The Storm Read online

  Did this yapper just call me “Big dog”? thought Shep. And who does he think he is, ordering me around? Does this dog want his tail bitten off? Shep didn’t have time for this, especially from a little dog. He had to get home. He had to wait for his boy.

  “I’m leaving,” Shep woofed to Callie.

  “You can’t leave!” Callie pushed out her chest and raised her ears and tail. “Where’s your sense of honor? This dog needs our help.” She squinted her little eyes and cocked her head. “What would the Great Wolf do?”

  Shep sighed. Why did I tell her about the Great Wolf? “What’s a knob?” he barked. “And how do you turn it?”

  The little dog snorted and snuffled on the other side of the door, muttering something about ignorant mutts.

  “Who’re you calling an ignorant mutt?” Shep snarled.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” yapped the other dog. “Just barking to myself. Nothing at all.”

  They heard claws scratching on the metal of the door.

  “Up there,” the dog barked. “On the door. That shiny piece that sticks out. That’s the knob.”

  Knob, Shep realized, was a yapper word for the metal paw that stuck out of every door. He’d seen his boy and other humans push on these paws to open doors before. He’d tried it himself back in his den, but the door never opened for him.

  “I know about knobs,” Shep said. “I didn’t know they were called knobs, but I’ve seen them before. They don’t work for dogs. I’ve pushed on a lot of knobs and the door has never opened for me.”

  The other dog started snorting and snuffing all over again, this time clearly growling about ignorant mutts.

  “Hey,” Shep grumbled, “you want help, you cut it with the ignorant mutt stuff.” Ungrateful little yapper, thought Shep.

  “Yeah, stop getting all huffy,” growled Callie. “You asked us for help and we’re trying to help you.”

  The other dog sighed. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry.” He coughed a bit, then continued. “You don’t push knobs. You turn them, then push them.”

  Shep shook his head. Knobs were like paws and paws didn’t turn. “Turn them? How can a knob turn?”

  “Turning means — Turning is where —” The dog snorted loudly. “Oh, hang it all!” There was a sound like the yapper was fighting with himself, then a loud cough, and he continued. “Excuse me. Very sorry. Just a bit frustrating, trying to explain things. You know? Perhaps you don’t. Never mind.” He coughed again. “The knob rotates. Yes? You understand that?”

  “No.” Shep was losing patience. Even the Great Wolf must have given up on some things.

  “Fine, fine,” the dog growled. “Forget turning. Just bite the knob straight on and tilt your head.”

  “Bite, then tilt?” Shep woofed. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Shep positioned himself directly in front of the knob, then stood on his haunches, placing his forepaws against the door. He dropped his head to the level of the knob and bit the shiny surface. His teeth slipped off it, and where they didn’t slip, they hurt, but he wanted to be done with this yapper in as few heartbeats as possible, so he clenched his jaws and tilted his head. His teeth scratched along the knob, but the knob itself didn’t move. Shep pressed his paws on the door to see if it’d worked, but no: The door wouldn’t budge.

  “Okay, yapper. I bit and tilted and still the door won’t open.” Shep spat, trying to get the harsh metal taste out of his mouth.

  “Did the knob move or just your head?” asked the yapper.

  “Just my head.”

  “Well, that’s not going to get us anywhere,” grunted the dog. “You have to tilt your head, and move the knob at the same time.”

  If this little dog yaps at me one more time … Shep’s teeth hurt and there were flakes of something stuck on his tongue and he was more than a little disappointed that he couldn’t make a knob work when it seemed that, at least at some point, the grumbly old yapper could.

  I should just drop these yappers, he thought. Drop every thing and turn tail for home. But why? His den would be empty like the rest of the city. Wherever his boy was, he wasn’t around here. Shep had to accept that everyone he loved had abandoned him. Now, his only friends were a nervous little girldog and an annoying old yapper stuck behind a door and this horrible, splintery, bad-tasting, teeth-hurting, tongue-poking, jaw-breaking knob!

  All his anger and frustration buzzed inside him like a fly against a window. He sprang at the knob and snapped his fangs around it. Jamming his forepaws into the door frame, he tugged at the knob as if it were a tug toy. He imagined his boy on the other end of it, taunting him, so close, but always pulling away. Why did the boy leave him? WHY?!

