The Storm Page 8

  Thank the Great Wolf, my teeth are saved! Thinking positive was working already! “If you turn the knob,” Shep barked, “I can push the door in.”

  “Brilliant!” yipped Callie, her tail in full swing.

  It took a few tries, but Shep and Cheese finally got the door open. Cheese bounded into the hallway. He was as tall as Shep, but skinny, and covered in silky, longish white fur dappled with dark gray spots. His long snout had rather droopy jowls, and his ears dangled far below his jaw and were covered in the same silky fur.

  Once they were properly introduced, Shep sent Cheese off to find Frizzle and help him rescue any dogs on his part of the hallway. Though Cheese was too light to pull open the metal doors, he was plenty strong enough to push them open. Shep and Callie continued sniffing doors along their hall, but came up with nothing.

  “Let’s head back toward El Vator,” Callie barked.

  Just as she took her first step, the lights went out.

  “Callie!” Shep barked.

  One heartbeat.

  Lights came on, but not the dim ceiling lights. In their place shone two blindingly bright spotlights. They glowed from a point high on the wall not far from where Shep stood.

  Callie trembled a stretch away from Shep. “What’s happening?” she whined. “Where’d the lights go?”

  “Shep! Callie!” It was Frizzle. He came bounding out of the dark and ran directly to Callie. The instant he saw her, his stubby tail waggled and he started panting with joy. “Thank my Master, you’re all right!” He licked her jowls, and she panted and growled and pawed playfully at his fat head.

  Cheese loped into view, followed by two yappers — a fawn-colored, chubby, smush-nosed girldog with triangular black flap-ears and a long, skinny brown pup with stumpy legs and floppy ears that nearly dragged on the floor.

  “The pug’s Daisy, and the little dachshund’s Oscar,” Cheese woofed, tail wagging in its friendly way.

  “Where’d the lights — snort — go?” Daisy asked. Her tightly-wound tail wagged as best it could. Oscar, who was two, maybe three moons old, stayed pressed to Daisy’s side, eyes wide and tail between his legs.

  “We tried to open El Vator,” Frizzle yapped. “But the button doesn’t work.”

  “There has to be another way down,” barked Callie.

  “What if there isn’t?” grumbled Shep. It was hard to stay positive in the dark with a bunch of strange dogs and no boy.

  “There is,” woofed Cheese. He looked cheerfully at Shep, then Callie, tail flopping side to side.

  “And?” asked Frizzle. “You want to share with the rest of us?”

  “Oh, sure,” he barked, then loped into the dark.

  “Wait for us!” Callie yipped, running after him.

  Frizzle and Daisy raced after Callie, but little Oscar wasn’t as fast. He tripped over his own paws.

  “You okay?” asked Shep, crouching low so that he was on the little dog’s level.

  “I miss my mom,” Oscar whimpered. He didn’t even look at Shep; he stared at the floor.

  Shep licked Oscar’s head, nearly knocking him over. Oscar grinned, panting short, sweet breaths, then remembered he was miserable and went back to staring at the floor.

  “Shep! We found a door!” Callie’s voice echoed from down the hall. Shep smelled that the other dogs were already out of the hallway.

  “Come on, Oscar,” Shep woofed softly. “We’ll get you out of this dark hall and then try to find your mom.”

  “Really?” he asked, eyes wide and tail wagging. “Okay.”

  Shep walked slowly beside Oscar, letting him set the pace. Oscar didn’t say anything, but he glanced at Shep’s paws every few steps, as if making sure he was still beside him.

  Callie was waiting for them in an open doorway at the end of the hall with Cheese, who sat with his rump against the door, holding it open.

  “What took you so lon — oh.” Callie knelt down and gave Oscar a sniff. “Can you walk down stairs?” she asked him.

  Oscar looked past her. Beyond the doorway was a stairwell that echoed with the barks of the other dogs mixed with the shrieks of the storm winds. At the end of each run of steps, there was a landing, above which was one of the blinding spotlights that had come on when the regular lights went out.

  “I’ve never been down steps,” Oscar whimpered.

  Callie trotted to the landing’s edge. “It’s like this,” she yipped, hopping down onto the first step. “See?” She hopped back up. She repeated her hop, first down the step, then back up.

