by Devon Hughes
As a last-ditch effort, Castor took a sharp pivot and shouldered against the beagle. The force and his hefty weight caught the smaller dog off guard and sent it hurtling into both the greyhound and the spotted hothead. They all careened sideways, a jumble of limbs and tails.
“Yes!” Castor howled gleefully, shocked at his success. Now all he had to do was catch up with Runt and find a way home!
But looking ahead, Castor saw that Runt was barreling down a hill. And downhill led to a place Castor had been forbidden from puppyhood to ever, ever approach: it led to the river.
The river wasn’t even water. It was muck. Swirling brown acid, where nothing survived except pink rats whose fur had been burned away, along with half their brains.
“Runt!” Castor barked a frantic warning. “Runt, stop!”
Knowing he should turn around, Castor surged forward, desperate to catch up with his brother. He called Runt’s name over and over, but Runt didn’t hear him, couldn’t focus on anything except the fat raccoons luring him toward them. He was wild with the hunger of the hunt. Castor watched as Runt ran to the end of the road.
And right out to the end of the dock.
When Castor finally reached him, Runt was panting giddily, surrounded by four fat raccoon meals, which he began eating with his usual fervor.
“Runt,” Castor said pleadingly, the toxic smell of the river burning in his throat. “We need to go. Now.”
“I got ’em!” Run grinned around a mouthful of raccoon fur. “I told you I’d get ’em!”
“And we got you,” a voice barked from behind them.
Castor whirled around. It was the beagle’s voice, but the dalmatian and the greyhound were there, too . . . along with eleven more of their friends. The entire rival pack was lined up, blocking their exit.
“Ohhh no,” Runt whimpered when he saw the other dogs. The limp raccoon fell from his jaws.
“Oh yes,” the beagle said. His ear was still bleeding. “On this side of town, we don’t take kindly to Southside mutts stealing our meat.”
“On this side of town,” the dalmatian said, his pale eyes unblinking, “meat is so scarce we sometimes feast on enemy dog.”
Runt couldn’t help it—he let out a submissive whine. The other dogs laughed.
“Runt, get behind me,” Castor commanded in a low, cautious growl. Then he lowered his head. He would fight every last one of them before they could touch his brother. “Come at me,” he growled at the rival pack, his lips twitching over his fangs.
And come they did. They were muscled or skinny, long-haired or short; they were all vicious. The dock was narrow, so he only had to fight two or three at a time, but the next group was always ready. Castor felt teeth sinking into his belly, snapping at his legs. Gnawing on his tail like an old bone. The beagle whose ear he’d nipped got revenge by biting one of Castor’s ears down the middle.
Within minutes, Castor seemed to be hurting from everywhere at once, and every inch of his body quivered in agony. Still, he fought back with a fierceness he never knew was in him. He bulldozed into the foe, snarling as he lunged. He shouldered a husky off the dock, and though he heard the splash, the next dog was already on him before he could look toward the river.
He had to get one more bite in, disable one more dog. He only wanted to save his brother, and maybe survive while he was at it. He knew he probably didn’t have a chance, but at least he’d go out with honor.
Then, all of a sudden, the other dogs were scrambling away. One after another, with their ears flat against their skulls and their eyes wide with fear, they turned tail and fled. Were they afraid of the river after what had happened to the husky? Or had Castor actually managed to win?
“We’re okay,” Castor said, still bewildered. He was bleeding and limping, and he could feel the painful tear in his right ear where the beagle had latched on, but they were both alive.
“We’re better than okay.” Runt scooted toward Castor, gratefully licking at his ears and cheeks. “I can’t believe you took on that whole pack!”
“Maybe I should challenge Alpha,” Castor joked, feeling proud despite himself. Runt frowned. “Or not . . . I mean, I was kidding.”
But Runt wasn’t looking at him. His usually floppy ears were standing up, alert, and he let out a fearful growl.
“What?” Castor asked, confused. He heard nothing.
