He walked back inside and to his favorite room in the house, where his twin runt slept, and clambered beneath the boy’s furs. He buried his body in them, just as he’d burrowed beneath the leaves. He wanted to absorb the boy’s scent into his own fur. He wanted it to be all he could smell, ever again. As he inhaled deeply and his belly spread full beneath him like a fat pillow, the sorrow returned. If he left here, he knew, eventually the boy’s scent would leave him. Especially now that the heavy odor of the Storm of Teeth lay across everything. He fell asleep, buried in the furs and painting a permanent memory of the boy’s scent into his nose.
Dawn brought more of the creatures. He awoke to them moving through the house. As he had the night before, he inhaled deeply to stamp the boy’s smell on his brain one last time. Then he poked his nose from beneath the covers.
One of them dragged a foot aimlessly down the hallway as it passed the door to the boy’s room. Eventually, he knew, he had to move. The longer he delayed, the further away the boy was. There was no rope binding him now. He must move soon if he were ever to find the boy.
He stood, ready to hop down, and his stomach roiled with his earlier feast. The creature’s shadow hesitated. He stood stock still, the boy’s furs around his head and shoulders. The creature grunted as it turned to come back up the hallway.
Fear coursed through him. His brain prepared his body for combat. He wanted to growl, to warn the creature away, as he and the boy had warned the stray away. But they were too big, much bigger than the stray, and they never stopped until they fed. Even after they fed. His growl would only bring their attention to him, he knew.
He had only one choice, then.
Leaping from the bed, he darted through the doorway, ignoring the groan of hunger behind him. He waddled down the hall, last night’s binge weighing him down.
Shambling shadows appeared in the living room, attracted by the first creature’s frustration. One of them was small like the Baby, only crawling. It dragged itself across the floor of the living room toward the hall. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for a path to freedom.
The crawling creature reached for him, and he was tempted to nip at the hand like he had the Baby’s. But he thought before acting. He wasn’t sure what biting one of the creatures would mean. Would he change too? Would he become one of them, no matter who bit first?
He feinted left, then jogged right and past the crawler’s clutching hands. Another creature stood between him and the open front door, but he darted between its legs and tumbled outside.
Creatures moved randomly in the street as the others in the house turned to pursue him. He could see bodies of the members of other packs sprawled around in death. At least some of them had stayed dead, as they should.
Now that he was out in the open, it was easy to avoid the creatures. His leg muscles bested the weight of his stomach, and he moved from body to body, making sure they were not the boy or the other members of his own pack. When he was satisfied, he moved into the woods behind the neighborhood and began his search.
His strategy was simple. He hid when the creatures were around and tracked when they weren’t. But tracking the boy was difficult. His scent was almost impossible to find.
As the Storm of Teeth grew in ferocity and size, as its biters spread their plague, the stench of the dead was everywhere. They were everywhere. Always hungry. Always eating. His fur was up more often than it wasn’t. He began to feel awake, even while sleeping.
The first day he spent going to the places he and the boy had always gone. The dog park. The route they walked, where the stray had attacked them. The fishing hole. But each time he failed to find the boy, his sadness deepened, his desperation grew. For three days he searched and tracked and found nothing but danger and grief.
On the third night, a bat attacked him, and he ran into cover on instinct. The bat carried a disease like the creatures. He could smell it. Only this disease was older, one he knew to avoid without thinking. He knew that if the bat bit him, he’d die. Death would be agony. He knew this. And he’d try to spread the bat’s disease to others, too.
Maybe the plague of the creatures was like the bat’s disease, then. He’d seen it turn members of other packs rabid after they were bitten. They joined the Storm of Teeth and became spreaders of the plague. Deep in his bones, he knew if a creature bit him, the plague would take him too. The same as would happen if the bat bit him. At last, the answer to the question. Whether he bit a creature or it bit him, he’d become a plague carrier. And go mad.
He resolved in that moment never to become like them. Not just for himself, but for the boy too. What if he found the boy after becoming plagued? He knew he’d try and hurt him, try to spread the sickness. Like the bat had tried to hurt him. And hurting wasn’t love. Not even runt love. And he didn’t want to hurt anyone, not ever.
That night, he returned to the fishing hole and laid his head near the edge of the pond. Maybe the boy would come back here after all, he decided. Maybe he’d remember this place, their refuge on lazy afternoons.
As he rested, the thought suddenly came upon him: what if the boy had been bitten by a creature? He whimpered quietly. Missing his second self made him ache inside. But it hurt even worse to think of the boy as a plaguebearer. Drooling, ravenous, and spreading madness to others like the bat.
No longer a boy. No longer his boy. An un-boy.
His twin wouldn’t want that, he decided. The boy was just like him and would never want to hurt anyone. He’d only ever barked the once, when the stray had threatened them. He’d never barked again, not even when the Baby cried all the time and everyone else began to bark at one another, aggravated.
He and the boy shared the desire to never hurt another soul. Better to die a natural death than walk, eternally ravenous, through an unnatural un-life. He slipped into the waking sleep that now passed for rest.
Before dawn, a noise startled him awake. His eyes popped open. That night in the yard, he’d learned to look first without turning his head. But the noise was off to the left. His spinal fur was already up, alerted by his nose. His ears too had warned him before his eyes had opened. It was the shambling noise. The shuffling, methodical step… step… step of eternal appetite. The hungry, persistent tread of a creature that should be still and dead. He sniffed quietly, but the wind was moving in the wrong direction.
He turned his head slowly to see how many.
Only one.
The only one that mattered.
The only one that mattered at all.
He whined.
The boy’s clothes were shredded and dirty. His eyes were yellow and rheumy. His mouth was red and shredded, as if he’d gnawed his own lips away to stave off starvation.
The wind shifted and he caught the scent. It wasn’t the boy’s sweet smell, the smell of runt love and playtime and warm furs on cold nights. It was the rotting stench of un-life.
He couldn’t stop his sadness from becoming sound. His whine of fear became a moan of hope stolen away. Attracted by the noise, the boy turned and reached out for him.
He stood up. He barked. He didn’t care if other creatures heard. He wanted to warn this one away. To somehow scare the plague out of the boy and make it give his twin back to him. To be a champion again for his second self.