The channel below us carried the runoff from the storm. It surged past less that five feet beneath us. I didn't want to think about what would happen if one of us fell into that maelstrom. I reached back and pulled a small knee out of my ribcage. "Joey," I said softly but with some degree of frustration, "Please keep your knee out of my side." "Sorry Dad." He said for the sixthed time. He was lifting himself up in the harness on my back and peering ahead.
About one hundred yards in front of us I could barely make out the rangy figure of Sam Glennon through the rain. Radio and John Jr. tramped through the mush just ahead of him. Jubie and two of the other dogs spread out along the upper edge of the slope on lookout. Far ahead, out of sight, I knew Ricky Esquivel, Dusty and a gaunt doberman they called Smitty, were on point. Joe the Frisby Cat and Benjamin, our yellow tabby, slunk through the shadows still furher forward, probably looking like a couple of oversized drowned rats.
Anyone with an imaginary friend discovered a whole new relationship with animals soon after the awakening. Even I found I had a powerful awareness and sensitivity to their communication that had not been there before. But Joey, Dusty and a few other children seemed to have developed some sort of union with certain animals that was almost a total transfer of sensory information.
Dusty had become the leader of the loose cadre of children and animals that had taken refuge in our house. She had developed the talent to extraordinary proportions and seemed to be able to contact and befriend almost any animal within a mile or two radius. With their help, she could even create a composite in her mind and effectively monitor an entire area. It was due to the emergence of these new abilities that the children had been able to avoid the authorities so effectively. Over the first two days after the Awakening, the method of using animal teams as scouts was developed and refined with the help of the "friends."
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