Daisy gave Pumpkin a severe head tilt, so far that Shep worried her neck might snap, but the others grinned, amused by the little dog’s antics. Shep wanted to slam a paw down on the fluffy white yapper’s back to keep her from moving, and panted to himself, thinking that Zeus would have done exactly that.
And then, as if Shep’s thoughts had been made real, Zeus himself hobbled out of the tunnel and into a beam of moonlight.
“Hello, old friends,” the boxer growled.
Zeus lowered his hornlike ears. “What?” he grunted. “No wag for your old packmate?”
“Get back!” Shep snapped, raising his hackles and sinking into a defensive stance.
The pack scrambled to get behind Shep. Daisy stood at his flank, ears up and fangs bared. Dover stood at Shep’s other flank, a low growl rumbling in his throat. Even Boji — gentle, scaredy-dog Boji! — snarled at the boxer.
“Do I need to remind you that I banished you from my pack?” Shep growled.
“No,” Zeus barked, sneering. “I carry around a constant reminder.” He lifted his front paw. It was wrapped in a heavy bandage that thudded against the dirt when he dropped the leg. “Apparently, though, you didn’t share that woof with every dog in your pack.” Zeus flicked his muzzle back toward the dark of the tunnel.
“I told you to wait!” Oscar’s bark echoed out at them. The pup appeared, covered in muck, and shook his coat, splattering Zeus with mud. “They didn’t know you were coming,” he woofed to the boxer, as if the whole pack weren’t right in front of him.
“Of all the dogs to rescue!” Ginny cried. “Have you forgotten what he did?”
“No dog’s forgotten,” Callie barked, her voice flat. A scowl bent her jowls and the front of her lip trembled over her bared teeth.
Pumpkin popped out from between Dover’s legs. “What’d he do?” she yipped. “He looks hurt.”
“I killed their friends,” Zeus answered. His sonorous bark hung in the thick air under the trees.
“Oh,” woofed Pumpkin. “I can see why they’re upset.”
“Oscar,” Shep growled, “what is he doing here?”
The pup trotted under Shep’s snout to explain; Shep kept his eyes trained on Zeus.
“I did just what we planned,” Oscar woofed. “I sniffed for a good cage to attack to cause the ruckus we had woofed about, a cage with a couple of big dogs in it. I thought that if there were a few big dogs, then maybe they would attack each other as well as the cage and maybe that would make more ruckus, and I thought the more ruckus the better, right?”
“Get to the point, pup,” growled Dover.
Oscar glanced nervously at Dover. “Well, so I was sniffing, and then this dog — it was Zeus! — barked my name, and I was all, ‘Hey, I’m mad at you!’ and he was all, ‘I’m mad at myself, is Shep around, I want to ask him to forgive me,’ and so I was all, ‘Well, he’s not here, but he’s around,’ and so Zeus promised to help me make a ruckus if I led him back here so that he could ask you for forgiveness.”
“Some dog — snort — better get this mutt out of my sight before I start to get nasty,” Daisy snarled.
“Wait!” howled Oscar. “Zeus just wants to ask you all to forgive him. Give him a chance to explain himself!”
“Nothing he barks is going to make any difference,” woofed Shep.
Zeus grimaced at Shep’s woofs. “I just came here to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
Fuzz sprang onto Dover’s back, hackles shivering along his arched spine. “Zeus-dog never forgiven!” he shrieked. “Zeus-dog kill Honey-friend!”
Shep nodded to Fuzz. “Don’t worry, Fuzz,” Shep woofed. “He’s not staying.”
The cat lowered his spine but kept his tail up and twitching.
Shep turned back to Zeus. “I don’t want your sorry,” he snapped. “I want Higgins and Virgil and Honey back.” Shep stood tall, rising out of his defensive pose. “What you did can never be forgiven.”
In his gut, Shep sensed that Zeus didn’t mean what he’d woofed about being sorry. Something about the glint of light in his eye and the tone of his bark told Shep that his former friend was here for something, and it wasn’t an apology. Shep’s gut said that Zeus was here to finish what he’d started. Shep couldn’t take the chance of trusting Zeus’s woofs, not after everything he had done. Zeus wasn’t worth the trouble.
