My tail gave a hesitant, then increasingly enthusiastic, sweep across the dusty floor.
Rebecca held the ration biscuit out between two trembling fingers, her arm extended with the caution of someone feeding a rabid crocodile through the bars of its enclosure. "Okay," she said, her voice a fragile whisper. "Easy now."
I leaned forward, a perfect gentleman.
My jaws opened just wide enough to accommodate a small car, and Rebecca went rigid as my teeth closed around her entire hand up to the wrist.
"O-oh, wait, no, you just—" Her voice went up an octave. "You literally just pulped a zombie skull with that mouth! Let go! Please, for the love of God, let go!"
I carefully plucked the pathetic excuse for a meal from her grip. My tongue, being the massive, uncontrollable slab of slimy muscle it was, decided to give her fingers a full, gratuitous inspection, curling against her palm with a wet schlorp before I pulled back.
She snatched her hand back like she'd just dipped it in acid, staring at it in the flickering emergency light. Thin, shimmering strings of my drool stretched between her fingers, glistening like cursed spiderwebs.
No blood. No missing digits. A goddamn Christmas miracle, all things considered.
She slowly flexed her hand, then made a face of such profound, soul-deep betrayal that it almost made the whole ordeal worthwhile.
"Why is it warm?" she whispered to the universe. "Why is there so much of it?"
I crunched down on the biscuit. The taste was a fucking war crime. It was like eating compressed sawdust that had been used to soak up the despair in a DMV waiting room. I swallowed it out of pure principle.
Rebecca scrubbed her hand furiously against her tactical pants, a futile gesture that only served to smear the biohazard into the fabric. "You are... a deeply unsanitary creature," she informed me, her tone desperately trying to claw its way back to 'professional medic' and failing miserably. "I just really need you to be aware of that."
I licked my chops, savoring the aftertaste of regret and preservatives.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep, shuddering breath, and seemed to mentally file the experience away under 'Repress Violently And Never Speak Of Again.'
"Alright," she managed. "You didn't bite my hand off. That's... promising."
Yes. Praise me. Admire my saint-like restraint in not degloving your entire forearm, you tiny, biscuit-wielding human.
Her gaze shifted from the dark corridor ahead to me, her expression a toxic cocktail of fear, disgust, and dawning pragmatism. Pointing a gun had been useless. Threats were even worse. Bribery had barely worked, and she couldn't have that many sad-crackers in her pouches.
She was out of sticks and nearly out of carrots. Time for a new approach.
She crouched down again, moving with the slow, deliberate grace of a bomb disposal expert, and reached a hand toward the side of my head.
I remained perfectly still. I was a patient predator. A cunning monster. A genius who understood that good things come to those who don't immediately eat the source of potential head-pats.
Her fingertips touched the patchy fur behind my ear.
Then she scratched.
My entire consciousness folded in on itself like a cheap suit.
Oh, sweet mother of evolutionary fuck, yes. Right there. Just a little higher. Those tiny medic hands possess a divine technique. Someone give this woman a Nobel Prize in scritches. This is better than absorbing biomass. This is better than dry-humping her unconscious leg. This is spiritual.
My eyes slid half-shut. My tail began to thump against the concrete with the force of a demolition hammer. One of my hind legs started kicking uncontrollably, a traitorous limb broadcasting my absolute submission to the world.
A tiny, involuntary smile twitched at the corner of Rebecca's mouth. "Oh," she murmured, a flicker of surprise in her voice. "You like that."
'Like' was the word people used for moderately interesting weather. This was a goddamn religious experience.
She scratched a little more, her movements still hesitant, her body coiled to spring back at the slightest sign of aggression. "You're... weirdly soft right here," she noted, then immediately cringed at her own words. "I cannot believe I just said that out loud."
I leaned into her hand so hard she nearly lost her balance. More. Continue this sacred ritual. My continued cooperation is directly proportional to the quality of ear maintenance.
She pulled her hand away after a few agonizingly short seconds.
I let out a pathetic whine and shoved my head right back into her palm, a two-hundred-pound engine of neediness.
"Oh, come on," she sighed. "You're absolutely weaponizing this against me, aren't you?"
Damn right I am, sweetheart. Welcome to the new economy.
She gave me one more reluctant, business-like scratch, as if that could somehow drain the sheer patheticness from the situation. "Fine. You help me navigate this hellhole, and I'll... I'll provide occasional scritches."
