by Allen Zadoff
I avoid his mouth, jumping to my front paws, then kicking out with my rear, a move that’s worked for me before.
I connect with his side, but it’s like kicking a stone wall. His muscles are thick beneath his skin, and unlike previous times, my kick barely registers.
Flashlights snap on in the campsite behind us, and I hear Chance and Junebug’s shouts as they search for me. They’re too far away for me to warn them, and I don’t want to bark and risk bringing them closer.
“You must have expected we’d come for you,” he says.
“I knew the blue uniforms were after me. I didn’t know there were dogs, too.”
“I’ve been tracking you since before Dr. Pao’s.”
“How is that possible?”
“I’m thirty-seven percent bloodhound. A super sniffer, among other things.”
I hear the sound of Chance and Junebug’s footsteps moving through the forest.
“Then the soldiers will be here soon,” I say.
“I work independently,” he says. “They do it their way, I do it mine. You don’t remember how it works with us.”
I’m afraid of this dog, but hungry for the information he knows.
“Tell me how it works,” I ask him.
“Every dog has a specialty. Mine is tying up loose ends. That’s why they call me the Finisher.”
“The Finisher.”
“It’s why I’m here. Unfinished business.”
“What’s my specialty?”
He sneers, his breath forming a cloud in the frigid air. “You make people love you.”
“But why?”
“Because you have a job to do,” he says. “You’re one of us, a Maelstrom dog.”
I yelp in distress as my suspicion is confirmed.
“Big girls don’t cry,” he sneers.
I clamp the sound in my throat, ashamed to be caught in a vulnerable moment in front of this animal.
“You’re one of us. You must have figured that out by now.”
I back up, my body instinctively trying to get away from his words. I’m hyperaware of the cliff’s edge behind me, and I shuffle to the side, being careful to avoid it.
As I move, I feel the unevenness of the forest floor beneath me, and something clicks in my head.
Gain the advantage.
If I can get to higher ground, I’ll have a slight advantage in an attack.
“If I am a Maelstrom dog,” I say, “why are they after me?”
“You went rogue,” he says simply.
“What does that mean?”
I shift to my left, moving up a slight incline as I try to keep him talking.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says. “It’s what I would do in your situation.”
He attacks instantly, staying low and coming for my belly, trying to use my position against me. I sense his moves before he makes them, and I crouch, avoiding his teeth and delivering a fast, defensive nip to his hindquarters.
He yelps and jerks away, backing up a few steps to reorient himself.
“Just a scratch,” he says.
His blood-soaked fur tastes disgusting, and I feel my stomach churn. I remember the taste of Thunder in my mouth and the way it made me feel.
He walks into the moonlight, revealing himself for the first time. He’s an awkward mix of breeds, big and thick-haired like a Siberian husky, yet with the shortened snout of a bloodhound and big jowls.
He howls into the air, a high, warbling note like a demented laugh.
“You think you’re better than me,” he says.
“I don’t even remember you.”
“But I can feel your disdain. It was there before, and it’s still here now. You think you’re special, that you don’t have to follow orders, and that makes you better than me. But the truth is we’re the same.”
“We’re not the same. You’re a killer—all you know is fighting.”
“We’re both killers. You’re just sneaky about it.”
He leaps forward, snarling.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I say.
“You have no choice, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“You used to be.” He charges like a wild animal, teeth bared.
I do my best to avoid the attack. I slam at him with my paws, then I throw warning nips, then I pivot and try to get away. But nothing seems to put him off.
He connects with a bite to my midsection. I hear his teeth crunch down, and I howl and twist, forcing him to release me.
But the damage is done. I feel blood flowing freely from a wound underneath me.
He backs up, rage in his eyes.
“I can see why they wanted to keep you,” he says. “You’re talented. Even when you started to rebel, they tried to work with you, at least until you snapped and gave them no choice but to destroy you.”
Flashlight beams bounce off the trees nearby.
“Wild!” Chance shouts.
He’s found me, and he’s only a few feet away, unaware of the danger he’s in.
The dog turns to Chance, his eyes red, drool flowing. He charges without warning, aiming directly for the flashlight beam in Chance’s hand.
I howl and attack, my heart pumping, eyes blind with rage. I crash into him from the side, catching him off guard, and my jaws close around his neck.
Chance screams, surprised by the chaos in the dark in front of him.
“What’s happening?!” Junebug shouts.
The Maelstrom dog squirms, his throat vulnerable between my teeth. I hold him by the neck, not biting but not releasing, controlling him with the tension in my jaws.
He thrashes, and his sharp nails scratch my side. He whines and tries to turn his head to bite. I don’t know how long I can hold him like this.
Chance’s flashlight finds me in the forest, and he gasps as he sees me with this dog. I know I’m covered in blood and wounded, and I can only imagine what I look like with this dog in my mouth.
“What are you doing, Wild? Who is that dog?”
I can’t answer, can’t speak with my mouth full of this animal, the terrible smell of him in my nose.
“What’s going on?!”
