CHAPTER 17

UNWELCOME

Everyone sat still and silent as the German Shepherds escorted the wolves out of town.

Then there was chaos as the assembled pets realized what a narrow escape they’d had. Darlene yowled in unbridled panic, then collapsed in the grass, her eyes covered.

The Pug barked, “What do we do? We need to do something! What if they come back?”

One of the Golden Retriever puppies asked Minerva, “So, do you want to stay here now, kitty?”

In answer, Minerva hissed and spat, lashing out with her razor claws, narrowly missing the pup’s face. He whimpered and ran off to where his sister sat with a few other young dogs.

Rocky and Gizmo huddled next to Max, ignoring the panicking pets and whispering to each other about Dolph’s betrayal. Georgie melted into a large, tearful puddle in the grass.

All Max could think about were Dolph’s parting words. The wolf hadn’t even seemed angry, really. He’d been calm, almost rational, as if no longer seeking Max’s death out of rage, but from another deep, hidden emotion.

“What’s all this?” a dog barked. It was Julep, who was marching past the mound of kibble bags with Dixie.

Minerva darted through the grass. As soon as she reached the two police dogs, she hissed. “How dare you,” said the black cat. “How dare you!”

“How dare us what, Miss Minerva?” Julep asked.

Minerva snapped her tail. “You know what! Your pack just escorted a whole herd of wild beasts through our town. Those creatures could have attacked me.” Fur bristling, she added, “And I bet they have my scent now, too. They’ll be after me for sure.”

Dixie stepped around the cat and nosed Darlene until the Lhasa Apso lowered the paw covering her eyes.

“We have it under control,” Julep said as Dixie nudged the other panicked animals into paying attention. “If we hadn’t helped those wolves, they might well have attacked us. Now that their bellies are full, they’re much less likely to come back.”

The Pug blinked. “Um, didn’t that wolf say that he’d be going after Max here?”

“He did,” Darlene yipped. “I heard him clear as the town bell. Those dogs led the wolves here; then they scared off the old lady.”

“Hey!” Rocky barked. “We didn’t do any of that.”

“It’s true,” Minerva said. “Everything was fine before these mutts appeared.”

A puppy whimpered. “Why did they do that to us?”

“They have to leave,” Darlene wailed. “Right now, Julep. Make them leave!”

“Enough!” Julep bellowed.

The German Shepherd stalked forward, glaring at each of them. Dixie stood on the gravel, watching silently.

“You all go home and sleep,” Julep said. “My officers and I will get this straightened out. Get.”

“But—” Minerva yowled.

“I said get!”

Grumbling among themselves, Minerva and the other animals left the lawn and disappeared down the darkened street. Julep and Dixie watched them go while Max, Rocky, and Gizmo huddled together on the grass. Georgie lay nearby, depressed and blubbering.

When the pets were out of sight, the police dogs came to sit in front of Max and his friends.

“Seems you have some explaining to do,” Julep said. “Several of my officers swear they saw the old lady drive out of town, and seeing as how her van is gone, I’m inclined to believe them.”

“We didn’t make her go away,” Gizmo said. “We would never do that. I can’t believe the things that cat was saying about us!”

Julep chuckled. “I trust you, little lady. But we still need to know what happened.”

“And you’re supposed to tell us about Praxis!” Dixie added.

“It’s all right, Gizmo,” Max said with a sigh. “They have the right to know what happened.”

Max started with everything Dr. Lynn had told them about the virus and what it could do. He explained that Dr. Lynn left to continue working on the cure that would let all the people come home. Georgie confirmed that she’d helped groups of animals like this before.

But of course what the two police dogs wanted to know most about was Praxis.

So Max explained about the laboratory: the white room that blasted electricity, and Gertrude the pig, who oversaw everything with an elephant nicknamed the Mountain. He provided directions to the lab as best he could.

Dixie trembled with excitement. “That doesn’t sound too far,” she said. “How long will it take us?”

“You really don’t want to go back that way,” Rocky said. “It took us weeks, and we barely made it here in one piece!”

