Pushing the door open wide, I jumped out and dashed after both her and the dogs. I found the woman bent over a cage. “Thank god.” I heard her sigh before replacing the towel over the top and grabbing for a leash lying on the ground. After hooking it onto the big dog’s collar, she handed me the reigns.
“Can you take Hercules back to your car. I’ll get the others.”
And when I looked down, I realized theothersweren’t human, which was currently the only species I was willing to risk my ass for.
“There’s no time. We’ve got to go. Now!”
“Please,” she pleaded, tears filling her eyes. “I can’t leave them.”
Something about her desperation kept me from bolting back to my car. Maybe it was that she was committed to a cause other than herself. That’s more than I could ever claim. “Okay. Hand me another one. But hurry.”
She picked up the tiny dog and unceremoniously dumped him into a carrier. “Here. He bites so don’t put your fingers in there.”
Yeah right.It wasn’t like I was going to get all touchy-feely with the Taco Bell dog while the world around me burned to the ground. Besides, the little mongrel looked psychotic. The minute I grabbed hold of the handle to his carrier, he was growling and attacking the flimsy bars.
Reaching my car, I opened the door and the massive dog wasted no time jumping into my backseat. The nippy pup wasn’t nearly as accommodating. And as I placed his carrier onto the seat, he attacked the crate, nearly biting my damn finger off.
“Fuck you, Little Dick.” I retracted my hand in the nick of time. I was never a dog person, and even less so now that the shrunken canine was hell bent on mutilating me. “Watch it, Yappy. I’m not invested in you at all so keep that shit up and see where it gets you.”
My eyes met Hercules’s, and I was forced to do a double take. He was looking between his canine brother and me with an almost humanlike expression of frustration on his face.
“Are you seeing this too?” I asked him. “Is he always such a jerk?”
The big dog leaned toward me like he had a secret to share and, no joke, I met him halfway thinking he might actually have something juicy to tell. But then he morphed back into a regular, dumb dog and gave me the soggiest tongue lashing I’d ever experienced in my life. It was as if I’d left my window down at the car wash and the rotating mop reached in and took a swipe at my face.
“Oh my god, dude,” I complained as I wiped the slobber off with the back of my arm. “Keep that thing in your mouth from now on, you hear me?”
The woman was already at the car trying to get the hatchback open. “Is it locked?” she asked, panicked eyes darting to mine.
“Wave your leg under the back bumper.”
“Huh?”
I mimed for her the correct foot movement to open the trunk, but she just looked pissed by the technological advances keeping her from… well… advancing.
“I’m not a magician,” she complained, thrusting the cage into my arms. “Here, can you wave the rats into your trunk?”
I would have laughed at her bitchy response had she not uttered the word rat.Like I said earlier, I wasn’t a dog person, but if the choice was between a dog and a rat, I’d pick the canine every single time. Why would anyone keep rats for pets? And more importantly, why would anyone try and save them in a fire? Did she not realize how many of their rodent countrymen died every damn day in lab experiments? It’s not like the world would miss two more. But with no time to argue, I waved my leg and the trunk immediately opened, allowing for the cage to be slid into the back with ease.
“Is that it?” I asked.
But she was already gone, sprinting back to the sidewalk where I’d nearly ran her down. “One more.”
I checked the position of the fire, which was not only behind us, but to the side of us and down the road from us as well. We were in the center of a giant firepit that had breached its barriers. Under my breath, I unleashed a volley of swear words. If I died because of lab rats and Little Dick, I was going to be eternally pissed.
“We have to go!” I yelled.
“I know,” she said, already running back in my direction. “I’m really sorry. Thank you so much for waiting.”
She was carrying a duffle bag and in her right hand was a bottle of Gatorade. I reached out to take the tote, but she sidestepped me.
“I got it. This bag has claws.”
Just as she was sliding the wiggling bag into the hatchback next to the rats, we both jerked our heads in the direction of an explosion. The house next door was blazing. After exchanging horrified expressions, we slammed the trunk and raced for the safety of the car.
“What the hell is happening?” I asked, neither expecting nor receiving an explanation to the nightmare raging around me. As if to drive home the danger we were facing, the dried brush directly beside the car sizzled before igniting with a pop.
“Go. Go,” she called out, pounding on the glove compartment.
