by Amy Shojai
Kelvin disconnected without answering. Lightening crackled again, and rain rejoined its dance with the wind. Time had run out for the cats and stray dog in the back. He’d thought the price steep enough in terms of innocent lives, until BeeBo and the unnamed kid tipped the balance further into the red zone. He’d make sure their lives counted for something.
The truck lurched as Kelvin climbed back inside. In another day or two, it wouldn’t matter if Sunny’s associates knew anything or not. Once rounded up along with the Doctor, the cops would dismiss any fantastic claims they spouted as desperate fabrications.
He shoved the truck into gear, and drove slowly toward the hidden barn, already planning how to get the animals from the truck into the dumpsters. It’d take three or maybe four trips. He didn’t have a carrier, so he’d have to tote one by one while dodging a path through the chained Pit Bulls. They wouldn’t bother him, but probably considered smaller pets as prey. The truck hit a pothole, and the bucking movement jarred something loose in the truck’s bed.
One of the kennel doors sprang open. It slapped to and fro in the growing wind. Kelvin took his foot off the gas when the three cats spilled out. The littlest one, the color of dark honey and probably just as sweet, climbed up something dark that moved. Kelvin twisted in his seat to stare, as the truck continued to coast.
The dark shape became a youngster. The boy tucked the small orange cat inside his coat and scooted on his butt to the passenger side of the truck bed. Kelvin cursed when the muddy white stray dog followed him. The boy boosted the pooch up and over the side of the truck. It yelped when it landed.
Kelvin watched with disbelief as the stolen “bait” escaped. The boy turned back, maybe to gather up the last two cats, saw him, and yelled. Kelvin slammed on the brakes.
"Run! Kinsler, run run run!" The boy vaulted over the side of the truck to follow the dog.
Kelvin leaped from the truck, cursing, but didn’t attempt to stop the boy. He stood and watched him pelt down the muddy trail, never once looking back. He waited until the boy disappeared from sight and then Kelvin collected the remaining cats, and delivered them to their destiny. They’d have to be enough.
Chapter 16
The fire in his lungs finally made Willie stop, but he still couldn't catch his breath. He stumbled off the side of the road to hunch beneath sheltering limbs of a live oak, leaves sparse but still green despite the weather they'd had. He propped himself against the tree before his noodle-weak knees gave out. The little cat inside his jacket shivered and mewed, and its tail slipped out. He tucked it back inside, thinking the waffle-colored tabby had the longest tail he'd ever seen.
Willie peered around the tree, and breathed easier at the empty road. He'd lucked out. Either the nefarious bad guy couldn't turn his truck around quick enough to chase, or he had more important stuff to do. Like maybe steal more kids’ dogs and cats.
"Kinsler? Where are you?" Willie thought the dog was right behind him. "Kin....sler. Come here, boy, come on, let's go home."
Waffles shivered and yowled in answer. "Hey, it's okay, little guy. Kinsler probably caught a whiff of squirrel and took off again. Dang dog lets his nose talk him into trouble. That's what Melinda says."
Melinda would know what to do. For a girl, she was pretty smart. At least Kinsler got away from the dog thief. Maybe he'd sniff his way home.
Willie's teeth chattered. It'd be cool if he had a fur coat and could sniff his way home like Kinsler, but he couldn't see three feet before him through the curtain of rain. He winced when something stung his cheek. He looked at the sky. Pea-size beads of ice peppered the ground and shredded leaves for thirty seconds, and then stopped. His soaked jeans stuck to his legs, and when lightening crackled, he scrambled from beneath the tree. Trees attract lightening. He learned that at the school safety assembly about tornadoes.
Tornadoes were awesome. Not when they hurt people. But the combo of wind and hail and lightening played out like video games where superheroes fought above the clouds, and thundering artillery drove evil doers away. He bet the dark fluff in the south-west sky was a wall cloud. Willie always thought it'd be cool to be a storm chaser.