“And won’t you be leaving the town unprotected?” Gizmo asked.

Julep paced back and forth on the lawn, while Dixie watched him, waiting for her leader to speak. “Here’s what I think,” Julep finally said. “We almost let wolves slip through today because our patrols weren’t as good as they ought to be. Fact is, without the human officers we’re not as well prepared to protect this town as we should be. Being smarter would help a lot.” He looked at Gizmo. “But you’re right, we can’t leave the town unprotected.”

“But Julep!” Dixie barked. “We have to go—we just have to!”

Julep raised a paw. “Now hold on. Let me finish. What I was going to say is that we’ll leave most of the K9 team here to keep things orderly. But you and I will go to this lab and find this pig.”

Dixie was practically dancing. “Oh, this is great! I can’t wait to leave!”

“Let’s see how she feels a week from now,” Rocky muttered to Gizmo and Max.

Clearing his throat, Max rose to his feet. “Well, good luck on your journey. I hope Praxis is everything you want it to be. If it’s all right with you, my friends and I should sleep. It’s been a long day.”

Julep nodded. “Of course.” The Shepherd started to walk away, then looked back at Max. “But Max, the other pets might be right. I don’t blame you for the old lady leaving, but there’s no denying the wolf pack is after you. As long as you and your friends are in town, we aren’t safe. You have to move on first thing. Got it?”

Max’s stomach felt hollow as Dolph’s words echoed through his mind once more. He looked down at his two small, exhausted friends, who were already halfway asleep. They hadn’t even had a full day to spend in this town. It seemed so unfair.

But they had no choice.

“We understand,” Max said softly. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Max lay on the rough floorboards of the front porch, in a darkened corner that shaded him from the glow of the streetlamps. Despite being so tired, he slept in fits and starts, opening his eyes several times to discover it was still night. The gentle snores of his friends wafted across the lawn together with the grunting of farm animals and the chirping of crickets.

Finally, after hours of battling for sleep, Max rose to all fours. He opened his jaws wide and blinked his heavy eyes, then trotted down the porch steps and onto the front walkway.

The air was thick with moisture that clung to the blades of grass and to Max’s fur. In the east, Max saw pink and orange seeping into the sky. Dawn was almost here. Which meant he and his friends needed to get out of town.

Yawning, Max went to the huddled pile of tan-and-black fur that was Rocky and Gizmo and nosed their sides until they woke up. Then he did the same to Georgie.

The big dog scrambled to his feet. “What is it?” he asked. “Are the wolves back? Or is it the gators?”

“Shh,” Max whispered. “No, we’re still safe, Georgie. It’s dawn, though. We need to leave.”

Georgie’s head drooped so low that his long, floppy ears almost touched the ground. “Oh, yeah. That.”

Rocky and Gizmo were already tearing into one of the bags of kibble. Max couldn’t help but notice that the shreds of the bag the wolves had devoured still littered the front yard. Whole patches of the lawn had been clawed up.

Dolph’s words came back to Max again, but he couldn’t succumb to fear, not now. He needed to focus on the next leg of their journey.

Kibble poured free from the bag the two small dogs had bit into, and they leaped back, tails wagging, as they watched their prize pool over the grass. Rocky said, “That’s the stuff. Beef flavor!”

“Good choice,” Gizmo said, then stuck her snout into the pile.

“We need to eat quickly,” Max said. “We may have found Dr. Lynn, but we still need to find Belle. We made a promise.”

Georgie’s head rose from the kibble. “Oh, that reminds me,” the big dog said. “Last night I told you I met some dogs from Baton Rouge.” Georgie cleared his throat. “Well, they had some things to say about Belle that you should know.”

Max nodded. “All right. We’ll talk to them before we leave.”

Max joined Georgie, Rocky, and Gizmo in eating kibble, then the four of them lapped up water from one of the many bowls Dr. Lynn had filled. Bellies full, Max asked Georgie to lead the way.

They walked by the home where they’d had those brief, wonderful hours curled up with Dr. Lynn. Max stared longingly through its wrought-iron fence as they passed, wishing he were still inside in front of a flickering fire, his head resting on the woman’s lap.

