And then he saw her.
Kaz.
The black dog’s shoulders loomed above the pack around her. Her furry brown eyebrows were low over her eyes, which glittered with vicious joy. The chaos of the battle, the stench of dog, the howls and cries — all the fighting seemed to give her plea sure. She was like the Black Dog made flesh for all dogs to see and fear.
But Shep was not afraid. He glanced up at Callie and the others, his packmates, and felt as brave as the Great Wolf.
“I challenge Kaz to a fight!” Shep’s deep-throated bark echoed throughout the room. “One dog against one dog, for ownership of this den!”
The fighting was suddenly still. The wild pack looked toward their leader.
Shep glanced at Virgil and flicked his ears; Virgil and the other big dogs raced up the ramp-shelf and began hoisting the smaller dogs onto the second level of the den.
“It’s you,” Kaz growled. “I knew I’d see you again.”
Shep’s ears lay against his head and his hackles bristled along his spine. “If you lose, the wild dogs will leave this place and never return.”
“If I lose,” Kaz echoed. Her ears were up and tail flat. She didn’t seem at all threatened.
“The pets will be left alone, no matter what,” Shep barked. “If I die, you let them leave.”
“If you die.” Kaz’s eyes blazed in a flash of lightning. Her fangs dripped with slobber.
Shep placed his paws firmly on the stone floor of the den. “I’m ready.”
The main pack of dogs formed a ragged circle around Kaz and Shep. Some dogs remained at the kibble pile, but most were attracted to the scent of the battle. Fangs bared and hackles raised, the wild pack yipped and bayed with excitement.
Kaz panted, her jowls curled into a savage grin. “I don’t think you’re in much of a position to bargain,” she growled. “How about, no matter what, we wild dogs do as we please?”
“We’ll see about that,” Shep snarled.
Kaz circled Shep, jowls quivering over her jaws. She snapped at him, first at his tail, then at his flank. Shep dodged each attack, though he sensed that she was merely toying with him. Then she feinted high, but thrust her head low, catching Shep’s forepaw with her teeth. He shrieked and hopped back.
“Who’s the big protector now?” Kaz barked. Her mocking tone pricked Shep like a fang.
Shep glanced up at the shelf, but all the others were gone. He was alone.
“If you yield, I’ll let you go,” Kaz snarled. “No sense in dying for a scraggly pack of pets.”
Shep put weight on his injured paw, and pain shot through him like lightning. His life used to be filled with such pains, his body a tangle of injury. He felt the claws of fear scratch at his heart — he didn’t want to die.
The wild dogs pressed closer, as if sensing his imminent defeat. And then he saw it: a pair of eyes peeking out from behind the rodent-floor railing, a wet nose catching the wall-light. He was not alone. His packmates were watching. And he was their only hope. He decided he had one more fight left in him.
Kaz lunged at Shep. This time he reared, slamming down onto her neck with his claws and snagging her ear with his fangs. With a jerk of his head, he tore the flesh from her skull.
The black dog didn’t so much as squeal. She cocked her head to the side where her ear had once stood, then snorted. “I guess now we’re even?” She licked at a trickle of lifeblood that ran down her cheek.
Shep didn’t wait for her next attack. He saw her muscles tensing on the outside rear leg; she was going high. Shep ducked and rolled onto his back, snapping his jaws around the soft underskin of Kaz’s neck. He locked his jaws, and, catching his paw pads on the stone, pushed off the floor. Lifeblood gushed over his snout. He released his jaws and jumped away just as Kaz’s body slumped to the floor. She spat slobber, tried to rise to her paws, and slipped back to the stone.
“So this is what it’s like to lose?” she grunted. Her eyes rolled slightly as she spoke. Her legs twitched, then lay still.
Shep limped to the center of the circle of dogs. Those nearest Kaz’s body shuffled away from the widening pool of lifeblood; the others remained still, save for the flicking of their ears. They were nervous, Shep could scent. They were waiting to hear what he, this dog who’d been a mere pet just heartbeats before, would howl. It was the window he needed to turn the pack in his favor.
“I’m the alpha,” Shep snarled, waving his muzzle at the fallen form of Kaz. “And I say the wild dogs leave this den.” He bared his fangs as he barked. “Unless any of you have the fur to challenge me?” He glared into the eyes of each of the nearest dogs, and they lowered their mangy heads.
