Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (27 page)

"Kutta!" he cried, dark thoughts about
hulkers' hearts spinning out of his mind entirely as he ran to her.
"Kutta, what are you doing, are you all right?"

Kutta opened her eyes slowly. There was gunk
all over her face again. Mhumhi was suddenly aware of how cold the
concrete under his paws was, and nudged at her urgently. "Kutta, go
inside, you're sick-"

"I'm sick," said Kutta, slowly, and blinked
at him. Her gaze seemed to slowly focus, and then she drew back a
little. "Mhumhi, your face- what happened?"

"It's not my blood," said Mhumhi. "I'm fine.
I have food for you."

She blinked at him again. Mhumhi looked back
at Maha, who was standing a little ways away, staring at Kutta with
wide eyes.

"Go in the room, Maha," he said. "Close the
door behind you."

She brought her eyes up to him, and her gaze
grew sullen again.

"Why should I?"

"Do as I say!" Mhumhi snarled at her,
open-mouthed. Maha put her hand up to her mouth and ran into the
room and slammed the door.

"What was that about?" Kutta twisted her head
back to stare at him, wavering slightly. "Why are you being cruel
to her?"

"It's nothing," said Mhumhi. "Nothing… Take
the meat, Kutta, there's enough of it."

Kutta seemed to accept that his tone brooked
no argument, and slowly got to her feet. Mhumhi eyed her, her ribs
and her bony hips.

"Where did you get the meat?" she asked. "Not
our dispensary…"

"Another dispensary," he said.

Kutta licked at his muzzle, then the corner
of his mouth, and his stomach gave that familiar heave. He hacked
up meat into a pile on the floor. It was slippery and dark
yellow-brown, different from the pale bloodless stuff they normally
got, but Kutta said nothing. Perhaps she was too sick to notice.
Mhumhi felt sick just watching her eat it. She did not know- he did
not know if she would eat it if she did- he did not know how he
himself had eaten it. He had looked into the hulker's eyes and
eaten him.

"It's good," said Kutta, making him tense,
but she merely raised her head to look up at him, licking her lips.
"I feel better…"

"Good, then we should take you back inside,
get you warmer," said Mhumhi, nosing up against her, but she drew
away.

"Inside… no." Kutta backed away from him. "I
can't go back inside, Mhumhi. I've done a terrible thing."

"What terrible thing?" asked Mhumhi,
half-amused by the seriousness in her tone. "What could you
possibly have done?"

Kutta did not answer, but she was shaking
slightly. Mhumhi went up to her and pressed against her side.

"Come on, come back in, you can lie down
where it's soft, and the puppies can snuggle with you-"

"No, no, it's that, it's them," gasped Kutta,
pulling away from him. "It's Tareq, I've done something awful to
him."

"What do you mean?" said Mhumhi, suddenly
getting the worst feeling of apprehension. Kutta looked away from
him.

"You must feel it," she said, "you must feel
it, when he whimpers- when you see them stumble- that awful
feeling, where you want to-" She hesitated. "Tell me I'm not the
only one who feels it! Tell me I'm not the only one who wants to
ki-"

"Keep your voice down," said Mhumhi, shooting
a look towards the door. "No, Kutta, no… you're not the only one
who feels it."

"Oh," said Kutta, shaking, and limped a
little away from him. "And now I've done a terrible thing, poor
Tareq, poor Tareq… I couldn't help myself."

"Kutta, tell me what happened," said Mhumhi,
now truly alarmed, and looked nervously towards the door again. It
had been very quiet.

"I was sleeping," said Kutta, "and I felt
feverish, and he- reached towards me, to touch me, I don't know,
and that terrible feeling came back again, and I- I- I couldn't
help myself!"

Mhumhi drew away, feeling thick dread at the
guilt in her eyes, and scratched at the door. "Maha? Maha! Let us
in, now!"

"No!" came Maha's voice. "Go away!"

"Maha, please, let us in- we've got to see-"
Mhumhi stopped himself, for he had been about to say "what's left
of Tareq," but Kutta didn't look like she had eaten; had she left
the body there? Was Maha inside with his lifeless body?

"Maha! Open the door!"

"No!" shouted Maha. "I'm not letting either
of you in ever again! You're a bully and you don't share, and
Kutta- she- she bit Tareq!"

