The Empty City by Erin Hunter Page A

backward as she stared at the wreckage. A faint breeze lifted a billow of white dust, and another piece of wood creaked, fell, and shattered. The howling rose again from the longpaw house: a small dog, lonely and desperate and afraid.
    Martha raked the ground with one huge paw, unwilling to look at anyone. “Poor Alfie. He wasn’t really one of us. He always kept to himself.”
    â€œMartha’s right.” Bella crouched on her belly, pawing dust from her eyes. “He wasn’t one of our Pack, Lucky. Not really. Oh, poor little Alfie. If he’d only come with us … but he hardly ever did....”
    Lucky looked from the collapsed longpaw house to the other dogs, and back again. Why were they talking about Alfie as if he were already dead?
    He had to bark loudly to make himself heard over the miserable sound from the ruins. “What are you saying? There’s a dog trapped in there! He’s still alive!”
    â€œBut we can’t help him.” Bella’s ears flattened even closer against her skull, and she growled resentfully. “We can’t do anything!”
    â€œWe have to try !” snapped Lucky. Daisy was staring up at him with wide eyes.
    Sunshine whined and spun frantically. “We can’t leave him there, can we, Bella?” Her ears drooped. “Can we?”
    A deep, gruff bark came from his side. Lucky turned, surprised, to see Bruno, looking belligerent.
    â€œLucky’s right.” Bruno glared at Bella and the others. “Alfie’s one of our Pack whether he knows it or not. And I’m going to help!”
    â€œThank you,” Lucky said. Bruno, at least, understood what it meant to look out for other dogs. “You’ll make a good Pack member. Now, come with me.”
    As they both turned and loped toward the ruin, Sunshine’s whimper rose behind them, high and frightened. “I’d come, too. I’d come, but …”
    Lucky shook his head. They treat me like I’m some expert on being a Pack leader , he thought, and they don’t even know what being in a Pack means!
    But if they wanted leadership, he’d give it to them; he’d show them this one last thing before moving on. Whatever else lay ahead of them, they’d have to find out for themselves, the hard way. One last favor. No dog deserves to be left to die. Then I’m off—they can look after themselves!
    â€œLook at the front of the longpaw house,” rumbled Bruno. “If he was in there, he’d be a dead dog already. He must be in the back, in the kitchen. The cold room, you know? That’s where his basket was.”
    â€œRight. Good thinking, Bruno.” Lucky inspected the ruins, pacing carefully through the debris. The walls were reduced to rubble at the front and sides of the longpaw house, and the roof had caved in completely. “There’s still a wall standing around the back. Let’s try there.”
    Lucky picked his way to the back, moving carefully on his injured paw pad. He could still hear Alfie howling pitifully somewhere under the rubble.
    â€œAlfie! Can you hear me?” Bruno barked. Alfie’s yelping didn’t stop; his friend’s calls to him had gone unheard.
    They clambered over fallen bricks and pieces of twisted metal into the backyard of the longpaw house.
    Lucky sniffed at the ground. No invisible power here; its source must have been destroyed. A huge and creaking old tree overshadowed the yard, and he glanced up at it nervously. It leaned at a slight angle, its trunk cracked where the lower branches began to spread, and he didn’t like the groaning noise that came from within it, as if it was in pain.
    Just in time, he spotted the broken shards of clear-stone on the ground in front of his paws. He trod a delicate path around them, followed by Bruno. A window had fallen out of the back wall. In the empty space left, some crisscrossed wire was torn and sagging, but still