After 30 Days

Fifty Day 61

The dog barked from somewhere out of view. Just once. I had my own car door open and was scrambling from the seat when a grip on my arm stopped me.

"Stay in the car."

Shawn threw the car into reverse and began backing up. I yanked my door closed with an echoing bang and twisted around in my seat again to watch out the back window. The door that Rex had gone out was still hanging open.

A relieved exhale left me when the dog's shape took form out of the darkness. He was standing in the middle of the road, his head swiveling back and forth as he looked at us, and then off into the blackness. He waited for us to almost drive clear to him, before trotting off further up the road. Shawn cursed again, and I could feel his frustration. I was more dumbfounded than anything else. Rex never acted like he was now.

"Call him. Get him back in this car."

"Rex! Come here, come on." I called for the dog, but he just kept trotting up the road. Once, he looked back over his shoulder, but then he faced forward again. "Rex!" I yelled with more urgency. This time he hesitated, stopping and looking around in confusion. "Rex, come here!" My raised voice echoed off the tunnel walls.

Dropping his head, the big dog turned around and began walking back toward the car with dragging steps. His tail drooped. Shawn hit the brakes and I thought I heard a relieved sigh escape him. Lit up in the red glow of the brake lights, I watched my dog as he paced back to us, looking reluctant. I called him again, quieter this time, encouraging him to keep coming.

He had almost made it back to the open door, was almost safely inside, when those big ears perked up and his head whipped around. His nose raised to scent the air. Then he was off again, running away and showing no sign of stopping this time.

This time, I did get out of the car after him. Whatever had captured the dog's attention, he was clearly not going to let it go by himself. I ignored Shawn's tense order to get back in the car and jogged after Rex. I didn't think that there were any zombies nearby, Rex would have alerted us to them. whatever he had been distracted by, I was hoping to catch him and get out of there before it found us.

It was unbelievably dark the instant I left the small circle of red that glowed from the taillights of the car. The dog panted ahead of me and I blindly crept toward the sound, trying to tell if I was getting any closer to him. Then the red glow from the car reached me again as Shawn kept pace with me in the car. Moving forward with more confidence once I could see my own feet again, I picked up the pace.

Rex was there, the far reaches of the circle of light occasionally catching his tail and back feet as he kept just out of my reach. We were going further and further back into the depths of the tunnel, and I was just about ready to curse at the dog myself when a sound from the darkness made me stop.

Someone was whispering. It was hard to tell just how far away they were, and I couldn't even begin to make out what they were saying, but someone was whispering in what sounded like an urgent tone somewhere ahead of me. I hissed at the dog again, he was close enough that I could make out his whole form now, but he flicked an ear in my direction and then jogged forward. Following his movement through the darkness I could just make it out when he sailed over the wooden pallets propped between the barricading vehicles, and was gone from view.

Stunned, I stood immobile, unsure what to do next.

Rex was more than just a dog, he was family. And I would never leave family behind to fend for themselves. But we had no way of knowing what was on the other side of that improvised wall. In such a dark and confined space, there would be little room for error if we wanted to avoid death.

The red glow that haloed around me subsided, a car door opened, and a second later Shawn was standing next to me. "Here," he sounded grim as he handed me the flashlight from my bag. "Let's get him and get out of here. Fast."

It was just one more reason why I loved him. He didn't try to talk me out of finding Rex, just accepted that we needed to do so, and was there to back me up.

I had no idea how I would navigate the world without him, now that I would know what I was missing.

A half of a step ahead of me, Shawn was working his way cautiously closer to the barrier. The light from the flashlight in my hand skipped ahead and bounced weakly back at us off of the pallets. I thought that I saw Rex peering between the wooden slats for just a second before he disappeared again.

The whispers that I had heard for a few seconds were gone and it occurred to me that Shawn wouldn't have been able to hear them from inside the car. He had no idea that I had heard someone or something in the darkness.

I stepped forward quickly and tapped the back of his shoulder just as he reached the front corner of the nearest vehicle. He twisted around to look at me.

"I thought that I heard someone before," I barely breathed the words, but he figured out what I was saying. His mouth tightened, but he just nodded once before turning back to look forward.

We were at the nearest pallets, and in the beam of the flashlight I could see that the wooden frames were just leaning up against each other and the cars. A solid bump would have sent the whole contraption rattling to the ground. Studying the mess for a long second, Shawn finally reached out and carefully began to work one pallet free. It scraped , seemingly too loudly in the darkness, as he pulled it away from the others and opened up a small gap in the fence.

He sent me a long silent look that seemed to speak volumes before ducking through the gap.

My heart was hammering in my chest as I followed him. The circle of light ahead of us seemed to vibrate a little and I realized that my hand was shaking. The breath that I sucked in, held for a count of three, and then let out helped to steady me. I wanted to call for the dog again, but kept quiet. Now seemed like a good time to make as little noise as possible.

Not that anyone nearby wouldn't have already known that we were there. The flashlight gave us away, and there wasn't anything that I could do about that. Without it, we would be completely blind.

On the other side of the barricade we found signs of life. A metal ring appeared slightly to the right. A lingering odor and the charred remains of a piece of wood gave it away as a place that someone had made a fire. An empty plastic bottle that had once held water lay on the pavement next to it.

We caught sight of Rex there, sniffing his way around the dead fire before he darted away again. His toenails clicked against the ground and faded out.

A few more steps and the flashlight illuminated a small tricycle that had glittery purple streamers flowing from the handlebars. A breath of air moved the strands slightly, the quiet rustling sound the only thing that I could hear other than the sound of my own shoes as I walked.

The silence seemed expectant and otherworldly . It made my wish for something, anything, to make some noise, just to ground me again.

The thought no sooner flitted through my mind when a high pitched whine sounded and was followed by a scratching. Following the sound I turned the light and found Rex again. He had made his way up onto the raised walkway that ran along the side of the tunnel and stood with his nose pressed to another metal door that was there. As I watched, he whined again and scraped his nails on the surface of the door.