  Oscar began to tremble. “Where’s Daisy? I want to go home!” he whined.

  Callie stood on the step with her bottom front fang caught on her jowl, giving her the strangest expression. She stared at the step as if it might give her the answer. Cheese smiled blankly at Shep, tail wiggling, clearly unable to help solve the problem at paw.

  “I’ll carry him,” Shep said. “I saw a mother carry a pup once at the kennel. If I can get a good enough hold on him, I think I can get him down the steps.”

  Callie sprang up the step and leapt at Shep’s snout, licking and nipping at his jowls. “You wonderful big old furball!”

  Shep was doing it: He was thinking positive. He was being “up.” Bring on the good things!

  Little Oscar trembled near Shep’s front paws.

  “I’ve got you,” Shep woofed. He snuffled his muzzle along Oscar’s back until he felt enough give in the pup’s thin fur. He took up the skin in his teeth and bit down. The pup yelped; Shep let go and the little dog plopped back onto the floor.

  “Let’s try again,” Shep grumbled. It was hard being “up” when every thing was difficult.

  He bit Oscar’s scruff again, trying to close his teeth as gently as possible on the fur. This time, Oscar merely whimpered as Shep lifted him off the floor.

  “Let’s go!” Shep growled through his teeth.

  Callie led the way down the stairs, with Shep and Cheese following. Frizzle and Daisy waited for them on one of the landings.

  “Don’t go down any farther,” Frizzle yipped. “It stinks like rat and mildew. This door smells like the main hall we started on.” Frizzle jumped up on the door, pawing in the direction of a bar of metal, which stretched across the door’s center where the knob should have been. The bar smelled like a knob: grease and metal.

  “I think this is a special knob,” Frizzle yapped. “Shep, will you be a friend?”

  Shep growled. Wasn’t he carrying a pup in his jaws? Wasn’t there another big dog right next to him?

  Shep placed Oscar gently on the floor. “Sure, friend. Let me get that for you.”

  He reared and slapped the knob with his paws to test it out. It clicked open just by pressing down on it. Why weren’t all knobs like this? Shep wondered. He pushed again on the flat part and shoved with his shoulder, and the door swung open into a hall off the entry room. Boji still mumbled miserably in front of the metal doors of El Vator.

  “Thanks, Big Nose!” Frizzle yapped, trotting out of the stairwell, ears forward, tail wagging, chest up.

  Shep knew from his stance that Frizzle wasn’t trying to bully him, wasn’t showing off. He was being friendly, in his pushy, yappy way. But still. Shep was doing all the work. He felt like these little dogs, and even the big dogs like Cheese and Boji, and even Callie, should give him more respect. Shep missed his boy. Things were so much easier with him than with these dogs.

  Oscar ran into the entry room. “Daisy!” he yipped. “Shep says he can find my mother!” He frisked about in front of Daisy, tripping over his floppy ears and stumbling on his oversized paws.

  “He lied,” Daisy yapped. “You — snort — came from the store. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t find your mom.”

  Oscar stopped mid-roll. “What’s the store?” he whimpered.

  Daisy licked the little pup’s nose. “Don’t worry,” she snuffled. “You’ve got me, kid. We’re okay.”

  Oscar nuzzled into Daisy’s ample flank a
nd curled into a ball. He flashed a pair of huge, sad brown eyes at Shep.

  Great Wolf and soggy kibble, Shep thought. You do a nice thing like get a pup off a dark hallway and all you get is grief. Maybe Zeus had the right idea. Maybe it wasn’t about being “up.” Maybe it was about taking care of yourself first.

  “We should search out the other levels,” Callie barked. “Shep, Cheese, you coming?”

  Doesn’t this yapper ever stop? Shep nibbled an itch on his hindquarters. No, he wasn’t going to run around, following these yappers who barked orders at him like he wasn’t the big dog, like he couldn’t trounce every single one of them, roll them in the dirt and —

  Shep shivered. He was so angry; why was he so angry?

  Callie stood in front of him, brown eyes wide, searching his muzzle for a response. Her ears were forward and her curled tail wiggled. “You okay?” she yipped. She stepped toward him, tail now wagging in wide circles.

  “I’m okay,” Shep woofed. “Just tired. What’s the plan?”

