by K. T. Tomb
“After you left the shelter,” Ula said, “I got adopted. No one believed me when I told them you were a feral dog. That sort of thing isn’t seen very often. But I stuck to what you had told me. I could read in your mind that it was true. I never doubted it. Needless to say, that made me a bit of a target at the shelter.”
“Yes,” Shadow said. “But what else happened with you? How did you get here?”
“I was adopted by a young couple. They seemed nice at first. They came into the shelter and looked over several dogs before settling on me. Something struck me as odd about them, though. Instead of taking any of us to the playroom or the courtyard, these people picked me up, felt up and down my legs, and watched how I walked. That sort of thing. The humans at the shelter apparently didn’t find anything strange about their behavior because they adopted me out to them. I was so excited to finally have a home. But I soon learned the reason for the strange examination at the shelter, and the dream of my happy home was not meant to be.”
“What was it?” Shadow asked, looking at the many scars that showed through her fur and her torn, healed ears. “What happened to you?”
“They took me to a place with other dogs, a large warehouse. The whole place reeked of fear and blood. I was terrified. First, they shaved off all of my fur. Then, I was tied to a leash at the end of a long pole and other dogs were brought in to me. Aggressive, mean dogs. It soon became clear that my role was for the other dogs to unleash their aggression on me before being put into a pit to fight each other. Sort of warming up for their fights.”
Shadow listened with horror. He had never heard of such an atrocity. “I don’t understand. Why? Why would they do this horrible thing to you?”
“For sport. They called me a bait dog,” Ula continued. “The first few weeks were terrible. I was kept in a small enclosure, unable to escape as the other dogs built up their killer instincts before they were forced to fight each other. I tried to talk to them at first, like I am talking to you right now, but I realized these dogs had something wrong with them. Their minds were not right, as if they had been bred and trained for this terrible hatred and came out of this training with a fever for fighting. I thought I would die from my many wounds. I was no match for any of them. They were all larger than me. And all of them were bent on murder.”
“How did you escape?” Shadow asked, shocked at what Ula was telling him.
“Finally, one day, a new dog had been put in with me. Bigger, meaner. That had been an especially hard time, up to that point. I truly feared for my life at every moment. A large, muscular dog stepped toward me—his head was almost as wide as his shoulders. His eyes were looking right through me and his mouth was already bloody. Foam dripped from his mouth as if he had eaten something he shouldn’t have. As usual, he was goaded into attacking me—the humans poked him with sticks and shouted at him until he became even more agitated. I often came out of these situations nothing more than a bloody pulp, wondering from one day to the next when I would be killed.”
“Oh, Ula. I am so sorry.” He nodded for her to go on.
“That day, I presumed, would be no different. As soon as he appeared, I could see the rolling whites of his eyes, the flash of his teeth. In the past, I had tried to be submissive, in hopes that the other dog would show mercy. This never worked. Keep in mind that I never once blamed the other dogs. They were victims, just as I was. Whatever these people had done to them was a terrible, terrible thing. But despite this, I soon realized that I had to find a way to survive. This dog before me was terrified, too, I could see, but he wasn’t terrified of me.”
“He was terrified of them, the humans,” Shadow said.
“Yes. So, I tried something I had never thought of before.”
“You fought back,” Shadow guessed.
“Yes.
I held up my head and looked him straight in the eye. When he lunged at me, I dodged and snapped back. I had never done this before. It goes against my nature. Immediately, I heard the humans react to my self-defense moves. They all began to gather around and chant something. I pushed myself into dominance. Remembering how the dogs in the shelter had tried to dominate each other, I did that, too. I didn’t want to hurt the other dog, but he kept coming at me, again and again, ripping up my flesh. Finally, I ducked under him and pretended I was going to show my belly, but instead, I latched onto his throat and brought him down to the ground.”
Shadow nodded for her to go on.
“I knew if I let him up, I would die. So, I didn’t let him up. I had his throat in my tightest grip and he fought and fought, never giving up. I squeezed his throat to keep him down and soon, he… died.” She paused. “I didn’t mean it to go that far, but if I would have let him up, it would have meant my own death. So, I chose life.”
Shadow was shocked. Ula, the happy-go-lucky dog from the shelter, had killed another dog. He didn’t know what to say. Not even in his wolf pack had one of his family ever killed another member. It would be unthinkable.
“It was self-defense,” he said to comfort her.
“Shadow, I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. When you see that the end is coming for you, you will do anything to survive. All I could think was, ‘How can I get out of this alive?’”
Shadow and the others bowed their heads to her, in respect and awe of what she had done to save her own life.
“What happened when the other dog died?” Shadow asked.
Ula said, “Since I was just the bait dog and very injured, the humans didn’t want to put me in the ring to fight, but they also knew they couldn’t have me injuring the fighting dogs. I think they thought it was a fluke because they kept me on as a bait dog for a little while, still bringing dogs to me to excite them as easy prey before they put them in the real fighting pit. But word got around that the bait dog had had enough. That a mere female dog was showing her will to survive. That was how I learned to become an Alpha.”
