Mutt: Please enjoy this chapter and review if you wish. It would help. I'm thankful for anyone to read, though.
"So, what do you think of the great outside Mutt?" Hige asked as we stopped for the first time in three days. I was quite surprised and a little proud of myself for lasting this long without growing tired or complaining about it. Not bad for a newbie. Secret kudos for myself.
We stopped in some barren, deserted town. There were only remnants of buildings and statues. Stone and wood splintered the dirt road that cut right through the whole place. It was so quiet. All I could hear was the wind and the hollow howls it created when passing through some cracks in the buildings. There were a few old cars broken down on the side of the road, but they looked charred. Actually, everything looked charred, as if a fire had swallowed this place at one point.
Sniffing the air a few times, my nose twitched as I picked something up. Slowly, I replied, "It's different." My eyes landed on something sticking out of the crook of a fallen building. Wandering over to it, I poked it once then pulled it out. My ears limped as I held the item and continued to stare.
Toboe followed me and saw it and his ears lowered as well. We were staring at the remains of a small child's doll. I could still pick up the scent of a little girl on it. "How sad." He sniffed slightly then wandered off to investigate other things.
Still holding the doll, I looked around the rest of the ghost town. With the sun partially hidden behind the clouds, I didn't have to shield my eyes to see how dismal this place was. Tsume and Kiba were watching me as I trekked the loose ground slowly. I was scanning the area slowly, not missing a thing. There were old footsteps, small items like books that belonged to maybe once happy people, and more remnants that made it look like a tornado hit here as well.
I stood in the center of the road and closed my eyes. The wind howled around me, touching and forming within and throughout everything then brushing against me in the end. Somehow, I could feel the despair the wind was feeling. No, it was the town. "Guys, I can hear the town crying." It wasn't until I said it that I realized how stupid I must have sounded. Not wanting to see their expressions, I kept my eyes closed and dropped the doll.
Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I opened my eyes and saw Toboe's sad smile. "We all hear it. We've been through here before. It's sad, isn't it?" Nodding, I tried to compare this feeling to the one back home. They were so different.
"All right, guys. Let's head out again," Tsume called to us before sprinting past us. Hige followed after him after complaining once about being hungry. Toboe and I didn't move. We were waiting for Kiba, but he seemed preoccupied with something else. He was staring up into the clouds. They were blotchy, gray, and rumbling just as they always were. It had been at least a month since I've seen the sun for what it truly was.
I was cautious as I made my way to Kiba's spot. Trying to turn my head to see what he was looking at, he narrowed his gaze and looked at me. "Uh." I backed up a good three feet. "We're just leaving is all." For some reason, I didn't think he was trying to look at me that way. It just seemed to fit his personality. Actually, I couldn't exactly pinpoint this guy's utmost persona. He was an enigma. "Are you okay?" I had to ask because he seemed a little worried about something. Maybe worried wasn't the word.
"I'm fine, Mutt. Let's go." He gave me the slightest of a glimpse before sprinting after Tsume and Hige. I was left in the dust.
Toboe wandered over to me and tugged on my sleeve. "We have to catch up, Mutt. I don't want to be left behind." He gave me a pleading look. "Please, I hate being left behind." My heart felt as if it had been clenched by a strict hand. I even doubled over a little. "Are you okay?" He put his arms around me, trying to comfort me. I broke away from his hold and took off at top dash. "Hey!" I heard his cry of surprise then his hurried footsteps. "Don't leave me behind!" Again, my heart twisted. It wasn't the look he had given me or how he tugged my shirt, it was what he said. He didn't want to be left behind. He hated it.
Just as he did.
An hour had passed since we arrived and left the town of tears. That's what I decided to call it. I never wanted to see that town again. Toboe was wary around me now, not understanding why I ran from him back there. I barely understood myself why I ran. It had something to do with those words he said that made me remember a bit of something I never wanted to stumble upon again. In that quiet, uncomfortable silence, the sky suddenly shifted and the winds began to gust at such a speed that I was having difficulty running in a straight line.
