The zombies carried me around the house. They climbed the stairs to the platform in front. The female zombie ran the cable through a metal cage on the platform. She dragged me inside.
When they’d pushed me into the cage, the door was shut. The female zombie made the cable loop slack and slipped it free.
Zombies stood around me, their eyes empty of life. I smacked my mouth to clean the foul taste from my tongue. I couldn’t believe that these simple, disgusting creatures had captured me.
I studied the wire cage. A real wolf could bend the metal door apart and rip it loose. As a supernatural I should be free without much trouble.
I growled at my captors. However nasty they tasted, I was going to rip the lot of them into pieces.
My neck and legs were stiff and clumsy with pain. Every ache told me how much I was going to enjoy destroying these zombies.
Cowboy zombie poked me with a long, smooth club. I snapped at the club and crunched it to pieces. He staggered from the cage, still grasping the other end of the club.
I flexed my shoulders and stretched my legs to ready myself. I raised my tail in alpha defiance and backed up to lunge.
An electric jolt punched along my spine. I jumped forward, and when my muzzle touched the metal door, another electric jolt snapped though my body.
I backed into the middle of the cage, surprised and worried.
The zombies made a gasping ghaw, ghaw-flinging spit from their disgusting mouths-that was as close as they could manage to a laugh.
What had happened? I looked around. A second cable connected the cage to the house. When I had touched the wires, that was when the electricity had gone through me.
The electric shock was too much even for my supernatural powers. One bite on the wires and I’d be flung on the floor, paralyzed from the electricity. How could these stupid creatures be so clever?
I paced in a tight circle within the cage. Barren ground and rocks surrounded the deck down to the gulch. Rabbitbrush and juniper grew around the boulders sticking out from the surrounding hills.
A layer of fresh smells wove through the zombie stink. Animals on the move: mice, hares, doves in flight. And the scent of morning pollen.
Morning.
The skies to the east faded to lighter blue. Yellow light touched the summit of the big mountain.
The dawn was coming.
And I was out here in the open in this cage.
I stared to the eastern horizon. When the sun made its appearance, its rays would burn me to ashes.
I growled in frustration and fear. I barked and howled. I circled left, then right.
The zombies stepped closer, lifting axes and clubs with nails in them.
One by one, the stars twinkled for the last time and disappeared into the gathering light.
The sky to the east flashed green and became yellow. It would be light soon and then the sun, the great destroyer of vampire flesh, would take me.