The dogs snuggled together in small groups around the edges of the Car-den, all except Zeus and Shep, who sat on opposite sides of its open front. Between Shep’s paws, several ants were trying to carry a crumb of moldy bread. They moved efficiently; if one ant dropped a corner, the next ant picked up the edge and the food moved toward wherever they were taking it. The ants worked together but seemed indifferent to each other. Shep glanced around at his pack.

Callie was curled next to Fuzz, who barked her next lesson in cat. Fuzz licked Callie’s ears as she repeatedly garbled a meow. Boji and Dover played in the corner with a striped stick they’d found in the Car-den. Even an emotional stuffed-nose like Shep could see how much these four cared for one another. After they went home to their families, how would they suffer being apart? And Rufus and Ginny — those two were like jaws: They fit each other perfectly. Didn’t they see how great it would be to stay together as a pack? What kept the ants shuffling on, working with bugs they cared less about than a kibble?

Maybe if he’d been a better alpha, his friends would have agreed to stay. Daisy had already woofed so much. Shep smelled her behind him, yapping with Pumpkin about the defense team. Pumpkin couldn’t believe that a pug could fight alongside big dogs.

“No offense,” the fluffy girldog yipped, “but how could you compare as a fighter with a rottweiler?”

Daisy gave a haughty snort. “It’s not about how big you are when you’re fighting,” she barked. “It’s all about your stance, how you present yourself.”

Zeus panted from his corner. “Think you could take me, yapper?” he snarled.

Daisy didn’t even raise her hackles. “I guess that depends on how long you could survive, missing that front paw.” She glared at the boxer for a heartbeat, then continued woofing with Pumpkin.

Shep wagged his tail. He’d turned Daisy from a wimpy pet into a tough-as-claws defense dog. Who cared that he was a terrible show dog and couldn’t fake friendliness to an attacking human — he was a good alpha. So why didn’t his friends want to stay?

“No one licking your tail tonight?” Zeus grumbled from the opposite corner.

“I don’t need any dog to lick my tail,” Shep snapped back, curling tighter around his paws.

Zeus panted lightly, then licked his hurt paw. “Every dog likes to have their tail licked,” he woofed. “Isn’t that why we stick with our humans? So we always have someone to scratch us behind the ears?”

“That’s not why I stuck by my boy,” Shep grunted.

“You woof ‘stuck’ like you’ve moved on from your human,” Zeus barked. “So you still think you’re going to stay wild?”

“Not wild the way you were wild.”

“You think there’s another way?” Zeus woofed. “You think you can do anything but be the toughest dog on the street to survive with the wild dogs? Let me clear that scent up for you, friend: You can’t.”

“I would never become a killer,” Shep growled. “I would never hunt down my friends.” Then he added, “Former friends.”

Zeus grimaced. “True,” he barked. “I didn’t have to do that.”

Shep lifted his head, turning his ears toward Zeus. “Why did you, Zeus?” he woofed. “Why did you attack us?”

Now it was Zeus’s turn to shift away from Shep. He rested his head on the other side of his paws; Shep could see nothing but the tips of his ears. “I’m a bad dog,” he grumbled. “Bad from claws to jowl.”

Something in the way he woofed it made it seem like Zeus wasn’t barking all his thoughts on the issue. Shep sniffed and scented that Zeus was anxious and angry and sad, all in the same heartbeat. Part of him wanted to curl next to his old friend, to offer him some comfort, but then he thought of Higgins and Virgil and Honey and all the other dogs who had died at Zeus’s command. Zeus didn’t deserve comforting.

Shep licked up the ants, dug his nose between his paws, and closed his eyes to the light.

 

Shep slept in fitful bouts. By the time the sun set, he felt more exhausted than when he had lain down.

“Time to move out,” he woofed.

Zeus rose from the shadows. He looked like he’d slept as poorly as Shep. Blaze had once woofed, The unhappy dog gets no rest from his troubles. Of all that girldog’s crazy beliefs, this was the only one that had proven itself true.

Fuzz appeared at Shep’s side. “Fuzz check street,” he meow-barked, then skittered down the pavement.

The others woke and stretched, and Daisy began barking them into formation.

“No,” yapped Pumpkin. “No formations. We should move in small groups or as single dogs. And I’m not even sure we should all go together. What if we split up and met at the beach?”