  The knob turned and the door swung open, with Shep still dangling from it, and hit the yapper square on the snout.

  “Oof!” yelped the dog.

  Shep released the knob and collapsed onto the floor, exhausted. He’d had a long, wet, depressing sun. He needed some kibble and a nap.

  The door had dropped him inside a spare, cave-like den. The floor was shiny wood, and the gray walls stretched high to the wood-slat ceiling. The food room was connected to the main room, separated by a counter lined with tall, thin-legged chairs. Everything was too clean and hard for Shep’s liking.

  He spotted a comfy-looking bed near a couch made of some chemical-smelling skin. Shep loped over to it and flopped his body down. The bed was too small — his head and forelegs stuck out one end, his hindquarters the other — but it was otherwise very comfortable.

  “Please, make yourself at home,” grumbled the little dog sarcastically. “I’m Higgins, of the Brussels griffon line, and you must be Shep. Short for German Shepherd, I presume?”

  Shep flapped his tail. “The one and only.”

  Higgins was very small, about half Callie’s size, with wiry, short brown fur on his body and an explosion of long grayish fur all over his snout. Like my man, Shep thought, panting. Higgins was a dog with a human hairface! He looked ridiculous!

  “What are you panting about?” Higgins asked.

  “Nothing,” Shep said, stifling his pants. “Just happy to have finally helped you.”

  “Yeah, now you can stop bossing us around,” Callie yipped, sniffing a narrow table next to the door.

  “And might I have the plea sure of your acquaintance,” Higgins yipped, “Miss, uh, pug? Mixed with, might I say, beagle?”

  Callie was instantly defensive, chest out and tail stiff. “Just because I’m not a purebred doesn’t mean I’m not just as good as you,” she growled.

  Higgins rolled over onto the floor, paws up, showing he meant no harm. “I do apologize,” he moaned. “I’m merely curious. It’s part of my research.”

  “Research?” Shep asked.

  Higgins sprang to his paws, tiny tail wiggling. “Yes! Research!” he yipped. “My human researches bugs: collects them in jars, pokes them with sticks, things like that. I thought that I should study something a bit more relevant: dogs. Did you know that pugs can see a stone placed right on their nose?”

  “Well, if it’s for research,” Callie said, sounding a bit confused, “my girl always says ‘Jack puggle terrier’ after my name, which is Callie, by the way.”

  “Jack puggle terrier,” Higgins snuffled, a far-off look on his muzzle. “My snout, it’s a new breed.”

  Shep had no idea what a breed was, but it seemed to him that between this research stuff and the mystery of the Red Dot, there was something weird about being a yapper that big dogs had been spared.

  “I smell another dog,” barked Callie.

  “That’d be Frizzle,” Higgins grumbled. “A French bulldog. Laziest pup I’ve ever met. He doesn’t normally live in this den, but my master offered to take care of him while his master is away.”

  “Why were you so desperate for help?” Shep asked. “This den looks comfortable enough.”

  Higgins sighed dramatically. “Frizzle ate all the kibble because he was, and I quote, ‘starving’
in the middle of the night. And now we are in fact starving, without a kibble or treat left.” Higgins leapt onto the smelly skin couch and sat, looking down at both Callie and Shep.

  Shep got out of the bed and began sniffing around the den. He wasn’t about to let this little hairface stand over him, as if the yapper were the dominant dog in the room.

  “I smell kibble,” barked Shep. “Over here, in these cabinets.”

  Higgins leapt off the couch and stood in front of the cabinet Shep was sniffing. His flap-ears pricked forward and stumpy tail wagged ecstatically. “Yes, I smelled it as well. I’ve been scrabbling at the doors all sun without luck. If you can open them, I’ll gladly share whatever kibble’s inside.”

  Share? thought Shep. Like this yapper could keep me from eating whatever I find.

  “Did I hear something about kibble?”

  Claws clicked on the hard floor. Air snuffled through a stunted muzzle. Shep knew that voice. Oh, Great Wolf, not that dog.

  It was the little black yapper from the other sun at the Park. His wing-ears pricked forward, his stump tail wagged, and he puffed out his chest like a pigeon wooing a mate.

