The Pack (12 page)

As Shep rose to his paws, he thought about saying something to Callie, something about how much he appreciated her help, or how much he needed her as a partner. But he said nothing. He left her in the dark, staring up at the blank face of the clouds, and took the back staircase-hole to the crushed floor and Out into the night.

Dover sat beneath his boat, as he did every night. Shep joined him, as had become his own habit.

“Hear the ruckus?” Shep grunted, sitting beside the old timer.

“Heard it,” Dover woofed, “but not sure what to make of it.”

“Pack's still holding together,” Shep said.

“By a dewclaw,” Dover added, looking at Shep with his deep brown eyes. Then he smiled. “But that's better than most could do with a pack of this size, facing dangers no dog has smelled since before the first collar.”

They sat together in the dark, feeling the breeze ruffle the fur on their backs. When sleep came, Shep curled next to Dover and the old dog rested his snout on the younger dog's scruff.

“You're doing good, pup,” Dover snuffled. “Real good.”

The next morning, as Shep lapped up his drink ration, he paused to examine the muzzle reflected in the water. His jowls were flecked with white hairs, and his eyes seemed to have shrunken under his brow. The dog in the water looked worn-out.
What's happening to me?
Shep wondered.

“Shep!” Oscar cried as he bounded up to him. “I can't tell you how amazing last night was.” His ears were up and tail was wagging. “Getting to stand next to you, in front of the whole club was even more exciting than watching you fight those wild dogs! Odie said he thought that we kind of looked alike, like maybe I could be your pup. Isn't that the best-smelling thing ever?”

Shep felt awkward even meeting Oscar's eyes. “We look nothing alike.”

Oscar's tail drooped slightly, but kept wagging. “Well, he didn't say
exactly
alike, just maybe something noble about the snout?” Oscar waved his little nose in the air, demonstrating its proportions for Shep.

Shep didn't know what else to say, so he said the only thing on his mind. “Pup, I don't like that story you made up. I don't like all these dogs in your club thinking I'm something I'm not.”

If Shep had torn Oscar's tail off, the pup probably would have looked less hurt.

The woofs trembled as they fell from his jowls. “But last night — I thought …” His eyes were wide, and his ears hung limp around his muzzle. “I only wanted to help you, like Callie said. Didn't my story and my club help you?”

Shep sagged into a sit next to the pup. “It's not that you didn't help,” he said, “it's just that the Great Wolf, he really means something to me.”

Oscar's tail began to wave and wriggle. “He means so much to me, too, Shep!” he barked. “When Callie told me that story while the wave was crashing all around us, all I could think of was you fighting that whole pack of wild dogs and Zeus and how much that was just like the Great Wolf and the Black Dog. And then when we told Odie that story together, it suddenly all piled together for me, about you and the Great Wolf and being his Champion. I mean, how else could you have done all that incredible stuff? The Great Wolf
must
have smelled how much you were like him and made you into his Champion!”

Shep shook his head. “Oscar, you really believe that? About the hairs and the tears?”

Oscar crinkled his nose. “Ginny added that stuff in,” he woofed. “Do you not like those parts? Because I thought the story didn't need anything more than just what really happened, but Ginny said it needed ‘fluff and fancy-ing,' whatever that meant. She also stuck on that bit about Lassie.” Oscar panted. “I don't even know who Lassie is.” He grinned at Shep and wagged his tail. “It's hard to run a club, you know?”

Shep did know, better than any dog. But he didn't feel right barking about that kind of thing with a pup. Particularly when the pup was running a club whose very existence made Shep's fur crawl. Woofing about things with Dover was one thing; confiding in Oscar was another bag of treats entirely.

Shep stood up. “Oscar, I'm sorry if you're having troubles, but that club is a burr you put in your own fur. All I wanted to bark is that I wish you'd have left me and the Great Wolf out of it.” Shep took a final lap of water. “The Great Wolf is my hero. Don't you understand how that makes him special to me?”

“I do,” Oscar grunted. His tail was so far between his legs, its tip dragged in the dirt. “Don't
you
understand that you're
my
hero, Shep?” The pup loped away from him and disappeared inside the boat.

Shep sighed; he felt like a pile of scat.
Why couldn't I have just wagged my tail and walked away?
What kind of dog was he, to be tearing the squeaker out of the pup's toy? He was doing every thing wrong. As he trotted out to begin his hunt, several pack members crouched to let him pass, a mixture of fear and awe on their muzzles. Shep broke into a run and only stopped when he could no longer scent the boat.

