Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (33 page)

"I don't know, I guess they got faded," said
Maha, putting her fingers over the face and wrinkling it slightly,
so that it looked confused. "They're all old. No one makes pictures
anymore."

Makes them, Mhumhi thought. So someone
did
make them. His thoughts veered uncomfortably back to his
conversation with Lamya, and he shook himself.

"Let's go back to Kutta and Tareq now. I
don't think we'll catch any rats here, they're too clever for
us."

Maha pushed her lips together and out. "If I
find a ladder…"

"No more ladders," Mhumhi said, very firmly.
He went to the door, then paused. Maha was not following him.

"What's the matter?"

"Oh," said Maha. She was looking down,
rifling through the papers. "I thought maybe I could find a picture
of a hyena, but there aren't any."

"A hyena?" asked Mhumhi, feeling sour at the
word. "Well, good."

"I wonder why," said Maha. For a moment there
was a tremor in her voice, then she looked up at him.

"Mhumhi?"

"What, what now?"

"Will I turn into a hyena?"

He put his ears back, especially at her
expression, at the vague horror in the suggestion, and went back
over to her and licked her cheeks and forehead.

"You won't. Don't be silly."

"I had- I had a dream last night," she said.
"About the hyena hulker. Chasing me. Except that when I looked down
my- my arms were getting all hairy- and every time I wanted to
scream I laughed-"

"That's just a dream," Mhumhi said, moving
his head so that hers was tucked between his neck and shoulder.
"Hulkers don't turn into hyenas. I mean, if they do, they've got to
be a different sort, right? They're not dogs."

"Am I really a dog?"

"Of course you're a dog," said Mhumhi. "Well,
you're only a little puppy. But you'll grow up into a nice big dog
one day. If your arms ever start getting hairy, it'll just be
because you've been eating a lot of good meat."

"In my dream," said Maha, her voice muffled
in his fur, "I wished I turned into a painted dog instead of a
hyena. Then I could go out in the city and run with you."

"That would be fun," said Mhumhi, imagining
it: himself and his little-sister puppy, playing in the sunshine
and on the warm asphalt, without the ever-lingering stench of
sewage.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Maha asked.

"No," said Mhumhi, wagging his tail a little.
"I'll tell everyone- everyone I know about it."

Maha tugged on his ear for that until he
gently mouthed her hand.

"I'll tell you my secret, but you
can't
tell anyone," she said, pulling her lips very far
down.

"Fine," said Mhumhi. "You're very mean to me,
you know."

She ignored the statement. "You know when I
said Tareq's mama used to say there were lots of hulkers? A million
million of them? I always wondered where they went. Where they were
hiding."

"Maha-" Mhumhi began, drawing away, his tail
lowering.

"Shh! Let me finish! Tareq's mama would say
they all ran away, or they all had a secret city, under this one,
and they'd come back. But I think that's dumb. We've been all
around these sewers and there's no secret anything. So I used to
think- it was stupid, but we saw that hyena hulker, didn't we?" She
swallowed, her eyes flickering. "I used to think that all the
hulkers turned into dogs. I mean, four-legged dogs."

Mhumhi thought of the dispensary and the
plastic-wrapped packages, emerging between rubber lips from the
cold, darkened interior. Of the dangling hulker and the way his
mind had thought:
Meat
.

"I don't think that's such a bad idea," he
said. "You might be right. It's what makes the most sense, isn't
it?"

"Right?" said Maha, her white-sided eyes
lighting up. "Else where'd they go? They didn't go anywhere, right?
They're all just dogs!"

"Right," said Mhumhi. "They're all still
here." He felt the hulker's heart beating inside of him again.
"They never left."

"Yeah," said Maha, and her face split into a
broad grin. "So I want to be a painted dog like you, Mhumhi, when I
grow up. Then we can go outside, okay?"

"I don't know about that," said Mhumhi.
Maha's face fell.

"Why not?"

"Well, to be honest, you're a little
smelly-"

"You're so mean!" she said, but she was
laughing too, and she got up and started to chase him. He bounded
down the hallway in front of her, wagging his tail and glancing
back. His heart was pounding.

