Tails of the Apocalypse

When You Open the Cages for Those Who Can’t (a Breakers short story) ^{by Edward W. Robertson}

Exhaust blew down the street, choking and putrid. She wouldn’t miss it when it was gone.

Raina waited until there were too many cars for any of them to move, then darted across the six lanes of PCH to the gray building on the other side. The parking lot smelled like sun-warmed pee, but that meant she was right where she wanted to be.

She snuck up the back stairs and poked her head around the corner. Her mom was behind the front desk talking about cats to a rich lady. Raina waited for her mom to disappear into the filing racks behind the desk, then scooted across the lobby to the door to the back.

There, men were hosing down small dogs in countertop tubs. The dogs didn’t look happy, but their baths would be done soon and then they’d be fine. But the ones in the cages would still be locked up with their sadness. Raina went to them, closing the door behind her. It smelled like dog fur and kibbles. The big dogs were in big kennels on the ground, while the small ones were shut up in two rows of cages stacked on top of each other. Half of them were barking at her. Others wiggled at the front of their cages, asking to be let out.

They had names clipped to their cages: Betsy. Mango. Chief. But those names were stupid, so Raina gave them names to suit them: Bellow, Snaps, Wasp. She let them lick her hand. A woman in scrubs entered and gazed at Raina but said nothing.

The door opened again. Her mom stopped in her tracks. “Raina?” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“Because I hate it,” Raina said.

“You still have to go.”

“No, I don’t. I’m here, aren’t I?”

Her mom pressed her lips tight. “How did you get here?”

“At recess, the other girls were making fun of me. So I left. I walked here.”

“Raina, that’s like five miles! You can’t walk that far on your own.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody knew where you were. You could have been hurt. You’re too young to be running around on your own.”

“I’m ten years old,” Raina said. “I can take care of myself.”

“Oh really? Then maybe it’s time for you to start buying your own food. And clothes. And games.” Her mom sighed. “I can’t take you home right now. Your dad’s at work, too. So I guess you get to stay here until I’m done.”

That was fine with Raina. She sat in the room with the dogs, scratching their ears and asking them questions. She knew their owners would be back for them soon, but there in their cages, they acted like the kids whose parents were late picking them up from school. Some sat still like the saddest things, while others paced like their stomachs hurt.

After a few hours, her mom came into the back to get her. As they headed for the front doors, Marisa walked in, dressed in her scrubs. She stopped, swung her mouth into the crook of her elbow, and coughed hard, shoulders jumping.

“That sounds terrible,” Mom said. “Why didn’t you call in?”

Marisa shook her head, voice strained. “Lydia told me if I don’t make it in and I’m not dying, I’m fired.”

“So next week, instead of one sick person up front, she’ll have three.”

“I tried. You know how she is.”

“A load of shit from above?” Her mom spun toward Raina. “You didn’t hear that.”

They didn’t talk much on the ride to their home in Gardena. Raina’s dad was still at work, so her mom started preparing chicken thighs for dinner. Raina cut the peppers and onions.

Her dad got home. They ate. After, her mom pulled her dad to their room and shut the door. A few minutes later, he came to Raina’s room and knocked on the door frame.

“Hey, killer.” He walked in and sat on the bed. “Hear you want to be a ten-year-old dropout.”

She looked him in the eye. “School’s stupid. It doesn’t teach you what you need.”

“But you need it if you want a job. Or to go to college.”

“I don’t like being told what to do.”

“No one does. I go to work every day, and every day, someone tells me what to do. Same goes for your mom. That’s life.”

“Why do people put up with that?”

He laughed, rubbing his forehead with his palm. “Most of us don’t got a choice. Bills to pay. Mouths to feed. But you know what? If you don’t want that to be you, you better do good in school. Or else you’ll have someone telling you what to do until the day you retire.”

Raina watched a singing contest on TV with her parents, then went to bed. She could hear the cars outside. She thought about walking away, following PCH until there was no city around her at all. Until the only voice she had to listen to was the wind in the grass.

Her mother’s coughing woke Raina the next morning. It was a Wednesday and Raina got ready for the bus as usual. At school, the other children sat quietly as the teachers taught them things about the division of numbers and books of made-up stories. At recess, the kids split into packs, seeking out those who didn’t have groups and teasing them. They coughed as they ran, eyes watering.

On Friday, both her parents called in sick. Even though they were staying home, they still made Raina go to school. As the bus groaned down the street, Raina hid behind the neighbor’s agaves until it was gone. As the diesel fumes faded, she smiled.

She walked west, all the way to the ocean, where the houses were made of glass and light. People sat in the sand or beneath restaurant umbrellas. They didn’t have to be at school or work, but when Raina asked one woman why, the woman gave her a funny look.

