Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (32 page)

Mhumhi went up and sniffed the stuff warily.
It did smell like dispensary meat, though the dirt had made the
color unrecognizable. He found himself still rather reluctant to
eat it, given what he had just heard.

"Listen," said Biscuit. "You must not pay any
mind to the things Lamya told you in there. Being without other
humans can- well, it can make a human act very strange. You must
realize that she was trying to say the things that would shock you
the most. And they simply aren't true."

Mhumhi raised his eyes up to meet Biscuit's.
"The dispensary isn't stocked with hulker meat?"

"Of course it isn't," said Biscuit, licking
his lips. "No… the meat is not human."

"Then where did all those hulkers go," said
Mhumhi, "and where did all the meat come from?"

Biscuit hesitated for a long moment,
wavering.

"The hulkers were killed and eaten by you
wild dogs," he said. "You are the ones who ruined everything. You
are."

"Then where did all the meat come from?"

"It must be dog meat," Biscuit insisted,
licking his lips again. "Or rat meat. It does not matter. It is not
human
." His pale eyes seemed to fade even more. "This world
was made by humans for their servants, the dogs. You are the ones
who betrayed that. We must suffer the consequences… we must wait
until the usurpers starve and eat themselves, like a string of rats
eating their own tails, so that our proper masters can rise
again…"

"You're the one who's gone mad," said Mhumhi,
almost admirably. Biscuit's tone had taken on a strange fanaticism,
his eyes staring somewhere beyond Mhumhi, but at his words he
seemed to snap out of it with a snarl.

"Were you not taking care of the children,
wild dog, you would be dead- remember that. You are lucky I can
smell them on you." He prowled around Mhumhi, raising his lip, as
if to remind him how very much larger he was. The hair on Mhumhi's
back was rising again.

"But," said Biscuit, "you have done a good
thing, and we cannot spare anyone else to look after them- not with
the arrests- so you will be aided. I will try to bring you food, if
you tell me where they are hidden."

Mhumhi hesitated for only a fraction of a
second. "If you want to give them food, we can meet somewhere- but
I won't tell you where they are."

This did not seem to please Biscuit, for he
rumbled. Mhumhi managed to meet his gaze for a moment, and finally
the large dog looked away.

"Fine! Then take this meat and go back to
them. Count yourself lucky that you have the privilege to be near
them."

Mhumhi said nothing to this, but he took the
meat, in several quick, unhappy gulps. Perhaps it was the dirt
smeared into it, but it was the worst he'd ever tasted.

His
Hulker's Heart

When Mhumhi scratched on the door in the
concrete hallway later that evening, he was met by a surprisingly
enthusiastic greeting.

"Mhumhi!" he heard, as Maha yanked the door
open. From behind her Kutta burst out, whining, licking Mhumhi on
the chin and wagging, clearly very hungry. Even Tareq was up,
toddling towards him with his hands outstretched, his mouth forming
a crooked, gap-toothed smile.

"Have you got meat?" Kutta whined, still
licking at him. Mhumhi was rather relieved to see that she looked
much better than she had in the morning, but it was hard to keep
the meat down with her going at him so enthusiastically.

"I'll give it to you
inside
," he
managed to get out, and she relented very reluctantly.

"I'm glad you're back," Maha said to him,
reaching to stroke his neck, and Tareq followed suit. Mhumhi
tolerated it as best he could, pushing through the lot of them to
get inside.

He gave up Biscuit's meat in the middle of
the quilt. It looked much cleaner for having taken a turn inside of
his stomach, and either way Kutta didn't seem to care much from the
way she attacked it with gusto, tail wagging. Mhumhi had to push
her out of the way to let Maha and Tareq grab handfuls, though he
found himself not wanting to watch them eat it. He felt that sick
feeling rising in him again.

"Is there more?" asked Maha, having already
made her portion vanish. Tareq gave an affirmative whimper, sucking
on two of his fingers.

"There's no more," said Mhumhi. There had
been at least a whole portion and a half in the domestic's stash,
but it did not go very far divided by four. Kutta gave a sigh and
flopped back down onto the quilt.

"We've got to find a way to get more," she
said, blinking her yellow eyes. "I'll go with you next time,
Mhumhi, I'm feeling better today."

