, fall into rising waters, only to rise again. Wavering. People didn’t get skeletal like the mutts, but seemed to go around, lost, acting like beasts when they caught sight of a living person. Yeah, living. The science on the Wavering claimed the dogs and humans were lacking organ functions save for the heart and liver, each set to minimal. 

          But both mutt and waterlogged person loved blood. Suckling like newborn piglets. Vacant eyed. Always wet and moldy. After a flood you’d find dozens of humans wavering in the streams and rivers, so many waterlogged weeds that never sank. Drifting to and fro until the eyes opened back up and new teeth sprouted. Most had gone out looking for their dog.

          So who would be so stupid as to run in the Dead Rain?

          “Children!” I damn near choked. Four little girls, at least with enough sense to wear raincoats and boots and masks, came down the street shushing one another. They were running hard but made it inside a house across the street.

          A minute passed. I lit another Camel, tense. Then the mutts ran in, boney as hell while soaked, long past breed identification. Nine of the little buggers. Three ran ahead, two stopped but slipped and skid on the wet asphalt. One slowed, then meandered up the steps of the house and began sniffing at the front door. Three more came across a disabled crow flailing in a puddle. Each took a piece to sip from. 

          What were those kids even doing outside? Half a chance they’ve got the Wavering now. I left why and how behind me years ago. Only cause and effect mattered. Rain brought mutts. Mutts spread the sickness, even though the rain itself tended to make those caught in it weak. Soft. Other.

          Can’t save them. They’re done. I tweaked the blind closed.

          Bobby cutting hair. Moira hating her very uneven, punk rock ‘pixie’ look. 

          Study shows children are less likely to catch rain-induced ‘Wavering’ degeneracy

          “Dammit,” I whispered.

          My duty is to rid the world of this. Mutts were patrolling, sniffing, hissing. Sometimes they got slick and jumped into windows headfirst over and over until they shattered. Sometimes their human revenant pets swaggered in turning doorknobs, swelling up, lips puckered in advance for sucking.

          I gave up the shotgun for a M&P Sport II for ammo count and accuracy. Smith & Wesson were the only men who never failed me. Exercising extreme caution, and hoping heavy rainfall dulled any sounds made, I turned the latches, pulled up my mask and half opened one window. The air smelled old and musty. It had been this way since the first Dead Rain what, six and a half years back? No refreshment. Only the scent of regret, as if the sky perished and the rain washed its decaying stench down to be hidden in the soil. 

          Sight lined up, I took out the mutt at the door. The other eight slowly came to awareness of my position and began to turn. Thank God they’re slow at a distance. Took down three more before one of them wised up and began to hiss and arch its very visible spine. 

          “You won’t make it past–”

          A soggy pale hand grabbed the rifle barrel and pulled it down with enough force to crack the window.

          A thousand curses went through my head but I stayed silent as some lumbering person, double teeth and all, swiveled into view. She was ghastly, torso puffy and splitting. I could make out new scars forming from the inside out. Blood clots welling up on tight skin. I wrestled my weapon from her grip but fell backward on the floor. 

          Now a mutt sniffed at the door, scratching, whining like it missed me while the lady Wavering swung her arms in through the opening. Her head got so knotty it looked like it was about to rupture. 

          “Sss sss sss!” it kept trying, failing, to speak. I crawled back, let the rifle talk for me. I blew off the left side of her head. Body jerked, pulled the rest of the window out along with a piece of the frame.

          I thought I had split her open. True, the ear and skin went to Heaven, but the head was whole. Like it healed instantly.

          The thing had a head inside its head. Cracking, popping, splitting, growing mangled fur and a new ear. Longer, pointed, paler pink and hairy inside.

          As she recovered, I crawled away in abject fear. What the hell was going on? Mutt at the door, Wavering crawling in on hands sloughing off flesh. She was disgusting, nasty, skin just so much old wet clothing tossed aside.

          The new her had fur, claws ripping through stunted fingertips. Eyes black as pitch. Human teeth fell off with the lips and nose. She was no longer a human or a revenant. Her body steamed and the whole place reeked.
          A wolf in man’s clothing. Wet red fur stuck to hide. Eyes still lost and dead. The chest expanded while the new abdomen dropped the swell in favor of lean, predatory muscle. Swear to God she gained six inches just standing still. The bottom half remained dressed, wet and dirty, in a raggedy skirt and apron over a pair of split flats.

          Out of her mouth a tongue issued forth, one conical and dry and, hollow tipped. 

          It was then I heard the mutt at the door fall over, whine, and, I guess, expire. Something happened then and there, a transfer or evolution or delusion I don’t know. Can’t recall. What happened next is a series of hysterical flashes.

          Screams. Mine, I think. Unloading the entire Sport II. A wolf, woman, jumping clear across the whole space while she got torn apart. Keys to a jeep out back. Driving hard, pedal to the floor.

          The bump. A crash. Airbag. The dark.