He felt strangely divided still, his
happiness and a new, aching sadness to add to the sickening things
he had learned that day. And yet- and yet- He thought of Lamya, of
the way she had spoken, the way she had bared her teeth at him.
What had Biscuit said about her? That she had been trying to upset
him. She certainly seemed to take pleasure in it. No, no, perhaps
Lamya was a so-called
human
, but she was nothing like his
dear Maha, who was a dog, a dog in every sense of the word.

Kutta's
Growl

It took Mhumhi some time to separate Kutta
away from the puppies, as Maha had got into a playful, cuddly mood
and kept trying to tease the both of them into roughhousing with
her. She even tickled Tareq, who giggled between whimpers and then
ran to hide in the bathroom.

While Maha was trying to extricate him from
underneath the sink, Mhumhi managed to get Kutta to slip outside
with him, first outside the room, then all the way back down the
hall. He did not want Maha to hear what he was going to tell
her.

"What's the matter, Mhumhi?" Kutta kept
saying, unconsciously parroting Maha from earlier. Inside the
little room, Mhumhi paced over the pile of paper, unsure of how he
even wanted to begin. He glanced at Kutta. She looked weary, her
eyelids drooping, but lucid. Now and again she would shiver a
little from the cold.

Mhumhi went to stand against her, sharing his
warmth, and licked the closed injury on her shoulder.

"How do you feel? I'm sorry for pulling you
all the way out here."

"I feel fine," said Kutta, even as he felt a
tremor go through her against himself. "I'm only tired. And
worried. What are you so frightened of telling me?"

Mhumhi drew away from her a little. "I'm not
frightened, exactly… Why do you say that?"

"You've seemed frightened," said Kutta, her
voice rasping. "You've seemed frightened ever since you came back
with that strange meat two days ago. It was so strange, too… where
did you find it?" She drew her ears back against her skull. "To be
honest, I keep thinking about it. It was so strange and… and
dark."

Mhumhi licked his lips, and she took another
step back from him.

"I'm frightened that you're frightened,
Mhumhi," she said. "Where did it come from? Because I don't think
it was from a dispensary- Mhumhi, you've got to tell me, please,
I've got to know what I ate-"

"All right!" Mhumhi said, twisting around to
pace by the wall with his tail tucked. "All right! I didn't get it
from the dispensary. I- I got it from a hulker! A hulker hunt, in
the long grass. I was there, and I- I-"

"A hulker?" said Kutta. "Oh."

"Oh?!" exclaimed Mhumhi, turning back around.
"What do you mean,
oh
?"

"I mean, yes, it's awful," Kutta said, rather
hastily, glancing at him. "It is… but I thought you were going to
say you'd killed another dog and eaten him- Mhumhi, I'm sorry."

"You thought I'd- no! No! I didn't even kill
the hulker, Kutta, I was just there when they brought it down, and
they were eating it, and I-"

"Hush, hush," Kutta said hastily, and went to
nuzzle against him. "You did what you had to do- the puppies had to
eat- it's all right. You didn't harm anyone."

Mhumhi let her soothe him a moment, then drew
back away. He could not help but think that the fragile distinction
between 'dog' and 'hulker,' even for Kutta, was much stronger when
they talked about meat.

"He was still alive when they were eating
him," he found himself saying, the words all in a tumble. "And I-
and he was still alive when
I
started eating him."

Kutta didn't say anything for a moment,
staring at him for her yellow eyes, and then she finally said, "I
suppose- I suppose it was painful…"

"I don't know," said Mhumhi. "He was crying
out before they started tearing into him, but once they did he
became very strange- very quiet-"

"Please," said Kutta. "Mhumhi, I don't want
to hear any more, I don't want to think about it." She was
swallowing convulsively, looking like she might be sick. "It was
just the one time, and we really needed the meat. This time the
meat came from- from a dispensary, right? Not from a hulker. It
tasted like dispensary meat…"

"Kutta," said Mhumhi, resisting the urge to
pace again. "That's what I've got to tell you. I've got to…" A wave
of anxiety swelled over him, and he turned and started gnawing on
his own haunch.

"Stop that!" said Kutta, springing forward,
and she pushed him down on his side. "Calm down, Mhumhi, calm down.
This is a bad time- we've been struggling, and we've seen terrible
things and had to
do
terrible things- but you are still my
brother, Mhumhi, and you can tell me."

