Dogs

by Nancy Kress

  The black car sped past Tessa and the shot pierced the gray London afternoon. She heard the bullet ricochet off the stucco wall surrounding the monestery. Close, very close. She dropped to the ground but there was no place to hide, nothing…down the street a child was screaming, a witness, she must make sure the child wasn’t hit…nowhere to hide, nowhere to run and the wall was too high to scale quickly…

  The car had stopped and was backing up fast.

  Tessa scrambled to her feet. But she really had no chance. The thick walls that privacy-loving Londoners so favored lined both sides of the street, which was too narrow to permit parked cars that she might have used as cover. The iron gate of les Frères de l’Espoir céleste had locked behind her. There was only the hope of reaching the corner but it was no hope at all, it was too far away…

  The car slowed more and she glimpsed the interior: driver and shooter, both in masks, the shooter’s semi-automatic aimed out the window. At her.

  She rolled toward the car, making his shot more difficult, a downward trajectory. If she could scramble behind the car, dodge it that way… It wasn’t going to work. The car came to a full stop, the door opened, and the shooter leaned out into the street. He knew she wasn’t armed! He had a clear shot, Tessa couldn’t dodge fast enough…

  The shooter’s head exploded.

  He collapsed back onto the passenger seat, bits of blood and brain spattering Tessa below. The driver accelerated abruptly and the car’s forward motion slammed shut the passenger-side door, bearing away its grisly burden. Tessa looked around, dazed; a man stood lowering his gun from between the iron gate bars, inside les Frères de l’Espoir céleste. He wore a ski mask. Armed and deadly monks?

  The child down the street was still screaming, and now a woman ran outside, snatched it up, and disappeared behind another of the ubiquitous walls. Another car pulled up. The shooter disappeared from the gate and a moment later leapt lightly down from the wall. A ladder, there had to be a ladder on the other side or something to…it didn’t matter, she wasn’t thinking clearly…

  The shooter took her arm and shoved her into the car. Tessa resisted, grabbing the car’s frame and preparing to kick, but the man said, “I come from Ruzbihan. This time you’re bloody well going to the airport.”

  “From Ruzbihan? Who—”

  He shoved her again, and she got into the car. All at once it seemed safer than being on the street. The car sped away.

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you,” he said impatiently. His eyes through the slits of the mask were bright blue. His speech sounded like Manchester, or Liverpool…She wasn’t good at British accents. “Ruzbihan sent me. You were supposed to go directly to Heathrow. You didn’t. Now you will.”

  “How did Ruzbihan know I would—”

  He made a rude noise and pulled a bandana from his pocket. Tessa let him blindfold her, understanding the necessity. Nor did she resist when soon the car pulled into a structure of some sort and she was led, stumbling, to a different vehicle. If these men were going to kill her, she would already be dead.

  So who had tried to kill her? And was this car really going to Heathrow?

  Out of sight of her captors, she clenched her fist tightly, hoping to stop her hands from shaking.

  An interminable time later, the car stopped. Tessa heard honking, vehicles starting and stopping. A moment later the blindfold was pulled from her eyes and she was pushed out the door at International Departures, Heathrow.

  “It’s 3:28,” the blue-eyed Brit said. “Your flight is at 6:10, isn’t it. Be on it. You’ll be watched.” The car pulled away. Tessa memorized the license number, knowing it would do her no good whatsoever.

  Then she was inside the airport, walking to the counter, claiming her ticket, acting as if this was all normal and she was actually “Jane Caldwell,” a weary American whose luggage had been lost. An American returning from an emergency trip to London for her mother-in-law’s funeral.

  Normal.

  Yeah, right.

  Tessa closed her eyes until her stomach had calmed. Then she turned back to the counter attendant, a pretty redhead with warm brown eyes. “Can you please tell me if Heathrow has a cyber café, or data center, or some such equivalent where people without their own laptops can send and receive email?”

  » 43

  Ellie heard the dog before she saw him. Twilight had fallen and the backyard was wrapped in deep shadow, but she would recognize that bark anywhere. Song!

