There was growling from outside the building, and Kiki had no idea what it was.
Not good.
If she went outside, she risked being spotted, but if she stayed where she was, she risked being cornered.
First things first. Figure out what exactly she was dealing with.
She carefully walked to the stairs, footfalls as silent as she could make them, and ascended to the floor above the lobby. Once there, she chose an apartment that looked out to the side the noises were coming from and peered through the window.
Coyotes.
Something was wrong with them.
There were nine of them, and four or five had limbs that dragged limply on the ground. All of them seemed to have trouble walking, and kept nosing and licking at various spots on their bodies.
They seemed sick. Best to stay away.
But not so sick that she was willing to bet on her ability to outrun them all. If she did choose a retreat, it would have to be quiet.
Dogs had a good sense of smell, and she wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. They could follow her scent here. Or they might be able to track her if she did sneak out.
If she could-
Nope. That had already led her to a breakdown before. Don’t think about it.
Stay in the present. Work with what she has right now.
Stay and hide, or run.
They might not be able to climb. She could try hiding in the upper regions.
But again, there was the issue of being cornered. She didn’t know how long they might stay there, and if their resolve was greater than her strength in the face of hunger and limited water, it could end very badly.
The longer she stayed here, the greater chance the choice was made for her. She needed to decide quickly.
In the end, she didn’t have the time to spare waiting hours or days for the threat to pass.
She tiptoed downstairs, grabbing her things. The backpack went on her back and the duffel was looped around her shoulders, so she could run with it if necessary. There wasn’t a back door to this building. She’d have to exit and go to the opposite side she’d seen the coyotes on and hope they didn’t see.
She pulled away a bit of the curtain and looked both ways. Clear.
She exited at a brisk walk, checked again, and saw the coyotes staring at her.
Ice rushed through her veins.
Okay so hiding was out of the question and she really did not want to fight nine coyotes with a broken kitchen knife.
Could she scare them off? Not this many.
So she ran. Stay ahead of them. Get somewhere they couldn’t reach.
Stumbling, dragging footfalls came from behind her, along with more growling, and she glanced back.
They were moving at different speeds, but right now it looked like the fastest ones were in the back. She slowed from a dead sprint into a quick jog, something she could maintain for longer. She’d sprint again if they got too close.
Any obstacles she could put between them? Anywhere they couldn’t go?
There. Some ditches in front of her and to the right. Wide, too wide to jump, and relatively deep.
She could probably scramble in and out faster than the coyotes could.
She slid into one, skidding to a halt at the bottom, and climbed out on hands and knees and was off running again.
She looked back.
“Shit!” She hadn’t gained any distance doing that. Somehow, even with limbs dragging they had cleared the gap.
Keep running.
Some of them were closing the distance, now. She sped up.
A fence? A wall?
She couldn’t escape them on foot without some tricks, and right now she didn’t have another option.
Maybe rock-throwing would have been a better idea.
If she ditched the duffel bag, would she be fast enough? Almost certainly not. Her issue wasn’t strength and stamina here, it was keeping her footing.
There was nothing around but ruined foundations and rubble.
As she ran, she grabbed a largish rock and whipped it behind her, doing the same thing with a few smaller ones. She didn’t look back to see if any had hit, just kept running and kept grabbing more to throw.
It worked, or it didn’t, and looking back would just slow her down.
Her breath was harsh in her ears. The injury on her upper arm, the infected cut, throbbed as she used the arm to throw more stones. She hoped some would hit their mark and at least slow the coyotes down, harrying them. She’d done something like this before, but never with her life on the line the way it was now.
It didn’t sound like they were getting closer. She’s heard a thud and a yelp.
Small victories.
Maybe if she could run far enough, they’d give up. No way she could outlast a normal coyote at this speed, but these ones were sick and weak. Some of them might be forced to stop, and the others might stay with them.
She was lucky they were sick. Healthy ones would have caught up to her easily and torn her to pieces.
Keep running. Keep throwing any stones in easy reach. Don’t fall and don’t look back.
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Normally with something like this she’d call for help, but nobody-
That wasn’t true. Gaunt might be nearby. But Gaunt was wounded. They probably couldn’t help her.
She should still warn them, if they were nearby.
“Dogs! Hide!”
Really, she was already being chased, not like shouting could hurt her cause much more.
She’d done what she could for Gaunt, now to stay alive.
Nothing, nothing, still nothing-
An alleyway between two somewhat intact buildings. A narrow one. It would form a bottleneck and slow them down, or they’d have to go around but if it was a dead-end alley she was screwed.
She ran through, the sides of her duffel scraping along the walls. The coyotes tried to run through after her, and she heard a yip. Glancing back, she saw two wedged in the entrance trying to get through.
