It was a nice sunny weekend, and my friends Linus, Henry, and Hugo, and I were playing soccer at Anderson Park, feeling the nice cool breeze and listening to the trees rustle in the wind.
Soon it struck 5 p.m. and I had to bike home. I walked in the front door, took my shoes off, dropped my drawstring bag down on the floor, walked into the living room, plopped down on the couch, and turned on the TV. When I turned on the TV I was immediately greeted by a big banner that read “Breaking News.” I was intrigued, so I decided to watch more.
Soon, the CNN reporter said: “A new, very popular breed of dog has shown behavior issues, especially when it’s a full moon. We have talked with the dog breeders that made the breed and they said the animals are very closely related to a wolf.”
I found this ridiculous, so I turned off the news and relaxed for the rest of the evening, and made plans to go to Anderson Park again the next day. It was going to be the same people as before, with the addition of AJ. AJ is smart, funny, and like Linus, knows what to do in tense situations. Can’t say the same about Hugo or Henry.
Soon, I woke up at 8 a.m., ate some breakfast, brushed my teeth, and started biking to Anderson. We all got there and started playing various sports like soccer, frisbee, and football. Soon it was 1 p.m. and we were hungry, so we biked to Jackie’s Grillette for lunch and then ice cream from Cold Stone nearby. After our stomachs were full, we went back to Anderson at around 2:30 p.m. The thing about Anderson Park is you can spend the whole day there and still be entertained. You can relax and cool off under a large tree, take a walk around the park, climb a tree, and run around. When we got back to Anderson I noticed the sky seemed a little darker than usual. I brushed it off, and my friends and I sat on a bench and talked about middle school, sports, and other things like that. It was about 3 o’clock when we started playing frisbee and that’s when I noticed how incredibly dark it had gotten. I looked over at the asphalt path to see if anyone else noticed, and that’s when I saw it: a dog being hostile to its owner.
“William, what are you looking at?” Linus said.
“Nothing,” I replied. We played frisbee for another hour or so and then it happened.
The sky started swelling up with dark black clouds and the moon was brighter and bigger than I had ever seen it before. “AHHHHH!” I heard someone scream. I looked over to the pathway and about five dogs, all the same breed, were attacking their owners and everyone around them as well.
“We’ve got to go,” I exclaimed to my friends.
We start running away from the chaos as one of the dogs started chasing us. The dog had gray, ragged fur, sharp canine teeth, and saliva dripping from its wide-open mouth.
“AGHHH!” Henry screamed. We all look back in unison horror to see Henry on the ground clenching his knee and the dog still closing in on us.
“Get up!” Hugo yells. “Get up!”
Henry responds, “I can’t! Help!”
With the dog about 50 feet away from Henry and us about 5 feet away, we take the risk and try to save him.
Hugo and AJ pick him up and start running, but the dog is so much faster and is closing in. It doesn’t look like they’re going to make it and — BANG! — Linus throws a rock at the dog’s head, leaving it stunned and confused.
“Come on!” Linus screams.
“Let’s get to a tree to climb,” I shouted.
We get to the Old Tree and we all climb up and sit down on a branch. “What in the world was that!?” asks AJ.
“Yeah, what the heck was that?” asks Linus.
“I think I know,” I say with my head down, explaining the news on the TV and the full moon.
“So you’re basically saying we’re screwed? Right?” asks Hugo.
“No,” I say. “If we can survive the night then we will be able to get out of here at daylight. Henry, what time is it?”
“4:15 p.m.,” Henry answers.
“Henry, what happened back there?” AJ asked.
Henry responds, “When I was running, I tripped on my shoelace and scraped my knee.” He takes off his sweatshirt and wraps it around his knee.
“All right, guys,” I say with leadership. “If we want to survive, we need a game plan.”
Everyone nods their head in agreement.
“O.K.,” I continue. “AJ and Hugo, you keep watch. Linus, you and I will go out and look for survival items that maybe some pedestrians dropped on the path, and Henry, relax here until your knee feels better.”
Everyone replied “O.K.” in unison.
Linus and I make our way down to the path and load our pockets with rocks and sticks we found on the ground. We run to a bush and look to see if there are any dogs in sight.
“Uh oh,” Linus whispers. “I think I see one, and it’s walking right toward us.”
We quickly run behind a tree and wait for the dog to leave. We see many more dogs in the middle of the vast green meadow.
“Let’s take the long way around using the paths,” I say quietly.
