Ellie's Story by W. Bruce Cameron Page B

Then he got up and walked over to a phone.
    â€œHello?” he said, loud enough so that Maya could hear clearly. “Can I order a large pepperoni with extra cheese?… Half an hour? Sounds great.”
    Then he sat down at the table again, and he and Maya laughed some more. Al put some pieces of the chicken on a plate and set them on the floor for me.
    I sniffed them. They were dry and coated with something black that tasted like smoke.
    â€œSee, Al, it’s not so bad. Ellie likes it!” Maya said, giggling.
    â€œI think she’s only being polite. Like you.”
    When the pizza came, Al gave me a piece of that, too. It tasted much better than the chicken.

 
    14
    One day Maya took me to the airport, a busy place full of strange smells—diesel fumes, asphalt, disinfectant on the floors, and many, many people. I had to ride in my crate in a dark, noisy room for a very long time. At last Maya appeared again to take me out and clip a leash on my collar.
    She walked out with me to a stretch of asphalt, which felt hot on my feet. Helicopters were nearby, blades whirring. I remembered the day Jakob had been taken away on one of those, and I stuck close to Maya’s side.
    But the helicopter didn’t take Maya away. She climbed in, but she called to me and I jumped in after her. I was back to being a chopper dog! It wasn’t as much fun as a car ride; the loud noise hurt my ears. But I was glad about it, all the same. Being a chopper dog meant I got to stay with Maya, and it meant I was going somewhere to Work.
    We landed in a place like nowhere I’d ever been.
    There were lots of dogs and police officers hurrying past. Sirens wailed. The air was thick with smoke and dust. I didn’t like the smells at all.
    There was something wrong with the buildings. Their walls were tilted; their doors hung lopsidedly or had been wrenched off. Roofs had holes in them or had slid off the buildings entirely and lay in heaps of boards and shingles on the ground.
    Maya didn’t seem sure where to go after we’d gotten off the helicopter. She stood still on the slab of asphalt where we had landed, looking around. “Oh, Ellie,” she said, very softly, just for me to hear.
    I pressed against her leg, feeling the fear in the tension of her muscles. It made me nervous; the strange smells and noises did, too. I yawned anxiously, wishing we could start Work. I wouldn’t feel nervous when I was Working.
    A man came up to us. His clothes and his skin were smeared with dirt and oil; his hair was hidden under a plastic helmet. He held out a hand to Maya and one to me. It smelled of ashes, blood, and clay.
    â€œI’m coordinating the U.S. response in this sector,” he told Maya. “Thanks for coming down.”
    â€œI had no idea it was going to be this bad,” Maya said. Her voice shook the tiniest bit.
    â€œOh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The El Salvadoran government is completely overwhelmed,” the man said. “We’ve got more than four thousand people injured, hundreds dead. And we’re still finding folks trapped. There’ve been more than half a dozen aftershocks since the earthquake on January 13th, some of them pretty bad. Be careful going into these places.”
    Maya put me on a leash and led me out into the streets.
    We had to climb over piles of stones and cinder blocks or find a way around piles of splintered boards with nails sticking out of them. Everything was coated with dust and ash. Soon it was all over Maya’s hair and clothes, all over my fur, sticking to my nose. I didn’t like it at all.
    We came to a house with a crack along one side that reached from the foundation to the roof. “Don’t go in,” a man said, rubbing sweat out of his eyes. “That roof won’t be up for much longer.”
    â€œEllie, find!” Maya said. But she kept the leash on my collar and called me back when I tried to go in the