“I challenge you.” The bark rang out like thunder.
A dog padded out of the crowd.
It was Zeus.
The howls of the storm through the window hole were the only sounds in the den as Zeus padded to the center of the circle. Some wild dogs licked their jowls and panted. The few who had cowered under Shep’s gaze now looked up at him, their eyes black slits, their tails flicking.
Zeus’s head hung low and there was no wag in his tail. There was a gash in the fur on his shoulder.
“Please, no,” Shep whimpered, the noise escaping his muzzle before he could think better of it.
Zeus’s ears pricked up immediately. Every hair on his body trembled at this expression of weakness. “What?” he growled. “Do you yield?” He stepped one paw closer to Shep, his jowls trembling.
Shep regained his stance — chest out, ears alert, tail up. “I do not yield,” he spat.
Shep’s heart pounded inside his chest. He could not abandon the other dogs to these mongrels. But to have to fight Zeus to protect them? Kill his best friend?
Not wanting the wild pack to see his teeth chatter, Shep locked his jaws. He had to stay strong. Everything could change in a heartbeat and the entire pack would be on him.
Zeus moved a stretch closer to Shep. The whole world was reduced to that space of stone: two dogs, best friends. And only one could step out of that circle.
Shep sniffed his friend. “They attacked you?”
Zeus licked his nose. “It’s their way,” he growled. He began to circle Shep.
Shep shuffled on his paws, following Zeus’s movements, always maintaining his stance. “You could have just walked away,” Shep woofed. “Why challenge me?”
“How better to prove to the wild dogs I’m as good as they are?” Zeus spat a hard pant. “And why should you get to lead?”
“This can’t be the life you want.” Shep could still see a glimmer of the old Zeus in his friend’s eyes. “Join me. We might have a chance,” he snuffled quietly. “Together, we could get out of this.”
It seemed that, for a heartbeat, Zeus considered Shep’s offer. He looked around at the snarling crowd of dogs, his ears up, his tail lifted. Then he snorted loudly and bared his fangs. “I don’t want to get out of this,” he growled. “I want to be wild.” Zeus crouched, hackles raised. “Good-bye, friend.”
Shep braced his paws. “Good-bye,” he woofed.
They met in midair, claws raking fur, fangs scraping jowls. Shep and Zeus had played together for long enough that they knew each other’s moves before they thought them. Their claws reacted almost instinctively, meeting a flank as it whirled through the air, catching a jowl as it flapped over an open jaw. Shep would snap not at where Zeus’s neck was, but where he knew it would be in two heartbeats.
The wild dogs bayed with excitement. They leapt on one another’s backs and panted with anticipation as they watched the two masterful fighters.
Shep and Zeus separated after each entanglement of claws, pausing for mere heartbeats to catch their breath or to spit slobber. Then they sprang off trembling hind legs, claws extended and fangs bared. First Zeus had the upper hold and flung Shep to the floor. Then Shep attacked from below and dragged Zeus over, throwing him onto the stone.
Once again, Shep felt the sickening excitement
of the fight cage. Once again, he tasted lifeblood, and it tasted good. He felt the darkness taking over. And this time, he knew it was the Black Dog. It was like the tails of dawn wagging in his mind. The Black Dog was not outside of him; it was inside, like a sickness. Winning this fight would not make him the Great Wolf; winning here would make him the Black Dog. Shep realized that that had always been his fear — all those nightmares, they all came down to this: That it was not the Great Wolf, but rather the Black Dog who ruled him.
Shep pulled away from Zeus and slid across the floor, nearly careening into the circle of wild dogs.
“We don’t have to do this!” Shep bellowed. “There’s another way!” Perhaps some of the dogs would listen to his bark.
Zeus’s eyes were wild — the whites exposed and riddled with red lines. His hackles bristled along his spine. “I’ve never seen you give up,” he spat.
“Why are we fighting?” Shep cried, turning to the nearest dogs. “There’s enough in this den for us all!” He smelled their confusion — they looked at one another, and some whimpered. There was hope yet!
Zeus turned to the largest group of dogs. “The pet forfeits!” he howled, fangs bared. “The den is ours!”
