And . . . waiting for her.
Watching her.
All that fur and muscle and size. Waiting. Like a statue. Patient.
But why? Why did he wait like that? Why not just come after her? If he could find her here, why didn’t he simply pounce on her and do to her what he’done to the scavengers?
Why?
Rags licked her lips and swallowed a lump that felt as big as a rock.
The dog cocked his head at her.
And with a soft, heavy thump-thump-thump, he began wagging his tail. Beating it against the dusty marble floor.
That was how it started.
5
Trying to discover the dog’s name went nowhere. She made her way through the entire alphabet, trying every dog name she could think of—Prince, King, even Fido. She was sure no one ever named their dog Fido unless they were trying to be ironic. She tried all the cool or semi-cool or corny names people she’d known used for their dogs. Sam, Max, Butch, Bo, a couple of dozen others.
The closest she got to a reaction was from Bo. The dog almost wagged his tail, but didn’t. As if he was waiting for more of the name. She tried Bob, Bozo, Bono. Nothing.
The dog had a collar, and there was a bone-shaped tag on it, but instead of a name, there was a message that didn’t tell her much.
PROPERTY OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY SCIENCES
CAPT. J. LEDGER
There was a serial number, a phone number, and a website.
In the end, because the dog wore that tag and because it almost reacted to Bo, she decided to name him Bones.
The first time she called him that, the dog merely looked at her with those strange eyes.
The second time she called him, Bones came.
And Bones he was from then on.
6
Rags and Bones stayed in San Jose for nearly five months, and in their own way, they became scavengers.
Of a kind.
True scavengers, as she saw it. Not psychopaths.
They didn’t hunt people. Not to rob, not to hurt, and certainly not to eat. Rags knew that with everything she’d been through she was probably more than half-crazy, but there was a lot of downhill road she’d need to travel before she let herself become that crazy.
The dog helped.
He was so smart. Weird smart, as Rags saw it. When she spoke to him, Bones listened. Not just heard her, but listened. As if he could understand her actual words.
It was strange, but even Rags had to admit that it was far from the strangest part of her world.
Rags had no idea what day of the week it was or what week of the month. She was pretty sure she was still thirteen, but that might not be true. If it was October, then she was fourteen. It still felt like September, though. Or the world wasn’t getting as cool as it should. It was usually in the high seventies in September. By October it dropped down to the sixties during the day and into the fifties at night. This year it was hot even at night.
That was a weird thought. Rags figured that with all those dead people—none of them warmer than room temperature—the temperature should have dropped. But no.
Maybe it was the fires.
Maybe it was from all those bombs they’d released.
She didn’t know. It was okay, though, because she was usually cold, and hotter days and warm nights weren’t too bad. If it got really cold at some point, she figured she could cuddle up with Bones. He was always warm.
Since finding the dog, Rags had learned how to sleep again. Really sleep. Like all night, which was something she had not done once since she ran away from home.
It took a while for that to happen. A few weeks. But over time she began to trust Bones completely. And to trust that he would hear or smell something long before she did.
Being with Bones changed things for Rags.
She smiled. She laughed. She played.
That felt weird, because Rags thought that those things were extinct concepts.
At first their play was only an accidental version of fetch. They were picking through the ruins of a clothing store, trying to find a good sweater because fall was coming. Rags found a funny little hat that she thought would be warm, but it was too small. It was the tenth hat she’d tried on that didn’t fit, and that annoyed her, so she threw it across the store.
Bones bounded after it and brought it back.
The world had changed so much that Rags didn’t immediately understand why the dog did that. But Bones picked it up and dropped it again, a few inches closer to her sneakered toes. Bones wagged his big tail.
Rags stared at the brightly colored hat and then at the dog.
“Seriously?” she asked.
The tail whipped back and forth. He lowered his head and used his nose to put it closer.
She bent and picked it up.
“Fetch?”
More wags.
“You’re weird,” she told the dog.
Bones had his mouth open, tongue lolling. It made him look like he was grinning.
So Rags threw the hat.
Bones bounded after it, crashing through overturned display racks, leaping over fallen mannequins to retrieve the hat. He brought it back and dropped it on the top of her left shoe.
The tail kept wagging.
As Rags bent to pick up the hat, she told herself that this wasn’t smart, that they needed to stay focused and to keep hunting for supplies, clothes, and food.
Instead, she and Bones played fetch for nearly an hour. With hats. With fuzzy slippers. With balled-up socks.
The next day Rags and Bones went in search of a pet store.
The store had been looted. Hungry people will eat pet food if they can’t get anything better. The shelves were bare of cans and bags. The cages had been torn open and most were splashed with blood. Either the hungry dead or the hungry living had been here.
The rest of the stuff was there, though.
Rags found a whole bunch of bright-green tennis balls, and she stuffed several of these into her backpack. Bones insisted that they play with one of them, and an hour blurred by. Rags laughed a lot because Bones acted like a big puppy when he was playing fetch. He was clumsy and pretended to hunt the ball.
