✨️❗️NEW NOVEL EXCERPT❗️✨️

Hi everyone! I'm once again a day late with the story time excerpt, but here is the latest sneak peek of Dog Down, specifically from chapter 15!! Please enjoy, and let me know what you think in the comments <3

CW: animals in danger, fox traps, zombies

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“I smelled water, I’m gonna go look,” Indigo said to the group, who were all preoccupied. But instead of waiting for an answer, Indigo went ahead and broke from the group to head down to where she was sure a small river or creek must run.

Indigo was quiet as she went, padding one paw in front of the other as she threaded her way through the underbrush, the tall grass, and the trees. Within moments, she was out of earshot of the group, and while this did cause her to pause for a moment, she figured she’d be able to sniff her way back easily enough.

After a few more moments, the unusually cold Dogstar starting to droop against the horizon, Indigo could hear the trickle of water close by. She began jogging the rest of the way down to the shoreline, then paused, realizing she could also hear the trickle of conversation coming her way. It was definitely a pair of animals, of which at least one was in a lot of distress, and Indigo tilted her head, wondering how much farther she should venture without the rest of her friends.

She looked back up the slight hill she’d walked down, about to head back, but then the sounds of distress reached her again. Indigo sighed to herself and headed down to the water.

She was quiet, hunkering down low until her belly was right up against the dirt. Indigo maneuvered down, and as the sounds of water grew closer, so too did the conversation.

“Are you sure you’re chewing hard enough?” the distressed voice whined.

“I promise I am!” the other voice returned, also growing frantic as the moments wore on.

Indigo finally made it to the shore, still covered by brush, and tried to get a better look at the situation. What she saw made her eyes widen.

Now, Indigo had seen birds before. They often flew into the backyard, and were so numerous at times, that it became fun to hide in the shadows and wait for bunches of them to fly down for worms before running out and scaring them. Ben often told her no to such antics, but it was Indigo’s guilty pleasure. And besides, she never hurt the birds.

But this bird was different. It was an array of shades that barely made sense to her eyes, its plumage long and lean, its beak curved as it bit into a taut piece of rope. That rope was connected to the hind leg of a gray cat, of which the leg looked wounded.

All in all, it appeared that some strange bird was trying to free a cat from some sort of trap, and that both were becoming increasingly worried at their failure to break the cat free.

Indigo figured she had nothing to lose. “Uhm… do you need help?” she called in their direction as she slowly crawled out from under the underbrush.

Both the cat and the bird fluttered in nervousness at the sight of her, so Indigo stayed still for a moment, allowing them to process her presence. “Not here to hurt anyone, I swear,” she added.

“Who’re you?” the bird settled on, and it was at that moment that Indigo realized the bird did not seem to be making outer noises at her the way the cat was meowing. Could the bird not vocalize?

“Indigo,” she tilted her head. “I can bite through that,” she offered.

The bird and the cat exchanged a look. Then they looked to the Dogstar, which Indigo realized was growing closer and closer to the horizon as her own gaze turned that direction. Thankfully, night had been relatively quiet the last week or so, so Indigo wasn’t worried.

But these two animals did not seem to share that lack of worry.

“She came out of nowhere!” the cat whined, meowing rather loudly in Indigo’s opinion.

“But I can’t bite through this,” the bird sighed, taking another crack at the string, which did not give way. “I can’t.”

They were quiet for a second. Indigo was about the say something before her head snapped in the direction of a long, piercing wail from somewhere nearby.

No… Indigo thought. Without waiting for the animals to respond, she bounded forward, crossing the water until she was on their side of the creek. “No time,” she huffed as the bird jumped backward, the cat, flipping onto its side in shock. But Indigo leapt forward anyway, grabbing the string or rope or whatever it was, as she began to gnaw on the material with as much force as she could muster.

The rope snapped, and the cat gasped as he rolled a bit to the side. But he was free, and while it was clear that his leg was injured, he was able to walk freely again.

“I… ” he started before another wail sounded.

“Come on! I have friends nearby, we need to find them,” Indigo started rushing back up the hill from where she’d come from. She didn’t stop to see if the cat and bird were following, but could hear them clamoring up the dirt behind her.

“Indigo!” she suddenly heard from just up ahead.

“Benji!” she voiced back just as she and the gray cat and bird ran into the others.

“What is going on? Where were you?” he started to ask as another wail broke out. This time, there was another. And then another sounded off too.

“We know a place to hide!” the bird said suddenly, hopping onto Indigo’s back. Indigo wasn’t sure what to think of the gesture but realized the bird hadn’t been flying much at that point. No vocalization, no flying. What kind of bird was this?

No time… she thought, shaking the questions away for later.

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If you liked this excerpt, let me know!!