The boxer sank back into a sit. He licked his jowls, as if considering Shep’s barks. “Well,” he woofed, “then I’m sorry I upset you by coming here.” He turned away and stepped back into the tunnel.
“No,” barked Oscar. “Don’t go.” The pup looked at his packmates, still huddled behind Shep. “What more do you want Zeus to woof? He said he’s sorry, he said he wants to be good. Can’t a dog want to change?” He stood tall — as tall as he could — and barked in a firm voice, one much more adult than Shep expected from the pup. “If you can forgive me, you have to be able to forgive Zeus.”
No dog so much as snuffled.
Oscar gazed into each of their muzzles, ending on Shep’s snout. Oscar’s large eyes searched Shep’s. Shep tried to hide his feelings, but something must have slipped. Oscar looked away.
“So you haven’t forgiven me,” he grunted. “Not even you, Shep.”
“We’re all trying,” woofed Shep.
“Fuzz not trying,” hissed Fuzz, who still shivered with rage.
Shep shot the cat a that’s-not-helping look. “Most of us are trying,” he barked, turning back to Oscar and licking the pup on the head. “But Zeus is a different scent entirely. You may have done something completely fur-brained, but Zeus killed our friends.” Shep glared at the boxer.
“I don’t care what you do,” Shep barked to Zeus. “But you can’t stay in my pack. If you’re waiting for your human to return, do it somewhere else.”
Pumpkin’s little white head popped out again from behind Dover. “Return?” she yipped. “The humans aren’t going to return.”
“Hush up, dear,” yapped Ginny. “Shep’s in the middle of a speech.”
“But he’s wrong,” whined Pumpkin. “The humans can’t return because they never left!”
Suddenly, every muzzle was on the tiny fluff of fur.
“What-does-she-mean-Shep-we-all-saw-our-humans-leave-and-we-never-scented-them-when-we-werein-the-city —” Snoop cut his rambling bark off and stared wide-eyed at Pumpkin. “Do-you-know-where-my-master-is?” he asked, almost slowly enough to be intelligible.
Pumpkin popped up on her paws like a frog, frisking and flopping with excitement. “You didn’t know?” she yipped. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you didn’t know!”
Callie padded closer to Pumpkin, eyebrows raised and tail waving cautiously. “How do you know that the humans never left?” she woofed. “My girl and her family locked me in my den and I haven’t had a whiff of them since.”
Pumpkin sat, head tilted. “They left you behind?” she barked. Her snout dropped against her chest dramatically. “Shave my fur and call me a squeaky toy.” She shook herself and continued, “No, my mistress hid me in a bag and carried me with her to this building, far from our den. There were all these other people crowding to get into the building, and there were people in green body coverings standing at the door checking each person in. They kept saying ‘shelter,’ and so that’s what I call the place.
“Inside, there were rows and rows of narrow beds for the humans. My mistress hid the bag I was in under her bed. I wanted to get a look around, you know, to see what this shelter was, so I dug my way out. Just as I was about to scramble under the next bed over, one of those green people saw me and started yelling. I tried to run, but the green woman was too fast and she snagged me around my belly. My mistress screamed and cried and I wriggled, trying to get back to her to comfort her, but the green woman just took me and handed me off to some other green person, and I ended up at that kennel you rescued me from.”
“Why were you in the medical tent?” yipped Cal
lie.
Every dog was on the tips of his pads, leaning toward her with ears pricked and eyes open wide. Shep held his breath, not wanting to miss a woof.
“I kept breaking out of my cage,” said Pumpkin, sighing. “They moved me there so that they could keep an eye on me. And then I hurt my leg breaking out of yet another cage. They had to sew me up like a toy. Can you believe it? But I had to get free and get back to my poor mistress. She’s positively lost without me. And now that I’m out, I can take you all with me to the shelter. We can find our humans!”
The pack burst into a riot of happy howling. They jumped and barked and batted at each other’s muzzles. Shep remained frozen on his paws. His boy was in the city. His family had stayed. But if they stayed, why did they leave me alone to be eaten by the storm?