When afternoon came, she walked to the school, waited for the final bell to go off, and got on the bus home. She’d been on her own all day and nothing had happened. Her mom would be mad at her for leaving school again if she found out, but Raina didn’t care. Her mom had to learn that she was wrong.

Back home, both her parents were in bed. Their breathing was heavy and sounded like something wet dragging itself up the shore. Raina looked in on them, but they were asleep. She was hungry after the day of walking, and she went to the fridge to warm up last night’s rice and beans. Sirens whined outside, but there were always sirens.

Her parents stayed in bed the next day, too. Raina brought them water and broth. They were pale and the room smelled wrong. The Kleenex in the trash beside the bed were spotted with blood.

That evening, her parents argued. Blankets rustled. Drawers scraped. Her dad walked out. He was dressed, but his brown face was waxy. Sweat dewed his temples.

“Get your shoes.” His voice was thick. “We’re going to the hospital. Can’t leave you alone.”

On the drive, the only sound was their wet coughing.

Cars jammed the hospital parking lot. Sirens spun. Lights painted the crowds red and blue. There were tents in the lot like they were selling the cars parked there. Her dad had to park three blocks away. Hundreds of people stood back from the front doors, where uniformed men in bug-like masks held long guns. People shouted and pressed forward. The men lifted their guns and yelled, and the crowds fell back.

“Martin.” Her mom grabbed her dad’s arm. “They’ll never let us in there.”

“They have to. We’re sick.”

“Look around. Everyone’s sick. And if we stay, Raina will be, too.”

He blinked, skin pulled tight over his face. “Come on.”

As they walked away, a gun went off. Men and women screamed. The three of them ran to the car and drove home.

Her mom trudged back to bed, shoulders jerking as she coughed into her fist. Raina’s dad bent down in front of her. The heat from his face was like afternoon sand.

“What’s going on?” Raina asked.

“We don’t feel good. But we’ll get better soon. Can you make yourself dinner?”

“Do you want some?”

“Not now.” He reached out to touch her arm, then stopped. A bead of sweat slipped down his nose. “Keep the front door locked, okay?”

“Okay.”

He turned, then stopped and looked back, a vein pulsing in his brow. “If something… happens. Wait for help. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He went to his room and shut the door. Raina turned off the lights and sat beside the window blinds, where one of the slats was broken. She peered through it to the intersection down the street. Normally, headlights streamed through the break in the blinds long after dark. That night, seconds passed between each car. Sirens whooped past every few minutes.

Raina only left her post to get food, use the bathroom, or bring her parents water. A day and a half into her vigil, her head snapped up from a doze. It took her a minute to understand what had woken her.

They’d stopped coughing.

Raina shot to her feet, heart heavy with dread. She took two steps toward their door and stopped. What if it would only be true if she opened the door and looked in? What if they’d needed her but she’d been asleep and they’d been too weak to get up and wake her? She sank to the stained, threadbare carpet. She knew what waited on the other side of the door. The worst thing in the world.

And that was why she had to stand up and make herself see.

The door creaked. The room smelled like blood and waste. Raina watched them for several minutes, then closed the door again. She went to her bed and lay down and wept. When she was done, she went back to the broken slat to watch the street.

Like one of the windup toys she’d had when she was little, the city seemed to stall, shudder forward, and stop. No more sirens. No more little planes burbling through the sky all afternoon. No more men walking their pit bulls. No more older kids hanging outside the Wendy’s and laughing too loud.

But her dad had told her what she needed to do. So Raina stayed at the window and waited.

Three days after she’d opened the door to the bedroom—three days alone in the silence waiting for help—the phone rang. Raina snatched it up. “Hello?”

“Hi there,” a man said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “And who’s this?”

“Raina.” Too late, she knew this was the wrong thing to say. “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend. Of your parents. Are you alone?”

Raina went still. “No.”

“Who’s there?” the man said. “Your parents?”

“That’s right. They’re in the other room.”

“Are they sick?”

“They’re fine.”

“Is that so. Then can I speak to them, Raina?”

She stared across the kitchen. “Hang on.”

Raina set the phone on the counter. As the man waited, she got the backpack she’d used for school. She got toilet paper and her toothbrush and the Tupperware of rice and beans she’d boiled. She emptied out the tail of a Pepsi two-liter and filled it with water. She got socks and underwear and a bag of the Bugles her dad liked.

Had liked.

Raina went to the front door, the man’s voice squawking from the phone back in the kitchen. He sounded angry, now. Like a man who wanted her parents to be dead. She went back to the kitchen and got the long, thin knife from the block. The same one she’d used to cut peppers and onions for dinner just a few days earlier.