Mhumhi went over to lick beside her exposed
ear. "Don't push yourself. I've got to talk to you about
something…"

"What?" she asked, but he pressed his jaws
together and flicked his eyes towards Maha and Tareq.

"Not now."

Kutta put her ears forward curiously, but
laid her chin back down on the soft quilt. Maha, who was wiping
Tareq's chin with her chest covering, was eyeing them.

"Mhumhi, I think I found more rats," she
said. "Will you come with me and help me catch them?"

Mhumhi wrinkled his lips again- he had not
found his last encounter with the creatures particularly pleasant-
but then again, rats might be better than any other sort of meat
right now.

"All right," he said, giving Kutta one last
lick. "Is it far away?"

"No, no, it's just down the corridor…"

Tareq gave a little whine and reached his
hands out to her, but she pushed them away. "Not now, Tareq. You
stay here with big sister Kutta, all right?"

Tareq's eyes seemed to moisten. "Bad dog," he
said. Mhumhi noticed Kutta's tail tucking even in her prone
position.

"Let's go, Mhumhi," Maha said, rather
hastily, backing towards the door. Mhumhi found he was inclined to
agree with the sentiment.

Maha led him down the corridor to the little
room he and Kutta had sheltered in the day before, with its pile of
papers. He trotted forward and nosed around in them.

"I don't smell or hear any in here," he
said.

"That's good, 'cause you would have scared
them all away just now," Maha said wryly. She pointed up towards
the empty shelves near the low ceiling. "I think there're some
holes near the pipes up there. I hear them moving around, and you
can see where the paper's been chewed on…"

Mhumhi could now see a few ragged edges in
the pile, though he was feeling a tad sore from her
admonishment.

"How will you catch them up there?"

"I have some old traps," said Maha, and she
reached into her bag and drew something small and square out of it.
"Only thing is that I don't have bait for them… but I figure if I
put it right next to the hole…"

"And how will you get up to the hole?" Mhumhi
asked, rearing up against the wall to try and see over the shelves.
"There's no rungs here."

Maha put the trap in her teeth and used both
hands to pull herself up onto the lowest shelf, her flat feet
kicking. Mhumhi backed out of the way, watching the operation
nervously.

"Be careful!"

Maha mumbled something unintelligible around
the trap in her mouth, reaching up to the next shelf. Mhumhi's ears
pricked- he'd heard the soft sound of tiny feet skittering behind
the wall.

"I think you're right- I can hear them back
there!"

"I told you!" Maha said, spitting the trap in
her free hand. She tried to reach around the top shelf but suddenly
wobbled dangerously.

"Maha!" Mhumhi cried, but it was too late.
There was a loud
crack
and the shelf split and she fell down
backwards.

Scraps of paper were flying- she'd landed in
the middle of the pile. Mhumhi scrambled to her side, whining. She
was lying there with her eyes shut and her face screwed up, but
Mhumhi did not smell blood.

"Hush, you're all right," he said, licking at
her coarse hair- she was lucky it was so thick; it must have
protected her head. He could feel a bump forming with his tongue
but nothing else.

"Ow," said Maha, in a shuddery way, and
sniffed.

"You're just fine," Mhumhi said, pressing his
muzzle against her warm cheek. "But no more climbing shelves."

"I have to get rats for Tareq," Maha
protested. At that moment the trap, which had landed somewhere to
their right, snapped loudly and spun itself in the air. Mhumhi
jumped about a foot.

Maha sat up, giggling. Mhumhi put his ears
back and used his shoulder to push her back over. She fell back
laughing and squirming into the pile of papers.

Mhumhi looked at her for a moment, tongue
hanging out in an unbidden smile. Then his eyes flicked to her
stomach, her hairless skin exposed as her covering rode up, and his
mouth closed. It reminded him of the glimpse he had seen of Lamya's
stomach, of the cord around it- of her words about hulkers, about
dogs, about meat- of the strange, fanatical raving of the pale-eyed
domestic.

Maha's giggles slowed. "What's the matter,
Mhumhi?"

"Nothing," he said, looking at her
uncertainly, this deformed, hairless creature lying down in front
of him.

