Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (13 page)

"Come on, Kutta, don't get lazy," said
Mhumhi, wagging his tail. "If it's this way, let's go this way!" He
came off the bridge and galloped onward, nose to the ground. Kutta
followed him at a more sedate pace until he slowed down enough for
her to catch up.

"Look," she said, nudging him. There was a
storm drain embedded in the sidewalk, like the one the fennec fox
liked to hide in. "That leads down to the sewer, I bet. We must be
going the right way."

"'Course we are," said Mhumhi, trotting over
to sniff loudly at the drain. "Smells like scat."

"Well, I hope it's the right scat, and we
haven't missed the turn or anything."

"Oh," said Mhumhi, who had forgotten to
consider that the sewer branched out. "Well, it doesn't feel like
we should've turned yet, does it?"

Kutta made no response, just circled the
storm drain briefly, sniffing, then looked straight ahead. "Let's
keep going this way."

"All right," said Mhumhi, and they went on,
down through the dusty lower streets, which were silent and empty
now that it was approaching midday. Mhumhi felt like he was
starting to recognize some of the old buildings.

"Isn't this near where the subway entrance
is?"

"Oh," said Kutta, glancing up briefly. "I
guess so."

She returned her nose to the ground,
sniffing, but Mhumhi looked up a moment, tongue hanging out. A
place where he had smelled his mother… The subway was underground,
too, like the sewers. Perhaps he had found Maha's 'other
entrance.'

"Mhumhi," Kutta called. He shook himself,
breaking away from his thoughts, and followed her.

They went up past where the subway had been,
towards the northernmost part of Oldtown. Here they hit the broad
edge of Wide Street where it swung in a curve before separating
into branches and high concrete ramps. Streetlights swung slowly
here too. Mhumhi looked up at them, as the light blinked from the
topmost to the bottom slot, signaling for nothing.

The dispensary was a long ways down Wide
Street from here, and on the other side they could see more
buildings, much taller than those in Oldtown, with many blocks of
stories. There was a large parking garage just alongside the
concrete ramp, and Mhumhi and Kutta trotted over to it, sniffing
curiously as they entered its shaded interior. It was full of empty
cars, parked neatly side-by-side.

Mhumhi could tell that many dogs had come and
left their marks here, perhaps for years, as the place stank
strongly of urine. He wrinkled his nose.

Kutta hopped over a low concrete barrier and
out of the parking garage. There was a little kiosk with a lowered
wooden barrier, striped yellow and black, and she leapt over it
playfully, kicking out her hind legs.

"I think we're getting closer," she called.
Mhumhi could hear the excitement and nervousness in her voice. He
felt it too. Past Wide Street and the parking garage, they were
leaving Oldtown.

There were no strict rules about dogs leaving
their districts, of course, as there'd be no way to enforce it, but
dogs still rarely left their places of birth, unless it was to look
for a new pack to make a family with. Mhumhi knew most of the types
of foxes in Oldtown
only
lived in Oldtown, anyway, so they
had no reason to leave.

He himself had never thought of seeking out a
new pack or a mate. He did not think Kutta had either, for all her
pretending. He couldn't imagine Sacha leaving; with his mother gone
she was their lynchpin, the source of their strength.

"Let's go," said Kutta, whistling
encouragingly, and Mhumhi followed her up the concrete ramp and
into a new part of the city.

Here quite suddenly it took on a shift in
mood, like a living thing. From Oldtown's pale apartments it went
to stretch upwards, blocks and blocks of windows, dark glass, high
metal struts, building after building after building. The street
ahead of them seemed to narrow off into the distance, buildings
growing closer on either side, though never touching. The skyline
was jagged.

They trotted across the sidewalk here, as
Kutta sniffed out the next storm drain, and then a metal manhole
cover on one side of the street. There was a little fenced-in set
of chairs and tables here in front of a building with a
glass-fronted door. Most of them had been blown over by the wind,
but Mhumhi could see a couple of them standing, with bright blue
umbrellas tilted but not overtaken just yet.

