The Empty City (24 page)

Lucky sighed in frustration but decided not to make any comment.
Let them bring their things if it makes them feel better
, he thought. At least they were moving swiftly to organize themselves, and they'd all accepted they had to abandon this camp. That was a start.

As they headed out of the camp, first along a barren ridge and then down into a gully, Lucky saw the little Pack was doing well in other ways, too. They were barely recognizable as the nervous, inexperienced Leashed Dogs he'd led out of the city.

They no longer smelled of soap and longpaws, but of river water and trees, of earth and one another. It was a proper, wild smell. They were far scruffier, too; even Sunshine no longer looked as if she'd ever suffered careful grooming from a longpaw. To Lucky, the little dog looked much happier trotting along with tangled fur and muddy paws. She and Mickey seemed to be getting along well, and when Mickey suggested they hunt together while they walked, she agreed with enthusiasm.

“Don't go too far!” Lucky warned them.

“Of course not,” agreed Mickey seriously. “We'll keep as close to the Pack as we can.”

The Pack
, thought Lucky as he watched the unlikely hunting pair set off into the bushes that lined the gully. Yes, it
was
nearly a proper Pack. There were hardly any complaints anymore, no one stopping to whine about thorns in their fur or bruises on their paw pads. They moved as a unit, watching out for one another without even realizing they were doing it.

Dog-spirits coming alive
, he thought proudly.

Even Bella was listening to the spirit within her, though she might not admit it or know it. They were learning how to be Free Dogs.

Lucky moved more cautiously as they reached the brow of the next hill, slinking as low as he could to the ground and flattening his ears. Both Mickey and Bella noticed, and came close to him, one on each flank.

“What's wrong, Lucky?” asked Bella nervously.

“That field down there. It's where we saw those yellow longpaws. Let's be careful.”

All the dogs eyed the land below nervously.
Good
, thought Lucky;
they're starting to think before they bark
. From up here he could see more of the field's surroundings: smoke rising from a huge longpaw tower; sluggish streams of yellow-gray water flecked with sickly curdled foam. Even the roads beside the field were stained with grimy suds where the water and foam had leaked, perhaps from that tower. Lucky shuddered, then shook himself. He was glad they'd gotten away from that terrible place while they could. It made him think of panic, and sickness, and death.

He picked up speed a little as they left. It was good to put these things behind them, and Lucky had started to relax, to feel free and easy once more as he listened happily to the chatter of Sunshine and Daisy behind him.

Then he heard a longpaw bark.

Lucky froze, one paw in midair. A ripple of fear went down his spine. The others, of course, pricked their ears, and one or two gave yelps of excitement, but it was Bella who snapped at them.

“Calm down!” Bella growled. “Be quiet! Have you forgotten what happened to Daisy?”

“Oh yes,” whispered Daisy. “Let's be very careful.”

Placing one paw cautiously in front of the other, Lucky crept through the trees and bushes ahead. There was a low building there, visible beyond its rusty wire fence, that reminded him of the Fierce Dogs' home. Even though they were far away from Blade and Dagger and the rest, Lucky didn't like it at all. Nervously he crouched and sniffed at the fence.

A crash of branches ahead and to one side almost made him yelp out loud; but instead he went as still as he could, cringing against a tree trunk and hoping he wouldn't be seen. The longpaw—the one who'd barked, he was sure—had burst from the thick bushes, but its shape seemed strange: bulky and uneven. Lucky realized instantly why—there was a dead deer slung over the longpaw's shoulder. In the longpaw's other hand was a loudstick—and one that had recently spat fire and death, judging by the acrid, pungent smell. But there was another smell, too: the smell of fresh blood, wafting from the deer carcass. Prey.
Food …

Lucky was slinking backward into the trees as the longpaw hauled a door open in the low building and began to carry the deer inside. It wouldn't have noticed the dogs at all, if the Pack had managed to stay quiet.

But then Bruno dashed forward, barking a greeting, and Mickey, Sunshine, and Alfie could no longer contain themselves, either. Bella growled at them to come back, but only Daisy and Martha remained subdued, the littlest dog huddled and trembling beneath her friend's legs. The rest were yelping their joy at the longpaw, running toward it, ears flying.

It spun around, dropping the deer in a thudding heap, and its eyes widened.

The longpaw gave another furious bark, and brought the loudstick to its shoulder, pointing it at the running dogs.

Lucky trembled as terror lifted his fur. Didn't the others
know
about loudsticks? Didn't they know what those terrible things could do? He was about to bark a warning when the loudstick exploded.

The sound was a crack as loud as the Big Growl. It echoed in the clearing, ringing in Lucky's ears, and it brought the running dogs to a terrified, skidding halt.

Lucky skittered forward, nervous, but worried for his friends. He saw instantly that none of them was hurt; the loudstick must have been pointing over their heads when it exploded.

While they were cowering back, the longpaw turned and dragged the deer inside the building, then slammed the door with a thundering clang.

The four dogs gathered their wits—but Lucky could barely believe what he was seeing. Instead of turning tail and running for their lives, they were bounding toward the low building again.

Bruno flung his muscular body at the door with a crash, and immediately the others were scratching at it, too, whining and yelping and whimpering. Stopping only to exchange one disbelieving look with Bella, Lucky raced forward, his litter-sister at his heels.

“Come away, you fools! What on earth are you doing?”

“Bruno!” barked Bella. “Didn't you see the loudstick? Didn't you
hear
?”

Bruno shook her off, and scratched at the door again. “It's only a
gun
, Bella! My longpaw had a gun! It hunted deer, just like that one!”

“And don't you see, Bella?” cried Mickey. “It didn't shoot us! And it wasn't a
bad
longpaw. It wasn't one of the eyeless ones with the yellow fur.”

