Tuskers. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

 “Three jars of olives?” Jenny asked.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I just grabbed everything I could.

She laughed and came over and gave me a hug.  “I know.  I was just teasing.  I can’t believe how brave you were to go down there.”

“Brave…or hungry,” I said, smiling.

In the morning, everything looked less terrifying.  From our bedroom window, there wasn’t a javelina in sight, and there were no sounds from downstairs.

“I don’t think they made it inside,” I said.  “I’m going to check.”

“No!” Jenny cried out.  “Stay here.  Let’s stick to our plan, just wait it out.  I love olives, you know.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.  I cracked to door open before she could protest again.  I stuck my nose out and sniffed.  No pig smell.  No grunts.  No banging and crashing.  I still didn’t think they were canny enough to lay a trap, though after last night’s events, I wasn’t so sure.

I hurried downstairs, being as quiet as I could, the heavy flashlight in my hands despite the brightness of the day.

I stepped into the kitchen, flashlight raised.  The room was empty.  It occurred to me then that I could maybe find another weapon.  I opened the drawer next to the oven.  There is was, the massive butcher knife that I’d given to Jenny one Christmas and which, as far I knew, had never been used.  All the sharper for it, I thought.  I transferred the flashlight to my left hand and grabbed the knife.  Only then did I approach the sliding glass doors.

The crack ran nearly the entire perpendicular length of the door.  Just outside lay a dead pig, its neck broken by the impact. 

I didn’t recognize the patio or the backyard.  Everything was broken beyond repair.  The umbrella, which had been over the table, was in shreds.  Every flower and bush was pulled out of the ground, and though I could still see hints of green in the lawn, most of it was torn up.

There was pig shit everywhere. 

“That’s fucking intentional,” I said aloud, somehow more offended by this than anything else I’d seen.  “You creepy animals.”

I put my finger to the crack.  The door was double paned, and the crack was on the outside one.  I suppose I should have been reassured, but I wasn’t.  How long before old Razorback convinced a few more of his followers to commit hari kari?

 I heard a sound behind me and whirled, knife raised.

Jenny was staring at the chaos outside with wide eyes. 

“Whatever did we do to them?” she asked, sounding offended.

“Seems to me we provided them with a daily banquet,” I said.  “A veritable buffet.”

She was shaking her head, absently picking up the dropped containers of food.  When her hands were full, she pulled out a fresh trash bag from below the sink, and dropped the food inside.  She went to the pantry and kept filling it.  Then went and got another bag and started filling it.

Without a word, I picked up the first bag of food and took it upstairs to the bedroom.  While I was there, I filled the bathtub with water; not to drink, but because so far the pigs had been one step ahead of us and I just didn’t know what they were capable of.  I didn’t know how they could cut off the water, but that’s what worried me -- not knowing.

When I went back downstairs, Jenny was looking thoughtfully through the knives, one by one, hefting them.  A little bit of a chill went down my spine, but I didn’t say anything.  I just wished we could do better for weapons.  I’d always been anti-gun and it burned my ass that the gun nuts might have been right.  About Armageddon, at least.

With that thought in mind, I went to the garage.  Our garage was full of junk, which was the unfortunate reason for the car being parked out of reach outside.  But it was my chance to find something useful.  All this junk was saved for some reason, I thought.  For the day we needed it. Well, todays the day.

But it turns out none of the junk was much use in a pig apocalypse. 

A Porkolypse, I thought, and smiled.  A Hamaggeden.

I found a hammer, and decided that it made more sense as a weapon than a flashlight, especially considering I wouldn’t be smashing the bulb and making the flashlight useless.

There was a sheet of corrugated metal against one wall, from when I’d thought of building a shed.  That was when I was still thinking like a Bendite, and believed I’d need to protect my equipment from the snow.

I wrestled it into the house and took it upstairs and leaned it against the bedroom wall.  Then I went to the garage again and rummaged around until I found some nails.  They were roofing nails, but there was a full container of them and I thought they’d do the job.

Meanwhile, Jenny had managed to get most of the food upstairs.

“You think we’re going to be here for months?” I asked.

“Never hurts to be prepared,” she said cheerfully.   “Or maybe I just want a choice in my meals.”

I trotted down the stairs, and at the bottom it suddenly occurred to me what I’d just done.  I hadn’t walked down the stairs -- no worse, I thought, hadn’t trudged down the stairs.  I had nearly skipped down the stairs, humming a happy tune.  I shook my head at the mystery of it, and went back into the garage and started just piling boxes on the floor, making a total mess of things, just looking for something useful for the next few nights.