  The night stretched out like the flights of stairs before Shep: exhausting and seemingly endless. Worse yet, the wall-lights that had flashed on when everything else went dark grew dimmer with each passing heartbeat.

  “Three more floors to go,” yipped Callie as she trotted past Shep up the steps.

  Callie had split the dogs into teams to make clearing the remaining parts of the building easier. Shep and Cheese followed her from floor to floor. Callie sniffed each door, while Shep and Cheese focused on the knobs that needed opening. Frizzle moved with them; he stayed in front of the door leading from the hall into the stairwell, holding it open with his body.

  Boji, Oscar, and Daisy remained on the entry floor. Seeing as Boji couldn’t move easily around the building — what with vile stairs and villainous doorways blocking every path — she stayed in the entry room and watched little Oscar. Boji was a natural dam, and she nuzzled and licked Oscar as if he were her own pup. Daisy, like Frizzle, sat holding a door open — this one leading from the stairwell to the entry room.

  Cheese bounded up to Shep with a large, brown and black wirehaired dog with a square head and long snout. Long, stiff hairs hung from his jowls near the nose like a hairface. Somehow, on a big dog, it didn’t look as ridiculous as it did on Higgins.

  “This is Virgil,” Cheese said, tail waving. “He’s pretty strong — pulled the door open himself.”

  Virgil tipped his head. “Terrier, Airedale class, at your service.”

  Shep stood tall and approached Virgil with ears forward and head high. Virgil allowed Shep to sniff him, not submitting to Shep, but not trying to otherwise assert dominance.

  “Can I be of assistance?” asked Virgil after Shep stepped back.

  “Great Wolf, yes you can!” Shep barked. Those were the best woofs he’d heard all night.

  “Two more floors,” Callie yipped, trotting past the big dogs.

  The whimpers and cries of frightened dogs echoed up the steps and down the halls, filling the building and rivaling the howl of the storm Outside. In the end, they freed Virgil, a lean greyhound named Snoop, an old timer black hunting dog named Dover, and two more yappers: a schnauzer named Rufus, who was the blockiest looking dog Shep had ever seen — square head, rectangular body with bushy-furred legs and a silver hairface — and a snobby sheltie named Ginny, who was covered in poofy brown and white hair and repeatedly mentioned in emphatic moans her distant relationship to some dog named “Lassie.”

  Virgil loped up the stairwell toward Shep. “Last floor clear?”

  “Yup,” Shep woofed. “Callie and Frizzle are already headed back to the entry room. There was another chain, but we rescued the rest.”

  Virgil growled. “I hate to leave a dog behind.”

  Shep panted lightly — it was nice to hear another dog say what he felt inside. “At least we’re done with the hard work, right?” he yipped, a scampish grin on his jowls. He batted Virgil’s ear playfully.

  Virgil furrowed his brow and cocked his head. “You want to play?” he barked. “At a time like this?”

  Apparently, Virgil did not feel exactly the same way Shep did. “No,” Shep woofed. “Just a bug.” He started down the steps. “Never mind.”

  A thunderous roar echoed around Virgil and Shep. They were near the top end of the staircase, high above the entry floor and as close to the storm as a dog could get.

  The monster wind from before growled in Shep’s memory — it was back! “We have to get out of here,” he barked.

  The floor began to vibrate.

  Virgil nervously eyed the ceiling. “I agree,” he woofed.

  They trotted down the steps. At each turn of the staircase, the storm rumbled louder and the building shivered. Two flights down, there was a crack of thunder that rattled the dim lights to darkness. Shep and Virgil raced on in the dark, paws flying down the steps. Another flight down, and they heard a whooshing noise that got louder and louder, so loud it seemed to be sucking at their very whiskers. The floor began to shake hard, forcing them to stop on the next landing. There was a deafening shriek, and the ceiling above them splintered, then exploded up into the sky. The wind tore at Shep’s skin, sucking him up.

  “I’ve got you!” barked Virgil. He clamped his jaws around Shep’s scruff.

  Shep clawed against the pull of the wind. Bits of the building flew up into the clouds, and with them went scraps of each den: couches and tables, and Shep swore he saw a cat disappear into the spinning air.

  Then the winds stopped. Shep fell against Virgil. As suddenly as it’d appeared, the voracious wind was gone.