“We’re all dogs!” Shep screamed. “We’re one pack!”
The wild dogs were too far gone; the Black Dog had their pack by the scruff. They began to close in. Shep felt a claw rake his chest, a fang clip his tail. He hoped Callie had found an escape, another secret back door.
A strange roar crackled Outside. All the dogs pricked their ears at the noise. Shep realized that he wasn’t the only dog who’d never heard such a sound before. It was like the rush of water from the paw in the Bath, only bigger, louder. The air suddenly smelled of the beach — salt and wet and endless blue.
And then Shep saw it.
A wall of water. In it floated whole trees, Cars, bits and pieces of the entire world.
It was coming straight for them.
Shep had only a heartbeat to react. He leapt for the nearest shelf. Just as his paws hit the metal, the water burst through the window hole. It smashed the wall open and rushed in, snatching up the wild dogs as if they weighed nothing. Shep saw even the great bulk of Kaz carried away in the water’s froth.
Zeus’s head bobbed out from beneath a splintered board.
“Zeus!” Shep howled. He was a mere stretch away.
Shep jammed his hindquarters between the shelf and a pole and lashed out with his fangs. They snapped down on Zeus’s paw.
“What are you doing?” howled Zeus.
Shep couldn’t believe his ears. “Saving you!” Shep barked from between clenched teeth.
“I don’t need to be saved,” Zeus growled, and tugged back on his paw. “I can swim on my own.”
“Don’t be a fuzz head,” Shep grunted, feeling his teeth slipping on Zeus’s smooth fur. “This isn’t some paddle pool in the Park!”
Zeus panted, a nasty grin on his jowls. “Always the hero,” he woofed. “Some dogs just can’t smell the scat until their nose is in it.” He jerked on his paw again, and Shep’s hold slipped even more.
“Help!” yapped Higgins.
Shep glanced at the shelf across from him. Higgins dangled from the edge of the rodent floor by a claw, then tumbled into the water.
Zeus stopped thrashing. Higgins struggled to get on top of a branch as he floated toward them in the roaring current.
“Who’s it going to be, friend?” Zeus growled. “You can’t save us both.”
Maybe I can save them both? Shep reached out with a paw, but felt his hold on the shelf slipping.
“Can’t make a decision?” Zeus barked. “Even when every heartbeat sends the yapper closer to his death?”
Higgins slipped off the branch and sputtered in the froth.
Zeus is a big dog, Shep reasoned. And Higgins has no chance. Zeus would make it, he could swim.
“Not much of a leader,” Zeus spat. “Why did I bother challenging you?”
“I’m sorry.” Shep closed his eyes and opened his jaws. Great Wolf, protect him.
“I knew it!” Zeus shrieked. “Some hero, King of the Yappers!” The water sucked him into the dark.
Shep closed his ears to every thing except the whimper of Higgins. As the water rushed the little dog toward him, Shep sprang off the shelf and grabbed the brown yapper by the scruff.
The water dragged them both down for a heartbeat. Shep flailed with his paws, hoping to dig into something. His claws caught hold of a shelf, and Shep pulled himself up. He got his head above the raging tide and placed Higgins’s bedraggled body on top of the shelf. Then, with what remained of his strength, he dragged his own body out of the salty froth.
Higgins and Shep sat together in silence. The storm’s winds whipped up waves on the floodwater’s surface. They lapped at the dogs’ paws.
“Thank you,” Higgins snuffled softly.
Shep did not answer.
“When the water struck, I was too close to the edge, watching you. I lost my grip.” Higgins hung his head and lay down, muzzle between his paws. “I should have been more careful.”
Shep growled quietly. It wasn’t Higgins’s fault he fell. And it had been Shep’s choice to save him. Shep had no dog to blame for his decision but himself.
“You’re welcome,” Shep woofed.
As the heartbeats passed, the winds ceased to howl. The water became a calm pool, then began to sink. By nightfall, all that remained of the flood were large, brackish puddles on the floor.
The wave had torn open the clear wall of the den, and also a chunk of the rear wall where there had once stood tall doors. Now the entire space was exposed to the Outside. The rain that drizzled on the street spattered onto the den’s stone floor whenever the wind gusted. It was a quiet rain, nothing like the earlier downpour — no lightning, no thunder. The storm had blown itself out.