Outside, crows scolded from the tile roofs. There was no sound of traffic. She didn’t know where she was going but she knew she needed to get away from the house and the lying, angry man on the phone. It was spring and the streets were wet from rain. Cars were parked at odd angles in the middle of the street. Others were crashed together and left behind. Sometimes she heard an engine far away, but that only made the silences in-between all the louder.

Shards of glass glittered on the sidewalk where shop windows had been punched out. At the corner, the Walgreens was torn apart, deodorant and shampoo bottles littering the entrance. Raina wandered down a side street. The front doors hung open like dark mouths at some houses. The people who owned them had abandoned them. If she wanted, she could walk in and make them her own.

But she doubted they were truly empty. She thought they had rooms like her parents’, where people slept forever in their bloody beds.

Los Angeles was gone. But what if the sickness hadn’t gotten to other places? She could go north. Santa Barbara. Her parents had taken her there when she was younger. It was pretty there. Maybe it wasn’t so silent and still. Maybe she could find help.

An hour later, with the clouds drizzling rain onto the apartments and strip malls, something growled at her from beneath a shrub. Raina stopped. A stout, black Chihuahua trotted out, hackles raised.

“Hi,” she said. “Are you scared?”

She crouched and held out her hand. The dog leaned warily forward, sniffing. It backed up a step, then leaned in and sniffed her again, its nose catching a whiff from her pack.

“I’ve got food.” She glanced down the street and shrugged out of her backpack. “Are you hungry?”

She opened the container of rice and beans and scooped a few bites out with her fingers. The Chihuahua edged closer, nostrils whuffing. He licked her hand, spilling grains of spicy rice to the sidewalk. He gobbled these up, so Raina dropped more to the ground. When the dog finished that too, she dug another scoop from the Tupperware, and he ate it from her hand.

“Hey!” A man’s voice echoed down the street. “Hey, you!”

He was two blocks away. A grown-up. The man leaned forward, breaking into a jog. Something about the way he moved felt wrong. He looked like a dog going after a squirrel. She shoved the food into her backpack and ran the other way.

“Hey!”

His shoes pounded the wet sidewalk. Raina darted down an alley that cut between two rows of houses. At the first open door, she ran inside. It smelled like her parents’ room. She found an empty bedroom and scampered under the bed.

Outside, the man’s shouts grew wrathful. That was the way of things now: with everything else taken, the only thing people had left was their anger.

Raina’s heart beat hard against her chest. Footsteps smacked outside the house, then faded, leaving nothing behind but the patter of the rain. After a few minutes, she got out her two-liter and drank some water. She waited half an hour before sliding from beneath the bed to check the windows. The alley was clear.

She couldn’t go north for help after all. Because she’d forgotten all about the dogs in the cages at her mom’s hospital. And if she’d forgotten them, then maybe everyone else had, too. She walked west toward the ocean she couldn’t see. It had stopped raining, but the streets smelled good for the first time since the sickness.

Something scraped behind her. She turned, tensing to run. The black dog stood on the cracked concrete, head tilted to the side.

“You can come with me,” she said. “But you better keep up.”

A mile later, he was still with her. Sometimes he trotted ahead, head swiveling every time a crow flapped from a tree. His nails didn’t click as he walked. He was so quiet Raina decided his name should be Knife.

She saw two people on her way to the hospital, but she hid behind bushes until they went away. At the intersection on PCH, cars clogged the lanes. Most were empty, but in a few, bodies sat behind the wheel, their flesh puffy and dark. Raina moved past them as quietly as she could.

The animal hospital’s front doors were locked. So were the dented metal doors downstairs. She trudged back up the slope to the front and pressed her nose to the glass. Knife joined her, nose twitching. If someone had locked the doors, maybe they’d taken the dogs out of the cages, too. But she wasn’t sure people were doing what they were supposed to anymore. Not after what she’d seen at the hospital.

She walked down the sloped parking lot to get one of the rocks from the landscaping and bash out the glass in the front door. She picked up a round stone and turned back. One of the second floor windows was open.

She walked beneath it, Knife trotting beside her. “Hello?”

No one came. There were some trash cans in the parking lot, but even if she stacked them, they wouldn’t be high enough to reach. Inside the window ledge, a hand crank jutted up. Raina frowned and went to the box at the front doors where they kept the slip leads. She took out a tangle of them, tying them together until she had a rope twelve feet long with a loop at the end. She went back to the window, twirled the rope, and slung it at the crank.

It took her dozens of tries before she snagged it. She tested the line, then set down her pack and climbed. Near the top, her arms began to shake. She hauled herself inside and dropped to the floor of a veterinarian’s office.

She went downstairs and unlocked the outer door. Knife ambled in, hopping up the steps behind her. The room with the cages smelled like pee and poop and something even worse. When she walked inside, the dogs lifted their heads and began to whine.