"Here," said Kutta suddenly, and turned and
took them down a street where the bottoms of the buildings were
marked with awnings and tall black markings; "Here," she said
again, and took him on another turn, where they ran across tattered
plastic siding flapping over an unfinished building that was just a
mass of metal struts; "This way," she said, and they ran across a
broad intersection, gaping and empty, marked with white and yellow
lines. She stopped here to sniff at another manhole.

Mhumhi looked up, and gave a jerk of shock.
Suspended on the building above him was a huge rectangular board,
and printed upon it was a lifelike image of a hulker's face, only
magnified a thousand times its size. It stared down at him with its
pale mad eyes, hundred-foot smile stretching white and
menacing.

Mhumhi knew it could not be alive, that it
was flat, and yet he tucked his tail. How could an image of a
hulker be there like that, grinning down at the city? It was too
unnerving, as if a hulker had taken his pale, watery urine and
pissed a high mark for all to smell.

"Kutta, look at this," he called.

"Wait, Mhumhi," she said, and he could hear
her sniffing deeply. "I think… I think that this is it!" She
laughed, letting her tongue hang out. "Look, come over here, look
at this!"

He turned nervously away from the mocking
image and joined her at the manhole. By one edge something
dirty-white stuck out. When he sniffed it he got a strong whiff of
Tareq- Tareq's urine, to be exact.

"This must be it!" he exclaimed, excited in
spite of himself. They had done it- they had found the other
entrance!

Kutta began scratching at the manhole in
excitement. "Maha!" she whistled. "Tareq!"

Mhumhi glanced around a bit nervously, but
the street was completely deserted. "Don't be too loud," he warned
her anyway.

Kutta twitched her ears but otherwise ignored
him, concentrating on scratching away at the cover of the manhole,
scraping all of its strange ridges. Finally it seemed to twitch
underneath her, and she leapt off.

The manhole cover hissed and made a grinding
noise as it slid over, pulled by some invisible electronic
mechanism. Maha's small fingers curled over the edge.

"Look, Maha, we found you!" said Kutta,
falling into a play-bow, as if it had all been a wonderful game.
"Come up!"

Maha waited for the manhole cover to grind
the rest of the way over before poking her head out. Her eyes
rolled nervously from side to side.

"Come out, come out," said Kutta, raising one
foot to paw eagerly at the air. "There's no one around!"

"That's not a good idea, Kutta," Mhumhi
warned her, glancing around furtively. The street may have been
empty, but that giant picture of the hulker's face still made him
rather anxious.

"Oh come on, Mhumhi, she can come out for a
little bit," said Kutta, wagging, but Maha looked around and shook
her head silently. Mhumhi could smell how frightened she was. He
licked his lips.

"Let's leave her be. We found where the hole
is, now we can find the things to put into it."

"All right," said Kutta, sounding
disappointed, and went over and licked at Maha's dense hair. "Take
the meat now then, little puppy."

Maha did so, stroking Kutta's chin as she had
done Mhumhi's, still queerly silent the whole time. She put the
handful of meat in her mouth so she could use both hands to crawl
back down the ladder. There must have been some mechanism to
trigger the manhole cover closed again, for it hissed back to life
and started laboriously shifting itself back into place.

"We'll be back soon," Kutta said, but Maha
said nothing as the cover bumped and rattled its way back
closed.

Kutta wrinkled her brow, looking at Mhumhi.
"What do you think is the matter with her?"

Mhumhi was surprised. "She's frightened,
isn't she? Of being on the outside? A dog could catch her
here."

"But there's no one around," Kutta protested,
almost childishly. Mhumhi gave her an odd look, and she sighed
through her nose.

"You're right, of course. Let's look around
these shops for some clothes and things. I think I know what a
candle smells like, so I can tell you what it is if we see
one."

Mhumhi agreed, glad to be leaving the giant
grinning face behind. They wandered up and down the street for a
bit, poking at doors, but none of them looked to be enterable,
aside from the food shops, which had broken windows and
long-emptied shelves.

Finally Kutta turned the corner and came
across a building with a large set of wide clear windows, through
which they could see tall shelves stretching gray and endless. As
they passed the doors, they slid open like magic. Mhumhi jumped,
and Kutta laughed.

