by Mark Tufo
“You shut up now, dog, you hear?” the male said to Ben-Ben. “Come on.”
The man and Ben-Ben left the viewer.
“What’d he say? Is he going to come out?” Patches asked, getting up from her hiding spot.
“Says he already relieved himself.”
“Inside?” she asked. I nodded. “What is wrong with that dog? He’s dumb even for a canine.”
“Watch it,” I told her.
She knew I was playing. “We can’t wait forever. Once it’s light out, we need to be out of this place. We may have to leave him.”
I nodded in agreement, even though now I had decided I wanted the dumb dog with me. Our pack was already too small; we couldn’t afford another loss. Although that wasn’t all of it, I cared for the mangy little guy. Too many feelings, I didn’t have the time to sort them out now; sometimes it was still difficult to realize I wasn’t trying to eat the cat.
“Riley?” Patches asked as I was trying to figure things out.
“I know. Let’s go get Jess and Zach.”
“Again, I’m sorry for your loss,” Patches said as we began to move away from the house.
“I noticed you said ‘your’ loss,” I said, looking for Patches to elaborate.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked back. “Jess had a hamster once that I was closer to, and I had wanted to eat that rodent.”
I snorted again. “Goodbye, Ben-Ben,” I said. I would mourn his loss later.
We were four or five of the human dwellings away from Ben-Ben’s new home when I heard his yipping.
Patches stopped and put her paw to her face; it was a very human like gesture.
“He’s like sticky kitty litter you can’t get off the bottom of your paws,” Patches said sadly.
“The dummy is going to give us away.” I was torn between running to get him and shut him up, or run and get away from him. But the dog would probably get lucky and follow us, yipping the whole way.
Patches must have been thinking the same thing when she asked her question. “Can he follow our scent?”
“Only if we were covered in bacon, and maybe not even then.”
This time the cat snorted. “Go hide, Riley. I’ll go get the pain in the behind.”
And there it was, I still didn’t completely trust the cat to do what she said even though she’d already saved my life a couple of times over. Old habits die hard. “Bite him once for me,” I told her as I got underneath a large wheeler.
Some time passed before Ben-Ben’s yipping finally ceased, and to Patches’ credit I actually did hear him yelp. I could see pictures in my mind of Patches sneaking up behind the small dog and biting his tail, probably sent him running! The funny thought was a happy reprieve from the stress I was feeling. My legs were starting to cramp as I waited for the two to come back. It was taking so long that I was getting certain something had happened. It was possible that the male two-legger had taken Ben-Ben out with a tether, and if that was the case, there would be nothing Patches could do.
I could, though. The thought scared me, but there it was. I had killed a two-legger, and I would do it again for my pack. I started to ease out from under the truck. I banged my head on the bottom of the wheeler when the cat spoke.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Riley - Riley - Riley!” Ben-Ben yipped.
“Dog!” Cat hissed loudly.
“Riley - Riley – Riley,” Ben-Ben whispered.
I was mad at the dog, but it was impossible to stay that way, his enthusiasm was infectious.
“You alright?” I asked as I got out and stretched my legs.
“I only got twenty-seven cookies twelve bowls of food and no bacon,” he said as he licked my muzzle.
“Does he really know numbers?” I asked Patches.
She shook her head from side to side.
“How are you?” Ben-Ben asked me when he realized that’s something he should have asked earlier.
“I’m fine, Ben-Ben, it’s good to see you, too.”
“So no bacon for you either then?” he asked sadly, his head dropping a little.
“How did you get out of the two-legger dwelling?” I asked him, trying to steer him away from talking about food. My stomach hurt from the pain of it, and I’m sure the large amount of blood I had swishing around down there wasn’t all that good for me either.
“I went to the door and kept telling them that you and Patches were out there and that I needed to go outside so I could be with you guys. And that then we needed to go find Jess and Zach so that we could leave and go find Justin who was at the other side of the Great Move,” he said excitedly.
