Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (7 page)

"You weren't there, you didn't see it," said
Mhumhi, but now he was slinking around the bathroom. "It was trying
to kill me."

"Maybe it was," said Kutta, "but I bet it was
only frightened."

"But it was huge!"

"Well, that big domestic was frightened of us
too," said Kutta, and Mhumhi eyed her, wondering if she really
understood the difference between a bulky domestic and a massive,
blood-smelling hulker.

"Anyway, Mhumhi," Kutta was saying, seeming
keen to slide out from under his gaze, "do you still have any meat
left in your belly?"

"Yes, but it's mine." Mhumhi resumed his
slinking, circling around the smelly toilet hole. Kutta gave an
exasperated snort.

"I was only asking. Do you want to go with me
today or not?"

"Oh," said Mhumhi, who had nearly completely
forgotten about Kutta's secret expedition. "I guess so…" Going
outside was somewhat less appealing than it had been that
morning.

"If you guess you do, then we have to go
now," said Kutta. "It'll take a little while, and Sacha wants me to
go out with her this evening to the dispensary. I don't want her
coming to look for us."

"Fine," said Mhumhi, with little
enthusiasm.

"So let's send Bii up to look after Keb,"
said Kutta impatiently. "Come on, Mhumhi."

Mhumhi put his ears back, recalling the
conversation he'd had with the fox earlier that day. Bii's big ears
had probably picked up their entire little discussion. Perhaps, he
thought glumly, it would be better if Bii ratted them out to Sacha.
Then she'd yowl at them and send them back upstairs and they
wouldn't have to go.

But when they went downstairs Sacha was
napping in the kitchen sink and Bii was still lying on the floor
where Mhumhi had left him.

"Kebero wants to play with you," Kutta told
him, and he got up slowly, wincing as he put weight on his back
leg, and limped over to the stairs.

"Should we really let him play like that?"
Mhumhi whispered to her, but she merely gave him a mordant look and
pushed out the door.

"Come on," she said. "Sacha's sleeping. It's
perfect."

Mhumhi sighed and followed her.

Kutta's
Secret

Kutta took him in the opposite direction of
the dispensary, which he was glad about, for it also took him away
from where the hulker had been. Instead she trotted towards the
subway, out towards the edge of Oldtown, until they came to a
dusty, empty street.

Mhumhi put his nose down but smelled very
little. No one, it seemed, had been by since the rain, or at least
no one who'd bothered to leave a mark. Kutta's pawprints ahead of
him were the only ones he could see.

The buildings here were older, and falling
apart into dry, crumbling plaster; many didn't even have roofs. A
slight wind was blowing some of the dust around into a gently
spinning cyclone in one street corner. Mhumhi paused to observe it
for a moment until Kutta turned back to nudge him on.

"Look," she said, trotting ahead. There was a
small arched bridge, and below it flowed a small canal, cut away
into the concrete and plaster skin of Oldtown. It smelled foul, and
the water that flowed sluggishly through it was brown and
sinister-looking.

Kutta paused to put her paws up over a metal
guardrail, tail wagging, and then ducked underneath and vanished
from view. Mhumhi bounded after her and saw that she had taken a
narrow brick stair that led down to a grate underneath the
bridge.

"Come on, Mhumhi," she called up to him,
waving her brush-tail. Mhumhi followed reluctantly- the smell was
no better up close. She nosed him encouragingly when he reached her
at the bottom.

"We'll have to swim a bit," she said, and
then leapt into the water with a splash.

Mhumhi flinched and let out a miserable whine
when the fetid water hit him, but she was already paddling away.
There was a gap in the huge grate under the bridge- a spot where
the bars had rusted away to ugly corroded stumps above the water.
Kutta swam through it.

"Kutta," Mhumhi whined, but she was already
gone into the darkness beyond the grate. He dithered for a moment
on the stairs before wrinkling his lips and leaping into the
water.

It was cold and unpleasant-feeling, and
Mhumhi regretted it at once. The smell was going to cling to him
for days. He was also not much of a swimmer- no opportunities to
practice, really- so it was with some difficulty that he made his
way to the dark opening in the grate.

