Tails of the Apocalypse (7 page)

“You can come with me,” she said. “But you better keep up.”

A mile later, he was still with her. Sometimes he trotted ahead, head swiveling every time a crow flapped from a tree. His nails didn’t click as he walked. He was so quiet Raina decided his name should be Knife.

She saw two people on her way to the hospital, but she hid behind bushes until they went away. At the intersection on PCH, cars clogged the lanes. Most were empty, but in a few, bodies sat behind the wheel, their flesh puffy and dark. Raina moved past them as quietly as she could.

The animal hospital’s front doors were locked. So were the dented metal doors downstairs. She trudged back up the slope to the front and pressed her nose to the glass. Knife joined her, nose twitching. If someone had locked the doors, maybe they’d taken the dogs out of the cages, too. But she wasn’t sure people were doing what they were supposed to anymore. Not after what she’d seen at the hospital.

She walked down the sloped parking lot to get one of the rocks from the landscaping and bash out the glass in the front door. She picked up a round stone and turned back. One of the second floor windows was open.

She walked beneath it, Knife trotting beside her. “Hello?”

No one came. There were some trash cans in the parking lot, but even if she stacked them, they wouldn’t be high enough to reach. Inside the window ledge, a hand crank jutted up. Raina frowned and went to the box at the front doors where they kept the slip leads. She took out a tangle of them, tying them together until she had a rope twelve feet long with a loop at the end. She went back to the window, twirled the rope, and slung it at the crank.

It took her dozens of tries before she snagged it. She tested the line, then set down her pack and climbed. Near the top, her arms began to shake. She hauled herself inside and dropped to the floor of a veterinarian’s office.

She went downstairs and unlocked the outer door. Knife ambled in, hopping up the steps behind her. The room with the cages smelled like pee and poop and something even worse. When she walked inside, the dogs lifted their heads and began to whine.

Not all of them stirred to greet her. A pug and a German shepherd lay flat in their cages. Their skin was the same temperature as the room.

One by one, she let the others out. There were twelve in all, from a big golden lab to a tiny tan Chihuahua. They crowded around her, whining and yowling, licking her hands and legs. Knife moved back, watching in concern. Raina opened the door to the large room, where her mom’s friends used to bathe and inspect the animals, and filled shallow plastic trays with water. The dogs lapped greedily.

From the other side of the room, a cat meowed like there was no hope. Raina jogged to the other room of cages, where eight cats stared at her from behind the thin metal bars that enclosed them. She had to let them out, but if she did that, she was afraid the dogs would eat them.

Raina stepped away, pressing her back to the wall. The dogs needed to be fed and cleaned. Some of them had chewed wounds in their paws and needed the medicine her mom used to give them. She should clean out the cages and take the dogs outside, in case they needed to use the bathroom. There was so much to do, and she didn’t know if she could do it. Abruptly, she felt very young. Why had the adults left the animals to die?

She clenched her teeth. Maybe the adults had been too scared or too stupid. But she was there now. And she was the only one the animals had.

“Don’t worry, kitties,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

If they were full of food, the dogs wouldn’t want to eat the cats. Raina got a bag of kibbles from the shelves out front and filled two of the plastic trays. As soon as she set the first one down, the dogs lunged for it, growling and menacing each other with their fangs. She set down the second tub. Soon, they’d each found a place, crunching away. While they ate, she carried the pug and then the German shepherd outside. There was nowhere to bury them, so she took them down the ramp to the underground parking of the motel next door.

Upstairs, a schnauzer had barfed on the floor, but it was already cleaning it up. While the dogs sniffed around, she brought water and kibbles to the cats. Some of them hissed at her and most of them didn’t want to eat.

Raina had known lots of cats in her neighborhood. Some had liked to be petted, but most slunk away when she came near. They liked to be by themselves. Three cat carriers were stacked against the wall. She went out back to set out food and water, then brought the cats outside one by one. They all ran away.

She’d thought to keep the dogs inside, but seeing the cats scatter to their freedom, Raina knew she had to bring the dogs out, too. Or she would be no better than the people who’d kept her in school against her will. Who’d abandoned the animals in the first place?

