With Knife beside her, she returned to the Target. In the aisles of skateboards and Legos, she found a big red wagon. Its tall rubber tires crossed the linoleum with the faintest of gripping sounds. She loaded it with the biggest bags of kibbles and dragged it back to the hospital.
By the time her knees were too tired to keep going, she’d filled up all the empty shelves downstairs. It was only when Raina went to feed the dogs dinner that she realized she had nothing for herself. She got a kibble from the bag and crunched it between her teeth. It was very dry and tasted exactly the way it smelled. But it was food. She ate.
After dinner, she felt rested enough for another trip to the store. She came back with enough dog beds for all of them. Including herself. She turned off the lights and flopped down.
Now, in the quiet aloneness, the impact jarred tears from her eyes. She wiped them on her shirt. What had happened to her parents? Her teachers? The stupid girls at school? Why wasn’t anyone there to tell her what had happened and bring her somewhere safe? Why hadn’t someone stopped the bloody cough? Why was she still alive?
Two paws pressed down on the side of the bed. A small round head stood in silhouette. Knife leaned forward. She tried to push him away, but he ducked her hand and licked her face. Hearing the sound of licking, another dog trotted over and licked her, too—Eggplant, there was no mistaking her breathing. A third dog rolled into the bed and flopped down on her feet.
“Maybe I don’t need to understand what’s out there.” She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Maybe I only need to understand what’s in here.”
Knife sighed and lay on her chest. It was okay to cry for a moment. But only a moment. There were ten dogs and they needed her.
As soon as she’d taken care of the dogs the next morning, she went back to the Target to pick up more kibbles. Two men and a woman were inside the store piling carts with diapers and soap. Before they could see her, Raina slunk back to the hospital to wait. The daytime was too dangerous. That was when the big creatures came out. The night was the time for the possums, the raccoons, and the skunks.
From then on, she only left the hospital after dark. Tough, the mutt with the brindle legs and white feet, was good at watching and staying close, so Raina took her along to the Target, too. While Knife sat up front guarding the doors, Tough watched Raina’s back as she loaded the wagon with dog food. Soon, she’d moved all of it home except for three bags, in case someone else needed them more.
Two weeks went by. The days got longer and warmer. Raina and the dogs slept through the afternoons, curled in their beds. Mean made peeping noises in his sleep. At night, Raina took them to the parking lot. She tried to take the others out by themselves, but Dragon and Cloud barked too much, and Smiles would wander away and refuse to return unless she dragged him by the collar. He was so heavy that she had to lean with all her strength to pull him away from what he was sniffing.
“You guys have to learn better,” she told them when she had them back inside. “Or else you’ll have to stay inside. Be like Knife and Tough. Be quiet and watch.”
Smiles was sniffing the corner. Mouse and Brick were asleep. Some of the others were watching her, but the rest were busy licking their paws.
“If you’re going to learn better, then I’m going to have to teach better. But you’ll have to listen. There’s only one of me and ten of you.”
She started with Smiles, trying over and over to get him to stay. Time after time, he went straight for the treat. Blinking back tears of frustration, Raina shut off the light and went to bed. Knife licked her face, but licking couldn’t solve everything. After a while, he gave up and lay down close beside her.
Day after day, she worked with each of them. Bit by bit, they got a little better. But Smiles still liked to wander off when she tried to take him down back streets, and Dragon bolted after every bird and squirrel that caught his eye. What if they never listened to her? What if one of them ran off at the wrong time and got hurt?
But there was nothing to do but keep trying.
Raina was bringing in a bag of oranges from the tree down the street when the hospital lights flickered and blinked off. She gazed up into the darkness. After ten seconds, the lights snapped back on, blinding her. But in that moment of darkness, she’d seen something vital. The machines that ran the lights and water were still out there, but the people who ran the machines were dead.
She spent the next days gathering jugs. Filling them with water. Climbing to the flat roof and placing buckets for rain. Every morning, dew glinted on the cars. Raina knew that came from the air, too—was it mist from the sea? There had to be a way to catch it, but she couldn’t think how.
The water wasn’t the only thing. Earlier, their rooms of food had looked like enough to last forever. But now that she knew the water could stop, the supplies no longer looked so large. They were going to need more.
That was the one lesson of the new world: you would always need more. If you weren’t busy getting it, you were busy losing it.
She’d visited enough of the nearby shops to know they’d already been looted. But there were hundreds of houses right behind the hospital. She’d been avoiding them. She knew what lay in the beds. What she’d found when the angry man on the street chased her. But she couldn’t be afraid anymore. The bodies couldn’t kill her. But fear could.
That night, Raina got her pack and her kitchen knife and walked outside. She meant to go alone, but Knife snuck out the door after her.
“Fine,” she muttered. Then her face softened to a smile. “Come on.”
Early on, she’d used snips from Target to cut a hole through the fence between the hospital and the home on the other side. She ducked through it and walked through the shaggy yard to the house’s back door. It was unlocked. She stepped into the entrance and was stopped by a wave of rotten stench. She took a step back, ready to turn and run. Knife trotted past her into the darkness. He sniffed at the kitchen table, then turned to stare at her.
“You’re much smaller than me.” Raina put her hands on her hips. “You should be afraid of everything. But that’s why you’re afraid of nothing, isn’t it? Or else you’d never stop running.”
She walked through the door. Inside, cans of food filled the cabinets. Human food: beef stew and chicken soup and cream of potato. She ate a can of stew on the spot. After weeks of dog food, the beef tasted like pure strength. She gave a bite to Knife, followed by a second. He ate in fast little jerks.
There were many houses, but less food than she thought. Much had been taken. Much had gone rotten. It would let them last longer, but not that much longer. They ate most of what they found each night, saving the dog food, which seemed made to last a long time.
She’d need more food, but what else could she do to find it? Could she teach the dogs to hunt? Some were too slow and loud, but Knife and Tough might be able to snatch crows or the rats that ran along the fence out back. It would be better than nothing.
The only other choice was to move somewhere she could grow corn they could all eat, but it would take weeks to haul the bags and cans of food anywhere. She could take one of the cars, but she didn’t like them. They made too much noise. Noise was how others found you.