The cool air of twilight seeps into the thorny camp before I feel comfortable investigating.
“It’s time,” I whisper directly into Diana’s ear. She flicks it at me like I’m a gnat, so I risk getting up and slide over to Spike.
She senses me and opens one eye. “Now?”
“Now,” I agree, leading the way to the hole in the center of this fortification.
We carefully pad our way to the edge of the hole and look down to see two mammals positioned as far away from each other as physically possible.
“Wheels,” Spike hisses, recognizing the weasel in the darkness right away. I’m squinting at the other animal, trying to recognize it and feeling like I do.
It picks its head up, and two big glowing eyes stare up at me, filled with such sadness that they make me take a step away from the hole.
“We have to get him out,” Spike whispers at me. My eyes are still locked on the unfortunate second animal, my brain fighting with my heart.
Wheels doesn’t respond to Spike’s repeated hisses, but the young animal looks from Wheels to us and back again before whispering in a soft voice, “Do you want me to try and wake him?”
Spike looks horrified at the idea and hisses back, “Stay away from him, you … you dog!”
He’s a dog, yes, but even more … I think he’s a very young Great Dane. I can tell by his long, rectangular head and square jaw. He’s young enough that he and the weasel are about the same size.
The puppy seems to be too used to the angry voice directed his way and turns away from us, burying his face under his long tail without another sound. I remember stories I have overheard from Hannah about her experiences before she met Pickles. When she talked about the abuse she suffered at the paws of cruel, bullying cats, she would seem to contract into herself, becoming a smaller version of her usually tall, lithe body. This pup’s reaction reminds me of that physical reaction. Some animals get smaller and talk more when confronted with trauma, and some animals get bigger and quieter. I went the second way. I don’t know why, but I can see how it happens.
“Emmy,” Spike says, actually poking me in the shoulder to get me to look her way. “Are you listening to me? We have to get Wheels out of there.”
“Both of them,” I hear myself saying, my voice gluey with emotions.
Spike is the one to stare at me now. “Both of them? Why? No, the dog … we don’t want to have some yappy puppy dog following us around.”
“Why not?”
“Look, I know how you feel about Diana, and … she’s a special case,” Spike admits, glancing back at the sleeping corgi, “but I’m telling you, she’s not a normal dog. She doesn’t bite you or chase you or bark like she’s nuts and attract zombies. But this puppy … we just can’t take a chance. They can’t be trusted,” Spike says.
“Like weasels?”
“No! Not like weasels,” Spike answers angrily. “You’ve got things all backwards. And I don’t have time to explain it again. You stay here. I’m going to grab some food for Wheels. Be ready.”
With that, she slides back to Diana and the pile of food.
I glance around at the piles of sleeping guinea pigs. They may be fighters, but these are not mammals of honor. They threw a defenseless weasel and a puppy in a hole. I will not fight alongside them. I crouch down so that I’m lying right beside the hole, as if I’ve rolled here in a fitful sleep.
“Hey,” I whisper down at the pup.
He tries to ignore me, but I know that he is curious. Finally, he looks back up at me from under his tail.
“Are you going to yell at me too?”
“Never,” I promise, and I mean it. Wow, it’s hard looking him in the face like this. “I’m Emmy. And that weasel over there — his name is Wheels.”
I wait, and finally, the pup says, “I’m Chewie.”
“Chewie,” I repeat, testing out. “I like it. Did you pick it?”
The puppy looks confused by the question. “No. My pets named me just before they ran away from the zombies. I only knew them for a few days. They left me behind.”
My heart thuds at that sad betrayal. It’s time for both of us to change tactics: this puppy will have to regain his confidence, and I will have to relocate my words to help him get there. “How did you get here? In this hole?” I ask.
Chewie gives his head a shake before answering. “I kept getting chased by zombies, by big cats, by mean rats … no one had time for me. Eventually, I left the rows of houses and made it down to a ravine. I fell asleep one night under a bush, and when I woke up I was surrounded by these scary hairy animals. They put me down here. I can’t really climb out on my own.”
He turns his face to his lower quarters, and I notice that yes, he has only one hind leg. As a pup, he probably hasn’t had time to adjust to his three-legged reality, but I have met other mammals with missing limbs who more than kept up with their peers. An unfriendly goat who lives at the camp springs to mind. When we got these two out of this situation, I would have to introduce them.
“If you want, you could come with us,” I offer.
“Come with you?” he asks, sitting up a bit. “How? Where?”
“Somewhere better than this hole for sure,” I promise. “Somewhere with kind, clever animals, and caring pets, and enough food.”
