Pete grabbed my arm and yanked me away. I stumbled, fell to one knee, but he kept dragging me and I was back on my feet a second later. We ran toward the bones, the piles of dead. Pete cut left. I slipped on a bone and lurched right.
The matriarch started barking. I didn’t turn around, but Mama had taught me well enough to know she was after us, barking to scare us, drive us forward. Into the pack.
“Pete, go high!”
I headed for the closest tree. Wasn’t much, but it had good climbing branches and was probably strong enough to hold my weight. Snarling and barking echoed behind us. No teeth crippled my legs, so maybe she wasn’t behind me.
I stumbled on the broken sidewalk where the tree’s roots had busted through, but hit the tree and climbed, grabbing branch and trunk, scraping my feet against the bark. I climbed as high as I dared, maybe twelve feet off the street. I tried to remember how high matriarchs could jump but it wouldn’t come. We didn’t see many, so we didn’t know a whole lot.
Pete either hadn’t heard me or didn’t like the trees near him, ’cause he kept running. The matriarch was almost on him, closing the distance fast.
“Pete!”
The matriarch leapt, teeth ripping through the back of Pete’s thigh. He legs buckled and he flew forward, arms flailing. She was on him half a heartbeat later, her teeth at his neck. Pete screamed. I closed my eyes until he stopped.
She didn’t eat him. She raised her head toward the garage at my back and barked low in her throat. Answering barks drifted past me. Yippers.
I looked into the dark spaces of the garage. Cars lined up in neat rows. Yippers echoed inside, lots of them. Pups. This was the matriarch’s den.
My stomached twisted. The matriarch glanced over and growled, but she didn’t leave Pete. She barked again and the yippers came into the sunlight, tumbling over each other, giant paws and ears tangling. The yips increased, sharp and harsh against my ears.
They bounded over and started eating, tearing little bits out of Pete with their tiny teeth. The matriarch stood guard.
Oh, Pete.
I didn’t want to watch but I had to. I had to study the matriarch, gauge when she wasn’t looking so I could get out of this tree and sneak away. I kept closing my eyes anyway.
Get out of here, girl, or you’ll be yipper food, too.
I took a deep breath and tried to remember what Mama had taught me. Get your bearings, find a safe route, move your ass.
I couldn’t go down to the street. That was the matriarch’s territory and she’d rip me in half to protect her pups. I looked behind me. The upper garage levels weren’t covered in wire screens like the first floor. The levels were open, the outside walls only waist high. A row of dusty cars sat right behind them. I could jump over, climb inside, and run until I was past the matriarch. Except…
I swallowed. You never went inside a building until you were sure it was empty. Especially when you knew a den was nearby.
Someone groaned.
Pete?
I turned, but Pete was well beyond words now. Pieces of him had been dragged away as yippers claimed their own part of the kill.
Maybe I was hearing things. Or it was the wind again.
“Vaya.”
I didn’t imagine that. A low voice, almost as low as the matriarch’s growl. I looked around.
Miguel!
He was leaning up against the wall about a half block down from where we’d killed the juvie, one hand pressed against his wounds, and covered in blood. More of it was splashed behind him in a long trail all the way back the “Kenny’s Alley” sign.
“Go,” he said, calm as could be. The kinda voice that didn’t get the dogs all riled up.
I couldn’t answer him with the matriarch so close. I pleaded at him with my gaze. How can I help you?
“Run. Now.” He staggered away from the wall and into the street. The matriarch’s head snapped his way and she growled low, her lip curling back and showing her teeth.
Don’t do it, Miguel, please.
But he did. He growled back, took another step. So did the matriarch.
I sniffled back my tears and turned away. I’d seen Miguel’s belly wound, same kind as Louie’s. Nothing I did could save him and he knew it. The parking garage looked awful far away, a good four feet. But Miguel was giving me a chance to reach it when he could have just bled out and died in peace.
Be wrong to throw away that gift.
I jumped for the garage. The matriarch snarled. Miguel screamed. I flattened against the waist-high concrete wall, banging my hip bones hard enough to see stars. I slipped, but caught myself, nerves screaming nearly as loud as Miguel was. Don’t you fall after all he did for you.
I hauled myself over the wall and into the garage level proper, banging my knee on a dusty car fender. Chest heaving, I risked a peek outside and wished I hadn’t. Miguel was surely dead now.