"Bit him," Mhumhi repeated, slowly, then said
again: "She bit him?"

"On the hand! He's bleeding! I hate both of
you!"

Mhumhi put down his paw and looked at Kutta.
She shuddered.

"It's true, I- I bit him! And then I ran out
here. I'm a monster, Mhumhi."

"Kutta," said Mhumhi, "you only
bit
him. He probably deserved it."

"Don't you say that, he's just a puppy,"
Kutta moaned. "And I know why I bit him. I hate myself!"

"Stop that," said Mhumhi, coming close to
lick her ears. "You're sick, and it's making you silly. Tareq is
fine. You haven't done anything he won't recover from."

"Why do I feel this way, Mhumhi?" Kutta
asked, leaning into him. "I don't want to… I hate it."

"You're sick," Mhumhi repeated, though his
tone was more listless. He knew exactly what she meant.

He nosed Kutta and pawed at the door again.
"Maha, let us in. Kutta and I are sorry. We've been mean to
you."

There was no answer. He scratched with
increasing urgency.

"Kutta is sick, and it's very cold out here.
Let us in!"

Still she did not answer. Mhumhi growled,
looking at his shivering sister.

"That little-"

"We'll have to wait for her to calm down,"
Kutta said. "She gets like this… angry…"

Mhumhi saw the sense in her words, but he was
still annoyed. "But where will you go? You can't stay out here in
this place when you're-"

"Sick, I know," said Kutta, weary-sounding.
"There's a little alcove at the end of the tunnel that has some old
paper and things…"

Mhumhi thought that sounded dubious, but he
walked beside her and helped her limp to the end of the concrete
hallway, where there was a closed door on one side and on the other
side there was indeed a little alcove, just a few shelves and a
pile of paper. Mhumhi, thinking of rats, nosed around in it a bit,
but though he smelled a few dried droppings it appeared the paper
had not been inhabited for some time. Perhaps Maha had something to
do with that.

Kutta settled down on the paper with a sigh
and put her head down, and Mhumhi curled up beside her, trying to
share his warmth with her. The paper was a poor substitute for a
blanket, but it was better than the bare floor.

Kutta was soon breathing evenly, if raspily.
Mhumhi could not get to sleep himself. He did not want to get up
and leave Kutta, but his mind ached for something to do to distract
it from terrible visions of the day's events. He spent some time
licking his injured leg. It seemed to be healing, though his paw
still tingled oddly from time to time. The wound itself was closed
and scabbed, so that was good.

He grew restless of tending to himself and
nosed about in the papers. There were a great many of them stuck
together, most faded down into whiteness. Some of the ones beneath
the top layer, however, still had an odd glossiness to them. He
pawed at them, enjoying the crinkling sound, and dragged a crumpled
batch closer to himself.

On one page that still had a few dark colors
he saw a strange image, and he had to blink at it a few times for
it to make sense: it was a hulker.

He pushed the paper away from himself at
once, alarmed. It reminded him of the eerie billboard with the
smiling hulker face on it. The paper was attached to a bunch of
others, though, and they crumpled open. More pictures of
hulkers.

He was interested in spite of himself, and he
pawed the thing back towards him and looked at the pictures.
Hulkers standing, hulker faces… He licked a page with his tongue to
turn it and found the taste awful and bitter. But there were still
more hulkers… hulker after hulker… so many images of them. How did
images like that get onto boards or paper, anyway? He thought that
it might not be natural, but he did not know how anyone would put
them there. And why? Who liked hulkers that much?

He turned the page again and was surprised to
see not a hulker, but a dog. A domestic, by the look of it, for it
had floppy ears. It was smiling, tongue hanging out. There were
strange scribbles all around it.

At least there was some representation,
Mhumhi thought, but it was somehow more eerie to see the dog there,
smiling in that empty way at nothing, frozen in place. He pushed
the papers away from himself, crumpling them loudly as he slid his
paw.

"What are you doing?" asked Kutta, sounding
groggy.

"Sorry, Kutta," he said. "I didn't mean to
wake you. I'm only playing with these papers. There are pictures of
hulkers on them, did you see?"

"Oh," said Kutta. "Yes… they're
everywhere."

"I wonder," Mhumhi began, hesitating a bit,
for the question sounded foolish to him. "Do you think… someone
made these?"

