Bits & Pieces (27 page)

Other places to avoid included hardware stores, sporting goods shops, grocery and clothing stores, pharmacies, hospitals, police stations, military bases, and department stores.

The best places to hide were stores or warehouses filled with stuff no one needed. Computer centers, toy stores, gift shops. Like that. For Rags, though, her most reliable bolt-holes were museums. One in particular. The one that had been her home for weeks now.

Nobody went to museums anymore. Not unless they had
displays of military equipment, and those had already been looted.

Rags ran three blocks along the avenue, leaving the dog and the scavengers behind. Leaving the sounds of what was happening behind. Then she stopped behind a mailbox to study the Japanese American Museum on N Street at Taylor, right on the edge of Japantown.

The place was on the corner of a big intersection that was crammed with wrecked or abandoned cars. The burned shell of a big Marine Corps helicopter was smashed into the east wing of the museum, and the front doors were shut and locked. The building was made from blocks of tan stone, and there were no windows at all on the first floor; the ones on the second floor were covered with ornate brass grilles.

All of the first-floor doors were made from heavy steel. The words
DEAD INSIDE
had been spray-painted on the outside as a warning.

Rags had done that.

She put that mark on several of her favorite bolt-holes. She'd seen it on other buildings. Warnings left by travelers who cared. Or by the military back when they mattered.

There were no dead inside her place, though.

It had been shut up for the night when the world fell apart. No one had come to open those heavy doors in the morning. No one ever would. The helicopter that crashed on the east wing had burned, and as far as Rags could tell, none of the people onboard had survived. They hadn't walked out, they hadn't shambled out. They'd burned and stayed dead.

Rags envied them.

The street was clear of the dead.

She took a breath and moved away from the shelter of the mailbox, darting in a haphazard pattern from one car to another to another as she made her way around the fringes of the intersection. She stopped often, listened closely, watched everything. The only movement was what was pushed by the wind.

Crossing that intersection took five whole minutes, because Rags needed to know that no one saw her and nothing reacted to her. She got to the helicopter and paused again. The burned meat smell was long gone now.

With great care, Rags went around to the far side, climbed up onto the broken tail section, and crawled along it like a bug until she reached the place where the dying machine had punched through the outer wall. There was a small pile of pebbles there that Rags had left behind. She picked one up and then tossed it through the hole into the shadows of the museum. It clattered and bounced and then lay still. She bent forward and listened with all her might to whatever the shadows had to say.

They said nothing.

There were no moans, no soft and ungainly footfalls. There were no human cries of surprise.

Nothing.

She let out a breath and crawled inside.

Rags flicked on her solar-powered flashlight—an insanely valuable item she'd taken from the backpack of a dead hiker. Someone had shot the hiker in the head but left his gear intact. Half the good supplies Rags had in her own backpack had come from that person, and when she prayed at night, Rags always included a special thanks to Stanley Nogatowski.
She'd learned his name from stuff she'd found in his wallet. Mr. Nogatowski was thirty-four, was a house painter, had a library card, had a debit card and two credit cards, belonged to Sam's Club, and had a picture of him and another man holding hands as they cut a wedding cake.

The things she had found in his pack—PowerBars, a canteen, water purification tablets, a compass, a first aid kit, and a knife, not to mention the solar flashlight—had saved her life that day and a dozen times since. Maybe more. She sometimes prayed to Stanley as if he were her personal guardian angel. Maybe he was.

Holding Stanley's flashlight in one hand and his Buck lock-knife in the other, Rags descended a slope of rubble from the hole in the wall to the floor of the museum.

The east wing had a lot of displays about the architecture of ancient Japan. Rain and fire had ruined almost all of it.

The rest of the building was in good shape, though Rags hadn't yet fully explored it. She'd been to the art displays, the literature display, and one room on the second floor that was filled with all kinds of clothing. Kimonos in glass cases or hung on strings from the ceiling. They looked like giant butterflies. Rags had taken a dozen of them down and made a nest for herself in a niche behind two massive display cases filled with thousands of ivory combs and jeweled hairpins. No one would want to loot that stuff, so that was where she went. She was safe there.

She settled down and tried not to think about what had just happened outside. The room was dark and quiet and safe. There were a dozen ways out and she knew every one. She had weapons positioned around—sharp sticks, pipes, a few
knives she'd taken from display cases of samurai stuff over in the west wing.

The last of the day's light fell in dusty, slanting lines through the high windows, and the grilles split the light into patterns of lotus flowers and cherry blossoms. She watched the way the patterns moved as the sun slowly set.

Rags thought about eating some of her soup, but her stomach rebelled. No. Not after what had happened.

So she pulled the ancient silk around her and tried to sleep.

The shakes began then, and they stayed with her. The shivers followed her all the way down into her dreams, and her dreams were no escape at all.

The dog found her.

In the deep of night, hours and hours after the thing with the scavengers, she woke from a troubled dream of broken teeth and grabbing hands. She woke to the certain knowledge that she was no longer alone.

Rags was too practiced a survivor to cry out even in terror. Instead she snatched up her knife and put her back to the wall, ready to run left or right, planning her route through the midnight darkness of the museum, certain she could navigate it better than any intruder.

Except she heard it coming.

It
, not them. Not the living, not the dead. Not people on either side of that dividing line.

She heard it even though it moved very quietly. The dead are clumsy, and they don't understand stealth. Scavengers do,
but Rags was alert. She was paying attention and analyzing the sounds she heard for reliable meaning.

She heard the dog coming. The faint click of nails on the marble floor.
Clickety-clickety-click.

Panic flared in Rags.

That big dog was coming.

For her.

It had followed her here.

