Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) by Lydia West

Author:Lydia West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: scifi, dog, animal, urban, futuristic, african fiction, african wild dog, uplifted animal, xenofiction

16

The Tunnel

It was nearly dawn, and very little starlight remained to illuminate their way, but outside their house there were still working streetlights on a few corners, pooling soft yellow light. Mhumhi and Kutta avoided them, sticking to the shadows. Mhumhi was really beginning to feel the helplessness of their situation. Limping, smelling like blood, trying to pant softly… If another one of those awful creatures found them, there would be no way that they would survive.

They had both agreed that it would be best to cut a wide angle around the light post where Mhumhi had gotten caught in the wire. Not that Mhumhi really thought it would help, in the end- why would the creatures stay there? As he limped along, he suppressed a shudder.

Part of him wanted to go back, just to see, to look- to see if anything was left there.

He had to quell such thoughts. He had held them about his mother, the thoughts that held aloft that strange and horrible hope, and they had gotten him nowhere. Sacha… had been right, it was not good to hold on to them.

As he panted and pushed himself along on three legs behind Kutta, skirting another pool of golden light, he felt a raw longing. She would have known what to do. She would have known the safest course- she would have been able to find Kebero and Bii- she would have kept the pack together, where it had dwindled to only two-

He whined, the noise unbidden.

"Hush," whispered Kutta, glancing back at him. "I know your leg is hurting… we're almost there…"

Mhumhi licked his lips and followed her without saying a word.

They moved slowly through the sleeping city. Mhumhi thought he saw eyes gleaming in a storm drain once- it might have been a fennec fox- but they vanished at once. The warm night air lay heavily on them, wind mingling scents together. Mhumhi was certain he could smell traces of the musky scent of those things, but it could have been from earlier, it could have been from a different direction, he did not know. At least it did not seem that it had come from anywhere close by.

Before he would not have even taken notice of the smell; he'd have assumed it was just another dog, but now it was firmly ingrained in his psyche. There was that, at least. They wouldn't be caught unawares again by something that smelly.

"There's the subway," Kutta whispered to him. The pale white building was suddenly looming out of the darkness in front of them. Mhumhi saw the sheet metal that had been blocking the little entrance he'd found, though now it was lying on the ground.

Cutting through the darkness they suddenly heard a noise: a moaning call, rising up like a question.

"No," said Kutta, her tail tucking in fear.

"It came from far away," Mhumhi urged, even as they heard a second noise come from a different direction. "Hurry, let's go inside-"

They darted together into the little gap in the wall, into the total darkness of the subway.

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