Dogs

by Nancy Kress

  Let them. Steve knew people like Keith, who understood better than to count on FEMA, or even on the Maryland Guard. The individual soldiers might be good people—probably were—but the command wasn’t strong enough to stop the jackal-lovers. Steve had heard talk around the police barracks, talk around town. The fucking feds were too afraid of another Kent State to fire on civilians, if it came to that. It was okay to let any number of kids die from dogs, but don’t let a precious dog-protecting protestor die while breaking the law. Well, Steve would just see about that.

  The perps who had blown up the Stop ’n’ Shop weren’t the only ones who knew about explosives. Keith was a trained and certified expert.

  » 65

  The canine silence in Tyler still bothered Jess. Throughout the day he heard a couple of hounds giving voice as they chased a rabbit or squirrel somewhere, and once a dog howled, a long drawn-out howl that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. It might have been one of the Nordic breeds, a Husky or Malamute, or even a wolf-dog hybrid. But that was all, all day.

  On his way to critical incident headquarters he motioned down a patrol car with Eric Lavida and Neil Patman. “Hey, Jess.”

  “Hey. You guys have anything yet on who stole the Vet Corps syringes?”

  “Not yet.” Eric looked stony. Forty or fifty participants and no arrests yet. “Nobody’s talking.”

  “Eric, something’s brewing here.”

  “Don’t I know it. We’re looking.”

  “I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”

  “Good.”

  Headquarters had changed yet again. The road running between the Cedar Springs Motel and the fields across the street had become the border of a fortified enclave. People came and went freely into the motel parking lot, still dominated by the huge mobile labs. Every room in the motel had become an office for some agency: CDC, USAMRIID, FEMA, FBI, MNG, the entire alphabet soup of crisis. The motel had been supplemented by large Army-issue tents stretching down the road.

  Across the street, military law prevailed. Guardsmen ringed more tents occupying at least fifteen acres. Two of the tents were gigantic. These housed dogs; Jess could hear the barking, snarling, yapping, growling, and baying that he’d missed all day in town. Around the two big tents sprouted a few dozen smaller ones. Above it all towered a forest of floodlight poles.

  Jess knocked on the CDC lab door and was told by a weary, white-coated woman that Joe Latkin was in the mess tent. The mess tent was warmer than the outside but not really at room temperature, and Latkin wore an open parka. Even in the parka, his slight frame seemed even thinner than a few days ago. With his pale blue, almost white eyes, he looked like a ghost from some scientific afterlife.

  “Hello, Jess.”

  “Hi, Joe. Listen, Billy told me he brought in a dog with milky film in its eyes but no signs of aggression.”

  “Yes, we’re very pleased to have it.” Latkin looked far too exhausted for pleasure. “But of course its antibodies may or may not provide us with additional clues to this thing, and a big factor is that viruses mutate constantly. By the time we determine what’s going on with that dog’s immunity at a cellular level, something entirely different might be going on. For instance…no, wait, come with me. I want to show you something.”

  Jess followed Latkin from the mess tent. The winter twilight had begun, a featureless gray under the cloud cover that had been building all day. Latkin strode across the road, where a rifle-carrying Guard stopped him. “This is a restricted area, sir.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m Dr. Latkin, head of the CDC team, and this is Jess Langstrom, Tyler animal control officer!”

  “I need to see your passes.”

  Jess didn’t have the pass required, which was apparently a new one resulting from tighter security. Fuming, Latkin summoned a Guard officer, who made two cell calls before allowing them to cross the road. Then they had to sign in, signatures and time: 5:15 P.M.

  “They keep changing the rules, the soldiers, and the whole damn protocol,” Latkin seethed. “All the emphasis is on the wrong things. Forms, not substance. Of all the mismanaged…that’s Tent A, Jess, where we have the infected dogs, and the other big one is B, uninfected. Come this way.”

