Trip

Part 3

She inched her way off the porch and closer to home. Maybe when she got there she would think of something, find someone to help. Cold grief made her stomach cramp, made her skin itch, made her light-headed.

She stumbled on a brick border. The world turned sideways, and then she felt cold mud against her cheek. Her wrist scraped against one of the bricks. She stared at her bare hands flopped like a fish gone belly-up on the ground.

Trip yelped and she raised her head. He no longer warded off the dogs, but was staring at her and trying to get back onto his feet. But he couldn't. His legs collapsed him flat to the asphalt.

The wind wiped her tears away. Trip whined.

The white dog bit his ear. Trip whined again, a lonely, heart-wrenching sound, and then snapped onto empty air.

"Coward," she whispered. "You're a goddamn coward."

She echoed his whimper, felt the loneliness he felt in the core of her, where she tried to hide it, bury it, kill it. He was just a dog. He was just a lonely, old dog. She was lonely too, and Trip had only ever understood her and cared about her and wanted to spend time with her.

She pried a brick loose, bloodying her fingertips. She held it in both hands like a cold loaf of bread and walked with jellied legs back to Trip.

The attacking dogs backed off a few yards so that all three stood in a row, facing her and Trip.

"Okay, Trip. Come on, get up. You can do it."

He struggled to obey and managed to put his weight on three legs before stumbling. The brown dog lunged after Trip. She lobbed the brick at it.

The brick clattered into a pile of leaves, missing the target. She kicked at the dog's head. Her shoe collided with its teeth. She felt a sharp pain as she watched its canine sink into her shoe, then the brown dog bounced away. Fear. Germs. Rabies.

She screamed and waved her hands. "Go away! Get out of here!" They didn't budge. She feared moving would incite them to strike as a group. Her foot throbbed. She wished for a stick. She should have known better, she should have done better than this. It had all seemed so right and appropriate and meaningful.

She pulled at Trip's collar to relieve some of the weight from his legs, and he rose unsteadily to his feet. She hunched over and helped him stumble a few feet closer to home. Just two blocks away, but it might as well be a hundred miles.

The three dogs stayed back, but she didn't know how much longer that might last. She would make it last for as long as necessary. She was going to walk her dog home and she wasn't going to let these three monsters stop her. She struggled to keep one hand free and help Trip bear his weight with her other hand.

And then she heard it: that damned gate banging on the metal garbage can.

The gate and fence were sturdy, the gate only unlatched. If she could get the two of them in there, she could lock out the three dogs and wait for help.

She swallowed a sob and set her muscles to moving Trip toward escape. She walked backwards so as to keep an eye and a throbbing foot ready. The trio of monsters kept pace, but did not close the distance.

She grasped the rough wood of the gate, stifled a cry as a large splinter pierced the pad of her thumb, and pushed Trip a few more feet into the yard. She slammed and latched the gate, and then collapsed on the gravel against it.

Three different snuffles hot on her neck drove her back to her feet. She double-checked the latch, checked the fence for gaps and loose boards, found none. The dogs continued to snuffle through the fence boards, and then, nothing.

No monsters. No wind. The silence made her ears ring.

Trip whined and thumped his tail. She sat cross-legged next to him and when he seemed about to struggle to his feet, she said, "It's okay, Trip," and moved closer so he could rest his gallon-sized head on her lap. She probed his wounds, searching for anything deep enough to need a tourniquet. A shiver shuddered through his body as he licked the knee of her pants She decided as soon as they were home she would clean him up and set him in front of the fireplace, inside the house.

She wiped tears from her eyes before the wind could whip them away. She had almost left him behind, but it wasn't fair to get left behind. She knew that now, and wasn't afraid to know it, or say it, or apologize for it.

It wasn't fair and Trip didn't deserve it, and neither did she.

_________

I hope you liked this story! If you enjoyed it, you might like the series I wrote about a group of runaways and a horrifying virus. You can read the first book in the Feast of Weeds series here on Wattpad. The book is called GERMINATION. 

Feast of Weeds is a post-apocalyptic series where the runaways are the heroes, the zombies aren't really zombies, and you can't trust your memories--even if they're all you have left.