                                             STAGE THREE

         “Reports are coming in from across the country that those humans infected by blood loss from mutt attacks who endure more than a few weeks are metamorphosizing a more resilient and lethal form of the disease. This unexpected and irregular occurrence makes them faster, more violent, larger, and clearly no longer human. This is not a drill. Forgo the damp, the dogs, and the Wavering. Avoid at all costs. Report any sightings of what some call wolves, werewolves, or Dogmen.”

                                           -Nightly News DC, broadcast two months ago

          The left forearm remains in a cast since whatever happened on Hampton Street. It’s not healing right after eight weeks. Four doctors can’t figure it out aside from fervent promises that I’m not turning into a bloodsucker. Slim relief. I stare at an old World War II jeep. We’re in the South Carolina Military Museum, refashioned into a makeshift hospital and refuge. They say all other hospitals went up in smoke. Grand pyres.

          I had reported the new change in the Skulks, Wavering, whatever. But I don’t remember. They keep telling me I did good work. I envision those four girls washing away in a deluge, eyes unblinking, smelling of dog, and failure overwhelms me.

          I’ve been wandering this place looking at the past while outside the city grows more feral by the day. ‘Rapid unexpected therianthropic mutation’ gets tossed around now by those with degrees. Mutts suckle human prey. Prey goes undead. Undead become werewolves or Dogmen while the mutt dies off. A new class of communicable illness no one can comfortably situate into a medical box. 

          Senseless is another one. Nobody can adjust to this. The dogs and relatives were bad enough, until you learned that a few shots would put them at ease. But the twist, these hybrids, require a lot more ammunition and a headful of prayers to maim just one.

          My emails were stuffed, most from the CDC, UN, some friends back home who were surviving inside the car and truck walls of Newark. Liv’s came in the dozens, furious, frightful. Relieved. She and the kids drive to Walmart and shop on clear days, Work at the hardware store is exhausting. Everybody comes in demanding more chains, paneling, nails, and power drills. Sometimes she drives Moira and Bobby to the Congaree and they–

          Imagine they can see me fighting the good fight. Until the Guard chases them off, anyway.

          I wake up and my face is wet and I freak out for every reason except the obvious. The bungalow is in my head as I bounce in and out of crisis meetings, hold the hands of scared, lonely, injured children. There is a calm around me despite the uptick in threat but it buzzes around. My mind is on alert. It knows no peace. The world is a permanent fog and only Columbia exists and anything else throws off my aim damn this arm!

I hit a patrol every now and again, in an M1145 Humvee, taking potshots at mutts. Roads are full of old skin eaten by crows, cockroaches, and rats. Days grew quiet. Soldiers tell the hybrids have taken to night raids now. The game changed the rules.

         Week nine spills over. Can’t go home because we’re so short on personnel. Fog from Sunday morning into Thursday afternoon and all throughout, a growing cacophony of graven howls from unseen shapes. We’re in a firefight for the survival of the whole damn museum an hour after sunset. The hybrids were out and organizing. Pack mentality. Doctors loaded patients into carriers, cars, vans, anything out back they could get their hands on and I was pushed off the front lines and into medical assistance due to my arm.

          I had just secured a little boy into the backseat of a humvee when I heard snarls and men screaming from the front of the museum. Broken glass. Assault rifles. A soldier forced me into the vehicle and he got in the driver seat, flooring the thing in reverse.

          Wolfmen and women burst through glass double doors of the parking garage, tongues searching the air for a taste of red. They were huge in the upper body while gangly, malnourished below the ribs, feet stunted and thickly clawed. Their eyes were vacant, polar opposite to the savage, unhinged flailing of the bodies. Sniffing and moving sideways as if they were blind, the arms still held a touch of the wavering effect.

         The humvee screeched out onto National Guard Road, hard swerve, heading southwest.

          “Where are we going?” I demanded.

          “Over the river! That was our last outpost! Columbia’s done for!” 

          We caught sight of blitzes of gunfire as the medical caravan rode away. The Military Museum was a haze of desperation. A helicopter landed on the roof only to be swarmed by retreating men and beasts who could leap over a full story in height. Some of them were so chaotic they jumped too high, right into the rotor blades and the last escape vehicle tilted, slid off the edge. 

          Flames licked the museum as overhead clouds revealed a Moon fat and satisfied with its fullness.

         “This thing have a fording kit?” I asked, mind on the matter.

         “They all do.  Backup plan in case the walls fell.”

          By the time I thought to ask this we had reached the end of National Guard Road, nothing more than a field stretching into the woods around the western border of the Congaree. There she was, swollen from so much rain and white and frothy against a mash of rocks and the night sky. Humvees dropped down steep, slow, splash. 

          Murder on the back and the arm for sure, but we crossed into that other world as a tiny portion fo Columbia burned and howled.

          “Can you drop me off?”

          “What!” the driver yelled. “What if the skulks are on our tail?”

          I looked at the boy, knocked out by whatever drug they gave him. “If I die tonight, let me die at home with the people Iove.”

          “I’ve got orders!”

