The next day, I was up with the first ray of light.

The small yet solid compartment was really well fit my size. It was not much smaller than the space that Kanti had made me. If only I had my plush toy.

Ah, I missed that small soft tortoise. It used to scream once when squeezed, but Kanti had the whistle removed when I didn’t stop playing with it the first night. It could have been worse; He could have taken the toy, but he didn’t. He knew I really liked it a lot.

The only problem I had with the compartment was the lack of ventilation. I smelled bad after my nightly activity, and the thought had pestered me all night. My whole body started itching because I had remembered it again, and before I knew it I was scratching my ears first, and then my sides. None of it worked. The stench was stubborn and it had decided to stick with me for a while.

Kanti would have tried to bathe — Nope, not going to think about it. I buried the thought back to the place it was trying to rise out from. Bathing was a punishment that no one deserved, not even hu-mans.

Truth to be told, I really didn’t feel like going outside. There were too many things on my mind. What was the point anyways?

Yet, I was up on my feet and rushing up the stairs when I heard the birds singing outside. Sunlight blinded me as I dashed onto the roof and under the large blue open sky. There were crows sitting at the walls and they cawed at me, calling me names. I chased them all over the roof, barking and jumping, scaring the hell out of them until they flew away.

Go die you stupid, dog. One of them cawed, circling above my head. I’ll be the first one to feast on your corpse!

It‘ll be me. The other retaliated.

ME!

And the two started fighting mid-air, clawing at each other playfully. They sure could joke, all right. But you never know with the crows. They could be joking one moment and become serious in the next. They were all a bit obsessed with death; most even believed that death was a lady and they were her messengers. It was just one of the reasons why I didn’t like them.

However, the birds were back! And it made me so happy!

I ran to the edge of the roof to get a clear view of their performance. There were five of them brown sparrows sitting on a tree branch nearby. I barked to get their attention and they chirped back in acknowledgment. Their presence meant there was nothing around that scared them. I inhaled a large nose full and didn’t find any sweetness in the air, either.

Holy plush toys and meat treat —the screamers were gone!

I howled at the sky for bringing me such good news, but then the itch started again and I got busy; that is until I got over the initial frenzy of emotions and started thinking.

Where were the screamers if they were not around? Were they also sleeping? Hiding in the houses that once belonged to them and waiting for the sky to shine bright?

Whatever the case, the empty roads meant I could look for Rusty and the others without needing to hide behind pillars and gates and such, without worrying about being chased.

But first thing first, I needed to quench my thirst. I was not hungry after last night’s meal, but the thirst was bad.

I could go to the house where I had eaten the dried rice, or I could ask Kalki for some water? Maybe she’d also give me some treats?

My mouth watered just thinking about them. I knew she never gave me any of those brown dried treats outside of our morning walks together, but it could be a special occasion, right?

She was still holed up inside the house, though. The gate was closed and none of the houses had the usual clinks and whistles going off, spreading a mind and mouth-watering mix of odors onto the street. I wondered if Kanti would ever return since his house was gone.

Kali would know. I thought, morosely.

I jumped from the second-floor balcony to the perimeter wall and hopped down to the road. I was getting better at it. The only problem was that, in doing so, I was behaving more like a cat than a dog. Not that it mattered.

The scent trail that Kalki left last night had dried, but it still flagged a strong sign of her presence. I didn’t know hu-mans also spread their scent before taking over a territory. The only problem was the screamers. They would know she was inside.

I barked at the gate to tell her what she’d done, but the gate didn’t open. There was no movement inside either. I had forgotten that hu-mans were lazy in the morning and didn’t like waking up until the orange ball was up in the sky and the air was warm.

I feared cold, but hu-mans detested it, really. Last winter, on a very cold night, Kanti and the other homeowners had gathered together and called forth a bright, laughing monster called Fire to scare the cold away. Cob had warned me to stay away from it.

That’s fire, he’d told me. It’ll burn you if you get too close. But Kanti had tried to take me closer to it, and I had to resist with my scrawny build to stay as far away as I could, though I did go closer to eat the small soft shell treats called pea-nuts —Rusty told me the name.

The thirst —I licked the pavement and sprayed the gate to mask her scent with mine. Kalki might be in heat, but I didn’t want screamers or hu-mans to know that. She belonged to Kanti, as Ginger belonged to Cob. I needed to protect her so that no other male would try to fill her belly with cubs. Females in heat could become a bit unreasonable, after all. It’s not their fault, just how things go.

