by Young, D. L.
Then last week’s conversation with my producer popped into my head.
“Are you firing me?” I’d asked Gonzalez.
My producer fidgeted in his chair. Ever the passive-aggressive weasel, direct questions always made him uncomfortable.
“No, Katie, I’m not firing you.” He cleared his throat and spoke with as much gravitas as a weasel could muster. “But this is a young person’s game, we both know that, and you’ve had a longer run than most. You need to start thinking about the next chapter in your life.”
The next chapter in my life. Over the past few weeks Gonzalez and the execs had changed tactics from not-so-subtle hints to outright suggestions. That morning someone had left a hard copy of the latest viewer feedback survey on my desk (my lowest rating ever circled in red, thank you very much).
Christ, didn’t experience count for anything anymore? And no matter what those damned numbers said, I still looked good on camera. Maybe not as good as those wannabes with the flirty eyes who couldn’t write decent copy if their lives depended on it, but I could still hold my own. Hell, if I’d been born with a dick they’d have let me go gray and said my potbelly made me looked distinguished. But Gonzalez didn’t want to hear any of that, of course.
Fuck ‘em.
I clenched my teeth, strode past the broken shell of a store, and entered Dogville.
The last rays of a blood-orange sun peeked over the treetops. I checked the distance to the convention center in the overlay. A bit over ten kilometers. I sighed. If the terrain had been anything close to drivable, I could have been there in ten minutes. On foot, the overlay estimated a two-hour hike.
As I walked on, outlines of empty buildings and forgotten strip malls began to appear in the overlay. Ghosts from another time. A tangle of undergrowth covered everything, growing to the second and third floors of the taller buildings. All the low-lying structures had been completely consumed, and had the overlay not displayed it for me, I would’ve never guessed the rugged ground beneath my feet had once been a four-lane avenue.
It took less than five minutes for a pack of wild dogs to find me.
They came out of nowhere. One moment I was alone, and then suddenly I was surrounded. I froze and my heart began to thump wildly. There were maybe twenty of them, heads down and growling. Drooling beasts from a nightmare with bared teeth and matted fur.
Years ago I interviewed a soldier in a Venezuelan field hospital, who told me how time slowed down, almost coming to a stop, during his gunfights in the jungle. Everything went into movie slow motion, he said, and random memories flashed across his mind: a soccer match in his boyhood village, the death of his uncle, the green-eyed girl who took his virginity.
It was a similar kind of thing, I supposed, my sudden flashback to Angela’s warning back at the Vivid Life studios in Austin. “I hear they don’t use any tech in Dogville,” she’d said, teasing her hair in the makeup room’s mirror. She looked at my chest and said, “They say the dogs there can smell cosmetic mods a mile away.” She smirked. “Better watch your step.”
Angela had no mods, of course. At twenty-four nothing’s started to drop yet, and at twenty-four you’re still enough of a brat kid to be smug about it.
The dogs crept forward, tightening the circle around me. My legs shook uncontrollably, my throat too constricted to scream. They closed in further, then the largest dog tensed up, ready to spring forward. I shut my eyes.
I stood there, blood thrumming in my ears. Moments passed and nothing happened. Then I realized the dogs had gone quiet.
“What are you doing in my turf, lady?”
I opened my eyes. The dogs were lying on their bellies. No growls, no snarling teeth, no aggression.
A girl stepped out from behind a thicket. She looked about fifteen, wearing ragged clothes, hiking boots, and a shotgun strapped to her shoulder. The dogs moved out of her way as she approached, her filthy face beaming with anger.
She ripped the specs from my face and examined them. “You been transmitting?”
“No,” I said, exhaling forcefully, suddenly aware I’d been holding my breath.
She put the specs into her pants pocket, then she began to pat me down. I was too stunned to put up any resistance. She finished and looked at me warily. “Got any more tech on you?”
“No,” I lied. I gave a silent thanks to the manufacturer of my hiking boots, where my backup specs were folded up in a hidden pocket.
