Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (21 page)

Mhumhi thought back to the day before, when
they had dragged the blanket out of the wolves' den. It seemed like
so long ago. How frightening the wolves had seemed back then! How
fierce their teeth! And yet, they had barely marked either of them.
He looked at his sister, at her bleeding shoulder.

"Those things… those dogs… what was wrong
with them?"

Kutta gave a little tremor from her spot on
the floor, and he felt immediately bad for bringing it up.

"They weren't dogs, Mhumhi," she said.
"That's all I know, that they weren't dogs. They didn't talk- they
couldn't
talk, I don't think- you saw the way they acted,
mindless- it was like they weren't intelligent, like rats, like
animals
."

"Monsters," muttered Mhumhi, limping through
the moonlight.

"The hulkers look more different from us than
they did, but the hulkers are really dogs, Mhumhi, they can talk
and think and smile- those things, those things were not
dogs
."

"Hulkers," said Mhumhi, slowly. "Kutta, you
saw it, didn't you? One of those things- the first one- it had a, a
hand. A hulker hand. Why? If it wasn't a dog, and it wasn't a
hulker, why did it have a
hand
?"

"It couldn't have," said Kutta, though she
looked and sounded unsure, her ears back and her eyes wide. "It
couldn't have been a hand, Mhumhi, it must have just had mange or
something, some deformity, because otherwise that doesn't make
sense
. We didn't see it correctly."

"Sacha saw it," said Mhumhi, and he saw Kutta
tense, over on the floor, and then flinch as she disturbed her
wounds.

"Either way," she said, "either way, we know-
we know what must be killing and eating other dogs. It's not the
police, nor the hulkers. It's those monsters."

Mhumhi agreed with her, though he thought
there were things that didn't make sense. "What was that wire?" he
asked, staring down at the mess that was his leg. Bald skin was
showing around the area the wire had constricted. "I don't
understand how I got so caught in it!"

He felt a sudden burst of guilt, for if he
had not been caught, they would never have lingered in the area, so
long, smelling like blood. They would have been safe down in the
sewers, all three of them, safe and sound with the hulker
puppies…

"I've heard of things like that," said Kutta.
"Wires or metal jaws you can get trapped in… I've never heard that
there were any in this part of Oldtown, though, I thought it was
more of a mid-city hazard."

"But where did it even come from?"

"Oh, it must have been something that rusted,
or fell down and got tangled," said Kutta, laying her head down on
her paws. "I don't know."

"It wasn't there before," said Mhumhi, pacing
through the moonlight again. "I've walked by that pole a hundred
times… marked it, even. The wire was never there before."

"I don't know, Mhumhi."

Mhumhi glanced at Kutta, at her muzzle with
dried blood in the fur, and felt a second surge of guilt.

"We mustn't stay here too long," he said.
"The house… I bet it's being watched now. The police will come
back. We've got to find a safe place somewhere else."

"Yes," said Kutta, softly. "Down in the
sewers… If we could get down there, hide with the puppies, we might
be better off. But swimming through the muck with these wounds-
Mhumhi, it'll kill us."

Mhumhi thought of the sickening scent and the
sewage, and shuddered. She was right. And he could not think of
anywhere else- and even if they could find a safe place to lie low
and lick themselves, they would leave a trail behind them, clear as
day, with the smell of their blood and exhaustion.

He looked at the heavy-smelling stain on the
couch again, wondering if it would be really so bad if they were
caught by the police. Especially if it was just Liduma and her
cronies. But Sacha's words returned to him, with another pang: they
were always looking for ways to have fewer mouths to feed.

"Kutta," he said, feeling a strange idea come
to him, unbidden, as he thought of the crowd that day at the
dispensary. "Kutta, I know where you can go. If we find that pack
of dholes again- the leader, what was his name, Rakshasa- I know
he'll take you in. They can protect you."

"No," said Kutta, at once.

"Come on, Kutta- you'll be safe, they're your
own kind."