But storm chasers only talked about the excitement. Nothing, not even hugging the cat in his arms, relieved the feeling of aloneness. He looked up, as if from the bottom of a dark, enormous pit with no way out. Clouds pushed down, down, down until he couldn't breathe, and his stomach clenched the same way a roller coaster flip-flopped your insides. Daddy would know what to do. Melinda would get mad. But Mom wouldn't even know he was lost, or care if he never got home. That sucked the worst of all.
"Don't be a stupid-head." He said it out loud, to buck up his courage, and the cat purred. "Wasn't talking to you, Waffles. But guess we're in this together."
Willie's wet clothes chaffed and itched his legs when he cautiously climbed back onto the road's crest. His shoes slipped every third step but he took care to dodge channels cut in the bank as water sluiced down. Hair dripped into his eyes, making it hard to see. The ditch on both sides of the road collected brown water that churned and nibbled and swallowed whole chocolate-color chunks from the bank. As he watched, the water level rose so fast it lapped nearly to the spot he'd previously stood.
Lightening zippered across the sky, and Willie picked up his pace down the middle of the road heading toward town. Rain took a breather and the wind didn't push quite so hard, but the spider web itch on the back of his neck never let up. Creepy.
Distant headlights drove Willie to the brushy growth off the road. Only the truck guy and his creepy minions dared to be out...and stupid-head kids. He figured these minions wouldn't be cute cartoons, neither.
One step off the solid pavement sent him sliding toward stinky ditch water. Willie wrapped his arms tighter around the purring Waffles, squared his shoulders, and slowed to a determined walk in the opposite lane. Dad said attitude got you through tough situations, so he'd be tough.
The van—it was a van, not the brown truck, he saw with relief—slowed to a crawl. "Drive on, drive on, drive on," he whispered to himself, and kept his eyes averted, sure if he made eye contact, his head would explode.
But the van pulled alongside him, stopped, and the driver cranked down the window. A kid maybe his sister’s age stuck his head out the window. A girl younger than Willie with black braids rode in the passenger seat clutching a stuffed purple dinosaur.
"Storm coming, bad storm. Get in, get safe. Bad storm, high winds predicted. Based on Fujita-Pearson Scale, storm will cause considerable to severe damage. Very dangerous situation. Golf ball size hail which is ice falling from sky, and F2 or F3 tornadoes. Fascinating tornadoes but deadly, too. Why outside? Get in." The boy cocked his head when Willie's rescued cat meowed. "Storm bad for cat, too."
Willie grinned. "Tornadoes are cool. I'm sort of a storm chaser. Want to be one, anyway." Rain began to spit again so he hurried to the rear door, levered it open and climbed inside. "I'm Willie. Sure glad you showed up, it's a long walk back to town." He opened his jacket and the orange cat spilled out, took a couple of unsteady steps, and then shook wet from its fur.
The little girl squealed and clutched her toy. "Grooby hates wet." She turned around in her seat, as much as the belt would allow. "Sixty-seven percent chance tornadoes hit Heartland."
The driver nodded. "Tracy knows numbers. Lenny knows tornadoes. And maps. I’m Lenny. She’s Tracy." His gaze slid away.
Kinsler did that with his eyes, too. Willie hoped Kinsler found a safe spot out of the storm, or sniffed his way home. Dogs were supposed to have some sort of homing instinct. He read about that in The Incredible Journey book.
The boy behind the wheel shoved the stick shift and gears grated before the van shook and began to move.
Willie studied the two kids. They talked weird, but he didn't doubt they were smart about numbers and storms. "We're not going back to town? We could go to my house." He wanted to go home, but at least he was out of the rain. Mom always sa
id beggars can't be choosers, so he couldn't complain.
"Basement?" Lenny kept both hands on the wheel, his knuckles white when sudden wind shook the van. When Willie shook his head, Lenny sped up the van.
What if a tornado hit his house? Melinda was there by herself. "One time we all huddled up in the bathroom. Hail took out the front window but everything else was okay." Ground shifted too much in North Texas to have a basement. He didn't know anyone who had a storm shelter, either. Most times, bad storms magically moved around or turned away from Heartland, and only hit the outskirts.
Tracy fiddled with a tablet, then held it up. Willie could see a multicolored schematic of weather radar moving in real time across a digital map.