“You earned it,” Shadow said.
“I did. Soon, no dog would even come at me, not even the biggest ones. Even with the strange things that the humans had done to them, going against an Alpha goes against any dog’s nature. And I was, and am, an Alpha.”
She glanced toward the pack around her with a wry glance as they all tucked their heads down. Shadow noticed a small smile exchanged between all of them and immediately knew that the dynamic between Ula and her pack was that she ruled them. He turned back to her to hear the rest of the story.
Ula continued, “It became clear that I no longer would function as a bait dog as the fighters always came away bloodied now, and were unable to effectively fight in the real fighting pit. I was no longer the warm-up dog. And to the humans, that meant only one thing.”
“Did they abandon you?” Shadow asked.
“Oh no. I would have loved to be put on the street to run away. They intended to put me down. I could smell the intentions of the man with the gun who took me out to the forest that day.”
Shadow had seen the human hunters and what he now knew were called guns. He had seen how they could make a killing happen, even from a distance with the strange method that produced such a loud sound and felled even the largest of creatures in the forest. The deer, the elk, the bear. All had fallen to the sound that cracked through the forest from a stick pointed by humans at an animal. Not a stick. A gun. Shadow had yet to understand how it worked, but he knew that all of the animals he knew feared this weapon.
“Where did he stop with you?”
“He didn’t take me far, just outside the city,” Ula said. “Once we got out into the trees, he dragged me, snapping and snarling, into the cover of the shadows on the leash, to hide from anyone nearby what he was doing. I sensed his gun on his hip, smelled it. I knew if I pulled loose and ran, he would point the gun at me and fell me with the sound it makes.”
“What did you do?” Shadow asked.
“I turned on him. Barking and snarling, I turned loose every bit of resentment and hatred in
side of me for what he had done to me. How he had used me. How he had taken away my life without killing me. And I fought for the others, too, even the ones who used me as a bait dog. It was what they were trained to do. And I fought for the other bait dogs, most of whom had died.”
She paused, remembering, her eyes far away. “My aggressive plan worked. He backed away, scrambling to reach for his metal stick, but I snapped at his hands until he had to hold them over his head to escape being bitten. He ran back to the truck, abandoning me—then and there.”
“And then what?” Shadow asked, his heart pounding.
“He sped off, leaving me free to roam and most importantly, leaving me alive. I had only known the city at that time. I knew I couldn’t survive in the woods by myself, so I found my way back to the city.”
“I want to leave the city so badly and just as badly, you wanted to find it again,” Shadow said in wonder.
“You have your way to survive and I have mine,” she said simply.
“When she found the city again is when she found us,” Goldie interjected. “I pulled the dragging leash from her neck.”
“And I chewed off her collar and the dangling muzzle,” Red said.
“That is true,” Ula said. “I stumbled across one of their food stashes. Not here.” She gestured with her nose toward the pile of pizza boxes behind them. “I think it may have been Mao’s China Hut, three blocks over.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Red confirmed. “I remember because you took all of the sesame chicken.”
Ula laughed. “I had to prove a point… that a female dog can be an Alpha.”
“Fair enough,” Red said.
“But I don’t understand,” Shadow said after mulling over the story for a moment. “How did Ula become your leader?”
“She’s an Alpha.” Switch spoke this time. “A dog can’t really go against that. She is not the largest of us, but she is the wisest and the fiercest.”
“That’s true,” Shadow agreed. “Does it work the same for a dog pack as it does for a wolf pack?”
Ula said, “From what you told me, yes. I think so.”
“Speaking of the forest,” Shadow said, “I have to go. I have lost track of time. If the bird delivered my message to the pack, they’ll be expecting me. And if they are on the move, I have to find out where they went before snow or rain covers up their tracks.”
“Go?” Switch said. “You can’t go. We need your help.”
“Help with what?” Shadow asked.
“The Mulligan Gang,” Red said. “Before Ula showed up, we thought you might have been one of them.”
“What’s the Mulligan Gang?”
Ula jumped in with the explanation. “Another dog pack is named after the man who once owned them. The story goes that he went away and did not return. His dogs got loose and escaped the dog catcher’s noose. You see, we roam on this side of town. We stick to the shadows and alleys. We know what restaurants put out what food in the trash and what time of day they do it. It’s a pretty decent life, actually. We just have to avoid the dog catchers and even the well-meaning humans who try to pick us up. They try to lure us into their cars with bags of hamburgers.”
“I will never take food from the hand of a human again,” Shadow said. “Not even a human cub.”
“We know better than that now,” Ula said. “Look where that got me the first time. From a shelter to bait dog was nothing I ever expected when I willingly went with a woman who fed me from her hand when me and my littermates were put on the street to survive. And then she took me in her car to the shelter. Now, we have learned and come far. Now, we fight for turf, for territory. Now, we fight for survival.”
Shadow listened carefully. His brief experience as an adopted pet had been easy, compared to hers. Except for the fact that he had never truly belonged to a human pack and never wanted to, he had not been so terribly mistreated. Not like Ula had. He shuddered to think of all she had been through since he had last seen her.