Zeus snuffled from behind him, “I can’t imagine going back to my collar.” His voice, dripping with disgust, echoed in the tunnel.
It struck Shep as the saddest of jokes that Zeus was the only dog whose thoughts matched his own. How could he go back to a family that abandoned him? Especially when he felt so alive living on the Outside. Yes, he missed his boy, but there was so much more of the world to explore!
Callie barked for every dog’s attention. “We’re not back with our humans yet,” she woofed. “Pumpkin, how far is it to the shelter? Can we be there by morning?” Her tail whipped behind her ecstatically.
Pumpkin stopped mid-bounce, flopping back to the ground. She looked around at the darkness of the scrubby woods, then back at Callie. “It’s not far from my den,” she yipped.
“Where’s your den?” woofed Boji, tail wagging. “Nearby?”
Pumpkin sank into a sit. “No,” she snuffled. “They put me in a Car to take me here, and we drove for many heartbeats.”
“Then why’d you get our tails up?” snapped Rufus. “What use is knowing our humans are somewhere in the city? We always knew they were somewhere.” The squaredog stomped into the shadows.
Ginny, who’d begun to whine pathetically, skittered after him into the dark.
“Keep within the scent perimeter!” barked Daisy, strutting after the others.
“I’m sorry!” whimpered Pumpkin. “Maybe if we all go back to my den, I can lead you there?”
She waved her tail, but no dog would return her wag. The rest of the pack returned to the nests they’d made in the dead leaves and bracken. Only Pumpkin, Shep, Oscar, and Zeus were left in the clearing.
“I only want to get home,” moaned Pumpkin. “Won’t any dog help me get home?”
“Let’s see how the fur falls in the morning,” Shep woofed. He didn’t mention how relieved he was that Pumpkin couldn’t just wave her tail and lead them all back to their masters. Now he didn’t have to convince every dog to stay with him in the wild. Didn’t have to convince every part of himself to stay.
Pumpkin slouched down where she sat, curling up like a tiny sad cloud in the dirt.
“What about Zeus?” Oscar barked.
Shep turned to the pup, who stood in front of the boxer. Zeus was nearly invisible beside the tunnel’s entrance.
“He can’t be a part of my pack,” Shep growled.
“What pack?” snarled Zeus. “These dogs all want to go home to their nice beds and dry kibble.”
“Whatever we are, I don’t want you to be a part of it,” Shep grumbled back.
Oscar hopped onto a large rock so that he was nearly snout-to-snout with Shep. “Pumpkin is Zeus’s and my best shot at getting home, too. You can’t drive us away when she could help us get back to our families.”
“I’m not driving you away, Oscar,” Shep said.
“I’m not going to leave Zeus,” the pup barked. “He’s only got three good legs. How will he get food? He’ll never survive without help. And if you and the others won’t help him, then I guess it’s left to me.”
Both Zeus and Shep had the same expression of disbelief on their muzzles.
“I don’t need help to survive,” growled Zeus.
“He’ll kill you for kibble, Oscar,” Shep snarled at the same time.
“Yes, you do need help,” barked Oscar, “and no, he won’t kill me. He could’ve killed me at any point tonight and he didn’t.” He looked at Zeus and grinned. “He’s changed. He did bad, but now he wants to do good.”
Zeus raised his jowl. Only for a heartbeat, but Shep saw it — that look of disgust. He’d seen it on his friend’s muzzle many times before. Zeus didn’t agree with a woof the pup barked. He hadn’t changed a hair in his coat.
“You can believe what you want,” Shep woofed. “But that dog there is a killer. You can follow his scent, but he’s only leading you to slaughter.”
Oscar’s tail sank and his ears flapped against his muzzle. “Well, then, I guess this is good-bye.” The pup hopped off the rock and loped to Zeus’s flank.
Shep couldn’t let the fur-brained pup just toss himself to the Black Dog like that. Not when Shep knew what Zeus would do to him.
“Oscar,” he barked. “Don’t go.” He forced the barks through his gritted teeth. “You’re right,” he continued. “Pumpkin could be a way for you both to get home.”
Zeus stood, his ears forward. An unsettling grin appeared on his jowls.
