The Last Dog on Earth

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  Logan raised his head. “I have no idea,” he said.

  Perry stubbed out his cigarette on the kitchen floor. “Well, let me ask you this, then, Logan. Do you have any friends?”

  Logan finished ball number thirteen. “Not really,” he said. “Well … I guess I have one.”

  “Liar,” Wack Man said. “A crap-for-brains like you doesn't have any friends.”

  “What's his name?” Freeze demanded.

  “It's a she,” Logan said. “Her name is Jack.”

  Freeze snorted. “A girl named Jack? What is she, a retard like you?”

  Logan started in on meatball number fourteen. “No,” he said.

  “I bet she's imaginary,” Wack Man said. “An imaginary girlfriend.”

  Perry chuckled. Logan concentrated on rolling the gooey meat into tight little balls. But he could feel Perry's eyes on him. They made him nervous.

  “I bet she's his pet,” Perry said.

  Blood rushed to Logan's face. He looked up.

  Perry smiled. “She's a dog, isn't she? Wittle Wogan has a doggy fwiend. Isn't that sweet?” His smile suddenly vanished. “Too bad she's dead.”

  “How would you know?” Logan knew Perry was just yanking his chain, but he couldn't stop himself from asking.

  “She's got paws, you dope,” Perry said.

  Logan blinked at him. “She's got what?”

  “Paws. You know, P-O-S. What every other dog has. Half the dogs in the state are dead. And I bet Jack is one of 'em.”

  Logan lowered his gaze to the sloppy, half-formed meatball. He didn't see raw hamburger, though. He saw Perry's guts. He saw Perry's bloody, ruined, chopped-up guts: the same guts that Perry had begged him to spare just seconds ago (“Please, no, don't!”) as Logan slowly raised the meat cleaver over Perry's pale white belly and brought it down hard like a guillotine—

  “That's why he's got a problem with eating dogs,” Freeze said. “He's in love with one.”

  Logan swallowed. He took a deep breath. “I'm not in love with any dog,” he said quietly. “I do have a problem eating them. But I don't have any problem at all eating people. Especially smokers. See, I'm in here for cannibalism.”

  Perry grinned. “Oh yeah? Then I guess you wouldn't have any problem eating this.” He picked up the cigarette butt from the floor, then stood and jammed it into one of the meatballs so that it stuck straight into the air.

  Freeze and Wack Man burst out laughing.

  “Eat it, crap-for-brains!” Wack Man yelled. “Eat it!”

  The kitchen door crashed open. Sergeant Bell and Mr. Frasier barreled into the room. Sergeant Bell's eyes flashed to each of the boys. His face was purple.

  “What in the name of Jiminy Cricket is going on here!” Sergeant Bell shouted. “Private Jones! Private Macklin! Get back to your work crew!”

  Freeze and Wack Man shuffled out the door.

  Sergeant Bell's eyes came to rest on the cigarette butt. His lips twitched. He jerked a finger at it. “Who did this?” he growled.

  “Private Moore, sir,” Perry answered.

  Logan gaped at him.

  “Private Moore, is this true?” Sergeant Bell demanded.

  Logan shook his head. His jaw started moving, but the words wouldn't come fast enough.

  “I told him not to do it, Sergeant Bell, sir,” Perry said. “But, see, Private Moore was trying to prove a point by—”

  “That's enough, Private Perry,” Sergeant Bell interrupted. He fixed his beady eyes on Logan. “Private Moore, you will dispose of that meatball. Then you will finish preparing dinner. Then you will excuse yourself from Alpha Base and spend the rest of the evening cleaning each and every outhouse until twenty-one hundred hours. Do I make myself clear?”

  Logan finally managed to close his mouth.

  “Do I make myself clear, Private Moore?” Sergeant Bell shouted.

  “Yes, sir,” Logan choked out.

  Sergeant Bell whirled and strode from the room.

  Logan watched him go.

  Perry snickered. Then he leaned over and patted Logan on the shoulder. “I told you you would know when I was lying,” he whispered. “Didn't I, my brother?”

