“There’s no one coming?” Mia asked for at least the seventh time, plus more. She kept looking through the rearview looker as if she thought it was broken. Every time she asked, Jess would turn around and look out the back.
“Nobody,” she replied.
I sat there looking at my pack. Mia was our newest addition; she seemed like a nice enough two-legger and Jess liked her just fine. I was going to keep an eye on her for at least a little while, even if she had helped us escape. If the cat was right, there weren’t very many trust-worthy two-leggers. Something that made my stomach hurt just to think about. I didn’t necessarily believe the cat, but it seems to me she’s been right at least as many times as she’s been wrong and I am not going to have that little self-serving feline tell me ‘I told you so’ again.
“Mia smells nice, think she has any milk?” Zach asked.
Patches, who had been slumbering (seems that’s all she ever does), jumped up when Zach spoke and had to work hard at not falling off the wheeler seat. Out of us all she’d been having the hardest time adjusting to the baby ‘speaking’.
I knew what he was asking. I’d seen Zach suckle from his alpha’s teat before. I did not smell that on her. If she had ever been with child it was a long time ago.
Ben-Ben was curled up and sleeping next to Zach, his legs began to twitch and he would let out involuntary yips. I figured he was having a bad dream.
“Ben-Ben,” Zach said, reaching a fat fist down to the dog’s sensitive snout. He gripped a bunch of the dog’s whiskers and yanked.
Ben-Ben pulled back awake, his eyes wide with fright. It took him a few moments to figure out where he was. “Riley, it was the worst dream ever!” he cried.
I figured he was dreaming about the lost defense of our home or any of the other bunches of things that had gone wrong since that night. Maybe he was even remembering his days at doggie jail. I shuddered thinking on any of them. I should have known beforehand when he spoke.
“There was this giant piece of bacon!” he started, drool falling from his maw. “It looked so soft, and fat was dripping from it. I just wanted to eat it so bad.” He whined. “But every time I tried to move closer, the bacon would move, too. And then when it finally stopped moving, I was stuck in deep, wet ground. I couldn’t move my paws, Riley. It was the worst thing ever!”
That’s the worst thing ever? I thought. If only that was the case.
“Oh, you poor baby,” Mia said, turning to look at Zach. “You must be starving.”
“I’m starving!” Ben-Ben barked, licking her paw.
“Umm, Mia, you’re drifting off the road,” Jess said, bracing her hands in front of her.
We were all tossed around as the wheeler was jerked back onto the hard ground.
“Sorry,” Mia said sheepishly. I could tell she was embarrassed.
Mia looked up again at the rear viewer. “I don’t understand why he isn’t following. He’d never give up so easily.”
“It’s a good thing, right? Maybe he just doesn’t think we’re important enough,” Jess said with hope.
“It’s not if we’re important enough, it’s that we defied him and he needs to make an example out of us. People will think if we could do it then so could they, and pretty soon his power will be undermined. He’ll never allow that.”
Two-leggers had horrible noses, and we had so much distance on him, I wasn’t sure why they were so concerned. I had heard and shared in their happiness as they said we had entered into Arizona and then another strange place called Utah. How far could he track us?
I once heard alpha male say ‘great minds think alike’. It was two summers ago and he had just come home from a place he called ‘work’. (Sounded like walk to me, I never understood why I couldn’t go with him). She-alpha had come out the front opener to greet him, kind of like a good butt-smelling. And before he could offer her his greeting, she said ‘Ice cream’.
“Just what I was thinking – great minds think alike,” he had replied with a smile.
I had not known what that velvety sweet treat was until we all piled into the wheeler and headed out to a small home that traded paper and metal for the stuff. Best trade ever! Can’t eat paper or metal.
Jess’ other brother Daniel, who died the night of the dead ones, had gotten a huge serving of the treat. When he went to lick it, part of it had fallen off and onto the ground. He had cried almost as much as when he had fallen off his two-wheeler and made life fluid come out his knees. I didn’t see the problem; I had sniffed at the ice cream once and licked it clean off the hard ground, loving every tongue full, even at the end when my tongue got hot from licking the ground! Oh that was heavenly.
“We’re two states over,” Jess said. “How can he follow us?”
And just like that, the fond memory of the fallen treat was wiped from my mind.
“We’re on the same road we left town on…Route 15. How hard do you think it’d be?” Mia asked back.
“Can’t we take another road?” Jess asked. I could smell the waves of panic coming off of her.
“Maybe, but I don’t know the area and we don’t have a GPS. Check the glove box for a map,” Mia said.
Jessie unlatched the small container up front. “Whoa!” she exclaimed. I peeked my head around to get a look, hoping it was ice cream or maybe bacon-flavored ice cream so we could all be happy.
“Does it have bullets?” Mia asked.
“You tell me,” Jess replied, handing it to Mia who took her hands off the steering device. The wheeler once again headed off the hard packed ground.
“Mia you’re doing that drifting thing again,” Jess said with no small measure of alarm.
“The two-legger might be a good one, but she’s going to get us all killed nonetheless,” Patches said. “I could drive better than her.”
I snorted, thinking how her little legs would try to reach the go-faster and the go-slower pedals on the floor.
“It won’t be so funny when we’re upside down,” Patches said haughtily.
I turned my head as far over as I could. It made my stomach feel funny, and I agreed with the cat AGAIN that ‘no’ it wouldn’t be so funny if we were upside down. I barked to get Mia’s attention. She looked at me in the rear viewer and she immediately gripped the steerer as the wheels bit into the soft dirt, sending the rear of the wheeler into what Jess called a fish-tail. That made no sense--it didn’t smell like that gross stuff the cat liked to eat. Two-leggers are funny animals.
The burning disc was coming up as Mia stopped the wheeler. Jess got out and stretched and then opened the door so that the rest of us could get out. I hopped down, immediately followed by Patches. Ben-Ben looked like he was still sulking from his near-bacon experience. Jess had to coax him to join us.
“I’m hungry, Jess,” Zach said, smiling as he reached for her nose.
“Are you hungry?” She nuzzled his face.
“He just told her, why can’t she understand him?” I asked.
“I wish I couldn’t understand him either,” Patches said, going towards the sand.
“As much as I hate it Jess, we’re going to have to pull off into one of these towns and look for supplies and gas.” Mia shielded her eyes from the burning disc and looked around.
Neither of them were happy about it, and to be honest…neither was I. We had found Winke and Faye, but most two-leggers had been – at the best – distrustful; or worse, outright hostile. The last one taking us all, save Patches, hostage.
“There were signs for a place called Hurricane a few miles up,” Jess said.
“Not sure I like the name, but it’s as good a place as any,” Mia said.
Ben-Ben walked over towards the side of the road; he lifted his leg, almost making water on Patches. She hissed and ran away.
“Next time you try that, I’m going to put a claw in a sensitive place,” Patches told him as she groomed herself.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
He appeared as if he hadn’t woken up too well. Still dreaming of his giant bacon slab I would imagine; but then again, which of us there right then wasn’t. My stomach was twisting in knots thinking of anything to eat. I was tempted to ask the cat if she wanted to hunt the green lizard – chicken-tasting things – when Mia looked around and told Jess we should get going.
According to what Jess said, the place called Hurricane was twelve miles off of the main hard-packed road. It didn’t sound all that far to walk, but with the wheeler blowing out cool air from the front I didn’t see why we should go out into the heat…especially without any ice cream.