  The floodlights came on, turning the field brighter than the gloomy day had been, as Latkin led him into a much smaller tent. It held a jumble of equipment, including an open laptop computer on an Army-issue folding metal table. A single large dog cage sat in the middle of the floor. In it was a male Doberman with a large dressing on its left hind leg and the funnel-shaped collar put on animals to keep them from biting off bandages or stitches. Despite the awkward collar and its damaged leg, the Doberman was going through some very peculiar motions. It leapt up as far as the cage would allow, closing its jaws on thin air, for all the world as if it were attacking invisible prey. Leaping, twisting, biting, tearing something only it could see, all in utter, eerie silence.

  Jess felt cold around his bones. “What’s it doing?”

  “We don’t know,” Latkin said somberly. “The dog just started this behavior this morning, and so far it’s the only one. This is the Doberman that was shot in West Virginia. The one whose saliva samples indicate it to be among the first infected. We’re waiting to see if the other dogs present with this behavior, or if this dog progresses to something else. Meanwhile, we have had one piece of luck.”

  “What’s that?” Jess said. He couldn’t look away from the Doberman. Leaping, twisting, biting at things that didn’t exist. At ghosts.

  “Doctors Without Borders came across a similar virus in Africa, and somebody at their headquarters found saliva samples frozen in the specimen library. They’re being flown to Atlanta now. Maybe a comparison will turn up something interesting.”

  “Hope so,” Jess said, although he didn’t understand how that would help. “Doctor, can I visit an uninfected dog? For just a minute?”

  “Go ahead. I’m needed back at the lab.”

  At Tent B, Jess had to sign in on a clipboard hanging from a rope beside an unsmiling Guardsman. As he endured the soldier’s hard stare, Jess tried to remember the time when it had been he who had jurisdiction over the animals in Tyler. All of ten days ago.

  Tent B was brightly lit. The noise was incredible but mostly benign; hundreds of uninfected dogs barked or slept or lapped water or chewed on rawhide or tried vainly to get at each other. Jess was startled to realize how many he recognized from rounding them up all over Tyler.

  Applejack and Schnapps. He heard Tessa’s voice saying, “Rich people like to give their dogs alcoholic names."

  Daisy, giving off the soft, strange, yodeling sound that only Basenjis make.

  Rio, a Bernese mountain, asleep in a huge cage.

  Folly, a tiny Chihuahua, shivering on her mat.

  Oxford College, the beagle belonging to a pair of over-educated commuters.

  Jess couldn’t find his great-niece Hannah’s collie, Missy, or Missy’s four pups. He hoped that didn’t mean they’d already been “sacrificed” for research. Although what did it matter, since as soon as the Army Vet Corps could get enough sodium pentobarbital to Tyler, all these dogs were dead anyway.

  He shouldn’t have come in here.

  Rounding a corner created by the stacked cages, he nearly bumped into a cluster of animal handlers deep in serious conversation. Jess heard “—have to remember to—”

  “Mr. Langstrom!”

  The group sprang apart. The girl who’d gasped his name was Melissa Taney, a twenty-something who worked with the county vet, Carl Venters. She looked as startled and upset as if Jess had caught her naked.

  “Hi, Melissa. I’m looking for a specific dog, a toy poodle named Minette, address 142 Farley Street. Can you help me?”

  “She’s over there,” a man volunteered. He was older than Melissa but not by much, and looked vaguely familiar to Jess. He realized that FEMA must be using locals for routine dog care. Well, that made sense—you didn’t ne
ed highly trained K-9 specialists to clean cages and pour kibble.

  “Thanks,” Jess said. He walked in the direction the man pointed, feeling all their eyes on his back.

  Minette lay asleep in her cage but woke as soon as Jess squatted beside it. As he squatted beside her, she barked and pushed against the bars to get close to him and feverishly licked his fingers. Did all this joy mean she remembered him, or would she have reacted the same to attention from anyone? He didn’t know.

  Jess stood, his eyes moist. Definitely he shouldn’t have come. Probably right now a second van, under much heavier guard, was on its way from Fort Detrick.

  Melissa stood beside him. “Mr. Langstrom, I’m sorry but you really should go now. This is a restricted area and we could get in trouble with Mr. Lurie.”

  He didn’t want that. “All right, Melissa,” he said in his deepest, most soothing voice, and then watched her mottle maroon. Something wasn’t right here. “I certainly don’t want to get anybody in trouble with Mr. Lurie.”

