All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 127: Reasonably Sized Dogs

"Lost sheep?" Susan froze. "Are you… Are you sure?"

Bee gestured towards Tony and the sheep. "I mean, yes. That's why we have so many of them."

"So many of them?" The taller woman frowned, noticing the flock of fluffy white beasts milling about nearby. "Oh. Oh. Well, yes, I suppose that makes sense too."

"Wait, what did you think I meant?" Bee frowned in confusion.

Susan hesitated. "I mean, far be it from me to interpret Void's will, but… Perhaps he meant a less literal interpretation of 'lost sheep'."

They fell silent, considering the implications. After a moment, Bee spoke. "You think, Void might have known that we would run into you?"

"I'm just thinking it's a possibility." Susan hedged.

"Hm. Well, Void did describe the sheep pretty specifically. But perhaps that was its way of getting us out here. Especially if this future wasn't a hundred percent certain." Bee thought aloud. "Also, if you are right, then that might mean we never needed to bring the sheep back in the first place. That would be… frustrating, to say the least. Rounding them up was a lot harder than I would have thought."

"We should definitely bring them just in case. Void probably had more than one objective." Susan agreed as she levered herself up to her feet. "I think I'm healed enough to get moving. Maybe I can help out a bit with the sheep too."

***

On the other side of the wall, I made out the impressions of two small footprints in the soft dirt by the road. Some brief analysis showed me that they could match Tanu's feet if he had jumped from a height; the depth made sense too. Unfortunately, his weight wasn't enough to press those feet into the earth at standard walking pressure. Even worse, despite throwing the range of my sensors to the max, I still wasn't able to find the little kid.

I widened my search. Instead of looking for him directly, I tried to find any more clues that might give me a clue about which direction he had gone. A few feet into the tree line, I found a small bit of blood on the leaf of a low fern that would have been just about knee level for Tanu. I engaged my thrusters and zipped over to the plant, avoiding the grass and all the dirt. I was able to get there in just a handful of seconds.

Once I was closer, I touched the sample with my Mop. Bringing it into my dustbin, I was able to analyze it a bit better. I didn't think I would have been able to tell if this was Tanu's blood. Not yet, at least. I was able to figure out a better timeline of when it was left, though. No more than three hours ago, and it was definitely human. I was pretty sure that Tanu came this way.

Following the path that the boy seemed to be taking got me going. As I drifted along it at high speeds, I kept my sensors scanning for any additional information. A few moments later, I found another bit of blood off to the right, deeper into the trees. It was a little higher than before. I dodged between the trees and bushes until I got closer to the spot.

Upon further inspection, I realized this was a false trail. The blood was about an hour or two too early. Just to be certain, I still sampled the blood and found that the profile didn't match at all. The level of iron in the blood already didn't match, and that was just the beginning. Quickly, I returned to the original trail.

I would need to work on this sort of skill as well as my system-granted skills. Being able to follow a human that I couldn't sense would be extremely useful. Especially if these children kept insisting on wandering off no matter how nice of a home I kept for them. But that would have to wait until this current crisis was resolved.

Pushing myself to the limits, I upped my pace to as fast as I could, still scanning all the surroundings for any sign of the boy. I started shutting down background processes to squeeze every quantum out of my processors. Urging my processors to move faster, I kept having to close out of negative probable outcome scenarios that my models kept spinning up. They weren't useful to me here. Other signs of blood out here were worrying, but I couldn't dwell on that either. Every microsecond could matter here. I wasn't about to lose this kid when there was still a nonzero chance of success.

A few hundred yards later, I found another trace of the human. There was a soft bit of earth deformed with a partial imprint of the right size. Judging by how much it dug into the ground, Tanu was running now. Right next to him was a strange print that looked a lot like it belonged to the family dog back home, except a lot bigger.

I paused for a few milliseconds, but I didn't see a good way to tell which print came first, so I just continued on the sparse track. The print led a little off of the main trail into what could barely be called a path. To my inexpert sensors, I could tell that it had only been traveled a dozen or so times.

As I traveled, I cast my sensors ahead, but still, I found nothing. This was both encouraging and not helpful in the slightest. I also didn't find more than the occasional print. More often than not, any prints were accompanied by the same paw prints from before on the soft earth. Suddenly, I saw the pair's tracks merge with that of a group of humans. What were they doing out here?

It wasn't long before I had my answer. A group of disgusting, rotting zombies appeared in my sensors not too far ahead. I slowed as I realized that they weren't moving forward quickly. Then the rest of the picture resolved in my sensors. Pinned up against a large rock was a small child and a very, very large dog with mottled gray fur.

