“Sorry, boy.” She started to walk again. An exit came up just after the surprisingly sturdy bridge, and she went down it, crawling over cars to do so.
Skeever planned his own route. Once down, he darted ahead, although he checked on her every few seconds.
They were quickly swallowed by New York City’s maze of buildings. They surrounded her, intact, crumbled, and everywhere in between. A brick building towered over her to the left. Tree branches emerged from its shattered windows. The row of houses to her right was in ruins and completely overgrown by an assortment of tall grasses, low bushes, and large oak trees.
A group of small monkeys with big brown eyes regarded her from the canopy of the oaks and yipped. They tilted their little heads to the side as she passed and shook a branch here and there, but monkeys this size weren’t dangerous. They were also hard to turn into food. Monkeys were another remnant of the ancient zoos, but unlike zebras, Lynn had seen them before. She had discovered they were too quick to kill with a throwing axe, so she let them be.
A glance at the sky told her she wasn’t going to be making any more miles today. Already, the sun lowered toward New York City’s crumbled skyline. Braving the night without shelter would be suicide-by-predator. “I think it’s time we find a place to hole up for the night, whatcha say, boy?” It would be a hungry night, but at least there would be another day to search for food afterward.
Skeever’s head lifted at the sound of her voice. He wagged his tail.
She smiled. I can’t believe I almost left you behind. How could it be that only three days had passed since she’d found him? It felt as if he’d been with her forever. She scratched the underside of his jaw with her free hand. The nametag on his collar jiggled. “What did you do before you met me, hm? Who was the man you were with? Who named you Skeever?”
Skeever tilted his head to the side and gave her better access to the underside of his muzzle.
“Too bad you can’t talk. Maybe then you’d have some answers for me.” She considered that. “Well, maybe it’s for the best. You already make enough noise as it is.” She patted his flank, then straightened up again. Yeah, it was good not to be alone. She’d been alone for so long, she had forgotten how good it felt to have someone to talk to, to rely on—even if it was a dog.
Looking about, she wondered what the wisest course of action was. There were undoubtedly familiar and unfamiliar animals in the city that used the buildings around her for shelter. At least a portion of those would happily make a meal out of her. She needed a place she could secure—someplace with a heavy door and not too many holes in the walls. There was no place like that around here; the area had been too heavily bombed during the war. She would have to keep moving.
The second she stepped forward, a loud noise echoed through the streets. Instinctively, she dropped into a battle stance. For a split second, she thought her foot had activated some kind of trap, but then the sound rose again. What the hell is that? Adrenaline-induced sweat made her fumble as she grabbed for her tomahawk.
Skeever yelped and turned to the source of the sound—somewhere ahead, to the right. Ears flat, he growled and tensed to the point where he seemed to vibrate.
It sounded again.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Animal. It has to be an animal. Dread settled coldly in her gut. “Shit, I’m going to have to check.” If she didn’t, she would never be able to sleep tonight. She reached down with her free hand to stroke Skeever’s rough-haired back. “You be quiet, understood?”
Skeever looked up.
Lynn took a deep, steadying breath. “Yeah, I know. This sucks.” Staying low, she moved toward the sound. “I don’t like it either.”
He caught up after a few steps, then passed her and sniffed the ground ahead.
“We just have to know.” She gripped her tomahawk tighter. Time to discover what monsters the streets of New York City housed.
Lynn ducked low and parted the grass in front of her. Another deafening cry came from the bottom of the hill. An enormous gray animal lashed its elongated snout at a group of eight or nine hunters.
An elephant! Surely it couldn’t be anything else.
It threw its trunk up and trumpeted its despair as another spear pierced its weathered gray skin. The weapon stuck to it until the monstrous animal threw itself against a building that promptly lost its façade. The spear snapped like a twig, and the man who had thrown it sprang away just in time to avoid both the elephant’s stomping feet and falling debris.
“Cody!” a red-haired woman screamed. She tried to get to him, but the age-worn tusks blocked her way, so she jumped back.
Another woman waved a machete in the air the front of the animal to draw its ire. “Look over here, you! Dammit, Dani! Kill this thing!”
The elephant turned away from the redhead and focused its lashing tusks and trunk on the machete-wielder.
“Keep it busy!” Another hunter rushed up to the animal’s now-exposed side, her long hair trailing behind her as she fearlessly hurled her spear. The weapon hit its target.
The elephant threw back its head and lifted its trunk. It trumpeted the sound that had drawn Lynn here.
Skeever barked and tried to pull free from the hold Lynn had on his collar.
She yanked on the thick leather. “Shut up!”
A shot rang out.
Lynn gasped. This was only the second time in her life she’d heard a gunshot.
Skeever struggled and whined.
She lifted her head higher to locate the gun that had been fired—and its wielder.
A black man knelt down just outside the flurry of activity to fiddle with a pistol, either to repair or reload it; Lynn couldn’t tell.
The elephant whined and drew Lynn’s attention. Another streak ran down its hide, adding to the look of morbid camouflage in an increasingly reddening area of battle.
Lynn could taste the blood in the air.
Cody had gotten up and shouted for the animal’s attention. He waved his empty hands and feigned forward with another loud cry.
The frenzied animal stepped back and threw up its trunk skittishly. Its small brain seemed too overloaded with sensations and emotions to choose a course of action.
Something gleaming caught the light before it lodged deeply into the animal’s neck.
The elephant trumpeted again, then stumbled.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the machete-wielder emerged at its rear and slashed across the back of a leg.
Blood gushed.
The elephant let out a chilling cry of pain and sagged through the leg. Its flanks heaved with each breath.
Skeever squirmed in his position half under her body, fighting the hand around his collar.
The swarm of people descended on the elephant like a chaotic but hell-bent swarm of lethal locusts. More spears pierced its sides; blades slashed.
Death by a thousand cuts. The words bubbled up from the depth of her mind without a solid memory attached to it.
Skeever contorted.
She flattened him to the ground more, wrestling him down.
The elephant fell with a dull thud that was not celebrated.
Was it dead? Eager to confirm the group’s victory, Lynn pushed up to see over the tall grass.
The second her attention drifted away from him, Skeever yanked away and raced across the street, barking like mad before fastening his teeth to the elephant’s waving trunk.
The group was thrown into chaos, caught between surprise and the last vestiges of the hunt.
“Skeever!” She forgot about the danger and gripped her tomahawk as she jumped up and sprinted forward, toward the circle of people and the animal in the last throes of its death struggle.