The explosion rocked the whole train, knocking Baxter and several other passengers off their feet. Everyone, including those seated in the car, were thrown forward when the emergency brakes screeched into action. I caught myself on the seats next to me, Baxter slid along the floor into a set of seats in between windows. Within moments, the train rumbled and bucked in all directions as the support cables keeping the rail suspended popped with steely high pitched metal twangs and wrenching sounds.
I was tossed maybe a foot up into the air before I slammed my back into the window, only to be thrown across the train. A panicked woman broke my fall and screamed, not through fear, but in agony. I am certain some part of her body may have broken under the impact, but a sudden weightless feeling in my guts distracted me completely from any further examination.
The engine of the train had run off the rail and plummeted down to the Under-rails along the side of the chasm, pulling the rest of the passenger cars with it. My stomach shifted uncomfortably with the weightless feeling. It was like I was in the throes of a “big drop” on a roller coast of old. Unfortunately, unlike those roller coasters, this ride had no restraints and an obvious dead end.
As the train fell, the angle of our descent fast approached a vertical one. Belongings and people shifted in a chaotic cacophony of terror filled screams and crashing sounds. As the car behind us broke apart, our vertical angle went beyond and flipped our car upside down. Things became confusing very quickly. I was beaten into a daze as I crashed from the floor to chairs to the ceiling. I do not recall losing consciousness during the event, but I also have no idea how I ended up suspended upside down from a few seats rooted to the floor, and the roof dented inward below me.
My vision and hearing consisted of an echo of everything. My head was pounding. My body moved in slow motion as I tried to test to see what was broken. The train car was dark with exceptions of a few beams of light shining through the dust in the air. The smells of burning plastic and rubber assaulted my senses. Sparks popped and screeched from broken lights and cables that had been pulled through the floor and ceiling. There wasn’t a single window intact that I could see from where I was.
The pounding in my head made it difficult to focus. I could make out what looked like a body of a man hanging out of the window, laying on the roof with his legs inside the train. There were a few other bodies, but I couldn’t verify whether they were unconscious or dead.
It was a sobering experience to say the least.
Cupping my hands over my ears, I closed my eyes and pulled my head to my chest. I figured it would at least help to mitigate the echoing sounds enough for me to regain my senses.
Baxter’s voice called my name a few times, but I couldn’t make out where he was exactly through the echoes. I called back and started a fumbling effort to free myself from whatever was holding me in the air.
“Donovan!” he shouted through a relieved laugh. “I cannot believe that just happened!”
I moved my hands slowly and managed to take hold of the side of his face with his ear. It wasn’t a hard grip or anything, but it gave me something to hold onto. I belted a cough for a bit before chiding him with a coarse voice, “Not so loud damn it!” His voice was ringing, and it was not helping my headache.
“Are you hurt?” he insisted, as he got close and checked me over.
“Not that I am aware of.” I replied drunkenly.
He didn’t hesitate and supported my weight as he broke off the back end of the bench that was securing my legs. I fell into his arms, and he set me on my feet. My legs refused to do anything I wanted them to and were useless under my weight. He must have been distracted by something else or expected me to stand on my own.
I fell to the ground with a yelp of pain, and he was not there to catch me.
“Sorry Don! Sorry, I thought you were ok.” He apologized as he pulled me up and hung me over his shoulder, with his spare hand supporting my back. It was not the most comfortable way he could carry me, with his rifle slapping me in the face every time he moved. I closed my eyes and shielded my face from his rifle. All the movement was re-enforcing my already present headache. He made a few sudden movements, but quickly arrived in an area he deemed safe.
He set me down, with my back against a solid space. I slowly opened my eyes again in hopes the double vision would have disappeared. From what I could initially gather through my dazed exploration of my surroundings, we were in a room of a disheveled office. The train had fallen through at least three floors of the office space bringing rubble and debris down with it. Baxter pulled my face toward his and looked me straight in the eyes as he took hold of my shoulders, “Don! Don, are you ok?”
I sluggishly made a dismissive gesture with my hand, and closed my eyes looking away from him, “Yeah Baxter. Yeah, I am fine or will be in a minute. I just need a moment to catch my breath.”
