Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (14 page)

No, it was only his reflection. Mhumhi let
his tongue hang out in relief. He'd seen mirrors before, but none
so big as these. He admired himself for a moment, winking his eyes
and tilting his head, before lowering his head so he could use one
of his paws to nudge a tap for some water.

He looked at himself while he lapped,
twitching his ears, putting them up and down. In the dimness behind
him one of the stall doors moved slightly.

Mhumhi blinked. The door moved again. There
came a loud flushing noise, so loud he jumped, paws sliding on the
smooth porcelain, one of his back feet slipping completely over the
edge.

He was eye to eye with his reflection in this
pose, so he had a good view of behind himself when the stall door
opened all the way and something huge with yellow eyes leapt down
from the toilet.

Consumer Wolves

Mhumhi fell completely off of the counter in
his surprise, coming to a hard rest on the sticky tiled floor
below. He twisted to his feet, paws scrabbling.

The yellow-eyed thing stepped into the light,
and Mhumhi's heart sank. It was a massive male gray wolf, and it
was baring its teeth.

"What're you doing coming here alone, you
little spotted bastard?" it said.

Mhumhi tucked his tail and backed away, back
towards the door. Gray wolves were the only wild dogs that were
bigger than painted dogs.

"I'm leaving," he told the wolf, perhaps more
hopefully than he should have, for it snarled, "No you aren't," and
lunged at him.

Mhumhi squealed and scrambled back through
the door, bumping through it. With a creak it began to slide shut,
catching the wolf around the middle as he burst through. He yelped.
Mhumhi didn't stick around to see if he was all right.

He dashed pell-mell down the aisle with the
cardboard boxes, twittering and calling for Kutta. Behind him he
heard the wolf snarl and give a short, sharp howl. That did not
bode well. Especially not when it was answered with other
howls.

"Kutta!" Mhumhi yelled, dashing around the
next aisle, but instead he found a wolf, a female this time,
snarling and advancing on him with her tail raised. Mhumhi
scrambled to do an about-face, sliding on the linoleum, and
actually ran into her. Her teeth caught him in the flank before he
got his feet underneath him enough to run away.

He heard other nails clicking on the linoleum
on the other side of the shelves on both sides. In a desperate move
he crouched and leapt, barely catching himself with his front paws
at the top of the shelves, and wormed his way over. The female wolf
leapt after him but fell back.

Mhumhi ran along the top of the shelf a ways,
then leapt to the next over, then the next, panting. Each aisle
seemed to hold more wolves than the last, and they were leaping and
growling at him. Panting, heart pounding, he wheeled around and
leapt over the end of the shelves to a low-hanging wooden sign,
suspended from the ceiling by wires. It swung wildly as he hit it,
and his paws could not get enough grip on the narrow surface and he
fell back and down.

His landing hurt a lot less than it should
have- rather than a hard floor, he landed on something soft that
yielded to his weight with the sound of crumpling plastic and a
great
poof
. He scrambled to his feet, unsteady on the
sinking surface. He seemed to have landed in a bin filled with
plastic-covered quilts.

His first, dizzy thought was that he was
incredibly lucky, but when he put his nose over the edge he changed
his mind. The bin was now surrounded by three wolves, all of them
showing their teeth. Somewhere in the distance he heard snarls, and
Kutta yelping and shrieking.

A wolf came trotting up and said, "We got the
other one. Should we kill 'em?"

"Wait," growled one of Mhumhi's captors, whom
he recognized as the big male from the bathroom. "If this one's
police, we don't want them sniffing around for the body. We'll have
to make him disappear."

Mhumhi made a bold choice then, likely not
one he would have made if he'd had his wits about him at the
time.

"I'm not police!" he shouted. "Honest, I
swear, I'm not! We only came in here looking for blankets!"

This prompted a great deal of surprise and
growling from the wolves.

"Not police?" growled the lead male. "A great
painted brute like you?"

"I'm not, really!" cried Mhumhi. "Ask her-
ask my sister- don't hurt her!"

"Sister?" said the lead wolf, then turned to
one of the others and barked, "I thought you said it was a whistle
dog!"

"It is!" said the other. "He's lying to save
his spotted hide!"