“Oh,” yelped Alfie. “Oh, Bella! The longpaw has a whole deer in there! If it lets us in, it'll share it. It can't eat a
whole deer
! We can help it!” Alfie yapped wildly at the door again.

A volley of angry longpaw barks from within made Lucky twitch.

Sunshine looked a little less certain than the others, and cast nervous looks back at Martha and the shivering Daisy. “Maybe Bella's right, Mickey. The longpaw did try to scare us, even if it didn't … hurt us …”

“It'll kill you next time,” snarled Lucky furiously. “It gave you a warning with its loudstick …”

“Thank you, Lucky!” Bella interrupted. She waited for the look of surprise to fade from his face. “You're right, of course.” She turned to the rest of the dogs. “I miss my longpaws as much as you all do, but
this
one isn't our longpaw. We can't chase after every longpaw we see!”

For the first time, Bruno, Mickey, and Alfie looked uncertain. “But, Bella …” whimpered Alfie.

“It's no good,” scolded Bella firmly. “You
have
to stop and think. Hasn't Lucky got through to you at
all
?”

The others looked downright ashamed now. Lucky looked up at his litter-sister, pride and nervousness jangling together in his mind. He was truly impressed with Bella's leadership. The four runaways were certainly submitting to her, lowering their heads, tucking their tails between their hind legs, creeping back to their friends in the trees. Bella was going to make a good Alpha for this group.

They would not need to depend on Lucky anymore.

Daisy yipped softly with relief at their return. “Come on, Mickey,” she begged. “Let's leave that longpaw here with its prey. That's all it's thinking of just now. Let's go on, quickly!”

“You're right, Daisy.” Mickey sounded ashamed of himself. “I'm sorry. We're all sorry, Bella.” He licked her nose apologetically. “We didn't think.”

“It's all right,” said Bella. “But from now on, we all have to be wary of longpaws. We don't
know
them. They aren't ours, and you must all remember that.”

As they headed on up the valley, quieter now, Lucky padded at Bella's side. When he licked her jaw, she gave him a quizzical glance, but looked happy.

She's starting to understand
, thought Lucky, with a warm sense of relief and pride.

They moved quickly after that, unnerved by their encounter with the longpaw and its loudstick. Breaks to rest, or to drink and eat, were brief, though Lucky took plenty of time to praise Sunshine in particular when she and Mickey returned from their foray with a rabbit. They needed encouragement now, after their shock and their fierce scolding from Bella.

But still, they were all coping much better than before. Even when they'd traveled over more land than he'd ever covered and the Sun-Dog was setting across the western hills, there were few complaints. It was Lucky, recognizing that Sunshine and Daisy were almost at the end of their endurance, who barked encouragement from the ridge of a hill.

“We're stopping to rest here. Look!”

All of them came right up beside him before flopping down, heads on paws, to gaze at the view.

“Oh my,” breathed Martha.

“Is that our
city
?” gasped Sunshine.

From their vantage point, they could see more than even Lucky ever had before. The shoreline was a curved ribbon of silver and the ocean an expanse of blue that stretched to a brilliant horizon. The precipitous hill at their paws sloped down to fields and broad plains of grass, and farther on, neatly groomed stretches of grass, made tiny by distance.

And there, too, was their city. Lucky stared. Even more from this angle than up close in its streets, Lucky could see the changes in one great, sprawling vista. There were gaps, like patches of skin in mangy fur, where buildings had simply ceased to exist, and lakes of silver water shimmered where there should be none. There were great rivers of that poisoned gray-yellow water, too, running between the ruined buildings.

No one had spoken since Sunshine's outburst. Now, Bella stepped forward to face her friends.

“Listen to me,” she said. “This is a different world.” She gave Lucky a sidelong glance, and he nodded, giving her a soft woof of encouragement.

Bella addressed her Pack again, more confidently. “You can see almost the whole of it from here, can't you? The whole world. You can see how it's changed. And a different world”—she took a moment to gaze into each Pack member's eyes—“needs a different kind of dog.”

Daisy whimpered uneasily. Solemnly Martha returned Bella's gaze. “You're not just telling us the world has changed, Bella. Are you?”

Bella took a breath, but the only nerves she showed were in the anxious thumping of her tail. “We have to survive on our own. We have to learn—we don't have a choice.”

“But, Bella,” whined Alfie, “we're trying. We really are.”

“I know! We're acting like a real Pack! But we'll never truly be self-reliant if we don't trust ourselves.” Bella pawed Alfie's longpaw ball where he'd let it drop. “We need to accept that we're alone, and we need to rely on ourselves and no one else. Not even our longpaws. We're going to”—Bella took a deep breath—“we're going to leave these things of theirs behind.”

Mickey dropped his glove in shock and stared at it, then at Bella. “Leave them? Bella, we can't!”

“We have to! Don't you see? Until we leave these things in the past where they belong, we'll never truly trust ourselves or one another. We need to accept these are our old lives! For now, Mickey, at least. They were important, but they are
past
. Please believe me.” Bella's ears drooped, and she added quietly, “Maybe Lucky's right. Maybe we need to try harder to listen to our dog-spirits.”

Lucky had never felt prouder of anything in his life.

Mickey gazed mournfully at Bruno, who lay down with a great sigh, his bulky head on his paws. But Alfie broke the miserable silence with an angry bark.

“But Lucky doesn't understand. And I'm starting to think you don't, either, Bella!”

“Alfie's right,” said Mickey, rising onto all fours. “I know it doesn't make sense to Lucky, but, Bella, you know how much this matters!”

What matters
, Lucky wanted to yelp in frustration,
is that you give these things up!
But he knew how important it was, especially for Bella, that he keep quiet, so he said nothing.