Nike and Friends: Lost in the City

Chapter 4

  I realized that it was teeth that dug into scruff. Max! I gasped. The black dog kept silent as he high tailed it off the road and jumped the fence to safety. Max set me gently down in the grass.

"Thanks," I meowed, still recovering from the fright.

"No problem, anything for family," Max panted.

After we calmed down, we investigated the area, looking for our people, car or any other signs that might lead us to them. The building was big, but I was sure it wasn't the hotel or mall Molly was talking about. Why would they want to come all the way here to see a boring, brown building? But, then again humans have the weirdest (and craziest) ideas. A couple hours went by and guess what? We found diddly squat (even though we searched that building from top to bottom, literally).

"Ugh! Nothing! Nothing at all! Well, on to the next place." I hissed bitterly. I had climbed to the top of the building (with much effort) to get a better view. I saw a lot more than I saw when I climbed that cottonwood tree. The wind picked up, ruffling my fur in all sorts of directions. 'The building appears to be some sort of mailing service', I observed as red and white trucks zoomed by dropping off boxes.

"Eh," I scoffed and went to find Max. I found Max, and we set off again, investigating everything that we came upon. We found another building, this one was a lighter brown color (and bigger too). It was really busy, people and cars were everywhere. How were we going to search this area when it was crawling with humans (and not get caught)?!

Somehow we managed to enter the building, but only to find that it too was crawling with humans. This may be were our people came, because it looked like one of those hotels or malls (it was fancy anyway). We started to search the busy building, trying not to get caught. I'm no fool. So I decide to do that spy thing I did earlier (when I escaped the 'Now Boarding' place) and Max decided to push right on through the crowd.

I don't know who had more luck because we were both thrown out. Max had spotted another building, this one however was twice as big (a whole lot bigger than the two we found but it was still brown and boring), and it had a huge parking lot that was filled with cars. The building was also pretty close too.

"Nothing here!" I called to Max loudly as I finished searching the parking lot in front of the building (the building faced another road south). Max volunteered to check behind the building (the north side of the parking lot). I looked up and for the first time I noticed what was imprinted on the front of the brown building, it read, 'Delta Airlines'.

'So, that's why that other building was so fancy and close to this one, this is an airport!' I didn't fully understand what this could have meant. In two shakes of a cat's tail I found Max who came trotting over to me.

"I was right!" I meowed.

Max tipped his head to the side in confusion," Right about what?"

"I was right about this place being an Airport!"

His expression was unreadable at first, then his eyes widened in curiosity, and then it turned into fear.

"Max, what's wrong? What's so bad about an airport?"

The black dog stared as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing, "Nike you mouse brain! Our family might have taken a plane to a place far away and might not come back! That's what's bad!"

"Oh..." I replied, ashamed that I hadn't realized it sooner. But for some reason I looked over (west) to an even bigger and busier road than the ones I'd seen before and saw a flash of a sparkly silver/grey car. 'Hey... I sort of recognize that car.' My gaze followed the car as I pondered, 'Well no der! That's Silverhare! The car that I'll recognize anywhere, the car that sparkles in the sunlight, the car that has our family!'