A month after the "cannibalism" attacks on Green City, residents started to think it was only going to go as far as that. Of course, no one thanked Police Chief Bettis. There was no reason to believe that HE had done anything at all. It was no secret that he had failed them before. There had been a series of robberies a few years back and Bettis had never found out who had committed the crimes. As a result, the thieves got away with more than $250,000 in cash and jewels. Some of the citizens still maintained faith in his abilities, like when a little girl had gone missing with her big brother. Bettis had sent a search team out at once to find the kids and, as a result, found them in no less than an hour. But most were skeptical of him however, and even more skeptical of the new detective on the case. No one knew anything about him; it was as if he had just appeared out of nowhere. He seemed to have shown up just two days after the attacks. He then released a statement saying that the situation was under control and that life in Green City would return to normal soon enough. Some citizens took those words too lightly, and got careless.
Linda and Tom had lived in Green City for two years. They thought it was the perfect place to start a family, despite the attacks one month ago. Besides, if it had been a month with no attacks, why should there be one now? The citizens would soon find out that the attacks had not stopped after all.
"Tom, could you get the door, my arms are full of groceries." Linda said, struggling under the load of three bags of food.
Tom walked over and inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. He walked into the kitchen and stared down at the empty dog bowl, sighing deeply. Their dog, Prince, had been missing for more than a week now, but Tom still hoped to find him. It seemed so quiet around the house without the dog barking when they got home.
"A little help please, I'm going to drop these in a second." Linda practically yelled at her husband. She had been in a bad mood for a while now, but Tom knew it had nothing to do with the dog going missing. Linda never seemed to like Prince; all she ever did was yell at him. It was probably because Tom had been sulking; wishing the dog had never run off.
"Sorry. Here, let me get those." Tom apologized. He took the bags from his wife and put them on the table. He then helped his wife unpack and put away the food. After his wife went to search the car for her cigarettes, Tom went to watch TV in the den. He heard a sound and stopped dead to listen. It sounded like a dog growling, but it was distant. Like it was down the street a little. It stopped suddenly however, and Tom decided that he was just wishing he had his dog back so much that he was imagining things. He sat down in his chair and picked up the remote but before he had so much as pushed a button, he heard it again. But this time it sounded as though it was right around the back of his house.
He got up to go out the back door to try and see what was making the noise, when he saw a shape hunched by the hedges that grew in the backyard by the fence. For a split second he thought it was Prince, but then he saw that the shape was too big. Prince was just a little dog, barely a foot tall. Tom took a step outside to shoo the dog away, suddenly in a bad mood, when it leapt at him and started barking ferociously. Tom saw, in the few seconds before it was on top of him, that it was the most hideous dog he had ever seen.
It looked like a German shepherd, but it was terrifyingly disfigured. It looked as though pieces of flesh had been torn off, revealing bone and muscle. Its head was covered in what looked like blood from the tip of its nose, to the back of its bony head. It had little patches of hair here and there, but its skin was mostly missing.
The dog leapt at Tom, knocking him to the ground, and began to tear at him. Frantically Tom tried to beat it off of him, but it was too strong; driven by a frenzy of anger and hunger. It ripped at his arms and tore at his chest, its claws clawing its way to his organs. Tom tried to yell, but found he could not breathe. The dog had started biting his head and neck, its claws still tearing his flesh away. Tom stopped fighting back after a few seconds, but the dog continued to eat the man. It finally stopped, and the only things left were some tattered clothes, bones, some skin left on his legs, and his empty eye sockets staring wide-eyed up at the sky.
"Tom? Honey?" Linda called from the kitchen. The dog's ears perked up, and it went running directly at the sound of the call. Linda screamed as her worst nightmare began to rip her flesh away.