It’s Junebug, racing out of the forest to find Chance staring at us. Her flashlight beam joins his, lighting me up as if I’m onstage.
The Maelstrom dog’s eyes are wide, and he thrashes again. At first I think he’s trying to get away, and then I realize what he really wants.
He’s trying to get to the children.
He jerks in their direction, jaws snapping, fighting to get away from me so he can get to them.
I don’t care about the foul taste of him in my mouth, or the flashlight beams dancing across us, or Chance shouting for Junebug to hurry. I can’t let the Finisher hurt the kids.
I crouch, muscles rippling in my legs, and I twist and throw him high into the air, as hard and as far as I can.
He lands at the cliff’s edge, scrambling to gain purchase on the loose gravel. His eyes go wide with fear.
I realize what’s happening, and I’m torn between saving him or letting him fall.
We are the same, I hear him say, but I don’t know if he’s said it again or I’m remembering it from earlier.
“We’re not the same,” I shout, rushing forward to help him.
But I’m too late. The Finisher loses his balance and goes over the cliff, howling as he falls.
I make it to the edge a second later and look down. I search the dark landscape for evidence of the Finisher. Did he land? Did he die? It’s impossible to tell.
“What did you do?” Chance asks.
The flashlights hit my eyes, causing me to blink.
“Did you hurt that dog?” Junebug asks.
“I didn’t—It was him or us.”
Chance and Junebug stare at me, confused by the fight they’ve seen. The look of horror on their faces is too much for me, and I turn away in shame.
I can still taste the Fini
sher’s blood on my muzzle. I take a step toward Chance, and he backs up.
“You killed him,” Chance says, horror on his face.
“I tried to save him. He attacked our camp, and I had to—”
I start to explain, but my words sound hollow, and Chance’s eyes are filled with fear.
“They’ll be coming for us soon,” I say. “Head back to camp and get ready to leave. I’ll be right behind you.”
The kids stumble away, flashlight beams swinging in front of them. When they’re out of earshot, I run to the cliff and take a final look into the inky blackness. I scan the ground below, but there’s nothing down there.
No body, no dog, no tracks of any kind.
THE SKY GLOWS OVER THE TREE LINE.
I clean myself in the river, washing out my wounds. The dog bite is bad, but not fatal, and the cold river water takes some of the pain away. What it can’t take away is the smell of the Finisher. When I step out of the water, his scent is still on me and the taste of his fur lingers in my mouth.
It was kill or be killed.
That’s what I tell myself, but it’s not the whole truth.
Something in me enjoyed hurting the Maelstrom dog. It felt like revenge, and it felt good.
Maybe he was right, and we’re both killers. I can’t be sure.
I smell Chance’s scent on the wind, and it pulls me back to the moment. I shiver in the cool dawn air, shaking off water from head to tail. Then I hurry back toward camp to check on the children.
Chance and Junebug have packed up in my absence, and they’re waiting with their backpacks by their sides.
Junebug is startled to see me, and she backs up a little when I come out of the woods.
Is she afraid of me?
I drop my head and whimper, reacting instinctively to the disapproval I feel.
Chance turns when he hears me, his face a mask of concern. “Are you hurt?”
I check the dog bite and realize it’s already stopped bleeding. My metabolism is revving high, speeding up the healing process.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “What about you two?”
“We’re okay,” Junebug says, but I can feel the tension in the air, and I notice she stays back, maintaining some distance from me.
“We should get out of here,” Junebug says. “The soldiers will be coming for us.”
“We have a little time,” I say. “That dog worked alone as a hunter.”
“He was hunting you?” Chance says anxiously.
I nod. “Turns out there are soldiers and dogs after me.”
“Then we need to go,” Chance says.
I lick my lips and the taste of the Finisher makes my stomach churn.
I hear Dr. Pao’s voice in my head:
You’re not a pet, Wild. You’re a weaponized animal, bred for intelligence, bred for strength and violence.
I turn away from the kids. “I have to leave for a while.”
Chance steps back as if hit by an invisible blow.
“What—Where will you go?”
“I need some time alone to think about our next move.”
“We know our next move. We’re going home,” Chance says.
It’s hard to hear him so upset, and I fight my desire to stay and soothe him. The truth is I don’t trust myself anymore, and I’m afraid of what might happen if I stay near him.
“The best strategy is to separate,” I say.
“Really?” Junebug stares at me, hands on her hips.
I look up to meet her eye. “If there are other Maelstrom dogs nearby, they’ll follow my trail and I’ll lead them away from you.”
“You mean there might be more of those things?” Chance asks, his arm shaking as he points back to the scene of the fight.
“It’s possible,” I say.
“And you want us to get home without you?” Junebug says. “How does that make sense?”
“You’ll follow the same path down the mountain, and I’ll catch up to you when I’m sure it’s safe.”
“When will that be?” Chance asks. He looks scared and small, standing there in the half-light.
I don’t have an answer for him, and it’s too painful to lie.
“The sun’s coming up. You’d better get going.”
