Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [32]
He glanced over at the big dog now, watching the way he scanned the street, sniffed the air, kept his ears perked and his body loose and ready.
Cheney was no one to mess with. He was big to begin with, but when he felt threatened he became twice as big, his heavy coat bristling and his muzzle drawing back to reveal those huge teeth. It wasn’t just for show. Today Hawk was carrying one of the prods for protection. But once, when he wasn’t, less than a year after he had found Cheney, he had gotten trapped in an alley by a pair of Croaks—zombie-like remnants of human beings who had ingested too much of the poisons and chemicals that had been used in the terrorist attacks and misguided reprisals that followed. Half dead already and shut out of the compounds, the Croaks roamed the streets and buildings and waited to die. Croaks were extremely dangerous. Even the smallest scratch or bite from one would infect you; there was no cure. This pair was particularly nasty, the sum of their rage and frustration directed toward Hawk when they saw he couldn’t escape them. But they were so intent on the boy that they hadn’t noticed Cheney. It was a fatal mistake. The big dog had come up on them in a silent rush and both were dead almost before they realized what had happened, their throats torn out. Hawk had checked out Cheney afterward, fearing the worst. But there wasn’t a mark on him.
After that, Hawk was convinced that Cheney was worth his substantial weight in daily rations. He quit worrying when he had to leave Owl and the smaller children alone. He quit thinking that he was the only one who could protect them.
The street sloped downhill in a smooth, undulating concrete ramp that was littered with car wrecks and debris from collapsed buildings. On one side lay a pile of bones that had been there for as long as he could remember. You didn’t see bones often in the city; scavengers cleaned out most of them. But for some reason no one wanted any part of this batch. Cheney had never even gone over to sniff them.
Ahead, the waterfront opened up in a series of half-collapsed wooden piers and ruined buildings that left the concrete breakwater and pilings exposed. The waters of the sound spread away in a black, oily sheen clogged with refuse and algae, disappearing offshore in a massive fog bank that hung from clouds to earth like a thick, gauzy curtain. There was land beyond the fog, another piece of the city that stuck out south to north in a hilly peninsula dotted with houses and withered trees. But he seldom saw it these days, for the fog kept it wrapped tightly, a world far removed from his own.
He reached the waterfront and stood looking about for a moment, Cheney working his way in front of him, left to right, right to left nose to the ground, eyes glittering in the thin light. Left, the steel skeletons of the shipping cranes rose through the mist like dinosaurs frozen in time, dark and spectral. Right, the buildings of the city loomed over the dockside, their windows thousands of black, sightless eyes whose glass had long ago been broken out. The waterfront itself was littered with old car hulks and pieces of the buildings that had come down with the collapse of the piers and the concrete viaduct that had carried traffic through the city long ago. A dark figure moved in the shadows of a building front, one of the few still standing, there for just an instant, then quickly gone. Hawk waited in vain for another look. It was something more scared of him than he was of it.
He started down the waterfront toward the places where the Weatherman could usually be found. He kept to the open spaces, away from the dark openings and rubble where the bad things would sometimes lie in wait. Croaks, in particular, were unpredictable. Even with Cheney present, a Croak would attack if given a chance. Of course, anything would attack street kids because they were the easiest of prey.
He had walked perhaps a hundred yards north when he heard the Weatherman singing:
A tisket, a tasket, The world is in a casket.
Broken