None of the dog beds were big enough for him. People had taken all of those. But she found a set of saddlebags that buckled around the dog’s barrel chest. She filled the pockets with toys, flea and tick medicine, and two bags of gluten-free dog treats that had been accidentally kicked under the front counter. She gave three of them to Bones, who nuzzled her afterward like he was in heaven.
Every day after that she took time to play with Bones. No matter where or how far she threw one of the fuzzy green balls, the big dog found it and brought it back.
He paid her back by helping her find food. He had an amazing nose, and he could scout up items she missed. In stores, in homes. Boxes of peanut butter crackers in a cabinet in an accountant’s office. A box of instant rice in a cupboard of a house that had clearly been searched. Even canned food, which was something Rags couldn’t understand. How could the dog smell food in sealed cans? She certainly couldn’t.
Between the two of them, they survived. They both put on a little weight, and eating better helped them get stronger. Rags was still thin, but over time she became wiry rather than merely skinny.
Sometimes Bones went out hunting alone and came back with blood on his muzzle. Rags hoped that it was animal blood. There were rabbits and squirrels and raccoons everywhere. If Bones was hunting like that, then it was okay. That was natural, even if it was a little disgusting.
But Rags remembered what Bones had done to those cannibal scavengers. She made sure that she washed the dog’s face of every last drop of blood before she’d let the animal cuddle up with her.
She washed his coat and applied the flea medicine. She found heartworm medicine and gave him regular doses.
She fell in love with the brute, and he clearly loved her.
Bones appointed
himself her protector. He proved it many times.
Once, when they were creeping along the border between Northside and Japantown, Bones began growling very quietly. No barks. She hadn’t heard him bark at all. Not once. But that growl stopped Rags in her tracks. The dog flattened out and crawled to the edge of a parked car and peered under it, so Rags dropped down and looked to see what it was.
A line of dead people were walking up the street. Why they were there or what they were following, Rags never found out. Sometimes the dead just walked. Mostly they didn’t; mostly they stopped moving if there was nothing for them to do, nothing to hunt or chase. A few, though, always seemed to be in motion.
Rags and Bones lay there and watched them. Nine of the dead. Adults and kids. Black and white, and a couple of Latinos. All of them pretty much gray now. Walking in a loose pack down Empire Street as if they had somewhere to go.
They didn’t hear the growls. Bones did it very quietly and stopped as soon as it was clear Rags was seeing what he wanted her to see.
It was like that.
The dead passed, and then the two of them got up and went in a different direction.
Another time there was pack of men. Survivors for sure, and maybe scavengers. Or maybe something else. They didn’t look as crazed as the cannibals, but they did not look friendly. Or safe. There were two really big men and a few others. One man had snow-white hair but he was young, probably no more than thirty. So many muscles, and a face that scared the crap out of Rags. Guns in holsters, knives strapped everywhere. And he looked around him with sharp, dangerous eyes. Red eyes. An albino, Rags thought, though she had never met one before.
The other big man was a few inches shorter but every bit as broad-shouldered and mean-looking. He had black hair and lots of scars, and instead of a gun or knife, he carried a two-foot-long length of black pipe wrapped in electrician’s tape.
The other men were no prizes either, but compared to the two big men, they seemed less important. Followers, thought Rags.
Bones had heard them coming and immediately took her wrist between his teeth and pulled her off the street. That was something he did, and even with all those fangs, he never once broke the skin or left a mark. She would only have gotten hurt if she’d tried to pull away. Rags didn’t. She’d come to trust Bones. So she let him pull her into a burned-out beauty shop, and they crouched together in the shadows, watching as the men walked down the center of the street. They walked with the kind of bold confidence people had when they were afraid of absolutely nothing and absolutely no one. Not the living and not the dead.
The men talked in normal voices. No whispers. They made crude, disgusting jokes, and they laughed like donkeys. Rags hated them on sight. She feared them too. If they weren’t cannibal scavengers, then they were clearly dangerous in some other way. If it hadn’t been for Bones, she might have walked right into them.
Beside her, Bones bared his teeth in a silent snarl of animal hate. If he was afraid too, he showed it in a different way. The hairs on his spine stood up, though, and he did not blink once until the men had passed the store and moved on down the street.
A third time Bones saved her was when she began heading into the museum along her usual route, climbing the helicopter tail toward the smashed-in corner. Rags was reaching for her solar flashlight when Bones came running up the slanting tail, pushed past her, and stood at the edge of the hole, staring into the shadows. Once more the hairs stood up on his back and he bared his teeth, and once more he did not bark. He didn’t growl this time either. He just stood there.
“What is it, boy?” she asked, kneeling beside him and pulling out her knife.
The dog stared and stared.
And then he began backing away.
“Hey,” Rags said, “we have to go in. All our stuff’s in there.”
Bones stopped and glared at her. Not in a threatening way, but as if he was trying to tell her something.
“You can stay right here, scaredy-pants,” Rags said, “but I need to get our stuff. We have a whole thing of food in there. My backpack’s in there.”