Not all of them stirred to greet her. A pug and a German shepherd lay flat in their cages. Their skin was the same temperature as the room.

One by one, she let the others out. There were twelve in all, from a big golden lab to a tiny tan Chihuahua. They crowded around her, whining and yowling, licking her hands and legs. Knife moved back, watching in concern. Raina opened the door to the large room, where her mom’s friends used to bathe and inspect the animals, and filled shallow plastic trays with water. The dogs lapped greedily.

From the other side of the room, a cat meowed like there was no hope. Raina jogged to the other room of cages, where eight cats stared at her from behind the thin metal bars that enclosed them. She had to let them out, but if she did that, she was afraid the dogs would eat them.

Raina stepped away, pressing her back to the wall. The dogs needed to be fed and cleaned. Some of them had chewed wounds in their paws and needed the medicine her mom used to give them. She should clean out the cages and take the dogs outside, in case they needed to use the bathroom. There was so much to do, and she didn’t know if she could do it. Abruptly, she felt very young. Why had the adults left the animals to die?

She clenched her teeth. Maybe the adults had been too scared or too stupid. But she was there now. And she was the only one the animals had.

“Don’t worry, kitties,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

If they were full of food, the dogs wouldn’t want to eat the cats. Raina got a bag of kibbles from the shelves out front and filled two of the plastic trays. As soon as she set the first one down, the dogs lunged for it, growling and menacing each other with their fangs. She set down the second tub. Soon, they’d each found a place, crunching away. While they ate, she carried the pug and then the German shepherd outside. There was nowhere to bury them, so she took them down the ramp to the underground parking of the motel next door.

Upstairs, a schnauzer had barfed on the floor, but it was already cleaning it up. While the dogs sniffed around, she brought water and kibbles to the cats. Some of them hissed at her and most of them didn’t want to eat.

Raina had known lots of cats in her neighborhood. Some had liked to be petted, but most slunk away when she came near. They liked to be by themselves. Three cat carriers were stacked against the wall. She went out back to set out food and water, then brought the cats outside one by one. They all ran away.

She’d thought to keep the dogs inside, but seeing the cats scatter to their freedom, Raina knew she had to bring the dogs out, too. Or she would be no better than the people who’d kept her in school against her will. Who’d abandoned the animals in the first place?

Upstairs, she whistled to the dogs and led them outside. Knife stood beside her, watching the others click around the parking lot to sniff and pee. The schnauzer and a terrier climbed the incline to the road and strutted away, but the others stayed close, stealing the cat food she’d brought out or flopping in the sun. When she opened the door, they filed back inside and clattered up the stairs.

“Okay,” she said to Knife. “Looks like we’re staying.”

The first thing she did was clean the cages. The second thing she did was wash the dogs. The third thing she did was go to the motel and get sheets to shape beds for them.

And the fourth thing she did was name them.

There was Brick the golden lab and Eggplant the pug. There was Dragon, the little one with long black tufts on her ears and tail who never backed down. The Chihuahuas, Cloud and Mean and Mouse, who scattered whenever there was a loud noise. Smile the retriever. And the mutts, Tooth and Tough.

And there was Knife.

For food, there were dozens of bags and hundreds of cans in the hospital, but Raina knew no one would ever bring them more. And she needed people food, too. There was a Target store up the street her mom had sometimes gone to on the way home. Raina fed the dogs and brought them out to the bathroom, then got Knife, who went everywhere with her, and walked up the hill to the Target.

She got a red shopping cart and pushed it up and down the aisles. The tile floor was cluttered with kid’s clothes and containers of hand soap people had knocked down and left there. Every single scrap of people food was gone. Raina’s head flushed with hot blood. How could they have been so greedy? To take everything? She hoped whoever had taken it all had been found by the man who’d tried to find out if she was alone, or the other one who’d chased her in the street.

Abruptly, a cold tingle soothed her blood. She wasn’t the only one out there. The others would be hungry, too. And there was no one left to stop them from taking whatever they wanted.

The people food was gone, but there were shelves and shelves of dog food. Too much for one trip. Or even two. She loaded bags into the cart and headed out of the store. On the smooth tile of the aisles, the cart hadn’t been too loud, but out on the pavement, it rattled so badly Raina wanted to scream at it to stop. At the hospital, she wrestled the bags of dog food inside and stashed the cart in the motel’s underground parking, far away from where she’d covered the pug and shepherd.

With Knife beside her, she returned to the Target. In the aisles of skateboards and Legos, she found a big red wagon. Its tall rubber tires crossed the linoleum with the faintest of gripping sounds. She loaded it with the biggest bags of kibbles and dragged it back to the hospital.