Patches just kept shaking her head. “He’s hopeless.”
“Well it’s the truth right?” Ben-Ben asked, his tongue lolling out.
“Did they have any other animals?” Patches asked.
“A bird, green and blue. It kept saying two-legger words.”
“A parrot,” Patches said, looking off into the distance, back the way she had come.
“You know about parrots?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure what it was. I knew about birds, but for the most part they stayed out of my world and I out of theirs. I snorted again thinking about me up in the air.
“I ate one once.” Patches answered my question. “It was mostly feathers, tasted bad, but it was going to tell the two-leggers I ate Jess’ hamster.
“You ate Jess’ hamster?” Ben-Ben asked. “I thought I killed it when I knocked its cage over and the water bottle cracked it on the head.”
“You did. Jess’ sires kept getting her new hamsters so she wouldn’t know,” Patches said. “Now that fat little hamster, that was a delicious morsel.”
“Gross,” I said. “Can we get out of here?”
“We’d better get going. Parrots are one of the few animals that can communicate with the two-leggers,” Patches said.
“So the bird heard everything Ben-Ben was saying?” I asked.
Patches nodded.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said as I started to move.
“I only told the truth,” Ben-Ben said, not understanding what he had done wrong.
Pretty much the way the dog always operated. With Ben-Ben it was a constant case of having to take the good with the bad. Sometimes the good far outweighed the bad, other times it got REALLY close. This might be one of those times where it got REALLY close. As if the two-leggers knew my thoughts, we could hear noise and a lot of it coming from where Ben-Ben had been enjoying his twenty-seven cookies.
“You heard that, too?” I asked Patches as she picked up the pace.
Ben-Ben turned to the sound. “Do you think they’re going to the store to get some bacon?”
“Not likely. Move!” I told him as I nipped at his hind-quarters.
“Where is that fucking dog?” a two-legger shouted.
“Creighton, come on, man, don’t tell me you really believe what the parrot had to say?” another male human spoke.
“I don’t know. That was some weird shit. The bird said something about a great move. He’s never said anything like that before,” Creighton replied.
“It’s a crazy bird—brain is the size of a peanut probably. Remember, man, the thing kept squawking that I was doing your old lady. And she hates me, who knows what’s going through that pea brain.”
“Yeah, my old lady really does hate you. I wonder why?”
Probably because I gave her a bad case of crabs, Lenny thought and then smacked his friend on the shoulder. “Come on, man, I’m down forty-two bucks. I want to see if I can get some of it back.” And then when you fall asleep I’m gonna kill that bird and then probably do your old lady again. It’s the least I can do considering I’ve already lost enough money to you for future services. He smiled the whole way back into the house. Sometimes you win even when you lose.
“They’re not following,” I told the group. I was hoping it would slow Patches up; she had a pretty good pace going. My fights had taken
a lot out of me, I was sore and tired and hungry and Ben-Ben would not stop talking about bacon.
“Sunrise is in a few more hours. We need to get Jess and Zach before then,” Patches said, not easing up on her loping run.
“Wheeler,” I said, getting behind some garbage. Patches was a few feet ahead. She had gotten behind a big blue box that the two-leggers put pieces of folded paper into. I never knew why they spent so much time writing things on the paper only to throw them away. Just one of the many strange things the two-leggers did.
“What’s Ben-Ben doing?” Patches asked.
I stuck my head up. He was just standing there, tongue hanging out, tail wagging expectantly as he waited for the wheeler to come into view.
“Get over here, dog!” I shouted over the approach of the big wheeler.
“Why?” Ben-Ben asked just as the truck came into view.
A large explosion issued from the fire stick one of the two-leggers had that was riding in the back; the metal bee sparked off the ground next to Ben-Ben’s paw. Urine pooled around Ben-Ben’s feet. He was frozen and couldn’t move. The truck stopped right in front of him.
“You think that’s the man-killer?” one of the humans asked.