"She's my sister, she is, we're a mixed
pack," Mhumhi babbled, frantic, seeing the tide turning away again.
"Please, we'll leave, we won't say a word, please don't kill
us…"

"He doesn't sound like police," said another
wolf, the female that had lunged at Mhumhi in the aisle.

Just then two more wolves ran up, one
dragging Kutta by the ear. She was whining, her paws slipping as
she struggled to keep up.

"Hi, whistle dog," said the female wolf.
"Who's this fellow?"

"That's my little brother," cried Kutta,
whimpering.

The wolf released her and she crouched low on
the floor, trembling. Mhumhi saw that her ear was bleeding
badly.

"The stories match up," said the female. The
big male raised his lip.

"Mixed pack," he growled. "I don't like mixed
packs. They're full of puppy thieves, aren't they?"

This set the other wolves to rumbling amongst
themselves. Mhumhi cringed into the quilt, making the plastic
rustle loudly.

"We're not puppy thieves," Kutta gasped. "How
could we? From you…"

"We had a puppy thief before," said the lead
male. "Or- an
attempt.
" He licked his chops, and the other
wolves exchanged looks. "Just one attempt."

"Please," said Kutta, "we didn't even know
anyone was in here. We're not from this part of the city. We were
just…"

"Why do you want blankets?" asked the female
wolf. "Has someone in your pack got pups?"

Mhumhi and Kutta exchanged a frantic look,
and then Kutta said, "Yes, and we only wanted more bedding, and
there wasn't any around where we live…"

The female wolf turned to the male and said,
"I don't think they're going to be doing any thieving. Let's let
them go."

"Let them go?" growled the male, not seeming
to like the idea. "What if they have the police on us?"

The female looked back at Mhumhi, her yellow
eyes sharp. "Do they look as though they can go to the police?"

The male hesitated, then put his ears
back.

"Go on and take your bedding," he said,
roughly. "You've got a warning, this time."

Mhumhi sank into the quilt with relief,
plastic crinkling. Kutta got to her feet again, still trembling.
The female wolf came over and licked her bleeding ear.

"I know who you are," she said. "I've heard
of you. The orphan pack."

Kutta said nothing, just kept her head and
tail low and bore the licking like it was a punishment.

"Sorry for all the fuss," the wolf continued.
"It's just that we make our den here, and most of the dogs in these
parts know it and leave us alone. As we like it." She laughed
softly, her yellow eyes gleaming.

"A few weeks ago, someone came after one of
my puppies. I'm afraid our backs have been up ever since."

"That's horrible," said Kutta, squeezing her
eyes shut.

"Yes, terrible," said the wolf, her tail
waving slowly. "I caught her, though. It was just an old white
domestic- quite fat and stout- filthy smelling. I'm afraid I nearly
ripped her leg off."

Kutta flinched. The plastic on Mhumhi's quilt
rustled loudly.

"I thought she'd get away from me, but my
lover Amaguk there came and caught her," the wolf continued. "He
caught her round the neck, made her scream. But that didn't last
long. They're made of weak stuff, these domestics. It was over in a
second."

Kutta opened her eyes and looked at Mhumhi.
Mhumhi himself was frozen.

"You killed her?" he hard himself say.

"Yes," said the large male, Amaguk. "She was
stealing my puppy, my daughter. She tried to tear her away from her
mother in the night. I killed her."

"So you see," said the female, "that's the
reason why we're all so on edge. I apologize for the rough
treatment."

Neither Mhumhi nor Kutta said anything. The
female wolf tilted her head and swished her tail, and the rest of
her pack converged around her and the walked away, vanishing
between the aisles once more.

After a long moment, Kutta looked up
again.

"Mhumhi…"

Mhumhi stood, staggering on the yielding
surface of the quilt, and hopped clumsily out of the bin.

"We'll kill them."

"Mhumhi, no!" said Kutta, putting her ears
back, as he tottered closer to her.

"We'll kill them, won't we, Kutta?"

"Don't be stupid," said Kutta, and Mhumhi
heard an edge of raw misery creeping into her voice. "We're not
going to kill anyone. They don't deserve it."

"They don't-!"

She ran over and pushed against him, stopping
him in mid-word.

