Darkness Falls (9 page)

The longpaws yelped fearfully, dropping the objects they had gathered and shoving each other out of the way as they made for the door. They hurried past the dogs, coughing as they broke into the open.

Lucky nudged Mickey urgently. “We have to get out!” he barked.

Mickey's eyes were wild, shooting around the room.

“But my longpaws—”

“Now!” snarled Lucky.

With an ear-piercing
crack
, the side of the room started sinking and the ceiling rocked.

The house!
thought Lucky.
It's falling down!

Lucky and Mickey scrambled outside and
bolted across the road to a stretch of grass in front of another longpaw house. They spun around in time to see a wall of Mickey's old home buckle. Its guts sprayed through cracks and rained on the front lawn. There was the sound of tearing and cracking. The buckling wall folded inward, crushing whatever remained inside. Mickey walked a tight circle, trembling and yelping in despair.

Lucky caught his friend's wild expression. “No!” he barked. “Stay back! Your longpaws are far away.”

Mickey dropped to the ground, his flanks heaving. “I know,” he whined. “But . . . I
must
defend the house!”

Lucky licked his friend's nose. “There's nothing to defend,” he soothed. “Your longpaws left long ago.”

There was another crack and the front door bulged forward. Debris from the broken building poured out of it, blocking the path.

“You would have been killed if you had stayed there a moment longer. Both of us would have been.”

Mickey yelped in acknowledgment. Both dogs crouched low to the grass, panting. The noises had died down. Now there was only the occasional clunk or crash and billows of white mist around the building.

Without warning, Mickey sprang to his paws, throwing back his head and howling: “All the good longpaws have gone! They've gone! Only the bad ones are left!”

Mickey walked a few paces and howled again, now addressing his departed longpaws. “Why did you leave me? I would never have left
you
! Why did you go?”

Lucky stayed quiet.
Let him get it out
, he thought.

Mickey's howls grew louder. “You let me come upstairs, you gave me treats. . . . You took me to the big garden, we played together. . . . I waited for you when I was alone in the house. . . . I thought about you all the time. Why didn't you take me with you?”

Eventually the black-and-white dog fell silent. He flopped back onto the grass and dropped his head, his eyes still fixed on the house.

“I thought they'd come back,” he whimpered. His ears twitched. “The other longpaws, the bad ones . . . we challenged them, we scared them with our growls and teeth. I could smell their fear-scent. That's not how it used to be. I've never threatened longpaws before.”

“The world has changed since the Big Growl,” said Lucky.

“That's the thing. It wasn't only the earth that was scarred and altered,” whined Mickey miserably. “It has changed the dogs who walk on it.” He sniffed the ground. “Earth-Dog, what happened to you?” He pawed the ground a moment and sighed, turning his shining, dark eyes to Lucky. “I was wrong to leave the Pack and come back here. I realize now that we have nothing left but each other.” Mickey tilted his head. “Lucky, I'm sorry I was so unfriendly when you arrived. It was those horrible longpaws, and you took me by surprise, that's all. I'm glad to see you but . . . why are you here? Did you leave the Pack too?”

Lucky looked away, beyond his friend, to the dust that still swirled around the broken home.

“I
had
to go, Mickey.” He shivered when he remembered how Alpha had thrown him out. None of the dogs had stood their ground against the half wolf, not even the Leashed Dogs. He didn't want to talk about that now.

“I know, I know, you're a ‘Lone Dog,'” Mickey barked. “But you relied on longpaws as much as we did. With them all gone, maybe there's no place for Lone Dogs anymore? The Pack is our family now. We need to go back, Lucky. We need to tell them that we made a mistake.”

Lucky swallowed, his throat dry. He was happy that Mickey was ready to leave this place of death and decay. Mickey would be safer in the Pack. But the dogs would never allow Lucky to come back. He felt a sad weight on his chest.

“You're right; this is no place for a dog anymore,” he said. The city was poisoned.
Nothing
could live here for long.

Mickey was gazing at him, a twinkle in his brown eyes and his tail thumping the ground. “It's not that far, Lucky. We both made it in good time, didn't we? If we hurry, we could even be there by next no-sun.” He rose to his paws, panting.

There was genuine cheerfulness in his face. Lucky couldn't remember the last time he had seen it.
He's so happy because he doesn't feel lost anymore. He's finally accepted that his longpaws have gone. I can't tell him now that the Pack forced me out, not yet
.

Lucky rose to his paws. “If you really want to go back . . . well, I'll come
some
of the way with you.”

Mickey barked excitedly, licking Lucky's ears.

“I can't rejoin the Pack, though,” Lucky added quickly.

Mickey started hopping and prancing back and forth. “Can't or won't? When will you stop pretending that you're better off on your own? You're safer and happier in the Pack; you know you are!” He nipped Lucky's ear playfully. “You
clearly
belong with other dogs. And the Pack needs you, as well. We've only survived this far with your help.”

Lucky didn't answer this but gave Mickey a good-natured shove with his head, pleased to see his friend's spirits so high. He hadn't expected him to recover so quickly.

I've come all this way to keep him safe
, Lucky thought.
I can't waste an opportunity to do just that
. “Let's go,” he said, his tail starting to wag in spite of himself.

Mickey growled happily, nudging Lucky as the two dogs play-fought in the long grass. Then Lucky broke away and started bounding along the road, making toward the path out of the city.

“Wait!” Mickey barked.

Lucky turned, his ears pricked up. “Is something wrong?”

“No. There's just something I need to do. . . .”

