Survivors

by Ryan White 

Within two years, Alice Sellers had lost her cat, Kevin, and her lifelong companion, Ruth. She would’ve given anything to get them back. But no such bargain could be had, so she wanted revenge. And since there was no revenge against hemorrhagic stroke, Alice’s last hope was killing the coyote that’d eaten Kevin five nights previous. 

Alice was splayed out under a hydrangea with a .22-caliber air gun aimed at a patch of overgrown grass between two gnarled rhododendrons—the place she’d found Kevin’s collar, bearing a couple spots of blood already faded to brown, the fabric chewed up and seemingly licked clean. She’d found scant tufts of belly fur, but the predator had taken the carcass off somewhere. Or else eaten Kevin’s bones.

Seattle had always harbored coyotes—so the Internet said—but in the pandemic’s beginning the streets quieted. Predation flourished, even in Alice’s neighborhood of Victorian homes—sprawling yards and mature plantings a boon for wildlife.

Discharging a firearm was illegal within city limits. But she’d done her research—she could use an air rifle on private property if she aimed “safely.” And killing a coyote was legal if you perceived danger. So her hunt was nearly lawful. She was trespassing, sure, but—informed of the circumstances—the homeowner might not object.

Knowing a coyote’s scenting abilities, she’d rubbed herself with cat urine—musky clumps from Kevin’s litter box (never to be used again—she was too old for another cat). She waited, obscured by the bush. But the sky grew milky. No coyote.

*

Three nights she woke to her alarm at midnight to lay beneath the hydrangea—Kevin’s piss on her hunting outfit less pungent each day—until around 3 a.m. on the third night when a sand-colored shape slunk into a penumbra of streetlight. It trotted in the road, stouter than she’d imagined, gradient tints of its fur glowing in the wan yellow light.

Fearsome, shrewd eyes. Upwind, bound for the grass.

Crack of the air rifle—violent flatulence whacking the pellet into the coyote’s shoulder. The animal stumbled. Then—staying afoot, heeding evolution’s programming—it fled.

Alice gave everything in pursuit, but the coyote was faster, skeltering through shadows, growing the distance. Alice tripped. As she fell, the animal made a crazed dash across the street, into the path of a speeding Range Rover. It slammed the creature down and thumped over it. The driver sped off.

For long seconds, Alice lay frozen, panting, inventorying the pain in her knees, elbows, hands, blood cooling her palms. Slowly, she got up, limping, approaching the animal—its slack stillness in the street, downed by its own strange maneuver.

What’d gone through the coyote’s head? Then, to herself, she said: “The bumper.”

Laughing now at her own joke. Tears too—relief washing away the adrenaline.

Blood ran from its snout. One dry eye goggled skyward. And yet Alice saw movement—a ripple in the belly fur. She wished she hadn’t.

This was a roadkill situation. Justice was done. She abandoned the coyote, hastening out of the road, glancing back to confirm no one had seen.

She was almost home before she stopped again. She was thinking of Ruth—of the night they’d picked Kevin out of a neighbor cat’s litter. Ruth had shed happy tears.

Alice cursed in the silent street.

*

She gutted the coyote on the concrete walkway behind her garage. Two pups emerged all but dead—they’d taken too much of the SUV’s force—and she finished them with the knife. Procedurally it was easier than field dressing a deer because she wasn’t saving the meat. But she cried as she worked—for the pups, for Kevin. But also because she felt Ruth there, mourning for the pups.

Three would likely live. She wiped each with a towel and lifted them into an old wine crate—in the bottom she’d made a bed of one of Ruth’s flannel shirts. The pups lolled, eyes sealed, mewling. It was almost 5 a.m. A crescent moon hung.

Animal control wouldn’t be open for hours. She dug a small pit in the corner of Ruth’s overgrown herb garden, tearing up the fragrant plants in the process. She chunked in some firewood and stacked the bodies of the mom and two pups on top. Then, after dousing it with the gas she kept for the lawnmower, she set it alight.

She brought the survivors inside and set the box on the living room rug. Exhausted, she collapsed onto the sofa.

*

Having caught a couple hours’ sleep, and after shoving her piss-rubbed clothes into the washer, Alice drove the crate of pups (the one she’d used when she brought Kevin to the vet) into the animal shelter—they’d be transferred to the wildlife center in Lynnwood. “Check in using the touch screen,” the woman behind the desk said, pointing. Alice entered her information. Approved terms of service. The woman looked at her monitor.

“If you wait over there, someone will bring him out.”

Alice shook her head, fatigue momentarily intolerable. “I’m dropping off.”

The woman pointed at her monitor. “It shows we’ve been calling you.”

It made no sense. The woman read off a phone number.

“That’s,” Alice paused. “That’s Ruth’s.”

“Well, Kevin’s chip is registered to it.”

*

Months later, Alice stood in the back of her house, watching Kevin in the yard. Whatever the unlikelihood, the microchip proved it was him.

When they’d first got home, peering at his belly, she’d convinced herself she’d found a healing bite (although as time passed, the marks remained and her conviction faded). But she didn’t need convincing about the patch of gray on Kevin’s head—an uncanny halo of silver. That was new.

In the garden the plants had reclaimed the scorched soil, vigorous in the June damp. Kevin stalked in the garden, threading herbs, leerily sniffing blackened dirt. Despite his changes, Alice felt sympathy. A fresh affinity even—to his strangeness. To his new caution toward a world in which he might not belong.

 

Ryan White is a writer and attorney living in Seattle with his cat, Django. He’s currently revising his first novel, The Retreat. His work has appeared in Hunger Mountain Review, J Journal, Red Rock Review, Litro and other publications. He’s an ardent surfer, and has been briefly jailed and hospitalized (separate incidents) while chasing waves in Mexico.