Exiles by Cary Groner Page B

chuffing between cliffs.
    “That is the weirdest thing,” said Alex.
    “What?”
    “Two or three months ago I would have felt like the plane was normal and the goat was weird. Somewhere along the line I switched sides.”
    Peter knew what she meant. He was now able to spot other Americans a block away, and not by their clothes, because Canadians and Brits and Australians dressed pretty much the same way. (The Germans he could always tell because they had a peculiar habit of wearing shorts and sandals with dark socks, and sometimes even knee socks.) But a lot of the Americans looked kind of dead in the eyes. They would walk the streets purposefully, their wallets poised, buying brass trinkets and folk art and often seeming to genuinely experience nothing. It made Peter uncomfortable, because once he became aware of it, he realized other people probably saw it too.
    There were nice Americans of course, and some of them had done a lot of good. There was a couple from Oregon who’d spearheaded the conversion of the
tempo
fleet from diesel engines to electric motors, and earnest students of Buddhism, and a woman from Sausalito named Olga, who’d started a program that gave poor villagers alternatives to selling their daughters as domestic slaves. But the tourists were a distinct breed. Peter had lived his whole life in his home country and somehow never noticed that look until he saw it in contrast to people who were different.
    They passed the floodlit grounds of the Australian embassy, then took a couple of turns and found themselves on quiet, deserted streets without lights, unpaved and fronted by small shops and ramshackle houses. Wayne Lee came to full attention and picked up her pace.
    “I should have brought a flashlight,” Peter said. “I have no idea if it’s safe here.”
    Alex straightened her shoulders and looked around. “Let’s keep going.”
    He’d always liked her courage, but after a few minutes they heard scufflings and he began to have doubts. He thought he saw movement behind them, flowing dark shapes low to the ground. Wayne Lee broke into a trot, and he struggled to rein her in.
    “What the hell
is
that?” asked Alex.
    “I don’t know, but I’m not liking it and neither is the goat.”
    He felt a surge of adrenaline. They were moving quickly, but the living shadows moved with them. The street branched, and one fork led back to the main road, about a hundred yards away, where there was light.
    “Take a right,” Peter said, but the things followed.
    “Dogs,” said Alex. “It’s a dog pack.”
    “They want Wayne Lee.”
    They started running. The dogs closed the distance and were nearly on them when a figure suddenly darted out from the shadows. It was a boy, yelling in Nepali. They halted, and the dogs quickly surrounded them. The boy walked in a circle, keeping himself between them and the dogs, brandishing a long, heavy stick. The dogs snapped at it, but he was quick; he’d pull it away at the last second, then slap them on the nose with it.
    “You have a bit of trouble, I think, mister sir,” said the boy, his English heavily accented.
    Peter asked him what they should do, and he told them to bend down and pretend they were each picking up a rock. They did as he said, and the dogs immediately backed off a couple of feet.
    “Follow me, please,” he said. “Keep your arms up, like you are going to throw the rock. You, girl, in the rear, please to face behind you. Arm up.”
    Crablike, they shuffled their way down the narrow lane. Wayne Lee, bleating and shivering with fear, shat prodigiously. Alex—inaddition to walking sideways, keeping her arm up, and watching the dogs—did her best to avoid the goat shit, often unsuccessfully.
    As they approached the lit street, though, one of the dogs lunged at the boy, briefly grabbing the stick in its jaws. The boy stepped back, which pulled the dog toward him, then shoved the stick down the dog’s throat. It gagged and opened its jaws