The tigress gathers the leadership of the surviving cainines on the island as well as her puppet Alpha, the Golden Labrador to her to discuss the widespread effects of Manna on those stranded on the island.

Whoo! now we're getting to the nitty gritty. But will the tigress have a change of heart? Manna is just so darn tasty after all...

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At the edge of the kudzu forest as the tigress had come to think of it, there was a great crowd of the four legged carnivores. It seemed apparent that the wolves and other wild canines of the enclave had already eaten, as they sat in a veritable pile either sleeping or chatting quietly. By the cow itself, there remained a slight hum of activity where the domestic dogs were still picking at the tender edges of the gaping red hole in the belly of the great bovine. Luckily the tigress had come at the end of the great feast or else she would have had much more trouble in finding the few canines important enough to be on her mind.

Predictably, the Golden Lab was sitting pretty with his aloof mate, however, the tigress inhaled in surprise when she first laid eyes on his yellow-white coat. Whatever effects the Manna was having on the tigress, it was obviously dampened by her 535 lb frame. Unfortunately for the new Alpha (who had actually been keeping an almost even tally with the tigress as far as number of disks consumed went), that wasn’t the case for him. Last time the tigress had seen him, the Lab had been chubby at the most, a well fed pet dog if there ever was one; now, he was thoroughly rotund.

He was laying on the soft mat of kudzu covering the ground off to one side - she couldn’t blame him, she would have been self conscious if she had ballooned so much in only two days - his head resting on his apathetic mate’s own swelling stomach. ‘At least she has a decent excuse!’ she thought upon seeing him. She knew it was irrational, given what was happening to everyone, what was happening to her, but the sight of him, his belly rounder than his unfairly won spouse with a litter of pups in her tummy, irritated her to the core.

To be perfectly fair, the Lab’s belly wasn’t exactly round, it was more like a great pink-skinned slab not unlike the prodigious paunch the cow had sported before her un-fortuitous - and delicious - demise. The hollow behind his broadened ribs was shallow at best, continuing almost horizontally to where it disappeared under his plump, turkey-like thighs; his gender, or what remained of it, was totally obscured, pressed back between his thighs by the encroachment of his king-sized gut.

“Holy cow…” breathed the tigress audibly with a hint of a giggle. It still wasn’t fair, she had hardly retained any trace of a slender figure herself, but somehow she felt that the lazy canine deserved an exaggerated response.

The Lab either didn’t hear or was good at pretending. He lifted his head up off his mate’s own distended stomach, his reaction once he saw who it was who had come calling wasn’t feigned at least. The Golden Lab immediately became more alert and he struggled to his feet in a series of strained movements that would have been a single smooth action for any other canine here. ‘Though not, perhaps for much longer…’ thought the large cat with a small shudder.

“Where are your betas?” she prompted before he could greet her.

The lab tossed his head over towards the small hill the cow formed through the shadows of the surrounding trees. “Somewhere over there, sleeping it off. Bastards all ate before me.”

The tigress was a little surprise at how seriously the soft, now obese, Labrador had taken his faux position as “Alpha” to heart. But it didn’t matter. “That’s completely unfair. Of course they should have let you get first picks. Everyone can see you’re withering away.”

The Lab eyed her sternly, which surprised the 615 lb feline even more, but decided not to make any reciprocating comments. Instead he just sighed, “Well… that is obvious and I’m not the only one. Something strange is happening on this island.”

“I’m glad you pointed that out. I might never have figured it out otherwise.” Said the tigress scathingly.

The lab sat down on his
hindquarters, the tigress noting how painfully obvious it was that the lab’s burgeoning gut made contact with the dark soil under him. “What is it that you wanted to talk to them about?” he asked and then added quickly, “You know, if you can get them all gone today, I could make some real progress here.”

The tigress almost sneered in disgust. It had become obvious that the lab wasn’t a bumbling idiot, but whatever brain he had seemed only capable of wheedling and scheming in the most cowardly sort of way. Only in the vacuum of any real power could he manage to maintain control of those left behind. “What I have to say concerns all of us.” Said the tigress sternly. “Go get your Betas and meet me by my tree, you know which one. And be quick about it!” she snapped.

The Lab’s eyes lit up and he waddled away as fast as he could manage. The tiger grinned: it was good to get him nice and scared again.

It did only take a little while before the three wolves arrived one by one under the leaning tree on which she reclined lazily, regally. After the lab had shown up trailing the third and final wolf, and panting not just a little heavily for the errands and short hike, the tigress let them stew in silence for a full minute before speaking.