          “Please.” I caught his eyes in the rearview and he saw mine. I felt tears streak my cheeks. 

          He drove up the ravine and stopped dead at a Guard checkpoint. West Columbia had barbed wire all over like the Somme. Gun emplacements. Good for the old Wavering, pretty much useless if the hybrids came calling.

          The humvee drove up the way and turned left onto Center. There was the bungalow, sitting pretty, untouched by plague and funeral parades. 

          Liv came out on the step in her robe, hair under a wrapped towel. God. Those full lips and lively brown eyes. 

          “Why are you zooming up here braking hard like a maniac? Is it evac time? Is it–?” She had a mug in her hand but it shattered on the ground as I exited the vehicle.

          “Hon.”  She stated it. No pulling the wool over her eyes. Despite my bad arm, the weight loss, bags under the eyes. She knew.

          “Who’s out there?” asked a male voice now deepened, followed by a girl’s gasp.

          Bobby peaked out, half a man now. Moira behind him, hair a tad longer, face stern.

          “You. You’re home now. For good?”

          “Could be brief,” was what I would have said, if my kids hadn’t hugged the life out of me. Their warmth, holy hell their sweet love sank in deep and I absorbed it all. On the outside–

          “You’re not glad to see us?” Moira asked, eyes soft.

          “I’m,” I began, “exhausted is all.”

          Liv, perfect as ever, let them have their time with me and guide me to the front door, bombarding me with questions about death counts and who snitched on who the most. Liv’s expression was, best as I could determine, ecstatic.

          I told myself not to bring up how little time we probably had left as the humvee tore off down Center Street. 

          The first two days I hardly spoke after annoying the kids to walk to the gas station (once the All Clear sounded) to get me some smokes. Liv frowned. They watched me. I observed the sky and tuned HAMlet for reports of anything crossing the Congaree. Day Three I remembered to eat, drink coffee on the front step with Liv who never pressured me, except to wrinkle her nose and gag over the Camel fumes.

          I kept the shotgun on my lap. Stayed awake most evenings. Days turned into weeks of remarkably sunny days and flowers blooming. We had forsythia in the front yard and star magnolia bloomed bright and fleshy brilliant. I watched my love home school the kids, these strangers in my little ones taller bodies, sat on cushions that forgot my shape. Ate the best soul food on the East Coast but found it bizarre. Quaint. Safe.

          On the third week I explained the change in the skulks, to which Liv only asked, “But it can’t get any worse, right? I mean, they never crossed the river and nights here are silent.”

          I stared off down the street. “We’ll see.”

          She bolted up. “Ah. Water Alert. Weather folks said the rains are coming back tonight.” She studied the graying sky. “We had some beautiful days though. Perfect days with you here. I know you’re not the same, but you came back. We’re whole again.” 

          I could report on those days, but they lie outside of the parameters I set for myself. Duty. Someone with more panache can wax poetic about community or keeping the faith. I’m just a grunt nursing a forearm in bandages that swells and works but never heals right.

          What I will end this report on, however, is the following day. We were in the usual Dead Rain alert mode. Doors and windows sealed (Live used cellophane for extra security). I had the shotgun and had shown the kids how to use handguns much to their dismay. We had one curtain half open, just to see Center Street soak, see if we might catch a sign for ill or good.

          The rain had lightened overnight from downpour to drizzle. Swirls of unnatural mist danced down the street. A low voice on the radio told of the emptying out of Chicago and how Russia went dark. But the Brits were treating the Welsh and Cornish and Scots as equals and formed a unit of nations fighting back against the storm. I guess it’s never too late.

          It was then that the mutt appeared, hollow and sunken in, spine caved. She whined, seeing us right away. Moira hugged herself from grief. Bobby readied his gun. I sat silent. Wait for them to move. Then, do them in. 

          “Wait. Look. What’s that?” Liv asked in a whisper.

          I rose from my chair and squinted. Hard to see through the wet screen, but yes, mutt brought a friend. A sickly, scrawny tabby cat stood nearby, also looking at our window. Crying. On the telephone line across the street, a few crows landed, feathers dropping off them. Eyes glazed over egg white. 

          Liv walked away, hands over her mouth, face pallid. After everything, the cat broke her mold. “I don’t understand is it getting worse or better it’s not just dogs anymore why I can’t figure it out somebody has to tell me because I can’t decipher it is there any hope left–”

          I reached for her hand. I felt the veins pulse hot and saw bewilderment in her eyes.

          “Remember when we had Betty, pretty kitty, all fun in a bundle of gray fur?” Liv snorted. “Good grief, I cried for weeks after she got hit by that drunk driver. Can you imagine if she was alive now during this and…sorry.” She paused and fought for control. “What does it mean?”

          I bit my lip. Cocked the shotgun, and rested my forehead on hers. A million bits of consolation or chastisement, jokes and nonsense struck the front of my mind. The kids brought out masks and raincoats. Skulks closed in. Only one made sense as I ordered Bobby to crack the door open so we could put in a little work. 

          “This is where we are now.”