Zhukov's Dogs (16 page)

My three companions didn’t seem bothered by it. Lee, the girl with dreadlocks I’d met my first night in Seattle, had joined us. She was busy on an old tablet, the screen cracked and a volume button missing along the side, but it worked well enough to map out our trail. The elevator shook suddenly and a heavy clank rang from below us. Steel doors parted, screeching for maintenance, and I got my first look at the old, uninhabited city of Seattle.

Icy, gray skylines with enormous gaps where structures had fallen. A layer of snow in the streets, deep enough to swallow abandoned vehicles and the first story of buildings in some areas. An ozone-like tang in the bitterly cold air. It had all been cut out of a macabre, Christmas pop-up book.

The cement we stepped onto was heated by thin wires woven into the ground, keeping the dockyard from freezing over. Beyond it, however, there was nothing but snow. A city its size ought to have been filled with the sounds of people rushing to work, cars revving and honking impatiently, and general chaotic din. All I heard, though, was the whistling of winds whipping up from the icy Puget Sound and between buildings.

We hiked along a semi-trodden out path for nearly an hour, alternating between army-crawling over uneven snow and scaling pieces of debris in the way. I suggested we try an unobstructed path, but Lee insisted it was suicide to stray from known paths and risk falling through a deep patch of snow. When the road seemed to even out for a short ways, we decided to take a break to catch our breath. We found a car and dusted the snow off the hood to sit. In no time, Val urged us to move on.

“Come on,” he said, flicking his half-finished cigarette aside. “We need to find them before it gets dark.”

I slid off the hood and brought my hands to my mouth to blow warm air in them. A stray curl fell from my cap. As I reached to tuck it away, I spotted something unusual beyond the sight of my hair.

“Nik, come on. There’s no time for—”

“Look,” I said, cutting Val short and pointing out down the street. A bright red backpack lay discarded atop the snow, provisions scattered all around it.

Val’s eyes grew wide. He whistled to Fritzi and Lee, both girls standing further up the trodden path, looking impatient. When Val pointed out the bag to them, Fritzi clasped her hands over her mouth.

“Is that Gemma’s?” Lee gasped.

I walked to where the path ended and the deep, uneven snow drifts began. Several buildings had fallen over the years, leaving the streets open not just to storms, but also to snow that blew up from the waterfront. Val followed close at my side, mumbling something about how bad this was.

“You can stay here,” I told him, already testing out the snow in front of me with my foot.

“Yeah, then who’s going to save your ass when you fall through?”

The last thing I wanted to think about was falling through, so, of course, Val decided to bring it up. I took a deep breath and a cautious first step off the path. The snow crunched under my feet with every step, giving way a few inches and then becoming firm again. Even though the bag couldn’t have been more than a block away, it felt like one of the longest walks ever.

When we reached the backpack, Val stooped to get a better look. He sighed, recognizing it and wringing the straps in his hands. “Yeah… Yeah, it’s Gemma’s.”

“This is full of supplies. She wouldn’t have just tossed it. They must’ve come this way in a hurry when she dropped it,” I said, looking around for some sign of life. Val tapped my leg, and I looked to where he pointed at footprints dusted over with snow.

We followed in them carefully, down a slope and toward a building, which had caved in on itself. The trail disappeared into the structure, and for a long moment, we just stared at it. The reality slowly sank in. Neither of us wanted to say it out loud, though, and the city had never been quieter.

“Do you think they’re in there?” I finally asked.

“Looks that way,” Val mumbled. “They must’ve been looking for a place to hide out.”

“Hardly any snow on this thing either. It couldn’t have fallen all that long ago.”

“So… I mean, do you think they were in there when it collapsed?”

Dog or not, I did not enjoy being the bearer of bad news. I could only nod and hope Val understood what it meant without either one of us needing to say it out loud. Val’s breath came out in thicker, faster clouds as it all weighed down on him. His eyes darted over the building. Slowly, he brought his hands up to wring together at his mouth, muttering a few swears into them.

I might have offered words of condolence if I wasn’t busy trying to figure out what would actually make Val feel better. I looked at the buildings along the street. Out of all the ones which had collapsed, the one in front of us still managed to stand a good two stories. All the others were just heaps of indistinguishable material.