"Yes," said Mhumhi, looking up at her scarred
muzzle. He opened his mouth and started panting. "Yes, you're
right. But it's not easy to say. I- well, first I should tell you
that I went to look for the hulker. The adult hulker, to give the
children to."

Kutta backed away from him, looking stunned.
"You did…? On your own? Mhumhi…"

"It doesn't matter," said Mhumhi, rising to
his feet again with some difficulty. "She won't take them in.
They're as good as ours."

"Oh," said Kutta, glancing down at the floor.
"Oh, I see."

Mhumhi thought she didn't look terribly
disappointed. He scratched lightly at the papers with one paw,
crumpling them.

"I've got to tell you what the hulker said to
me, though, Kutta, while I was there. Listen…"

He began to speak, and found that it somehow
got easier as he did, the words becoming dry and mechanical. Rather
it was Kutta's reactions that expressed how he ought to feel: first
curiosity, then unease, then outright disgust and fear.

"No," she said, after he told her Lamya's
comment on where all the hulkers had gone. "No… Mhumhi that's
awful, that doesn't make any sense, why would they… no…"

"There's more," he said, and he told her
about Lisica's body being in the refrigerator.

"The red fox?" Kutta gasped. She trembled.
"And you said there was a- a wire around her neck? Mhumhi, do you
know what this means?"

"I suppose it means that the foxes haven't
really got a leader anymore," he said. Kutta looked at him like he
was mad.

"No, Mhumhi, it means that the hulker is the
one who put out that wire that you were caught in!" She seemed
hardly able to stop the snarl that bubbled up through her lips.
"It's because of her that you were caught- and Sacha-"

Mhumhi had not even thought of this, but
Kutta was completely right. His dislike for Lamya began to solidify
into hatred.

"It was her- it had to have been! Her and
that awful domestic! She said something's been stealing the dogs
off her traps, too… I bet it's been the hyenas, drawn to the smell
of blood… like that time…"

"She as good as
murdered
Sacha,"
snarled Kutta. "It's her fault! I'll tear that domestic apart the
next time I see him!"

"Wait, Kutta," said Mhumhi, for she was
getting very worked up, panting and slobbering and pacing the
length of the room. "I'd like to rip him up too- believe me- but
he's said he'll help us. He's offered to give us meat for the
puppies. Children, he calls them."

"
He
could become the meat, for all I
care," said Kutta, her yellow eyes shining evilly. Mhumhi
swallowed.

"Ah… Kutta…"

She glanced at him, then seemed to deflate.
"I'm sorry. I've just been… it does strange things to me, being
sick and cooped up and hungry… And now you tell me this."

"Sorry," said Mhumhi. "Really."

"It isn't your fault," Kutta said. "And
anyway tomorrow I'll be able to get outside again, if there's a way
that doesn't involve getting wet. I can go with you- I can probably
blend into the morning crowd at the dispensary, there're bound to
be lots of dholes. And you can meet that stupid domestic and take
all his meat."

Mhumhi had to laugh, his tongue lolling. "I
guess I'll have to. I'm afraid you'd kill him on sight."

"I would!" said Kutta, and then she coughed.
"It'd be better than sitting here.. waiting… Mhumhi, what are we
going to do? I'm afraid that strange hulker will come back, or the
hyenas, or the police… Did you check the house while you were
aboveground?"

"No," said Mhumhi. "I didn't dare go near it-
didn't want anyone to recognize me. A culpeo saw Maha peeking up,
but I think I led him off our track."

"He saw her?"

"Yes, but I pretended to be police and told
him to keep it secret- told him I'd give him hulker meat." He
wagged his tail, but Kutta pulled her lips back.

"Oh, Mhumhi, that wasn't- when you don't give
him anything, what do you think he's going to do? He'll go to the
police looking for you, won't he? It'll all get out!"

"Well, I-" Mhumhi was appalled to realize she
had a point. "Well, what would you have done, then?"

"I don't know… It must have all been lost
anyway when someone spotted her, but to have you connected- Mhumhi,
we need to hide somewhere else. Anywhere else. There're things
coming at us from all sides, and I'm frightened for the
puppies."

"But not for us?" Mhumhi asked, meaning it to
sound light, but the way she looked at him seemed anything but.