I could make out the concern on his face. Normally when I had seen him get the stuffing kicked out of him, I would force him to look at me, and have him count my fingers. He decided to do the same thing to me. Making a “V” with his fingers he pointed to his eyes, “How many fingers Don.”
I snapped as I swatted his hand away, “I’m fine Baxter! Dammit, just let me be for five minutes!”
He made a submissive gesture with his hands and stood up leaving me propped against a wall. I took a few deep breaths to try and calm my headache but ended up coughing on the dust.
Awe rung clear in his voice as he spoke to himself, “Fate’s alive…”
I grumbled, “Will you stop with that religious crap? I am going to have to restrict your video privileges if you keep watching that Unitarian Church garbage.”
It had been at least a year or so that Baxter had found a sermon of the Unitarian Church; A government run church that collected general practices and principles from old world religions and rolled them together into one unified religion revering one deity to help explain the miracles and wonders of the world that science had yet to explain. There is no place for a diversity of religious beliefs in a utopian society. Too much of that stuff will inevitably cause problems and disagreements. So, leave it to politicians to take the best of all worlds and compile it all together into one large compromise. I am sure that the tax breaks involved with declaring conversion and active membership had no possible influence on the members who signed up.
Hell, I had been tempted to look into it a few times but could never get around how “cultish” the whole thing looked in video. People just looked like drones, despite their extreme genetic and cybernetic diversity. Regardless, he had been watching sermons “religiously” at least once a weekend since. He wasn’t actively praying to my knowledge, but he seemed to enjoy taking notes on sermons, and engaging in philosophical conversations with me or Ginger when he felt the need to explore a new idea.
He snapped through a growl, “Will you look Don!?”
I opened my eyes; the double vision had subsided to tolerable levels. Baxter looked offended but pointed up from where he stood. I followed his finger to see a sobering site of the Rails above us. Through the cloud of dust, you could see the open chasm, and follow the damage on the rail to where we had landed. It was an impressive sight, and one that made me smile selfishly with the sobering realization that we had no business surviving the fall.
He lectured, “I cannot think of anything more than this to find a reason to believe in Fate Don. We must have fallen…” He paused, and turned to look up to the damaged rail we had come from, “What… close to two hundred meters?”
I would say it looked about right. Given that we were sitting in the wreckage of a building that broke the train’s fall, we were still a few stories above the lowest tier of the Under-rails’ District Fourteen. The knowledge that the chasm was even deeper than the ground level of the Under-rails was even more sobering, knowing that if we were further away from the side, we would have potentially plummeted down even deeper into the dark levels where the ocean water drains into.
The look of deep-rooted appreciation and happiness overcame Baxter as he clapped his chest with his hands, “How the hell are we still alive!”
I was speechless, and seriously giving thought to the concept of a great Fate out there thinking high enough of me to keep me around a little longer. It was a fleeting thought that was interrupted by the sound of a woman coughing. Baxter shifted abruptly from excited puppy to devout protector and scrambled back into the train.
I shouted after him, “Hey! Be careful Baxter! There is no way that this thing is entirely stable, we should not move too much till the reclamation crew comes to clean the mess!”
Baxter replied as he ducked into the train, “On it!”
He moved quickly, no doubt using his canine senses to locate people that were still alive, or marginally so. Two at a time, he pulled and/or carried folks out till our small group became nine. People of varying degrees of injury and consciousness were placed against the floor, two women of which did not look like they were going to make it. They were bleeding a lot, and we just did not have the equipment to help. I did my best to collect myself and help to bring a few folks around. My headache had begun to subside. Despite feeling bruised and battered, my motor functions had returned to normal. During the few minutes of rest, I managed to take before I felt guilty about watching Baxter do all the work to help.
Baxter came back out of the train with a man in his arms, “Don! There are other people on the lower levels of this building from the other train cars. I think this is it here, but I need one more look to make sure.”
I ushered him on, “Do it. We are not going anywhere from here for a little while.”
As he ducked back into the train, a loud howl erupted from below. I could not put my finger on how many were involved, but it got not only my attention, but that of the other passengers that were conscious.
The brown-haired man clutching his broken arm next to me said as he coughed, “What the hell was that?”