Okay, that would buy her some time, but she still needed to get away.
They wouldn’t be stuck long enough to get out of sight, and in fact they would probably be emerging in a few seconds. It also might be time to think about a better weapon with longer range. A knife was good for doing damage, but for a fight like this she wanted to stay on the defensive.
A metal rod of some sort. Maybe. There was nothing easily visible in the area she was running through now, but she’d pick up anything that stood out to her.
The first few coyotes had gotten through and were half-running, half-limping after her again. The area around was empty. The buildings that had been spared were a fluke, it seemed.
Just keep going.
…
“But I’m tired!”
“We can take a break in ten minutes, sweetheart. Can you keep walking until then?”
Kiki crossed her arms, kicking at the dirt trail. “Do I have to? Walking’s boring. I hate it.”
Her mama frowned. “Well, do you want noodle legs?”
Her papa nodded sagely beside her. “It’s true, if you don’t walk enough your legs get all soft and wriggly. Like spaghetti noodles.”
“...That’s not true.”
“You know how some people need wheelchairs to get around? Well, sometimes that’s because they got hurt or they’re sick, but sometimes, it’s because they were lazy and got noodle legs.”
“Nice try. I’m not five anymore. You can’t fool me.” Her sixth birthday had been a few weeks ago.
Mama sighed, crouching a bit to look at her. “Your legs don’t actually turn into noodles. Papa is exaggerating.”
“You don’t know that.”
Mama glared at Papa, and he stuck his tongue out at her.
“But,” Mama continued, “your legs can get really weak if you don’t use them enough. When you go back to kindergarten, you don’t want to have to sit around inside when everyone else is playing, do you? What if they’re playing tag and you’re too slow to join them?”
She really liked playing tag during recess. She huffed, glaring at the ground.
“Ten more minutes. Just keep going until then, okay?”
“If you can run to the waterfall faster than me,” Papa said, “I’ll give you my candy bar.”
“...What flavour?”
“Chocolate raspberry.”
She was speeding off down the path almost before he’d finished talking.
…
She had run as fast as she could then, and she was running as fast as she could now. Just keep going. Just to the next ruin, to the next intersection, to the next broken stoplight. The stakes were certainly higher now, but it was the same game. A footrace that she had to win.
All she had to do was keep going.
Keep going. Keep running. Keep moving, until she escaped, until she got to Gaunt, until she got home. She could do this. She wasn’t very fast, but long hours hiking made her slow to tire.
She was hungry, tired, weak and crippled, but at the very least, she could still run.
They were still following.
She needed a weapon.
A flash of red caught her eye, and she veered over to the object half-buried and surrounded by sparkling cubes of safety glass. It cost her a few seconds to dig through the rubble and yank the item out, but it was more than worth it.
A fire axe.
The coyotes had gotten closer in those few seconds, and when she looked at the leading one’s limp leg, she swore something was moving under the fur.
Run. Fast as she could, yet so painfully slow, but it was enough. It would have to be, because she had no other choice. Run like hell and all its demons were chasing her. Run like her brother was about to stick a fork in an electrical socket again, or like these coyotes were running for him instead.
A pebble nearly sent her foot skidding out from under her. She yelped, caught her balance just in time, and kept running. The fire axe was clutched in a white-knuckled grip, ready to cleave her way to safety.
She was running as desperately as she’d scaled that building to escape the dust storm, sweat beginning to run down the sides of her face.
Before she’d come here, there had only been one time she’d had to fight for her life like this.
She’d passed that test then, and she had no intention of failing this one now.
Unfortunately, raw willpower only got you so far. She slipped again, actually fell, and when she got up she had no time to do anything but swing the axe at the coyote leaping for her.
She’d had a bad grip. The blunt end whacked it in the head, and it fell aside. The others closed ranks, cautiously advancing as she backed up to a wall. Being cornered was dangerous, but being surrounded would be far worse.
Another jumped at her, and she brought up the axe handle between them just in time. Its teeth clicked around the metal, and she just managed to shove it aside, staggering to the left as it was pushed off to the right.
There was a blur and she was knocked backwards into the wall. The coyote had slipped and fallen as it lunged at her throat, falling on her chest. It had fallen awkwardly and caused her shirt to ride up, so her bare skin was touching its greasy, sticky fur.
She swung the axe, forcing it away, a gash opening up in its shoulder. There was a crawling sensation that slowly turned into near-unbearable itching spreading across her sternum and ribs. Oh god. Get out. Get out first and look later. Survive the attack.
There was one coyote blocking an area, panting and stumbling on two limp legs. How it had even gotten here was beyond her, but the others weren’t very close to it. Go. She ran, shoving past it and narrowly dodging as it snapped at her, and then she was free and sprinting away.