Shep smoothed his hackles. The fluffy girldog’s every bark set him on edge. “We don’t even know how far we are from the beach,” he grumbled. “We could wander for suns before we met up again. And what if you ran into a wild dog? Would you be able to charm your way out of a real battle?”

Callie flattened her ears and raised her eyebrows: She was not amused. “I think we can keep within scent of one another without raising any suspicion,” she barked. “I haven’t smelled, heard, or seen any humans pass the Car-den this sun. It might just be the group of dens we’re in, but I think that most of the city is still empty.”

Pumpkin gave Shep a hurt look and flicked her tail, as if waiting for an apology. Ginny shuffled to her side and licked her head, offering her some comfort from Shep’s bullying. Great Wolf, he sighed.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Shep grumbled, tail low. He was tired of every dog contradicting his orders. He regained his stance, raising ears and tail, and repeated Callie’s idea. “We move in small groups — three dogs at most. Stay within scent-range of me. I will track directly toward sunrise.”

Rufus raised his bushy gray ears. “And if we do happen to bump snouts with a wild dog?” he yipped.

“I’ll smell it,” Shep barked, “and come running.”

Oscar, sitting near Zeus’s hurt paw, looked at Shep with a smile on his jowls, the old sparkle in his eye. At least some dog still viewed Shep as an alpha.

Fuzz scampered back into the garage. “Street clear,” he hissed. “One Car pass. Saw old human in broken den. Broom still in hand.”

Shep licked the cat on the head as a sign of thanks. Fuzz cringed, then looked up at Shep like he’d piddled on his fur. The cat licked a paw and began grooming the besmirched hairs.

Pumpkin divided the dogs into groups that would attract the least attention. “We have to balance the cute with the … less cute,” she woofed, ears pricked and head tilted in thought. “Boji, you go with Zeus and Oscar, and Dover —”

“I will not go with that killer,” Boji growled. She began to tremble, as if raising her hackles physically pained her.

Dover licked Boji’s nose. “I think I’ll stay with Boji,” he woofed. “If it’s all right with the rest of the pack.” He glanced at Pumpkin, ears up and tail flat.

Pumpkin sighed, as if this were a huge problem. “Fine,” she snuffled. “Boji, you go with Dover. I’ll go with Rufus and Ginny. Daisy —”

“Daisy sticks with Zeus and Oscar,” Shep interrupted.

Pumpkin glared at him. “I was just going to bark the same thing. So that leaves you with Callie and the cat.” Pumpkin gave him the once-over with her beady black eyes. “I hope they’re enough to counter your general growliness.”

I’ll show you growly, Shep grumbled to himself, but let the girldog’s comments go. If Callie thought Pumpkin was on the right scent, then there had to be something to what the fluffy girldog woofed. And the Great Wolf knew, Shep had proven himself worse than Zeus at dealing with the humans they’d encountered so far.

As the last rays of sunlight dulled to deep purple blue, the dogs headed out of the den toward the beach. The moon shimmered in the sky, a fat crescent of white, and already a few fires of the Great Wolf’s coat glimmered.

The street wound through a collection of dens, all of a similar size. The dogs traveled undisturbed and Shep couldn’t scent any hidden danger, so they stayed together in a loose clump as they loped down the Sidewalk. The storm had barely touched some of the dens; others were missing windows or whole walls. The light of a dim lamp warmed a curtain in one — all the dogs drifted toward its familiar glow until Shep’s growl woke them from their trance.

The road swung away from the dens and ended at a larger street.

“We split up here,” woofed Shep.

He had Boji and Dover take the lead, followed by Daisy, Oscar, and Zeus. Shep’s team left third, with Pumpkin, Ginny, and Rufus at the rear.

“I don’t know why we have to go last,” grumbled Ginny. “Lassie knows, we can move faster than that boxer.”

“Exactly,” barked Shep. “I can’t have every dog running ahead with Zeus limping at the rear. We need to stay within scent-range of one another.”

They moved down the large street in a line and then split off onto side roads. If Shep lost the scent of a dog, he howled their name. After several rounds of howling, the pack had a sense of how far they could wander before they had gone too far.

Callie and Fuzz mumbled woofs in cat back and forth to one another. Shep felt like the odd dog out. He’d hoped that maybe he and Callie could have barked more as they walked, that maybe he could have tried to convince her again to stay with him. But she was oblivious to his entreaties. Every time he barked something to her, she answered in as few woofs as possible. She wasn’t unfriendly, just uninterested.