  The decision came to Logan quite suddenly, late that same night. He was lying in bed, wiped out and stinky from cleaning the outhouses, when—bang— it hit him. It was like another soft mallet that fell from the sky and struck him just hard enough so that he could see (really, truly see)—as clearly as if he were standing on a beach on a cloudless day and his future was the wide, green, wavy sea stretching off to infinity.

  He was going to leave this place.

  Very soon. Tonight. Right now.

  There was no reason to stay. Sergeant Bell was right: The outside world didn't exist inside this fence. Logan was beginning to forget what the outside world was like. And he wanted to remember. He didn't belong with kids like Perry or Freeze or Wack Man. He couldn't understand them, and he had no interest in trying. They spoke their own secret language, they lived by some freakish code that Logan didn't get, and their twisted lives had nothing to do with anything Logan had ever done or seen or even dreamed about. They made Devon Wallace look like the coolest, most fun, most normal guy on the planet. The kids here didn't even live on that planet. They lived in an entirely different universe. Maybe a guy like Sergeant Bell could do something for all the Perrys and Freezes and Wack Men out there. Maybe he could help them, somehow. He almost seemed to need them—in the same weird way that Robert had once needed Logan: to pick on, to yell at, to boss around. For all Logan knew, they might need Sergeant Bell, too.

  But Logan didn't.

  And if Mom and Robert couldn't see that, then he didn't need them, either.

  That was really the whole point. He could see that now, too. He wasn't so much running away from the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys as he was from the two people who had sent him here. He didn't need them because they didn't need him. Forget “need”; they didn't even want him. Why else would they have shipped him off to this place? Logan was what Sergeant Bell called nonessential personnel.

  As Logan lay there, he wondered why Mom had taken so long to come around to Robert's point of view. At least Dad had made his decision years ago. He'd just up and vanished into the mountains. And now Logan was going to do the same. He only wished he hadn't wasted so much time cooking spaghetti and dog balls and cleaning outhouses.

  Quietly, cautiously, Logan slipped out from under his covers. The cabin was still. The air hummed with the drone of crickets: dree-dree-dree. Perry snored lightly in the top bunk. As if in a dream, Logan pulled on his hiking boots and tied the laces. He could barely see what he was doing. For a moment, he thought about swiping Perry's lighter and setting the cabin on fire. Nah … he wasn't a killer, even if Perry and Freeze and Wack Man might be. Best just to make a clean getaway. He would need a few supplies, though, to get him wherever he was going. Which was …

  East. Sure. He would head east. Why not? Toward the rising sun. Toward a new dawn and all the rest of that symbolic, poetic garbage. Go east, young man. Or was it: Go west, young man? He couldn't remember. Whatever. If it was west, that would be even better. He would do the exact opposite of what everyone expected.

  But first he was going to sneak home and get Jack. There was no way he would leave her with Robert. No way.

  Logan would sneak home, which would take a day or so, and then he would hide outside the house in the dead of night. While Mom and Robert lay sleeping, dreaming about owning a swimming pool or a big house or a purebred Labrador, Logan would slip inside and grab Jack.

  Excellent.

  Logan crept out of the cabin. The floorboards creaked under his feet. Nobody stirred.

  He could see much better once he was outside. The moon was bright, glittering on the flat, broad leaves of the ferns. So. What did he need, exactly? Some food. A knife. Matches, for building a fire. A flashlight. Money would be nice, too—although he doubted he'd be able to find any. Whatever. He could s
crounge around for some at home. What else?

  A fishing rod, just in case he got lost and needed to find his own food. Rope. Sergeant Bell said that a maggot always needed rope in the woods, although he'd never said why. Logan would figure it out soon enough, he supposed.

  Alpha Base was as still and silent as the rest of the camp. Logan tiptoed into the kitchen. In less than thirty seconds, he was able to round up almost everything he needed—including about two pounds of leftover spaghetti in a Tupperware dish marked BELL. He wasn't able to get his hands on a fishing rod, though. Those were locked in a supply shed right next to Sergeant Bell's cabin. But that was no big deal. He wouldn't be in the woods long enough to need a fishing rod, anyway.

  Logan dumped the loot into a jumbo black plastic garbage bag. He ran for the fence.