"Let's look in here, there are a lot of
things," she said, sniffing eagerly.

Mhumhi followed her, warily, jumping again
when the doors slid shut again behind them. It felt like a seal had
closed, for the air in the store was very still and silent.

Both Mhumhi and Kutta began sniffing at once,
for at some point or another there had been dogs in this place.

"Probably just exploring," said Kutta, tone
falsely bright. Mhumhi knew why she was nervous- the dogs smelled
strong and large. "Let's start down there, where there's
light."

Mhumhi followed her, feeling uneasy again.
The store's artificial light had sputtered out in some places, so
that there were patches of abrupt darkness amongst the shelves; in
other places, the lights sputtered and flickered like they did on
Food Strip Street.

The shelves Kutta took them along were lined
with strange objects: coiled black hoses, small carts with wheels,
large cans of strong-smelling stuff, and a whole bank of yellow
clay pots. Some had been knocked over and smashed on the linoleum.
Mhumhi stepped gingerly around the fragments.

"What do you think?" he asked. Kutta glanced
back at him.

"Not here, probably," she said. "I think the
things are arranged in some kind of pattern. There must be an area
for bedding. We could split up and search for it."

Mhumhi trotted around the edge of a shelf to
look down another aisle, where a few feet away the lights cut off,
leaving it in darkness.

"All right," he said, as his tail tucked
down.

"Are you frightened, Mhumhi?" Kutta asked.
"We don't have to."

Mhumhi glanced back at her, said, rather
sulkily, "It
will
be faster," and slunk down the aisle.

He stepped through the dark part, hearing
Kutta's nails clicking away in the other direction behind him. Here
it smelled strange, artificial, though it had gotten hard to
discern shapes in the dimness. He gingerly nosed what was on the
bottom shelves. His nose bumped against something smooth and
yielding- cardboard. It just seemed to be a shelf full of cardboard
boxes.

Mhumhi went on a little further, nosing every
few feet, and discovered something smooth and metallic. When he put
his head in it it tipped off the self and landed on its side with a
deafening clang. Mhumhi froze instinctively.

From somewhere far in the distance he heard
Kutta give an inquiring whistle, and breathed a slow sigh of
relief. He gave a little chirp to let her know he was all
right.

He sniffed whatever he'd knocked over- it
seemed to be a large metal pot. He left it where it was on the
ground.

The aisle he was in was yielding little in
the way of bedding, so he broke into a brief run and circled around
to the next one. At least here there was more light, though it
showed him nothing, as the shelves were empty. Only bits of
cardboard and plastic remained. Mhumhi surmised that they had once
held food.

He went on to the next aisle, skipped it when
it held much the same thing, and went trotting down the next. This
one looked more promising- it widened out, and there were metal
racks with cloth hanging on them. It looked like the same sort of
cloth wrappings the hulkers wore. Mhumhi couldn't recall the name
Maha had used for them.

They looked too small to be used as blankets,
though Mhumhi supposed if you were to drag a whole bunch of them
you could make a nice nest for a den. Indeed it looked as if some
dogs had done just that, for there were plastic and wire hangers
scattered on the floor in places where they'd been torn off the
racks. The smell of large dog was stronger here. Mhumhi sniffed it
in a worried way. It smelled as if whatever had been here had been
here quite recently. There was new scent layered over old
scent.

He trotted on and found another shelf full of
cardboard boxes. The smell intrigued him, so he reared up and dug
at one with his paws until it tipped off the shelf, spilling out…
something. Something oblong made of rubber. He sniffed on it,
gnawed briefly, and decided to leave it.

At the end of this aisle there was an open
little corridor. Mhumhi went in curiously and found that it
branched into two. On one side there was a carpeted floor and what
looked like several empty stalls; on the other, a half-open door
from which came the unmistakable smell of toilets.

Mhumhi went towards the toilet side, thinking
he might be able to get a drink of water. Where there were toilets,
there were sinks, after all.

He squeezed through the door and found that
the bathroom was quite dark, with only one or two lights above the
row of sinks still working. He leapt up onto the counter and got
the shock of his life- there was a
huge dog standing right there
beside him
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