Are you waiting for all of us to die,
Maha?

"Mhumhi," she said, reaching her hand out,
and he went forward and let her scratch under his chin.

"Puppy," he said. "Do you ever think about
what it would be like if there were lots more hulkers?"

"Huh?" She rolled over on her side to look at
him, rustling. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if instead of lots of dogs and a few
hulkers, there were a lot of hulkers and a few dogs."

"But hulkers are dogs," said Maha, blinking
at him.

Mhumhi hesitated.

"Maha, do you know the word 'human'?"

At once Maha made a face.

"Tareq's mama taught me that word, and my
first dog mama said it sometimes… But I don't like it. Tareq's mama
tried to make me use it all the time."

"Why do you think that is?" asked Mhumhi, and
he crept down to lie beside her. She put one arm over his back,
running her fingers through the thick fur around his neck.

"I dunno… She thought hulkers were better
than other dogs, I s'pose. But I think every kind of dog sort of
thinks that anyway, right?"

Mhumhi was rather surprised by her insight.
"I guess you're right."

"Tareq's mama said that too," Maha said,
pulling her lips down and looking away from Mhumhi, so he could see
the whiteness on one side of her eye. "Something like… there used
to be a lot more hulkers. If that was true, maybe it would be nice…
maybe the police'd stop killing and eating us, if there were a lot
of us."

"Maybe," said Mhumhi, perhaps too darkly, for
she turned back to look at him again.

"What's the matter? You seem like you've been
upset since you got back."

"I'm only tired," said Mhumhi. "And as soon
as I get back, a silly puppy wanted to take me out to catch rats,
and I haven't seen a single one-"

"You said you heard them!" said Maha, kicking
a flurry of papers at him, and he bounded out of the way and fell
automatically into a play-bow.

Maha seemed to recognize the pose, for she
pushed herself up with one foreleg, teeth bared in that impish
hulker grin. Mhumhi went at her in a bound and knocked her back
over, so she fell on her back, squirming and giggling again,
pushing at his chin and chest as he mock-bit at her.

He found his play suddenly becoming more
halfhearted, for it had made him think of Kebero, still missing.
Maha seemed to sense his growing unhappiness and fell still against
him.

"Mhumhi, look," she said, rustling around a
bit in the papers. "Look, there's a picture of a dog here,
see?"

She drew out a crumpled piece underneath her
blunt claws. It was the same picture Mhumhi had seen the night
before, or an identical copy: a smiling dog, blank-eyed, with
strange dark scribbles all around it.

"Do you know what it says?" Maha asked,
tracing a finger over the black lines.

"What it… says?"

"Tareq's mama said that paper talks if you
know how to understand it," said Maha. "It's these things around
the picture. She was trying to teach me."

"Paper talks, does it," said Mhumhi, humoring
her.

"I'm serious! It's a silent language. You
hear it in your head." She saw the look he was giving her and gave
him a shove. "Like I
said
, Tareq's mama was teaching me, so
I used to know when papers said 'dog.' Like this one- it's got to
say it on here somewhere…" She furrowed her brow and ran her finger
side-to-side along the paper, hunting. Mhumhi found himself
entirely bewildered.

"Puppy, I hate to say this, but I think some
hulkers are just-"

"Here it is!" said Maha, stabbing her finger
down. "When you look at that it says 'dog!'"

Mhumhi couldn't stop himself from looking,
trying to focus on the blurry lines and hear the magical
head-voice, but all he felt was slightly dizzy.

"I don't hear anything," he said.

"You don't hear anything, you've got to- it's
like the lines are a picture like this one, even though they don't
look like it. You've just got to see a dog where there isn't
one."

Mhumhi looked at Maha for a moment, her
earnest wide eyes and all. He pawed at the pile of papers.

"I see a dog there."

Maha looked at what his paw was on: a glossy
picture of a hulker's head.

"Of course that's a dog," she said, sounding
exasperated. "But you've got to look at the word, Mhumhi, and see
one, not a picture. If it's a picture it's not really talking to
you."

"I hope not," said Mhumhi, leaning down to
sniff gingerly at the hulker image. It really was lifelike,
flattened as it was. "Why are the hulkers in the pictures always so
pale?"