Good Dog

by Dan Gemeinhart

  Darkly surged forward with all his ferocity and thunder but the cat was too quick, too ready, and Darkly’s teeth snapped only at empty air and snowflakes while feline claws raked his snout and his eyes. Then a mouth, small but full of sharpness, found his shoulder and stayed long enough to pull one more light away.

  The hellhounds pulled back, leaving Brodie with his back against the concrete once more.

  But this time? This time, he wasn’t alone.

  “Change your mind, Patsy?” Darkly growled.

  “Yeah,” she replied, head low and ear back. She stood beside Brodie, her eyes on the hellhounds, and her tail swishing and whipping behind her.

  “You came back for yours, huh? You want your piece? I get the last sparkle, but you have first dibs on what’s left before I get mine.” Darkly’s words were friendly, but his voice was not. His eyes were unblinking. The ghosts of his muscles were taut and ready. He knew better.

  “Nah, mutt. I mean I really changed my mind. You ain’t getting any more of this dog’s shine … not firsts or lasts. Not as long as I’m around.”

  “Huh. Guess we’ll just have to make you not around anymore, then.”

  Patsy just hissed and spat in reply.

  Brodie looked down at her. Her spotted coat, even in death, was thin and patchy. Her missing ear was a gnarled scar. Her ribs showed through her fur. She’d had a tough life, he was sure. And an even tougher death.

  He wanted to be mad at her. Furious, even. She’d betrayed him. She’d put him on this bridge, surrounded by these hellhounds, far from his boy.

  But Brodie’s heart? It knew a hero when it saw one. And Patsy was a hero there on that bridge, even if she’d never ever been one before. You don’t have to have been a hero before to be one when you really need to. We can all be a hero anytime we decide to be. Believe me.

  Because a hero? A hero isn’t a person. A hero is a choice. And Patsy made one.

  “I don’t think we can win this one, Patsy,” Brodie murmured down to his fierce companion.

  “You think I don’t know that?” she muttered back. She risked a quick glance at him, then shot her eyes back to their tormentors. “You know, you could just howl, you idiot.”

  “No,” Brodie said, thinking of Aiden. “Never.”

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  Smoker and Thump spread out to either side, closing the circle around them and pulling it tighter. The hellhounds crouched low, ready to spring. The time was at hand.

  “The snow’s nice,” Brodie whispered to Patsy, who’d stepped in closer so they were shoulder to shoulder. The flakes were huge now, giant heavy fluffs that fell so thick they almost blocked out the darkness. Almost. “Aiden and me always loved the snow. If this has to happen, I’m glad it’s in the snow.”

  “I hate the snow,” Patsy said. And then she yowled and jumped with claws slashing right at Darkly’s snarling face.

  Patsy was smaller than a dog. Weaker. Her teeth weren’t as big, or her jaws as strong.

  But Patsy? Patsy was worth three dogs in a fight.

  Brodie didn’t watch. He was busy with his own battles. But he heard it. He heard her rabid fighting. And he heard the hellhounds, too; he heard their whimpers and their howls and their frantic scrambling to shake loose of her.

  She kept at least two dogs busy. She took some shine, she lost some shine. That cat fought like a lion; she fought like a demon. But what she really fought like? She fought like a lost soul, cast into darkness, trying to claw its way back to the light. She did.

  And Brodie? He fought, too. Even harder than he had before, now that he had a friend to fight with. To fight for. They fought. They fought fierce. They fought ferocious. They fought together.

  And they lost.

  Bit by bit and bite by bite, being outnumbered took its toll. They began to lose more shine than they took back. They landed fewer bites themselves, but felt more and more teeth digging at their own souls, and holding on for longer.

  The swarm moved as the battle raged, tumbling and stumbling its way down the bridge, closer to the end of it. But not close enough.

  There was a pause. A break in the battle.

  Brodie and Patsy stood tail to tail, facing the doom that surrounded them. The hellhounds paced, circling them, licking at their teeth and wagging their tails. Each demon sparkled with stolen shine now. Brodie’s soul was spread between them.

