Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) by Lydia West Read Free Book Online

sluggish progress,
looking neither right nor left. He had nothing but dogs to
compare it to, but it was not one. It was tall- very tall- much
taller than the maned wolf or any other creature he'd ever seen. It
only had two legs- no, that was wrong, it stood on two, the
others dangled straight down, looking broken at the shoulder. It
was covered up in- in wrapping, he thought hysterically, like the
meat from the dispensary. What showed through the wrapping was
hairless, glistening skin.
    Mhumhi swallowed again, feeling the meat he'd
just eaten roil in his stomach. It had not noticed him, just kept
moving forward in its slow, dull way, lurching step by step. He
tilted his head up- up to see its face-
    Its face- there was something horribly wrong
with it. It had no nose. It was as if the muzzle had been chopped
off, leaving a weal of raw flesh. It had no ears at all, just more
wrapping around its misshapen head. Its eyes were huge and bulging
and the white was showing all around them. It was a face of
madness.
    It took another lurching step forward. Mhumhi
suddenly realized what it was: it was a hulker, like the police
pack chased, like his mother had told him about. Slow, dull, and
meaty, the painted dogs always said, when questioned. Gentle, his
mother had called it. Different-looking, but a dog like we are.
    The hulker heaved itself forward, feet
thumping, and there came the scraping. It had something with its
front paw, dragging behind itself. Mhumhi couldn't help but crane
his neck from the shadow to try and see around the edge of the
dumpster.
    Its paw was naked, split, skeletal, curled
around like talons.
    It was holding the back feet of a dead
dog.
    Drool dripped from Mhumhi's lips as he
struggled against the urge to gasp and pant- the dog was a coyote,
yes, he saw that now, maybe even the coyote he had seen just
earlier stealing from a corsac fox- he did not know, he could not
recognize it, as its face was smashed to a bloody pulp that wobbled
as it dragged along the ground.
    Mhumhi couldn't stop himself then, he gave an
awful rasping gasp, and the hulker's raw mouth split open, showing
square flat teeth, and it turned its head and looked directly at
him.

5
    Hulker
    The hulker's eyes were on him, wide eyes with
mad white edges. It dropped the back legs of the dead coyote and
swung to face him where he was cringing, terror-struck, against the
brick wall. In its other paw, which he hadn't seen, it held a long
piece of wood.
    In a quick motion it swung the wood at him.
Mhumhi heard it whistle, the speed and strength of it belying the
hulker's earlier slow movements. He leapt forward instinctively and
hit the creature squarely in the chest. It was horrid and warm and
he squealed with fear and thrashed in midair as it grabbed at him,
sending it over backwards.
    Mhumhi did not look back, he ran, dashing
full-speed down the street, around the corner, and away, fear
propelling him until the buildings of Oldtown whizzed by in a
blur.
    He only stopped when he ran straight into a
low-slung, trundling tanuki and tripped fantastically, flipping
over onto his back. The tanuki mewled furiously at him and waddled
off.
    He rolled back onto his elbows, panting,
looking around. The few small dogs that had been out on the streets
were staring at him as he lay there. He could not get the hulker's
nightmarish visage out of his mind. And the dead coyote… He
retched.
    The bright sunlight and the sight and smell
of dogs like himself gradually dispelled his fear, though, and he
eventually got up, still shaking a bit, panting as though he'd run
twice as far. A horrible thought was coming to him.
    Bii was still in the alleyway with the
hulker.
    He hoped that the old fox hadn't been spotted
from his hiding place behind the dumpster. If he had, Mhumhi didn't
know what the hulker would do. Did it have the strength to shift
it? Mhumhi had the sinking feeling that the answer was yes,
thinking of the strength that the hulker had put into the blow