Old Dog, New Tricks

I’m looking into the bus-sized crater that used to be a home for old folks like me. Mindless Ones are lumbering around at the bottom, some crawling and dragging their entrails. It was only months ago that I fled to survive.

I sat in my rocking chair. Those days, my favorite thing to do was watch the bombs hurtling across the sky like shooting stars. That night was no different, except there were thousands of shooting stars. My sweetheart Hank, in spite of the fragility of a man pushing ninety, tried to pull me away, yelling, “We’re gonna die, woman!”

I folded my hands across my lap and turned to him, saying, “What’s the use, honey? We’re already knockin’ on heaven’s door. Besides, the orderlies will put up a fuss again. You don’t want that, do you?” Shouting and high-pitched inhuman shrieks sounded down the hall. I thought it was Agatha and Robert going at it like high school seniors at a drive-in. Hank persisted. I rolled my eyes. “Fine, fine hon. I’ll put my face on.”

I’m the one standing here today. Hank is six feet under because of natural causes, not a Flesh Ripper attack or a Raider ambush if you can believe it. In old age, you get used to death, so the apocalypse is a walk in the park. I look at the six monsters stuck for eternity in that hole and figure I might as well have a little fun. There are no Peacekeepers this side of Portland to give me a hard time about it. I pull my 1911 out and start firing. I imagine I’m at the 1957 county fair throwing darts at balloons. I’m a good aim even with a jittery hand. Heads erupt with red goo like a teenager popping pimples or a kid biting into jelly-filled candy.

I spot a red-headed Mindless One wearing scrubs with a badge that says Teddy. I recall that he was a mean boy, so I shoot his limbs into bloody pulps before finishing with his head. He looks like a prairie dog that was ran over by ten big rigs by the time I’m done with him. I fire once more only to hear a click. Fuck, I’m out of bullets. Looks like I’ll be making another trip down to the Hub. I unclasp my fanny pack and dig around. Four coins - two quarters, a penny, and a dime. That might seem like a small purse, but these days, all that matters is that you have coins; four coins is enough for five bullets. I cup my hands around my mouth and yell as loud as I can, “Asswipes!” I laugh at my shaky voice and walk toward the highway on-ramp.

“Breaking news! Geriatric woman escapes from nursing home, walks down I-5. Details at 11.” I used to report such stories on 8 KGW, but that was a long time ago. There isn’t much to do on long walks into town, so reminiscing about simpler times, like when I was a pretty woman five years out of undergrad whose only worry in the world was reading a teleprompter correctly in an engaging tone and whether the man I was going see that night would wine and dine me or set me up, is often the best way to remind myself I’m not a Mindless One yet.

I come across a brand-new - new before they stopped making them, of course - luxury sedan half-wedged underneath the storage container of a semi-truck and can see the rotting mangled bodies of both the driver and passenger. I couldn’t scavenge the thing even if I wanted to, and believe me, an old lady can always benefit from a few extra coins. On the other hand, the abandoned truck cab at the other end of this travesty appeared worth the time to stop and take a gander. I approached the driver’s side door and peered into the window. The window was rolled down.

I couldn’t see anything inside. I opened the door and looked around the driver’s seat. The glove box was ajar like somebody, maybe a lazy police officer, opened it after arriving on scene and forgot to close it. A large brown object pounced on me before I had time to see what it was, I thought it was a pony from when I was a girl, but then I realized what it was as it licked my face: a dog, and not just any dog, one of those golden retrievers. It circled around to the back of the cabin to the little bed where a pale little girl lay in a fetal position with her limbs tucked inward toward her body and eyes closed. I knew she wasn’t dead because she coughed. She looks like the daughter of one of my former Intro to Journalism students at UCLA, except this one isn’t Asian. She opens her hazel eyes and looks at me like I’m responsible for whatever happened to her.

“Help, please…”

”You’re turning, little girl, aren’t you?”

”I need… a cure.”

Her voice was raspy. I knew that diminished rattle in her breath. I’ve heard it too many times in months past.

The dog whimpered.

”Damn right you do. Hmph. Well, little girl, even if I scrounged around for a cure, you’d turn into one of those cannibal monsters by the time I got back.” I was never good at talking to little kids. Her skin is already turning pale, but her eyes are not yellowing yet. She might have an hour, maybe two.

