I grabbed my camera, reslung my backpack, and started up the nearest hill. Amanda followed, craning her neck and looking around for any sign of her mysterious dogs.
At the top of the hill, I took a series of panoramic shots, trying to capture the park in the foreground and the city on the horizon. The early-morning light made the remaining grass glow a bright, vibrant green, providing a great contrast to the gray streets and buildings. Unfortunately, the hill was too small and the surrounding buildings too high, so instead of catching city blocks stretching out into the distance, all I got were walls hemming us in. Like we were standing on the floor of an immense gray-walled box.
“Over there!” Amanda hissed. “In the trees!” I lowered the camera and found her pointing toward a patch of woods to the south. Her eyes were wide, and her voice quavered with excitement.
“Where?” I asked, but she was already running, kicking up dead leaves as she slid down the hill. “Amanda, wait! It might not be safe.” I looped the camera strap around my neck and followed her down.
She entered the trees twenty yards ahead of me, immediately disappearing from sight. I plowed in behind her, then stopped, listening for movement.
“Amanda!”
There was sound everywhere: the subdued hiss of something sliding through the bushes to my left; then to my right, the brittle snap of a dead branch directly ahead. I couldn’t see much of anything. Low bushes had grown out of control between the trees, and I watched as a sea of leaves rippled around me. The wind, I told myself. Just the wind.
And then the growling began. All around. Low and guttural.
“Amanda?” I hissed. I’m not sure why I felt the need to whisper. Anything she could hear, they could most definitely hear.
There was no response.
I started moving forward through the bushes, holding a hand out in front of me to push aside the encroaching branches. I hadn’t taken more than three steps when I felt a weight against my leg—a push, nudging me forward. I stumbled over my own feet, my heart breaking rhythm inside my chest. I barely managed to catch myself. There was movement all around—the dry rustle of leaves—and the thick, dark smell of animal musk. I glanced back, but something darted in from up ahead, catching my hand in a quick, hard grip. It was an intense pressure, engulfing my palm, and a wet growl vibrated up through my flesh and bone.
I tried to pull my hand back, and a gray muzzle came into view; black lips and pink gums were wrapped around my fist. I could see yellow plaque-stained teeth. I could see blood welling up between those teeth and my hand.
I panicked and surged forward, trying to get away. My shins hit canine flesh with a dull thud, and I collapsed forward onto my knees. Onto the dog. I felt a sudden expulsion of breath puff out around my hand, and I somersaulted forward. My hand finally came free.
A loud growl swelled up from the trees behind me, radiating out of the ground cover. Then a half dozen dogs exploded from the brush, teeth bared and saliva flying. I scrambled up to my feet and started to run, bouncing off trees and stumbling over branches and roots.
They were fast, and I could feel them gaining on me. The back of my neck tingled in anticipation, bracing me for that final, brutal snap, preparing me for the razor-sharp jaws that would sink into my fragile flesh at any moment now.
There was no way I could outrun them. No way in hell.
Then, suddenly, I was free, bursting out of the trees and falling forward into a scrim of leaves and decaying mulch. I spun around on the ground and started pushing myself backward, keeping my eyes on the trees, unable to get up off my ass.
“Dean!” Amanda cried out in surprise just before I collided with her legs and knocked her to the ground.
“Move!” I panted. “Move, move, move!” I continued to push myself backward, using my legs to propel myself away from the trees. Then my feet began to slip, and, finally, I stopped.
The trees were still. There was no sign of the dogs.
Amanda remained where she’d landed, watching me with huge perplexed eyes. “Your hand. You’re bleeding!” She crawled forward and grabbed my hand, rotating it front to back, inspecting the damage.
For a while, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the trees; then a sharp pain blossomed in my palm. I sucked a breath through my teeth and turned toward her probing fingers. “The dogs, the fucking dogs,” I said. “They’re crazed. How’d you get past them?”
She glanced up from my palm and shook her head. “I didn’t see them. I didn’t see a thing.”
With the tail of her shirt, she wiped the blood away from my palm, revealing a pair of deep holes. It was my left hand, and the holes were spaced on either side of my previous wound—the line of raw flesh that had been ripped away in the apartment building. Amanda turned my hand over, exposing a single puncture wound in the web between my thumb and forefinger. This was the nastiest of the holes. My stomach began to turn, and I looked away.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not yet,” I hissed. The fear had begun to subside, replaced by frustration and anger. “I’m sure it will. Give it a couple minutes and I’m sure it’ll be hurting like a motherfucker.”
Amanda shook her head. “You must have startled them,” she said. “You must have done something wrong.”
I gave her an incredulous look, and she stared right back, stubborn, unwilling to hear anything bad about her precious dogs.
“You see my hand?” I asked, raising it up so the blood spilled down my wrist and dripped onto my jeans. “You see what they did?”
Amanda didn’t reply. She ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it around my palm. “Give it some pressure,” she said. “We’ll clean it up when we get home.” Then she grabbed my uninjured hand and pulled me to my feet.
“This is what I was looking at when you bowled me over,” she said.
I looked around, finally calm enough to take in my surroundings. We’d passed through the stand of trees and were now standing in front of an open cave mouth, an oval swatch of darkness punched into the face of a fairly steep hill. The opening was only about four feet high, and its edges were ragged, as if it had been chewed into the earth. The grass in front of the entrance was muddy, imprinted with the shape of a hundred large, hand-size paws.
I lifted my camera and took a couple of shots. At first, I tried to use my injured left hand, but a sharp jab of fire made me drop the camera back against my chest. Finally, I managed to prop it up on the palm of my right hand and gingerly stab at the shutter release with my left thumb.
“This is where they come from,” Amanda whispered, a hint of awe in her voice. “This is where they live!”
Before I could stop her, Amanda took a step forward, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted “Hello!” I listened as that word echoed again and again—hello, hello, hello—getting fainter as it passed deeper underground.
Judging by that sound, those reverberations, it wasn’t a cave we were facing—a shallow little grotto—but rather a tunnel, leading down into the earth.
Amanda began toward the opening, and I jolted forward, reaching out to stop her. As soon as I touched her arm, a low growl erupted from the dark tunnel—a sustained, multivoiced rumble, like rocks grinding in the heart of the earth. “We’re not going in there, Amanda. No fucking way!”
She turned toward me, a blank look on her face. I raised my hand, showing her my bloodstained bandage. After a couple of seconds, she nodded, finally relenting.
“Maybe later,” she said, a dreamy quality to her voice. “When you’re better. When we’re better prepared.”