As the pack wound its way through the jumble on the street, Shep began to scent just how much the wave had changed things. Every surface it had touched smelled of salt, and every puddle tasted salty and did nothing to quench a dog’s thirst. The higher the sun rose and the hotter it got, the worse the problem became. By midsun, the pack was woozy from thirst and hunger.

Higgins licked his bushy furface to try to moisten his nose. “My snout,” he whined, “I can’t smell anything over the stench of salt and rot.”

Rufus pawed at an overturned bucket. “We’ll never find any food in this place,” he grumbled. A shell with skinny legs and jagged pincer arms scrambled out from under the bucket and into the muck clogging a sewer grate.

“What was that?” Rufus cried.

Cheese loped to Rufus’s side, then sniffed the grate. “That was a crab,” he woofed as he lifted his long ears out of the tangle of leaves and trash. “They live at the beach. Why would a crab be here, away from the beach?”

“The wave smelled like the beach,” barked Shep. “Maybe the crab came with the wave?”

Daisy shoved her stunted nose into the heap on the sewer grate. “Is a crab food?” she yapped.

“I’m not sure,” woofed Cheese.

Daisy lifted her snout. “Then let’s not — snort — waste time barking about it,” she snapped. “If I don’t get a bite of kibble soon, I’m going to get growly.”

Like she’s not already growling, Shep thought.

More strange creatures — alive and dead — littered the streets. A long, green-brown thing like the neck of Shep’s family’s floor-sucker slithered under a slab of stone. Something else that resembled a scaly human kibble-plate with eyes and a flat tail flopped in a shrinking puddle. Blue sacks of air, like blown-up poop bags, sat on tangled strings of jelly. Shep didn’t want to try eating any of them — if they looked that odd, how good could they possibly taste?

The weirdness factor, however, only made Callie all the more curious. She trotted right up to one of the bags and gave it a lick.

“Ooh, Shep, it’s salty!” she yipped, tail waving and ears up. She hopped aside, offering a lick to any dog who wanted, and stepped on one of the jelly strings.

“And it bites!” cried Callie, leaping off the string. She desperately licked her paws to get them to stop stinging.

“Every dog!” Shep barked. “Back away from the poop bag!”

The pack startled. The dogs looked around their paws anxiously, searching for an attacking bag of poop, then began to scatter in different directions.

“What poop bag?” yipped Ginny, shuffling directly toward the thing.

“That blue balloon!” snapped Shep. But Ginny trundled directly onto the bag and caught her paws in the jelly strings.

“In Lassie’s name, get it off me!” she yelped. Ginny stumbled back and tripped over Callie. The two girldogs rolled snout over tail into a mound of sand.

Shep couldn’t help but pant as Ginny — all fluff and flailing paws — tried to right herself, and repeatedly smacked Callie in the snout.

“Would some dog offer a paw?” grumbled Callie as she winced away from Ginny’s writhing rump.

Shep nudged Ginny with his muzzle and she got her paws under her.

“Let’s agree that we’ll stick to eating only the kibble we know,” Shep woofed. “No more sampling of the poop bags, the scaly tubes, or anything that smells like the wave.”

Oscar sank into a sagging sit. “But every thing smells like the wave,” he groaned.

“We’ll find some fresh kibble, pup,” Shep yipped, licking Oscar’s head. Great Wolf knows what we’ll do if we don’t….

Cheese swung his long snout up at the stone building across the street. “The wave didn’t reach the rodent floor,” he said. “Maybe the dens on the upper floors of that building stayed dry.”

Higgins strutted to Cheese’s side. “Could be worth checking,” he barked. “Better that than stumbling around on poop bags that bite.”

The dogs picked their way to the front of the squat building. Three rows of windows glinted on its face. The first level of the building had been drenched by the wave, but the upper levels seemed untouched.

Virgil snapped his teeth around the knob and, with one tug, pulled the entire door from the wall. He fell back, barely avoiding being crushed by the falling plank.

“What’s wrong with the door?” he cried as he scrambled to his paws.

Callie sniffed the sodden door frame, which had buckled and broken from the single tug. “We have to be careful,” she barked. “The whole world has changed. Things won’t work the same as they did before the storm.”

Shep nosed his way into the dark beyond the door. He stood in a dank hallway. The hall extended back into the building, and a staircase directly in front of him led up to the second level. Paper peeled back from the walls, curling down like giant leaves above him. Shep scented several distinct dens on the first floor, and more above.

“We need to find what kibble we can before the whole building collapses,” Callie snuffled behind him. “Tell the pack to split up, small dogs with big.”

Shep turned. “Higgins and Cheese, and Dover and Rufus, you cover this first level. There might be some food the wave missed. The rest, follow me and Callie up the stairs.”

Boji pawed at the doorway. “Perhaps Oscar and I should wait here?” she woofed, tail waving hopefully.

“Smells good to me,” Callie yipped. “You stay here and keep watch.”

Boji’s ears pricked up. “Watch? For what?”

“Anything,” Shep woofed to her. “Everything.” He licked Boji’s snout and pawed Oscar’s ear. “Bark and we’ll all come running.”

The second level was darker than the first, as the only light shone through one thin window in the building’s front. Shep felt the building shiver when the wind gusted, and the floorboards groaned with the dogs’ every step.