“They might still be in there,” I said. Val’s eyes lit up, and he looked to me for an explanation. Fritzi and Lee had caught up with us just in time to overhear my theory. “See how this one’s still got a few floors to it? That means it has good foundation. There’s probably a parking garage under it. If your friends were smart, they’d have thought about the risk of a cave-in and hidden down there.”

“So, there’s hope,” Fritzi translated, more enthusiastic than I’d ever heard her. “Let’s get in there.”

Lee scowled and gestured at the ruined building. “Are you crazy? Look at that thing! It could all come crashing down on us!”

“It won’t fall any further unless a big storm hits it,” I told them.

We waited as Lee pulled up the weather forecast on her tablet. Flurries overnight and into tomorrow morning, followed by partially cloudy skies. Val studied the forecast for a moment, tapping his fingers against his jaw as he weighed the options. “All right. Let’s get in there.”

Flashlights were handed out, and Val took the lead. We stepped through the revolving doors, their glass panels completely shattered. The lobby, or at least what was left of it, was pitch black. Towering mountains of steel and debris were precariously piled, turning the space into an industrial obstacle course and keeping us from exploring too far.

“This is a terrible idea.” Lee whined somewhere in the darkness behind me. I didn’t bother to tell her otherwise.

Slowly, we made our way through the lobby. Every time a board of wood groaned underfoot, we all froze and looked up to see if the building was ready to come down on us. And then, halfway over the remains of a coffee shop, it wasn’t the groan of wood that made us panic. It was the
crack
. Val’s foot had gone through a weak piece of drywall. He was already trying to pull himself free by the time I was warning him not to.

“Stay still!” I yelled.

It was too late. The drywall splintered in all directions and disintegrated into nothing. I dropped my flashlight and dove for Val, but the drywall began caving under my feet. Val disappeared from sight. Cursing out loud, I threw my weight backwards in hopes of escaping the same fate.

Fritzi lunged forward and hooked her arms under my own, heaving me away from the collapsing floor. The ground gave an awful screech as we fell back on it. A split-second later, the ground was gone, and weightlessness took over. My stomach jumped into my throat, Fritzi screaming in my ear, as we plummeted into darkness.

A sickening, paralyzing panic barely lasted for a second. My mind raced, and body responded. We needed to stop. We needed to stop before we hit the ground. Light from somewhere beneath me bounced off a jagged surface to my right. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I reached out, determined to grab onto something. Anything.

Suddenly, my feet hit an uneven surface. I rolled with the impact as trained, my back striking hard, then my knee. The surface was too steep; I was tumbling too fast. I threw my hands out in search of something to grab. My fingers hooked around a sharp object, which cut through my gloves and deep into my hands.

I saw Fritzi’s faint outline overhead. Quickly, I wedged my shoes into the uneven wall, not caring what I clung to, and reached a hand out toward her. “Grab on!” I shouted.

Fritzi’s hand missed mine, but I managed to snag the hood of her coat. She jerked to a stop with a choked gag and scrambled back against the rubble I’d wedged my shoes into. I could hear her panting out shaky bits of German.

Something beneath us moved. I looked down at the flashlight Val had dropped. Someone another story below had picked it up, and they pointed it right at us.

“You guys all right?” Val called.

“Still in one piece,” Fritzi replied.

“Nik?”

“Fine.”

That wasn’t necessarily true. Whatever I held onto still sliced into my fingers, and my gloves were soaked with blood. Val’s flashlight revealed I’d grabbed onto a shattered windshield of an old car crushed between a chunk of cement and two other cars. The flashlight scanned over the rest of the slant, and the three of us stared in awe at the destruction.

From the ledge we’d all fallen from, Lee called down, “Now what?”

Nobody answered. I was still too worked up to think clearly, let alone plan the next step. I heard a grunt below and looked down at Val. It suddenly occurred to me that he’d fallen much further than us.

“You okay down there, Val?” I asked.

“Yeah, fine.”

Too quick of a response. He’s been hurt
. At least I wasn’t the only one lying about being okay.

Val pointed his flashlight back at us and asked, “What do you think? Can we climb back up?”