Lenny tapped the screen. "Safe spot, there." He slowed the van, peered through the windshield past the flack-flack-flack of wipers, and turned off onto a hidden gravel pathway.
Crowding tree limbs scraped and pushed against the van like witch fingers guarding secrets. Willie yelped when a particularly large limb thumped the windshield. A star-shaped crack appeared. He remembered the drainage ditch on both sides of the road, and hoped the narrow road wouldn't wash out before they got to Lenny's safe spot. And that it truly was safe.
Dad would call the road a pig path. Willie wondered where feral hogs hid when tornadoes threatened.
The three remained silent, bracing themselves as the van struggled up a slight incline to higher ground. Lenny slowed the van, and pointed. "Down there is safe. Tornado jumps over low land."
Willie checked out windows on both sides of the van. The road straddled a man-made dam. A livestock tank on the right gave way to a steep dirt slope on the other, where a cement barn squatted halfway down screened by an army of massive bois d'arc trees. The building seemed solid, all right.
The overgrown drive veered to the left and downward, and Lenny drove slowly, babying the van. But almost immediately, the tires lost traction in the saturated ground. The van skied sideways, crabbing downward until earth completely gave way.
Tracy shrieked, Willie yelled. The van slammed the rear wall of the barn. Waffle’s percussive spit-hiss morphed into banshee yowls after Lenny's head made a melon-like "thonk" on the windshield. Silence.
Then a pack of dogs howled.
Chapter 17
Shadow wondered why September ignored the stowaways in the back of the SUV. When they jumped in the car at the theater, he'd noticed right away. Maybe it was a game, hiding under blankets. Shadow liked games. The kids only came out after September left the car to go into the house without him.
"Good-boy, Shadow." Nikki reached to scratch him. "Thanks for not giving us away." She turned to speak to Steven. "Now what? September left the keys, but I don't know how to drive. Do you?" The hitch in her voice, and rising inflection, partnered with her wrinkled brow, spoke of worry and concern.
Shadow still fretted what Steven wanted. But he liked Nikki. She gave him treats, played the show-me game, and scratched his chin the way he liked it. And she smelled like cats. Shadow liked cat smell.
The squeal of wet tires stopped right behind their car and made the two kids squeak and dive back under the blankets. Shadow arched his neck and pricked ears at the strange man who got out, followed by an odd lady moving with strange twitches. She had flyaway fluffy hair even longer than September's. He poked his nose out the window crack, tasting the air when they walked by.
The lady's smell mixed sweat and perfume, medicine and fever. It reminded him of the vet clinic, only without the companionable animal smells. The man's breathing hurried fast as his feet, while his shoulders hunched against the rain. Wind tossed the lady's mane over her face, and then away, and when Shadow glimpsed her wild eyes, his ears went flat. He muttered a growled caution to himself.
What to do? September was inside. Strangers near his person, without Shadow to protect, made his heart race faster than Macy chasing a toy.
His suspicion and frustration grew when the pair reached the door. The man fiddled with the handle to make it open, jingling keys—Shadow knew that word from the show-me game—while the woman made high pitched whines that hurt a good-dog's ears.
Shadow furrowed his brow and ran to the other side of the car to see better as the man opened the door. The sick-smelling lady scuttled inside. He whined and pawed the window. He should be with his person, to protect September and warn about sick-smelling people and strange men opening doors.
Sometimes when he pawed car doors, the window scrolled down. Shadow didn't know why this didn't happen every time. The fact it happened at all offered enough incentive for him to try every time, especially when a good-dog needed to be with his person.
People knew many things that dogs didn't. September told him to wait and good-dogs did what they were told. But dogs knew many things, too, sometimes more than people did.
He pawed the door, scratching the window and the side of the panel, while anxious whines spilled from his throat. Maybe Nikki would open the car door for him? Shadow checked, but the two kids still huddled under a pile of blankets, not even a twitch to betray their presence. They smelled scared, the acrid scent laser bright. He heard muted sounds that must be the whiny lady's voice even through the closed door of the house.
