DogForge (2 page)

The three moved slowly and tucked close to the outer wall. The floor was at a slight tilt, a mass of wires blocked the entrance. A howl came from deeper inside, a mournful sound with cries of anguish.

Barley whimpered and stepped back. Grat stood next to Samus and nudged at the mass of wires.

Samus felt the fear coming on, that deep seated animal adrenaline moment telling him to go.
Run. Flee. Gnash your teeth, snarl and get out!
But instead he pushed it back and forced himself through the wires and into the space beyond. The wires were tight on his fur and he felt pinpricks and scrapes on his hardened hide. He opened his eyes on the other side and yelped.

A cavernous space opened with crinkled and crumpled steel hanging at odd angles like sheets of broken ice. Starlight streamed through holes in the ceilings and smoke rose in slices of gray. Lights danced on wide white fixtures but it was like they just couldn’t quite catch. The floor was a mass of corpses. Dogs.

They were all shapes and sizes. Small dogs, large dogs, lanky things, dogs in sleek suits of armor with heavy legs, and dogs in armor bulky and strong. Not a single one moved.

Samus smelled death. His eyes took in the sight and his brain balked at thought of going towards it.

Grat huffed next to him and looked down his wide snout. “Dead,” he said, as if to remind himself.

Barley pushed through and whimpered. Her legs shook.

“Get anything you can,” Samus said quickly. “This will be tribute for years.” He saw things they could use, the armor looked perfect but he had no idea how to get it off. His eyes locked on a lance and he set off towards it. He tried to pull it away, but it seemed fused to the armor.

Creeping metal and thermal expansion echoed through the hold. It was like the moaning of the dead, but it was just steel losing its temper. A single bark sounded from the darkness deeper into the hold. It ended with whimpers and cries.

He needed to keep the fear away, he could taste it in his mouth, thick and rich. Just like in the ruins. They would dig out things, metal things, things they didn’t know, but things that kept them in favor. They would dig until the bots came. Then, they would run.

Scraps for the machine gods. Blood for the blood god.

Grat walked with stiff legs on the corpses and tossed back machinery and scraps. Barley piled it on the edge of the room. She looked at the floor and she avoided the piles of corpses. Samus stalked the edge and whipped back what seemed useful or interesting. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew what the machine gods liked.

There was a familiar click and all three froze. Samus turned his head and saw it.

The skelebot’s body was steel with a prominent rib cage that sang with chrome. A dim blue light echoed from beneath, a mechanical light, a harsh light, a light like a dying star. Its pelvis was narrow with legs that pivoted and hung with the tension of a kangaroo. But the face was ghastly. Wide, like an inverted banana, kaleidoscope eyes and a pincer-beak for a mouth. A flicker of light danced on the edges of its body like raindrops on a window. It had no hands, simply metal claws that clasped a jagged axe. It tilted its head, focused, and leapt forward.

Samus knew what it was. As a pup, he ran. As an adult, he could take down a wounded or wrecked one. They found them stuck in the ruins and gnawed on them with metal teeth. But mostly they ran from the dirty blue lights and the death that came with it.

But this, he knew, was different. It wasn’t as old as the ages, it was new. He didn’t have to relay orders to Grat or Barley. They knew, they’d done this before. Except never inside an unknown space against a fresh skelebot. Samus’s heart pounded harder. Now the fear seeped in.

He powered towards the skelebot and juked to the side. His claws screeched on the chest armor of a fallen dog.
Turn!
He pushed behind it. The air swooshed and hissed. He felt a slice on his rear hind quarter and a searing burn on his tail.

The skelebot slammed the axe down on the floor with a crash like an explosion. A spray of hair and a slice of blood spurted out from Samus. It spun and sprang out like a coiled spring. It threw a stiff arm behind and slammed Barley aside. She yelped, rolled, and tumbled over the corpses. She stood with a snarl.

Samus rebounded off a sheet of steel and felt a tearing snap. The bot gripped his tail tight. He yelped and fire burned through his spine before he was free. The adrenaline was now something more, he could feel it focus, tighten every joint, and push him faster. A stub of tail dropped from the skelebots grasp and tumbled to the floor.