I looked up the wall of cars, cement, warped metal, and glass. It was scalable, but we certainly didn’t have the right equipment for it. “Over there along the wall maybe,” Fritzi suggested, pointing to her right.

Val turned the flashlight toward the corner. It was mostly uneven chunks of cement piled next to the smooth dividing wall. It would be a rough climb but not an impossible one.

“Who’s there?” came an unfamiliar voice.

The light spun around and locked onto a petite girl. She threw both hands up to shield her eyes, hissing like a cat. “Christ! Out of my eyes!”

“Gemma?” Val asked.

The girl dropped her hands and rushed forward. She leapt at Val, clinging to him like a friendly koala would to an unsuspecting eucalyptus tree, with all four limbs wrapped around him. Val spun her around on the spot.

“You’re alive!” he shouted.

“Of course I’m alive.” Gemma laughed. “Did you think you could get rid of me?”

Val stopped spinning and set her down so he could speak with her face-to-face. “The others, are they down here too? Are they okay?”

I couldn’t see Gemma clearly, but the silence that followed Val’s question wasn’t a good sign. She stepped back from Val and looked downward. They were too far away for me to make out what she told him next.

“Hooray for happy reunions and stuff. Now, how about you aim that light this way so we can get down?” Fritzi called to them impatiently. Val pointed the light back at us, and we spent the next several minutes working our way down. As soon as we were on solid ground, Gemma ran to embrace Fritzi, and I got a better look at the newcomer.

She was tiny, maybe ninety pounds when soaking wet. Her short, black hair spiked out in all directions, bangs hanging in her eyes and set of silver goggles resting over top of them. The edge of a feather tattoo poked out from underneath her collar, along the side of her neck. When she released Fritzi, Gemma turned to me and quirked her head to one side. “And who’s this?” she asked, smiling bright despite our surroundings.

“New recruit,” Val said. He waved a hand between the two of us. “Gemma, meet Nik. Nik, Gemma.”

I held my hand out. Gemma threw her arms open and latched onto me. It wasn’t quite a koala hug, for which I was grateful, but she squeezed me tightly and put her tiny chin on my chest to look up at my surprised face. She was hands-down the friendliest of the revolutionaries I’d met so far.

“You’re tall,” she said.

“You’re just short, Gemma,” Val replied.

Gemma released me to retaliate, but Val quickly suggested we join the others and explain our plan of escape. He called up to Lee and told her to wait there until we figured things out. Gemma led us through the parking garage, and soon, we saw a light pooling around a corner ahead. As we rounded the corner, we were greeted by a chorus of excited noise.

There were three boys gathered around a single heat lamp. A freckle-faced boy with dark red hair and a heavier build; a young boy, no more than thirteen, with crooked teeth and short blond hair; and an older boy almost the size of Tibbs, with dark eyes, hair buzzed close to his head, and a square jaw. The first two boys looked much happier to see us than the third.

“Val! You came to rescue us!” cheered the young boy. There was the utmost sense of admiration in his eyes as he stared up at Val. Apparently my boss had a fan club.

When the square-jawed boy scoffed, I learned my boss had an enemy, too. “Or,” he began, turning his head to spit, “He’s trapped down here like us.”

Val’s little fan turned on the boy several times his size and balled his fists. “Shut up, Jayne!”

Gemma swiftly intervened. “Guys, cool it. We found a spot along the wall where we might be able to climb up.”

“That’s great news,” the redheaded boy chimed in.

“What’s so great about it, Finn?” Jayne asked. “How are
you
going to climb out with that shoulder all messed up?”

Finn’s hand shot up to his cover his left shoulder, which hung at an awkward angle. Val stepped forward to defend him. “We’ll pull him. There’s enough extra clothing on us to make some kind of rope. It’ll make the climb safer for us all.”

“Great idea,” Gemma and the younger boy said perfect unison.

Then Val made the mistake of asking a question which was anything but appropriate, given the ordeal his team had been through. “What about the wine? Any make it this far?”

Jayne spat again. I grimaced.

“You really think that shit matters?” Jayne asked.

“That’s a no then.”

Jayne laughed. “That’s a hell no, you rotten shit.”

Leave it at that. Just leave it at that
.