Click here to find out how "Zombie" ends.The dog finished eating, licked the bowl, licked his chops, and looked up at her. His dog-mom.“Sit,” she said. It came out more as a high-pitched sob, but he understood and sat. Ever trusting, obedient, and eager to please. He gazed up at her with unabashed adoration.She caressed his head a couple more times, then grabbed his collar. Her hands shook. This didn’t feel right. But she’d wasted too much time already, and she didn’t see any other way. She brought the knife under his throat.
It took her two days to fashion a doggie backpack out of her old clothes that wouldn’t rip apart when laden—two days in which the hunger gnawed at her and she scarcely slept—but in the end she succeeded. Exhausted but triumphant, she loaded it up with the food and water Milton would need and put it on him. As she settled the pack on his body, she noted the muscles alongside his spine and at the tops of his front legs. His meaty back haunches.
Milton sat down and wouldn't move.Click here to read the rest of Part II.
“Milton,” she called, her voice shaky. The small dog trotted in from the other room to stand in the kitchen doorway. He cocked his head and wagged his tail a couple of times, questioning. She set the bowl on the floor. “Come on, baby. Come eat—” and her voice broke. With one hand she stroked the dog’s head and back as he wolfed down the chunks of rotting flesh in his bowl, her tears hot and blinding, her heart fracturing.
He’d lost some weight over the last few weeks. They both had. She could feel his ribs and spine beneath her palm.
Which was part of the reason she had to do this now.
Her other hand, tucked behind her back, gripped the handle of the knife she’d just sharpened....Click here to read the rest of Part I on The Darker Half.