Runt scrambled to his feet now, and there was no trace of the joy that had been on his face moments before. “Is that . . . ?”
Then Castor heard it. His ear must’ve been damaged worse than he thought, because the noise was close now—too close—and it made every hair on Castor’s coat stiffen.
It was a crushing sound—like bones being ground up—and then a slurp.
4
CASTOR LOOKED UP THE HILL TO SEE THE SNAILLIKE machine with the words WASTE MANAGEMENT stamped on it. Then the Crusher Slusher was hurtling toward them, giant and menacing, and before Castor and Runt could reach the start of the dock, it was already blocked off.
Near the Crusher, they could see the dust and debris trembling on the pavement. Then Castor saw the raccoons’ fur rustling, and he could feel the high-force suction starting to pull at him. He and Runt scrabbled at the wood planks of the dock, desperately trying to find purchase.
Castor bared his teeth, and the loose skin of his jowls pulled away from his face. The wind was so strong now that it dried his eyes, making everything blurry. As he was dragged blindly toward the awful gears, Castor couldn’t believe that, after everything he’d survived in his scrappy life, this was the end. He almost wished the dogs had torn him apart instead.
Abruptly, the sound cut out. The Crusher had stopped.
Castor blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. Runt, only a few feet from the machine now, turned to look at him, wide-eyed. Castor stepped forward and peered around the Crusher Slusher with tentative hope. If it had died, they could squeeze around it. . . .
A figure in orange stepped out of the top of the Crusher, and Castor froze. Runt’s eyes went wider and white with terror, and Castor knew he could never make up for how wrong he’d been, how stupidly reassuring, how confident.
It was a human.
Not a faraway figure trapped behind glass. This was a human on the street, standing in front of him. At least that’s what he thought it was.
Castor had thought humans looked like the faces he’d seen in the virtual posters, but this creature looked almost insect-like. Its face was greenish, and it had large, round, tinted eyes, like those he’d seen on flies. It seemed to have trouble breathing—he could hear its labored breaths coming out of its weird circular mouth—and it was covered in billowing orange fabric and gloves—probably to hide the rest of its hideous skin.
It was terrifying, and it was lumbering toward him.
Castor didn’t know what to do, so he studied it like prey or an enemy dog. He noted the vulnerable parts—the fleshy sides, the fingers, the unstable two-legged balance.
Get away, he barked at the human.
The creature hesitated and turned its head, and for a moment, Castor thought his warning had worked and it was about to retreat. But instead, another human was moving in on them.
“What do you have there?” the second one called.
“Just a couple of mutts,” the first answered over its shoulder. “I tried to suck ’em up, but the old clunker’s not what she used to be.” It reached one of its orange arms toward the Slusher Crusher and rapped against the metal. “Careful,” it said as the second human stepped toward Castor. “That one’s vicious. Just saw him take on a dozen other dogs in a fight.”
“Really?” The human cocked its head but continued forward anyway, and Castor saw that it was holding something in its hands. Something hard and dark and mean-looking. Something that seemed familiar somehow, that Castor might’ve seen on one of the flashing pictures at some point. . . . The human brought it up to its face, peering through its hard, reflective eyes.
Runt whined and licked at him, distraught. “What is it, what is it, can I kill it?” he panted.
Castor didn’t have time to think about that now, though—his senses felt off. There seemed to be twice as many men, their orange outlines blurring every time he blinked, and Runt looked like he was glowing strangely. When the men spoke, their voices were hollow and muffled.
“What’d you do that for?” The first man’s hazy form stepped forward.
“You know NuFormz, the warehouse on the island, where the old prison used to be? I got a buddy over there, Slim, who says they’re looking for a fresh crop of animals for that Mega Media reality show—Unnaturals, or whatever. I bet those lab coats will pay a pretty penny for a prize like this.”
“I’d sure put my money on ’im in the ring,” the other agreed. “I love a good match.”