  A train whistle bellowed somewhere nearby, its call muffled by the snow.

  The bridge quivered. The train was passing beneath them, under the bridge.

  Brodie could feel what was left of his soul. He had four lights left. Four.

  He glanced at Patsy. She only had one.

  “Howl,” she said.

  “No,” he answered.

  “It’s bad, idiot. It’s the worst. There’s no coming back from it. You’ll be lost forever. Like me. Just howl.”

  “Not while there’s hope, Patsy.”

  “There isn’t any, idiot.”

  He knew she was right, of course. But knowing and believing are two very different things.

  The train whistle blew again, right under them. The rattle and clatter of it rumbling down the tracks echoed in the night air.

  Brodie’s head, which had sunk low at the truth of Patsy’s words, swung back up.

  “Patsy,” he said, his voice as low as he could make it.

  “Yeah,” she said, flexing her claws and lifting her lip at Darkly.

  “Remember Tuck on the truck, when we first met?”

  “It ain’t the time to get sentimental, dog.”

  “No,” Brodie said, more insistently. “Do you remember? Tuck, on the truck? Do you remember how you warned him?”

  “Sure. So?”

  “Think, Patsy.”

  The train howled once more. Like it was calling an angel. The whistle was more distant now, but the bridge still shook under their paws.

  At the edge of his vision, Brodie saw Patsy’s head snap toward him. She’d gotten it.

  “I think our ride’s here,” he whispered.

  Patsy pulled in against him. The hellhounds drew in closer.

  “On the count of three,” Brodie said.

  “No time,” Patsy hissed. “Go!”

  The hellhounds surged in, teeth first.

  Brodie and Patsy didn’t run. They didn’t fight. They didn’t jump up into the falling snow.

  Brodie and Patsy disappeared. Down.

  As the hellhounds rushed in, Brodie and Patsy dropped down out of sight, through the bridge.

  All that the hellhounds’ snapping jaws and biting teeth found was each other.

  If they’d been alive, it would have hurt.

  There was a strange moment of humming quiet as they passed through the concrete of the bridge, then a roaring when they dropped into the night beneath it, right above the thundering train. They landed together in a rattling train car. It was a roofless car, open to the night air and full to the top with a shuddering pile of dusty black coal. Brodie jumped to his feet the moment that he came to rest, his eyes on the bridge they’d just escaped from.

  They were in the very last car. They’d barely made it.

  The tracks behind them were empty. But as Brodie watched, a shadow plummeted from the bottom of the bridge. It was a dog-shaped shadow, lit dimly by a few circling soul lights. It landed roughly on the dark and trainless tracks, then jumped up and began running after them. Thump. He was certainly determined, that one. But after a few stubborn steps, as the train pulled farther and farther away through the snow, he stopped and just stared after them.

  Up above, at the railing of the bridge, three dark heads appeared. Brodie recognized Darkly’s shape, even at a distance, looking after them. He could feel the beast’s anger, through all that distance and darkness and snow.

  Brodie had escaped again. But this time, not before paying a steep price.

  He looked at the lights swirling around him.

  One. Two. Three. Four.
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  That was it. All that he had left of his soul.

  He felt it. He felt their loss. He felt cold. Lonely. Numb, almost. More like a shadow and less like a dog. Less like a hero.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?” He asked the question quietly. Softly.

  But Patsy heard it.

  “What do you mean, over?” She was lying near him, in the pile of coal. Her eyes blinked up at the snow falling around them as they rolled down the track. Her one remaining bit of sparkle glimmered feebly around her.

  “I mean, all of it. Me and my boy. Trying to find him. Trying to save him. It’s over.”

  “Why would it be over, mutt?” Her voice was flat, fightless. Its edge, its growling life, was gone.

  He turned toward her.

  “Look at me, Patsy. I’m almost all out of shine. I don’t know where he is. Darkly’s got my soul and can follow me again. And I’m heading in the wrong direction. It’s over.”

  And, just like that, Patsy’s anger was back. She rose up, her fur standing with her and her eyes flashing.