Fighting every instinct to run, I tiptoed past the first row of cars, watching for pups or even another juvie. I darted across the worn yellow arrow painted on the concrete and hid behind another row of cars, the dust even thicker on their hoods. So many rows between me and the other side of the parking garage. Between me and safety.
I kept moving, row by row, car by car. I could smell dog every time the wind gusted, but none jumped out at me. I had to make it to the other side of the garage and back onto the street. Regain my bearings. If I could find the golden dome, I’d know which way was home.
I passed the last row of cars and followed the ramp down. Short metal boxes with striped barriers blocked the entrance, but they must have only been intended for cars. I slipped around them easily and dropped onto the sidewalk outside, gasping in fear and sadness.
I didn’t have time to grieve though. I had to get out of there. No, you have to find Tonzo and warn them. You have to kill that dog. I took a deep breath and looked in the direction I thought home was. The church we’d passed on the way in sat on the opposite corner from the parking garage, just across the street from me. The golden dome glittered beyond it. Home was that way.
I looked the other way, toward where Miguel had been taking us. A low brick wall ran along the sidewalk like a railing on the other side of the street, cresting over a sunken plaza speckled with tall white signs. Giant painted whales swam on the side of a building at the end of the plaza. Papa Ray called it the whaling wall, and always laughed, but I never understood why it was funny. But I knew what it was next to. The main entrance to the Underground.
Tonzo and his team would be heading there. Abbie would be there.
Suddenly, I smelled dog piss. A second later I heard it. Drips down a wall.
I was too scared to move. Too many places for a dog to be lurking, not enough places for one small girl to hide.
The dog came around the corner on my right, closest to the church. Another juvie, this one with dried blood on its muzzle. I chilled, picturing the other team ambushed by dogs, Abbie torn apart like—I shoved away the image. A fresh javelin wound cut across the dog’s shoulder, but it didn’t look that fresh and was already starting to close. Someone else had wounded it, probably earlier today.
“So you’re the one who got Louie,” I said evenly, steadying myself. He didn’t look sick, but that’s how it was with carriers. Anything that looked sick didn’t live long enough to spread the Bug very far.
The juvie growled. I backed away, maintaining eye contact as I pulled my last javelin out. I was in charge here. I was alpha. He needed to back down.
Yeah, right.
He ran at me. I held my ground a heartbeat longer, then turned and fled toward the wall across the street, looking for higher ground. All I had to do was get to the Underground. There’d be help at the Underground.
And if there’s not?
I tightened my grip on my javelin. It threw off my balance some but I sure wasn’t going to drop it.
The juvie ran beside me, teeth snapping at my heels as I raced along the wall.
“Shawna!”
Abbie appeared ahead like he’d popped out of the ground. Then I saw the stairs leading down. The stairs to the plaza. The entrance to the Underground. I’d made it!
“Dog,” I yelled. He raised the javelin in his hands. Tonzo and Sarah jogged up the stairs. They didn’t look scared, just mad. They reached the sidewalk and threw their javelins as one. The juvie yelped behind me. Tonzo was already moving when I reached the end of the wall, his other javelin out. I leapt, misjudging the distance, and Abbie caught me as I fell. My javelin went flying.
Tonzo and Sarah were on the juvie, stabbing it. It yelped and tried to bite them, but soon went quiet.
I clung to Abbie, shaking and trying not to be sick. Some hunter I was.
“Where are Miguel and Pete?” Tonzo asked. From his tone, it was clear he expected the worst.
“We found a matriarch with a litter of pups.” I wiped my eyes with the palms of both hands. “She was so huge! I tried to help, but…” I couldn’t say it.
Tonzo nodded, Sarah swore. Abbie just looked pale.
“She and the yippers are on the other side of the parking garage there. Their den is inside.”
“We’ll have to let Mayor Yang know,” said Abbie.
I wanted to say yes, run back to the hotel and let someone else deal with her, but if I did, I’d never be a hunter. It was my choice. My life.
“No.” I shook my head. “We have to kill her. The yippers, too.”
Sarah agreed with me. “We can’t let a matriarch claim territory this close to the hotel. Soon as those yippers are old enough, they’ll start looking for ground. And it’ll be our ground they’ll take.”
“What about her pack?” Tonzo said. I couldn’t tell which side he was on. “We can’t tangle with a matriarch pack.”
“She won’t have one with her while she has pups,” I said, Mama’s teachings ringing in my ears. “She’d have birthed them away from the pack and will go back when they’re weaned.” We didn’t know much more than that, but we assumed the weaned pups started fending for themselves, claiming their own territory until they were old enough to join a pack or take on one of the pack leaders.