“Yeah it rips out your ankle, dropping you to the ground, and then it eats each of your eyeballs, while you scream in agony for your momma,” the man driving said.
“Really?” came the first man’s voice.
“No, you stupid shit. That dog couldn’t take a squirrel. And look, it pissed itself just looking at us.”
“Should I kill it?” the first man asked.
“Icely’s orders,” the driver said.
“I wish it’d stop looking at me,” the first said.
“Are you going to kill it or not? I’m getting sick of looking for a dog. You could kill this one and we could be done, tell everyone we thought this was it.”
“Okay,” the man in the back of the truck said.
“Biscuits,” I growled.
“What are you doing?” Patches whispered to me. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” she said as she watched me getting into a lunging position. “Oh no way are you going to leave me with him,” Patches said as she stepped out from behind the box. She meowed loudly.
“Hey, Hank, it’s a cat,” The man in the back of the truck said. “Should I kill it?”
“If you’re going to do it, now’s the time,” Patches said as she brushed up against the leg of the box purring contentedly.
“It’s just a fucking cat, kill the damn dog,” Hank said.
I sprang up over the garbage and past Ben-Ben.
“What the fuck?” the driver said. The man in the back of the truck still had his attention on Patches.
“What?” the man in the back asked the driver just as I sprang, my front paws catching the lip of the truck bed, my back paws gripping on to the wheel of the wheeler.
“Holy shit!” the man screamed as I dove into his body.
“Andy, you alright?” the driver asked through the viewer behind him. I was thankful he did not come out to help.
I had bit down savagely on Andy’s arm and felt the bones shatter as I shook my head back and forth. He was begging for help. He had dropped his fire-stick and, with his good arm, he was trying to push me away. I let go of his arm and bit the hand that he had in my muzzle. I ripped three of his fingers off at the knuckle. His shrieks quickly became sobs.
“It’s killing me!” he hitched. “Help me, Hank!”
“The driver has a gun, Riley! Get out of there!” Patches warned.
I had bit down on the side of the man’s face when I turned to see the driver pointing a small fire-stick at me through the viewer, his hand was shaking. I let go of Andy and hopped down just as I heard the viewer shatter under the explosion from the metal bee. There were two more shots, but I was already running. Patches stuck a very large claw into Ben-Ben’s behind to get him moving also.
“Oh fuck! I shot Andy,” Hank said. “Andy, you alright?” Hank asked as I heard the door to the wheeler open up.
We were traveling fast. I did not hear Hank getting back into the truck, but it would have been impossible to not hear the fire alarm begin anew.
“Think that’s for us?” Patches asked as we all were catching our breath behind a small human dwelling.
I had to look at her long and hard. “You’re kidding, right?” She had asked it so seriously I wasn’t sure.
“You’ll catch on eventually.” She smiled at me.
Ben-Ben kept stealing glances at me when he didn’t think I could see him.
“What, Ben-Ben?” I asked when I caught him for maybe the seventh time, or it could have been the twelfth, but I didn’t really know that number.
“Riley, you attacked a two-legger. You told me to NEVER bite a two-legger,” Ben-Ben said.
“She saved your life, Ben-Ben,” Patches said, interceding on my behalf.
“Saved my life from a two-legger? Why would they want to hurt me?” Ben-Ben asked, clearly confused.
“This is a bad place, Ben-Ben. They make dogs fight to the death here,” I told him.
“You lie!” he shouted, standing up. “All two-leggers are like Santa and they give us food and sometimes bacon!”
“Ben-Ben, they took Jess and Zach, and we don’t know if they’re alright. I just fought another dog. I had to kill him because the humans wanted him to kill me. Not all humans are like our Alphas…or Santa for that matter.”
Ben-Ben was still shaking his head. “I...I don’t believe you, Riley.”
“Stupid dog, what do you think that man in the back of that truck was doing?” Patches said angrily.
Ben-Ben was clearly confused. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.