With that done, I tottered ahead on the empty straight road.

I turned right from the corner and passed the home where I had killed the screamers last night. I wanted to take a look inside, but the smell of rot was horrifyingly deterring.

Kalki’s scent was stronger there and I could do nothing to hide it either. I sprayed a bit of my sent on the gate, but I could still smell her scent under mine. Well, she could always leave the house she was hiding in. I decided to bank on it, that I would be able to get her out of that house.

Sighing, I walked past and entered the house with the bucket. It was still there under the kitchen sink, half full and waiting for me to drink. The water tasted a bit funny, but still much better than what I had eaten last night.

I was coming out of the house when I smelled something, someone, another free dog. He was one of Bread's lackeys, and I remembered watching the lot of them run after or with Rusty and Ginger before the dark storm had enveloped me.

I had completely forgotten about them!

The scent stopped right outside the house where I had sprayed. I hid behind the closed half of the gate as my heart trembled in anticipation. He would know where they were, wouldn’t he? Rusty would have tried to befriend them since the world had gone to shit. Dimple would have hated the idea, but Ginger would have made him agree.

The scent started moving again. I smelled him following the trail up the stairs and to the roof. There he spent less than a minute before rushing down and running out of the house. He obviously didn’t like what he had found.

The stench of rot must have scared him because he didn’t stop once he was out on the road, and ran past me in a hurry. I peeked from the gate and saw him disappear inside another house after spraying at the front gate. He was marking the territory, and I could smell more signs that he had left on his venture.

I made up my mind and followed the scent marks he had left. They led me to the other side of the road, to the park where Kanti and I used to spend our mornings. I found Dimple’s scent on the gate. This was it!

Rusty was old as the town —I’m exaggerating— and obviously knew many places that no one else visited. It was possible that they all were there.

There was just one problem. There were hu-mans in the park, simply loitering around, slowly walking about, trying, and failing to even stretch like normal. I could smell the stench of death from them. There was also the sweet invitation, but it was faint, minuscule in comparison to Cob and the two screamers from last night.

The front gate was wide open: the flowers in full bloom around it. Plants skirted the whole iron fence, bringing color to the park. Kaki liked the flowers. I decided to bring back a few when I returned with Rusty and the other. They would improve her mood. She was upset over something even though I hadn’t bitten her. Ah, well, it wasn’t easy to understand hu-mans.

I chose a place fairly far away from the screamers and rolled over on the wet grass to clean my coat. The grass blades nicely combed my hair. I was mostly free of rotten flesh bits when I got up, though the stench remained. The screamers had obviously gotten my odor, but they were far too slow to act. No wonder the dog I had found had gotten past them.

They seemed like they wanted to play with me, but I was in no mood to play with them after last night. I ran past them. There were more of them lying in the grass up ahead. They were playing dead, just like Kanti liked to play with me. They were pretending. I knew and gave them a wide berth when passing by.

However, there was one among them that was acting differently from the rest. While the others were slowly walking around, as if reenacting their actions from the time when they were hu-man, that one was standing among them looking at the sky with its mouth wide open.

It had a relatively shallower stench to it, and I have to say that it scared me. I was not the only one scared of it. The screamers were also staying away from, that is until it got angry. Suddenly, it screamed and tackled another one of its kind to the ground.

I seriously believed they were playing with each other like Cob sometimes did with me, but I was wrong. The aggressive one bit the other's neck while it lay still under him. He tore a mouthful of flesh and ate it. The others instantly turned toward them. The ones that were lying also raised their heads toward him, stood up, and then all the dozen or so screamers in the park slowly started converging at him, while it continued eating and enjoying its meal.

It raised its head and let out a roar when it noticed them coming at him, but didn’t pull back. It was not scared of them, and that was a scary realization.

I saw this as a chance and made a run for the other side of the park. I jumped over the iron fence since there was no gate and landed in the dirt on the other side. Screams rang out behind me as I left the park behind and started making way into the patch of wild ferns and bushes. The screamers had nothing to do with me any longer.

There was a hollow tunnel that led straight through, and to my happiness, I found Rusty’s scent mark at the entrance. Coupled that with the footprints in the mud and I knew I had finally found them.