"Made them?" Kutta was quiet for a moment.
"Someone… who, though?"

"I know," said Mhumhi hastily, "that makes no
sense. They just are, I suppose, like everything else."

"I don't know," said Kutta. "I don't know…
Mhumhi, have you ever thought that the city felt like… like it
wasn't made for us?"

"Sick-silly," said Mhumhi. "I shouldn't have
said anything. The city, made? Who'd make it? The city is the whole
world! Who could've built all this?"

Kutta did not respond, aside from a soft
whine. He rolled over to nuzzle at her and felt her breathing start
to slow again.

Mhumhi must have fallen asleep too, for the
next thing he remembered was slowly waking up with a bad feeling.
His eyes fluttered open. Kutta was still snoring softly beside
him.

Something was making his stomach churn,
though. He was not quite sure what- there was nothing he could see
or hear, but- He raised his head and sniffed the air.

There
was
something strange. He could
smell hulker, hulker he wasn't familiar with, and the scent seemed
to
flicker
, somehow, like it was incorporeal, which didn't
make any sense. The hairs on his back rose. He got up from Kutta's
side, ignoring her sleepy murmur, and turned the corner.

There was a hulker crouching in front of the
puppies' door. Mhumhi was startled by the sight of it- the scent
hadn't smelled anywhere near that close, but there it was, touching
the door with its hands and rocking back and forth in place. Mhumhi
got the sense that something was wrong with it.

He was not sure what to do. The hulker had
not seen him, and while it was an adult, it did not seem dangerous.
It had nothing in its hands and it seemed fragile, the way it
rocked. He thought it smelled like a female. Perhaps it had sniffed
out the puppies and wanted to look after them…?

If that was the case, Mhumhi thought, it
would be best for him to make himself scarce, not scare it off. But
he stayed where he was, easily visible if the hulker should happen
to turn her head. That bad feeling had not gone away.

The hulker raised a forepaw, crooked forward
awkwardly. Beneath her dense coverings Mhumhi glimpsed a hairy
wrist. She batted on the door.

There was a beat of silence, then Maha's
voice came from the other side: "Go away! Bad dogs! You can't come
in!"

The hulker paused, tilting her head slightly,
then rose up on her hind legs. She looked unsteady, swaying for a
moment, then batted on the door again.

There were a few scraping noises, and then
Maha opened the door, her face tearstained. "I said you can't-"

She stuttered to a stop, staring up at the
strange hulker, which still swayed as she looked down at her.

"Who are you?"

The hulker rocked wordlessly for another
moment, tilting its head the other way, then grabbed Maha by the
hair and dragged her out of the room.

Maha screamed, but Mhumhi was already
running. He had not formed a plan or even had a coherent thought-
his teeth merely hit the hulker's calf.

The hulker squealed and dropped Maha on the
ground. It raised its hands and beat at his head, one, two, three
blows that knocked him dizzy. He let go of its flesh to stagger
back, tasting blood- his or the hulker's? How did it taste no
different?

The hulker had not finished, though. While he
was dazed it took one long leg and kicked him in the side. He
staggered back with a yelp.

Maha was getting to her feet, one hand on her
head pressing down her wiry hair. The hulker turned and lurched
towards her. Mhumhi gave it a warning snarl and ran towards it,
stopping short when it turned and swung its fist at him.

"Mhumhi!" Maha cried. The hulker turned to
look at her, and Mhumhi threw himself forward, catching her elbow,
bearing her down.

She squealed and kicked him away again, but
he was faster this time and only caught a glancing blow. His
injured leg wobbled.

On the ground the strange hulker pushed
herself up on her hands and looked at Mhumhi. Her eyes showed no
white. She opened her mouth and laughed, and all of Mhumhi's fur
rose. It was not a hulker laugh. It was a hyena laugh.

Maha gave a little scream, and the hulker
looked at her and crawled forward on all fours, grinning. Mhumhi
lunged at her again, but this time he only caught the edge of the
wrappings around her chest. She yowled and rolled, and Mhumhi let
go, springing back. But this time he had gotten in front of
Maha.

"Go!" he said to her, turning back to look at
her. "Go back into the room and shut the door! I'll get rid of
it!"

She merely stared at him and whimpered, both
hands around her face.