  She grabbed a package of deli roast beef from the fridge, yanked on her coat, and ran through the backyard. There he was, just beyond the fence, a slim gray shape lighter than the dark field and woods behind him.

  “Song! Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”

  But where were Music and Chimes and Butterfly? The four always stayed together—always. Ellie’s heart clutched. Could the other three greyhounds have been captured, or even shot?

  “You came home, I knew you would, I have a treat for you…treat—” She stopped abruptly.

  Song drew back his lips, showing all his long teeth, and snarled.

  Oh, God, no—

  Ellie took a step backward. This couldn’t be happening. Not her dog, her baby, that she’d rescued and nurtured and loved so much, not…

  Out of the darkness, Butterfly came running toward her at full speed. The swiftest and most muscular of Elli’s dogs, Butterfly covered the frozen ground so fast that he seemed to be flying. Yes, that’s why I named… She had no time to finish the thought.

  In complete silence, and all the more terrible for that, Butterfly launched himself off the ground toward the fence. Ellie saw the graceful light shape, ears back and teeth bared, hurtle toward her through the gloom. She felt paralyzed, unable to turn or run, and so she had to witness it all.

  Butterfly didn’t make it. His body fell onto the top of the fence, where the chain link rose to sharp metal points to keep out intruders. The dog screamed—that was the only word for it—a sound so human and horrifying that Ellie cried out, too. Then somehow she was moving, trying to tug the dog’s impaled body off the fence, trying to avoid the snapping jaws, while a foot away Song leapt and barked.

  Butterfly bit her coat, his teeth sinking into the thick fabric just short of her arm.

  Ellie shrugged out of the coat just as Butterfly freed himself and fell, with a sickening thud, into the yard. Blood flew off his body. Ellie ran. She could hear Butterfly behind her, but the greyhound was badly enough injured to slow him dramatically. Ellie reached the house, ran inside, and slammed the door. She began to cry.

  Her dogs, her pets, her babies…

  Somewhere outside a siren sounded, neared, stopped.

  She had to help Butterfly, had to…had to…

  Sobbing, Ellie nonetheless heard the men shouting outside, heard the single rifle shot. Her sobs increased until she was crying hysterically, ignoring the doorbell, wailing for Butterfly, for Song, for the missing Chimes and Music, for a world where nothing any longer made sense.

  » 44

  Something was going on underground in Tyler. Jess could feel it when he rang doorbells to ask questions about dogs, when he paid for gas at the Kwik-Fill, when he picked up groceries for dinner. People wouldn’t meet his eyes, or gazed at him too steadily, or said hello with false heartiness. He tried, and failed, to find a name for what he sensed. Suspicion. Fear. Anger. It was all of these, and something more.

  Nearly 400 dogs were unaccounted for. Jess suspected a lot of those had been deliberately let loose by their owners, people like Ed Dormund. Dormund smirked at him at the gas station, as if he knew something that Jess did not.

  The short winter afternoon was darkening when Jess put his key into the front door, scooped two days’ worth of Washington Posts off the porch, and put a Hungry-Man TV dinner into the microwave. As it heated, he pulled the latest newspaper from its plastic bag and scanned the headlines.

  TEDIC CALLS FOR DESTRUCTION OF ALL INFECTED DOGS

 
House Minority Leader Albert Tedic (D-Ohio) today called for the destruction of all dogs infected with canine plague in quarantined Tyler, Maryland. “Have we learned nothing from the bird flu?” Tedic asked dramatically on the House floor. “The safety of all Americans must and will be our first priority, not the sentiments of a handful of pet owners. It’s not impossible that this thing could go airborne―why is the current administration taking this risk with American lives?”

  The battle in Washington power circles over the best way to handle canine plague has heated up in the last few days as various party—

  Jess grimaced. Not that he hadn’t seen it coming. In one way, Tedic was right. The dogs in those open cages were a potential menace, and people went in and out of the tents all the time. Christ, people still went in and out of Tyler all the time. Tessa Sanderson certainly had. If the wiggling blue viruses that Dr. Latkin had shown him did mutate…

  But Tedic was wrong, too. It wasn’t just “the sentiments of a handul of pet owners” that were keeping those dogs alive. Dr. Latkin needed them for research, had a whole sequential order set up to kill them for their brains. The public didn’t know that yet. Or maybe they did, it had been three days since Jess had really attended to any news that wasn’t right under his nose, so—

  His phone rang. “Jess? Billy. Listen, did you hear?”

