The Return (7 page)

All the dogs pressed closer to Shep and Callie, as if trying to take comfort from her woofs. They smelled scared and sad — Shep hadn't made them want to stay with him; he'd made them think their families hated them. What kind of alpha did a thing like that?

Pumpkin cocked her muzzle. “You all seem so, how can I bark this, kind of desperate? Crazy?” she yipped. “I mean, your humans love you. It's like in Ginny's story-thing — humans and dogs need each other. Once we get to the shelter, you'll see!”

“Easy for you to woof,” Zeus snapped. “Your mistress never left you. You never had to fight for your life on the streets.”

“True,” woofed Pumpkin. “But that's all over now. You're almost home.”

“There's a lot of city between us and home,” Dover barked, shaking himself. He turned to Shep and with a stern gaze woofed, “The sun's setting.”

Shep licked his jowls. He'd made his pitch as best he could; he didn't want to upset his pack any further. If no dog wanted to stay with him, he'd have to form a new pack. But he'd promised Callie he'd get her home, and he would not break a promise to her.

“Let's get into formation,” he howled.

Shep gave the dogs a few heartbeats to slurp some water and otherwise get ready to hit the trail.

Oscar crept up to Shep's flank, trembling. “Did my family leave me because they saw I was a bad dog?” he whimpered. “Do you think they knew?”

Shep could not have felt like a bigger pile of scat.

He lay down beside the pup and let his ears flap loose. “No, Oscar,” he snuffled. “I think your family loves you. Listen to Callie's woofs. Just believe that they love you.”

“You don't.” Oscar looked at his paws.

“I want to believe,” he answered truthfully. He wished he could believe that his boy loved him, that the Great Wolf still watched over him, that his pack still saw him as an alpha — he desperately wanted back his faith in
everything
.

Oscar snuggled against Shep's fur. “Do you think the pack will ever forgive me?” he yipped. “Can I ever be a good dog again?”

Shep recalled asking Callie the same thing so many suns ago, after he told her about what happened to YipYowl. “Once, pup, I did something bad — I was scared and angry and I did something I couldn't forgive myself for. Callie told me that it wasn't about whether I was a good dog or a bad dog. She said I just had to keep
trying
to be a good dog.”

“Like the Great Wolf,” Oscar yipped.

Shep licked the pup's head. “Yeah,” he woofed. “Just like the Great Wolf.”

Daisy came over to where they stood. “Is the pup bothering you?” she growled.

Oscar glanced up at Daisy's muzzle. Her wrinkles had twisted into an angry scowl. The pup yelped and slunk away toward his and Zeus's nest.

“You shouldn't be so hard on him,” Shep woofed.

“If I'd been harder on him,” Daisy grumbled, “maybe he wouldn't have turned out to be such a fur-brain.”

“You do recall that he's a part of your family?” Shep yipped. “If you go home, you're going with him.”

Daisy waved her tail. “Don't —
snort
— remind me.” She licked her nose. “If I had any faith in your planning skills, Alpha, I'd stay with you.” She strutted off toward the stream, yapping at Boji about scent trails.

As she left, Fuzz crept out of the shadows, his snout stuffed with dead insects. He spat them into the dirt at Shep's paws.

“While Shep-dog give pack sad-tail, Fuzz hunt up travel-food,” he meow-barked.

Shep glared at Daisy's retreating rump. “You think I'm a good alpha, don't you, Fuzz?” he grunted.

Fuzz didn't even blink. “Shep-dog try. Rarely succeed. But nose on right scent.”

Shep stifled a growl, then sighed.
At least the cat's honest.
“I just don't understand the rush to go home,” he woofed. “Why don't my friends feel what I feel?”

The cat considered Shep for a heartbeat. “Fuzz stay with Shep-dog,” he meowed. He nodded his pink nose and purred loudly.

“An ex-alpha and a declawed cat,” Shep groaned. “We'll be quite a pack.”

Fuzz stopped purring. “Shep-dog no want Fuzz?” the cat hissed.

Shep wished he'd kept his snout shut. Nothing he woofed was coming out right. He'd just kicked dirt in the snout of his most loyal packmate.

“Of course I want you in my pack, Fuzz,” Shep woofed. “You're the only friend I've got.”

The cat flicked the tip of his tail, thinking. “Accept apology,” he meowed.

Shep wagged his tail. “I'll howl the pack together,” he barked. “We'll move straight through the Park toward sunrise. Will you scout ahead, see if there's any trouble lurking?”

“Fuzz check,” the cat meow-barked and sprang off into the shadows.