The girl’s eyes were harsh and suspicious. “What’re you doing this far from home, mod-mama?”
“I’m a television journalist,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “Have you ever seen the program Vivid Life?"
The girl looked at me like I’d just asked her directions to the nearest luxury spa. “There ain’t too much TV here, lady. We don’t do tech in Dogville.”
The dogs whimpered and whined around us. The girl whistled and they jumped to their feet.
I instinctively stepped backward, away from the dogs. The girl laughed. “Don’t worry, mod-mama. It ain’t me you oughta be afraid of.” She motioned around. “This ain’t no place for a city lady like you. We ain’t got no shops, no cars.” She spit on the ground. “You better leave while you’re still in one piece.”
She then turned and disappeared into the brush at a run, her pack trailing behind. As soon as I caught my breath, I followed them.
A good journalist knows a hot lead when they see one.
***
The girl was young and fast. Keeping up with her and her pack wasn’t easy.
She moved along at a rapid clip through the ruined husk of McAllen, the ex-city most people these days referred to as Dogville. I’d been following her for nearly half an hour. It was a black, moonless night, and without my specs’ nightview my naked eyes struggled to keep the girl in sight. I had the backups tucked away in my boot, but I left them hidden for now. Couldn’t risk having her snatch my only other pair.
I tripped and stumbled my way over the dark, unfamiliar terrain, my leg muscles aching from the effort. Up ahead the girl paused and looked in my direction to see if I was still following. She was too far away for me to make out her features, but I imagined her expression, that dirt-smudged face of hers growing more annoyed by the minute. I resisted the urge to call out to her, not wanting to draw the attention of whatever might be lurking unseen in the forest. She spotted me, then turned back around and started running again, torturing me with a faster pace. Every few minutes the cycle repeated: stop, turn, check, run faster.
Fatigue began to overtake me and I lagged farther behind, the distance between us growing by the minute. My lungs were on fire and before long my legs began to give out. I finally had to stop, wheezing and lightheaded, my body hurting in ways I didn’t know it could.
The girl was gone and I was alone in the dead city.
I collapsed onto a rust-covered park bench, my breath coming in deep, convulsive gasps. The temperature had dropped and the bench’s dull, metallic cold seeped through my pants. I shivered and my thoughts again wandered to my car’s comfy leather seats.
What am I doing here?
Earlier that morning back in Austin, when I’d pitched the story to Gonzalez he’d been less than enthusiastic. “Come on,” I’d pleaded. “This is a great story. A life and death struggle in the ruins of a once-great American city.”
“This is McAllen we’re talking about,” he scoffed. “‘Once-great’ is pushing it a bit, don’t you think?”
“All right, forget that angle. How about this: rival territories combine forces to take out Dogtown’s cruel overlord, a former narco kingpin. I’m telling you, this story has it all. Danger, action, and the footage is going to be unforgettable.”
Gonzalez mulled it over. “What do you know about this ex-narco?”
The truth was I didn’t know much, but I had no intention of admitting that to Mr. Weasel. “They call him Demonio. Story is he used to run with one of the Sinaloa cartels. They say he’s got th
e biggest turf in Dogville, something like five hundred dogs in his pack.”
“And when you say ‘they’ you mean that filthy kid I saw in your office?”
“Yeah,” I said, a bit sheepishly. My source was a smelly boy who’d just left Dogville, scared off by the prospect of an all-out turf war.
“Go get him.”
I fetched the boy and Gonzalez wrinkled his nose when the kid sat down.
“Fuckin’ suicide, taking on Demonio,” the kid muttered as he looked to the floor and stunk up the office. “His dogs ain’t like other dogs. Fuckin’ killers they are, just like him.” His hands trembled as he spoke. “You know how Demonio marks his territory? Enemies’ heads on spikes, like outta some horror movie. Puta madre, you see something like that and you can’t never get it out of your head.”
Gonzalez asked the boy to step out.