By the time her knees were too tired to keep going, she’d filled up all the empty shelves downstairs. It was only when Raina went to feed the dogs dinner that she realized she had nothing for herself. She got a kibble from the bag and crunched it between her teeth. It was very dry and tasted exactly the way it smelled. But it was food. She ate.

After dinner, she felt rested enough for another trip to the store. She came back with enough dog beds for all of them. Including herself. She turned off the lights and flopped down.

Now, in the quiet aloneness, the impact jarred tears from her eyes. She wiped them on her shirt. What had happened to her parents? Her teachers? The stupid girls at school? Why wasn’t anyone there to tell her what had happened and bring her somewhere safe? Why hadn’t someone stopped the bloody cough? Why was she still alive?

Two paws pressed down on the side of the bed. A small round head stood in silhouette. Knife leaned forward. She tried to push him away, but he ducked her hand and licked her face. Hearing the sound of licking, another dog trotted over and licked her, too—Eggplant, there was no mistaking her breathing. A third dog rolled into the bed and flopped down on her feet.

“Maybe I don’t need to understand what’s out there.” She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Maybe I only need to understand what’s in here.”

Knife sighed and lay on her chest. It was okay to cry for a moment. But only a moment. There were ten dogs and they needed her.

As soon as she’d taken care of the dogs the next morning, she went back to the Target to pick up more kibbles. Two men and a woman were inside the store piling carts with diapers and soap. Before they could see her, Raina slunk back to the hospital to wait. The daytime was too dangerous. That was when the big creatures came out. The night was the time for the possums, the raccoons, and the skunks.

From then on, she only left the hospital after dark. Tough, the mutt with the brindle legs and white feet, was good at watching and staying close, so Raina took her along to the Target, too. While Knife sat up front guarding the doors, Tough watched Raina’s back as she loaded the wagon with dog food. Soon, she’d moved all of it home except for three bags, in case someone else needed them more.

Two weeks went by. The days got longer and warmer. Raina and the dogs slept through the afternoons, curled in their beds. Mean made peeping noises in his sleep. At night, Raina took them to the parking lot. She tried to take the others out by themselves, but Dragon and Cloud barked too much, and Smiles would wander away and refuse to return unless she dragged him by the collar. He was so heavy that she had to lean with all her strength to pull him away from what he was sniffing.

“You guys have to learn better,” she told them when she had them back inside. “Or else you’ll have to stay inside. Be like Knife and Tough. Be quiet and watch.”

Smiles was sniffing the corner. Mouse and Brick were asleep. Some of the others were watching her, but the rest were busy licking their paws.

“If you’re going to learn better, then I’m going to have to teach better. But you’ll have to listen. There’s only one of me and ten of you.”

She started with Smiles, trying over and over to get him to stay. Time after time, he went straight for the treat. Blinking back tears of frustration, Raina shut off the light and went to bed. Knife licked her face, but licking couldn’t solve everything. After a while, he gave up and lay down close beside her.

Day after day, she worked with each of them. Bit by bit, they got a little better. But Smiles still liked to wander off when she tried to take him down back streets, and Dragon bolted after every bird and squirrel that caught his eye. What if they never listened to her? What if one of them ran off at the wrong time and got hurt?

But there was nothing to do but keep trying.

Raina was bringing in a bag of oranges from the tree down the street when the hospital lights flickered and blinked off. She gazed up into the darkness. After ten seconds, the lights snapped back on, blinding her. But in that moment of darkness, she’d seen something vital. The machines that ran the lights and water were still out there, but the people who ran the machines were dead.

She spent the next days gathering jugs. Filling them with water. Climbing to the flat roof and placing buckets for rain. Every morning, dew glinted on the cars. Raina knew that came from the air, too—was it mist from the sea? There had to be a way to catch it, but she couldn’t think how.

The water wasn’t the only thing. Earlier, their rooms of food had looked like enough to last forever. But now that she knew the water could stop, the supplies no longer looked so large. They were going to need more.

That was the one lesson of the new world: you would always need more. If you weren’t busy getting it, you were busy losing it.

She’d visited enough of the nearby shops to know they’d already been looted. But there were hundreds of houses right behind the hospital. She’d been avoiding them. She knew what lay in the beds. What she’d found when the angry man on the street chased her. But she couldn’t be afraid anymore. The bodies couldn’t kill her. But fear could.

That night, Raina got her pack and her kitchen knife and walked outside. She meant to go alone, but Knife snuck out the door after her.

“Fine,” she muttered. Then her face softened to a smile. “Come on.”

Early on, she’d used snips from Target to cut a hole through the fence between the hospital and the home on the other side. She ducked through it and walked through the shaggy yard to the house’s back door. It was unlocked. She stepped into the entrance and was stopped by a wave of rotten stench. She took a step back, ready to turn and run. Knife trotted past her into the darkness. He sniffed at the kitchen table, then turned to stare at her.