  When he got there, he had to smile. Until now, he'd hated every second of the obstacle course—almost as much (but not quite) as his work crew duty. Now he was downright thankful for all that stupid wall scaling. Because a chain-link fence … that was a cinch.

  There was no hesitation. Logan sealed the plastic bag with a knot, tossed it over the fence, then scrambled up and over himself. The metal rattled: ka-ching, ka-ching. He cringed, silently praying that nobody would wake up.

  He was breathing hard by the time he landed on the other side, but he'd never felt more awake or alert or alive. He took one last look at the grounds, just to make sure that nobody had heard him.

  The place was completely dead. A giant cemetery.

  Right then, Logan wanted to scream at it—to shout every single dirty word he'd ever heard or would hear in his life and tell everybody there (Perry most of all) that they were all stupid suckers, and that he would have his revenge and vaporize the whole ridge with his most famous and ingenious invention ever, the LMBMCFBNV (the Logan Moore Blue Mountain Camp for Boys Nuclear Vaporizer), and that the act of destruction would be sweeter than the sweetest chocolate cake baked for the richest billionaire on earth….

  But he didn't. He just grabbed the bag and ran. That felt pretty good, too.

  Jack had been trapped in the dark place for a long, long time. No matter how she barked and scratched at its walls, she couldn't escape.

  When the man and the woman had first brought her down here, she'd welcomed the quiet and the cool, damp air. She had no memory of the cave where she'd been born, yet she felt a natural comfort in places like it. But as the confinement stretched on and on, so did her loneliness. It grew to consume her. It was all she knew.

  She could hear the man and the woman above her as they walked about their lair. But she never heard the boy. She could still detect his scent on many of the objects in the dark place, but he was gone. The man and the woman provided food and water for her, but nothing else. Not even companionship. They never rewarded her.

  They feared her.

  Jack could sense their fear in the skittish way they moved. She could sense it in their voices. They no longer walked her. She'd been forced to relieve herself in a corner. Relieving herself in the same place where she slept and ate felt wrong. But she had no choice.

  And so she began to dig. She dug to escape—to get out of the dark place and find the boy.

  The dirt was hard and compacted. But with effort, it began to crumble. She wore her nails down to nubs. Her paws bled. She refused to stop. She scraped the flesh there until it was little more than tattered shreds of raw, exposed nerves. She ignored the pain. She ignored the froth at her mouth, the thirst, the hunger. She ignored it all.

  She would not stop until she was free … or dead.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Jasmine was dying.

  Westerly had no doubts about it anymore. There was no need to bring her to one of the quarantine centers or to run a test from home. Either would simply confirm what he already knew. Sitting here on his rug, unable to work, watching her hour after hour after hour, the horrible truth was quite plain to see.

  She had a prion disease.

  She'd lost the ability to walk. She couldn't stumble more than a few steps without falling. Her jowls and snout were moist, flecked with white foam. Her eyes darted frantically, unable to focus. And now, as she struggled to sleep, the rest of her body betrayed her as well. She had no control over her back muscles. They danced and jerked and shuddered as if pulled by the invisible strings of a puppeteer.

  “You'll sleep soon enough, Jazz,” Westerly whispered.

  He couldn't believe how fast the disease was destroying her. It was only a matter of time before she stopped moving completely. Then she would enter the second-to-last phase. That comalike sleep. That strange limbo between life and death.

  He wouldn't allow her to get to the phase where she attacked. Not because he cared very much whether or not she transmitted the disease to him. But because he didn't want to see the change in her eyes, the lack of recognition, the mad frenzy. He didn't want to remember her that way.

  Westerly sniffed and wiped his eyes. He couldn't think about Jasmine anymore. He had to compartmentalize her. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to the computer. Maybe Harold had found that paper. Better still, maybe he had found an immune dog—an animal whose own body could somehow deactivate the prions before they did their deadly work. If there was a way to cure this disease, Westerly knew he would find it there.

  But Harold hadn't called or e-mailed since he'd hung up on Westerly weeks ago. If he'd found the paper, he would have forgiven Westerly's rudeness. Westerly's own dog was at risk. Harold wasn't that coldhearted.