She straightened and took a step toward the hole.
Bones darted forward and blocked her way.
“If you’re that freaked out, then come with me. We’ll be quick,” insisted Rags. “In and out.”
The backpack was hidden beneath an empty display case, and it was crammed with twenty-six cans of food and all the rest of her supplies. All she had with her at the moment was the flashlight, the knife, and the first aid kit. She had to get it.
The dog stood there, blocking the entrance with his massive size.
“Hey, your food’s in there too, Einstein,” she said, trying to push past him.
Bones did something he had never done once before. Not to her.
He bared his teeth.
Nearly two hundred pounds of dog, with fangs that could tear her apart. And all of that—muscle and teeth—right up in her face.
Rags was instantly and completely terrified. She stumbled backward.
Bones held his ground. He did not advance. Did not attack.
He stood there between her and the hole into darkness.
Slowly, slowly his lips settled back and he stopped snarling at her. Rags kept backing away. Not from the hole. From him.
Then Bones wagged his tail.
Two quick switches back and forth.
He cast one lingering look over his shoulder, and then he followed Rags down the tail of the helicopter and onto the cracked asphalt of N Street. When they were both down there, Bones stared up at her and made a soft whining sound. His tail flicked again.
Which was when Rags got it.
This wasn’t about her. It was only about the museum. It was about the dog knowing something she didn’t. Smelling, sensing, guessing. Whatever.
It was about the hard truth that the museum wasn’t their home anymore.
It never would be again.
Whatever was in there, it wanted that place even more than Bones did. That was really scary.
Bones nudged her with his muzzle and kept nuzzling and whining until she broke down and touched him. Just a touch at first, then as he felt her hand on his fur, Bones pushed against her. Rags knelt down very slowly and wrapped her arms around the big dog. He licked her face as if in apology.
“Thanks,” she said.
She wept for the food and supplies.
She wept for being alive.
Bones pressed himself against her and whined.
And they didn’t die.
7
That night they slept in a shoe store that had been so thoroughly looted that even the little stocking things people wore when trying stuff on had been taken. There was nothing in the store but empty boxes, a smashed cash register, old animal bones, and dirt.
Out back, in a small courtyard shared by six different stores, they found three dead men and a lot of blood. Flies were heavy and the corpses stank. Rags looked at them through the screen door while Bones stood beside her. There were weapons on the ground and scuff marks. This had been a real fight. Rags was getting so that she could read signs of violent encounters. Fights with the dead left one kind of mark. Fights between living people left another.
This fight had definitely been between living people. What convinced her of that was that each of the corpses had their heads cut off.
The dead didn’t return if their heads were cut off. Or if their brains were damaged. Someone had killed them and then made sure these three wouldn’t rise.
Rags closed the door.
The presence of the rotting corpses, though completely disgusting, was useful. Rot did not attract the dead. Only living flesh did that. So, with nothing to steal and nothing to eat, the place was as safe as safe got these days.
Rags and Bones slept in the storeroom, curled together like pups in a litter.
All through the next week Rags looked for a new place. Some of the best prospects—places she’d taken note of to come b
ack to—had been looted. A few had burned down, though whether it was arson or lightning was hard to say.
Almost every day they found more dead people. Not the walking dead. She found more people who had been killed.
And it was when she and Bones were examining the third fight scene that she noticed something. All the dead people had tattoos. Skulls, mostly. On their arms, on their necks. One had a big one on his chest. The tattoos were crude. Stuff that looked like it had been done recently and badly; not stuff from before.
Always skulls.
Every single dead person had a skull tattoo.
She began studying the bodies, trying to learn from them.
All the corpses were tough-looking. People with scars and with other, older tattoos. Although Rags had grown up in a nice neighborhood, she’d watched enough TV and rap videos to know what jailhouse tats looked like. Some of these people had those kinds of ink.
All of them were in bad shape. Like they’d been in a bad fight before they died. Almost all of them were men. She saw a couple of women, but these women looked every bit as rough and tough as the men.
At the seventh scene of slaughter, Rags began going through their pockets. She found stuff she didn’t care about—cigarettes, money—and stuff she kept, like matches, folding knives, sealed packages of beef jerky and Slim Jims. Bottles of hand sanitizer, aspirin, vitamins. Even a little plastic container of breath mints.
She found a lot of rope, twine, metal handcuffs, and plastic pipe-ties. What her uncle Mark called Flex-Cuffs. Like cops used on TV. Every single corpse had that stuff.
She left that stuff there and took the useful items with her.
The days passed.
Twice she thought she heard the sound of yelling and then a few gunshots, but it was on the other side of town, and about the last thing she wanted to do was walk into someone else’s trouble. Rags had gotten used to being alone. Just her and the dog.
Bones, though, sometimes he’d stand and listen, facing the direction of those kinds of sounds, head cocked, nose twitching. A few times he whined softly. But he never left her to investigate.
Bones never left her side.