Upstairs, she whistled to the dogs and led them outside. Knife stood beside her, watching the others click around the parking lot to sniff and pee. The schnauzer and a terrier climbed the incline to the road and strutted away, but the others stayed close, stealing the cat food she’d brought out or flopping in the sun. When she opened the door, they filed back inside and clattered up the stairs.

“Okay,” she said to Knife. “Looks like we’re staying.”

The first thing she did was clean the cages. The second thing she did was wash the dogs. The third thing she did was go to the motel and get sheets to shape beds for them.

And the fourth thing she did was name them.

There was Brick the golden lab and Eggplant the pug. There was Dragon, the little one with long black tufts on her ears and tail who never backed down. The Chihuahuas, Cloud and Mean and Mouse, who scattered whenever there was a loud noise. Smile the retriever. And the mutts, Tooth and Tough.

And there was Knife.

For food, there were dozens of bags and hundreds of cans in the hospital, but Raina knew no one would ever bring them more. And she needed people food, too. There was a Target store up the street her mom had sometimes gone to on the way home. Raina fed the dogs and brought them out to the bathroom, then got Knife, who went everywhere with her, and walked up the hill to the Target.

She got a red shopping cart and pushed it up and down the aisles. The tile floor was cluttered with kid’s clothes and containers of hand soap people had knocked down and left there. Every single scrap of people food was gone. Raina’s head flushed with hot blood. How could they have been so greedy? To take
everything
? She hoped whoever had taken it all had been found by the man who’d tried to find out if she was alone, or the other one who’d chased her in the street.

Abruptly, a cold tingle soothed her blood. She wasn’t the only one out there. The others would be hungry, too. And there was no one left to stop them from taking whatever they wanted.

The people food was gone, but there were shelves and shelves of dog food. Too much for one trip. Or even two. She loaded bags into the cart and headed out of the store. On the smooth tile of the aisles, the cart hadn’t been too loud, but out on the pavement, it rattled so badly Raina wanted to scream at it to stop. At the hospital, she wrestled the bags of dog food inside and stashed the cart in the motel’s underground parking, far away from where she’d covered the pug and shepherd.

With Knife beside her, she returned to the Target. In the aisles of skateboards and Legos, she found a big red wagon. Its tall rubber tires crossed the linoleum with the faintest of gripping sounds. She loaded it with the biggest bags of kibbles and dragged it back to the hospital.

By the time her knees were too tired to keep going, she’d filled up all the empty shelves downstairs. It was only when Raina went to feed the dogs dinner that she realized she had nothing for herself. She got a kibble from the bag and crunched it between her teeth. It was very dry and tasted exactly the way it smelled. But it was food. She ate.

After dinner, she felt rested enough for another trip to the store. She came back with enough dog beds for all of them. Including herself. She turned off the lights and flopped down.

Now, in the quiet aloneness, the impact jarred tears from her eyes. She wiped them on her shirt. What had happened to her parents? Her teachers? The stupid girls at school? Why wasn’t anyone there to tell her what had happened and bring her somewhere safe? Why hadn’t someone stopped the bloody cough? Why was she still alive?

Two paws pressed down on the side of the bed. A small round head stood in silhouette. Knife leaned forward. She tried to push him away, but he ducked her hand and licked her face. Hearing the sound of licking, another dog trotted over and licked her, too—Eggplant, there was no mistaking her breathing. A third dog rolled into the bed and flopped down on her feet.

“Maybe I don’t need to understand what’s out there.” She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Maybe I only need to understand what’s in here.”

Knife sighed and lay on her chest. It was okay to cry for a moment. But only a moment. There were ten dogs and they needed her.

As soon as she’d taken care of the dogs the next morning, she went back to the Target to pick up more kibbles. Two men and a woman were inside the store piling carts with diapers and soap. Before they could see her, Raina slunk back to the hospital to wait. The daytime was too dangerous. That was when the big creatures came out. The night was the time for the possums, the raccoons, and the skunks.