The huge dog was… well, huge. It probably weighed more than Tony did. I watched as it sprayed spittle everywhere, snarling and snapping at the zombies advancing toward it. Next to the large dog stood Tanu. He held the stick I had gifted him this morning. His trembling hands gripped it in the guard position, but despite his apparent fear, he would sometimes strike out at the zombies when the dog was in danger of being surrounded.

It would have been easy for the boy to climb up on the rock to get out of the reach of the zombies. I didn't know if the dog would have been able to follow, but they didn't even try. As I got closer, I saw why. Underneath the rock that stood behind the dog and boy was a smaller tunnel filled with much more reasonably sized dogs.

The massive dog lunged forward at the ever-advancing zombies, its warnings ineffective. It bit one in the throat and threw it to the ground. There were still four more around it, though, and as they closed in, Tanu stepped forward, swinging his stick with 93% of the possible force his body could theoretically produce.

I had seen enough. A few bursts of my sanitation lamp and all four of the standing zombies had neat holes in their heads 3.5 inches wide. As they collapsed, the giant dog finished separating the head from the rotting corpse it was attached to. Immediately it started retching and vomiting up bile. I could sympathize.

Moving in, I cleaned up after it. Soon enough, the bits and bodies of the undead disappeared into my dustbin. I even cleaned up the dog sick. Tanu stood there, shocked and breathing hard. I was just relieved to have made it in time. I was glad to have hurried. If I had been here a minute later, this might have been a very different scene.

Eventually, Tanu seemed to come to and looked at the stick in his hands. The flat wooden part was smeared with black gunk. Correctly identifying the issue, he bent down to wipe off the excess on some moss before he tucked it in his belt. Truly, he was one of my better students. Looking toward me, he gave me a shy wave. That was right. Tanu was a quiet child.

When I moved closer to inspect the smaller dogs, the large one stepped in my way and fluffed up its neck, growling. I popped out my Spray Bottle, ready to reprimand the dog, but Tanu stepped forward to lay his hand on the dog's flank. Surprisingly, it calmed down somewhat. Good, he was training the dog. That was an important rite of passage my humans back home made their little humans do with the dog, even if ours was much smaller. Still, it would likely be a while before this one could come into the castle, just in case.

With the larger dog calmed, I was able to move past and inspect the reasonably sized dogs. They were quite squirmy and loud. I imagined the noise they were producing didn't help with avoiding the zombies. Also, it seemed that they were searching for something, but they were going about it all wrong. From my experience, animals could find things better with their eyes open. Just wriggling around in a pile with their eyes closed didn't seem to get them any closer to their goal.

We would have to bring all of them back to the castle. It simply wasn't safe for them outside of the walls, at least not the small ones. The enormous one appeared capable enough of fending for itself. Still, I did hope that these would be outside dogs. Maybe Mary would have an idea of how to care for them without too many problems. We would have to see when we got back.

Reaching down, I grabbed one of the smaller dogs and placed it on my back. As I picked it up, I could feel the huge one tense, but once I put it down, it relaxed. All in all, there were seven normal-sized dogs. I could carry one on my back, and Tanu could just lift another pair. The large dog grabbed one by the scruff of the neck, but that still left three unattended who refused to open their eyes. Now to figure out how to get them moving…

---

Susan, Bee, and Tony darted back and forth, corralling the panicking sheep in the same general direction. Susan's help with the flock greatly improved their time. Bee wasn't sure if it was that she was good at guessing where the sheep would run to or the fact that three people were able to better fence in the flock and force them where they wanted to go.

Either way, she just appreciated the help. At least Bee wasn't exhausted as they drove the sheep along the road. It even let Bee occasionally dash off to go deal with the roaming undead. They were not nearly as much of an issue during the day, but if one got too close, it could still spook the sheep into going in a direction that they didn't want.

When they reached the town of Greg, they had to leave the road. No one wanted to try and guide a flock of sheep through the city. It turned out that leaving the road wasn't too bad, though. They were able to use the wall of Greg to pin the fuzzballs in from one side without much of an issue.

Before the sun had finally set, they had reached the edges of the treeline.

"Wow," Tony panted, "who would have thought that sheep would be so hard to find?" The group had set up camp for the night, finally taking a well-earned rest. Things hadn't really given them much of a chance to talk throughout the day, as they were simply too busy.

"I have a little experience with sheep." Susan volunteered. "I could have told you that wasn't going to be easy. You were strangers to them, and had no well trained shepherding dog, this was never going to work well."

"Oh? Where did you learn about sheep from?" Tony asked as he laid out his bedroll.

Susan looked at Bee with an odd question in her eyes, one that Bee wasn't sure how to answer. She just shrugged. Susan took a small breath before answering. "I had a deep cover assignment on the border a couple years ago. Turns out, no one really looks too hard at a shepherd chasing down a lost sheep. No matter where they're going."

"Deep cover?" Tony asked in bewilderment.