“You come from a place like that?” Chewie asks, wonder making his voice wispy. “And I could really come with you?”
“Really,” I say, fighting the urge to describe my reasons for leaving. They seem oddly unimportant now when weighed against the good things about The Menagerie that I want Chewie to experience.
I turn my eyes to the immobile lump at the other end of the hole.
“He’s knocked out,” Chewie says, following my gaze. “Landed on his head when the guinea pigs threw him down here. He’s not the most graceful animal.”
To my surprise, I find myself defending Wheels. “He was thrown in a hole,” I growl. “Grace has nothing to do with it.” Plus, I think, he’s probably playing dead. It’s his signature move. Based on how the guinea pigs seem to feel about weasels, it might have saved his life this time.
Chewie’s brown eyes get wider, and I realize that growl betrayed my anger, but it wasn’t directed at him. It was for his captors. “I’m going to get you both out of there,” I promise him, purposefully softening my tone for maybe the second time in my life.
That’s, of course, when Spike shuffles back to my side, her arms laden with vegetables for the weasel. “Why are you talking to that dog?”
“His name is Chewie, and we’re getting him out of that hole,” I say, angry at Spike for the first time since we fought a zombie and fell off a cliff together.
Spike’s eyes narrow to slits. “Fine. But he’s your problem.”
“Who’s your problem?” Diana asks sleepily, wandering over to where we sit by the hole. “Hey, Wheels! You found him. And who is this sweet pup?”
Chewie stands up excitedly, barking up at Diana. “Hi! I’m Chewie!”
“Shhh!” I say, trying to calm the pup down so he doesn’t wake up the guinea pigs.
“See!” hisses Spike, waving her paws at the puppy. “Dogs are loud!”
Diana drops to her belly and sticks her snout into the hole as far down as she can. “Hi, Chewie, aren’t you a darling? We have to be quiet. Can you hear me if I whisper? I’m Diana.”
Chewie looks so happy to see another dog I think he’s going to wag his tail right off. Diana’s entire back end is dancing as well. Like I said, dogs have two moods: crazy happy and wretchedly sad. I never want to see Chewie wretchedly sad again. It might break my heart.
“What are you doing down there with Wheels?” Diana asks, interrupting my thought.
“We’re going to fight,” Chewie says, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Do you know any other dogs, Diana?”
“Wait, you’re going to what?” Spike interrupts.
“Fight! The guinea pigs feed the winner,” Chewie explains. “I had to learn to fight other animals, but I’ve gotten pretty good. And I’m so very hungry. Diana is a nice name. Where’s your tail?”
“I … my tail?” Diana answers, looking back up at us in confusion and growing horror at Chewie’s words.
“Rumi said there would be an opportunity for Wheels to defend himself,” I say, understanding the dilemma immediately.
“You know Wheels can’t defend himself against a dog,” Spike says, glaring down at Chewie. “He’s not a fighter.”
“He won’t have to be,” I say, the words shocking me as they come out of my mouth. Am I actually suggesting not fighting our way out of a situation? I’ve spent too much time with strategically minded war-avoiding felines like Pickles and Wally. But I have an idea that I think they would be proud of. “You don’t really want to hurt Wheels, do you, Chewie?”
“Of course not,” Chewie says, his eyes going back and forth between me and Diana.
“You’ve got an idea,” Diana says to me.
“I do, but I need everyone to trust me,” I say, looking up to watch Rumi emerge from his sleeping place, followed by a cadre of his guinea pigs. “Especially you, Chewie. Do you want to come with us?”
Chewie nods his head so hard his eyes cross.
Spike looks down into the hole, her whole body vibrating with doubt. The puppy glances away from her heated gaze.
“I trust you, Emmy,” Spike says to me, her eyes still on the puppy. “If you promise to get Wheels out of there, I’ll follow your lead.”
“Chewie, you have to do what Emmy says,” Diana says, using her newfound influence over the younger dog. “No matter how weird it sounds.”
Chewie stares up at her and nods, his eyes wide. “I will. I promise. You won’t leave me?”
“Never,” Diana whispers down at him. “We never leave family behind.”
I feel a smile tugging at my mouth for the first time in a long time, but there is a new battle to fight, and it won’t involve my claws or Diana’s wiles.
“Strangers,” Rumi says as I approach him, “the sun will be up soon. I think it is time you kept your word and left this place.”
“We will be on our way,” I agree. “Heading directly west, the way we came, right, Spike?”
“Riiight,” Spike says, sounding unconvincing to my ear.