“As at least one of you knows, there are other survivors on the island,” she paused for effect, “and not all of them are 2000 pound blobs of meat on hooves.” She looked down to the large timber wolf who had accompanied her to the other side of the island and back. “You know about the rhino,” there were looks of surprise from the other two wolves and outright fear from the plump Lab, “But when it chased me away, I found something else. Something probably more important in the long run than the rhino…”

She first had the larger Beta tell his side of the story. It turned out that the sleeping rhino had somehow passed through the first line of the staggered and thinly spread party. A yearling stumbled onto him, the tigress struggled not to picture the horrific flattened corpse she had passed that day, and stupidly started barking for the rest of the pack. “As if all of us together could take a 3000 pound pissed off rhino.” He added regretfully. The bull had then charged and the rest was known better to the tigress than to any other. She recounted her own story, leading up to the bamboo grove and then her decision to “continue exploring” after she had recovered.

“…And that’s when I heard them through the forest, a whole herd of horses and mules and such.”

A fiery glow came into the timber wolf’s eyes and a smaller Beta licked his chops.

She went on to describe their little hidden enclave, its defensive position and the number that she saw; she conveniently edited out the part where she was chased away.

The Lab’s face sunk at the description, “But how will we ever get them if we can’t approach from any direction except the shore?”

The other three all rolled their eyes. The one Beta who had actually left the eastern side of the island echoed the tigress’s own thoughts on the matter, “They have to leave sometime to forage. Now that we know where they rest every night, it shouldn’t be too hard to hunt them in the jungle.”

“Not that it matters now.” Piped up the smallest of the three who had fought for the title of Alpha, “that cow we had will last us a month. And who know… there might be more out there, getting fat on Manna.”

“I seriously doubt that cow will last us a month,” said the tigress distantly. Then she trained her eyes down on the four canines seated below her - ‘Just like good doggies.’¬ - and said, “Hell,” looking now directly at the Lab, “With him around it might not last the week.”

The other three immediately broke into stumbling laughter, despite the fact that not a one of them was what might have been called “trim” any longer, and the Lab hid his face instinctually. He tried to hunch a little smaller - rather unsuccessfully. One just can’t hide a gut that big - and looked pleadingly up at the tigress where she was seated on her throne above them. ‘How pathetic’ she thought, but decided postpone the second jab she had been preparing. So instead she pointed at the smallest Beta, “You. Do you have a name?”

The smaller brown wolf swallowed at being singled out from the little group. He seemed as a child again in the presence of the tigress looming above in the play of shadow and light of the canopy behind her, hardly one who could have rallied others to him in a bid for the sacred position of Alpha. “No. My number was Sigma-39”

“What do you think the chances of there being more cattle on the island?” asked the tigress; the Beta had already told her the night before that the cow they had herded up the beach was simply stumbled upon, stray in the jungle..

Sigma-39 simply shrugged, but then took a more respectful posture under the glowering eyes of the very large cat looming over him. “Me and my guys were poking around south of here yesterday and we saw some signs.” The tigress could very well imagine what sort of signs, “Definitely more than one, but nothing fresh. They could have landed there the first day and be on the other side of the island by now.”

The medium wolf, whose coat was almost entirely white save for speckled markings around his eyes and his grey socks, said, “Have you looked at these things? I’m surprised Tau-64 here got that tub to run so far before it broke its own neck.”

“They all don’t have to be that way,” the tigress pointed out and realized that she’d been spending too much time discussing with her “Science Team.” She did not want a two way stream of discussion here, not with the effective ruling body of every major predator on the island gathered.

The white wolf looked down and pawed at the ground, “I supposed not.” He muttered

Sigma-39 spoke again, “I still don’t see why that matters. We don’t need to do anything until we run out of cow. Be that a month… or… heh… a week.” He couldn’t suppress a chuckle and a humorous look at the single bloated domestic dog present.

The tigress flashed her teeth in a deadly snarl that immediately killed all humor in the vicinity, “That’s where you’re wrong. We can’t let anyone think they are safe on the island. We need to let them know that this is our island.” She didn’t speak loudly, but her words contained all the deadly assurance of a 615 lb cat behind it.

Despite that, however, a voice did rise to meet her when she had been expecting awed silence. “Do you think that’s wise? Wouldn’t it be better to keep quiet and strike them unawares when we need to?”

It was the voice of the Beta who had gone with her deep into the island and the one who had brought back the cow; with not a little of her own help, she reminded herself. She was stunned at first, and more than a little fearful that her lack of experience had finally shown itself. But one thing was certain, she could not show weakness, not here… and of course she would be free to change her “policy” later if she so chose. “Did I ask for a second opinion?” she growled fiercely and to her delight even the big Beta shied away under her wrath. ‘That is a good idea though.’ She thought to herself, ‘Good thing he mentioned it. Better to strike from the shadows where they think they’re safe than go riling them all up… That is if I can get these mutts to stop stuffing themselves with the damn Manna.’