That monster of a dog.

Clickety-clickety-click.

The knife in her hand felt so small. She felt small.

That dog had killed five people. Five armed adults.

Clickety-clickety-click.

So close now. Right on the other side of the case behind which she crouched.

Then . . .

Silence.

Rags did not dare breathe.

A single ray of cold moonlight slanted down through one of the high windows. She rose slowly. So slowly, gripping the knife, holding the flashlight in her left hand, thumb on the button. Ready to flick on the light and stab in that moment of blinding surprise.

She tried to remember if dogs could see in the dark. If so, did that make them more vulnerable to sudden bursts of light?

Rags had no idea.

She moved very slowly down the edge of the case and peered around.

What she saw made her freeze into a pillar of ice.

The big dog sat there. Right in the middle of the patch
of light thrown down from the window. It was a huge male. Young and strong, but looking starved and a little wild. He sat upright and looked directly at her.

As if anticipating that she would come that way. Hearing, smelling, sensing. Whatever.
Knowing.

And . . .
waiting
for her.

Watching her.

All that fur and muscle and size. Waiting. Like a statue. Patient.

But why? Why did he wait like that? Why not just come after her? If he could find her here, why didn't he simply pounce on her and do to her what he'done to the scavengers?

Why?

Rags licked her lips and swallowed a lump that felt as big as a rock.

The dog cocked his head at her.

And with a soft, heavy
thump-thump-thump
, he began wagging his tail. Beating it against the dusty marble floor.

That was how it started.

Trying to discover the dog's name went nowhere. She made her way through the entire alphabet, trying every dog name she could think of—Prince, King, even Fido. She was sure no one ever named their dog Fido unless they were trying to be ironic. She tried all the cool or semi-cool or corny names people she'd known used for their dogs. Sam, Max, Butch, Bo, a couple of dozen others.

The closest she got to a reaction was from Bo. The dog almost wagged his tail, but didn't. As if he was waiting for more of the name. She tried Bob, Bozo, Bono. Nothing.

The dog had a collar, and there was a bone-shaped tag on it, but instead of a name, there was a message that didn't tell her much.

PROPERTY OF THE

DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY SCIENCES

CAPT. J. LEDGER

There was a serial number, a phone number, and a website.

In the end, because the dog wore that tag and because it almost reacted to Bo, she decided to name him Bones.

The first time she called him that, the dog merely looked at her with those strange eyes.

The second time she called him, Bones came.

And Bones he was from then on.

Rags and Bones stayed in San Jose for nearly five months, and in their own way, they became scavengers.

Of a kind.

True scavengers, as she saw it. Not psychopaths.

They didn't hunt people. Not to rob, not to hurt, and certainly not to eat. Rags knew that with everything she'd been through she was probably more than half-crazy, but there was a lot of downhill road she'd need to travel before she let herself become
that
crazy.

The dog helped.

He was so smart. Weird smart, as Rags saw it. When she spoke to him, Bones listened. Not just heard her, but
listened
. As if he could understand her actual words.

It was strange, but even Rags had to admit that it was far from the strangest part of her world.

Rags had no idea what day of the week it was or what week of the month. She was pretty sure she was still thirteen, but that might not be true. If it was October, then she was fourteen. It still felt like September, though. Or the world wasn't getting as cool as it should. It was usually in the high seventies in September. By October it dropped down to the sixties during the day and into the fifties at night. This year it was hot even at night.

That was a weird thought. Rags figured that with all those dead people—none of them warmer than room temperature—the temperature should have dropped. But no.

Maybe it was the fires.

Maybe it was from all those bombs they'd released.

She didn't know. It was okay, though, because she was usually cold, and hotter days and warm nights weren't too bad. If it got really cold at some point, she figured she could cuddle up with Bones. He was always warm.

Since finding the dog, Rags had learned how to sleep again. Really sleep. Like all night, which was something she had not done once since she ran away from home.

It took a while for that to happen. A few weeks. But over time she began to trust Bones completely. And to trust that he would hear or smell something long before she did.

Being with Bones changed things for Rags.

She smiled. She laughed. She played.

That felt weird, because Rags thought that those things were extinct concepts.

At first their play was only an accidental version of fetch. They were picking through the ruins of a clothing store, trying to find a good sweater because fall was coming. Rags found a funny little hat that she thought would be warm, but it was too small. It was the tenth hat she'd tried on that didn't fit, and that annoyed her, so she threw it across the store.

Bones bounded after it and brought it back.

The world had changed so much that Rags didn't immediately understand why the dog did that. But Bones picked it up and dropped it again, a few inches closer to her sneakered toes. Bones wagged his big tail.

Rags stared at the brightly colored hat and then at the dog.

“Seriously?” she asked.

The tail whipped back and forth. He lowered his head and used his nose to put it closer.

She bent and picked it up.

“Fetch?”

More wags.

“You're weird,” she told the dog.

Bones had his mouth open, tongue lolling. It made him look like he was grinning.

So Rags threw the hat.

Bones bounded after it, crashing through overturned display racks, leaping over fallen mannequins to retrieve the hat. He brought it back and dropped it on the top of her left shoe.

The tail kept wagging.

As Rags bent to pick up the hat, she told herself that this wasn't
smart, that they needed to stay focused and to keep hunting for supplies, clothes, and food.

Instead, she and Bones played fetch for nearly an hour. With hats. With fuzzy slippers. With balled-up socks.

The next day Rags and Bones went in search of a pet store.

The store had been looted. Hungry people will eat pet food if they can't get anything better. The shelves were bare of cans and bags. The cages had been torn open and most were splashed with blood. Either the hungry dead or the hungry living had been here.