Castor’s mind was racing. He’d heard of dog disappearances before. Was this what had happened to his great-uncle Carmine or to the collie mutt last year? Had the Gray Whiskers’ warnings been right all along?
He struggled to his feet, or rather he scuttled sideways like a spider, tripping over his own paws. His legs weren’t working right. They were heavy and felt like they were made of the brown sludge in the river—all liquidy.
“Come on, then,” the man with the weapon said, his voice echoing. “I’ll give you a cut of the cash if you help me get him in my truck.” Their bodies seemed to flicker as they stepped toward Castor.
Now it was Runt’s turn to defend his brother. He stood in front of him, and his frantic barking was an alarm for every animal within earshot.
“Easy, there,” one of the men said, gesturing for Runt to move aside. “It’s not you we want.”
Castor was proud when Runt responded with a snarl and a snap of his jaws, but then they shot him with the poison arrow, too.
Castor’s head felt so heavy now that he couldn’t even protest as the insect men lifted him with their gloved hands and threw him into a cage in the back of a truck. The bars crossed in front of him and he smashed his face into them, scratching his nose.
Runt started to howl now, and even after the doors of the truck closed and the metal box started to move, Castor could hear his brother’s voice—a long, mournful wail of protest. It trailed them for miles, until Castor lost consciousness.
5
ACROSS THE RIVER AND 247 STORIES UP, MARCUS WAS IN his bedroom, listening to music on full blast and practicing kick flips on his skateboard as he scanned the simulink network for updated stats on the Unnaturals, like he did before every match.
He was only allowed to watch four of the sixteen fights each season, because his stepdad, Bruce the Brutal, worried about “overexposure to violence.” That was totally uncool, considering he was eleven years old—only fifteen months away from being a teenager!—but it was also totally hypocritical. Not only did Bruce help Marcus’s older brother, Pete, get a job with NuFormz, but Bruce helped design the monsters, which he’d confided to Marcus were only virtual models, anyway. But like any die-hard fan, Marcus still knew the mutants’ histories by heart, especially the ones on his favorite team.
Team Scratch had had a rough time lately. That was putting it mildly; the Invincible had led Team Klaw on a five-season winning streak, and he wasn’t showing any sign of slowing down. Pookie the Poisonous—the Chihuahua-spider—was the only one that could hold a candle to the scorpion-tiger, and he’d been mysteriously retired halfway through last season. Then the Crunch, a cockroach-crocodile that everyone thought would be super tough, had gotten squashed in his first match, bankrupting half the gamblers in Lion’s Head. Things had just gone downhill from there, and almost every time Marcus had checked the simulink, at least one member of Team Scratch was listed as injured.
Still, Marcus wasn’t giving up hope. Tonight was the final showdown, the Mega Monster Mash-up, when all the creatures fought at once. It was the most important match of the season, the only match that really counted, and Marcus had a warp ticket with his name on it.
He scanned the stats projected in front of his eyes. Even as a loyal Scratch fan, he knew it didn’t look good. Team Klaw’s odds were 62:1.
There was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, and Marcus looked away from the simulink toward the floor-to-ceiling warp screen on the far wall of his room. He could see Matchmaker Joni Juniper—or her avatar, at least—descending from the ceiling of the Dome in the mouth of a golden lion. As she reached the center space next to the scoreboard, the lion roared and erupted in an explosion of stars that turned into a banner.
MEGA MEDIA PRESENTS:
UNNATURALS FINAL FACE-OFF!
“The match is starting!” Marcus called downstairs to his mother.
The Matchmaker’s mouth was moving. Marcus killed the guitar-shredding noise of Sky Seizure and popped in his magni-sound earbuds.
“The time has come,” she announced. “For the night all you Moniacs have been waiting for! The Mega! Monster! Mash-up!”
Marcus usually hated that lame fanboy term, Moniac, but Joni Juniper was a total skyrocket, with honey-brown skin and a cloud of soft, dark auburn ringlets that framed her face, and when she said it, he actually blushed. He felt way too far away from the stadium, though—it was time to warp!
