The Last Dog on Earth

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  The second guy smirked. “You can put your hands down, kid,” he said.

  “Oh.” Logan managed a nervous laugh. His arms flopped down to his sides.

  “Look, it's not safe for you to be around here,” the first one said. He didn't look at Logan as he spoke. Instead, his eyes slowly and systematically scanned the woods. “There's a sick dog on the loose. We've been tracking it from the highway. We know it's around here somewhere. We got to take care of it. Put it down. Know what I mean?”

  Put it down. It took every ounce of Logan's self-control not to look at the LMMFN. “Um … how—how sick is the dog?” he stammered. His voice was shaking.

  “It's got POS, boy!” the second one snapped. “And I don't care what the CDC says. It's up to us to take these dogs out. The government sure as hell isn't going to do it for us.”

  Logan shut his mouth. His eyes darted from one guy to the other. He could hardly breathe. His chest felt as if it were about to explode. Thoughts jumped around in his brain like popcorn in a skillet—a swirling, hot, crackling mess. These guys were trying to kill Jack. They thought she had the disease. But so what? Even if she was sick (which she wasn't), you couldn't just go around shooting dogs. Could you?

  “Have you seen it?” the first guy asked.

  “The dog?” Logan said. He shook his head. “No. No, sir. I haven't.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “Since early this morning, sir,” Logan said. “I haven't seen anything but beavers.”

  The second guy looked at the LMMFN. “What's that for?” he asked.

  Logan's heart was beating so loudly that he was certain they could hear it. “That's for catching fish,” he said. He shot a quick glance at the bag. It rattled. “There's a couple in there right now. Big ones.” He chuckled, then bit the inside of his cheek to keep the laugh from running away with him. “See them squirming?”

  The second guy raised his eyebrows at Logan and grinned. “You use a garbage bag to catch fish? Wouldn't a line and tackle be easier?”

  “I can't afford those things,” Logan said. It was true, technically. He was broke. And he sure looked poor: thin and wet and dirty— not to mention stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  “Oh,” the guy said. He seemed embarrassed. He turned to his friend. “Well, I don't see that mutt anywhere. I bet it's headed back toward the highway.”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah, you know, come to think of it, I did hear something in the woods a few minutes ago. I thought it was a beaver or a deer. It seemed to be heading toward where you just came from.”

  The guys looked at each other. Without a word, they started marching back into the fog, away from the stream.

  Logan stared at them. Please, just go away. Please, please, please …

  The second guy glanced over his shoulder. “If I were you, kid, I'd head home,” he said. “It's dangerous out here.”

  “Gotcha. I'm on my way home right now. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  He held his breath until they had vanished completely.

  Pent-up air exploded from his lungs. He dashed back to the plastic bag and peered inside. Jack appeared to be sleeping … but fitfully, as if she was having a nightmare. She wheezed every time her chest rose and fell.

  Logan tried to think. So. However she had done it, Jack had found him. Here. Forty miles from home, at least. And Robert and Mom were nowhere to be seen. If anything was Ripley's Believe It or Not! material, this was it. This was a miracle. An old-timey, parting-of-the-Red-Sea, flat-out miracle.

  Too bad he couldn't enjoy the moment.

  He had a couple of problems to deal with first. He had a sick, injured dog on his hands. He had two mouths to feed: his and hers. He had no money, no food (okay, three measly fish), and nothing with which to bandage Jack's wounds or clean up her sores. And for all he knew, Jack really did have POS.

  If she did, he wouldn't let her die. He wouldn't let anyone shoot her, either. He'd nurse her back to health somehow.

  And that was the biggest problem. Jack was a runaway, too. Logan couldn't take her to a vet. He couldn't tell anyone about her. Otherwise, they'd both get caught—and he would be shipped back to the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys and she would either be “put down” or taken to a CDC quarantine center. And then killed, he was willing to bet.

  So he would have to play doctor.

  Logan Moore, veterinarian.

  Ha, ha, ha. It was almost funny. Almost.

