by David Bruns
“Maybe I don’t need to understand what’s out there.” She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Maybe I only need to understand what’s in here.”
Knife sighed and lay on her chest. It was okay to cry for a moment. But only a moment. There were ten dogs and they needed her.
* * *
As soon as she’d taken care of the dogs the next morning, she went back to the Target to pick up more kibbles. Two men and a woman were inside the store piling carts with diapers and soap. Before they could see her, Raina slunk back to the hospital to wait. The daytime was too dangerous. That was when the big creatures came out. The night was the time for the possums, the raccoons, and the skunks.
From then on, she only left the hospital after dark. Tough, the mutt with the brindle legs and white feet, was good at watching and staying close, so Raina took her along to the Target, too. While Knife sat up front guarding the doors, Tough watched Raina’s back as she loaded the wagon with dog food. Soon, she’d moved all of it home except for three bags, in case someone else needed them more.
Two weeks went by. The days got longer and warmer. Raina and the dogs slept through the afternoons, curled in their beds. Mean made peeping noises in his sleep. At night, Raina took them to the parking lot. She tried to take the others out by themselves, but Dragon and Cloud barked too much, and Smiles would wander away and refuse to return unless she dragged him by the collar. He was so heavy that she had to lean with all her strength to pull him away from what he was sniffing.
“You guys have to learn better,” she told them when she had them back inside. “Or else you’ll have to stay inside. Be like Knife and Tough. Be quiet and watch.”
Smiles was sniffing the corner. Mouse and Brick were asleep. Some of the others were watching her, but the rest were busy licking their paws.
“If you’re going to learn better, then I’m going to have to teach better. But you’ll have to listen. There’s only one of me and ten of you.”
She started with Smiles, trying over and over to get him to stay. Time after time, he went straight for the treat. Blinking back tears of frustration, Raina shut off the light and went to bed. Knife licked her face, but licking couldn’t solve everything. After a while, he gave up and lay down close beside her.
Day after day, she worked with each of them. Bit by bit, they got a little better. But Smiles still liked to wander off when she tried to take him down back streets, and Dragon bolted after every bird and squirrel that caught his eye. What if they never listened to her? What if one of them ran off at the wrong time and got hurt?
But there was nothing to do but keep trying.
* * *
Raina was bringing in a bag of oranges from the tree down the street when the hospital lights flickered and blinked off. She gazed up into the darkness. After ten seconds, the lights snapped back on, blinding her. But in that moment of darkness, she’d seen something vital. The machines that ran the lights and water were still out there, but the people who ran the machines were dead.
She spent the next days gathering jugs. Filling them with water. Climbing to the flat roof and placing buckets for rain. Every morning, dew glinted on the cars. Raina knew that came from the air, too—was it mist from the sea? There had to be a way to catch it, but she couldn’t think how.
The water wasn’t the only thing. Earlier, their rooms of food had looked like enough to last forever. But now that she knew the water could stop, the supplies no longer looked so large. They were going to need more.
That was the one lesson of the new world: you would always need more. If you weren’t busy getting it, you were busy losing it.
She’d visited enough of the nearby shops to know they’d already been looted. But there were hundreds of houses right behind the hospital. She’d been avoiding them. She knew what lay in the beds. What she’d found when the angry man on the street chased her. But she couldn’t be afraid anymore. The bodies couldn’t kill her. But fear could.
That night, Raina got her pack and her kitchen knife and walked outside. She meant to go alone, but Knife snuck out the door after her.
“Fine,” she muttered. Then her face softened to a smile. “Come on.”
Early on, she’d used snips from Target to cut a hole through the fence between the hospital and the home on the other side. She ducked through it and walked through the shaggy yard to the house’s back door. It was unlocked. She stepped into the entrance and was stopped by a wave of rotten stench. She took a step back, ready to turn and run. Knife trotted past her into the darkness. He sniffed at the kitchen table, then turned to stare at her.
“You’re much smaller than me.” Raina put her hands on her hips. “You should be afraid of everything. But that’s why you’re afraid of nothing, isn’t it? Or else you’d never stop running.”
She walked through the door. Inside, cans of food filled the cabinets. Human food: beef stew and chicken soup and cream of potato. She ate a can of stew on the spot. After weeks of dog food, the beef tasted like pure strength. She gave a bite to Knife, followed by a second. He ate in fast little jerks.
There were many houses, but less food than she thought. Much had been taken. Much had gone rotten. It would let them last longer, but not that much longer. They ate most of what they found each night, saving the dog food, which seemed made to last a long time.
She’d need more food, but what else could she do to find it? Could she teach the dogs to hunt? Some were too slow and loud, but Knife and Tough might be able to snatch crows or the rats that ran along the fence out back. It would be better than nothing.
The only other choice was to move somewhere she could grow corn they could all eat, but it would take weeks to haul the bags and cans of food anywhere. She could take one of the cars, but she didn’t like them. They made too much noise. Noise was how others found you.