  Although … Harold might not even know that Westerly owned a dog.

  Of course he didn't. Why would he?

  In a flash, Westerly was at the phone, furiously punching in Harold's number. It rang once. Twice. Three times. Come on. Come on—

  “Harold Marks.”

  “Harold. It's Craig Westerly.”

  There was no response.

  “Hello?” Westerly said. “Harold?”

  “What do you want?” Harold asked. He sounded tired and hoarse.

  “I, um … I wanted to know if you'd found—”

  “Your paper?” Harold interrupted. “No, we haven't. We haven't found an immune dog yet, either. We're a little busy.”

  Westerly hesitated. “I … I'm sorry. I didn't—”

  “Sorry?” Harold spat. “That's nice. Thanks. I appreciate it.” He spoke much more quickly than usual. “You want to know what's going on? We've got hundreds of sick dogs here and a lot of sick people. I haven't slept in about three days. So if you want to chat, now's not the time.”

  Westerly clutched the phone. His hands were moist. He glanced at Jasmine, twitching on the rug. “My own dog is sick,” he said. “Jasmine.” He felt as if he were listening to someone else talk. “Jasmine is her name.”

  “My dog is sick, too,” Harold said. “Cody. A springer spaniel. He's in quarantine. We're trying to get everybody in Oregon to throw out all their dog food. Do you know how hard that is? Nobody …” He paused. “Why are you calling me?”

  “I … I … didn't know you owned a dog.” Westerly turned away from Jasmine and stared out at the favorite evergreen tree, unable to keep still. He shifted from one foot to the other. It was an overcast, sunless day. The tree looked as grim and skeletal as ever. It looked like death.

  “Westerly, are you all right?” Harold's tone sharpened. “Did your dog bite you?”

  “No, no.” Westerly shook his head. “I just …”

  “Okay, listen,” Harold said. “I'm willing to forget about everything that's happened in the past. I don't know what's going on where you are, but let me tell you what's going on here. People are nervous. We've got lines and lines of dog owners outside the laboratory, and they all want to be examined. We have to put them under quarantine. The ones who are already sick are overcrowding the university hospital—”

  Westerly slammed the phone down.

  It was a reflex, like kicking after being knocked on the knee
. He stared at the receiver. He felt bad. He hadn't been thinking. He just couldn't listen anymore. He knew he'd made a mistake … yet some part of him also knew that more talk wouldn't do either of them any good.

  Talking only got in the way of doing something.

  The trip to Joe Bixby's general store took two and a half hours when Westerly hiked it, sticking to the mountain paths. The drive only took about fifteen minutes. The trouble was, he hadn't sat behind the wheel in well over three years. He had no reason to drive anywhere. Jasmine didn't like riding in cars. They made her nervous.

  The beat-up old two-door Honda sat in a ditch at the edge of the dirt drive. Westerly climbed in and turned the key.

  It didn't start.

  He tried again. All he got was a loud, mechanical stutter, like a person choking.

  His jaw tightened. He grabbed the gearshift and put the transmission in neutral, then hopped out and started pushing the car down the road. He groaned and winced under the strain, but gradually the car picked up speed.

  Within seconds, he was jogging just to keep up with it. He jumped in and turned the key, and the engine roared to life, belching black smoke.

  “Yes!” he whispered, slamming the door.

  The muffler rattled the whole way. He didn't pay any attention to the noise, though. He just drove as fast as possible.

  Joe Bixby's dog may be immune, he said to himself over and over. Sam looked healthy the last time I saw him. Sam may be immune….

  He hardly even noticed the caravan of black ambulances passing him in the other direction.

  “Westerly. Good golly. Are you all right?”

  Westerly stood panting in the doorway. He'd nearly crashed into the place. There were tire marks on the road outside. Bixby must have heard the screech. He squinted at Westerly from behind the counter, his eyebrows knit with concern.

  “I'm fine,” Westerly breathed. He struggled to get a grip on himself. “Listen, Joe, can I ask you a favor?”

  Bixby shrugged. He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a pack of gum. “I suppose so,” he mumbled. “It depends, I guess.”