Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1)
Read Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) Online
Authors: Lydia West
Tags: #scifi, #dog, #animal, #urban, #futuristic, #african fiction, #african wild dog, #uplifted animal, #xenofiction
Darkeye Volume One
by Lydia West
Copyright 2014 Lydia West
Smashwords Edition
Cover art by Aliza Layne
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase
an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book
and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your own use
only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and
purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of
the author.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my readers at koryoswrites.com,
without whom this series would never have been completed. Your
words of encouragement, enthusiasm, art, and especially your
critique were all invaluable to me.
I would also like to thank my wonderful cover artist,
Aliza Layne, and my good friend Madelaine Morales, who helped me
with formatting. And my parents, who suffered through the
nine-month gestation of this series.
Last but most certainly not least, my supporters on
Patreon:
Talia Henderson
Not A Lizard
Makinsey
Sparky Lurkdragon
S. W.
Merrick Meyers
Megan Krueger
Emily Aiken
Thank you so much for all of your support!
This book is dedicated to my dog, Asta, who passed
away during the completion of this series.
Wild
Dogs
It was utterly dark, the cold air sinking in
the high concrete tunnel with a dull rushing sound, like the long
sigh of an invisible giant. The blackness was really absolute; the
platforms and the blandly tiled walls and the trench lined with a
metal track were all blanketed in that whispering emptiness. The
electric lights that had once lit the subway had long since
sputtered out.
But there was a sound, under the humming of
air: claws softly scratching concrete.
"Mother!"
The voice was high and strange, the word
sharp in the blackness. It came again.
"Mother! Mother, are you here?"
It echoed and faded and the rushing hum
continued.
There came a sharp bark, from above.
"Mhumhi!"
"I smell her!" cried the voice. "Oh- I
smelled her! Oh, she was here, Sacha, she was here!"
"Mhumhi, come up right away! Hurry!" From far
above, where the tunnel sloped, there was a patch of light,
arc-shaped, and shadows crossed it.
There was a scrabbling and a scraping, and
then a tall, lean dog pushed his way through, squeezing from
between a piece of metal siding and a concrete wall, blinking hard
in the fierce daylight.
He was not a domestic dog. His coarse coat
was patterned brown and black and pale like dappled sunlight. His
ears were cupped and round, the expression on his dark face
inscrutable, as his skinny tail curled low between his legs.
He was what was called a painted dog: a kind
of wild dog.
A little rain was falling, making dark spots
on the concrete sidewalk and washing the dust off of the street
beyond. The painted dog turned and looked back at the metal siding,
sniffing the air. The building he had emerged from was squat and
unappealing, all yellow faux-brick with a flat iron roof. There was
a door in the wall, a few feet away, but it was heavy, and
shut.
A second dog emerged from the hole behind the
siding. This one was much smaller, coming barely to Mhumhi's knee,
and was solid brown with dark legs. Everything about her was short
and squat, even her ears, which were tiny and round, and her eyes
were narrow in her small bearlike face.
This dog was called a bush dog, and though
she was very small, her expression made it clear that she was just
as much a wild dog as her larger companion.
"Don't go down there again, Mhumhi," she
said. When she spoke she did not move her lips, but rather opened
and closed her mouth, the same harsh sounds that Mhumhi had used
emerging somewhere from the back of her throat.
"I think there are dogs that live down
there…" she continued, but trailed off, raising a lip slightly in
annoyance. Mhumhi was twittering and chirping at her and trying to
lick her chin.
"Sacha, I
smelled
her," he whined,
between licks- he was mostly bathing her neck, as her chin was so
low it was hard for him to get at. "She must be down there- she
must have gone down there at some point, sometime…"
"She probably did," Sacha grunted, seeming
resigned to the licking. "You don't know how old the scent is."
Mhumhi said nothing to this, but he stopped
licking, and trotted a few steps away, looking back at the siding.
Sacha eyed him.
"I mean it. Don't go back down there. You'll
end up killed, and then what good will that be to us and
Kebero?"
"If Mother came back-"
"Don't, Mhumhi."
"But she must be injured, I think, she must
be trapped- there were a bunch of rocks that fell down at part of
the tunnel, and I was trying to dig at them-"
"She's not injured, Mhumhi," said Sacha,
raising her lip a little again, and Mhumhi's tail, which had been
wagging, went limp.
"Even if- even if she's dead, I want-"
Sacha's words were hard and flat: "Mother may
not be dead."
Mhumhi stiffened. Sacha looked away for a
moment.
"Come on, Mhumhi, if you've even got any meat
left in you, Kebero is hungry. I've left Kutta with him, but you
know
she'll wander."
Mhumhi cast one last look back at the
building, blinking from the rain, and then shook himself and
followed her as she moved onto the street.
It was midday, and they were in a mostly
unpopulated part of Oldtown, so around them the city was quiet.
Squat little buildings walled in bleached white plaster were
crammed tight together along the wet, pale street. Here and there
the harsh odor of dung or urine marked a dwelling, but both Mhumhi
and Sacha did not bother to give it more than a cursory sniff or
two.