With the wind suddenly came a torrent of huge, thudding raindrops. They struck my nose and eyes, making me blink rapidly, and hack horribly when I tried to breathe. I wasn't the only one struggling. Tsume and Kiba tried to act as if they were fine, but Hige was shouting and trying to keep Toboe from blowing away. It was so unexpected! We should have smelled the coming rain. Were we that distracted?
"Everyone stop!" Kiba shouted at the top of his lungs so we all could hear. We all huddled around him, not for warmth, but for safety. I tried looking around, but the rain was coming down so violently that I couldn't even see past my bangs. Which, by the way, were stuck to my face and I couldn't keep them out of my eyes for the life of me.
Getting sick of them, I dropped my human illusion and huddled into the group as a wolf. Everyone seemed to follow suit and we all clustered into a tight ball. Rain thudded against our backs, soaking and chilling us to the bone. I even began to shiver, but I tried with all my might to cease. There was no way I'd show I was wimping out already, like some pampered, spoiled mongrel. If they could tough it out here then so could I.
Suddenly, Toboe leaned into my right shoulder. He was shivering violently as he buried his face under my chin. I didn't say a thing as I had no idea what to say. None of the others said anything because they either couldn't see or didn't care. Whatever it was, I didn't do anything as I continued to let Toboe shiver against me. Maybe just a little, I let myself shiver against him, so he knew he wasn't alone.
"Kiba! We can't stay here!" Hige yelled over the whipping rain and thunder. The dark flashed into a flurry of flickering lights as lightning danced across the sky and the bombarding roar of thunder followed in its wake.
Toboe screamed out of fear beside me and I couldn't help but speak out as well, "We have to find someplace! Anything!" Mud and rocks swept up in our faces, flooding into our noses, causing even more of a problem. If we didn't die by freezing in the rain, we'd most likely die by drowning from the mud! I watched helplessly as more lightning danced across the twisting, unforgiving skies. The flashes of light they created gave us split seconds of waterlogged glimpses of each other.
Hige looked absolutely pathetic as his thick fur laid flat and long, giving him the resemblance of an over-sized, soaked rat. Kiba and Tsume looked extraordinarily thin with their fur matted to them, revealing their ribs and bones. I knew better, though. Those bones were strong and they could certainly take a lot of damage. Toboe looked oddly like a female right now, as he didn't look too skinny or too wide. The rain pelted his fur, but it was sleek and his body slender. Thunder clapped the sky and Toboe flinched then tried to silence a scream.
I tried looking around again, desperately searching for some form of shelter between lightning strikes. There was nothing but a curtain of freezing, bruising rain. Sadly, just for a second, I wished I was back in the city. Safe within the compounds of some old, broken-down building, possibly fighting off some guy or just avoiding the rain. I quickly shook that longing from my mind. That world was no longer mine to live in. This, the real outside, was my home. Unmerciful or not. In a way, I could barely keep a smile from my lips, this cold harshness was almost like home.
Once again, the collaged world around us lit up with a crackling light. In that second, I spotted something off in the distance. It had reflected off the light. I couldn't tell if it was the rain playing tricks on me or if I had really seen something. Waiting in the darkness, I remained quiet about it until the next passage of light. Not five minutes had passed when the world brightened again. I wasn't seeing things, there was something out there glinting off the light.
"Kiba! Behind you!" I shouted over the pounding off the rain. "There's something out there! It may be shelter!" He looked at me with uncertain eyes. I may have been here, and he may have asked, but I was still an outsider. I had yet to earn any ounce of trust. I had to try, though! "Please!"