"My kind!" Kutta cried, and she actually
bared her teeth at him. "They're not my kind! Since when was I a
dhole? I'm not a dhole, I don't know how to
be
a dhole- I'm
a- I'm whatever our pack is, Mhumhi, I'm
you
, and I'm not a
dhole! And don't you
dare
try to abandon me!"

In her distress, she was struggling to get to
her feet again, slipping and sliding, until finally she did it, and
staggered over to him with her teeth still showing.

"Kutta, be careful, your wounds-" he started
to say, but she cut him off.

"What would you do if I left?" she said,
coming up close to him, getting in his space so that he cringed.
"Where would you go? To join the police? They'd kill you! How could
you even think that I could leave you!"

Mhumhi whined, and fell trembling to the
floor, wagging his tail over his belly. Kutta stood over him for a
moment, shaking a little, then collapsed on top of him.

"Sleep," she said. "We're going to sleep-
you're going to shut up, and not come up with any more ideas. Then
we'll decide what to do."

She had fallen with her foreleg and head over
his back, heavy and warm. Mhumhi twisted a little to lick her
injured shoulder. She flinched.

"No… go to sleep."

He ignored her, focused on licking the area
clean. She did not protest, only coughed again, her body rattling
with it.

He must have fallen asleep for a time after
tending to her, for the next time he woke up it was pitch black.
The moon had gone down, and all was still and silent. Kutta's body
was still over him, though he could no longer hear the rasp of her
breath. She was a limp deadweight.

Mhumhi's leg was aching terribly, and he
found he could not go back to sleep. He shifted painfully.

"Kutta, wake up," he whispered.

Kutta did not stir. In the darkness Mhumhi
squirmed for a moment and managed to drag himself from underneath
her.

"Kutta!"

He nosed her. She was still warm, but her
sides did not move. He whined and pawed at her, fear rising in his
breast.

"
Kutta
!"

Suddenly she gave a huge bray of a cough.

"It's so dark," she murmured. "What's the
matter?"

"Oh," said Mhumhi, and stepped back,
panting.

"What is it?" He heard her shifting around in
the darkness, claws scratching the floor. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," said Mhumhi, which was a
fantastic lie.

"I feel a little better," said Kutta, and he
felt her warm form get closer before her nose brushed his cheek. "I
think the bleeding in my shoulder has stopped, too. We should run
away now."

"Yes," said Mhumhi, feeling lost. "Where,
though?"

"At first I thought about trying to go to
Lisica," murmured Kutta. "We could tell her what's really been
killing other dogs."

"We don't even know that those things were
doing all the killing," Mhumhi pointed out. "We don't even have
proof they existed. And I don't like that golden jackal."

"That's a moot point," said Kutta, but he
heard the faint amusement in her tone. "But I don't think we should
go to them anyway. I don't trust them not to just turn us in if
they hear the police are looking for us. I don't think they felt
very strong allegiance towards us… we're not like them."

"So there's nowhere we can go," said Mhumhi.
He found himself thinking of the pack of dholes again. If he
convinced Kutta that he'd go with her, maybe…

"No," said Kutta. "There is one way we could
go. Back down to the sewers, without swimming. There's a way there
through the subway."

"Through the subway?" Mhumhi took a moment to
revel in the fact that his guess had been correct. "Was that the
other way you and Mother used to take? Wasn't there something wrong
with it?"

"Yes," said Kutta, sounding uncomfortable,
"but I think that if we're quick and quiet we should be able to get
through all right."

"Quick and quiet?" Mhumhi glanced down at his
injured leg. "Why must we be quick and quiet? What sort of thing
will stop us from being loud and merry down there, exactly?"

"There's nothing really down there, not
exactly," said Kutta. "Not that Mother or I ever saw… but there was
a cave-in, and it- er- opened up a new way."

"A new way to where?"

"I don't really know," Kutta admitted. "But
Mother was very frightened of it when she smelled the air. She said
that way wasn't safe anymore and wouldn't use it. But if we've got
no other choice, I think if we run straight through it we ought to
be alright."