  She nodded, not meeting his eyes.

  Jess walked back across the brightly lit field, signed himself out, and headed for the mess tent. Might as well have dinner there as at his silent apartment, and it seemed a good idea to stick around here for a while.

  Just in case.

  It was 5:37.

  » 66

  Tessa was running out of supplies. She’d eaten five cans of stew and one of the two packages of dried figs. Worse, the propane that heated Ebenfield’s cabin was running out. He must have gone down the mountain every few days to buy supplies and steal wireless Internet service.

  She stood on Ebenfield’s bed, craning her neck out the window to watch the two dogs. The third one had never returned. Tessa’s hope had been that the dogs’ eerie behavior was the first sign of impending death, but so far this had not happened. The huge animals continued to bite and leap at the demons visible only to their diseased brains, but they did not die. Ebenfield’s disease didn’t kill them; the cold at night didn’t kill them; they didn’t kill each other.

  So she would have to do it.

  There was nothing in the cabin to help her. Saw, hammer, propane canister—but what could she do with them? Anything she threw, the dogs could dodge. Blowing up the place, with propane as the combustible, would probably kill her, too. She had no faith in the ability of any fiery, hand-carried torch to keep the dogs away from her long enough to reach Ebenfield’s car. The car itself had antifreeze in it, which was poisonous to dogs; in fact, lapping antifreeze spilled on garage floors was a leading cause of death among pet dogs. But Tessa couldn’t reach Ebenfield’s car. Maybe she…

  Poisonous to dogs.

  Tessa bounded back to the window and stuck her head out the hole. Carefully she studied the ground, the trees, the bushes.

  There.

  It was easier getting back onto the roof than it had been getting off it before. She was rested now, fed, and not quite so cold. As soon as Tessa emerged from the cabin, balancing herself on the window ledge in her filthy socks, the dogs emerged from their trance and started lunging and growling at her. She forced herself to not look down. Even so, she could see the forty-two deadly teeth in each set of powerful jaws.

  She got herself onto the roof and began the slow, agonizing transfer from pine tree to pine tree. Immediately she realized her mistake. This wasn’t easier than her first trip, but harder. The melting snow made the pine branches slippery. As her socks became increasingly sodden, Tessa’s toes lost their ability to judge the thickness and sturdiness of the branches beneath her feet.

  Twenty feet from the cabin roof, she slipped off a wet branch.

  Her left food slid sideways and she cried out. Below, the dogs jumped high. Had her right foot slipped, she would have fallen off the branch and onto the dogs. Instead, her legs parted to either side of the branch and her groin hit the wood. Hard. Despite the jolting pain, Tessa had just enough presence of mind to immediately jerk both feet upwards even as her arms clutched for the tree trunk. The jaws of the bigger dog missed her foot by inches.

  Shaking, Tessa waited a long time to rise again. The sun filtered wanly through the dripping pines. Water dropped on her head. The part of her mind not occupied with either pain or fear realized what word she had cried out as she fell: “Jess!"

  What the hell was that all about?

  No time to wonder. Carefully, and twice as slowly, Tessa resumed her tree-to-tree transfer. When she finally reached her goal, the branch was too slight to support her weight. She was forced to go as far out on the thin limb of a neighboring maple as she dared, then grab for twigs and branches she could break off. The dogs, snarling, followed her every inch of the way.

  The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of—

  Then came the journey back, slower and even more treacherous because of the load she carried. Her groin felt on fire; she must have bruised everything down there. As the roof of the cabin drew closer, Tessa knew that no matter what, she would not be able to make herself do this Tarzan act again. Twice, yes. But not a third time.

  Back inside, she gave herself a moment to stop shaking, then stripped the bark from the yew and tore it into tiny pieces. The light outside was already fading, it would be a cloudy night, and she needed to get this done while she could still see outdoors. In Ebenfield’s one saucepan she dumped the remaining cans of stew, heated them, and mixed in the yew bark. She dumped the whole mess out the window onto the melting snow.

  “Come on, doggie, din-din, you hell-hound bastards!”

  Both dogs raced over and gobbled the stew as if they were starving, which they probably were.

