Pavlov's Dogs

• Title Page
  
• CHAPTER ZERO
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  
• CHAPTER FORTY
  
• CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  

Pavlov’s Dogs

D.L. Snell & Thom Brannan

Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

Copyright 2012 D.L. Snell & Thom Brannan.

www.PermutedPress.com

Cover art by Cospirazy Digital.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D.L. SNELL

Thanks to John Sunseri and Jacob Kier for their help brainstorming the original concept, and thanks to our awesome beta reader, author C. Dulaney. Also, I owe a debt of gratitude to my family: without you, none of this would be possible.

THOM BRANNAN

For Kitty, without whom my world would have no color, my sky, no sun or stars. 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart...

W.B. Yeats

THE SMELL OF SCORCHED OIL and metal came as a relief, considering the whole world was rotting under Paulo’s nose. He and Marie hid behind the remains of an overturned Blazer, its trailer twisted around the hitch.

“I can no hear them,” Marie said.

Normally at this point Paulo would have poked fun, lovingly, at her poor English. Normally.

He took in the dark, wavy hair framing her face, took in the strands of it stuck in her tears. Paulo decided to never make fun of her again, for as long as they lived.

Leaning down, he kissed Marie’s forehead. “
Amorcita
, if we can’t hear them, maybe they can’t hear us.” He took her hand and put it to his lips.

Marie smiled, knowing they were in bad trouble and he was going out of his way to comfort her, and loving him for it.

They moved together, stepping around the overturned Blazer.

Each of them had seen so much death in the past month.
In the past hour
. A whole world full of death and pain. So neither of them had paid any heed to the body pinned underneath the trailer, mainly because the corpse hadn’t been of the variety that moved. But now it
was
.

The crushed woman looked at them without any eyes and moaned. It didn’t take long for others to join in. They came out of nowhere and everywhere all at once: alleyways, shattered storefronts; one even jumped off a roof. Its legs shattered on impact, but even that was not enough to stop it.

At the sight and smell of the couple, arms shot up, jaws sprang open. Rheumy eyes zeroed in.

And the moaning.

The endless moaning.

Insistent. Tortured.

Like people dying at a hospital, groaning for help.

Paulo ran with short steps, giving himself shin splints so Marie could keep up. She could only run so fast. Not nearly fast enough.

He looked back, cursing their pursuers. Even the best horn players had to take breaths, yet these
things
could go on and on. Tireless. Ceaseless. Rolling out their monotonous one-note dirge.

Paulo steered them down an alleyway.

Suddenly Marie was falling down, dragging Paulo with her and crying out. She had rolled her ankle in a pothole.

No world, no public services. No DOT.

Marie sobbed as Paulo helped her up. He cringed and glanced down the alleyway. If any hungry corpses lurked ahead, they had just been called to dinner, certainly no thanks to the walking horn section behind them.

“
No puedo
, Paulo. I can’t go on.”

“No.” Paulo hunched and pulled her arm over his shoulders. “We keep on moving, and we do it together.”

Somewhere ahead, the forever moan was answered. By a single woman, from the sound of it. Otherwise, the alley seemed clear.

Paulo looked back, gauging the speed of the graveyard dragging itself along behind them.

Dead men ahead.

Dead women and children behind.

Paulo realized they didn’t have much of a choice.

He and Marie hobbled forward together, and Paulo’s eyes darted about, looking for
anything
they could call a shelter.

As if by some answered prayer, he saw a door ahead of them, slightly ajar. Paulo laughed once, and Marie lifted her head.

“What?”

He pointed out the door, and they altered their trajectory toward it.

Just ahead, a few dead men came around the corner. They instantly locked onto the couple.

“
Van a caer
,” Marie said as Paulo moved faster, dragging her along. “If we fall...”

“Then we won’t fall,” Paulo said.

He and Marie moved almost as fast as the men. Judging by distance and speed, he worried they would reach the door at the same exact time.

Then what?

Die in the street?

As they drew in, the dead men lunged, snapped, then ran into the metal door just as Paulo slammed it shut behind him.

“I didn’t hear it click.” He bent down to study the moving parts. “Baby, there’s no
latch
.”