He ran. With every leap he could hear it behind him. Close. So close. The claws clacked and the axe sang through the smoky air. He needed to hide, do like a pup, and get somewhere small.

“Grat!” He cursed and leapt through a narrow gap. He was caught in a space that ended in a crimped passage.

The skelebot thundered on the strut behind him with the axe. The axe’s edge crackled in the same deathly blue light and tore chips from the heavy support. The bot couldn’t get in. Yet.

“Grat!” Samus howled louder. He could feel himself change, the wildness came out, the animal fear. He tried to push it away, the thing that told him to leap in, attack it, get out. Wait.
Just wait!

It stopped. The axe hung midway through a chop with energy crackling and singing on the blade. The head spun in a complete circle and, as if satisfied, it nodded and pulled back the axe once more.

Grat leapt out from a strut high in the darkness above and connected with the upper shoulders of the skelebot. It screeched and thrashed but Grats jaws locked on the axe arm. His eyes closed tight and his teeth bared.

The skelebot screeched louder. It slapped and punched at Grat. Each blow cut and hammered into Grats pelt. The claws snapped shut and pierced deep into Grat’s side.

Samus charged and hammered into the skelebot with his mouth biting down onto the other arm. Grat streamed blood from a clean diamond shaped wound in his side. But Grat did not let go.

Samus bit down and felt his teeth scream. It was the same every time: it started out slow, cool, and got warmer, hotter, until he couldn’t bare it anymore. Then his teeth were like fiery daggers in his mouth. But oh they cut, he loved how they cut.

Grat’s teeth pushed through first and the axe dropped to the floor. The screeching stopped and the skelebot slammed the crimped stump of his arm into Grat and flung the heavy dog away. Samus released and struggled back. His teeth were almost there,
almost.
The arm bore a heavy cut and teeth marks like a pick stabbed into it. The skelebot paused, scanned, intent on something else.

Barley leapt through the pile of corpses and stood over Grat. Grat stood on shaky legs.

“Get him out!” Samus howled to Barley. He turned his eyes to another tighter passage and saw the lance on the corpse. His first leap put him past the skelebot and his second skidded him alongside the dead dog. He had a moment’s recognition that it wasn’t a dog like any he had seen: it was smaller, with thinner hair. It seemed so frail in the suit of armor. He grasped the lance in his heavy jaws and pivoted the point up just as the skelebot rushed after.

In one eye Samus watched as the skelebot tried to dance aside on the polished floor while in the other he looked into the dead eyes of the dog next to him. His jaw steered the lance to the side and it speared into the upper shoulder of the skelebot. Blue light flared for a moment and it convulsed once before settling and relaxing.

He released the lance and sat back on his haunches, feeling the burn where the tip of his tail once was.

“Send in four, we need to strip what we can,” Samus said.

Barley and Grat limped through the field of corpses and moved out through the mass of cables. Samus stared at the bot and felt the adrenaline ebb away. He looked back down to the dead dog with the lance and wondered who in the hell this was. He turned and gave a single lick onto the stub of his tail. He felt no sorrow to lose it, it was now just proof of his prowess.

A single bark sounded. Samus stopped, listened and focused. It was deeper inside, behind him, through the mangled mass. He turned to look towards the exit and then plunged inside.

He leaped over a broken strut and slid down the backside into a passage. His belly scraped the ground and he pushed himself tight to the floor. Another yelp sounded and it was closer.

“Samus!” Munin barked back in the passage.

“Take what you can and get out!” he barked through gritted teeth. “I’ll be right behind you.”

The sounds of thrashing announced that Munin had begun to strip what he could.

The passage grew tighter, closer, warmer. The smoke tight in places. Then it was open.

A female dog, brown with a white stomach, lay crumpled on the floor with her legs broken and a wicked gash ruptured through her abdomen. Her eyes were wild with a sickly yellow froth on her lips. She yelped and clawed at the floor trying to reach a pile of pups. She wore brown and yellow chest armor, but most of the suit seemed to be missing, as if it was put on in haste.

Samus watched for a second. The pups were dead. They were young—too young—and none stirred. No, there’s one. He stepped closer and didn’t know what to do. Could it speak like he could?

Claws sounded behind Samus and he knew that someone was coming.