  “Hear what? I just got home.”

  “Then come back. They’ll want you. One got out.”

  “One what?” Jess said, a second before he realized that it was maybe the stupidest question of his entire life. But he’d thought immediately of Tessa, who’d gotten out of Tyler: One got out…

  “One dog,” Billy said. “Game warden over the state line shot a Doberman that brought down a doe. Didn’t get it clean, and when he went closer to finish it off, he saw that white film on the eyes. Dog was snarling and lunging like a son-of-a-bitch, even shot in the leg it tried to attack. Warden got back-up and they’re bringing the Doberman into Tyler.”

  “Was the dog wearing tags?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, you think they tell me everything? I just happened to be with Don DiBella when the call come. Better get in here.”

  Jess shoved three spoonfuls of Hungry-Man Steak Tips into his mouth, burned his tongue, and headed back out again.

  An escaped dog. The FEMA cordon, the Maryland Guard, the hunting teams…none of it had worked. And how many other dogs had the Doberman infected, roaming around the West Virginia hills for the last however many days?

  It wasn’t over yet. In one awful sense, it might be just beginning.

  INTERIM

  He was late going out to feed the dogs. It was the fucking rash—it had kept him up half the night. And the smell was getting worse, much worse. Why should he have to suffer this way? But, no, that was wrong thinking. Suffering made a man strong. Suffering was a test, and a glory.

  Still, the itching had gotten so much worse it made it hard to sleep.

  So he stumbled out at mid-morning toward the dog shed. The mountains, so different from those of his real country, shone with sunlight on snow. He hated that; the dazzle hurt his eyes. Which also itched. He carried the bucket of kibble to the dog pen, ignoring the growling and snarling, and saw that one of them was missing.

  The man stood very still, dread seeping along his spine. He’d been told to not let this happen. He’d been told…frantically he searched along the fence. The hole dug under it hadn’t been there yesterday. It was small, and deep, and bloody. The dog had dug it overnight and squeezed under, tearing his own flesh. The others hadn’t followed, not yet.

  He brought stones and dirt and filled the hole. He fed the remaining three dogs. He scratched the rash on his face until it bled, and through all of it his rage grew, replacing the dread. Rage was better. Rage was heartening. Rage let him be in command, no matter what the others said. And command was his right. He’d been denied it all those years by all those soft elite bastards, and now it was his right, because unlike those others, he was not soft. He was a true man.

  Leaving the dazzle of the day that so hurt his eyes, he went back into the dark cabin and sat at the laptop to compose email messages. Later, he would drive to some place with wireless capacity, sit outside in his car, and send them.

  And very soon now he would have his reward.

  TUESDAY

  » 45

  Ed Dormund slipped through the back door of Tom Martinez’s house at four in the morning. It was a relief to finally get out of his own place and away from Cora. They were all meeting at Tom’s because he lived out in the country and didn’t have a wife, lucky bastard.

  Dennis Riley was already there, along with two other friends of his, Sam Jones and Leo Somebody, plus a guy Ed didn’t know. Dennis said, “This is Brad Karsky. He used to work with me at Slocum. He’s an explosives expert.”

  Instantly the air in the dim kitchen tautened. Brad was older than the rest of them, maybe in his fifties, with drooping jowls and a deliberate, almost fussy manner. Ed felt a kind of coldness coming off the man, something you could almost touch. Weird.

  Dennis said, “Slocum Mining really screwed Brad over but good. Fifteen years he puts in without a single mining accident for his explosives and—”

  Brad cut in with, “That isn’t relevant here, Dennis,” and immediately Dennis shut up.