  “Thanks,” Shep whimpered, climbing off of Virgil. He shook and felt a twinge of pain where Virgil had grabbed him.

  “Just doing my duty,” woofed Virgil.

  Above them, the stairs that remained stood black against a blue sky. The first tails of dawn wagged across wispy clouds high above. It was as if, along with the roof, the storm, too, had disappeared in the screaming wind.

  The building groaned, then slumped down on one side. The walls around them cracked and a piece of staircase fell past them down into the dark.

  “That’s not good,” whined Shep. “Let’s get out of this stairwell!”

  Shep and Virgil raced down what stairs remained and burst into the entry room. The rescued dogs stood huddled at its center, eyes wide and fur trembling. Callie sniffed around in the potted bushes near the clear entry doors.

  The ceiling slanted toward Higgins’s den and the door frame to the den was cracked.

  “Zeus!” Shep yelped.

  Zeus ambled out of the den. “What happened to the ceiling?” he grunted, yawning.

  Shep sighed with relief at seeing his friend. Higgins scuttled out of the den behind Zeus, mumbling about how his master would be furious and something about an escaped moth, but perked up when he saw that there were new canine subjects to research.

  Zeus’s tongue circled his jowls and his stomach gurgled. “Whoa! Hear that? The big dog’s hungry. We need to find some kibble!” he barked loudly. He turned to Shep. “Think you can hunt up some kib, the way you’ve unearthed so many yappers?” Zeus nipped Shep’s scruff and panted.

  Shep winced — Zeus had bitten him right where Virgil had snagged him back from the wind. “I think we have a little more to worry about than your stomach,” Shep grumbled. “For example, the building collapsing on our snouts.”

  “Problem solved,” Zeus barked. He walked up to the clear entry doors. They stayed shut.

  “Hey, which one of you yappers broke the door?” he growled.

  “Like we didn’t try that already,” Callie snapped. “The storm broke the doors.”

  The building grumbled loudly, and with a squeal, the ceiling dropped a whisker-length and the clear doors cracked into huge spiderwebs.

  Zeus scampered back, tripping over the pack of terrified dogs.

  “If the doors are broken, how can we get out?” Ginny yowled, which started the whole mess of them
howling and whimpering. The fear smell was like a fog around Shep. All of the dogs were terrified, even Zeus, who crouched close to the ground and whose ears lay back on his head.

  Shep had an idea. “We can get out!” he bellowed. “Cheese, you other big dogs, push over those trees!”

  Shep jumped over Higgins and threw all his weight against the potted palm nearest the doors. It rocked, tapping the clear wall of the door, then bounced back into place.

  “Hey, Shep!” barked Snoop. “You-want-me-to-pushon-this-tree-huh-yeah-’cause-I-could-push-on-it-yup-yup-see?” He slammed his long, thin legs against a flowering bush.

  “No, Snoop!” Shep cried.

  But Snoop’s single slap was enough to topple the bush; it landed on Ginny with a muffled crunch.

  Ginny scrambled out from beneath the bush, leaves and sticks and petals jutting out every which way from her fur. “Lassie never had to suffer such indignities,” she grumbled.

  “Nice pawwork, Skinny,” yapped Frizzle.

  “Sorry, Shep,” Snoop grunted. “I-was-only-trying-to-open-the-doors-like-you-said-do-you-think-this-meanswe’re-trapped —”

  “Trapped?” barked Rufus. “Did he say trapped?”

  “No!” Shep snarled. “No one’s trapped.” If these yappers would shut their jowls for a heartbeat … “We just need to hit this tree harder.”

  Regaining his stance, Shep reared to hit the tree again with his paws. Virgil joined him and they lunged against the trunk together. Their combined weight knocked the tree over. It banged into the glass and lodged in the cracks of the web. The glass bulged out, but would not break.

  All the dogs started to howl at once — they were trapped! Even Shep felt the claws of fear scratching at his heart.

  Callie appeared from down the hall toward Higgins’s den. “I found a way out!” she barked. “There’s a door down here that smells like Outside!”

  “Let me smell!” Shep leapt over the small dogs at his paws, and he and Callie raced down the hall ahead of the pack.

  “Good find,” Shep barked as they ran. He was a little annoyed that she hadn’t mentioned this door before he started with the tree.