Lucky watched as Mickey disappeared behind a loudcage, the one where he had first spotted the black-and-white dog watching his longpaws' house. A moment later, Mickey reappeared, the longpaw glove held in his jaws. It was worn and filthy, stuffing trailing from a tear in the fabric, but Mickey carried it as though it was the most precious thing on earth. His tail no longer wagging, he walked solemnly toward the house. Lucky was about to stop him when Mickey paused before the front lawn that was now dusted white.

He stood a few minutes in silence, gazing at the wrecked house. Then he trod carefully over the lawn, kicking up puffs of dust. He set down the glove on the broken front step where the door used to be. He gave it a tentative lick, cleansing it of dust and dirt. Then he took a step back.

The glove shone clean and fragile like a small creature amid the rubble. Mickey seemed to speak directly to it as he whined:

“I am going now. I have to leave you behind and go into the wild to live with the Pack. Everything has changed, and in this world without longpaws, dogs must make their own way.”

Mickey glanced at Lucky, who lowered his muzzle respectfully. He didn't understand the way the Farm Dog felt. He had never shared a bond with a longpaw. But if it made Mickey so loyal that he would defend their house even after they'd abandoned him . . . well, maybe they weren't
all
bad.

Mickey continued. “If you ever come back, you will find this thing, your possession, which you gave to me. It was my favorite toy, and when I played with it, I thought of you. This will prove that I came back to look for you—that I never forgot you or stopped loving you.”

Mickey turned away from the place he'd once called his home. Lucky felt certain he'd never lay eyes on it again.

Lucky led the way along the broad, leafy streets lined with sleeping loudcages. Mickey padded behind him. They stayed in the center of the street, keeping away from the leaning houses, which creaked and groaned. Lucky feared that they might collapse at any moment, just as Mickey's longpaws' house had.
We need to get out of here as quickly as possible
, he thought.

Ears pricked, he listened to the growls and groans of the buildings. He was surprised when he caught a distant rumbling sound, not from the streets or the ground, but from above him. His eyes shot up, searching for rain clouds. The sky was clear and blue, and the air was warm following the showers of the previous night. Even the black cloud had disappeared, its poison ash spewed in dark pools or clinging to trees in the forest. Still, there was a whirr and grumble in the air, and Lucky shot Mickey a worried look.

“Thunder!” barked Mickey, a fearful look crossing his face. “The Sky-Dogs are angry again!”

Lucky needed Mickey to keep calm. He turned to sniff the air. It was dry. “I don't think so. . . .” Lucky's hackles rose and his ears twisted, trying to understand the whirring sounds.

Mickey's tail froze. “What's that?”

Lucky spun around. High over the jagged horizon of buildings, he could now see something huge, as big as a loudcage, bobbing in the sky. Was it a bird? As he and Mickey watched, another one came into view, darting down lower and hovering above some houses, proceeding with jerky, angry swoops. Their huge wings spun over their heads in circles, slicing the air with a noise like thunder.

“I don't like it,” Mickey whined. His eyes flicked wildly across the road. “We should get out of here.”

“Hold on,” said Lucky. As the birds looped overhead, they whipped up a wind that tore the leaves from trees and set the dogs' hairs on end. But Lucky yelped as he saw there was something even stranger about these huge birds. Their bodies were shiny and smooth and they both had deep holes in their flanks where their insides were exposed to the open air.

Lucky could see right
inside
their bellies!

He craned his neck. Something yellow was moving about in there. The color . . . he knew that color.

Longpaws!

Longpaws trapped inside the birds! It was such a strange sight that Lucky's eyes had struggled to understand what they were seeing. Now he was certain: Those hostile longpaws with their bright, shiny pelts were barking at one another as they shifted about in the birds' bellies.

Mickey must have spotted them at the same time. “Longpaws!” he yelped. “What's that one doing?”

A longpaw in the first bird was edging toward the hole in its shiny flank. He half climbed through, hanging outside in the open air. The bird seemed to help him by dipping to one side so that the longpaw was dangling toward the broken houses, pointing and barking back to the others.

Lucky felt a tremble of uncertainty run through his body. “They're searching . . . I think.”

“Searching for what?” Mickey asked.

There were three of them now—three huge birds, whirring, their wings whipping up the air around them. One swooped closer, a longpaw still dangling from the wound in its flank. The others dispersed over the city. Lucky could just make out other yellow-furred longpaws pressing their faces against the see-through bellies.

The dogs cowered, their fur blown flat, blinking against the wind that stirred beneath the birds' wings. One bird stayed overhead, hovering and hunting. But what was it looking for?

Then all three birds veered sharply toward the city outskirts. They dropped lower as they disappeared from view.

“They're going to land in the forest!” Lucky barked over the receding thunder of their wings. “I think we should follow them and find out what they're up to!”

Mickey was reluctant. “What if they see us? The birds are carrying those horrible, yellow-furred longpaws. They're
dangerous
, Lucky.”

“We'll keep a safe distance.”

“Don't you remember how they shouted at us? How they kicked Daisy?”

Lucky did remember. He watched the silhouette of the huge birds whirring lower until he could no longer see them behind the buildings.

“We won't get close to the longpaws or those birds,” he barked. “But it's no good ignoring them. We need to understand what they're searching for. We need to know if they're a threat. Maybe it will give us a clue to where the other longpaws have gone. It's a risk we have to take.”

Mickey's eyes were wide and his black ears were low.

“If you're sure . . .”

Lucky watched the sky a moment longer, though he could no longer see the great birds in the distance. “We have to do this. We have to find out what they're up to!” He bolted along the road with Mickey close behind. Their paws pounded against the hard stone of the city streets as they raced back to the forest.