“But Zeus can’t sleep with us,” Shep snapped. “He has to keep at least fifteen stretches away, and I want him on the sunset side of the tunnel. You can stay here or with him, but those are my rules.”
Oscar leapt at Shep’s snout, tail in full swing. “Oh, Shep! You’re just the greatest! And you won’t regret this! Zeus will be a model dog, I promise.”
Shep licked the pup. “I’m not holding my breath,” he woofed.
“He’s changed,” yipped Oscar. “I can smell it.” He turned to Zeus. “Come on!” Then he raced into the dark, on the sunset side of the tunnel.
Zeus squinted at Shep like he was about to woof something. But the big dog just snorted and followed Oscar into the shadows.
Shep sniffed deeply, catching their scents and locating them in the palette of odors swirling through the swamp. He noted where each of the other dogs slept, and what their exact smells were so he could note any nuance of change in their scents — even when sleeping, a dog would have a heartbeat of reaction time before being killed, and that’s all Shep would need to know Zeus was on the prowl. If he had to keep the boxer nearby to keep him from killing Oscar, so be it, but he wouldn’t let Zeus catch him unawares ever again.
Shep curled himself in the middle of the clearing. He rested his long muzzle on his paws, pointed toward where Oscar and Zeus had disappeared, and closed his eyes. He did not sleep. His ears constantly twitched, marking every movement in the wood, and his nostrils fluttered, catching every scent that blew by.
Shep smelled Callie’s approach. The tails of dawn had just begun to wag in the sky behind Shep — their dim light outlined the rim of the tunnel. Before him, the sky was still deep blue and a few fires of the Great Wolf’s coat glittered along the tree line.
“You’re up early,” he woofed.
“I figured you hadn’t slept,” Callie replied. She sat beside Shep’s snout. “I remember what that was like — no rest for the alpha.”
“You’ve gotten more sleep while trapped in that cage?” Shep shifted his muzzle to the other side of his paws, away from Callie.
“What else could I do?” she woofed. She licked one front dewclaw and rubbed it over her short muzzle. “It was loud in that building and the lights were always on, but I was so tired I could have slept in the middle of the street with Cars whizzing over my back.”
Shep decided to dig straight into the idea he’d been chewing on all night. “I want to rebuild the pack,” he barked. “Now that you and I are back together, we have a real chance at surviving.”
Callie placed her paw on the ground and looked at Shep. She planted a light lick on his wet nose. “I can’t,” she woofed. “I’m sorry, Shep, but I want to go home. I want to be with my family.”
Shep pushed himself to sitting. “But why?” he yipped. “It was you who wanted to escape your den back on that grate, before the storm.”
Callie grinned. “A lot’s happened since we met on that grate. For starters, I nearly died.”
Shep panted lightly. “Nearly,” he snuffled. “But we’ve learned so much. I think we could really make it, especially with the humans coming back. There’ll be more food to scavenge —”
“Shep,” Callie yipped softly. “You’re not hearing me. I don’t want to rebuild the pack. I want to return to my girl.”
“I thought we were partners,” Shep grumbled. “I thought you wanted to lead the dogs.”
“I did,” she woofed. “But that was when we didn’t know where our humans were, when all we had were our fellow dogs to rely on. Now our humans are here — they never left! And we can find them. Don’t you smell how different the situation is?”
Shep licked his jowls and scanned the surrounding scents — Zeus was still in his pile of leaves with Oscar; every other dog snored on. “How is the situation different?” he barked. “Pumpkin doesn’t know where she is, let alone how to get to this ‘shelter.’ And what if the place was destroyed in the storm? What if our families are —” He stopped himself, knowing he’d gone too far.
Callie stared at him, frightened by what he’d almost said. “I won’t believe such a thing until I’ve smelled it myself.” She shivered. “I have to believe that, with or without Pumpkin, we will find our families. The humans are here. The city is no longer abandoned.” Callie sniffed the air. “I can smell them, all around. Even if we just go back to our dens, I’m sure our families will return for us.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Shep felt ashamed barking the woofs out loud. “I want to be free.”
Callie smiled a gentle smile and rubbed her muzzle against his shoulder. “Wearing a collar doesn’t mean you’re not free,” she said.