She continued with that train of thought. “Good. But before we act on that, you all have something very important to do.”

Now all four of them were paying close attention, the lab literally quivering at his hindquarters. “Nobody’s to eat the Manna anymore. We all know what it’s doing to us… him especially.” She couldn’t stop herself from pointing directly down to the wilting Labrador as the others snickered quietly. “No more mushrooms. We’re going on an all meat diet.”

The three Betas barked in agreement, but the Lab was too busy wallowing in his own self pity to notice.

“I want a fit fighting force!” the tigress stood now on her perch her voice rising, “Those damn equines aren’t going to know what hit them!”

More barking followed and the smaller wolf even howled. The Lab, as ever the coward, edged slightly away from all the noise. The tigress slumped back down in the opposite direction, her back to the canines. They sat, looking confused as she knew they would and a few moments later she said, “You all can go now.” Only after she had heard them all disappear - ‘without a mutter or trace of backtalk’ she thought smugly - did she allow herself a nice long purr.


* * *


The rest of the day was spent in celebration for the bountiful food source that had been driven practically into the camp and in a haze of sloth and inactivity. The three scientists continued their restless hypothetical chatter, counting their numbers and interviewing others for their census data. The tigress didn’t know of how much more use they would be, even they admitted they were pressed against their limits without any access to scientific equipment of any sort. Still, they were amusing to watch them in their self-imposed and self-important missions as they flitted to and fro within the camp, always talking or drawing diagrams into the sand or carving them into slips of bark.

Everyone else had the right idea, as the tigress lounged in the shade at the edge of the forest… well almost everyone else. There was one other who was almost as busy as the science geeks. That strange, mismatched tailless freak of a dog. She would spend hours staring into space, but yet she never seemed to be at rest. She, with the ridiculous name of “Buttercup,” also continued drawing her arcane diagrams into the trunks of nearby palms until the bases of her claws bled in which case one or more of her caretakers would come and drag her away unresisting and place her again in the sand. The tigress didn’t know why her thoughts kept flying to this strange dog. ‘She’s just a genetic defect and there’s nothing more to it than that.’ And yet the tigress, the mighty hunter was eventually drawn to examine the drawings on the trees for herself.

It was just a bunch of crisscrossing lines and circles on a field of yet more vertical lines. The diagram went all around the trunk of every tree that was carved, all with patterns drawn over the evenly spaced vertical lines. ‘Nonsense drawn by a lunatic and nothing more.’ Dismissed the tigress. She turned to only to find the striped canine sitting in front of her with that blank stare, one eye green, the other blue.

She didn’t know where the shiver of fear that crept up her spine came from and was ashamed that she felt it at all. It was as if this tiny mutt, hardly any larger than coyote, exuded some sort of twisted aura, it felt unnatural being around her. The tigress didn’t say anything, instead moving away back across the meadow as fast as was appropriate.

Before she had passed, however, Buttercup spoke for the first time that the tigress knew, “They are what it sees.”

The tigress just wanted to take off into the safe, normal gloom of the kudzu forest, but her curiosity overcame her, “What are what who sees?” she asked.

The patchwork canine continued to stare off into space. The tigress noted, while waiting for a response that this dog alone hadn’t accumulated additional weight since landing on the island. When the little dog didn’t answer, the tigress continued her way, but the instant she moved, Buttercup spoke again, “The One who is Many.”

“Who the devil are you talking about?” pressured the tigress, turning to the seated dog still staring in the same direction she was when the tigress first saw her.

There was no reply.

She clenched her paws and felt like swiping the freak with her claws and putting her out of her misery; the thought was actually terribly attractive, no more annoyance at herself for being fascinated by her… and no more fear either. She actually raised her paw, but decided against it at the last moment when she remembered that she was in plain sight of everyone on the meadow. A part of her argued that they should know who’s in charge, but it wasn’t the dominant part. Something about delivering death onto an imbecile dog, even one as annoying as this one, rubbed her fur the wrong way.

She was about to go when Buttercup spoke for the final time. She said simply, “He will not make you happy.”

The tigress snarled, strangely angry for some reason although she hadn’t even understood what she was talking about. The words flew out of her mouth, “You don’t know anything! You freak!” The tigress slashed out with a paw. It hit the sand right below the striped dog and kicked up a wave that all but bowled the much smaller canine over. Buttercup simply stood up, shook from head to toe and walked calmly a few feet away and sat down again on some beach grass at the base of a palm. The tigress walked stiffly away, glowering, partly because of what the strange dog had said, but also because a part of her said that she had been aiming for her body when she had suddenly encountered sand instead.

That night she dreamed again…