Shep gathered the dogs, gave them each one of Fuzz's bug snacks, and explained the formation he wanted to move in.

“I want Dover and Boji to take the flanks, and Daisy, you take rear point.” He turned his snout to Zeus. “You stay in front of Daisy.”

“Aye, aye,” grumbled Zeus in a lazy drawl, as if this was all boring. As if organizing the pack wasn't the most important step in moving a group of dogs.
Then again, Zeus's wild pack was like a litter of pups — every dog running whichever way their noses took them. And that's why his pack was defeated. Organization is critical —

“This is a bad idea,” yipped Pumpkin. “A super-bad idea.”

“What is it, sweet snout?” yapped Ginny. Shep wondered if he should keep those two from woofing. The last thing he needed was for Ginny to help Pumpkin become an even bigger burr in his fur.

“We're going to look super scary to a human, moving as a big pack,” Pumpkin continued. “I think we'd do better moving as one or two dogs, you know, just casually loping on the Sidewalk like it's no big deal.”

“How am I supposed to defend the whole pack when it's broken into bits and scattered all over the street?” growled Shep.

“Defend us?” yipped Pumpkin, unaffected by — or ignoring — Shep's tone. “From what? The key, I thought, was to make it to the beach without getting nabbed by the dog catchers.”

“She does have her teeth in something with that,” muttered Ginny.

Shep growled to himself. He was feeling a bit like maybe he should have left the little white fluffy ball of contradictory opinions in her cage.

“We stay in formation through the Park,” he snapped. “When we reach the street, I'll reevaluate.”

Callie gave him a concerned sneer, one snaggletooth caught on her jowl. Zeus snickered, betraying his enjoyment at seeing any obstacle in Shep's path.

Shep took his position at the front of the pack, careful to keep Zeus's scent directly behind his tail.
I've got my nose on you, Zeus
, Shep thought.
You'll have to work pretty hard to pull the bedding over this dog's snout.

 

Shep kept the dogs under the cover of the trees, moving directly toward sunrise, and soon ran into a wide road. Fuzz caught up with the pack and said that he'd run up and down along the road, and that it was the same one they'd crossed under through the tunnel.

“Road swing away from cold winds, then back toward sunrise,” Fuzz hissed. “Dog-pack follow road, yes?”

“Good find, Fuzz,” Shep woofed.

Fuzz flicked his tail, then sprang ahead of the pack along the road.

The cat's loyalty to him confounded Shep. Fuzz had every right to hock hairballs at Shep for what he'd done. Shep had tossed the cat and Honey out like ripped toys, abandoned them to be killed by Zeus. Fuzz never meowed anything about it, never asked for an apology, but how could he not blame Shep for Honey's death? Shep wondered what Fuzz would do once they found the shelter. He said he would stay with Shep, but when he saw his family, would he go home, too?

 

Shep led the dogs farther under the trees but followed the road's curve away from the cold winds. The woods were fairly quiet — there was an odd lack of life. He took a deep scent of the air and pricked his ears.

“What —
snort
— has got your tail in a twist?” barked Daisy.

He smelled that familiar scent: death and dirt.

Wild dogs.

“Get back in formation,” he growled. “And get ready to run.”

Shep smelled Zeus become more anxious. He must have scented his old friends.
I'm sure they'll have some questions for you….
Shep thought.

Shep caught the scent closer, near a rotting tree some twenty stretches off.

“To the road,” he yipped to Daisy. “Now!”

The pack bolted away from Shep, all except Zeus, who stood with him.

“Did you not hear me?” Shep barked.

“Oh, I heard you,” Zeus growled.

There was just one wild dog, but it was bounding toward them. In the moonlight, Shep could tell that the dog was injured. He sniffed and smelled that the dried lifeblood he'd scented before was the dog's own.

“Get out!” snarled the dog.

He was skinny. Too skinny. And he had a ragged collar around his neck. This wasn't a wild dog; this was someone's pet gone wild. The dog was missing a paw — his front leg ended in a jagged wound. He had one, maybe two suns left before the Great Wolf came for him.

“We're just passing through,” Shep growled, not angrily, just to let the dog know that he'd defend himself if he had to.

The dog looked from Shep to Zeus and back. His jowls trembled over his bared teeth and his hackles shivered along his exposed spine. Then the dog sprang at Zeus — why, Shep had no idea. The dog had to sense that Zeus could kill him with a single swipe of his fangs, which Zeus did. The dog fell to the ground, limp as a stuffed toy.

“You didn't have to kill him,” Shep woofed.