Chance takes a step toward me, and Junebug puts an arm out to stop him. He pushes through her arm and rushes toward me, dropping to his knees, his face even with my own.
He leans in and looks me in the eye.
“Take care of yourself, Wild. When we get down, we’ll head for the group home. I’ll see you there, if not before.”
I turn away, unwilling to tell him the truth—that I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again.
I RUN.
Through the forest, up and down embankments, fighting my way through thick undergrowth only to run some more.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I know what my direction must be.
Away.
I want to get as far away from the children as I can. Or maybe it’s the truth I’m running from.
Dr. Pao warned me that I had the instincts of a killer built into my genetic code.
I didn’t want to believe her.
But I felt the instinct come alive during the fight with the Finisher, and now I know she was telling the truth. Maybe I’ve known it all along. The dreams were telling me what I’d done, but I didn’t want to listen.
Maybe you’d be better off not knowing what’s out there, Ruben said.
I wanted to know, and now I do.
I’m a violent dog, created by Maelstrom. They’ve made me what I am and taken away my chance of finding a home.
I don’t belong with dogs, but how can I live with humans? A feeling of despair and pain washes through me.
Now they’re after me, and they won’t stop. Dogs, soldiers, whatever else they might have at their disposal. I think about a future of running and fighting, and my body is overcome with exhaustion.
I slow to a trot, looking for someplace where I can lie down for a while. A hiding place that will give me time to rest and to heal.
I spot an outcropping nearby with a narrow cave opening beneath it. I crawl into the cave on failing legs, squeezing through the crack in the rocks and into the fetid black hole. My body is shutting down, forcing me to rest so it can heal.
I lie in the dark listening to the sound of my chest heaving. I feel the blood dripping from my wound and taste the dog’s stinking fur in my muzzle.
Occasionally I think of the kids, but I push the image from my mind. Instead I look into the darkness, choosing the dark and the cold as my companions.
I slip in and out of consciousness.
Maybe I sleep. I can’t be sure.
Gradually I become aware of a noise. A low hum, vibrating through the stones above me.
I can’t tell if I’m awake or dreaming. And then the hum gets louder, the pitch rising and fading as it moves away.
There’s something familiar about that sound.
A helicopter.
I crawl my way out of the cave, moving from pitch-black to inky night.
It’s dark now. Did I sleep through the day?
I hear the noise again, the unmistakable sound of helicopter blades chopping through the air. If one already went by, this must be a second one.
A minute later a helicopter skims the tree line above me, heading away at speed.
I catch a glimpse of it between the branches. It’s a twin-engine Black Hawk, a military helicopter, flying low and carrying a heavy load. I see blue uniforms through the windows on the cargo door.
Maelstrom soldiers. Where are they coming from?
I orient myself with the moon, quickly getting my bearings on the mountain range. The helicopters are heading north, and I look south, scanning for familiar features.
That’s when I see the double peak like a letter K on its side. I look across the canyon to where our campsite was located. It’s nearly ten miles away, but I can see that the top
s of the trees are disturbed near the area where we’d set up camp. The leaves have been blown right off by the blast of the rotors.
The helicopters were at the campsite.
I start to run.
THE SITE HAS BEEN DESTROYED.
Dozens of bootprints mark the area where the soldiers tracked through camp looking for us. I follow the prints down the mountain, my heart pounding as I trace the path that Chance and Junebug took as they fled from the soldiers. I race along for several miles before I see the broken branches and trampled foliage that are evidence of a fight. The kids’ backpacks are torn open and flung aside.
This is where the soldiers caught up to them. I can still smell the uniforms combined with the fuel of the Black Hawk helicopter that carried them here.
I call out to Chance and Junebug, howling into the forest, but nothing comes back except the echo of my own voice.
The scents on the forest floor tell the story. The children ran until the soldiers caught them. They struggled as best they could, but they were overpowered and carried away, at which point their scents disappear entirely.
I whine with frustration and rage that I wasn’t here to protect them when they needed me.
A flash of light catches my eye. I see a glint of metal on the ground behind a tree and run toward it.
It’s Junebug’s laptop. It’s tucked between the tree roots and half-covered with leaves. Junebug would never leave her laptop unless…
She hid it here on purpose, hoping I would come back and find it.
I scrape off the leaves and nudge it open with the tip of my nose.
Junebug has turned off her security, and the screen lights up as soon as I touch a key.
I’m looking at a Google map of the California coast. There’s a location pinned forty miles north of here, in the direction the helicopters were flying.
It’s a different mountain range than the one I’m standing on. I study the area around it, a deserted expanse far from cities and developments. I look for anything I might recognize, any clue at all.
That’s when I see it.
Point Mugu.
That’s where they’ve taken the kids, so that’s where I’ll go.
THE SMELL OF FUEL HANGS HEAVY IN THE AIR.
Without the smell, it would be all but impossible to find this base, buried as it is within a valley in Point Mugu State Park, completely hidden from view, with only a single road leading in and out.