He decided to set small goals for himself, to make the hunt even more exciting. He would bring in the most prey that any hunter had caught in one sun. He found a metal box in an alley, heavy enough to keep out scavengers, and flipped it over: He would hide his prey inside.

By midsun, he'd downed two rabbits and a squirrel. He chased a chipmunk into a ruined den and smelled an interesting, musky scent. It was a ferret, still trapped in its cage. Shep pawed the cage and the nasty weasel spat and scratched at Shep's claw. Its beady eyes betrayed a vicious intelligence. The ferret was not going to give in that easily.

Shep found the door to the cage and bent it open with his teeth. “There you go,” he woofed to the ferret. “Now we can fight fair.”

The weasel considered Shep for a heartbeat, then sprang for the open cage door and squeezed its way through. It smiled at Shep; they both knew what was coming.

The ferret bolted across the floor, its long body humping along the stone. Shep scrambled after it, heart racing. The weasel wriggled into a tiny hole in the corner, thinking Shep couldn't follow. Shep jammed his paw into the hole and ripped the sheet of paper-stone from the wallboards. The ferret squealed and dove at Shep's paw. Shep swept down with his jaws, barely missing the cunning creature's head.

The weasel leapt at Shep's jowls, and Shep rolled the thing onto its back. The ferret snapped and clawed at Shep's snout. He could barely land a tooth before the thing had its head out of the way. Then Shep mashed the weasel's chest with his massive paw and caught its head in his jaws. The fight was over.

 

Shep snuck into the den through the stairwell and dropped his four kills in the kibble room while Higgins was fussing with rations in the back corner. The only dog who saw him was Snoop, who had been assigned to help Higgins with kibble distribution. He barely got in a “Hey-Shep-how-ya'-doin'?” before Shep slipped back into the stairwell and out into the evening.

When the time came for the nightly meeting, he forced himself back inside, though he'd been tracking a cunning rodent through a maze of rubble. He sat in the shadows and let the other leaders bark. He braved the glazed gazes of his adoring throng to give his nightly speech, then escaped the cramped walls of the boat into the clear night.

Each sun, Shep sought out more challenging animals to hunt, things that would really test his skills. He caught an iguana easily — they were half-asleep whenever they were lounging in the sun. Birds were more difficult. Shep practiced sprinting up and down an alley. Once his speed was near that of a rabbit, he focused on timing his leap and snap-bite. Then he went after his first bird.

It was a lithe white bird on long black legs with a thin orange snout. It moved slowly through a brackish puddle behind a demolished den. Shep kept downwind of the squawker, low to the ground and hidden by bramble. The bird flicked its head away; this was his chance. He exploded from the hedge, paws flying over the grass. The bird barely had time to register his existence before needing to flap open its lovely fans of wing. It slapped the air and lifted off the ground. Shep sprang up and snapped his fangs around its slender neck. He landed with the bird hanging limp from his jaws.

He sought out more dangerous prey: huge rats with teeth the size of a pup's snout; small water lizards; a nasty old lizard that lived inside a green bowl of shell with a hard, snappy mouth and sharp, clawed paws. He fought all sizes of rodent — medium-sized ones with black muzzle masks and striped tails, white-faced ones that hung like fruit in trees, and once, near dusk, a huge bat whose leathery wings were studded with claws.

Shep even found a rodent-like thing encased in a hard, horny shell like a nut. The creature had a pointy nose, long ears, and a tiny, bony tail. The heartbeat it scented Shep, it began scratching furiously in the dirt. Shep hooked a claw on its shell just before it disappeared. He smelled lifeblood and fur under the shell, so he flipped the thing over and found its soft underbelly. The weird rodent became kibble in heartbeats.

Shep dragged what he could back to the boat, and always forced himself to sit through the nightly meetings. He made his customary speech to the pack as quickly as possible, then dashed back Out to the hunt.

Several suns into his hunting spree, a thunderstorm rolled over the city. Shep decided to take the morning off. He pulled himself into the meeting room, which the bulk of the pack avoided, and curled up in a corner to wait out the storm. Before he could so much as close his eyes, he heard a girldog woof his name — well, one of his names.

“The Storm Shaker is Out saving other dogs, sweet snout,” a dam snuffled to her pup. “That's why he left us his Voice.”

Shep shot to his paws and dropped down into the hallway below. The dam was startled, and her pup hid beneath her flank.

“Storm Shaker!” she cried. “Be a good pup, Shag,” she woofed to the pup. “You wanted to smell the Storm Shaker, and here he is.”