“You’re much smaller than me.” Raina put her hands on her hips. “You should be afraid of everything. But that’s why you’re afraid of nothing, isn’t it? Or else you’d never stop running.”

She walked through the door. Inside, cans of food filled the cabinets. Human food: beef stew and chicken soup and cream of potato. She ate a can of stew on the spot. After weeks of dog food, the beef tasted like pure strength. She gave a bite to Knife, followed by a second. He ate in fast little jerks.

There were many houses, but less food than she thought. Much had been taken. Much had gone rotten. It would let them last longer, but not that much longer. They ate most of what they found each night, saving the dog food, which seemed made to last a long time.

She’d need more food, but what else could she do to find it? Could she teach the dogs to hunt? Some were too slow and loud, but Knife and Tough might be able to snatch crows or the rats that ran along the fence out back. It would be better than nothing.

The only other choice was to move somewhere she could grow corn they could all eat, but it would take weeks to haul the bags and cans of food anywhere. She could take one of the cars, but she didn’t like them. They made too much noise. Noise was how others found you.

So every night, she went out to scavenge. The first few nights, she only took Knife, but it was a good chance to take the others farther than they were used to. One at a time, of course—she wasn’t sure every house was unoccupied. Sometimes she heard a car engine or a gunshot, but these were always distant. She avoided any house with buckets on the roof for collecting water or gardens in back. There weren’t many of those.

One day, she turned on the hospital sink and nothing came out but a sputter of air. On her nightly runs, she started looking for water, too, and cans of soda for herself.

She was out with Knife and Smiles that night. Outside a Spanish house with broken windows, she turned to Smiles.

“Sit,” she said. Smiles sat. “Stay.”

She went inside with Knife, moving quickly through the cabinets. When she came back outside, Smiles was nowhere to be seen.

She moved to the corner, straining her ears for the click of claws. Noise could get you killed, but she had no other choice. Not if she wanted to see Smiles again. She whistled. Knife peered into the night, nose twitching. Raina whistled again, then jogged back past the house to the next block. She whistled a third time. Down the street, Smiles lifted his head from the bush he was snuffling.

Raina ran to grab him. “Come on, stupid. Time to go home.”

She went back to the house for her wagon and headed for the hospital. After a few blocks, something scraped behind her. Raina whirled into a crouch. Knife growled, but the street was empty.

At the hospital, she unloaded the night’s catch and dumped beef stew over kibbles. She thought about punishing Smiles by withholding the stew, but he wouldn’t understand. After dinner, she bagged up the trash, which was full, and took it to the underground parking next door. She went to bed.

Hours later, Raina snapped awake. She’d heard an engine outside. There was no sound now. She got up and went to the door to the front office, standing on her tiptoes to peer through its small window.

A flashlight beamed through the front windows into the hospital’s reception area. Raina held perfectly still as the light swept through the front room, passing from the reception desk to the empty shelves that had once held bags of food. The woman outside wore a dark uniform and had a silver badge on her chest.

The officer tried the door. Finding it locked, she flipped her flashlight around, and cocked her arm to smash it into the door.

Raina flung open the door to the back room. “Stop! We’re in here!”

The woman drew a pistol, shining the flashlight in Raina’s eyes. “Show me your hands!”

Raina lifted them. The officer flicked the beam of the flashlight across the room, then back to Raina.

She lowered the gun, voice muffled by the glass. “Can you open the door?”

Raina hesitated. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Someone said a little girl was here. All alone except for a few dogs. Is that true?”

Was she there to help? Like Raina’s dad had said someone would be? Raina nodded to the officer and unlocked the door. “Who saw me?”

The woman walked inside, casting her light past the front counter. “Another survivor. He thought it would be better if I came by. What’s your name?”

“Raina.”

“Hi, Raina. I’m Officer Morgan. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“My friend said you had dogs here. Are they okay?”

“Some of them bark too much. And one likes to sniff too far.”

The officer smiled. “Can I see them?”

Raina brought her to the back room. The dogs swarmed around Officer Morgan’s legs. Smiles and Eggplant jumped up on her. Tough and Tooth barked. The Chihuahuas backed away, hackles standing straight up. The officer bent to scratch their ears and thump their backs.

After they calmed down, Officer Morgan straightened, rubbing her hand over her mouth. “You can’t care for all these animals.”

“Yeah I can. I have food for them.”

“What’ve you got?”

“Kibbles,” she said. “And the meat they like.”

“Dog food. Right.” Officer Morgan folded her arms, looking down at Raina just like her teachers used to do. “What about water?”

“I filled lots of jugs,” Raina replied proudly. “And I have more on the roof for the rain.”

“It’s almost summer. You’ll be lucky if it rains an inch between now and November.”