"Willieeeeee!"
Shadow ran to the other side of the car when he heard September's worried cry. From somewhere behind the house. He relaxed a bit. The strangers inside weren't near her after all.
He didn't know what the "willieeee" word meant, but it had the same tone as when she called Shadow to come. Was September calling another dog? He only liked to come when treats or toys were involved. But he came anyway, because he wanted to be a good-dog for September.
Would she give that willieeee-dog a treat? He listened hard, past the sizzling-bacon-sound of rain on the roof, and paw-swiped the door again.
This time, the window opened. Delighted, Shadow hopped out and stood on the pavement for a moment, sniffing the foot treads of the strangers while rain pelted his black fur.
The door to the house opened again, and Shadow's head came up. The strange man left the door ajar, and called over his shoulder. "Watch your mother, my phone’s in my car."
Shadow dashed away when the man jogged toward him, and redoubled his pace at the man's startled cry. He bounded to the rear of the house, nose up to seek September and the willieee-dog she'd called. Running feet slapped a sodden drumbeat, and Shadow recognized September's quiet gasps for breath. No longer worried, now she sounded scared.
He barked as he ran so she'd hear him and know not to be afraid. He'd protect her, just as she protected him. That's what family did for each other.
Shadow found the fence, and followed it around the backyard border, barking again and again until he reached the open gate. He quickly scanned the large yard, and found September in the open doorway of the house. Her tight posture, both palms up in a warding off gesture, screamed danger.
Each splashing leap brought him closer. At first, he ignored September's voice, intent on reaching her as quickly as possible.
"Shadow, wait." She didn't turn, just held her palm toward him, to reinforce the command.
He skidded to a stop shy of the cement paving stones. Shadow whined, and took two slow steps closer to within nose-touch reach.
"Good-dog, Shadow. Wait." September backed up a step, too
Peering around her leg, Shadow saw the wild-eyed woman in the middle of the room, waving her hands around. Something silver-bright glinted in one of her fists. A young girl stood at one side, mouth a silent "o."
"Where's my son? Where's Willie, what have you done with Willie, he's not here, where’s Willie?"
Shadow recognized the “where” word. September often prefaced a seek command with this word. He looked around, wondering what she’d lost, waiting to be told what to find.
September offered the woman a length of fabric, the sort of thing people wore around their neck because they didn’t have enough fur to stay warm. September spoke
with calm, but Shadow read the underlying emotion. He tensed, prepared to throw himself at the threat.
"Mom?" The young girl found her voice. "Put down the knife. Please?"
Knife? Shadow knew that word, too. He watched the lady's hand. There were no treats in her other fist.
"Who are you? Where is my son?" The words came fast and loud, jumbled together so Shadow couldn’t pick them apart. The sick-smelling lady moved erratically, her head whipping back and forth so her mane-like hair covered her face. She stalked toward the young girl, jabbing the knife in the air. Shadow took a stiff-legged paw step closer, putting himself between September and the knife.
"Melinda, go!" September jerked her head and the girl sidled sideways and then turned and ran. Her footsteps thumped away to the front door, and Shadow heard it swing open. His ears rang when she screamed for help.
Shadow sidled closer. He leaned hard against September's knees, using his weight to push her back. He snarled silently when the strange man rushed into the room. Shadow showed his teeth, not wanting to bite, merely to warn away the danger.
September put a hand on Shadow's head. At the unspoken request, he lowered his lips but divided his attention between the man and the distraught woman.
"Go 'way go 'way go 'way." She jabbed the knife at the man, too, and he backed up without saying anything. "Where’s Willie? My husband is a cop, go ‘way go ‘way go ‘way."
Shadow knew the words meant bad things because September flinched like she’d been hit. Shadow nose-poked her thigh, and she finally made eye contact. Her posture changed. His tail lifted with anticipation, knowing she'd made a decision. Her hand on his head stroked with purpose, and she whispered for him only. "Good-dog, Shadow, wanna play show-me?"
He wagged, but remained silent. Shadow watched her face, confident now she'd taken charge and could tell him what to do. How to fix this. Together they could do anything.