My tail gave one heavy, sweeping thump that sent a cloud of plaster dust into the air. Deal.
"Good," Rebecca said, pushing herself carefully to her feet. "Then we need a name for you, because I can't just keep calling you 'the horrifying corpse-dog' in my head."
My ears perked. This was important.
She studied me, her face a mask of intense concentration, like a scientist trying to name a particularly volatile new element.
"Buddy?"
I gave her the flattest, most unimpressed look my exposed facial muscles could muster. Buddy? Did you just call me Buddy? I am a genetically augmented killing machine, not a goddamn Labrador that gets confused by screen doors.
She blinked. "That bad, huh?"
I sneezed. A thick, grey wad of mutant snot shot out of my nose and splattered against the tile with a wet thwack.
Rebecca physically recoiled. "Gross. And totally unnecessary."
It was an editorial comment, thank you very much.
"Rex?"
I just stared.
"Champ?"
I stared harder, channeling the disappointed energy of every father who ever saw his son's art degree.
"Sir Drools-a-Lot?"
My tail, the fucking traitor, gave a single, enthusiastic wag before I could clamp down on it.
Rebecca's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, you liked that one?"
I barked sharply, a sound like rocks in a garbage disposal. Absolutely not. That was a muscle spasm. A post-traumatic twitch. You're hallucinating.
A short, strained laugh escaped her, a brittle sound in the heavy silence. "Okay, okay. Joke names are off the table."
As she moved, we passed a cracked mirror hanging crookedly on a staffroom door. My reflection was a thing of pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel: torn hide, busted teeth, and a face that could curdle milk from fifty paces.
Rebecca glanced at it, then quickly looked away. "You really are a freaky thing," she murmured.
Rude. But accurate.
Her gaze settled back on me, a little softer this time. "Ghosty," she said, testing the word.
I tilted my head.
"That's your name now. You appeared out of thin air, you're creepy as all hell, and you seem to enjoy haunting trainwrecks while covering people in questionable fluids."
Ghosty.
Now that... that had some fucking style. Ghosty sounded like a proper monster alias. It had menace. It had mystery. It was the name of a creature that ate final bosses for breakfast and used their spines as toothpicks.
I gave a single, approving wag.
Rebecca nodded, as if the decision had just been ratified by a UN security council. "Ghosty it is."
I let out a soft bark of assent. Then, for good measure, I padded forward and rubbed my entire body against her leg like an oversized, structurally unsound cat.
She staggered, catching herself against the wall. "Careful," she hissed. "You probably weigh more than my first car."
I continued the affectionate gesture, because the floor was filthy, the air smelled of decay, and this tiny medic was a portable source of warmth and potential scritches. She looked down, bracing herself for the inevitable slime trail.
Nothing. Just a few stray black hairs on her trousers and the faint, lingering scent of wet dog, which was practically a luxury air freshener compared to the rest of the evening's olfactory horrors.
"Huh," she said, looking genuinely surprised. "Well, I'll take it."
Good. Your standards are now sufficiently lowered.
I gently took the hem of her sleeve between my teeth, gave it one firm tug toward the side corridor, and then let go. I barked once, soft and low, then lifted a paw and pointed down the hall, fully committing to the Lassie bit.
Rebecca just stared. "You want me to follow you?"
I barked again, trotted a few paces down the dark corridor, and glanced back over my shoulder expectantly.
She looked from me, to the blocked tunnel behind us, then back to me. The gears were turning in that concussed little brain of hers. I had saved her, licked her, demanded payment in scratches, and accepted a name. In the grand, cosmic shit-show of her current situation, I was somehow the least terrible option on the menu.
That realization alone probably required years of therapy.
She finally let out a long, defeated sigh, adjusted the shotgun on her shoulder, and stepped up beside me.
"Alright," she said, her voice low and steady. "Lead the way, Ghosty."
My tail started wagging again.
"But if this turns out to be a monumentally stupid idea," she added, her eyes fixed on the darkness ahead, "I am holding you personally responsible."
I moved forward, my claws clicking on the tile, a low growl rumbling in my chest.
Rebecca fell into step beside me, her Beretta held at the ready, a rookie medic and her pet nightmare, walking side-by-side into the bowels of hell.
[To Be Continued]