  For many days and nights, White Paws had been unable to hunt. It was as if some dark spirit had taken control of his body. He stumbled through the forest, lost and frightened and bewildered—following a scent only to find it gone, chasing an easy victim only to find that he couldn't run.

  Sleep was winning its battle. White Paws was too tired to fight it anymore. It settled over him like a thick fog, playing tricks on his mind and body. He had to surrender, to end his hunger and pain. Yet he couldn't keep still. Every time he lay down, his body twitched and jerked. So he would get up and try to hunt again.

  He hadn't eaten in a long, long time. He was all alone.

  The old pack was gone—dead, their bodies rotting in or around Mother's cave, far away. But his sister, the she-pup … she was nearby. She had been in the very spot in which he now stood. He could smell her scent. Great white drops of foam fell from his jowls. He stepped forward—

  His legs gave out under him.

  He teetered in the mud and collapsed.

  This time, he couldn't get up. But there was no need. His sister would find him. He was sick and weak, but she would hunt for both of them.

  Sleep finally won its battle, but White Paws was content. The pain and hunger and confusion began to recede, leaving only a warm, empty darkness in their place.

  His sister was very, very close. Soon he wouldn't be alone anymore.

  PART IV

  JULY 24–JULY 27

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  “All right, Jack. I'm taking you for a walk. And I don't care what you say.”

  Jack glanced up from the crackling fire.

  “Come on,” Logan ordered.

  Jack's tail flickered, but she didn't move. She just put her head back down. Then she closed her eyes and sighed: “Hrrrm.” It was the kind of happy sigh you would make if you'd just stuffed yourself with a really big lunch and were settling down for a nice siesta.

  Logan frowned. Of course she sounded that way. She had just eaten a big lunch.

  Jack's appetite definitely hadn't been affected by POS or whatever it was. In fact, Logan was beginning to doubt that she was sick at all. Sure, her body was in bad shape, and her legs and paws were all cut up—but the sores were beginning to scab. Logan had used his socks to bandage her. He'd cut them into strips and washed them in the stream and carefully wrapped them around each paw.

  Now she was wearing socks. And his feet were blistering.

  Hiking boots and bare feet were not a good combination. In fact, hiking boots and bare feet were about as bad a combination as, say, cigarette butts and meatballs, or bug-spray cans and microwave ovens, or starving kids and stuffed dogs.

  “Come on, Jack,” Logan said again.

  He stood up and glanced at the cloudless blue sky. The sun was high overhead. At least the weather had cleared. The past few days had been gorgeous. No fog. No humidity. Plenty of dry wood for fires. Some people might have said that it was paradise out here. A Garden of Eden. Except that the Garden of Eden probably had other food besides fish.

  Yup, out here, wherever they were—near Mitchell, Logan supposed, whatever rinky-dink town that was—life was all about fish. Fishville, USA. Fish for breakfast, fish for lunch, and fish for dinner. He'd hoped maybe to find some berries or wild vegetables or something like that, but as it turned out, he had no idea how to find the edible stuff. Nothing looked familiar. The woods were full of mushrooms, but for all he knew, they were all deadly poison. Same with the berries on the bushes.

  He'd even thoug
ht about trying to catch some beavers, but the beavers had vanished once he and Jack moved in. Their stumps and half-eaten logs and big dam were all that remained of them, like a ghost town.

  Now it was just fish.

  When Logan wasn't eating fish, he was catching them. Or cleaning them. Or cooking them on a stick. Or feeding them to Jack. And boy, did she love them. She could eat twice as much as he could. Her breath reeked of them. So did his, probably. Why wouldn't it? Every other part of him smelled like fish: his hands, his fingers—even his armpits.

  He really, really, really wished he had a toothbrush. Rinsing his mouth out with water from the stream just wasn't cutting it. The stream tasted like fish, too.

  “Jack, come on!” Logan commanded.

  Nothing. Not even a sigh this time.

  Logan shook his head. Enough already. Jack's unwillingness to move was getting on his nerves. The trouble was, she was a smart dog. She had figured out that there wasn't much reason to move, so long as Logan kept stuffing her with fish. No doubt she was perfectly at home out here in the wilderness. Probably a lot more at home than she'd ever been at Logan's house. She was from the wilderness.