“West, straight through the gate and onwards,” Diana says much more believably, and then barks a few times for emphasis, getting Chewie’s attention. I hope he understood.
Rumi nods in satisfaction, flicking his hair at his underlings. The signal prompts a bunch of guinea pigs to run toward the ropes that will raise the thorn door.
“But we need to bury our friend first,” I say.
Rumi tilts his pompadour at me in confusion. “Bury your friend?” He looks at Spike and then at Diana.
“Our friend Wheels. He died during the night. He was very weak,” I say, pointing at the hole, “with Crowvid-19.”
The guinea pigs are all ears now, even the ones holding the ropes.
“Crowvid-19?” Rumi repeats at me.
“He caught it from riding crows,” I explain, shaking my head. “A common sickness amongst those fowl creatures. And weasels, well, they aren’t the most careful mammals.”
“When you came upon us, we knew he was dying. We were getting ready to cremate him,” Diana says, catching on to my strategy. “That’s why we had the fire.”
The guinea pigs around us are now looking at each other, whispering amongst themselves.
“The wolves interrupted us,” Spike says, nodding. “Now we have no fire, but we can still bury our friend. It’s the least we can do.”
“We wouldn’t want anyone else to get sick,” I say, planting my final seed.
The guinea pigs finally break ranks and scamper around looking for water to cleanse themselves of this disease they’ve brought into their camp. Now it’s like someone dropped two dozen wigs on the floor and they are all playing the floor is lava.
“He is not dead,” Rumi says, though his hair starts to look a little limp as he says these words. He pads over to the hole behind us, dodging frantic guinea pigs, and calls down, “You, dog, poke him.”
Chewie looks up at Diana, who gives an infinitesimal nod, and then the pup pokes the weasel. He pokes him again. He finally rolls him over so that Wheels is lying face down in the hole. That is professional-level playing dead he’s doing down there. At least I hope he’s playing dead.
Rumi backs up in horror, trips over a pure white wig/guinea pig, and says, “We will fill in the hole. Get the dog out … we will get dirt and …”
“Oh no, the dog is infected too now,” I say, shaking my head sadly at the puppy in the hole. “He will be gone soon. You need to bury him too. Just to be safe.”
I don’t know Chewie, but any animal would be freaking out at this suggestion. He stares up at us, his eyes begging to be saved. But he says nothing. He doesn’t even whine like I’m sure he wants to. Dogs are loyal to the very end.
“Do it. Listen to the hamster,” Rumi commands from his prostrate position, giving in to verbal commands over his limp and unresponsive hair. “Bury them in dirt. Do it now.”
“Well, if you’ve got this, we will be on our way,” I say, walking away from the hole. “If you could open these gates?”
“Yes, begone,” Rumi says, totally distracted at this point, his exaggerated accent gone. “Our kindness has been answered with disease. We will never have dealings outside of our own kind again. It’s not safe. And I advise you to never set paw in our territory again.”
“Like we asked to be jumped in the forest,” Spike says under her breath, but none of the guinea pigs are paying attention. They’re too freaked out.
Somehow, Rumi gets the guinea pigs organized enough to pull the ropes that will release us back into the forest.
“Go,” I say to Diana as soon as the gate is raised high enough, and then I follow her out.
“West?” she asks.
“West,” I agree.
“What’s west?” Spike whispers, following us.
We get behind a bush directly west of the gate, and I start digging immediately. “Help me!”
Spike and Diana leap into action, digging beside me, following my lead. We go down at an angle, with no spiral at all, and we keep going and going until the sun is well above the horizon. I imagine that my paws are the giant claws of a panther and, as I push the dirt behind me, that my hind paws have the power of a full-grown kangaroo. I dig. I don’t stop for breath or rest, but my brain is buzzing. I start to think this plan was too complex for a young puppy and a terrified weasel. I start to wonder if I’ve lost another dog who looked at me with trust in his eyes.
That’s when a snout I recognize pushes its way out of the dirt in front of us.
“Wheels,” breathes Spike, digging more frantically.
“Spike! Thank the Wolverine,” Wheels says weakly as soon as his entire head is out. “I didn’t know where or when it would be safe to come up. I just heard Emmy say to aim the tunnel west.”
We pull Wheels out of the tunnel and then, with his help, dig out Chewie, who was right behind him, learning to dig beside the weasel as they escaped their grave.
“Did I do it right?” Chewie gasps as soon as he is free. “Mr. Wheels?”
“You did it perfectly,” Wheels says, wrapping his scrawny arms around the shaking puppy. “We’ll make a burrowing animal out of you yet.”