My stomach sunk a little. Given our position in the Under-rails, it was likely we may have been in the territory of one of the wild packs of dogmen, and that would not be a good thing for anyone injured and without weapons to defend themselves. My brain finally connected the dots to the group of dogmen that had fired the explosive at the rail. I had completely forgotten about them. My stomach sunk a lot.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I noticed almost immediately after the revelation that my firearm was missing.
Baxter looked excited as he came back out of the train, “Was that a howl?”
I sounded far more panicked than I should have been, “Yeah, probably from the same dogs that shot the train.” Pointing back to the train, “My gun! Baxter quick, my gun may be in the train.”
He looked initially confused, but after a few shots rang out from below, he quickly ducked back into the train. I looked around, there were still a few spaced that we could possibly move into but hiding from a pack of dogmen would be a remarkably difficult task, especially considering most of the blood would act as a quick train right to us.
The problem with howls, is that it is so damn difficult to determine precisely how many of them there are when they coordinate them. Even when Baxter and one other dog synced, they sounded like there could be more. I couldn’t for the life of me remember how many were fiddling around on the roof before the train was hit. Considering what I have heard and seen of wild packs, their numbers could even be larger if they were coordinated enough to make a raid against the city’s transportation systems.
I had seen at least four mentions of such attacks over the past year and that was only the televised incidents. The government made pretty extreme efforts to cover up incidents like this so people would not worry. Witnesses were paid off, or they disappeared, so should we survive, it would not stand without reason that I could expect a bit of a bonus to top off the experience. Survival being the key.
A woman had just managed to start coordinating a potential escape through a door leading further into the building when a seven foot tall Great Dane breed of Dog man hit her with a backhand that sent her to the ground a few feet back. He did not wear any clothing and was definitely a male. On top of the hulking physical build, of which I felt he would give Baxter a run for his money, he held an old XMOC model rifle (a semi-automatic firing cannon. Focuses more on stopping power than rate of fire.) The Dane did not have a pair of power greaves like Baxter. I took note, because in a one-on-one fight with a Dog man, my unmodified self, stood virtually zero chance of doing much of anything.
I got Baxter a pair of greaves to help alleviate the fragility in his Tarsal (the joint that makes up a dog’s ankle). Dogmen can walk and move normally, but the joints simply are not built to handle the stress of intense physical stress. Stockier breeds fared a little better than others, but in the end the same factors apply. Without his greaves, Baxter would injure himself jumping his own height and sprinting long distances. With the greaves, a lot of the stress that his ankles undergo on a typical active day is absorbed. Leave it to technology to help bypass natural limitations.
The Dane looked angry, baring teeth through a snarl as he scanned what was left of the room. He took a moment away from a focus on me to take aim and fire the rifle on the woman. Her body jolted with the loud thoom of the rifle, as her back ripped open from the shot. The Brown-haired man scrambled in a shouting panic and barreled into me, knocking me over to get away and to a destroyed doorway behind me that lead into an exposed room of the building. The Dane leveled the rifle at him and shot him in the back as he fled. He was thrown against the wall from the shot, blood spattering where he hit before he slumped to the ground.
Despite the screaming conscious women, I was the only target moving arm and arm away. The Dane gave me a grim smirk as he leveled the rifle my direction. I had no cover from where I was. I could not charge him as he had made it clear that despite having an odd grip on the rifle (large hands), he was a competent shot. There wasn’t a space I could roll to, or scramble too where I would not be shot. All that was left to do really was curse Fate, so to speak.
At least that was my position before Baxter roared from the train and pumped a short three round burst from his rifle into the Dane. Two of the bullets drilled right into its right shoulder, the one supporting his gun, while the third round popped through the wall to the Dane’s right. Baxter’s ears were pressed to his scalp, his lips curled into a vicious snarl. The Dane gave a high-pitched yelp as he fell in a slight spin to the ground, his rifle clattering to the ground away from him.
Baxter shouted at the Dane as he methodically moved from his position in the train, “Stay down! You’re under arrest!”
I gave Baxter a confused look, “Under arrest Baxter?!”
The Dane gave a vicious snarl and barked threateningly at Baxter a few times as it assessed its situation. Baxter took a few steps closer, rifle still focused on the Dane, “Shut up, and stay down!”