The night passed uneventfully. They crossed under a huge road and heard the whoosh of Cars flying down the pavement above them, but the road they followed remained mostly empty. One Car drove by — one of the big, boxy metal machines driven by the men in green — but either it didn’t see or didn’t care about the three dogs trotting along the pavement. Pumpkin’s plan was working: The smaller groups apparently weren’t considered a threat by the men in green.

As the sun rose, the road swung toward the cold winds, then ended in a canal. The others had run into the same problem, and they all met up with Shep and Callie at the main road, which had the only bridge as far as any dog could smell.

“I think we should keep going,” woofed Pumpkin, who seemed to buzz with energy. “I think I can smell salt. We’re getting close to the beach!”

“The canal smells like salt,” grunted Zeus.

Pumpkin ignored his downer-dog woofs.

Shep looked around at the others, who waved their tails and looked at him with pricked ears, eager to keep moving. “It’s not worth the risk of traveling during sun time,” he barked.

Callie placed a paw on his. “We should keep going no matter what the risk,” she woofed. “Seeing people back in their dens, I’m worried our humans might leave the shelter. We have to get there as soon as possible.”

Shep’s tail began to wag. Callie’s family might have left the shelter! My pack might be forced to stay wild! But the thought that his family might not be at the shelter — that he might not even have the option of going home — stopped his tail’s swing. It was one scent to woof that he was staying wild, but another track entirely to think he could never go home.

“So we keep going,” Shep woofed. He padded out onto the bridge and led his pack onward toward the brightening sky.

 

Across the canal was an area of larger, flat buildings — stores and storage buildings like the kibble den and the place with the dry-biscuit human food. The streets stretched farther apart to accommodate the sprawling fields of pavement around each building, which made it difficult for Shep to scent the small groups.

Shep glanced at Fuzz. The cat nodded his small head, then burst off to check on the others.

Callie watched him go. “That cat has really come to love you,” she woofed.

Shep panted. “Love me?” he yipped. “No, Fuzz tolerates me. After what I did to him, to Honey, I feel lucky to get even that.”

Callie grinned. “You’re not very good at sensing anything other than anger, are you? Always aware of an oncoming attack, but blind to a dog’s love.” She licked his nose, then padded down the street. “You have to work on that, partner. There’s a lot of love that you’re missing.”

Shep followed her, silent. Was that true? Were there dogs out there loving him and he had no idea? He felt like all any dog did was argue with him. But Callie’s woofs reminded him of something Blaze had said to him once, back in the boat. She told him that he needed to believe in himself as much as the pack believed in him.

But the pack had always wanted more from him. He’d always felt like such a failure in their eyes, like he could never be a good enough alpha. Maybe he wasn’t able to see love, at least not in other dogs. Growing up in the fight kennel, all there’d been was hate between him and his fellow dog — except with the old timer.

And his boy. His boy had loved him.

Sadness washed over him like a wave. And for some reason, he couldn’t push it away. His claws dragged on the stone.

Callie glanced over at him. “What’s dragging your tail down?”

“I miss my boy,” he woofed. “But I’m not ready to go home — at least, a big part of me isn’t. I feel like I’m being torn apart.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Callie yipped. “Follow where the Great Wolf leads you. Maybe when we reach the shelter, you’ll know what to do.”

 

By the time Fuzz caught up with them, the sun was fully in the sky. “Shep-dog!” he screeched. “Trouble! Evil-dog-of-horrible-deeds has bad paw. Small-snout and smush-muzzle stopped in alley.”

Shep and Callie raced after Fuzz through roadways lined with mounds of wreckage from the storm. Daisy barked to them from the mouth of an alley next to a board-covered store.

“It’s bad,” she snorted. “The fur-brained pup wouldn’t let me leave him.” She waved her snout toward a large, metal box overflowing with garbage. Shep found Zeus growling with Oscar beside it.

“This will help,” Oscar barked. “Just let me put it on your paw!” He held a plastic bag in his jaws.

“It’s too small,” Zeus growled. He held his paw up against his chest, as if he were guarding it. The remains of the bandage were streaked with red and the wound itself oozed a yellowish goo.

Shep looked at Fuzz. “Tell the others to make for the beach,” he woofed. “We’ll meet them there.” He turned to Daisy and Callie. “You go with Fuzz,” he snuffled. “Join Ginny’s team and keep them out of trouble.”

Daisy’s ears pricked up. “Alpha, we can’t just leave the pup with that dog.”