“Mom?” he called again, pulling out one of the earbuds. “Ticket code? Pleeease?”
“Sure, sweetie,” his mom answered. “As soon as you finish your history homework.”
Uh-oh.
“Who cares about the Warming Age?” Marcus groaned. He’d been procrastinating on this research feed all day. What was the point of reading about the animals that went extinct in the past, when you could watch newer, cooler virtual animals fight right now?
When his mom didn’t answer, Marcus sighed and turned back to the simulink and pulled up the list his teacher had generated, scanning it for something he recognized. Aha: hippopotamus! He thought he knew enough about a former Unnatural, a Komodo dragon– hippo mix, to whip up a quick feed. He remembered the Hellion’s crazy-powerful jaw, and that gross red drool, and started dictating the text.
“The hippo’s teeth sharpened themselves when ground together, and by overproducing saliva to slick things up, they could swallow their enemies whole.”
Or was that the lizard half of it? Marcus wasn’t sure, but he was able to bluff his way through a mediocre couple of pages, and soon enough he’d uploaded it to the school’s inter-verse. “Mom!” he screamed desperately. “Finished!”
The simulink beeped and moments later, the ticket code materialized in front of his face. Marcus popped the earbuds back in, slid the Blink over his eye, and pulled his desk chair up close to the warp screen. When his fingers made contact with the filmy material, a numerical key appeared, he tapped out the code, and a cartoon lion breaking his chains appeared on-screen, confirming his entry.
Warp time, baby!
The Blink clicked on and Marcus felt slightly dizzy as his eyes adjusted to the 4D image on the screen. Then he was there.
Or he was as much there as you could be without actually having tickets to the live match. Marcus knew he was still in his bedroom, of course, but other than the feel of the chair cushion beneath him, it sure seemed like he was in the Dome. When he rotated in his chair, his view expanded to a 360-degree view of the inside of the stadium. He saw the metallic sheen of the curved ceiling, the hologram of Joni Juniper dancing through the air as she revved up the crowd, and the crowd itself, thousands of people in the sloping bleachers all around him. They looked angry.
Marcus gave a voice command to crank up the volume on his earbuds, and the sound of booing rushed into his ears.
He looked down toward the wide, dusty
circle at the center of the Dome. The Invincible was prowling around the arena, looking more terrifying than ever. His imposing white tiger’s body rippled with muscle, razor-like teeth glinted under the Dome’s bright lights in a permanent snarl, and a long scorpion’s tail curved over his head.
It looked like that stinger had done some serious damage; in the ten minutes it had taken Marcus to finish his homework, the match was already over, and with it, the season.
Looking around the arena at the aftermath of the Invincible’s rampage, Marcus was sick to his stomach. He tore off his Blink and warped out of the stadium, feeling cheated. He tossed his earbuds on the bed and joined his mom in the kitchen.
She was furiously chopping vegetables and dumping them in a pan, and Marcus peered around her arms to get a look at what she was cooking.
“Honey, don’t touch,” his mom said. “Bruce is going to be home any minute, and I’ve got to finish this. You know he likes his food hot when he walks in the door.”
Marcus couldn’t care less what Bruce the Brutal liked.
“I hate stew, anyway,” he grumbled. “I’ll have a Vita pill or something.”
His mom made a sound of disapproval in her throat that told him that wasn’t an option. “A capsule of powdered protein is not sufficient for a growing boy.” Then she glanced up from the food she was making. “Hey, I thought you were warping into the match. Is it over so soon?”
“The Invincible won again,” he said, more to himself than her.
“It’s just virtual reality, honey,” she said, repeating what she and Bruce always like to remind him. “It’s just entertainment.”
Well, it hadn’t been very entertaining, that was for sure. It would be almost a month before the new mutants started competing—not that it mattered much. As a Team Scratch fan, it was getting harder and harder to get excited about another season.
So much for a comeback.