  “Hey, I met you in the Park!” the black dog — Frizzle — woofed. “Never got that palm tree back from me, did you?” He strutted over to Callie and began sniffing her over. “Why, hel-lo, gorgeous,” he growled softly.

  Shep waited for Callie to bite him square on the nose, but instead, she sniffed him back, tail wagging furiously. “Hello there!” she yipped excitedly, her bark cracking a bit. “That’s Shep and I’m Callie.”

  Callie slapped her front paws on the floor, head low, rump raised, and tail in full swing. “Let’s play!”

  Frizzle slapped his paws. “You’re on!”

  The two began a ferocious little tussle on the floor, yipping and squealing and scrabbling like two pups. Both Higgins and Shep looked on, Higgins with a tired, not-again expression on his snout, while Shep was frozen in disbelief. Could Callie actually like that annoying little yapper?

  Then again, Callie was also a yapper, under the strictest of definitions. Maybe it was a yapper thing. But Frizzle was in a different, more annoying class of yapper. Callie was a nice girldog who was helpful with breaking things and good at catching vermin. Frizzle, on the other hand, was a waste of fur with a Car-sized ego who wouldn’t be able to fight his way out of a dog bed, let alone the fight cage.

  Shep had to break things up. This Frizzle was no good for Callie. As her defender and rescuer, he had to get her out of there, and quick. He jammed his claws into the cabinet and scratched the door open. “There,” he barked loudly. “Kibble for all.”

  “Finally!” howled Higgins. He dove unceremoniously into the cabinet and started tugging on the kibble bag. Seeing as Higgins was a midget and old, the bag didn’t budge. Shep grabbed a corner and dragged the bag, with Higgins hanging from its side, out onto the floor.

  The smell of food roused Frizzle from his play with Callie. He scrambled over to the bag and dug furiously at the packaging.

  Shep put his paw on the black dog’s back and shoved him aside. “Allow me,” Shep growled.

  “Watch it, Big Nose,” Frizzle barked angrily. “I’ve been in my fair share of scraps. I could take you down — if I had to.” He puffed his chest out even farther and kicked his little hind paws, head low and ears back.

  One look and Shep knew for sure that this dog had never fought anything more than a stuffed toy in his life. His stance was all wrong — Shep could flip him with one swipe of his muzzle.

  “Hey now,” Callie whimpered, shoving her way between Shep and Frizzle. “Let’s just eat, okay?” She looked at Shep, then at Frizzle, and gave each a lick on the nose.

  Shep decided to ignore the annoying little dog’s threat, for Callie’s sake. And because it wouldn’t have been a fair fight. He gripped the bag with his teeth and tore a gash in it, spilling kibble all over the floor. The four ate that bag, and then Shep showed them how to open the cold box. There wasn’t much food in Higgins’s cold box, but Shep nonetheless enjoyed exploring the various flavors of kibble inside.

  Frizzle sniffed the empty tray he’d just polished off, then licked his jowls. “Now that was a meal, eh, Higgy?”

  Higgins lifted his head from a bowl. His muzzle was coated in white stuff that dripped off his whiskers. “It’s Higg-ins, pup. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “You might want to clean up your fur, Higgy,” Shep woofed, panting.

  Higgins ran a paw across his nose. “Good gracious,” he said. He began wiping his snout with his paws and licking them clean.

  A noise like a giant Car grumbled Outside. Shep loped over to the window and rested his forepaws on the ledge. The roar of the storm sent vibrations through the wall and into Shep’s claws. The rain was falling so hard that the water didn’t even bead up on the window; it poured down the clear surface in a single, rippling sheet. Palm trees swayed all the way to the middle of their trunks, their green fronds whipping in the wind like Shep’s woman’s long hair. Shep couldn’t see anything in the street — no birds, no lizards. The clouds were a gray wall, like thick fur across the sky.

  Then the fur of the clouds changed: It swirled and dropped like a stone to the street. The growling became a roar and Shep was shaken from the window ledge. His whiskers tingled — the air was shifting.

  Suddenly, the glass in the window burst. It flew Outside with a scream into a blinding fury of cloud. All scent blew away with the window, as if the swirling cloud contained a giant floor-sucker. The cloud flashed a set of sharp fangs, then claws, razor edges whirling.