  “What matters,” Brad said in his heavy way, “is that we do this right. First a warning explosion, because that may be enough to achieve our goal. And no one gets hurt. That’s an absolute must. We want safe destruction of a meaningful target. We want to be absolutely positive that no one is inside the building. We want the explosion followed by a clear and untraceable phone message stating the activity the authorities should take.”

  “‘Free the uninfected dogs,’” Tom said. “Short and sweet.”

  Brad said, “Better would be ‘Return all uninfected dogs to their owners within the next twenty-four hours.’”

  Ed nodded. This Brad guy was smart.

  Sam said, “What’s the explosive?”

  Brad said, “An RDX compound with blasting cap and remote detonator.”

  “How’d you get RDX out of Slocum?” Leo asked. “I thought all that stuff was controlled.”

  “It is. But it’s not hard to fill out the forms for a certain amount of explosives needed for secondary rock breakage and then use a little less. The blasting caps and detonators I make myself.”

  Dennis said, “I thought Congress got all itchy about terrorism and made the manufacturers embed plastic I.D. tags in all that stuff.”

  “True,” Brad said. “But my supply predates those regulations.”

  Feeling left out, Ed demanded, “You sure your stuff is still good?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Tom said, “So what’s our target?”

  Brad told them.

  » 46

  Jess started out at first light for the West Virginia mountains, one of five cars slipping unobtrusively and separately out of Tyler. Each car held one or two men, animal-control officers or deputies. “Attract as little attention as possible,” Sheriff DiBella had said, “but find out if you can where that Doberman came from, if it happens that the damn thing didn't escape from Tyler. Find out if anyone’s missing a dog, find out if anybody’s been attacked.”

  “Anybody been attacked, they’d of reported it,” deputy Ed Ames objected.

  “Not necessarily,” DiBella said. “If the Doberman bit a commuting soccer mom, you bet your buns we’d know about it by now. But you know how secretive and clannish some of those hill folk are. Or maybe you don’t. Our story is that Flatsburgh Animal Control has a Doberman that was bringing down deer and does anyone know where it belongs. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone who acts like he knows more than he’s saying.”

  The eight men shifted their booted feet uneasily. Finally Ames said, “Sheriff, are we looking for a terrorist?”

  “No. Jesus H. Christ, Ames, there’s no terrorist out there! You b
een watching too much bad TV. There’s a dog that either got infected in Tyler and wandered out, or a West Virginia dog that caught this thing some other way. We’re just trying to find out which. Now everybody get out there, and be careful what you say.”

  Jess headed for his truck. Or a West Virginia dog that caught this thing some other way, DiBella had said, and that was the real terror. DiBella meant an airborne germ of some kind. DiBella meant that the thing might have spread away from Tyler, wafting through the air like lethal snowflakes, infecting neighboring counties. DiBella meant an out-of-control pandemic, spread by dogs. DiBella meant mass plague and mass hysteria.

  No. It hadn’t happened yet. Don’t borrow trouble.

  Jess snorted at his own thin optimism and showed his papers at the checkpoint out of Tyler.

  Up in the West Virginia mountains, most radio stations disappeared. The truck was down to two, both of which ran heavily to country-and-western music and announcements of car-dealership events. Finally he caught WKBL from Keyser. A very angry woman from some animal-protection organization was being interviewed.

  “Nearly all of the dogs in detention in Tyler are not infected, and they’re beloved members of families, and. Even if—” Jess dipped over the top of the rise and down a steep slope, and the station dissolved into static.

  Something bright orange lay in the snow behind a stand of bare trees.

  Jess stopped the car, backed up carefully, and pulled over. He tried the binoculars but the orange splotch was hidden from this position; he’d caught it only by chance when he’d glanced into the rearview mirror at just the right point. Carefully Jess waded across a small stream, the icy water not quite reaching the top of his boots, and under trees that gave onto a snowy upland field.

  The hiker had been dead a while. She lay looking up at the gray sky, half her face torn away. Her orange jacket was soaked with dried blood; the rest of the blood had been covered by the falling snow. From the part of her face that was left, he could see that the girl had been young, twenties maybe. Her eyes were blue, her hair light brown. She’d been pretty.