The pup peeked out at Shep, then ducked back under his mother.

The dam licked her pup, then smiled at Shep. “He's just shy. Seven suns old this morning!”

“Oh,” Shep woofed. “Congratulations.” He hadn't barked one-on-one with another dog in … how many suns? The woofs felt strange on his tongue. “What did you say about a Voice?”

The dam's tail drooped. “Is this some sort of test? Grr, let me smell if I can remember it exactly.” She cocked her head. “Oh, yes.”

 

The Storm Shaker set out to complete his work of rescuing animals trapped by the storm. He worked from when dawn's tails first wagged in the sky until the last of the sun's light faded, and his packmates struggled alongside him.

As the pack gathered more dogs, the Storm Shaker realized that he could not both continue his mission and lead the pack. He noticed a young pup sitting quietly at the edge of the crowd, looking up at the Storm Shaker with an intense gaze. The Storm Shaker approached the pup.

“Why do you not play with your packmates?” the Storm Shaker asked.

“I want to be like you,” the pup replied.

“Then you shall help me,” the Storm Shaker barked.

The pup was small, and could not tear a door from its hinges or dig through a sodden wall. But the pup was smart, and his bark was loud and clear. The Storm Shaker said to the pup, “You will spread the story of the Storm Shaker, and in that way lead this pack. By hearing my story, all dogs may learn to be free and live in peace.”

 

“Stop!” Shep cried.

The dam swallowed her woofs. “Did I get something wrong?”

Shep pushed past her, his nose on Oscar's scent. It led him to a corner of the main den near the windowed back wall of the boat. Oscar sat on a ripped pillow, yipping quietly with Odie.

“Might the Storm Shaker have a word with his Voice?” Shep growled.

Oscar looked up at him, surprised. He waved his snout and Odie trotted away.

“So you heard the new story,” Oscar woofed, his bark flat.

“I thought I made it clear that I didn't like these stories.” Shep tried to keep his woofs quiet.

Oscar sat taller. “You made it very clear.” His bark broke every few yips into a whimper. “But all the dogs wondered where you were. They kept asking me, ‘Where's the Storm Shaker? Why isn't he ever in the den?' They felt like they'd been abandoned all over again. They needed a story to make them feel better. To make them feel like you didn't
hate
them.” He spat the last woofs out.

Shep was again stunned to silence. Oscar trembled in his stiff sit, his snout lifted proudly, his eyes locked on Shep's own. The pup had grown in the moon-cycle Shep had known him. He fit his ears and paws a bit better, and he didn't trip when he walked. His gaze possessed a depth dug out by all the adventures and ordeals he'd experienced since they'd met in that dim hallway what seemed like cycles ago, like another world entirely.

“I don't hate you, Oscar,” Shep snuffled, finally.

Oscar trembled even harder, as if fighting with his own muscles, then shook with one enormous shiver and sagged. “It sure feels like you hate us,” he grunted.

“I'm Out hunting for food,” Shep woofed, though he knew that was only half the truth, maybe less than half.

Oscar pulled his sit straighter. “Do you have a different story you want me to tell? I'll say whatever you want.” His tail gave a feeble wag and a smile curled his jowls. “Working together, I'm sure we could come up with some really good-smelling stuff.” He leaned toward Shep, and his tail wagged harder.

Shep shrank back. He didn't want more stories, or different stories; he wanted
no
stories. Why didn't Oscar understand? The pup was so hopeful, so happy. He looked at Shep the way he had back in the kibble den, after the wave. He looked at Shep like Shep was a hero. But Shep didn't feel like that dog anymore. He didn't want to lead; he didn't want to be a hero — he wanted to be left alone to hunt. Everything was so clear and simple when he was hunting. There was the hunter and the hunted; there was a beginning and an end. He had to get back to that world in as few heartbeats as possible.

“I'm not good at stories, pup,” he groaned. He turned and padded away from Oscar as quickly as the crowded den allowed.

He stepped into the stairwell, ready to escape, and bumped snouts with Honey.

“They've killed a cat, Shep!” she barked hysterically. “A
cat
!” She waved her muzzle at Fuzz.

Fuzz cowered beneath Honey's belly like a shadow. Over the suns, he'd cleaned his fur of most of its mats, and now he looked as his name implied — he was a black cloud of fur. Faint stripes ran throughout his coat, and a shock of white blazed at his chest. His green eyes were wide open, and he scanned the empty passage around them like the hunters were already on his trail and fast approaching.