The truck had been running on the Jingha Expressway for over six hours.
Tang Miao’s insides had been jostled into a complete mess.
This vehicle’s suspension was even worse than the last one. Every time they hit an expansion joint, her entire cat body bounced up, her head smacking the top of the cardboard box, her rear slamming into the bottom—she’d been slapped back and forth no fewer than twenty times.
She wedged herself into the corner between two cardboard boxes, all four claws digging into the corrugated paper, before she finally stabilized.
Midway through, she gnawed on a piece of smoked sausage.
The sausage Auntie Bai had given her was different from what she’d eaten yesterday behind the Russian restaurant’s back door.
This one was a mass-market product swiped from some street vendor—heavy on garlic, light on black pepper. When she bit into it, the meat was loose and greasy, with oil oozing out.
She licked up the sausage crumbs clean, then fished two small dried fish out of her bag and nibbled on those.
Better to ration. No telling how much longer until Beijing.
Around the seventh hour, the truck slowed down.
The engine’s RPM dropped. Tang Miao sensed the vehicle decelerating, turning, then decelerating again.
It stopped.
The driver’s door slammed open with a bang, the driver jumped out, and his footsteps faded into the distance.
Tang Miao pricked up her ears.
Outside there was a jumble of voices, car engines, and a broadcast looping some announcement.
A service area.
She’d been holding it in the whole trip.
A cat’s bladder is small, and all that sausage had made her thirsty. Time to find some water.
Tang Miao poked half her head out through the gap in the ventilation louver.
The sunlight was harsh enough to make her squint.
Outside was the parking lot of a large service area, packed with all kinds of trucks, sedans, and coaches crammed together.
The ground was dry asphalt, no snow.
Having traveled this far south, the temperature was noticeably warmer.
She observed for a minute, confirmed the driver was long gone, then squeezed out through the window.
Landing.
Her paw pads hit the dry asphalt. Compared to six days of treading on ice and snow, the sensation made her want to roll around on the spot.
She moved along the shadows beneath the trucks, crawling out from under the chassis, then skulked along the edge of the parking lot.
There was usually a faucet outside the restrooms at service areas.
She found it next to a row of trash bins.
The faucet was dripping, forming a small puddle underneath.
Tang Miao crouched down and lapped at it.
The water was cold, with a hint of rust, and very thirst-quenching.
She licked it up for a good twenty-odd mouthfuls, her belly settling comfortably.
Done.
She looked up and scanned her surroundings, ready to head back the way she came.
Her nose twitched.
Something was off.
There was a smell in the air.
Not the usual service area scents—gasoline, instant noodles, or the disinfectant of public restrooms.
Blood.
Thick, fresh—not the amount from a single wound.
And the stench of urine.
Animal urine, highly concentrated, the kind of acrid reek that comes from many animals relieving themselves simultaneously in a sealed space, left to ferment.
Tang Miao’s fur bristled slightly.
The smell came from the farthest corner of the parking lot.
Several large vehicles were parked over there, poorly lit, furthest from the service area’s main building.
She hesitated for a moment.
Don’t go.
None of your business.
Get back on the truck. You’ll be in Beijing soon.
But her legs were already moving toward it on their own.
Her legs never listened.
In the corner of the parking lot sat a battered white van.
Most of the paint had peeled off. The side windows were covered in black tint, and the rear window was pasted over with newspaper.
The license plate was caked in mud, the numbers barely legible.
Tang Miao crept up to the wheel. The smell grew stronger.
Blood, feces, and something more fundamental beneath it all—fear.
The pheromones animals secrete under extreme terror.
She hopped onto the lid of a nearby trash bin, then from the bin onto the van’s hood.
The hood was warm. The vehicle hadn’t been parked long.
She walked from the hood to the roof, then crawled down the side.
The window beside the driver’s seat was cracked open about two fingers’ width for ventilation.
Tang Miao pressed her head to the gap and peered inside.
Her pupils contracted into two vertical slits.
The cargo area was crammed full of wire cages.
The cheapest kind—crudely welded, with rusted burrs at the wire intersections—stacked layer upon layer, from the floor all the way to the ceiling.
The cages held dogs.
Dozens of them.
Big and small, mixed breeds.
Mongrels, mutts, and a few that were clearly someone’s pets.
Their fur was dirty, but traces of grooming cuts were still visible.
In the topmost cage, three small dogs were squeezed together.
A Pekingese, a French Bulldog, and a Papillon.
The Pekingese wore a genuine leather collar.
Hanging from the collar was a silver oval name tag with engraved lettering.
Tang Miao squinted at it for a long time, barely making it out: [Beijing · Ping’an]
The old Pekingese’s eyes were cloudy, its nose cracked and dry, its body curled into a tight ball in the wire cage.
Beside it, the French Bulldog breathed heavily, white foam gathering at the corners of its mouth.
The Papillon lay motionless in the corner of the cage—whether asleep or already gone, it was hard to tell.
Among the mongrels in the lower cages, several had wounds on their legs, the blood from the wire burrs already dried into dark brown scabs.
Tang Miao had seen the news.
Dog thieves roamed from place to place, stealing pet dogs and strays, loading them onto trucks, and shipping them to other provinces to sell to slaughterhouses.
A dog went for a few dozen yuan. A single truckload could hold over a hundred.
She crouched by the window gap, staring at those cages of dogs for a long time.
Walk away.
You’re a cat.
A four-month-old orange tabby kitten, weighing four pounds.
You can’t save them.
If you go in, you won’t make it out yourself.
Tang Miao jumped down from the car roof and landed on the ground.
She took three steps.
Then stopped.
Those eyes of the old Pekingese.
In those two murky orbs, blind to all light, reflected a sliver of sky that seeped through the crack in the car window.
It didn’t bark, didn’t struggle—just lifted its head, gazing toward the light.
Beijing · Ping’an.
Someone had given it a name, bought it a genuine leather collar, and paid to have a nameplate engraved.
That person was probably scouring the world for it right now.
Tang Miao stood on the asphalt, all four paws gripping the ground.
She thought of the woman at the vegetable market, of Tata’s pouch of gold beans, of Auntie Bai’s rough tongue grooming her fur.
She had been treated gently by this world.
“Meow, damn it.”
Tang Miao cursed, turned around, and ran back.
…
She circled back to the van, leaped onto the hood, and crawled up to the gap in the window.
She tilted her head sideways, pressing her ear against the metal, squeezed one paw in first, flattened her shoulder blades, and forced her way through the crack.
She landed in the driver’s seat.
The smell here was ten times stronger than what she’d caught outside.
Tang Miao’s stomach lurched violently, sour bile rising straight to her throat.
Blood, feces, vomit, fear…
All the scents churned together, sealed in the airtight compartment for who knows how long, fermenting into an invisible wall of stench.
She bit down on the tip of her tongue, suppressing the urge to vomit, and climbed from the driver’s seat into the back.
The rear compartment was packed full—cages stacked four layers high, the top one less than ten centimeters from the ceiling.
The cages were wired together with iron twists to keep them in place, rattling loudly with every shake.
Most of the dogs had already stopped moving.
They lay in their cages, eyes unmoving, breathing so shallow it was barely perceptible.
Several bore obvious wounds—welts from sticks, gashes from wire, torn flesh crusted over with dark brown scabs.
A gray mixed-breed dog had its mouth wrapped in three loops of clear tape, its nostrils fluttering weakly.
In the bottom corner, a stray dog was already gone—body stiff, eyes half-open, pupils dilated.
The dog beside it leaned sideways, pressing its back against it, as if keeping it warm, or as if standing guard.