The Pack by David Fisher
It’s a dog-eat-man world
If you’re looking for a simple, down and dirty, brutal tale of man versus animal, then I heartily recommend The Pack.
This is the third such creatures-gone-wild Paperback From Hell I’ve read (following The Nest and Killer) and it’s an economical exercise in doing exactly what it says on the tin.
It’s simple, really: an island popular with summer-long tourists has an abandoned dog problem. The canines are brought to the island as pets but cut lose at the end of the season as their families return to the city. When winter sets in, the heretofore domesticated doggies turn increasingly feral. They form a pack — following their brutal grey shepherd leader — and transform from man’s best friend into man’s worst enemy.
The story of The Pack is minimal and efficient. Like Die Hard could be accurately described as “a man is trapped in an office building with a bunch of terrorists”, so The Pack can be described as “a man and his family are trapped in a house surrounded by vicious, murderous dogs.”
That’s it. The humans here are stuck in a house. If they step outside, they will get attacked and probably killed. How do they escape? And if they do, how do they get off the island?
It’s a straightforward, high stakes conflict. The goal is survival.
But within that minimal framework, Fisher crafts a compelling, entertaining, and increasingly tense narrative.
As with so many of these seemingly basic horror paperback concepts, it comes down to the specifics of the characters to bring depth and elevate the material. Originally published in 1976, The Pack is very evocative of similarly “basic” Hollywood movies of the 80s (again, like Die Hard) that are deceptively small in the story they tell, but which actually have a lot more going on than it might first appear.
Larry Hardman grew up on Burrows Island. His parents, Tom and Freida still live there. They are one of only a handful of elderly couples that now reside on the island year-round. Larry and his wife, Diane, are visiting during the offseason not just so that their children can spend time with their grandparents, but more so that Larry can try and convince his parents to leave their remote island behind and spend their twilight years nearer him and his family.
Not that things are going so great in the New York Hardman’s household. Larry and Diane are essentially strangers who share a bed. He is an island-raised, city-dwelling workaholic, she is (or at least appears to be) a materialistic shrew who is not at all glad to be slumming it in the house where her husband grew up.
And that’s before the intergenerational tensions or the introduction of Larry’s estranged brother, Kenny — a wildcard combat veteran who winds up trying to make it back to the island to save his stranded family when they’re held hostage in their own home.
Story-wise, the whole things take place over mere days. (Three? Four?) But so much happens as Larry and Diane methodically come up with ideas of escape, put their plans into action, and are inevitably go back to the drawing board. To evoke another holiday movie comparison, The Pack plays like an inverse Home Alone: but gnarlier, bloodier, and far more ruthless.
There is a lot of death in The Pack, but it is also a tale of perseverance. Characters are at war with the deadly animals, but at conflict with each other. Old wounds must be confronted in order to heal. Individuals must dig deeper and find a side of them they never knew existed in order to progress.
There is, in short, a lot more going on here should you want to look for it. The Pack is a far deeper and touching novel that it has any right or need to be. And yet, at its core, it is a simple, straightforward, and brutally efficient story of man versus animal.