So every night, she went out to scavenge. The first few nights, she only took Knife, but it was a good chance to take the others farther than they were used to. One at a time, of course—she wasn’t sure every house was unoccupied. Sometimes she heard a car engine or a gunshot, but these were always distant. She avoided any house with buckets on the roof for collecting water or gardens in back. There weren’t many of those.
One day, she turned on the hospital sink and nothing came out but a sputter of air. On her nightly runs, she started looking for water, too, and cans of soda for herself.
She was out with Knife and Smiles that night. Outside a Spanish house with broken windows, she turned to Smiles.
“Sit,” she said. Smiles sat. “Stay.”
She went inside with Knife, moving quickly through the cabinets. When she came back outside, Smiles was nowhere to be seen.
She moved to the corner, straining her ears for the click of claws. Noise could get you killed, but she had no other choice. Not if she wanted to see Smiles again. She whistled. Knife peered into the night, nose twitching. Raina whistled again, then jogged back past the house to the next block. She whistled a third time. Down the street, Smiles lifted his head from the bush he was snuffling.
Raina ran to grab him. “Come on, stupid. Time to go home.”
She went back to the house for her wagon and headed for the hospital. After a few blocks, something scraped behind her. Raina whirled into a crouch. Knife growled, but the street was empty.
At the hospital, she unloaded the night’s catch and dumped beef stew over kibbles. She thought about punishing Smiles by withholding the stew, but he wouldn’t understand. After dinner, she bagged up the trash, which was full, and took it to the underground parking next door. She went to bed.
* * *
Hours later, Raina snapped awake. She’d heard an engine outside. There was no sound now. She got up and went to the door to the front office, standing on her tiptoes to peer through its small window.
A flashlight beamed through the front windows into the hospital’s reception area. Raina held perfectly still as the light swept through the front room, passing from
the reception desk to the empty shelves that had once held bags of food. The woman outside wore a dark uniform and had a silver badge on her chest.
The officer tried the door. Finding it locked, she flipped her flashlight around, and cocked her arm to smash it into the door.
Raina flung open the door to the back room. “Stop! We’re in here!”
The woman drew a pistol, shining the flashlight in Raina’s eyes. “Show me your hands!”
Raina lifted them. The officer flicked the beam of the flashlight across the room, then back to Raina.
She lowered the gun, voice muffled by the glass. “Can you open the door?”
Raina hesitated. “How’d you know I was here?”
“Someone said a little girl was here. All alone except for a few dogs. Is that true?”
Was she there to help? Like Raina’s dad had said someone would be? Raina nodded to the officer and unlocked the door. “Who saw me?”
The woman walked inside, casting her light past the front counter. “Another survivor. He thought it would be better if I came by. What’s your name?”
“Raina.”
“Hi, Raina. I’m Officer Morgan. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“My friend said you had dogs here. Are they okay?”
“Some of them bark too much. And one likes to sniff too far.”
The officer smiled. “Can I see them?”
Raina brought her to the back room. The dogs swarmed around Officer Morgan’s legs. Smiles and Eggplant jumped up on her. Tough and Tooth barked. The Chihuahuas backed away, hackles standing straight up. The officer bent to scratch their ears and thump their backs.
After they calmed down, Officer Morgan straightened, rubbing her hand over her mouth. “You can’t care for all these animals.”
“Yeah I can. I have food for them.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Kibbles,” she said. “And the meat they like.”
“Dog food. Right.” Officer Morgan folded her arms, looking down at Raina just like her teachers used to do. “What about water?”
“I filled lots of jugs,” Raina replied proudly. “And I have more on the roof for the rain.”
“It’s almost summer. You’ll be lucky if it rains an inch between now and November.”
Raina frowned. She tried to think of a place nearby where water flowed, but the only place she could remember was the ocean. “Then we’ll have to find more.”
Officer Morgan turned toward the front of the building. After a long moment, she smiled at Raina. “Tell you what. I have a place in the hills. It’s near a reservoir. I’ve got food. Water. And all kinds of room for dogs. If you’ll help me farm it, you can come stay there.”
“But this is my home.”
“It isn’t safe here. There are bad men out in the streets. This place is away from that.”
Raina thought for a moment. “Is it just you at the farm?”
“Sure.” Officer Morgan smiled deeper, eyes crinkling. “And a whole bunch of dogs.”
Raina lowered her eyes to the animals. She’d worked so hard to build their home here. They had food and medicine; she didn’t know which pills did what, but there were books that would tell her so. They knew the streets and homes around them.
But the animal hospital was on the main road. There was nowhere to grow food. There was no lake or stream. Sooner or later, they’d have to move—if the other survivors didn’t come for them first.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Officer Morgan placed her hand on Raina’s shoulder, then walked around the hospital, assessing the animals. “Let’s take the big ones first. Then we’ll come back for the little guys and anything else you want to bring.”
She had a K-9 van parked on a side street down the block. Raina led Brick, Smiles, Tough, Teeth, and Eggplant to it. Officer Morgan helped them into the back. They returned to the hospital to load bags of food on the wagon and lock up. As they closed the door, Knife darted out to stand beside Raina.
“Can he come?” Raina said. “He goes everywhere with me.”
“Why not?”
