Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (39 page)

Her head bumped painfully against his, for
she had been trying to get up, and they both flinched.

"I'm all right- it couldn't bite me-"

He registered her words with both relief and
confusion, and looked over at the hyena, which was cringing ahead
of them. There was something solid covering its muzzle, rendering
it biteless.

Someone spoke in an unfamiliar language, and
Mhumhi realized it was one of the strange hulkers, the one gripping
Maha around her chest. It raised an arm and pointed at him.

Maha was fighting her, thrashing and kicking
and sobbing. "Let me go! Let me go! Mhumhi! Mhumhi!"

Mhumhi snarled as Kutta got to her feet
beside him, and they advanced more slowly on the hulkers, hackles
raised.

The one holding Tareq let him go and raised
something- a metal thing Mhumhi had never seen before. Maha
screamed and aimed a kick at her, shouting words in that strange
liquid language. The metal thing went spinning away. The hulker
cried out a string of sharp words and then grabbed something else-
a sort of long pole that had been leaning against the wall.

Tareq had been huddling on the ground, eyes
wide and fearful, but as the strange hulker raised the pole he rose
and went in a stumbling dash towards Mhumhi and Kutta. Mhumhi ran
forward at once, bracing himself to take the blow that now seemed
to be aimed towards the puppy. He saw too late the shining loop
hanging from the end of the pole.

Tareq's fingers touched him just as the loop
tightened around his neck and he reared with a squeal, thrashing,
accidentally knocking the Tareq over. Kutta cried out as Mhumhi
continued to struggle, feeling terror rise up in him- the loop was
tight around his neck, squeezing against his windpipe, and he had
just seen Sundu die-

He was still connected to the hulker holding
the pole, and he dragged it forward, making her stumble. He heard
Kutta give a panicked cry, her head darting between everyone
assembled- the hyena, the puppies, the strange hulkers, captive
Mhumhi- before lunging at the hulker holding the pole.

The hulker aimed a kick at her and she fell
back with a yelp. Mhumhi thrashed harder in response, struggling to
move closer, but the pole held him away. He changed tack and
bounced towards the other hulker, the one holding Maha; his captor
shouted and dragged him backwards, upending him, making him fall on
his back.

Maha was screaming now, alternating between
two languages: "Stop it! Let him go! Let him go!"

The hulker holding her picked her up, even as
she struggled, and threw her into the black car. She slammed the
door and turned just in time to come face-to-face with Kutta, who
had sprinted in a flash of teeth to leap at her throat.

The hulker got her arm in the way just in
time, but it did not stop Kutta bearing her down with her weight.
She shrieked.

The hyena, which everyone had mostly
forgotten about, gave a whining squeal and bulled its bulk into
Kutta, knocking her off the hulker, which whimpered and clutched at
its bleeding arm.

The hulker holding Mhumhi at the end of the
pole bellowed something and threw open the car door. The hyena
leaped through it without hesitation, and Mhumhi, filled with brief
terror for Maha, threw himself after it. He yanked the hulker
forward as he entered the car, gasping through his constricted
airway, claws scratching at the cloth seats. The hyena squealed and
cringed away from him as far as it could.

There was a tremendously loud
slam
from behind him and Mhumhi turned, the pole now hanging unsupported
from his neck, and realized he had been trapped.

"Mhumhi!" cried Maha, and he turned to see
her curling her fingers through the links of a fencelike barrier
that separated the two rows of seats. He and the hyena were on one
side; she on the other.

The hyena was cringing and muzzled; no real
danger, so he felt safe to turn and do his best to lick her
fingers. The pole was braced against the door, preventing him from
moving much further.

"Mhumhi, hurry, get closer," she was gasping.
"I can pull it off- I can get it off-"

There were noises from outside, curiously
muffled from within the enclosed car- he heard Kutta whistling and
shrieking, the hulkers bellowing. He pressed his neck as close as
he could against the fence so Maha could hook her fingers through
the loop, then with a great tug pulled himself backwards and free
of it.

The hyena uttered a little whine as he
stumbled free, falling halfway down into the carpeted space below
the seats, but did not move towards them.

Mhumhi leapt back up, sparing a brief sniff
for the metal barrier separating himself and Maha- there looked to
be no getting to her through it.