"Please, Mhumhi, don't make this worse. Don't
make it harder. Please, let's get what we came for, then we can
leave… we don't have to come back…"

Mhumhi was stiff against her pressure for a
few moments more, then he slowly yielded, all his legs going weak
against the floor, like he was a puppy again, just learning to
walk, with no strength in him, no strength built up… He felt like
there was a bald, open wound in his chest, stinging, empty.

He got to his feet and turned around and took
the quilt- the whole, heavy, plastic-wrapped thing- and dragged it
loudly and roughly out of the bin. It was awkward to carry, and he
bit down on it hard, plastic and then fabric and then feathers
filling up his mouth.

Kutta came up on the other side and helped
him drag it for a little while, and then, as they passed an aisle,
she let go and ran down it and picked something up from the
floor.

Mhumhi hadn't the mind to ask her what it
was, so he kept dragging the quilt along as she came up behind him
with something long and cylinder-shaped in her teeth.

He barely remembered what it was like to
leave the store, then to drag the stupid heavy quilt all the way
back down the street, around the corner, back to the striped
intersection with that grinning, mocking hulker face leering down
at him. He dropped the quilt and watched Kutta scratch the manhole
cover again.

It seemed to take a very long time for Maha
to respond, and while they waited Mhumhi stared hatefully up at the
giant face.

Kutta put the thing she'd been carrying down
on the ground and said, "Sacha and Kebero…"

"Let's not tell them," said Mhumhi, the words
rattling out of him. Kutta looked at him, her eyes soft.

"We must tell them, Mhumhi. At least Sacha.
She'll want to know what-"

"Sacha doesn't care!"

Kutta didn't say anything back after he spat
the words out, just stood there in front of the manhole. Her ear
still bled sluggishly, black blood crusting in her fur.

"She'll just say she deserved it," said
Mhumhi, more softly.

Kutta might have said something, but the
manhole cover jerked and shifted, and Maha put her fingers over the
edge, peering shyly out. Her eyes brightened when she saw the white
mass of the quilt.

Mhumhi was looking away, so Kutta walked
around and caught it in her teeth to drag over closer. Maha looked
around in a furtive way and pulled herself all the way out of the
manhole.

She walked on two legs around Mhumhi, and
looked at him, wide-eyed, but he continued to ignore her. She
looked at Kutta, but Kutta said nothing as well, just listlessly
tugged on the quilt.

Maha put her forelegs around the poofy mass
and started to shove it down the manhole, finally sitting down and
kicking at it until it dropped all the way down.

"Here, Maha," said Kutta, and she picked up
the cylindrical thing to show to her. "I found you a candle."

Maha's face brightened with a real smile.
"You really found one," she said. She looked at Mhumhi. "I thought
you were lying to us."

Mhumhi glanced up at her, then away
again.

"Mhumhi," asked Maha, "what's wrong?"

She moved closer to him. He leaned away,
tensing, opening his jaws.

"Maha, don't," said Kutta. "He's- we're not
doing well."

"Oh," said Maha. "But you're bleeding!"

She was pointing not to Kutta, but to
Mhumhi's flank. He realized that it had been bleeding the whole
time; he just hadn't noticed.

"Did someone hurt you?" asked Maha, and then
she put her arms around Mhumhi's neck.

Mhumhi went completely stiff, rigid, even
rising on his hind legs slightly against her grip. His mouth was
open, his teeth bared. Kutta seemed frozen as well, eyes wide and
staring.

Maha kept hugging him, blissfully, even, her
arms and fingers hot against his fur, her strange bare hulker flesh
pressing up against his, at once all too intimate and too close- he
could hear her heart beat, her pulse. He thought of his teeth
cutting her skin, of what her hot blood would taste like, pumping
out into his mouth, of the way her flesh would fill his belly, of
the way she would die, and he would steal her death for himself
while he ate her.

It was strange, but even while these thoughts
crossed his mind, he relaxed. He relaxed into the arms of the
hulker girl, felt her touch become part of him, warming him, his
neck to his own beating heart.

"That's enough, Maha!" said Kutta, her tone
very, very worried, and Maha let Mhumhi go. His neck felt cold and
bare.