They looked at each other, Sarah all hard lines and anger, Tonzo just as hard, but even harder to read.
“She killed them,” I whispered, unable to get the images out of my mind. “Those yippers ate them.”
Abbie groaned and turned a little green. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Don’t matter,” Tonzo said. “Shawna’s right. The bitch has to die. We owe Miguel and Pete that.”
Sarah looked down the street toward the garage. “Won’t be easy. How big is she?”
“Cow sized.”
“Great. She’ll tear us up in a straight fight. Can’t just throw the javs and hope we hit something vital and kill before she gets to us.”
“So we trap her.”
All three looked at me, and it took me a second to realize I was the one who’d said it.
“Trap her how?” Abbie said. “We don’t have any nets.”
“My Mama used to tell us a story about a pack they had to deal with when she was a hunter. They lured it into a blind alley and blocked off the entrance. Then they just attacked from above.”
“Deeke told that story, too,” Sarah said. “Six juvies working together.”
“Not a lot of alleys around here, though,” I said, looking around. “Would a car work?”
Tonzo nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
“How are we going to get her in there?” Abbie asked.
“Bait. That’s why it’s called a trap.” Tonzo walked over to the row of cars rusting by the sidewalk. He stopped at one that looked like a big box. “This’ll do. Doors open on both sides.”
I understood right away. We could hide on the far side of the car, ready to slam the doors shut. Someone lured the matriarch down this way, ran though the car, we closed the doors after. Timing would be tricky, and if we could slow her down when she got in there, we’d have more luck.
He tried the doors, but they were locked. “Gonna take me a minute to pick them.”
I wiped the window and peered inside. “We’ll need to tangle her up enough to give us time to get the doors shut. We could hook something through the handles on the roof, string up some kind of a slip system to raise it as the runner jumps through.”
“But we don’t have any nets,” Abbie said. “That’s what I said before.”
“Maybe there’s something in the Underground?” Papa Ray said it was quite the shopping district when he was a kid. Rows of stores, maybe stuff nobody but the old folks had ever seen before.
“Go check.” Tonzo swore and banged his fist on the door. “This’ll take me longer than I thought.”
Sarah waved a hand at Abbie. “Go with her. Just because the juvie’s dead don’t mean it’s empty down there. And hurry. If the matriarch’s got Shawna’s scent she might come looking for her.”
I headed down the stairs toward the double doors. The glass was long gone. Abbie walked beside me, a tight grip on his javelin. He handed me the one I’d dropped.
Abbie stepped in front when we reached the entrance.
“Let me go first.”
“Okay.” I readied the javelin.
We crossed over, the inside not that different from the outside, even though it felt like a whole new world. This was it. I wasn’t following someone into buildings searched a dozen times; I was heading into the unknown. I was hunting. Windows lined one side, so light got in. That would change the deeper in we went. I checked my belt for my flashlight. Still there.
Debris littered the floor and gathered around the overturned carts. Brick-front shops sat behind them, their windows broken as well, though not as many. It looked old-fashioned, but heavy concrete ribs loomed overhead, kinda like the underside of an overpass. Pipes and tubes ran along them, with bird’s nests stuck into the crevices.
We checked the first shop, stepping over the glass and avoiding the trash that had piled up in the alcove around the front door. Clothes. Not much left, but the naked mannequins lay in piles as well, some missing limbs. I shivered. It looked too much like piles of bodies.
“Check the nooks and crannies,” I said, sliding my javelin into the harness. “The obvious stuff was taken a long time ago.” But there had to be more. Mama said there was always more if you knew where to look.
I headed for the back room, but it had been picked clean. Even the desk drawers had been pulled out and emptied. Disappointment washed over me.
“We’ll have to go deeper in.”
Abbie gulped, but nodded.
I scanned inside the shops as we passed, but unless they still had supplies in the main room, I wasn’t going to waste time searching them. At the end of the row we turned, heading down the next line of shops. It grew darker here without the windows shining in. I pulled out my flashlight. Abbie’s clicked on a second later.
“Shawna, I’m scared.”
“Me too.” But I was also excited. This was what I’d dreamed of. Searching places no hunters had searched before, finding supplies that would help the block and keep us safe. How many had braved the shadows and found the treasures were hidden back there?
This was worth the risk.