“A dog attacks me, I kill it,” Zeus snapped. Then he lowered his head and nosed the ear of the fallen dog. “Anyway, this one wanted to die.”

“I guess better to die by a fellow dog than to starve alone,” Shep woofed. Then he shook his head. Why was he woofing with Zeus like a friend? Zeus was his enemy. Shep could never forget that. He could never let his guard down again.

“Let's get the others,” he barked.

 

The Park opened into a field packed with lakes. Along the banks of each lake lay countless water lizards. Any one of the beasts could have swallowed Pumpkin or Callie whole.
This explains the wild pet's missing paw.
Shep couldn't defend the pack from that many water lizards. He decided to risk leaving the Park and climbing onto the big road.

A fence divided the road from the Park, but the storm had broken it in several places; the metal mesh sagged on its support poles. It was fully night now — the Silver Moon hung high in the sky, sparkling in the tiny stones embedded in the roadway. The darkness would help to keep them hidden.

“Keep to the edge of the pavement,” he woofed.

The pack, scared after running into the wild pet and perhaps reminded of what Shep had done for them over the last moon-cycle in keeping them from such a fate, didn't argue. Even Pumpkin kept her snout shut and stayed in formation along the side of the road.

Shep's mind, however, was full of howls. He reminded himself of how strong and fierce and cunning he was, of how many beasts he'd bested over the last moon-cycle, and yet the image of the wild pet could not be chased from his mind. Surviving alone in the city was not going to be easy — particularly with humans barging back onto the streets. Shep wondered if that wild pet had been driven into the Park. What dog would choose to live with all those monster water lizards? Was that really the life he wanted?

 

The dogs moved slowly, careful where they placed each paw. The road led into an area of wide, low buildings. The buildings looked flimsy; the fact that they hadn't been flattened by the wave confirmed for Shep just how far they were from the beach. But the storm itself had left its scratches. Pieces of wall were missing from the buildings and some were missing their roofs. Light poles lay like sticks across the smaller roads and thick wire strings dangled between them on the stone.

There were only a few Cars sleeping on the vast stretches of pavement next to the buildings, and the air was empty of any scent of life. No Cars rumbled down the wide street the dogs walked on. It seemed their only company was the Silver Moon and the blinking fires in the Great Wolf's coat.

“I'm hungry,” whimpered Oscar.

Shep's stomach growled in response. He sniffed the air — a faint scent of food reached his nose. It came from one of the buildings, down one of the smaller streets.

“There's food over there,” he woofed, waving his snout toward the scent. “Let's sniff it out and see if we can steal a bite.”

Fuzz bounded ahead of the pack, a black blur against the street. The dogs caught up with him near a window.

“Food here,” he hissed. “Boxes and boxes. But window closed, door closed.”

Callie stuck her nose to the wall and began scenting for another way in. “I found something!” she yipped from around the corner.

Shep found her pawing at a broken piece of siding.

“I think we can dig through the wall here,” she woofed. “It's made of thin metal. If we pull on it with our paws and teeth, I think we can bend it back far enough to sneak through.”

Shep dug his teeth into the broken strip and tugged. His teeth slipped for a heartbeat, but then caught on a ragged bit. He jerked his head and the wall peeled back slightly.

“Go!” he grumbled through his teeth. The pack squeezed through the opening.

Inside, the only light came from the small windows and a dim bulb near the door.

Callie was the last through, and she waited for Shep inside the hole. “Dawn is still a ways off, so I think we can rest here for a while,” she said. “But we should clear out well before the sun is in the sky.” From the light pant under her bark and the flutter of her eyelids, Shep could tell that this was a request — Callie was exhausted.

“Sounds good,” Shep woofed, happy to hear her barking with him about a plan as if they were still teammates, whatever the real reason.

The others sniffed around the boxes. Zeus tore into a box and found small boxes inside the big one, then sealed bags inside the small boxes.

He bit into one of the bags and grimaced. “It's food,” he grumbled. “But it tastes like a stale biscuit.”

 

The pack ate and snoozed in fits. Shep couldn't sleep — he needed to keep an ear on Zeus and a nose on this building, which was bigger than the kibble den and dark as the Black Dog's hide. He paced between the piles of boxes, row upon row of the stale bags of food. Shep had choked down a whole bag of the stuff. He guessed that it was the human equivalent of dry kibble — they'd only eat this if they had no other options. He panted to himself,
What a snob I've become
. This kibble would have been like food from the Great Wolf's bowl when he was in the fight kennel. After eating fresh meat and scraps for so long he wondered how any of them could ever go back to bowl after bowl of dry pellets, for the rest of their suns.