With a wave, Marie directed his attention to the room in which they now found themselves. She leaned against one wall, and the other three walls weren’t far away. It was a small space, bare, completely empty: hall, tiled floor, a bit of debris that must have blown in with the wind.

“
¡Nada!
” she said. “No block, no nothing.”

“We should go farther—”

Thump.

The door jumped against Paulo’s shoulder. He jammed his foot against the base of it, into the crack, and pressed harder with his upper body. It felt as if he were holding back the pounding, swelling of the sea.

His cowboy boots slid. Not by a lot, but they slid.

“Marie,
por favor
...”

He didn’t have to say the rest. They had been together so long—on the run for so long—some things could be left unspoken.

Marie nodded, then limped from one wall to the next. It had looked like such a small space, but crossing it felt like three hundred feet. She practically fell into the far wall.

Sweating, whimpering, favoring her one foot, Marie shuffled over to the hallway.

“Here!” she said. “
¡Una puerta!
”

The door stood at the end of the short hall, leading into an adjacent room.

“Keep going!” Paulo called, shouting over the constant drumming of bones and dead skin on hollow metal. “Find us something, Marie,
por favor!
”

She reached for the knob, but hesitated. How many times had they gone through one door only to turn back, chased by the dead?

It didn’t matter though.

There was only one choice left.

Marie turned the knob.

Beyond, she saw another empty room, but the outer wall had crumbled to a pile of mortar and brick. She could see out into the alleyway, which was completely packed with the living dead, all trampling and climbing over each other like frenzied ants.

Marie put her hand over her mouth. So this was the force Paulo was holding back with a single metal door and a cowboy boot. And she knew the slightest sound would attract their wrath. Like
red
ants attacking a bug.

Luckily the dead didn’t notice her as Marie quietly closed the wooden door. She noticed that the knob
could be
locked, if only they had the key.

Marie hobbled over to Paulo, who met her eyes briefly as she leaned back against his metal shield. He blinked and shook his head.

When would it ever end?

Even though they knew the answer to that, they sometimes wished to just get it over with. But then their common sense got the better of them because sometimes even death was not the end.

Paulo started to ask what Marie had found, but stopped. The fresh tears on her face answered his question.

She took a shuddering breath. “This is it,
mi vida
.” She reached out and caressed the pocket of Paulo’s jeans. “Do you still have them?”

He lowered his head and pushed harder on the door. A dark look had come over his face. “I wish we still had the gun.”

Caressing his cheek, Marie smiled. “Do you still?”

“Yes,” he said, “I have them.”

Staring into his eyes, she dug into Paulo’s pocket and pulled out the small cardboard sheath.

“I lost the other one,” he said.

“But one is enough, no?”

He couldn’t wipe the grave expression off his face. A gun would have been much quicker. Just two bullets and it would all be done. But a single razor blade? He imagined having to cut her, watching the light go out of her eyes as her life leaked onto the floor of this filthy little room.

Paulo blinked hard and swallowed. He thought about cutting himself after, but while he was still dying, and too weak to move, the dead would finally get to them.

Paulo caught Marie’s hand and kissed her fingertips, tasting a bit of salt and grit.

“It is,” he said. “It’s enough.”

They leaned in to share one last kiss, and as their lips parted, they heard it. Something
new
.

“Is that a... wolf?” Paulo said.

The hairs on the back of Marie’s neck shivered on end. “
No se
, Paulo. It sounds like.”

The single howl rose into a chorus, and the beating on the door ceased. They heard dead meat slump against the metal and slide down. The relentless weight was lifted from the door, as if the deadly invaders had simply ceased to exist.

Paulo reached to open it.

Marie slapped at his hand.

“Eh, stupid.”

“I have to
see
.”

She fidgeted, glanced back toward the hallway that led to nowhere. “Just a crack,” she told him.

Paulo agreed.

He opened the door, just a crack, just enough to let in the light of some brand new nightmare.

Dark-skinned, hulking figures moved among the shambling dead, scything a path with their talons. Heads went flying, arms went flying. Corpses were launched into the air.

A large hairy beast, with fur like a golden retriever, leapt from car to car, homing in on the couple. Paulo’s eyes widened as the figure lunged.