EXTINCTION WARRIOR

Chapter 14

We walk super slowly wading through grass up to my knees. We're about thirty feet away when Tuk spots him.

"Look,there, eleven o'clock." He whispers pointing. "In the shade.Close to the tree trunk. Licking his shoulder."

Myeyes dart to the left. We're maybe twenty feet away. Insects buzz loudly in the still air. A black mound of flies covers his shoulder and a small black cloud hovers above his wound. He's got big, round ears, notched with scars, and eyes that pierce with intelligence. His face is bear-like with light brown fur on his head and cheeks. A streak of black between his eyes runs the length of his snout,pointing to a fur-less muzzle. His mistrust engulfs me.

He stands wobbly, and sends a blurry image...of a man holding a rifle."Back! Get back!" His voice thunders, like stampeding hooves on dry, crusty earth.

My mind is clear and focused, my heart soft and open. I send a picture. Of him, running free with his pack. "We're here to help you."

He sniffs the air. His pictures scatter in my mindsight, as his voice roars.

"Pack hunts. Running miles. Chasing wildebeest. Zebras panic. Antelope bolt. Blinding dust. Pack circles sick one. Hyenas close." He pauses, his nostrils flare, inhaling our scent.

His chest and belly are a swirl of black and brown that twirls down across his white spotted legs, like Aana's marble cake. He's beautiful.

"Bang! Bang, bang! Farmer. Poacher. Game hunter. Bloody pack. Running. Falling. Everywhere." He says. His violent images whipping through my mindsight in the whirl of a dust storm.

He turns his head and howls to the sky, "hoooooooo..." and waits. Listening.Howls again and waits. We wait. Listening. For an answer from the vast grassland in his African savanna. Waiting for his pack to howl back. Waiting for someone in his family to be there still.

"Ooooooo..." Comes a faint, birdlike reply. His ears turn, and he lies down again.

Closing my eyes, I send him a picture of pups jumping. Happy. Everyone is happy he's back with his pack.

His emphatic reply comes in sharp twitters. "Humans over-breed. No room to hunt. Too hot to hunt. Too hot!"

It's loss of habitat and climate change.

"We need to move in quickly." Tuk leans in to whisper.

"He's less fearful now." I whisper.

"He has less blood now too." Tuk replies.

I crouch in quickly next to the painted dog, and sink lightly to my knees. Tuk opens the kit on his other side and grabs a tube of numbing agent from the holster.

"Triple anesthetic BLT. First aid essential." He whispers, unscrewing the cap and waves his hand over the flies that scatter, buzzing above the bloody wound.

Tuk squirts the BLT in, and all around the wound. Blood seeps in a circle from the small hole in his shoulder. The dog doesn't move. Instantly my shoulder feels better. Tuk waits a few seconds, wipes the fur around the bullet hole with a sterile pad, and opens a pack of sanitized forceps. Staring into the bloody hole, he inserts the forceps with precision, and pulls the bullet straight out. The dog's blood flows faster now. Flies are landing on the dog's shoulder and leg. They want the blood. With the same surgical precision, like a robot, Tuk puts the bloody forceps back in their pack, and grabs a tube of Extra Cellular Matrix.

I whisper with a glare, "Don't squeeze hard."

He squirts half the tube, a fat clear blob in the bleeding hole, like a3-D printer jam. The blob begins to melt over his shoulder, and Tuk spreads it around with his index and middle finger.