The collar she’d placed around his neck bit slightly into his skin, but Max decided he liked having it. As long as he wore it, she could find them again.

And as long as he wore it, he wouldn’t forget that the end of his journey was close.

As they passed tall, stately homes, Max saw the shadows of dogs and cats just waking up from where they’d slept on grass or beneath bushes, on porches or atop eaves. At the end of the street, where another road ran north to south, Georgie stopped walking. They stood on what was once a playground. Grass rose up taller than Max, hiding swings and the lower portion of a slide.

Dr. Lynn hadn’t ventured here with her lawn mower. They’d reached the town’s outer limits.

“This is the place,” Georgie said, gesturing toward the big brick house on the corner. It was the same as every other house on the street—several stories tall with a white-painted porch. A picket fence surrounded the yard.

Georgie nosed past the gate, which squeaked on rusting hinges, then held it open for the others. “Around back,” he said.

Inside the yard, Max caught scent of several dogs—and heard them barking excitedly.

“Good catch!”

“Watch it, it’s coming for you!”

“Woo-hoo! Did you see the air Jay got?”

Max peered around the corner to see five medium-sized dogs racing through the backyard, their tongues hanging out, looking like they were having the time of their lives. One of them had a bright green Frisbee in his mouth, which he released with a snap of his neck. The neon disk soared through the air until one of his companions caught it in her jaws. The other dogs laughed and barked in approval.

They were nearly identical, slightly smaller than Max, with shaggy black fur that covered most of their bodies. They had white fur on their bellies and chests and in a stripe down their foreheads. Their ears were pointed and alert, their yellow eyes open wide in excitement.

Border Collies, like the puppies at the beach!

“Georgie!” one of the females cried. “Did you come back to play?”

“Hi, Em!” he barked back. “Afraid not. I brought my friends I was telling you about, the ones who are looking for Belle.”

The mood in the backyard changed in an instant. The dog with the Frisbee let it drop to the grass, and the five Border Collies stared at Max, Rocky, and Gizmo.

“Brr,” Rocky muttered. “Is it just me, or did it just get chilly out here?”

“It still feels warm to me,” Max said.

Gizmo chuckled nervously. “I think he means how they’re acting, Max. But maybe they’re just shy. Let’s go say hi.”

Max, Rocky, and Gizmo trotted across the grass. The Border Collies still stared, silent.

Georgie cleared his throat. “These are the dogs from Baton Rouge,” he said. “Dee, Jay, Kay, Em, and Zee.”

Gizmo wagged her tail. “Wow, you came all the way from Baton Rouge. How brave!”

“Not really,” the male named Jay said. “It’s not that far.”

Rocky tilted his head. “Why did you leave? Were you looking for your people?”

The dogs glanced at one another. “We don’t really have any people,” Em said. “I mean, the people who raised us were just looking to sell us off. They never had a chance, though.”

“Then why did you come here?” Max asked.

Em licked her lips, then sighed. “Well, we weren’t taking too kindly to the way our neighbors were acting, the way they were forming packs and making demands. So we decided to head out on our own.” She asked Max, “Why are you looking for Belle, anyway?”

“We made a promise to a friend of hers who is no longer with us,” Max said. “An old Australian Shepherd named Boss. He wished for her to know that he didn’t abandon her on purpose.”

The Border Collies gasped.

“Oh, Boss,” Dee said. “We liked him. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Sniffling, Kay hid her head in Zee’s fur. Zee licked her reassuringly.

“You’ve come a long way for Boss,” Em said, fighting back her own tears. “And Belle should rightly know what happened to him. Just… be careful.”

Max remembered his dream of the animal parade and Belle’s stormy float. Something told him finding the Collie wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped.

“Why should we be careful?” Max asked. “Boss told us Belle was known as the nicest dog in the city.”

“Yeah,” Rocky said. “He made her sound absolutely perfect.”

“Oh, she was,” Em said. “All I know is, things changed after the people left. Belle changed. Just please.” The Border Collie met Max’s eyes. “Be very, very careful.”