  As Tessa watched, she silently thanked Minette. It was because of Minette that she’d researched canine toxins, because of Minette that she’d vowed to dig up all her lilies of the valley, come spring. Yew was much more toxic to animals than lily of the valley, than rhododendron, than begonia or daffodil bulbs or spinach plants. To die of yew poisoning, a dog needed to consume only one-tenth of one percent of its body weight.

  That worked out to about one and half ounces per hell-hound outside the cabin.

  Tessa peered out the window. But a part of her mind had snagged on something else. Ebenfield had said of these monstrous beasts that they were “not the first ones.” That implied that he’d infected other dogs, earlier. If so, what had become of them?

  She watched the dogs, and she waited.

  » 67

  Dennis Riley said, “Anybody want me to go over everything one more time?”

  Ed Dormund fingered his old nine-millimeter in his coat pocket and eyed Dennis resentfully. Sure, Dennis had organized this “cell,” as he called it, for tonight’s action, but the meeting was being held at Ed’s house. Dennis was acting like he was Big Boss here, and that wasn’t right. Also, everybody practically bowed down to Brad Karsky.

  Well, okay, there was reason for that. Ed wanted to be fair. Karsky had been the brains behind the Stop ’n’ Shop bomb. But there were no explosives involved tonight, and this was Ed’s house, so Dennis should just—

  “Let’s go,” Leo said, standing up.

  “It’s too early,” Ed said, and felt a little better when Leo sat down again.

  The six men, all dressed in dark nondescript clothing, sat in Ed’s living room, illuminated by a single lamp with a forty-watt bulb. Ed had drawn the thick drapes over the window and locked the doors. Nobody knew when the evacuation flunkeys would come around to start throwing citizens out of their homes, but if any FEMA fuckers came tonight, it would look like nobody was home. That had been Ed’s idea.

  He’d slept all afternoon after the morning’s raid on the Army Vet Corps van, and now he was energetic and ready. He had a sudden thought. "You know what? We're like Minutemen."

  “Who?” Sam said.

  “The guys who defended Boston and won the American Revolution for freedom,” Ed explained, and when Brad and Dennis both nodded, Ed felt good again.

  Dennis said, “It’ll s
ure be good to have my Ninja back. I’ll bet you miss Jake and them, too, Ed.”

  “You know it,” Ed said. He did miss the Samoyeds. He hadn’t told any of the men that his dogs had been infected, or about Cora’s death, just saying for now that she was “away.” Nobody questioned this. And anyway, maybe the Samoyeds hadn’t really been infected after all. They’d never liked Cora.

  “Be a lot of traffic,” Tom said.

  “That’s true,” Sam said. “All the lily-livered evacuees. But that’s good. Our people will blend right in.”

  Brad nodded again. He said, “Ed, you work with me, okay?”

  “Sure,” Ed said, with a quick grin. “Maybe we should go. Traffic.”

  The men picked up their ski masks and headed for the garage.

  Del and Brenda Lassiter sat in the kitchen of their daughter’s house, finishing dinner. Brenda had eaten hardly anything. Chrissy, sweet girl that she was, fussed at her mother.

  “Have a little meat, Mom.”

  Brenda smiled tremulously. “It’s all so good, honey, but I just don’t seem to have much appetite.”

  Chrissy glanced at Del, who shook his head slightly: Don’t force her. Even before she was diagnosed, before the chemo, Brenda had never been able to eat when she was distressed.

  “How about turning on the news to—” Chrissy began, caught herself, and flushed guiltily. Del, who’d told his daughter privately not to have the news playing near Brenda, said quickly, “Three-handed pinochle until Jack gets home from work? Honey?”

  Brenda apparently hadn’t been listening. She suddenly burst out, totally unlike herself, “I just don’t understand! I just don’t understand what the government...I just don't understand how anybody could hurt a dog!"

  Kill every last dog before they all kill us.

  Steve Harper had kept it small. Just him, Keith Rubelski, Ted Joyner, and Ted’s girlfriend Cassie. Keith carried the explosives in a canvas bag that surprised Steve with its smallness and lightness. Thank God for Keith.