They stopped to get out of the rain for a
moment under the plastic roof of a bus stop, panting, breath
steaming. Sacha shook herself, and then again, snorting at the
wetness. Mhumhi sat down and half-heartedly scratched at his
shoulder with his hind claws.
The building across from them had a half-open
door, and Mhumhi saw something peep out at it to look at them: a
small face, as small as Sacha's, with grey-and-black markings. It
vanished as quickly as it had come.
"Gray fox," said Sacha. Her tone was
dismissive.
The gray fox reappeared in the doorway, and
beside it, another one poked its head out. This one yapped across
the street at them.
"Are you police?"
Mhumhi raised his head, tail wagging slightly
against the concrete, but Sacha shot him a look.
"No, he is not!"
This seemed to bewilder the foxes, and they
put their heads together and conferred for a moment before the male
spoke again.
"But have you heard, about the West Big Park
meat dispensary…?"
"We have not!" said Sacha. "Go away!" She
uttered a fierce whine. This seemed to startle the foxes so much
that they vanished entirely, and the door snapped shut.
"You're so mean," said Mhumhi, rising to his
feet and stretching a little. "What do you think they heard? About
the dispensary?"
"Rumors," said Sacha. "Like always. Somebody
or some pack of somebodies is spreading them around. Stupid."
"Rumors like the dispensary doesn't give out
meat anymore?"
"Stupid," Sacha repeated. "Trying to make
dogs get upset. It's only mealy little foxes who'll get worked up
about it, I think. The dispensaries won't stop giving out meat.
We'd starve."
Mhumhi thought this statement over. He
decided not to point out that their hunger might not be what caused
the dispensaries to run or not; Sacha did not like being
corrected.
"The rain's lighter," she said, peering out.
"Let's go."
Together they trotted through the crammed-in
dwellings of Oldtown, gradually reaching more populated areas.
Other dogs wandered listlessly around in the wet; most of them were
foxes, or the size of foxes. They watched lanky Mhumhi pass with a
certain wary focus, but the vast majority of them knew of him
already, and if they didn't they'd notice how meekly he followed
the diminutive Sacha. He was not like other painted dogs.
They came to a sort of groove in the street
with a metal rail running through it- a track for a trolley. Sacha
sniffed at it warily and then hopped over it.
"I don't think it'll sting today," she told
Mhumhi, "but don't touch it anyway. I don't trust it."
Mhumhi made a show of stepping over it,
posturing with his longer legs. She snorted at him and then turned
to continue walking, stub tail up and rigid.
They had arrived on their home street, and
Mhumhi let his tongue hang out when he saw their house. It was one
of those same packed-in buildings, visibly indistinguishable from
the others, but the mingled scent of his small family made him feel
warm in the chilly rain.
Sacha ran up to the front wall and backed up
against it, nearly doing a handstand on her front paws, to mark it
with urine.
"Liduma won't like that," said Mhumhi, waving
his tail.
"If the police ever come here, they can tell
me how much they don't like it," replied Sacha, and she ran to the
door and nosed it open. Mhumhi followed after her, joining in her
whining and yowling when he crossed the threshold with his own
chirps and twittering.
They heard yapping from the second floor, and
clattering down the narrow stairs came a medium-sized,
cinnamon-colored dog, smaller than Mhumhi but still dwarfing little
Sacha. Her black brush of a tail was wagging furiously and she ran
to try and lick under Sacha's chin. Mhumhi bounded in place once or
twice and then joined her, bathing poor Sacha, who twisted and
growled at them.
"Enough!" she finally barked. "Stop
that!"
The cinnamon dog- which was called a dhole-
parted her teeth in a smile, her tongue hanging out. Mhumhi panted
happily in response and gave her a few licks around her jowls. She
put a paw on his shoulder, pushing him away, and sniffed around his
forehead and ears.
"Did you go to the subway again?" she
asked.
Sacha spoke before she could answer. "Kutta,
where's Kebero?"
"Oh, upstairs, he was sleeping," the dhole-
Kutta- said, not seeming very interested in the topic. "Mhumhi, did
you catch any sign of her?"
"I smelled her, but…" Mhumhi glanced at
Sacha. "I don't know how old the scent was. It wasn't strong."
"Well, that's good- that's a start-" Kutta
said, eyes bright, but Sacha interrupted her.
"He's not going back. And neither are you."
She caught Kutta's gaze in a hard stare until she lowered her head
and wagged her tail between her legs.
"I wasn't really planning on it- it's so dark
and strange down there- but surely, Sacha, if Mhumhi smelled her,
we should keep-"
"Take Mhumhi upstairs," said Sacha. "If he
has any meat left in him, he needs to give it up."
"All right," Kutta said, looking away.
Mhumhi's tail lowered too, though it was more related to the thing
about the meat.
Sacha left them to go lap up some water from
the sink embedded in the counter. Kutta nudged Mhumhi with her
shoulder and led him up the stairs.