Free The Vile Village by Craig Sargent

unfinished tasks—not the least of which is finding my sister, April. It’s not a world
     that nourishes love, baby. I wish it were different. I wish—” He turned and started quickly down the stairs, not wanting her
     to see the tears forming in his own eyes.
    He found Excaliber outside. He hadn’t paid much attention to the dog over the last few days, other than noting that it seemed
     to be alive and eating its share of chow. But when Stone’s attention was actually on the animal as he headed across the main
     yard, he noticed that it was playing with a bunch of farm dogs, shepherds, collies, mutts. Stone started ahead fast, with
     an expression of growing horror on his face. He had seen what Excaliber could do, and it didn’t like dogs.
    But as usual, just when he thought he was starting to get an understanding of the pitbull, it went and did something that
     totally destroyed his preconceptions. It licked the face of a huge Labrador retriever, then barked happily jumping in the
     air. Stone called to the animal, shaking his head from side to side as he headed toward the motorcycle. But he had only just
     begun to scold himself for misjudging the pitbull so terribly when it did something to completely sabotage
that
idea as well. As a shepherd got a little too close and opened its jaws a little too wide, Excaliber went down on both knees
     in a flash, like a wrestler preparing for a throw. He sank both teeth around the animal’s lower front leg and pulled hard
     so the dog came crashing down on its face. They were “playing” around on grass and loose dirt, so the shepherd wasn’t hurt,
     but the animal, which must have outweighed Excaliber by a good forty pounds, nonetheless rose and backed off like it didn’t
     want anything to do with the pitbull. The others, too, shrank back in nervousness as the bullterrier looked around, happily
     wagging his tail again, confused as to what was wrong.
    It was almost sad in a way, Stone thought as he whistled hard again. Excaliber turned and came rushing toward him. The pitbull
     was too strong, too good a fighter for its own good. And when threatened, it responded with primitive re-flexes. Too bad if
     some little poodle got crushed into pâté.
    “Come here, boy, good boy.” Stone laughed as the animal began jumping and bucking around in the air as it was wont to do when
     in fits of extreme pleasure. “How you doing, dog?” Stone slapped the animal on the side of the head each time it reached its
     pinnacle of trajectory—about six feet off the ground—and it let its big tongue lap out around his wrist and arm, sending out
     a mini-spray.
    The pitbull didn’t look half bad, considering. There were still tufts of hair missing here and there, like little semibald
     patches. But LuAnn insisted that it would all grow back again that one of their dogs had had similar radiation burns when
     it explored an atomic-bomb crater about twelve miles off. The ointment she had used on it had totally healed the mutt. Stone
     glanced down at his own arm. It didn’t look great, but most of the swelling had diminished. Pinkish bumps about the size of
     dimes still lingered on his back and legs. His face was back to normal, other than what looked like a bad boil along one cheek
     and flakes of dried skin here and there from the peeling off of his outer epidermal layers. But that would just make him look
     a little meaner in Murder City, which was fine with Stone.
    LuAnn had told him that the boys who had saved him had found a number of burned creatures just a few miles past where Stone
     had been picked up. But as the kids got closer to him they said the animal life was less severely damaged. Apparently the
     high-rad rains had been stronger to the east and more diluted to the west. Where you were when the glowing rains hit determined
     whether you lived or died. Stone and the dog had been on the right side of the tracks.
    “Come on, pal,” Stone said as he threw his pack onto the