  “No. You don’t get to just give up, idiot. Not after all this. Not after making me think that—after making me believe that—” She snarled, trading teeth for the words she couldn’t find. “It ain’t over. See all those houses there, up this hill?” she asked, jerking her head toward the forested slope that rose from the railway embankment. “That’s Hilldale Heights. These tracks curve right around it. You hop out, you climb up the hill, you start looking for the cop car or that beat-up wreck the jerk was in. It ain’t that big a neighborhood.”

  “What about Darkly?”

  “What about him? He’s been after you since you came back and that ain’t stopped you yet. And it’s all a mess now, anyway. Yeah, he got some of your shine … but some of what he took from you, you just took from the others, and some of what he got is mine … your precious shine is spread thin and all mixed up. He might be able to feel you out eventually, but you got time. Especially when we split up. He might feel us out here, barely, but if we separate he’ll have to pick one trail to try and follow. You got some time, dog. And you got shine, too. Enough to get to your boy, I bet.”

  Brodie’s tail almost started to wag.

  “Really? You think I can make it?”

  “Yeah. But you better go. Time ain’t on your side.”

  “But … what about you, Patsy?”

  “What about me? I’ll be fine. I always am, mutt.”

  Brodie looked at the cat. That hard-talking, tough-boned, nasty-souled, chewed-up feline with the growling heart and her one little soul light circling around her. The cat who had betrayed him and handed him to his enemies, then came back to save him. The cat who walked alone, always snarling at the dark world around her.

  “Why did you help us, Patsy? Why did you help me and Tuck the whole time?”

  Patsy’s eyes were on the darkness rolling by. She couldn’t look at Brodie’s eyes, at his dwindling soul, when she gave him the truth.

  “I wasn’t helping you, idiot. I was helping me. I saw all your shine and I just had to have it. You don’t know what it’s like, that hunger. I knew if they tore into you, there’d be none left for me. I figured if I could play you along for a while, maybe split you up, I’d get a chance to rip some off ya. Then Darkly cornered me in that car, and I had to make a deal. So I did. We’d worked together before, Darkly and me. We both knew how it worked. I deliver the goods. I get my cut.”

  “So … all along, it was just about the shine?”

  “It was always about the shine,” Patsy answered. “Until it wasn’t.”

  They rode in silence for a moment, the train shuddering and creaking beneath them.

  Then Patsy spoke again, her voice so quiet, Brodie could barely hear it.

  “I shoulda used my shine on that kid,” she said.

  “What kid?”

  “The jerk in the cafeteria. The jerk who threw garbage at my girl. I shoulda used my shine to sink my claws into his leg. Make him bleed. What’s a soul for if you don’t use it?”

  “I thought we couldn’t touch the living.”

  “We can’t. But still.”

  “Yeah,” Brodie said. “You should’ve used your shine. But not for that kid. You should’ve used it for your girl. You should’ve used your shine to rub against her leg, one last time. You should’ve used your shine to let her know she wasn’t alone. That’s what a soul’s for.”

  Patsy blinked at him, then looked away.

  “What do you know?”

  But Brodie? He knew a lot. He did. Believe me. He knew all the most important stuff.

  “Why don’t you call them, Patsy?”

  “Call who?”

  “You know. The angels.”

  “Angels? What, like that guy that took Tuck away? Nah, he ain’t no angel. There ain’t no such thing as angels, mutt. He’s just a person. A human. Dead. Stuck, just like us. They help us—or think they do, anyway—and they hope that’ll help them move on. But they’re just lost souls, too.”

  Patsy? Well, in a lot of ways she was a dark and twisted soul, wandering and angry and senseless. But sometimes, she knew exactly what she was talking about. Believe me.

  Brodie, though? Brodie, with his true soul, was a true friend. And he wasn’t giving up.

  “Well, whatever they are, then. You can call them, too, right? Like we can? Why don’t you? Because, Patsy … what you’re doing down here, stealing shine and running from Darkly … that isn’t a life, Patsy. I don’t know who you’re here for. But you should move on.”

  Patsy stepped toward him, her teeth showing and her tail whipping angry.

