Love and the Undead (gxg)

Chapter 4

The second we entered the woods, Erebus turned into a completely different dog. Muscles tense and head down, he moves silently through the foliage.

"Holy shit." I whisper to Iris. "He's like a machine."

She just looks at me amused and puts a finger to her lips before concentrating back on the task at hand. We're following Erebus through the woods, trying to be silent so as not to scare away any potential pray. Suddenly he stops in his tracks at the edge of a drop off. We creep forward to see whats there and I almost gasp out loud. At the bottom, rummaging through the brush is a huge moose.

"Iris." I whisper. "There's no way we can let him try to kill that moose! Its huge!"

"Just watch." She replies simply.

Erebus is crouching at the edge of the small "cliff" and looks back at Iris for permission. She places a hand on his back so that he'll wait for a second. Then, she clicks her tongue and all the sudden its like he disappears. I look around trying to find him and dont see him until he shoots from the foliage down by the moose, and latches on to its throat. The moose makes a strangled sound and tries to knock him off but Erebus's jaw is clamped tight. Finally, the moose falls and Erebus just trots back to us happily, not even trying to eat the animal like I expected.

"He doesnt want to eat it?" I ask Iris confused.

"Oh, no doubt he wants to, but he wont until one of us gives him permission." She replies.

Erebus plops down on the soft grass watching us expectantly, not even panting. I just shake my head and start towards the moose. I tie a rope around the beck legs, and grunt as I start dragging it. This thing has to weigh at least 200 pounds. Iris offers to help but I decline because I like the struggle and physical exhertion. Its not often that something is this hard for me because I worked hard to get my body strong.

By the time we get back to the house I'm exhausted, but I know there's more work to do. I still have to cut up the meat into strips and cook as much as we can eat, as well as lay some strips out to dry into jerkey. I don't want to waste any meat because we'll need it when we leave. We. I guess I didnt even think about the possibility of Iris taking off on her own. I really hope she stays, I enjoy their company.

Huffing, I heave the moose's body onto a table in the back yard and begin skinning it. Iris is sitting on a rock across from me, silently watching the process. I've done this so many times now, I feel like I could do it with my eyes closed. My knife cuts clean through the meat, and in no time I've got steaks cut out for tonight, and smaller strips that I'll smoke into jerkey for the road. I call over Iris and hand her one of the raw steaks to give to Erebus for now. I'll make sure to cook him one with ours later. She let's out a whistle and seconds later here comes Erebus sprinting towards us like he knew there was going to be food. She laughs and throws it into the air when he's still a good 5 feet away and he leaps into the air and grabs it before it can hit the ground. I also saved a couple of the thicker bones for him to chew on but I'll give him those later. Man, I could really use a cigarrette right now. I pull out my pack and light one up, leaning against the side of the house.

"You want one?" I hold the pack out to Iris.

"No thanks I'm good." She replies.

I pull the pack away and put it back into my pocket. Iris walks over and leans against the wall next to me, asking what we're doing next.

"Well, we need to cook what we're going to eat tonight first thing. And then after that, we need to smoke the rest of the meat so that it wont go bad." I tell her.

"Okay." She says. "What do we need to do that?"

"I have an idea.. Will you go get the racks out of the oven please?"