“Great idea,” Linus whispers back.
We make our way along the black asphalt path, making sure no dogs see us. We find two bags of Cheetos, a pair of walkie-talkies, and some stinky socks.
“Who would bring stin — ”
“Shhhh,” Linus says.
This is when I realized that I hadn’t said that last sentence very quietly. Now two dogs were on us. “RUNNN!” I screamed. We start sprinting to the Old Tree; we can see the Old Tree in the distance, and I hear Hugo yelling, “There’s three on you now!”
That’s when I look back and there were, in fact, three on us now. Then one of the dogs pounced on the back of my heel and ripped my shoe off.
But it doesn’t stop us as we get back to the tree and climb it for dear life. “Wow, that was a close one,” I say between breaths.
“Yeah,” Linus agrees, “but we found some food and two walkie-talkies.” We set up the walkie-talkies, and I had one and so did Hugo.
Some time passes and then Henry says, “I’m going to go to sleep, it’s 9 o’clock.”
“O.K.,” I say with concern.
“Yeah, same,” AJ says.
They sit on a branch and lay back against the tree’s base. As they head off to sleep Linus, Hugo, and I brainstorm on what to do next. We decided to get some sleep as well.
The next thing I remember is waking up to scratching at the bottom of the tree’s base. “Everyone wake up!” I yell. I wanted to alert everyone, even though there was no way that the dogs could get up the Old Tree, our base camp.
“Whoa!” Linus yells. He pulls away his feet just before the dog jumps up and clenches his jaw.
“We need to get higher up,” Hugo yells with authority.
We start climbing up the tree, going higher and higher.
“Guys, wait!”
We look down to see Henry yelling, pointing to his knee. We remember his knee. But then, “AGHHH!” Henry screams as the dog bites his leg and drags him to the ground. The dog keeps dragging Henry, left leg in the dog’s sharp teeth and running out of sight, dragging him across the green grass.
I just make out the sight of Henry being dragged into a different section of the park. “We have to get him,” I say.
“But how?” Hugo asks.
I explain the plan: “We will use walkie-talkies, one per group. The groups will be me, William and AJ, and Linus and Hugo. Let’s go.”
But there were still dogs waiting for us at the bottom of the tree. To get them to go away, I grab a pack of Cheetos from our stash and throw it as far away as I can from the tree. Sure enough, the dogs run toward the snack.
“Let’s go, guys, and we have to remember to pick up the wrapper when it’s daytime — we don’t want to be polluting Anderson Park,” I whisper, climbing down the tree as quietly as I can. I hand a walkie-talkie to Linus and Hugo. “Come on, guys. Let’s split up.”
Me and AJ start tiptoeing the path while Linus and Hugo go across the green meadow.
It’s about 1 a.m. now as me and AJ make our way around the park trying to find where the dogs took Henry. “See anything yet?” I whisper through the walkie-talkie.
“Nothing,” Hugo responds. We walk for about five more minutes until I see it: About 100 feet from me is a big bush that you can walk into. There were about 20 dogs crowded around the bush. I turn on the walkie-talkie. “G-guys, I think I know where Henry is.”
Soon, both groups meet up and we strategize. We come up with a plan; Linus will go and distract the dogs because he is fast and can get back to the Old Tree safely. AJ, Hugo, and I will go save him. We put the plan in action at around 2 a.m. Linus walks up with fear in his eyes.
“You got this, Linus,” I say confidently. He purposely snaps a stick in half to get the dogs’ attention. It works. He runs for his life back to the tree. We can only hope he makes it back O.K. “This is our chance. Come on!” I yell to Hugo and AJ.
We run like the wind to the bush and see Henry. He looks completely rattled. We can see that his leg has scrapes and deep wounds through his torn-up pants. He has only one shoe on and a big rip in his sock. His shirt is muddy and scratched up. “Come on, let’s get back to the tree.”
We all pick him up and make our way back to the tree, and thankfully we see Linus.
“Oh, thank God,” Hugo says with relief.
We patch up Henry’s wounds with our hoodies and our socks. It’s now 4 a.m. and I can just see the sunrise on the horizon. “Guys, I think we did it!” I say, tears in my eyes. “We did it!”
The dogs go from ragged fur, sharp teeth, and saliva dripping from their mouths to their old original straight fur and cute eyes. We run out of the park and all agree that we stick together and always help our friends, even though it means sacrificing something else.