I asked, as I picked myself up off the ground, “What did he say?”
Baxter gave me a very quick, questioning glare before returning his focus back on the Dane, “I don… He didn’t say anything Don! The hell would you ask me something like that?!”
I didn’t have time to speak before a thick tongued accent of a deep baritone voice, which was way to proper to be a dog man, spoke from the door behind me, “He asks because the human is ignorant.”
Baxter’s expression drooped as did his jaw, his eyes growing large as he gave half his attention to whomever was behind me. His rifle was still unwavering on the Dane. I had the distinct impression something was probably being aimed at my head given his reaction, so I slowly raised my hands, and turned to meet who was talking.
Unfortunately, it was a dog man; a German Shepherd breed that seemed kitted out for battle. The guy was wearing body armor much like what I had secured for Baxter, complete with power greaves that looked like they had seen a lot of use and could use a few repairs. His fur coat was a mixed collection of shades of white and light brown. His eyes were a deep brown, and his face had a pretty gnarly scar running up the left side of his head into a completely destroyed ear. He was a leaner body type and slightly shorter than Baxter but carried himself like he was an Order bred dog man.
He didn’t look at me as he approached, aiming a rather impressive looking hand cannon at my face. His attention was on Baxter, along with his partner, a Rottweiler armed in a similar getup of body armor. He was thick and stocky, typical for the breed and stood roughly as tall as Baxter. The Rott had a similar rifle to the Dane trained on Baxter and stepped abreast the Shepherd with a military hunch, ready to fire as soon as Baxter made the wrong move.
The Shepherd cocked his head to the side slightly and gave Baxter a squint-eyed stare, “Baxter was it? Let me guess… This human is your… “Handler”.” He spoke the word as if it was poisonous.
The wheels in Baxter’s head were turning feverishly, you could tell as he did his best to assess a potential win in the situation. One gun aimed at him, one aimed at me, and his gun tailored on a hulking mass of a snarling Great Dane. Our odds were not good at all, and he knew it as well as I did. Baxter gave me a pleading look that was begging me to tell him what he needed to do. I didn’t have anything to say.
The barrel of the Shepherds gun pressed solidly against the back of my skull, and the Rott prowled closer. Baxter had given the Rott more attention than he probably should have, and the Dane took advantage.
Before he could get up however, the Shepherd erupted in a shout, “Dee! Enough!” The Dane shrunk back to the ground, and the Shepherd continued, “You are hurt. Go, leave and get taken care of; you are no good to us now. Leave before the humans come to claim what is left of their train.”
The Dane did as he was told and collected himself, clutching his shoulder. Never ceased to amaze me how generally tolerant to pain dogmen were. He left the way the Shepherd and Rott came in without a word. I wasn’t sure the Dane could speak at all. By comparison, he did seem far more primitive than his counterparts.
The Shepherd spoke again in a consoling fashion, “I do not have any care or concern for the humans in what is left of this room. But I do not wish to harm you Baxter.”
Baxter gave him an uneasy glare.
The Rott moved a little closer still and grunted, “Your gun Baxter.”
The Shepherd nodded toward the Rott, and when Baxter hesitated, he drove the barrel of his gun into my head forcing me to lean to the side. He chided, “Don’t make this more difficult on yourself Baxter.”
Reluctantly, Baxter handed his rifle to the Rott, who snatched it quickly and backed away still keeping aim. The pressure eased and the barrel of the Shepherd’s gun lifted off my skull.
He spoke down to me, still eyeing Baxter, “On your knees human. Hands on your head.” I obliged, and when I was done, he continued, “tell me Baxter. Why do you continue to serve this human? It’s not needed, clearly you are independent.”
Baxter responded, “He is a friend. I don’t serve him.”
The Shepherd lectured, “I’m sure you don’t. That is why you wear a collar and hold your own leash.”
The train had totally distracted me from virtually everything. I forgot entirely about the damn leash. He deactivated his collar again at some point after the crash. It wasn’t the time, but Baxter gave me a sheepish grin to which I returned slight tilt of my head, and a “You’re going to get it when we get home”, glare.