Shep split the teams up — Virgil with Ginny and Snoop with Daisy. Shep and Callie took the doors toward the back of the building; Shep figured that, as leaders, he and Callie should be brave and check out the dens farthest from the light.

As Shep and Callie moved into the shadows, they discovered that the back half of the hall had collapsed. Only one door was accessible, and it was already open, thanks to a large chair that was jammed into the door frame. Callie shoved her way under it to check the inside while Shep waited in the hall. The misplaced chair meant the wave had reached the upper levels, too. Shep’s hopes sank — could any of the food have survived?

“The food room’s been trashed,” Callie said as she trotted out from under the chair.

Shep sniffed the pile of rubble that used to be the hall. “This stuff smells unstable. I don’t think we can get to any other doors.”

“Maybe we don’t have to,” Callie barked. She pawed at the wall, digging her claws into its surface. The paint crumbled and a small hole appeared. She scratched again, and a bigger chunk of wall fell out.

“Things don’t work the same as before,” woofed Callie, “but that’s not always a bad thing.”

Shep joined her in digging, and soon they had scratched a large hole through the wall to the den on the other side.

Callie squeezed her way into the den, and Shep stuck his head through the hole after her, flattening his ears to avoid a snarl of wires inside the wall. The den was dimly lit by windows along the opposite side of the room. The salt smell of the wave covered most surfaces, though Shep also scented fresh kibble, untouched by the salt.

Callie barked from farther inside the den, “The Bath room has fresh water in the big white bowl!” Shep heard a splash.

Desperate for a drink, Shep jerked his shoulders and wriggled his chest to fit through the hole. He tumbled into the den just as Callie emerged from the Bath room, muzzle moist with fresh water.

“There’s kibble over that way,” Shep woofed as he struggled to his paws. He raced to the Bath room and lapped up as much water as his stomach would bear.

When he was finished, he found Callie dragging a kibble bag across the floor. She spotted Shep and dropped the bag, panting with exhaustion.

“Good news — pant — the bag smells fresh,” she managed. “But where’s the dog who was supposed to eat it?”

Shep’s tail drooped. He scented the air. “Not here,” he woofed.

Callie slumped to her haunches. “How are we going to do this?” she sighed.

“Do what?” Shep woofed, padding over to his friend.

“Survive,” she snuffled. “We haven’t even been Out side for a full sun, and already we have stung paws, only one bowl of fresh water, and a single bag of kibble.”

“I thought you found all this roof-falling-in-on-our-backs stuff exhilarating,” Shep woofed, teasingly.

“That was before every thing became so hard,” Callie groaned.

Shep licked her nose and wagged his tail. “We’ll think of something,” he said, grinning. “Or, better yet, you’ll think of something and I’ll nose every one into doing it.”

Callie smiled. “Go team,” she woofed in a goofy bark.

 

Shep dragged the kibble bag behind him as he and Callie climbed down the stairs. The others were waiting in front of the doorway, their tails wagging. A small pile of different kinds of human kibble rested on the collapsed entry door.

“Can you believe our luck?” yipped Rufus. “I smell cheese in one of the bags!” Drool dripped from his silver snout.

Callie nipped Shep’s shoulder as he was about to step Outside.

“Drag the bag past Higgins,” Callie snuffled, “and tell him to start dividing up the food.”

“Why can’t we all just dig in?” woofed Shep.

“Because if we do that, the dogs are going to stuff their snouts. There’s not enough, even with this bag, to fill every dog’s belly.” Callie cocked her head as if waiting for Shep’s thoughts to catch up with her own.

Shep looked at the kibble, then at the dogs. What Shep had considered a small pack suddenly seemed enormous.

“Okay,” Shep groaned. “But why Higgins? I think I should divide the food. I am, after all, the big dog here.”

Callie flapped her ears around her head, frustrated. “What do you know about how much kibble an Airedale needs versus a pug? A young pup versus an old timer?” Callie stood tall, but her ears drooped, like this was more barking than she thought necessary on the issue. “Higgins has done research on this stuff. He’ll be fair.”

Shep considered arguing with her, that Higgins was a bit of a tail dragger himself, but he didn’t have any better ideas. And Higgins did know about breeds, a concept that Shep had a weak bite on at best.

Callie snorted impatiently. “I make the decisions on this team, right? So just follow my scent on this.”

Shep was startled by her sharp tone. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But Higgins better give me that old bone I see peeking out.”

“You’re the big dog, Shep,” Callie woofed, flopping from the landing down onto the street, “not the Great Wolf accepting offerings.”

Shep barked Callie’s orders accordingly, first privately to Higgins, then to the whole pack. Higgins puffed up like a Ball at being given such an important job, and began at once calculating the rations each dog should get. Some dogs grumbled — Rufus (of course) and Ginny, who claimed to be on a special “high-fiber” diet — but Shep reminded them of what Callie had woofed, that this was a new world with new rules.

“One of those rules is that we share all our kibble, and it’s divided fairly,” Shep barked. “Don’t worry,” he said, somewhat more gently, “no dog’s going to starve. We’re all packmates.”

They ate quietly in a tight ring of paws, each dog facing into the circle so that they looked at each other, and not at the wreckage of the world around them. Strange sounds reverberated off the buildings and streets. Bird cries carried from far away — or were they the shrieks of more buildings collapsing? As the clouds turned deep orange in the setting sun, every dog huddled closer into the circle.