  Shep scrambled back toward the food room, the wind now tugging at his skin. He clawed his way around the wooden counter and found the three yappers cowering inside the kibble cabinet. Shep shoved his head inside, crouching in front of the cabinet and on top of the yappers, as if the dark could protect him. The four dogs trembled and the den seemed to tremble right along with them.

  The roar quieted to a growl, then to nothing. After a few heartbeats, all that remained was the whistle of the wind and the slap of rain on the floor under where there’d once been a window. It took several more heartbeats before the dogs crept out of the safety of the cabinet.

  “I’ve never smelled anything like that,” Callie whimpered. “Was it a wild dog, Shep?”

  A tremble ran over his fur and whiskers. “No,” he woofed. He did not tell her his suspicion about the monstrous wind — that it was the Black Dog, and that it was coming for him.

  “What was that?” barked Frizzle. His wing-ears twitched on his fat head.

  “Nothing,” grumbled Higgins. “The storm. It’ll be over by morning. I’m going to the bed room to get some sleep.” He snorted loudly and scrabbled down the hall.

  “No,” snapped Frizzle. “I heard a bark.”

  “I just heard it!” Callie raced into the bed room and Frizzle bounded after her.

  Shep stayed where he was, claws clinging to the floor. He strained his ears and scented the air. Had it been the Black Dog? Where had the windstorm gone?

  “Shep, come listen!” Callie cried from the bed room.

  Shep shook his head. There was only the noise of the storm, only the scent of rain. Whatever that terrible wind had been, it had vanished. Shep shivered and stretched. He wanted to curl up in the cabinet until the end of the storm, then find his boy and go home. But he was the big dog in the den. He’d better check things out.

  Shep loped down the short hall into the dark bed room. There was a small window, but it was blocked by something. The shadowy forms of Callie and Frizzle stood on the large bed in the middle of the space; Shep smelled Higgins in the opposite corner of the bed.

  “What?” Shep grunted. Then he heard the barking. It was muffled — he couldn’t make out anything about the other dog, or what it was trying to say — but there was definitely a dog on the other side of the wall, a dog in trouble.

  “We should go help him,” said Callie.r />
  “Yeah!” howled Frizzle. “I’m ready for some action.”

  “What if that monster wind is in there?” whined Higgins.

  “Even more reason to help!” barked Callie. “Shep, let’s go.”

  “Why me?” woofed Shep. He didn’t want to go anywhere near that wind.

  “No one else can get the door open, silly fur.” Callie headed for the door to Higgins’s den — they’d left it open, so as not to get trapped.

  “My teeth hurt from biting that knob,” said Shep. “I’m not going to risk breaking a fang.” He ran his paw over his muzzle for emphasis. Who was Callie to tell him to follow her? He was the big dog, the rescuer — he’d saved her from a giant killer bird! Why was he the one getting pushed around?

  “That dog sounds like it’s in trouble. I’m going!” Callie raced out of the den. Frizzle took off after her, howling with delight.

  “Finally,” sighed Higgins. “Some peace and quiet!” He snuggled back down in the comforter.

  Shep looked at the bed, and at Higgins, already snoring away. Why, Great Wolf, did I ever leave my den?

  Shep bolted out of the door, sniffing his way after Callie. She was only going to get herself into trouble, and it wasn’t likely that Frizzle would be much help getting her out of it.

  He found them both outside a door not far down the hall from Higgins’s den. Callie, being a stubborn little mutt, was leaping at the knob, trying to snap her teeth around it.

  “Great Wolf,” Shep barked, pushing Frizzle aside. “You’re never going to get the knob to turn that way.”

  Shep heard scratching on the other side of the door. “Well, dock my tail! Is that Shep?”

  Shep knew that voice: It was Zeus! Shep barked hello, his tail spastic with joy at running into his best friend.

  “Zeus! Thank the Great Wolf!” Shep yipped, leaping at the door. “What’s the trouble?”

  Zeus explained that a tree outside his den had crashed through the window. “Rain’s pouring in,” he barked, “and the wall’s broken.”

  “Don’t worry,” woofed Shep. “I’m going to get you out.”