“This experience has changed you forever,” he said softly.
“The choice was to change myself or die,” she said. “Now, we always stay on this side of the city. The Mulligan Gang is the other pack that roams the other side of the city. The problem is that there is a small strip, just a few city blocks away, which falls under debate as to which pack will claim that area. It has a few choice restaurants. The steakhouse, for one. Prime eating. No pun intended.”
“What will you do?” Shadow asked. “How will you figure out the territory?” He already knew the answer before she gave it because he knew what happened when a wolf pack crossed into another wolf pack’s hunting territory.
Ula looked around at the dog pack. “We’ll have a face-off with them in a day’s time. Problem is, they outnumber us. There are four of us and six of them. If we had more dogs in our pack, we would stand a fighting chance. If you were with us, it would at least give us a chance to win. I do have a bit of a reputation as the dog who survived the fighting pit, but my experience only goes so far. I am small, compared to our enemies.”
“I don’t know,” Red said. “You can be pretty intimidating when you want to be. Size is a factor, but not the only factor. You have courage and you are swift and ruthless when you have to be.”
“Absolutely,” Goldie said as he and Switch both nodded in agreement.
“Stop kissing up to me, boys,” Ula said with an eye roll, but Shadow noticed again the small grin and chiding tone she used. She turned back to Shadow. “The truth is, Shadow, we need that territory. It has the only two steakhouses in the city. We’re dogs. We can only survive on pizza crusts and sesame chicken for so long before we start going a little batty. We need meat. Bones. Fat scraps.”
Shadow thought about it. He wanted to get back home to the forest. To meat, to bones, to fat scraps. And to his brothers and sisters and parents. That much was certain. But Ula had been the only friend he’d had in that horrible animal shelter. The advice she had given him had helped him survive, even after he had left with the human family with a leash and collar around his neck. He came to a decision. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll help you tomorrow. But I need to ask a favor in return.”
“Anything at all,” Ula said.
“The family I was with,” Shadow explained. “The man has a picture of the forest, the same place where I lived with the wolf pack. I am not sure what it means exactly, but I am certain that my family is in danger. If they got the message I sent, they should leave the area. But if I can somehow stop the man, then we would have our home back.”
“How would you stop him?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I would get all of my wolf brothers and sisters together to—”
“To what?” Ula said. “You can’t stop humans from doing what they want. They have cars and guns and leashes and muzzles. You can only run from them now, Shadow. The wolf pack must run, too. That is the only answer.”
He considered her wise words. “You’re right. If I help you win this territory in tomorrow’s fight, will you help me get back home?”
“Of course,” Ula said. “I will go with you as far as I can.”
“Did you really grow up with a wolf pack?” Switch asked, his eyes wide with wonder.
“Yes, I did,” Shadow said. He realized that for the first time, more than one dog believed him. A feeling of pride and sorrow washed over him as he thought about his wolf family and all he had learned from them and also, since leaving them.
“Tell us about it,” Goldie said with a similar look of marvel.
Shadow glanced at Ula, who nodded her approval. They had many hours before dawn would come. The dogs settled in while Shadow regaled them with stories of his youth, beginning with Mother Wolf, who had defended him as fiercely and proudly as one of her own pups. And he told them of each of his wolf siblings, whom he considered his real brothers and sisters. They listened as he described the feeling of taking down prey with the single mindset of the pack working together in perfect
harmony. He recalled for them the beauty of the untouched forest, the majesty of the mountains marking the edge of the forest, and the serene silver lake where the animals gathered for water and refreshment. Eventually, one by one, the dogs drifted off to sleep, each dreaming about running through the trees, feeling the freedom of the wind whipping through their fur as they plunged forward toward the horizon.
Shadow stayed awake for a long while, watching over his sleeping friends… like an Alpha would. It had been a long time since he had been part of a pack. It felt strange that they were not his family from the forest, but in their own way, he knew they were a family to each other.
Shadow knew that he was a dog but not a dog. He also knew that he was a wolf but not a wolf. Perhaps there was no one else like him. He lived between two worlds and now, he could choose where he wanted to be. It occurred to him that in a dog pack, he had a fair chance of becoming an Alpha. But in a wolf pack, he would not become an Alpha. He thought about his choices for a long time.
After the fight with the Mulligan Gang, he would go his own way, back to the wolf pack. This, he decided.
He looked at Ula, over whose sleep he watched. It would be very hard to leave her. But his heart was in the forest with a wolf pack. Not here with a dog pack. He knew in his mind what he was physically… a dog of unknown parentage. But in his heart and mind, he was pure wolf.
He heaved a sigh as, try as he would, he could not stay awake another moment. He finally succumbed to dreams of running in the forest and someday, taking down an elk on his own. They were big dreams, as big and bold as he had ever had.
Chapter Thirteen
The dawn greeted the sleeping dogs, casting its golden glow over them.
Shadow opened his eyes first, noticing Ula had leaned her back against his during the night. He took comfort in the contact, as it reminded him of the feeling he had once enjoyed while curled up with his pack mates, back in the forest. It always came back to that. The forest.