Without any warning at all, the Shepherd slammed the side of his gun into the side of my head. The blow forced stars to explode into my vision and I hit the ground quickly afterwards, with a completely renewed headache thrummed with each heartbeat. Baxter snarled and looked like he was about to lunge when the Shepherd took aim with his hand cannon.
The Shepherd raised his voice, “I don’t want to kill you Baxter! Now settle down!”
Baxter threatened, “Do not touch him again… or anyone else here.”
The Shepherd lectured like a professor, “I want you to listen to me real hard. We are pressed for time, so I am going to give you two minutes to answer my question. How is it that you do not serve this human?”
It put me on the spot too. He cooked for me, he cleaned house when it was his turn, he was there for me when I was in the hospital, and he was there for me when I returned home. He was there for me when I need him, and in my line of work, I pretty much needed him all the time. I could not answer that question without making me look bad. It was totally unfair.
Baxter stewed for the entirety of two minutes, and I saw his features drooping as he did. His anger, his need to protect me, I could see them evaporating as the gears turned. The Rott lowered his rifle. The stars slowly left my vision as Baxter continued to struggle with a good answer. Far as I was concerned if I so much as attempted to suggest anything, the Shepherd was going to hit me again, or in the worst case just shoot me to get it over with.
Baxter’s jaw hung loose as he stared at me, and the Shepherd broke our figurative silence, “Trust me when I say this, dogmen are not slaves, and should not be. We are more than that.”
He took a few steps away from me and put his hand on the Rott’s shoulder while giving a presenting gesture toward Baxter, “You are not much different from Horus or myself. We came from the same mold as you. We are not dogs Baxter, and neither are you.”
The conflict in Baxter’s expression was palpable. He was taking this guy seriously. I could not believe it, five years of work, and that dog man was unraveling everything that I had taken part in raising. Everything. I was going to die if Baxter caved, I knew it, and it tore me up knowing that my life and those in the room rested on him coming to his senses, or coming to the “right” senses… Those thoughts in mind, I felt pretty shallow thinking that way. I sounded just like Percy back at the office. I couldn’t believe that the Shepherd had even gotten me thinking more about the issue.
It was hardly the time.
Shep pressed harder, “I find it hard to believe you have never thought of your own freedom. Life without that collar. Life the way you want to make it.”
Baxter had all but let his guard down, and the Shepherd sheathed his hand cannon at his hip and approached. Baxter let him put his hand on his shoulder and he continued, “I thought those things too. I wanted nothing more than to have that freedom. A family of my own. A mate.”
Baxter looked like he was about to collapse. He looked like a damn puppy who lost his way. Anger welled up inside me. A primal rage I could not reason with. I could not believe that everything we had been through together for five years; everything was unraveling as if it had never happened. I could not believe he would simply disregard all of it. Everything I had done for him, was worth nothing at the one moment when I needed him most.
The Shepherd turned to the Rott, “Horus, change of plans. We are keeping a few of these humans for hostage purposes. If you and the others cannot carry one or more, then kill the rest you find.”
Horus nodded and leaned down to sniff an unconscious woman. Moving her around, he seemed satisfied and hoisted her up over his shoulder. In a deep bass voice, he responded simply, “On it boss.”
The Shepherd turned face Baxter again, and said, “Listen. We are going to take you to a place where you can be introduced to a new life. Trust me when I say this. You will wonder why you never thought of doing this sooner.”
He removed a black cloth sack from a pocket in his vest and flipped it out before handing it to Baxter. He pointed at me, “That one is yours for now. When we are through you won’t need him anymore trust me. I will let you do the honors of showing him that you are no longer his pet.”
Baxter looked at me with the most infuriatingly apologetic expression I had ever seen him give before. I felt totally betrayed, and it must have shown on my face. I did not make any effort to hide it. I was going to die, and someone I thought was my friend had just shived me in the back to milk the inevitability out of the moment.
Baxter opened the sack and approached slowly, “Sorry…”
I had so many things I wanted to scream at him. So many words would have been appropriate for how I was feeling at that moment.
All I managed to say was, “You son of a bitch…”
He put the sack over my head as I kept repeating those five words, louder and louder. Without warning, something struck me over the head again, and I fell unconscious.