  Unfortunately, Logan wasn't. He'd never felt less at home. Living off the land might be fine for wild animals or Eskimos or the characters in Huckleberry Finn, but in Logan's opinion, it stank for a fourteen-year-old kid from Newburg, Oregon. In books, they always made running away seem so easy and exciting. One adventure after another. Nonstop fun. Stowing away on a raft, joining the circus, getting mixed up with Gypsies—that kind of thing. They didn't mention the part about being dirty and wet and smelly all the time. They didn't bring up the fact that you couldn't really sleep—because you were afraid the fire would go out or your dog would run off, or because it was so cold and uncomfortable that sleeping was pretty much impossible, anyway.

  That stuff wasn't exciting at all. That was a big pain. Not to mention incredibly boring. In real life, there was nothing to do when you ran away—no gadgets to fiddle with or Gypsies to talk to…. Actually, Logan could do without the Gypsies. But he definitely couldn't do without socks. Or a toothbrush. Or a hot bath. Or a change of clothes. Or a double cheeseburger with bacon and sautéed mushrooms and a side of fries.

  Right. So he had a new plan now. Well, it was actually his old plan, except that he already had Jack.

  First, he was going to order Jack off her lazy behind. Second, he was going to sneak home, as he'd planned. But instead of getting Jack, he would take a bath and stuff his face and find the bankbook for his savings account and grab the LMMRC and the LMSCG and maybe even the weed whacker. Third, he was going to buy a bus ticket to some obscure place like Iowa, where no one would ever find him. He could smuggle Jack in his backpack or something. Fourth, he was going to take all his inventions to the patent office, patent them, and sell them. Fifth, he was going to become a millionaire by his fifteenth birthday and live in a castle and devote the rest of his life to destroying the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys and discovering the cure for POS.

  He picked up the fish he'd cooked for the journey. He figured there was enough for two days, both for him and for Jack.

  “Jack!” he yelled. “Get up!”

  She didn't even open her eyes.

  Fine, he said to himself. He marched over to the LMMFN and untied the casting rope, then tied it to Jack's collar. Then he yanked it. Hard.

  Jack yelped. She staggered to her feet, casting a reproachful glance at him.

  “Good girl,” Logan mumbled. He hurried into the woods, away from the stream and the fire. Frankly, he needed a change of scenery. The makeshift leash stretched between them. It was like a tug-of-war. Jack just couldn't keep up. She almost tiptoed, raising her legs with each step, as if walking over hot coals. Her tail hung between her legs.

  Logan hesitated. Hmmm. Her paws must still hurt. Maybe he was being a little hard on her. On the other hand, if she didn't get used to walking now, they might be stuck out here forever. He only had three matches left. If it rained again, they would be in big trouble.

  Jack barked. Her neck hairs rose. Her tail shot straight up in the air.

  “What is it, girl?” Logan whispered.

  She barked again. Her tail started swishing back and forth. He'd never seen it wag so fast. It looked like a windshield wiper.

  Logan glanced around the shadowy woods, then back toward the stream. His campfire was half hidden by leaves. It was strange. He'd been lost probably a week now—and until this moment, the forest had never freaked him out. Not even in the middle of the night. It was peaceful at night. He chewed his lip. He didn't believe in the bogeyman or anything like that, but still, he had run into two guys with guns. It was sketchy out here. The guys had said it themselves: it wasn't safe. Maybe they were still looking for Jack. Maybe they'd figured out that Logan had lied to them.

  Jack scampered forward. She was still hobbling a little bit, but now she was tugging him. Logan refused to budge, though. No way. They were staying put until he figured out exactly what was making her so excited.

  Something moved in the brush.

  Logan held his breath.

  There. Maybe fifteen feet away. It moved again. It wasn't a person … unless the person was lying down. He strained his eyes. No, it was definitely an animal of some kind, but Logan couldn't tell what it was.

  It growled.

  Jack's tail stopped wagging. She whimpered.