In the dying light, Shep saw that the den was wholly changed. The wave had knocked over some of the shelves, and those that remained stood bare like white teeth. The bags of kibble were gone, as were the tanks of water, the brushes, beds, and toys. In their place, the wave had left pieces of the Outside. Strewn against the shelves were dead iguanas, palm fronds, shards of plastic, and stone. Drifts of mud and sand were piled against every obstacle that had been in the wave’s path. A Car lay on its back halfway through the den’s wall. A door lay on the floor beneath Shep, its golden knob intact. Scattered amidst the debris lay the broken bodies of dead dogs.
Shep could not get Zeus’s muzzle out of his head: his eyes wide as he screamed, claws scratching at the water’s surface, then black. Shep told himself that he’d made the right choice. Zeus was a big dog; he could have swum against the tide, while Higgins would surely have been sucked under. Shep didn’t see Zeus’s body on the floor. Perhaps Zeus had survived, made it to safety Outside. Perhaps, any heartbeat now, he would lope back into the den.
“Shep!”
The shrill bark echoed throughout the darkness. It was Callie. Thank the Great Wolf, she survived.
“I’m here!” Shep howled. “And I have Higgins!”
“Double brilliant and a pile of treats!” she yipped from somewhere above. Several other barks joined Callie’s in celebration.
Higgins pawed gingerly at the shelf’s edge. “How can we get down from here?” he whimpered.
Shep sniffed along the shelf. The darkness was complete inside the den — the wall-lights were gone and Outside only the moon shone, and dimly at that. Shep’s nose was overwhelmed by the stench of death and salt water, and every few heartbeats the walls of the den gave off a deafening scream.
Shep stopped at the edge of the shelf nearest the stairs. “There’s a palm trunk here,” he woofed. He pushed on it with his paw. “It feels sturdy enough for us to walk down.”
Higgins approached, reeking of fear.
“Don’t worry, old timer,” Shep yipped. “We’re safe.”
“Old timer,” Higgins grumbled,
sounding more like his usual cranky self. “I’m barely ten cycles old.” He placed one paw on the trunk, then another, and began, belly to bark, to make his way to the floor.
Shep gave Higgins a generous lead, not wanting to trip over him halfway down. The clouds must have cleared, because the moonlight Outside was brighter. It glowed in every puddle, which lit the drowned city like lamps. When Shep finally climbed down the trunk, he could make out the silhouettes of the other dogs.
“You all made it?” Shep woofed.
He smelled Callie’s approach. “Only a paw or so of water reached us on the rodent floor,” she said. She nuzzled her head into his chest. “That was a brave thing you did.”
“I couldn’t let Higgins drown,” Shep snuffled, sitting. Zeus flashed into his mind and he winced. “I wish I could have saved them both.”
Callie panted, then nipped Shep’s neck. “Not just Higgins, silly fur,” she barked, “but standing up to the whole pack of wild dogs, defending us with your very lifeblood.”
“What she means — snort — is we owe you the fur on our backs,” Daisy yapped.
Shep panted, a smile on his jowls, and the small pack pressed closer to him.
Ginny shoved the others out of the way. “Not even Lassie could have done better,” she squealed, coating Shep’s whiskers in slobber.
Boji mumbled “Oh, dear” over and over as she scented out and licked clean each of Shep’s wounds. Cheese stood beside her, head cocked and tail waving, muttering about how he’d never seen the likes of that fight.
Virgil approached, tail low and ears up, then lay down at Shep’s paws. “You’re the bravest dog I’ve ever met,” he woofed.
Snoop leapt over Virgil’s back, his tail whipping in circles behind him. “Yeah-Shep-you’re-the-most-amazingdog-ever-I-mean-I’ve-seen-some-dogs-tussle-in-the-Parkbut-holy-treats-you-were-just-flying-and —”
Dover nipped Snoop on the flank.
Snoop panted, grinning sheepishly, then licked his jowls. “I-just-mean-thanks-for-saving-us,” he yipped.
Dover lowered his head and waved his tail as he pawed closer to Shep. “You done good,” Dover woofed. “Course, we’re all lucky that wave came when it did.” He sat and scratched his ear.