I was sure the authorities would rescue us by the end of the day, or at least by tomorrow.  But if we had to spend another night here, I wanted to be prepared.

Suddenly, Bend, Oregon with all its hipsters and snow wasn’t looking so bad.   Especially because there was one thing the town lacked -- javelinas.  The occasional cougar perhaps, but cougars were sensible enough to run when given the chance.

When I finally gave up my Easter egg hunt, Jenny was back in the kitchen, at the stove, cooking some ham and eggs.  “Might be our last chance at a hot meal,” she said.  She too was humming, and it occurred to me that our danger had brought us together, given us a purpose together, and that both of us were liking it.

Still…there ought to be an easier way.  When this was all over, I was going to try harder to find activities that we both enjoyed and which had more meaning than card games and pickle ball.

We sat at the dining room table for once.  We didn’t even glance at the TV, though it passed through my mind that perhaps there was some news there.  Or on the radio.  Right after breakfast I thought.  Or lunch.  Or brunch, or whatever this was.  Whatever it was, it was nice, to just be sitting with Jenny.

We sat eating quietly, trying to ignore the mess outside.  There wasn’t a javelina in sight.  It was beginning to seem like it had been a bad dream, and that was now over.  The brightness of the sun, the clear blue sky.  Nothing threatening in sight.

After brunch, I got up and turned on the TV.  There was nothing but snowy reception.  I switched off the cable connection and tried over the air.  We could sometimes get the nearest channel, though not clearly.

I found it and turned up the volume and tried to make sense of the words through the white noise.  It was local weatherman, but he was sitting at the anchor desk.

“Stay indoors,” he was saying.  “I repeat, stay in doors.  Help is on the way.”

And with that, the TV blinked off.  In the background, the refrigerator went silent.  It always let out a low hum, of which I was aware, but which was just part of the normal background.  The sudden absence of the hum was impossible to ignore.

“The bastards cut the electricity,” Jenny said.

“I don’t see how that’s possible.  Those are overhead lines.”

I went to the corner of the house that overlooked the posts that brought in the electricity and saw the wires hanging down, sparking as they waved in the wind. 

How the hell did they do that? I wondered.

Jenny was standing at the patio door.  I wanted to tell her to get away from it, but didn’t want to scare her.  I hurried to her side, planning to move her gently back.  Then I saw what she was looking at.

It looked like a hundred of the pigs, chasing a dog.  It was sprinting with all its might for our patio door.

Before I could stop her, Jenny was opening the door.  She gave me a look that said, ‘don’t argue.’

The gold retriever, though it was so filthy it was hard to recognize, shot through the opening and Jenny slammed the door shut and latched it as the first javelina slid into the glass.  The outside panel of glass shattered, and I heard the pig squealing as broken shards rained down on it.  Thankfully, the inner panel stayed in place.  A large piece of glass went into its neck and it fell on its side and twitched once, twice…and was still. 

Supposed to be safety glass, I thought to myself.  Isn’t supposed to do that.

The pigs were milling about outside, pushing each other aside, sometimes leaping over their fellows.  A twirling, jumbled mass.

Then they were suddenly quiet, lining up almost in neat rows, in ranks, as impossible as that seemed.

Razorback walked down the middle and looked at the two of us.  It stared up at us with calm yellow eyes.  Then it turned casually and walked away.

To me, it seemed to be saying, ‘I can get you anytime.  You’re just meat in a can.’

“What was that!” Jenny cried, and I realized that she hadn’t yet met old Razorback. 

“That, my dear, is the cause of all our troubles.”  A glimmer of an idea rose in the back of my mind.  Take out the leader, I thought.  But the idea was so outrageous, so desperate; I dismissed it. 

Like the guy on TV said.  Help is on the way.

Except why had it been the weatherman?  And why had the studio been so empty and why had the camera been at such an odd angle and why had he sounded as if the microphone was yards away?

The dog had flopped on its side the moment it was inside and was breathing hard.  It looked up at us with trusting but panicked eyes.

“That’s the Underwood’s dog,” Jenny said.  “What do you think happened?”

I looked at the blood all over the dog’s normally silky fur, and what looked like bits of meat and gristle attached.  I didn’t tell Jenny where I thought the Underwoods -- or at least part of them --- were.

“Do we have any candles?” I asked.