When he left my producer sighed. “Jesus, Katie, dog fights and narcos? That kind of crap is for twelve-year-old gamer boys. Not exactly our demographic. What are you thinking?”
“I know, I know. It’s not our standard fluff celebrity fare, but just—”
“And for all you know this kid made up the story just to con you out of some cash.” He eyed me suspiciously. “How much did you pay him?”
I shrugged. “Not that much, but listen, he told me when and where it’s going down. Why not just go down there and check it out?”
“Dogfights and narcos,” Gonzalez muttered, shaking his head. He pushed his chair away from the desk, his face hardening. I’d seen that face before. He wouldn’t be changing his mind. Weasels can be stubbornest of species.
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
I stomped out of his office, slammed the door behind me, and left the building. Within minutes I was in my car speeding south on I-35, clutching the steering wheel and cursing Gonzalez. If Angela had brought him the lead, the same exact lead, it would have been a different story altogether. He’d have smiled and said yes and sent her down to Dogville with a security team.
Screw him.
Maybe I had paid the smelly kid a few bucks more than I would have liked to, but so what? And, yes, maybe it wasn’t the strongest lead I’d ever had, but there was a story down in Dogville, I could feel it. And if Gonzalez wouldn’t give me his blessing, I didn’t give a crap. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d be swimming upstream on a lead. There was a big story out there somewhere, the award-worthy kind of story that would stop all this retirement talk bullshit.
There was a story down there, I told myself again. There had to be.
But as I sat there on the cold bench, I felt it all slipping away, disappearing like the wisps of my frosty breath in the cold night air. The site of the raid, according to my smelly source, was the old convention center the narco used as his stronghold. It was at least another hour’s hike away. And even if my exhausted old legs could have carried me the distance, I didn’t like my odds of making it there without becoming some stray pack’s chew toy.
I cursed myself for losing the girl. She’d been heading in the direction of the convention center. Idiot. I should have asked her about the raid on Demonio when I had the chance. Should have offered her cash to tag along. Jesus, couldn’t I think on my feet anymore? Maybe Gonzalez and the execs were right. Maybe it was time I learned to play gin rummy or knit sweaters or whatever the hell retired people did to pass the time. I hadn’t even had the good sense to get any footage of her, and that was a real shame. There was a very pretty girl under all that dirt and attitude. Full lips, piercing eyes and...
A very pretty girl.
Of course. That was the angle. That was the story. But then that was every story, wasn’t it? It was always about a pretty girl.
I took the specs out of my boot and called Gonzalez. His weasel face appeared in the lower corner of the lens, and I got him up to speed.
“Wait a minute, did you just say you’re in Dogville alone?”
“Yes, now listen. I ran into this girl out here, and she’s—”
“I want you to come back right now. It’s too dangerous. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Just give me a minute to lay this out for you. This girl is the story. Who is she? Why is she here? Why is she risking her life to fight Demonio? Why doesn’t she just leave?”
Gonzalez sighed heavily. “Jesus, you really are at the end of your rope, aren’t you? You think I don’t know what this is about? Everyone’s career has to come to an end at some point, Katie. Yours, mine, everyone’s.”
Bloody weasel. No matter how hard I pushed, he pushed right back.
“She’s hot,” I said.
A pause. “What?”
I closed my eyes and listened to the words come out of my mouth. “The girl,” I said. “She’s hot. Face like an angel, young and thin. And she’s got this raw, animal sexuality. Men will drool over her, probably a fair amount of women, too.” My stomach turned.
My producer said nothing, his miniature head floating in the corner of my specs. After a long moment he finally, predictably, said, “Well, now. I guess that changes things, doesn’t it?”
***
I made my way through the ruin that used to be McAllen’s central square. Like the ghost of a city that surrounded it, the square was a crumbling mess of dying buildings and teeming underbrush. I’d been running for nearly an hour, my legs throbbing and weary but somehow still managing to carry me forward.
