Free Pack by Lilith Saintcrow

Pack
    When Oscar stopped, ears pricked and one paw slightly raised, even his breathing gone almost silent, I did, too. Remember those stupid movies where the animal would warn about impending danger and an asshat of a human wouldn’t listen?
    No, nobody remembers those movies. Everyone’s dead, over ninety percent of the population, probably more every day. Anyone left has more to worry about than the fact that you can’t get a DVD player to work anymore. Or a microwave.
    Popcorn. Just one more thing to miss. Except right now I was more worried about toilet paper. Finding something to wipe your ass with after the apocalypse gets ranked in importance behind food, shelter, ammo, and antibiotics, but it’s still up there. I hate wiping with leaves.
    I hitched my backpack up and unlimbered the rifle instead of the machete. Distance is always better.
    If the problem was other humans, Oscar would’ve been looking up at me with that you make the call, alpha expression he’s so good at.
    Nah, if he was looking like this, it was likely animals, not people or Others. Not sure if Others are strictly people, really, for all the stories you hear about them wearing people-skins. Before the Thing—the Turn, the Event, the Great Fuckery From the Stars What Put Us Here, whatever—passed the tipping point, everyone called them Others . You could hear the capital letter in front, too. Every damn time.
    I strained my only-human ears. That’s another thing about the apocalypse; it gets pretty damn deafening sometimes. Packs of feral dogs, birds yapping all goddamn day, and all the sky’s immense echoing. Sometimes you can go a little crazy, you know—start thinking the entire blue lens is a big eye, watching the way the Others probably did before they came down.
    Some people said they were magic. Other people said government secret . Me, I’m voting on aliens, because I remember the lights in the sky getting too far south the winter before things went all pear-shaped. And the lights in the sky over my own town before what had only been a problem in the big cities came to rural America.
    Not that anyone cares what I think.
    Oscar moved away a couple steps. Eighty pounds of blue merle Australian shepherd, and I named him before I knew what a sweet guy he really is. It’s not his fault he looks like a Muppet. Or that when I let him out of that goddamn cage the fat fuck had him in, he was hungry and frightened enough to be a little crazy.
    Anyway, just up over the hill was today’s sort-of-destination, some tiny podunk that, from the look of the two-lane highway ribboning into it, might have been unlooted. We’d camped a few miles back at the freeway interchange, just to be safe, so we could approach it at noon. Sunlight was always best.
    Oscar’s ears were perked as far forward as they could go, and his hackles rose a bit. He looked even fluffier that way, and he gave me the well, okay, now what? look.
    That was when I heard it. If I hadn’t…well. I don’t know.
    It took me a couple seconds to place the sound. Long, drawn out, and high-pitched. For a second I thought it was Others, and my skin chilled all over, everything from nipples to nape drawing up high, hard, and perky. I tasted copper, but then another instinct kicked in, and I recognized what it was.
    â€œWhat the hell?” I looked down at Oscar, who gave the canine equivalent of a shrug.
    I pointed, and he set off trotting off to my left; I drifted onto the overgrown shoulder, loping forward with the rifle held easy. At the top of the rise I’d be visible, but the sun wasn’t behind me, so I wouldn’t be too easy to spot. I stopped just before my head would pop up over the rise, though, dropped down to my knees, and worked forward in a basic-training crawl.
    It pays to be cautious. Before the Event I would have called the military part of the problem with society, and after…well, the Others