“Please, I don’t wanna die…”

“Okay, don’t worry, little girl, I’ll find you a cure. I’ll be right back.” The nearest Humanitarian outpost is at least a two-and-a-half hour walk, including sitting breaks for my old peddlers, both ways, but I really just want the girl out of my hair. I point my index finger upward and start backing away when I feel a hand clamp down on my left shoulder.

“Well, what do we have here? Hey, Darius, check it out! It’s the zombie-slaying granny!” A man sporting a short mohawk wearing a wife-beater underneath a black leather jacket and black jeans smiles at me with a wide mischievous grin on his face. He twirls a revolver. Another man, twice as big as the one in front of my face, with the same clothes but with unkempt dreadlocks holding an assault rifle against his shoulder, staggers towards us.

“Looks like easy pickins’ today!”

The dog jumps out of the cab barking and clamps his jaws around the knees of the Raider who was restricting my movement only seconds ago. He drops his revolver as he screams. The girl pokes her head out of the cab to see what’s happening. She no longer looks terrified but confused as she raises her eyebrows and yells, “Sandy!”

I pick up the revolver and, as quick as I can, straighten my back as I aim at the other Raider. His mouth is wide ‘O’. I take advantage of his shock and shoot him in the chest three times, until he falls to the road. The other Raider, the one being attacked by the dog, exclaims, “What the fuck little girl!” I turn to him and shoot him in the face, between his eyebrows. It only takes one. He stops squirming, and so does the dog who looks up at me with a jovial smile and a beard dripping with blood like my nephew's mouth after eating a tub of frosting with red food dye. The little girl walks up to the body of the mohawked raider and gawks at him. Her face is older now that I have a good look at her in a new light. She looks too old for a child and too young for an adult, although I admit that it has been a lifetime since I dated a pediatrician. She still has the same bony frame as a child, but I don’t care. I aim the gun at her chin.

The dog has its tail down and is looking at me funny like it’s confused.

She raises both of her hands and says, her voice too calm for someone one wrong word away from being shot, “All right, all right, they made me do it. Calm down, grandma.”

I thought about killing her just for saying that, not like there were any Peacekeepers here, although I didn’t know what kind of bond this dog had with her, so I best keep my guard up. You can never be too careful on highways next to cities like this. “Who the fuck are you? Are you with them?”

“Bev. Just Bev, that’s all I’m telling you or anyone about who I am anymore. And no, no I’m not with these Raider assholes. See, another gang came through me and my friends’ hideout and wiped out most everybody but me an’ my girlfriend, Noelle. And…” She had that look in her eyes, that thousand-yard stare like she was reliving in a few seconds a life that should have never been hers. “An’ that’s all you need to know. Now, my turn. Who taught you how to shoot like that? Most folk your age long been dead ‘cause they can’t take care of themselves.”

“I taught myself, missy. Old dogs can learn new tricks if they really want to. Speaking of dogs, this mutt yours?” I lower the gun.

“Something like that. Found him wandering the inner city.”

The dog is wagging its tail like a jet propeller, and I get this sense that I’ve seen the thing before. It’s likely I’ve seen it looking for scraps around Portland, assuming the girl’s story isn’t a fib. The dog sticks its tongue out at me, panting rhythmically, stopping abruptly every so often to lick its chops.

“I don’t have anything for you, mutt, scram!”

Bev says, “I think he likes you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I take it you don’t need a cure?”

“No cure, no, but a bullet through the brain sure would be nice to get out of this hell.”

I start walking away without saying another word. I don’t need any more depressed people to slow me down. The dog follows me. I’m half a block away when she calls out, “Wait!” and runs after me. I stop and roll my eyes.

“Little girl, I don’t need people talking about their feelings to me or people who want to offer themselves up as a sacrifice to zombies. There’s enough death out here.”

“One, stop calling me little girl. I’m 19. Two, we should stick together and-”

I shoot her in the face and remember that this old pooch standing proudly by my side, tail still wagging, was the therapy dog at Regal Retirement Home, who came only on Wednesdays, and I would give her strips of bacon from the breakfast buffet when his owner wasn’t watching.

Old dogs can learn new tricks.