"Well," said Mhumhi, who has getting an
extremely bad feeling about all of it, "that's very encouraging.
But there's another problem with that, Kutta."

"What problem?"

Mhumhi gave a short, desperate laugh. "To get
to the subway we've got to go back past that part of the city- back
to where those things were."

The
Tunnel

It was nearly dawn, and very little starlight
remained to illuminate their way, but outside their house there
were still working streetlights on a few corners, pooling soft
yellow light. Mhumhi and Kutta avoided them, sticking to the
shadows. Mhumhi was really beginning to feel the helplessness of
their situation. Limping, smelling like blood, trying to pant
softly… If another one of those awful creatures found them, there
would be no way that they would survive.

They had both agreed that it would be best to
cut a wide angle around the light post where Mhumhi had gotten
caught in the wire. Not that Mhumhi really thought it would help,
in the end- why would the creatures stay there? As he limped along,
he suppressed a shudder.

Part of him wanted to go back, just to see,
to look- to see if anything was left there.

He had to quell such thoughts. He had held
them about his mother, the thoughts that held aloft that strange
and horrible hope, and they had gotten him nowhere. Sacha… had been
right, it was not good to hold on to them.

As he panted and pushed himself along on
three legs behind Kutta, skirting another pool of golden light, he
felt a raw longing. She would have known what to do. She would have
known the safest course- she would have been able to find Kebero
and Bii- she would have kept the pack together, where it had
dwindled to only two-

He whined, the noise unbidden.

"Hush," whispered Kutta, glancing back at
him. "I know your leg is hurting… we're almost there…"

Mhumhi licked his lips and followed her
without saying a word.

They moved slowly through the sleeping city.
Mhumhi thought he saw eyes gleaming in a storm drain once- it might
have been a fennec fox- but they vanished at once. The warm night
air lay heavily on them, wind mingling scents together. Mhumhi was
certain he could smell traces of the musky scent of those
things
, but it could have been from earlier, it could have
been from a different direction, he did not know. At least it did
not seem that it had come from anywhere close by.

Before he would not have even taken notice of
the smell; he'd have assumed it was just another dog, but now it
was firmly ingrained in his psyche. There was that, at least. They
wouldn't be caught unawares again by something that smelly.

"There's the subway," Kutta whispered to him.
The pale white building was suddenly looming out of the darkness in
front of them. Mhumhi saw the sheet metal that had been blocking
the little entrance he'd found, though now it was lying on the
ground.

Cutting through the darkness they suddenly
heard a noise: a moaning call, rising up like a question.

"No," said Kutta, her tail tucking in
fear.

"It came from far away," Mhumhi urged, even
as they heard a second noise come from a different direction.
"Hurry, let's go inside-"

They darted together into the little gap in
the wall, into the total darkness of the subway.

"Oh, no," Kutta moaned, when they had both
come through to the other side. Mhumhi's tail tucked too, in the
darkness.

The interior of the subway reeked with
monster. Mhumhi could smell its marks, its urine and feces, and the
heavy musk of its markings. There had been more than two
individuals in there- the smell was so strong that there was no
telling if there were any in there even now.

"Come on," said Mhumhi, his heart thudding
away, "come on- let's go as quickly as we can. We can't go back. We
have to do it."

Kutta made no sound, but he heard her
stumbling forward in the darkness, claws tapping on the tiled
floor. He followed, vaguely remembering the layout from the time he
had come there seeking his mother's scent. There were pillars- the
trench of the track- the familiar rushing sound of air passing
through long tunnels.

He nudged Kutta towards the way down, a pile
of old debris piled up against one side of the deep track, and they
slipped and stumbled down together. Their progress was very loud.
If there was anything in the tunnel, it knew it wasn't alone now.
Mhumhi hoped they were alone.

He kept his nose near Kutta's tail and
followed her as she limped down the track, half-tripping over the
metal rails as he came across them in the blackness. The smell of
the beasts was not getting any lighter- they had been all along
this area at some point, even far past the station where they had
climbed in.

Both of them kept quiet, the sick feeling
still rising in Mhumhi's chest.