Some of the itching was fading, numbness replacing it. She ignored it, looking around for something, anything, any safe location she could get to. Nothing. How was there still nothing?! There had been an entire city here, and not one building was still standing!
Maybe she should double back to the skyscraper, take a detour around the pack. She might be trapped there, but she’d be safe for a few hours and might have another chance to get away later. It would be a better situation than she was in now.
Double back, climb up, and regroup.
She really should have just hidden there to begin with.
More running for her life across empty dusty streets, narrowly avoiding potholes and infected coyotes at her heels. She didn’t pay attention to how long it was, just focused on her destination and the direction she needed to go to get there.
To the skyscraper, into the lobby, up the stairs. She slammed the door behind her, hearing a thud and scratching claws against it, and started climbing. Her legs burned and by now she was flagging a bit, pulse rapid and her breaths short and fast. She kept going up to the point where the wall had been stripped, only the metal scaffolding left, and then she quickly shoved the axe in her duffel so she could use both hands to climb.
Once she was a few meters above any nearby sections of floor, she looped her backpack and duffel around a bar and sat down heavily.
It took less than a minute for the coyotes to get up, baying at her, but they were too sick and weak to climb the scaffolds at all. Some hadn’t made it. There were only five left.
She was stuck here for the foreseeable future.
She leaned against a column, curling an arm around it. She was shaking a bit, still high on adrenaline, so she looked out at the horizon and took a few deep breaths.
Should she take a look at her chest? Definitely.
Did she want to? No. No, she wanted to pretend she was okay for a bit longer. At least until she was sure she wouldn’t fall into the coyotes’ waiting jaws.
“Where are you, Gaunt?”
If they arrived here, they’d hear the coyotes. Maybe they’d turn and leave, and she couldn’t fault them for that.
Maybe they’d forge onwards and help her.
Or maybe they’d both end up dead.
“I survived you fuckers once, I’ll do it again,” she muttered to the horde below. If Gaunt did end up here, she was absolutely not going to just sit there and watch them be torn apart.
That being said, they might not show up at all, for whatever reason. In that case she'd have to figure this out for herself.
Yeah, she probably wasn’t going to make it if that happened.
“You know, if I make it out of here alive, I’m probably going to be terrified of dogs, and it’s gonna be your fault. You, and that stupid stray that tried to eat me, and that dead rotting dog that I stepped in. You’re all conspiring against me to give me a dog phobia.”
One growled at her, leaping and falling several feet short of her dangling foot.
“That’s really rude of you.”
Another tried with the same result.
“That’s not gonna work. You’re too short and weak. You can’t reach me, you stupid fuckers!”
Three of them started yapping.
“Well, fuck you too! I’m gonna make you stupid bastards sit here for days. And when I do die, you know what? You’re not even going to get to eat me then, because I’m going to fall off the building. And I’ll make sure to be holding the whisky bottle, so when I splatter, all the gore’s gonna be full of broken glass, and you’ll all eat broken glass like the idiot cousins of wolves that you are! And you’re gonna die slowly, and horribly, and my ghost is going to point and cackle the whole time! Yeah, I might die, but I’m bringing all of you down with me!
“Yap, yap, yap. All the yapping in the world isn’t going to change the fact that I’m up here and you’re down there. You can’t reach me! I can sit here and call you stupid ugly bitches and you can’t do anything about it! You! You, there. You’re a stupid, ugly bitch. Your friend too. What, was one of your parents a gross hairy tumour? If so, I feel bad for them for having such an ugly kid! Maybe I’ll start throwing shit at you, what do you think of that? I’ve got a bunch of cookware here! Anyone want to get brained with a frying pan?!”
Her words rang in the air as she realised things were suddenly a lot quieter.
There were three coyotes in front of her.
“Where are the rest of you?”
There was a thump from below, and within seconds, she could hear more thuds and screams of pain.
If she was lucky, it was Gaunt down there.
If she was unlucky, it was the thing from the subway.
The last three were nervous, hesitant. Their eyes darted uneasily between the stairs and the horizon, but they were trapped up here just like she was. There was nowhere for them to go.
Did she risk calling out and drawing attention, or stay silent?
She could hear whatever it was coming closer, a gradual ascent.
Fuck it.
She scrambled down, jumping the last meter or so, and sunk her axe blade into a coyote’s skull while their heads were turned.
The other two snapped their heads around, lunging. She turned to the leftmost one and shoved it back, forcing it to the edge of the building. Damaged floor crumbled as it struggled to find purchase, claws scraping until she kicked it in the chest and it slid over the edge.
She hadn’t done anything to the other. She didn’t have to, as it turned out, as an arm wielding a crowbar lashed out and crushed its skull like an overripe watermelon.
She turned to get a good look at the figure.
“Gaunt?”