They got in the van, Knife riding on Raina’s lap. Officer Morgan checked to make sure Raina was buckled in before driving away. As they headed north through the night, fear fluttered in Raina’s heart. She’d done fine on her own, hadn’t she? Why leave with the officer? But she thought of what was best for the dogs, and she calmed down.
Officer Morgan stayed off the highways, traveling down side streets and avoiding the bigger roads, many of which were clogged with cars. The towers were black bricks against the sky. The officer asked her lots of things about how she’d survived the last few months. What she’d seen. Whether anyone had tried to hurt her—and whether she’d had to hurt anyone back.
“I had to run and hide sometimes,” Raina said. “But that’s it.”
“You’re lucky.” Officer Morgan slowed to ease the van through a tangle of cars. “It’s bad out there.”
They drove for miles. Raina thought they were headed north, but she didn’t know the parts of the city they were traveling through. Bodies lay on sidewalks, bones beginning to show through what was left of their skin. Knife climbed behind her seat and curled up on a towel there.
In time, hills loomed before them. The van slowed. Ahead, another intersection was blocked with wrecked cars. Officer Morgan swore, glanced at Raina, and turned the van around, coming to a stop.
“Raina, there’s a map under your seat. Can you dig it out for me?”
Raina slipped her head under her shoulder strap and leaned forward. There were several maps under the seat. She got them out and turned to Officer Morgan.
The barrel of a gun stared back.
Officer Morgan’s jaw tightened. “Don’t look at me.”
“What are you doing?”
“I said, don’t look at me!”
“I don’t understand.” Raina angled her head to the side, trying to obey, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the gun. “What are you doing?”
“There’s nothing left out there. If you knew any better, you’d thank me.”
“Don’t hurt my dogs!”
The officer’s finger twitched on the trigger of the revolver. She bared her teeth and cursed. “Get out of the van.”
Officer Morgan lowered the gun. Raina stared, then scrabbled for the door handle. She tumbled into the street. Officer Morgan slammed the door shut behind her. As she drove off, Knife popped his head up in the passenger window and howled, black eyes gleaming.
The van rumbled away, tires screeching as it turned. Raina stood in the middle of the road, her head spinning. She was miles from home. Officer Morgan had her dogs. The woman knew where Raina lived, but Raina had no idea how to find her.
A cold voice spoke from the back of her head. She only had one choice that made sense. Find a car. Drive back to the hospital. And get the other dogs somewhere safe before Officer Morgan came for them, too.
But there was also a hot voice. And it told her to do something else. She ran down to the corner where the van had turned, then headed north, following its sound. She sprinted as hard as she could, but the engine’s hum diminished with each passing second. She gasped for breath. Her legs burned. When she couldn’t run any further, she coasted to a stop at the bottom of a long hill, gazing up the empty street. Palm fronds fluttered above the sidewalks.
Tears streamed down her face. She sank to her knees. Ahead, a small shadow trotted toward her from the darkness.
“Knife!” She leaped to her feet and ran to meet him. “How’d you get here? Did she throw you out?”
He jumped up, pawing her, then spun in a circle. Raina gestured north over and over. “We have to find them, Knife. Do you know where they went? Do you know where she took them?”
Knife stared up at her, his black eyes just like the button eyes of a stuffed bear she’d had as a little kid. He turned around and walked swiftly up the hill, nose sweeping si
de to side. She followed him through winding roads of grand houses nestled in the trees. After another two or three miles, the houses stopped altogether and there was nothing but forest. On top of a rise, Knife came to a stop, his wet, black nose twitching.
Raina gazed into the darkness. “What’s wrong? Where’d they go?”
Knife glanced up at her. He took one step forward, then stopped again, paw lifted hesitantly.
Raina balled her hands into fists. “Just tell me where to go.”
Uphill and to her left, far away but clearly her, Tough barked three times.
* * *
The house lay in the darkness like a spider’s hole.
The smell of rotting bodies wafted on the wind. Eggplant whined from around the back of the house, her smush-nosed voice like a raspy baby. A candle flickered behind the windows. Raina waited for it to go out, then waited longer still. Knife sat beside her. Silent. Watchful.
The wait gave her a long time to think. At first, she thought to go around back, get the dogs, and run away. But Officer Morgan knew where she lived. She was a bad person. The same as the man who’d called and the one who’d chased her in the street. The type to come back for her. Even if Raina could find a car, get back to the hospital, and move the dogs somewhere new, it wouldn’t be right. She would still be out there. Preying on the city. On the dogs.
The front door was locked, but the garage door was propped up by two-by-fours, with a couple of hoses running out into the drive. Raina used one board to lever the door up another few inches, slipping a second board beneath it and wriggling through the gap. The door to the house was unlocked.
Raina stood in the darkness. Someone was snoring from a back room. She took off her shoes and snuck forward. Officer Morgan lay in bed beneath her sheets. The revolver rested on the dresser beside her. Raina moved silently forward and picked up the gun. It felt too heavy, like something from another world.
Knife growled. Morgan blinked, inhaling with a stutter and grabbing at the empty space on the dresser.