"The door, Mhumhi, open the door," Maha
urged, crawling along alongside him as he moved. "The handle- you
gotta lift it up."

He gave a wag of acknowledgement, glancing
back towards the hyena to make sure it still hadn't moved. Then he
bit at the thing that looked like a handle to him, sinking his
teeth into the queer rubbery substance that coated it, and tugged
backwards. It did not budge.

"No, Mhumhi, the plastic thing underneath
that!"

"Oh," said Mhumhi, letting go. He saw what
she meant- there was a handle in a little plastic square above the
thing he'd been tugging on. He put his teeth to it, mashing his
nose, but his teeth caught and the plastic handle started pulling
forward.

It slipped out of his teeth, visibly marked,
and snapped back into place without opening anything.

"Pull it harder!"

"What about
your
door?" he asked,
pawing his sore nose.

"It's locked and it won't open," said Maha,
clutching her fingers around the fence links, and he supposed that
was a good enough excuse. With a growl he went back to the handle,
pulling back and drooling from the effort. This time his teeth
held, and there was a loud click.

"It's open!" cried Maha. Mhumhi reared to put
his body weight on it, swinging it partially open. Through the
window he saw a hulker whirl around, white eyes wide. It slammed
itself back against the door, shutting it and sending him backwards
into the hyena.

He twisted and the hyena squealed, squirming
past him to press itself against the door. Mhumhi, seeing his
opportunity, ran to the other side, where there were no hulkers.
Maha crawled after him.

Before he could tamper with this door,
though, the door on Maha's side of the fence opened and Tareq came
tumbling inside, wailing loudly. Mhumhi spun around as the door
slammed, and then the car creaked and wobbled- the other hulkers
were getting inside in the very front.

Mhumhi felt a burst of fear, looking at Maha
and Tareq unprotected in front of him. He reared and scratched at
the fence, growling; he even bit it, but it was unyielding. The
hulkers squeezed Maha and Tareq between them as they came in, the
smaller of the two dragging Tareq onto her lap. The doors slammed
shut again.

Maha was struggling between the two of them,
but the one holding Tareq put a hand on her shoulder and said
something in the hulker language, a long stream of incomprehensible
syllables. Maha fell still.

"What did she say to you?" cried Mhumhi,
slamming his paws against the chain-link. The strange hulkers both
turned around to look at him, eyes wide.

"I don't know- I don't know-" Maha said, in
half a sob. "She has such a strong accent- she says we'll all be
hurt if we don't hold still!"

Mhumhi snarled and slammed against the
barrier again; the hulkers exchanged a look. One of them did
something to the car that suddenly made it growl back, the insides
rumbling. Maha gave a little scream and covered her ears. Mhumhi
fell back in surprise against the hyena again, which merely
squirmed a little and looked up at him.

He pushed himself up, only to flinch- from
outside there came a scratching and scrabbling at his window.
Kutta, whining, was leaping and scratching at the glass from
outside. He ran forward and put his paws against it, unable to
suppress a whimper of his own. Then he stuck his head down to tug
at the plastic handle again, growling from the effort, but through
he pulled it back fully, the door would not open. The hulkers had
done something to make it lock like the others.

Kutta whined and yelped, her voice muffled,
and he gave a hoo-bark of his own. The car gave a jerk and he
slammed forward into the barrier and fell down into the carpeted
space again.

Kutta kept leaping at the window, whistling
and whining, but by the time Mhumhi had got up again it was moving
faster, the buildings outside crawling away with increasing speed.
Kutta had to run to keep up, giving out guttural contact calls for
him, even as he scratched at his window and whined for her.

Maha was squirming again, saying something in
the liquid hulker language, but the hulkers did not respond, and
the car moved faster and faster, and Kutta got further and further
away behind them, and soon Mhumhi could not see her at all.

He turned and met Maha's eyes again, and they
shared a moment of sheer terror: they were trapped in a vehicle
with two strange hulkers and a live hyena, speeding towards the
unknown.

TO BE CONTINUED IN DARKEYE VOLUME 2…

Lydia West is twenty-three and lives with three
axolotls and a cat. Darkeye was originally a serialized webnovel at
her website.

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