Canid Undead: A Dog's Story

20 - Befalling

The four followed the others' startlingly short scent trail. It was mere seconds. They spotted a fairly small building, giant, disfigured Ferals glued to it.

"Well, what now?" Kyan said, despondent.

Ferals slowly clawed at a tree, a rotting squirrel in the twigs above. Juno observed this aloud. "Look, up there."

Tom stood there for a moment, thinking hard. Tez sat by Kyan, clearly spooked.

Kyan and Juno attempted to devise a rescue mission of sorts for some time. Tom came to a conclusion finally. Would it work?

"What if we kill that squirrel," he continued, nose pointed at the undead squirrel that rested on one of the tree's many twigs, "and paint its guts unto us? It could work as a way to blend in and get through those creatures."

Kyan grumbled. "If we have to."

Juno whinnied.

Tom and soon Juno nod, looking at Kyan expectantly. Tez spaced out, her eyes still wide with worry and utter panic.

Kyan prepared for flight, zooming up to the squirrel. She twisted its neck.

Snap!

The dog landed roughly, dropping the blown up creature.

Juno unsheathed a claw, ripping the squirrel open in moments. Tez flinched.

The four proceeded to put a bit of its blood here and there, wary of where it went.

Kyan took its intestines in a grip with her wing, slathering it over herself and the other three. Slosh. Slosh. Slosh... The noises were horribly disgusting, as you'd guess. Kyan gritted her teeth.

Finally finished, they prepped themselves for their mission.

They inched closer and closer to the building and the many, many deadheads that loitered among it. Kyan shot her wings out, shaping them into a shield. She covered Juno, Tez, and Tom, guiding them through the crowd. She was very zen, Tom could tell, very naturally zen. Must've been that grass we ate earlier.

Once they'd reached the door, Kyan put up her wings, maneuvering them in a such a way as to block off the Ferals. Tom looked back. Success.

Tom and Juno rested one ear on the door. They heard a mix of shuffling and nervous murmurs.

Tez's ears perked up. Moving her snout to the bottom of the door, she called for Merli anxiously.

The door cracked open. Tom, Tez, and Juno scurried in, Kyan following in last. Careful, her wings still erect, she backed into the building, two characters slamming the two doors shut immediately after they'd all entered.

One was a maned wolf, her legs long and limber. The other was an average-looking black horse. His hair was long and wavy; his locks shone under the light.

A little ways away, two humans sat under a blanket, both propped against a wall. One was sickly, the other smelling dreadfully of sadness, guilt, and fear.

As Tez's group conversed with the strangers, she wandered the place. It seemed to be built to keep safe. There were rooms with many beds, a counter before those many rooms. Water, human food, soft, furry humans' pelts, and likely pelts that the humans wore sat behind the counter.

In one room, Tez found two human skeletons in one big sleeping bag. In another room, Tez found three deceased, once extremely ill humans that'd bound themselves to one of the bed's frames. Returning, she overheard the sick human hacking furiously, their sentence breaking. Accordingly, the human was infected by their rat. The human was dying.