  “What's wrong?” Logan asked her. “Jack, what are you—”

  Before he could finish, the animal pounced. The attack was so quick and violent that Logan registered only a blur of motion. It was a dog, a wolf, maybe—Logan didn't get a look at its face. He just saw flashes: matted reddish fur and a pair of outstretched white paws. And jaws: foam-flecked, dripping jaws with sharp teeth that tore into Jack's hind leg with such ferocity that Logan was sure the leg would come right off.

  “No!” Logan shouted.

  All of a sudden, the animal collapsed. There was blood all over the ground—spread across the soil in reddish-black, thick, chunky drops. Logan started shaking. He couldn't think. Jack's screams sent hot bursts of panic shooting through his body. The harshness of it was deafening and unearthly, like a doomsday siren: “Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!”

  “Stop it, Jack,” Logan whispered frantically. “Stop it!” What if those hunters were nearby again? What if they heard her? “I'll get you help. I swear.”

  His eyes darted back to the fire, then to the animal. Whoa.

  This animal was a dog. And not just any dog.

  With the exception of its white paws, it was a mirror image of Jack.

  E-mails sent from Rudy Stagg to

  Dr. Harold Marks, July 24–27

  To: hmarks@portlanduniversity.edu

  From: rudy@rudystagg.com

  Date: July 24

  Subject: Help

  Dr. Marks:

  Sheriff Van Wyck told me that you were the expert on POS. I need to see you. A friend asked me to kill his dog and I got bit on the ankle before I could shoot her. The hospitals around here are all filled up. Maybe you've heard of me. I'm famous around here. I don't know why everybody's so mad because if it wasn't for me, the whole town would be sick right now. All I did was try to help. I saved people. Have you found a cure yet? Can I come see you?

  To: hmarks@portlanduniversity.edu

  From: rudy@rudystagg.com

  Date: July 26

  Subject: Help

  Dr. Marks:

  Did you get my e-mail sent July 24? Please respond.

  To: hmarks@portlanduniversity.edu

  From: rudy@rudystagg.com

  Date: July 27

  Subject: Help

  You are a piece of crap. I hope you get POS.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  It was almost three days later when Logan finally came across a highway.

  Well, it wasn't a highway, exactly. It was more like a deserted two-lane road. Whatever. It was some sign of life some
where. And that was good enough. Until this moment, Logan had been pretty sure he was lost for good. He'd been trying to walk west—or what he thought was west, anyway: toward the sun, toward the coast and home and civilization … but the woods had just kept getting thicker and thicker, and after a while Logan had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that he and Jack were going to die out in the wilderness.

  “Check it out, Jack,” Logan whispered. He nearly fell on the smooth black pavement. “A road. We can find help now.”

  Jack keeled over and lay on her side, panting. But for the first time since she'd been attacked by her mirror image, her tail wagged. Only once. A weak little flicker. But it was something.

  Logan swallowed. He glanced at the makeshift leash. The end of the rope was bloody where it had rubbed his palms. Almost every part of his body was scratched or bleeding or aching. Sweat stung his eyes. Strange little flashes danced at the edges of his vision. His clothes looked like Mom's rag pile, only much dirtier and more ripped up. His hunger was like a vacuum cleaner that kept sucking on his stomach, harder and harder and harder until everything inside him got shrunken and twisted into a tiny, parched knot.

  But he hardly noticed any of that. He hardly noticed anything except Jack. Did she have POS now? Even if she didn't, could she survive with her leg torn up as badly as it was? He was too preoccupied even to make a Things I Hate list, although there was plenty to hate. He hated everything. He hated the fact that he couldn't help her. He hated that he'd been forced to half carry, half drag her through the forest while trying his best to keep flies and mosquitoes off her wounded leg, which was pretty much impossible. He hated the fact that he was too weak to travel more than a few hours each day. He hated that they'd gotten caught in pricker bushes, that branches had lashed their faces, that she'd howled in pain….

  Whatever. There was no point in thinking about it anymore. Their luck had just taken a turn for the better. They were on a road. Roads led places. Roads led to cozy beds and hot baths and fresh toothbrushes and big plates of waffles.