From then on, she only left the hospital after dark. Tough, the mutt with the brindle legs and white feet, was good at watching and staying close, so Raina took her along to the Target, too. While Knife sat up front guarding the doors, Tough watched Raina’s back as she loaded the wagon with dog food. Soon, she’d moved all of it home except for three bags, in case someone else needed them more.

Two weeks went by. The days got longer and warmer. Raina and the dogs slept through the afternoons, curled in their beds. Mean made peeping noises in his sleep. At night, Raina took them to the parking lot. She tried to take the others out by themselves, but Dragon and Cloud barked too much, and Smiles would wander away and refuse to return unless she dragged him by the collar. He was so heavy that she had to lean with all her strength to pull him away from what he was sniffing.

“You guys have to learn better,” she told them when she had them back inside. “Or else you’ll have to stay inside. Be like Knife and Tough. Be quiet and watch.”

Smiles was sniffing the corner. Mouse and Brick were asleep. Some of the others were watching her, but the rest were busy licking their paws.

“If you’re going to learn better, then I’m going to have to teach better. But you’ll have to listen. There’s only one of me and ten of you.”

She started with Smiles, trying over and over to get him to stay. Time after time, he went straight for the treat. Blinking back tears of frustration, Raina shut off the light and went to bed. Knife licked her face, but licking couldn’t solve everything. After a while, he gave up and lay down close beside her.

Day after day, she worked with each of them. Bit by bit, they got a little better. But Smiles still liked to wander off when she tried to take him down back streets, and Dragon bolted after every bird and squirrel that caught his eye. What if they never listened to her? What if one of them ran off at the wrong time and got hurt?

But there was nothing to do but keep trying.

Raina was bringing in a bag of oranges from the tree down the street when the hospital lights flickered and blinked off. She gazed up into the darkness. After ten seconds, the lights snapped back on, blinding her. But in that moment of darkness, she’d seen something vital. The machines that ran the lights and water were still out there, but the people who ran the machines were dead.

She spent the next days gathering jugs. Filling them with water. Climbing to the flat roof and placing buckets for rain. Every morning, dew glinted on the cars. Raina knew that came from the air, too—was it mist from the sea? There had to be a way to catch it, but she couldn’t think how.

The water wasn’t the only thing. Earlier, their rooms of food had looked like enough to last forever. But now that she knew the water could stop, the supplies no longer looked so large. They were going to need more.

That was the one lesson of the new world: you would
always
need more. If you weren’t busy getting it, you were busy losing it.

She’d visited enough of the nearby shops to know they’d already been looted. But there were hundreds of houses right behind the hospital. She’d been avoiding them. She knew what lay in the beds. What she’d found when the angry man on the street chased her. But she couldn’t be afraid anymore. The bodies couldn’t kill her. But fear could.

That night, Raina got her pack and her kitchen knife and walked outside. She meant to go alone, but Knife snuck out the door after her.

“Fine,” she muttered. Then her face softened to a smile. “Come on.”

Early on, she’d used snips from Target to cut a hole through the fence between the hospital and the home on the other side. She ducked through it and walked through the shaggy yard to the house’s back door. It was unlocked. She stepped into the entrance and was stopped by a wave of rotten stench. She took a step back, ready to turn and run. Knife trotted past her into the darkness. He sniffed at the kitchen table, then turned to stare at her.

“You’re much smaller than me.” Raina put her hands on her hips. “You should be afraid of everything. But that’s why you’re afraid of nothing, isn’t it? Or else you’d never stop running.”

She walked through the door. Inside, cans of food filled the cabinets.
Human
food: beef stew and chicken soup and cream of potato. She ate a can of stew on the spot. After weeks of dog food, the beef tasted like pure strength. She gave a bite to Knife, followed by a second. He ate in fast little jerks.

There were many houses, but less food than she thought. Much had been taken. Much had gone rotten. It would let them last longer, but not
that
much longer. They ate most of what they found each night, saving the dog food, which seemed made to last a long time.