Slowly, he lifted himself and turned to stare off into the rain. At first, he was staring into the dark, but once the lightning flared up the water, he also saw the glinting. "Toboe, Hige, Tsume! We're heading for that area!" They stood slowly, stiff with cold. I also had my problems, feeling as if I weighed twenty pounds heavier than I should. "Mutt," he called to me last, "stay with Toboe. Make sure he doesn't fall behind."
At first, I thought he was going to praise me or something, but I was soon getting used to the fact that I may never get a single sign of approval from him. I was all right with that. So, instead of holding anything against the older wolf, I merely nodded my head and remained beside Toboe.
Speaking of Toboe, he wasn't faring well. He couldn't keep his eyes open very long and his pace was slow and very sluggish. I kept to his side, holding him up if I ever needed to when a huge gush of wind whipped at our soggy and frozen bodies. My footing in the once stable ground was atrocious as I slipped in water and mud puddles. The three up front spared no time in waiting for us as they trudged on, their pace quicker than ours. I was very confidant in my ability to keep up, but I couldn't risk losing Toboe and having them turn on me.
"It'll be all right, Toboe," I ushered him on by whispering in his ear. "We're almost there. Just a little longer." The "little longer" was actually farther than I expected. We had to cross over a small hill and some type of mud dune. That was like a sand dune, but it was made of very soft, and easily sinkable mud. Hige had accidentally stepped in a wrong spot and almost got sucked right in. After the two hills, we came arrived at the destination of the glinting. What it was kind of scared me.
"What is it Kiba?" Hige asked over the roar of the wind. We all stared at massive metal skeleton sticking out of the mud. It looked about as tall as a twenty story building, but it came to a very odd pointy arch at the top. The glinting we saw was the very tip, which we saw was covered in some type of steel. Whatever it was, there was a giant hole torn in the side with metal bars behind it. A giant metal skeleton.
Kiba didn't say anything as he led us inside the massive, strange building. We all looked around. It wasn't dry, but it wasn't soaked either. There were metal bars everywhere lining the inside of the thing. It formed the sides like ribs for the structure. I looked up and saw walls with opening like that of doors that led upward. It looked like a building, but it wasn't meant to be upward like this. Looking around, I saw that there were supposed to be more to the building going underground.
"Guys, what is this thing?" Toboe managed to choke out. He started choking even more as he tried ridding water from his lungs.
Tsume looked up and around the room we were in. There were broken remnants of what were probably crates and a few odd scraps of weird rubber circular things. He sniffed the air and managed a small answer, "I think it's called a boat."
"What's a boat?" I was the one coughing raggedly now, trying to relive myself of the rain I inhaled earlier. Hige shook himself off, sending huge drops of water on us. "Hey!" Glaring at him with one eye, I had to clench the other shut as my bangs flopped in the way.
He snickered, "Oops, sorry." His fur stuck out in odd ends, looking like a wet puff ball. I'd laugh at him later. Right now I was cold. Toying with his collar slightly, he looked around. "A boat, huh? Isn't that what humans used to travel through water?"
"On top of the water, I think," Tsume added.
Leaving Toboe's side, I went to a corner and shook myself off. Water sprayed off me, but didn't get the others wet. When I was done, I looked off in one direction and walked around aimlessly. Suddenly, my hind foot caught onto some type of rope and it latched around it instantly, tightening and flinging me up in the air. "Heeeey!" I yelped out of anger more than fear. The room was spinning and jumping as I dangled, spun, and just plain swung rapidly by my foot.
"Mutt!" Hige yelled in surprise.
"Get me down! Get me down now!" I thrashed more, but it just caused more pain. A trap? A trap in a place like this? What's going on?
As I came around for another loopy swing, I saw Tsume leap into the air and cut the rope. I dropped instantly, but years on the street hadn't left me with nothing. When the ground came too close, I twisted around then landed on my feet. My hind leg hurt horribly as it was the injured one from back in town. I tried not to say anything. Instead, I sat down to try not to set anymore traps off.
Tsume walked up behind me then nudged me in the back with his boot. "You okay?"