The overlay said I was a couple minutes away from the convention center. The raid was supposedly going down sometime tonight after sunset. With a bit of luck, I’d get there before all hell broke loose. With a bit of more luck, I’d get some decent footage.
I reached the top of a small ridge and stopped. There it is. Far below was the convention center, a massive, domed structure of rusted steel and pock-marked concrete. There was no movement anywhere and everything was quiet. I tapped my specs and recorded a slow, panoramic shot of the vista.
A deep, throaty growl from behind me broke the silence, sending a cold shiver down my back. I turned to see an enormous dog baring its teeth. Its matted gray coat covered a thick, powerful frame that must have outweighed me by thirty pounds.
The monster’s ears pricked up and its body stiffened. Then it suddenly turned and bolted away, disappearing into the brush. In the next moment half a dozen dogs, barking and yelping, rushed past me, chasing after the beast. I looked to see where they’d come from and there stood the girl, arms crossed and frowning.
I let out a huge breath. “Thank you, thank you. My God, that thing would have torn me apart.” If she hadn’t been scowling at me, I might have walked over and kissed her dirty little face.
“You don’t listen too good, do you, mod-mama? That’s twice I saved your ass, and there ain’t gonna be a third time.” The girl’s eyes widened. “Jesus, have you been transmitting?” She stomped over and reached for my specs, but I slapped her hand away.
She frowned and shook her head, then she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Her pack returned and gathered around her. She glared at me; her dogs lowered their heads and began to growl.
I showed my palms and took a step backwards. “Wait a minute, all I want to do is—”
The pack and the girl suddenly looked away in unison, distracted by something in the forest. There was a faint, high-pitched sound in the distance. A dog baying.
The girl’s dogs sat back on their haunches, raised their heads, and began to howl. A few seconds later more packs, unseen in the forest all around us, joined the chorus.
I shouted above the noise. “This is it, isn’t it? The raid’s starting?”
She took a step closer. “How do you know about my raid?”
Her raid?
The sound of countless dogs baying grew to a terrifying, deafening volume.
The girl turned and ran to the edge of the ridge, trailed by her pack. She looked down toward the convention center then motioned for me to join her. I ran over.
It took me a few moments to register what I saw. There were dogs everywhere. Hundreds of them. From every direction they poured from the top of the ridge surrounding the convention center. It had to be every pack in Dogville. I watched, awed and speechless as they descended at a frenzied run, urged on by their pack leaders.
The girl turned and looked at me in a way that oddly reminded me of Gonzalez. She seemed to be debating with herself, trying to decide if I was worth bothering with or simply unimportant extra baggage.
“Anyone who ain’t with a pack’s gonna get torn to bits,” the girl said. “You stay close to me, you hear? I ain’t gonna wait for you.”
I nodded, adrenaline pumping.
She hurried down the ridge with her pack. I scrambled after them, determined to keep close. Then about halfway down the ridge I recovered my wits enough to remember: footage!
I paused, snapping stills and recording action shots. The barking and howling grew louder and more frantic as the first packs reached the parking lot. I panned to the convention center, but there were no signs of Demonio or his dogs. They had to be holed up inside. It must have been terrifying for the narco to hear those sounds, knowing what was coming for him with nowhere to hide, no way to escape.
I stopped recording for a moment and looked around. The girl and her pack were far down below me, nearly at the parking lot. I was on my own.
I picked my way down the ridge and kept recording. The fastest dogs had already reached the entrances, a series of arched tunnels extending like a spider’s legs around the building’s perimeter. I lost sight of the girl and her pack as they merged with a mass of dogs funneling into one of the tunnels. As the horde disappeared inside, the sounds of the attack became an eerie, howling echo.
By the time I finally made my way across the parking lot to one of the entrances, the dogs had been inside a couple minutes. I stopped for a moment and listened.
Something was wrong.
Everything had gone quiet. I didn’t hear barking or yelping, only the soft sounds of nighttime insects and the gasps of my own breathing.