  “A life? A life? What do you know about a life, Brodie? You had your boy and your warm house and probably a bowl full of food put out for you every day. I didn’t have none of that. I didn’t have nobody looking out for me. I ran and I hid and starved and shivered and I did it all alone. I didn’t come back for nobody, idiot. I came back for me.

  “You know what humans say? They say that cats get nine lives. Idiots. Nine lives? I didn’t even get one, Brodie. I didn’t even get one. I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t gonna agree to being dead when I never even really got to be alive. I didn’t belong here. And I don’t belong there. I had nothing, I got nothing, I ain’t nothing. And that’s what I’m gonna keep on being. On my terms.”

  Brodie looked at her. He looked at the fire in her eyes. And he saw something there he hadn’t seen in her before. A heart. A broken one, maybe, but a heart nonetheless. A heart with life in it, even. And where there’s a living heart, there’s always hope. Believe me.

  When he answered her, it wasn’t with fire or teeth or growls. It was with a step forward and wide-open eyes looking right into hers.

  “I don’t know about your life, Patsy. All I know is what you’ve been to me. It wasn’t nothing. You were something with me and Tuck. All three of us, we were something. Car-hopping, outrunning the hellhounds, finding my boy. You have friends, Patsy. And you are a friend, too. Not a perfect one. But you’re a friend. And that ain’t nothing. You can do what you want. But I’ll tell you this: Wherever I end up, wherever that place is, I hope you’re there. ’Cause if I belong there, you belong there.” He looked into her green eyes that he could see now held plenty of anger, yeah, but not just anger. There was more there. There was. He lowered his head so they were eye to eye, heart to heart. “You’re not nothing, Patsy. Not to me.”

  Patsy looked away, out at the trees blurring by. Out at the shadows and the snowfall.

  “You’re an idiot,” she said.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “Get going,” she said, tilting her chin up at the houses glowing through the trees. “Get to your boy while you still can.”

  “Yeah. It’s time. One last thing, though, Patsy. You’re not moving on just yet, are you?”

  She didn’t look at him.

  “I figured,” he went on. “I hope you do, but if you’re gonna stick around … I want you to
take some of my shine.”

  Her eyes snapped to his.

  “What do you mean? You ain’t got any to give, fleabag.”

  “I do. I got four left. Take one, Patsy. Please.” She looked away again, but Brodie persisted. “Come on. You’re enough of a pain in the neck as just a ghost cat; I don’t think the world could deal with you as a hellcat. Go on.” Her ear was back. Her tail slashed through the air. She looked at the lights glowing around his body, then looked away. “Patsy. You’re down to nothing. You’ll probably lose what you got just jumping down off this train. Take it. I’m not leaving till you do.”

  She blinked. Her tail swirled.

  “I’m not,” he repeated. “Take it. So I can go. Hurry. Please.”

  Patsy growled. She started to turn away, then stopped. She eyed his shine, then stepped toward him. She leaned in and pressed her muzzle to his neck. He felt her mouth open, felt her teeth press sharp against his throat.

  “You sure about this, mutt?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Patsy. Do it.”

  The train rumbled beneath them. The snow, white and perfect, fluttered down around them.

  And then Patsy? She did it.

  Brodie felt her teeth sink into him, felt the stinging agony of the bite, and he fought every instinct he had to twist away, to flinch, to snarl and fling her off. He stood there as her fangs dug deeper and deeper, as her head twisted in a chewing tear … and then he felt it. Felt the shine break free, felt the painful loss of light, felt it rip away from him, felt Patsy tear off a bite of his soul and add it to her own.

  Brodie whimpered. He couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes and whined as his soul got smaller and darker.

  Patsy let go. She stepped back. She sat looking away from him.

  “Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

  Brodie shook himself, trying to throw off the pain of the soul loss and the emptied feeling it left behind. He stepped to the edge of the train car, put his front paws on the frosted metal rim, and looked down at the ground passing beneath him.

  “Patsy?” he asked over his shoulder. “Why didn’t you betray us earlier? Like at the dumpster? You know you could have just let me jump down to help Tuck.”