Turning to look back at him, I hid my right eye behind my bangs. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little spooked."
He looked around, wary now. "This place may be full of traps, but I wouldn't know why."
Kiba looked up at the door that led to higher ground. "Let's go up there." Without another word to us he leaped up, swayed to the right, kicked off another wall, and made it to the door without missing it. He vanished from our sights. Hige followed after him, but when he made it to the door, he had to grab the edge of it and scrabbled up.
"Stupid porker," Tsume murmured before lunging upward. Toboe and I were the last ones to go up. He was still shivering a bit as we both sat on the cold, wet ground. The wind struck the boat with such a force that it shook and shuddered every so often. I even found myself jumping slightly to the sharp groaning sounds it made.
Finally, Toboe stood and looked at me. "Can you make it to the top?" He looked concerned for me as I tried not to bring any notice to my injured leg. "Do you need help?"
"No, I'm fine." Standing, I moved to the side with crates and stood on them. "Go on, you go first. I'll follow." I shook an idle hand at him. "Go."
His eyes lingered on me for a few seconds. He actually seemed a little sad about something. Finally, he turned away from me then looked up. "Mutt, I hope you trust us." With a mighty leap from the younger pup, he scaled the area after leaping off the wall and clung to the door opening. Soon, he climbed up and was also gone.
I was sitting in the near pitch darkness, aside from the flashes of lightning outside. The wind gusted through the openings in the boat and cut right through me. Shadows and sounds made me jumpy and maybe a little afraid. My hind leg throbbed from the abuse and I knew there was no way I'd be able to reach the opening up in the ceiling. It was a jump just out of reach, but I had to get up there.
Strange smells filtered into my nose, faintly, disgustingly, and I realized it was death. My fur stood on end as I got down from the crates. I looked around, holding up my human illusion, trying to see where the smell was actually coming from. Something in the darkness squeaked, a metallic, rusty squeak. The sound of movement swayed in the air. I could feel the shift. Lightning flashed outside. Wind bellowed around me. The smell soon became so strong that I thought I was going to gag!
Something was moving behind me, so I turned to look. "AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Mutt? Kid? Hey, Mutt!" Tsume called down to me. "Kid!"
I was running around, electricity dancing through my spine. All the time I was screaming "Get it off! Get it off! Oh my God!" at the top of my lungs. My eyes scanned the area again, the dead, rotting corpse of a wolf hung upside-down from the same type of trap I was in. It must have been hanging from a crook in the darkness, but the wind must have knocked it down.
"Get up here!" Tsume must have seen it too as he sounded worried now. I could set off another trap again at any moment!
Whipping around, sparks of fear still dancing along my spine, I crouched while gathering as much strength I could. When I felt like a tightly wound coil, I pushed off the ground with all my might. My leg throbbed and soon stung again as I connected with a wall. I felt the cold, rusty metal under my feet as I kicked off again. The door seemed like an incredibly small target and I knew I'd never reach it. I was right, sadly. The door was less than an arm's length away and I felt myself dropping slowly.
"I gotcha!" Tsume reached out and grabbed my outreached arm. He managed to grab my wrist, but we were just hanging there for a second. Soon, I felt myself being hoisted up then thrown inside the area. Light flooded my eyes as I hit the floor then slid across it before hitting the wall. "You need to eat more, kid." Tsume was standing over me a minute later. "You weigh next to nothing."
My heart was beating fast, rapid like a snare drum, as I tried to catch my breath. I wasn't afraid because I was falling. The sight of that grotesquely rotted figure of that wolf corpse was still fresh in my mind. I didn't even notice the pain in my leg or the eyes on me. My body continued to tremble even beyond my mind telling it to stop. I could see everyone's mouth moving as they were trying to talk to me, but I wasn't able to hear them. With my body still in panic-mode, I closed my eyes and forced myself into a safety induced slumber.