Raina frowned. She tried to think of a place nearby where water flowed, but the only place she could remember was the ocean. “Then we’ll have to find more.”

Officer Morgan turned toward the front of the building. After a long moment, she smiled at Raina. “Tell you what. I have a place in the hills. It’s near a reservoir. I’ve got food. Water. And all kinds of room for dogs. If you’ll help me farm it, you can come stay there.”

“But this is my home.”

“It isn’t safe here. There are bad men out in the streets. This place is away from that.”

Raina thought for a moment. “Is it just you at the farm?”

“Sure.” Officer Morgan smiled deeper, eyes crinkling. “And a whole bunch of dogs.”

Raina lowered her eyes to the animals. She’d worked so hard to build their home here. They had food and medicine; she didn’t know which pills did what, but there were books that would tell her so. They knew the streets and homes around them.

But the animal hospital was on the main road. There was nowhere to grow food. There was no lake or stream. Sooner or later, they’d have to move—if the other survivors didn’t come for them first.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Officer Morgan placed her hand on Raina’s shoulder, then walked around the hospital, assessing the animals. “Let’s take the big ones first. Then we’ll come back for the little guys and anything else you want to bring.”

She had a K-9 van parked on a side street down the block. Raina led Brick, Smiles, Tough, Teeth, and Eggplant to it. Officer Morgan helped them into the back. They returned to the hospital to load bags of food on the wagon and lock up. As they closed the door, Knife darted out to stand beside Raina.

“Can he come?” Raina said. “He goes everywhere with me.”

“Why not?”

They got in the van, Knife riding on Raina’s lap. Officer Morgan checked to make sure Raina was buckled in before driving away. As they headed north through the night, fear fluttered in Raina’s heart. She’d done fine on her own, hadn’t she? Why leave with the officer? But she thought of what was best for the dogs, and she calmed down.

Officer Morgan stayed off the highways, traveling down side streets and avoiding the bigger roads, many of which were clogged with cars. The towers were black bricks against the sky. The officer asked her lots of things about how she’d survived the last few months. What she’d seen. Whether anyone had tried to hurt her—and whether she’d had to hurt anyone back.

“I had to run and hide sometimes,” Raina said. “But that’s it.”

“You’re lucky.” Officer Morgan slowed to ease the van through a tangle of cars. “It’s bad out there.”

They drove for miles. Raina thought they were headed north, but she didn’t know the parts of the city they were traveling through. Bodies lay on sidewalks, bones beginning to show through what was left of their skin. Knife climbed behind her seat and curled up on a towel there.

In time, hills loomed before them. The van slowed. Ahead, another intersection was blocked with wrecked cars. Officer Morgan swore, glanced at Raina, and turned the van around, coming to a stop.

“Raina, there’s a map under your seat. Can you dig it out for me?”

Raina slipped her head under her shoulder strap and leaned forward. There were several maps under the seat. She got them out and turned to Officer Morgan.

The barrel of a gun stared back.

Officer Morgan’s jaw tightened. “Don’t look at me.”

“What are you doing?”

“I said, don’t look at me!”

“I don’t understand.” Raina angled her head to the side, trying to obey, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the gun. “What are you doing?”

“There’s nothing left out there. If you knew any better, you’d thank me.”

“Don’t hurt my dogs!”

The officer’s finger twitched on the trigger of the revolver. She bared her teeth and cursed. “Get out of the van.”

Officer Morgan lowered the gun. Raina stared, then scrabbled for the door handle. She tumbled into the street. Officer Morgan slammed the door shut behind her. As she drove off, Knife popped his head up in the passenger window and howled, black eyes gleaming.

The van rumbled away, tires screeching as it turned. Raina stood in the middle of the road, her head spinning. She was miles from home. Officer Morgan had her dogs. The woman knew where Raina lived, but Raina had no idea how to find her.

A cold voice spoke from the back of her head. She only had one choice that made sense. Find a car. Drive back to the hospital. And get the other dogs somewhere safe before Officer Morgan came for them, too.

But there was also a hot voice. And it told her to do something else. She ran down to the corner where the van had turned, then headed north, following its sound. She sprinted as hard as she could, but the engine’s hum diminished with each passing second. She gasped for breath. Her legs burned. When she couldn’t run any further, she coasted to a stop at the bottom of a long hill, gazing up the empty street. Palm fronds fluttered above the sidewalks.

Tears streamed down her face. She sank to her knees. Ahead, a small shadow trotted toward her from the darkness.

“Knife!” She leaped to her feet and ran to meet him. “How’d you get here? Did she throw you out?”

He jumped up, pawing her, then spun in a circle. Raina gestured north over and over. “We have to find them, Knife. Do you know where they went? Do you know where she took them?”