“Well maybe if you weren’t standing in your own urine you would have heard them talking about killing you,” Patches shouted.
“I...I thought they were talking about something else,” Ben-Ben said.
“They weren’t, you dumb dog. We should have left you at that house,” Patches said in huff, walking away.
I followed after Patches. I couldn’t stand to be under the gaze of guilt from Ben-Ben any longer. I didn’t hear him following for a few moments; I think he was considering going back to the house he was at.
“Do you think Jess and Zach are alright?” he asked, panting a little as he caught up.
“I hope so,” I said tersely.
“This is it,” Patches said as we stood on the outside of a fenced yard. The two-legger dwelling was the largest of any we had seen so far. “This is the home of the person that runs the town.”
“Icely,” I said off-handedly.
Patches looked at me, wondering I guess about how I knew. Patches fit easily through the fence. Ben-Ben would fit barely if he decided to go in at all. I’d be lucky if I could fit my head, and right now I really wasn’t in the mood to try. The Alphas weren’t there to laugh good-naturedly about it as they tenderly got me un-stuck.
“Patches,” I said louder than I meant to. She was walking across the yard, and I guess just figured we were all behind her.
She stopped and turned, looking at me quizzically. “You’re not going to fit,” she said as if she had known all along. “We’ll get her, you just be ready. Ben-Ben, you coming?”
“I won’t bite a two-legger,” he said—mostly to me.
“Fine, but I’m still going to need your help,” Patches told him.
It was a little tighter for Ben-Ben to fit through than I thought, probably from all the bacon he’d been eating at Winke’s and Fay’s. I nudged him through harder than I probably had to. Patches outright laughed as Ben-Ben rolled backside over head. I turned so he couldn’t see my expression.
CHAPTER SIX - The Previous Day
“What do you want?” the guard at the gate asked.
“Just tell Icely that Creighton has something for him,” Creighton said as he looked out the window of his SUV.
The guard looked thr
ough the windshield and saw the wide eyes of the girl in the passenger seat. The guard waved them in as he opened the gate. “You wait in your car until I let him know. You got it?” he asked as he shut the gate behind them.
“It’s me, Creighton, we’re like best friends,” Creighton replied to the man.
“Listen, I have my orders, you get out of that car, best friend or not and you’re gonna get shot.”
“Fine, fine, tell him I’m here,” Creighton said in exasperation. “I’ll wait like a good little boy in here.”
The guard pointed to the man on the porch. “Hey, keep an eye on the smart ass here will you.”
The man on the porch holding an assault rifle nodded.
“Why couldn’t you just let us go?” Jess asked.
“First off, why would I? And secondly even if I had a conscience, which I don’t, if I had let you go and Icely had found out, he would have hung me in the center of town by my neck,” Creighton said as he wrapped his hands around his throat and stuck his tongue out, making strangled noises as he did so. He laughed at Jess’ reaction. “Relax, I’m safe.”
But I’m not, Jess thought.
“Icely says send her and the baby in,” the original gate guard yelled from the porch.
Creighton began to get out.
“He said send them two, he didn’t say anything about you joining,” the guard clarified.
“But I found her, I should be the one to present her,” Creighton protested.
“Yeah, yeah, he thanks you for your gift. Now drop the girl off and screw!” the guard shouted.
Creighton hesitated for a moment, looking at the revolver on his hip.
“Don’t do nothing stupid, man,” the guard said. “Curly over there will cut your car in half before you can get that pea shooter out of its holster.” As if to reiterate the point ‘Curly’ hefted his MP-4.
“Shit, this ain’t right, man,” Creighton said to the guard who merely shrugged. “Get out!” Creighton said to Jess, brimming with hostility. She started to cry. “I said get the fuck out!” he yelled as he leaned across her and opened the door. “Listen, you get out on your own, or I’m going to push your ass out and toss your brother after you.”
“Why are you doing this?” she cried as she hefted a wide-eyed Zach onto her hip.
