“Not really.”
“Joe always liked ’em feisty.”
Gina’s breath came heavy now and her cheeks reddened.
“It’s going to be tough walking back up.”
“It always is. I don’t even know why you’re dragging me along. You could manage this alone.”
“You know I need you to gauge the mood. That’s why.”
“Still. I’d rather not be here.”
“I’ll pay you well. You know that.”
“It’s not the money, Rosie. It’s what we’re doing. Every time I come out with you it feels like we’re going against nature. Like we’re siding with the wrong people.”
“You didn’t meet the client. He’s a nice guy. Wants to save his kid.”
“Of course he does, Rosie. You keep telling yourself that.”
I didn’t like that; I’ve been able to read people since I was twelve and it became necessary. Gina’s sarcasm always confused me, though.
At the fourth waterfall, we found huge, stinking mushrooms, which seemed to turn to face us.
Vines hung from the trees, thick enough we had to push them aside to walk through. They were covered with a sticky substance. I’d seen this stuff before, used as rope, to tie bundles. You needed a bush knife to cut it. I’d realized within a day of being here you should never be without a bush knife and I’d bought one at the local shop. I cut a dozen vines, then coiled them around my waist.
Gina nodded. “Very practical.” She was over her moment, which was good. Hard to work as a team with someone who didn’t want to be there.
What did we see at the fifth waterfall? The path here was very narrow. We had to walk one foot in front of the other, fashion models showing off.
There were no vines here. The water was taken by one huge fish, the size of a Shetland pony. The surface of the water was covered with roe and I wondered where the mate was. Another underground channel? It would have to be a big one. It would be big but confining. My husband is confined. I’m happy with him that way. He can’t interfere with my business. Tell me how to do things.
At the sixth waterfall, we saw our first dog. It was very small and had no legs. Born that way? It lay in the pathway unmoving, and when I nudged it, I realized it was dead.
Gina clutched my arm. Her icy fingers hurt and I could feel the cold through my layers of clothing.
“Graveyard,” she said. “This is their graveyard.”
The surface of the sixth pool was thick with belly-up fish. At the base of the trees, dead insects like autumn leaves raked into a pile.
And one dead dog. I wondered why there weren’t more.
“He has passed through the veil,” Gina said, as if she were saying a prayer. “We should bury him.”
“We could take him home to the client. He already has a hole dug in his backyard. He’s kind of excited at the idea of keeping dogs there.”
Is there a name for a person who takes pleasure in the confinement of others?
We reached the seventh waterfall.
We heard yapping, and I stiffened. I opened my bag and put my hand on a dog collar, ready. Gina stopped, closed her eyes.
“Puppies,” she said. “Hungry.”
“What sort?”
Gina shook her head. We walked on, through a dense short tunnel of wet leaves.
At the edge of the seventh waterfall there was a cluster of small brown dogs. Their tongues lapped the water (small fish, I thought) and when we approached, the dogs lifted their heads, widened their eyes, and stared.
“Gaze dogs,” I said.
These were gaze dogs like I’d never seen before. Huge eyes. Reminded me of the spaniel with the brain too big.
“Let’s rest here, let them get used to us,” Gina said.
I glanced at my watch. We were making good time; assuming we caught a vampire dog with little trouble, we could easily make it back up by the sunfall.
“Five minutes.”
We leaned against a moss-covered rock. Very soft, damp, with a smell of underground.
The gaze dogs came over and sniffled at us. One of the puppies had deep red furrows on its back; dragging teeth marks. I had seen this sort of thing after dog fights, dog attacks. Another had a deep dent in its side, filled with dark red scab and small yellow pustules. Close up, we could see most of the dogs were damaged in some way.
“Food supply?” Gina said.
I shuddered. Not much worried me, but these dogs were awful to look at.
One very small dog nuzzled my shoe, whimpering. I picked it up; it was light, weak. I tucked it into my jacket front. Gina smiled at me. “You’re not so tough!”
“Study purposes.” I put four more in there; they snuggled up and went to sleep.
She seemed blurry to me; it was darker than before. Surely the sun wasn’t further away. We hadn’t walked that far. My legs ached as if I had been hiking for days.
At the eighth waterfall we found the vampire dogs. Big, gazing eyes, unblinking, watching every move we made. The dogs looked hungry, ribs showing, stomachs concave.
“They move fast,” Gina whispered, her eyes closed. “They move like the waterfall.”
The dogs swarmed forward and knocked me down. Had their teeth into me in a second, maybe two.
The feeling of them on me, their cold, wet paws heavy into my flesh, but the heat of them, the fiery touch of their skin, their sharp teeth, was so shocking I couldn’t think for a moment, then I pulled a puppy from my jacket and threw it.
Their teeth already at work, the dogs saw the brown flash and followed it.
They moved so fast I could still see fur when they were gone.
I threw another puppy and another vampire dog peeled off with a howl. The first puppy was almost drained, its flatter, as if the vampires sucked out muscle, too.
“Quick,” Gina said. “Quick.” She had tears in her eyes, feeling the pain of the puppies, their deaths, in her veins.
I threw a third puppy and we ran down, away from them. We should have run up, but they filled the path that way.
I needed a place to unpack my bag, pull out the things I’d need to drop three of them. Or four.
We heard a huffing noise; an old man coughing up a lifetime. We were close to the base and the air was so hard to breathe we both panted. Gina looked at me.
“It must be the alpha. The yellow dog.”
It seemed to me she stopped breathing for a moment.
“We could try to take a piece of him. We’d never be lonely again, if we did that.”
The vampire dogs growled at us, wanting more puppies. The last two were right against my belly; I couldn’t reach them easily and I didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to see the ninth waterfall,” Gina said. I shook my head. If the vampire dogs were this powerful, how strong would he be?
“It’s okay. I’m ready now. I’ll take three of them down quietly; the others won’t even notice. Then we’ll have to kick our way out.”
She nodded.
We turned around and he was waiting. That dog.
He was crippled and pitiful but still powerful. His tail, his ears and his toes had been cut off by somebrave. Chunks of flesh were gone from his side. People using him as sacrifice for gain.
Gina was impressive; I could see she was in pain. Was she feeling the dog’s pain? She was quiet with it, small grunts. She walked towards him.
The closer she got to the dog the worse it seemed to get. “I want to lay hands on him, give him comfort,” Gina said.
The dog was the ugliest I’ve ever seen. Of all the strays who’ve crossed my path here, this one was the most aggressive. This dog would make a frightening man, I thought. A man I couldn’t control. Drool streamed down his chin.
He sat slouched, rolled against his lower back. Even sitting he reached to my waist.
All four legs were sprawled. He reminded me of an almost-drunk young man, wanting a woman for the night and willing to forgo that last drink, those last ten drinks, to achieve one. Sprawled against the bar, legs wide, making the kind of display men can.