He passed underneath and felt the air
immediately get cooler. It was dim inside, filled with the sounds
of dripping and trickling. The sunlight streaming through the gate
cast a bright cross-hatch on the water.

Kutta gave a little whistle of encouragement
somewhere ahead of him, and he saw that there was a platform with
more stairs that she'd climbed onto. He swam to it, claws
scratching on the brick, and dragged himself out of the mucky water
in a relieved bound.

"That's it, that's the only hard part," Kutta
said, standing away as he shook himself. "Now it's just a short
walk."

Mhumhi shook himself again for good measure,
snorting. "What are we going to see down here anyway?"

"You'll see," said Kutta. Her tail was still
wagging, damp and draggled as it was. She seemed to be getting into
a better mood the closer they got to her secret.

The platform lead further on into the dark
tunnel, and there were more stairs going down, and it got even
darker. As his vision left him Mhumhi kept close to Kutta,
listening to her footsteps click on the concrete. The sound of
slowly trickling water was with them always, as was the awful
stench.

Kutta stopped suddenly and he bumped into her
damp, furry rear.

"Wait a moment," she said, and he heard her
scratching around in the darkness. Suddenly there was a burst of
light.

Mhumhi had to blink for a while to get his
eyes adjusted, and what he saw when they were was not reassuring.
They were in a wide tunnel with a very low ceiling. Below the
platform they were standing on there still oozed a viscous,
nasty-looking stream. It looked shallow enough to stand in but
Mhumhi felt distinctly better up where they were.

"What did you do?" he asked, still
blinking.

"There's a switch," said Kutta, indicating
with her nose on the wall. Wires ran from the switch along the
ceiling to little lights in wire boxes strung every few feet along
the tunnel. There were a great number of pipes and other wires
running in bundles along the walls that Mhumhi could not make head
or tail of.

"Just a little further," said Kutta, and
trotted forward. Mhumhi glanced down at the shallow sludge and
spotted a flicker of movement. It was only a very large cockroach,
but he still felt unnerved.

The cockroach made him think of Bii, and he
wondered if this was the place Bii went to hunt when he was in
better health. If the little fox went down here, it couldn't be so
bad, could it?

He followed Kutta along the tunnel, which
seemed to stretch on forever, light to light with short patches of
darkness in between, until finally she led him down yet another set
of stairs and through an arched entryway.

Mhumhi's senses told him that he was suddenly
in a very
large
space. He went to the edge of the platform
to look out and felt weak. The ground dropped away from them into a
huge concrete cavern. Broad pillars held up the ceiling while
dangling bulbs cast round disks of light on a pool far below. The
sound of rushing water was loud all around here, and he could see
it draining into the pool from high pipes set around the room.

Kutta took him down the platform, which
ringed the room, until they finally came to another set of stairs,
these ones blessedly going up. Kutta hesitated.

"Stay a little ways back, now," she told
Mhumhi. "Try to be quiet, and stop when I do."

"What
is
it, Kutta?" he asked, loud
over the sound of the water, but she merely whisked her tail in his
face and went up the stairs.

Here it was much quieter, as the concrete
closed in on all sides again. There was no water here, and the
tunnel was narrow and square. Suddenly they came to a door.

Kutta shot Mhumhi a look, warning him to
stop, and then scratched on the door.

Behind the door, something moved. Mhumhi
tensed.

Kutta rose up on her hind legs, tail wagging,
and pushed the door slowly in. Beyond there was darkness, but
through the overpowering sewer-stench something strangely familiar
prickled at Mhumhi's nose.

Kutta trotted into the room, and Mhumhi
followed. He could definitely hear soft movement nearby. It sounded
like something small, low to the ground. Then it coughed. Mhumhi
jumped.

"That's strange," Kutta said softly. "Just
one…"

Just one
what
, Mhumhi wanted to
scream, but his senses were on live-wire alert now. He crept
forward after Kutta, sniffing. That scent… meat… dog…

Behind them, something screamed.

Mhumhi whirled around and felt Kutta do the
same in the darkness nearby. There was a figure standing in the
light of the doorway. Standing on two legs.