Knife stared up at her, his black eyes just like the button eyes of a stuffed bear she’d had as a little kid. He turned around and walked swiftly up the hill, nose sweeping side to side. She followed him through winding roads of grand houses nestled in the trees. After another two or three miles, the houses stopped altogether and there was nothing but forest. On top of a rise, Knife came to a stop, his wet, black nose twitching.

Raina gazed into the darkness. “What’s wrong? Where’d they go?”

Knife glanced up at her. He took one step forward, then stopped again, paw lifted hesitantly.

Raina balled her hands into fists. “Just tell me where to go.”

Uphill and to her left, far away but clearly her, Tough barked three times.

The house lay in the darkness like a spider’s hole.

The smell of rotting bodies wafted on the wind. Eggplant whined from around the back of the house, her smush-nosed voice like a raspy baby. A candle flickered behind the windows. Raina waited for it to go out, then waited longer still. Knife sat beside her. Silent. Watchful.

The wait gave her a long time to think. At first, she thought to go around back, get the dogs, and run away. But Officer Morgan knew where she lived. She was a bad person. The same as the man who’d called and the one who’d chased her in the street. The type to come back for her. Even if Raina could find a car, get back to the hospital, and move the dogs somewhere new, it wouldn’t be right. She would still be out there. Preying on the city. On the dogs.

The front door was locked, but the garage door was propped up by two-by-fours, with a couple of hoses running out into the drive. Raina used one board to lever the door up another few inches, slipping a second board beneath it and wriggling through the gap. The door to the house was unlocked.

Raina stood in the darkness. Someone was snoring from a back room. She took off her shoes and snuck forward. Officer Morgan lay in bed beneath her sheets. The revolver rested on the dresser beside her. Raina moved silently forward and picked up the gun. It felt too heavy, like something from another world.

Knife growled. Morgan blinked, inhaling with a stutter and grabbing at the empty space on the dresser.

Holding the gun in both hands, Raina aimed it at her head. “Why did you take them?”

The woman startled upright, pressing her back to the headboard. “Jesus!”

“Why did you take my dogs?”

“Put down that gun, little girl. Before someone gets hurt.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you even know how to aim that?”

“I saw you do it.” Raina lowered her aim to Morgan’s chest. “Tell me why. One. Two. Th—”

“They’re not pets anymore!” Morgan blurted. “One dog keeps you safe. Anything more is just meat.”

Raina didn’t think she could pull the trigger. When the gun went off, it was so loud that Knife peed on the floor.

Along with her dogs, two others were caged out back. When she let them out, they snuffled around the yard, inspecting the pile of bones, but they didn’t pick any of them up. They knew better. Raina called them to the gate, but when she opened it, the two strange dogs ran away. Smiles followed them. She whistled, but he didn’t come back. Hoping his new friends would help keep him safe, she let him go.

Raina loaded the others into the van. With the seat scooted all the way forward, she could barely reach the pedals. On the way home, she kept running into snarled intersections, forcing her to detour. Miles from the hospital, she backed into a pole because she was too short to see behind. Some part of the van caught fast to the pole. She got out with the dogs and walked south.

The sun rose, slanting over the buildings, glinting on the dew on the cars. When she got to the hospital, she found the dogs scratching against the other side of the door to reception. She opened it and they rushed her, jumping up against her legs. The back room smelled like poop. They’d eaten all the food she’d left out and the water bowls were down to the last licks.

She cleaned up the mess. Poured fresh water. Let out the little dogs who’d been cooped up all night. After, most went back to bed. Raina sat on the bench in the front room, Knife on her lap.

“She was right,” Raina whispered. “I can’t take care of you all. If something had happened to me, they would have been trapped. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink.”

Knife looked up at her from the corners of his eyes.

“I had to learn to take care of myself. That’s the only way now. For all of us. Do you understand?”

He yawned, squeaking, and closed his eyes.

She let them sleep a while longer. She tried to think of another way, but Officer Morgan had shown her the truth. No one was coming to save you. No matter what your dad said, there was no salvation except what you honed for yourself from whatever you had.

The next night, she brought a full bag of kibbles down to the parking lot and poured it into multiple tubs in case any of the dogs came back later. Then she got her pack, brought the dogs outside, and headed east.

The dogs ranged ahead. Raina slowed. Dragon bounded onward and the others raced after. One block away, then two. Raina stopped. The dogs kept running. All except for Knife, who turned his head, one black paw lifted from the street. He glanced at the others as they disappeared around a hedge, then strutted back to Raina and took his place by her side.

She wanted to tell him to go, to be with the others, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She kneeled and scratched his ears.

“I can’t take care of all of them,” she said. “But maybe we can take care of each other.”

He lifted his nose to the wind. Raina did the same. When he moved down the street, she followed.