Then a voice spoke. “Denali? Denali? I’m so sorry. We tried, we tried.” The voice was almost a moan, a touch above a wheeze.

Samus froze and turned his head slowly. A man lay on the edge of a massive chair with wires streaming out from his body. He wore a gray and black uniform with a glossy shroud over his eyes.

A man! He heard scratching behind him. Whoever was coming was almost there.

Exile!
The words hit him again and he had to do something.

Samus leapt forward and jumped on top of the man. His heart slammed in his chest and he knew what he had to do. Just beyond the chair was a dropoff into darkness. He reached his jaws down and clamped gently onto the wires.

The man spasmed beneath him and Samus thrashed his head to the side, tearing the wires out.

“Oh god! Oh god!” the man screamed and mewed. “Denali! Denali! Save me, oh god!”

“Quiet!” Samus growled and snapped his jaws shut on the man’s neck. It tasted salty and he almost stopped. Almost. The scratching behind him sealed it. He gripped tightly and tasted blood.

The screaming stopped. The man pumped once, twice, and was still. Samus gripped the man’s shoulder in his wide jaws and tore him free from the chair. He cast the corpse into the darkness. A thud sounded from below.

“You,” a low growl said.

Samus turned his head to the wounded dog. She had propped herself up on both broken front legs and was trying to come closer to him. Her eyes bore rage sheathed in agony.

So they can speak? That makes her a witness.

“You,” she growled again, and Samus was on her.

* * *

S
amus walked slowly past the corpse and stood over the pile of pups. They were small, like the mother, only one still moved. Its eyes weren’t even open yet. He leaned his head down and sniffed it. It smelled so clean, so new.
You’ve no place in this world.
He leaned closer, mouth open.

“Stop,” Barley growled. She stood behind him with her hackles high. Her fur matted with Grat’s blood.

He gently plucked the pup up and felt it squirm in his lips. No, this one might have a place here. “Take it,” he said, and set the pup gently at Barley’s feet. “Raise it as your own.”

Barley’s eyes looked confused and thankful. She sniffed the pup and raised her nose to Samus. “I will,” she said, and picked it up gently. It cried a tiny whimper in her jaws and Barley’s legs quivered. “Thank you, Samus.”

“Her name is Denali.” Samus growled and turned away. “Now go!”

When Barley left, he walked back to the edge of the dropoff and stared into the darkness.

D
enali, forever the runt, chased after the future and stumbled into the past.

She leapt over a moss covered stone and sprinted after the caribou. Her tongue lolled out to the side, a look of pure joy across her face.

The caribou ran with an intensity that only prey can run with. It stank of fear. A froth of spittle darted along its nose. Hooves skittered on a plate of shale and it caught itself before careening down a steep slope. Plates of gray stone cascaded behind it.

They raced down the slope and headed towards an abandoned town. Bracken and tundra scrub cropped up from the crumbling concrete in erratic patches. Once through the ruins, the wide open range of the high taiga drifted away into the horizon. The caribou lowered its head and charged forward.

Denali danced through the shale. Her paws slipped on the loose stone. Then she was tumbling down the slope. With every landing she tried to flip and roll but the speed was too much. Finally she came to a rest and barked angrily. “Damn!”

Her paws throttled quicker. The caribou sprinted away. She knew if it reached the taiga that it would merge back into another herd and then she’d never lay into it. All she had to do was bring a kill, and she was failing. Failing
again
.

No matter how hard she tried she was never big enough, or fast enough, or burly enough. Too slow to hunt. Too weak to salvage. Too small to pull.

I can do this.
She pictured the kill in her mind.
I can do this!

The caribou halted midway through the ruins and sprang forward. The pace and distance was wearing on it. Legs slipped on the aged concrete and it bawled loudly as it gained speed. Massive antlers swung from side to side as it strained to push faster.

Go!
She willed herself faster. She knew she didn’t have the long legs or the massive mouth. All she had to do was get one tooth.
One tooth!
And then it would be hers. That one tooth would stop it, drag it down, then she could get it.

The concrete walls slammed past, faster, almost in a blur. The spaces inside were stark and white with nothing left inside. But she didn’t notice any of that. Her eyes were only for the caribou and she was getting close.