Mhumhi at once felt an overpowering desire to
flee, his legs trembling, but in the unfamiliar darkness there was
nowhere to go. The figure was small, but it was definitely a
hulker, standing there on its thick legs, grimacing at them, its
mad eyes bulging. It had wildly thick fur upon its head.

"Kutta, I think we can fight it off," said
Mhumhi, attempting to sound braver than he felt. "It isn't as big
as the other one."

"Don't even move, Mhumhi," Kutta said
warningly. "Stay right where you are."

Mhumhi growled. The hulker seemed to flinch
at this, and he felt a sudden touch of boldness. It was frightened
of him. He opened his jaws in a snarl.

"Mhumhi!"

But the hulker had turned to run, and
something seemed to snap on in Mhumhi's brain. He chased.

The hulker gave that awful, undoglike scream
again, but it was slow and stumbling. Mhumhi could hear the
thudding pulse in its neck, and he knew at once that it was
there
he had to go. He was salivating, drool dripping from
his tongue as he ran, teeth aching for that pulse.

The hulker squealed and tripped, falling flat
on the concrete. Mhumhi twittered his delight and bunched his
muscles to spring-

-only to be unceremoniously bowled over.

"Kutta!" he cried, for she was on top of him,
baring her teeth.

"I told you to stay put! Now look, you've
ruined all my good work!"

Mhumhi, bewildered, tried to get back up, but
she shoved him down with her chest and stood over him until he
wagged his tail over his belly and licked her chin.

The hulker was still nearby, getting up
slowly, and Mhumhi twisted underneath Kutta to growl at it. At once
she bumped him with her chest, looming over him until he whined and
put his ears back.

"They're not to be hurt, Mhumhi," she
said.

"They?"

"Yes," said Kutta, turning her ears back in a
sheepish way. "That hulker, and her brother."

"That…" Mhumhi repeated, unable to
comprehend. "That… hulker?"

"Yes," said Kutta. "I suppose it would have
been better if I told you ahead of time after all. They're hulker
puppies, Mhumhi. Mother was taking care of them, and now I am."

Three Brothers, Three Sisters

"Hulker puppies," Mhumhi was still repeating,
bewildered, a few minutes later. Kutta had told him sternly to wait
by the door while she tried to coax the frightened female hulker
back. From the dark room, there still came coughing, which Mhumhi
supposed must be from the other one.

"Come here," Kutta kept saying, her tail
wagging gently as she stepped towards the female. "No one will hurt
you."

But every time she got too close, the little
hulker would run further away.

"Don't go too far, Kutta!" Mhumhi called
after her, feeling anxious for her. Kutta turned back to glare at
him.

"Hush! You're frightening her more!"

Disgruntled, Mhumhi got up and looked into
the darkened room. The coughing came again. He took a big sniff of
air, but it told him next to nothing about whatever lay inside.
Either it was the heavy reek of sewer muck or the hulkers' own
mysterious scent preventing him from getting a lock on identifying
them with his nose.

He stepped into the room, nosing around,
feeling far more confident after his adventure chasing the little
female. If it was a hulker
puppy
, it was really not so
frightening at all.

Near the door he spotted a light switch like
the one Kutta had hit in the tunnels and reared to jab it with his
nose. Harsh electric light filled the room. Mhumhi blinked, and saw
the second hulker, blinking as well.

It was lying in a nest of blankets, so that
only the funny-shaped head protruded, and it was looking at him. It
looked smaller than the other hulker, and less frightened. It sat
up, coughing. Its movements were shaky and childish and it gave a
kind of bleat.

Mhumhi felt that twitch again, as if a light
switch had been turned on in his own head. He licked his lips. If
he could only bear it back down to the ground- it looked so weak,
he could just tear out the belly without bothering with the
throat-

He was panting and drooling now. He tried to
close his jaws and swallow. Kutta had said not to harm them- so he
would not- but oh, how could she
stand
it!

The hulker was crawling towards him, and now
it got up on its hind legs. Mhumhi shut his eyes painfully, unable
even to look at the thing. It was bleating at him again, and he
turned his ears back, trying not to hear it.

"Hello!" the hulker bleated.