“Just go,” grumbled Oscar. “I’ll think of a way to fix Zeus, then we’ll follow your scent.” The pup kept his eyes on the pavement.

Shep licked Oscar’s head. “I’m staying, pup.”

Oscar looked up at him, a small grin on his jowls. “Well, only if you want to.”

“I’m staying, too,” yipped Callie.

Shep’s ears pricked. Maybe Callie was beginning to see what he meant about being his partner?

“I could stay,” snorted Daisy, “if it would help.” She snuck a glance at Oscar.

“You go with Fuzz to tell the others,” yipped Shep. “No need for the whole pack to stay on the streets any longer than necessary.”

Daisy licked her nose in agreement but did not wag her tail. She looked down at Oscar. After several heartbeats, she snorted, “Stay out of trouble.” Then she trotted out of the alley, barking for Fuzz to follow.

“I don’t know what you think you can do,” Zeus snarled. “The paw’s done for. I can’t walk.”

“Then we’ll find another way to move your sorry rump,” barked Callie.

Zeus’s jowls curled at her yips. “I don’t want your help.”

“Shut your snout before we start listening to you,” Shep woofed. He turned to Callie. “Zeus needs a shoe, what humans wear on their feet.”

Callie looked at Zeus’s paw, her head tilted in thought. “No,” she barked. “I don’t think he can walk on that, even with a shoe.” She trotted down the alley and began sticking her snout into the various piles of trash. “Oscar!” she bayed. “Get over here and help me sniff for wheels!”

The pup scampered down the alley after Callie’s curled tail.

“Why are you helping me?” Zeus growled, squinting at Shep.

“I’m not helping you,” Shep snapped. “I’m helping Oscar, and he’s got it stuck in his jaw that he’s got to help you, so just shut your snout and be grateful.”

“Why is that pup hanging on me like some leech I picked up in a sewer?” Zeus dropped to his haunches, then slid across the slimy stone to lie down.

“That pup thinks he can make up for betraying his friends by helping you get back to your master,” Shep growled. “If not for him, I would have left you to be eaten by a water lizard back in that Park.”

“I see you’re not interested in forgiveness.” Zeus licked his paw and flinched as his tongue hit the wound.

“You don’t want to be forgiven,” Shep snapped. “You have to be sorry — really sorry — to want forgiveness. You’re not sorry, not for anything.”

Zeus looked up and for a heartbeat, Shep saw in his eyes something of the old liveliness, the old friend that had run with him through the Park. Shep saw a great sadness, as if that old Zeus was trapped inside this new Zeus, desperate to get out. And then it was gone: Zeus’s eyes were again as hard as stone.

“I guess I’m not,” he growled. He dropped his head on his paws and stared at the wall.

There was a loud crash and a heap of garbage far down the alley collapsed in a wave of stench. Shep ran toward the pile, sure he was going to have to dig Callie and the pup out. When he got there, he found them tugging on a slimy rope tied to the thick, plastic handle of something caught under the trash.

“Help pull!” Callie barked from between gritted teeth.

Shep snapped his jaws around the rope and tugged back. The trash gave way and out burst a red plastic wagon. The wagon’s body had thick, short walls and it rolled on hard, fat black wheels. His boy had had one like it, a dirty old thing that he used to drag his sticks and Balls to the Park to play games with the other boys.

“You want to put Zeus in this?” Shep woofed, dubious.

“You have a better idea?” Callie asked, panting. “My girl had one of these, and she tried to drag me around in it sometimes. It’s not comfortable — I always hopped out as soon as I could — but it’ll work to move that stubborn, ungrateful, nasty, vile killer you and Oscar insist we help.”

“Me? I’m only doing this for Oscar.” Shep heard his bark break like a whiny pup’s.

“Sure you are,” Callie woofed, grinning. “And I’m digging through trash to help Zeus.”

They rolled the wagon down the alley toward Zeus, who flicked his horn-ears back like he was going to argue with them. But when Callie barked her idea, Zeus willingly loaded himself into the thing. He had to scrunch into an uncomfortable-looking knot, but somehow the boxer managed to fit into the tiny wagon.

“Let’s roll!” yipped Oscar, thrilled at having solved a problem.

Shep looked at Callie.

“You don’t think I’m going to pull him, do you?” she yipped.

Shep sighed. “No, I guess not,” he barked. He took the mucky rope between his jaws and threw his weight against the wagon. With a groan — from both Shep and the wagon’s wheels — the thing rolled forward.