If he only knew what she was before all this.
Before the Change, her only reason for living was to make her master rich, while the canines around her suffered unspeakably, lived meaninglessly, and died horribly. Even now, after surviving so much, she could not shake the feeling that things could return to the way they were, and she would suddenly find herself trapped in her old life, realizing that the war had been a dream.
She could remember the litter of puppies, her brothers and sisters huddled together, hiding from the cold and the light. Then they were all separated, her mother included. Everyone was confined to cages facing a white stucco wall. Wawa could hear her siblings, along with many others, squealing above, beside, and beneath her. She tried to talk to them, but her voice died out amidst the shouts bouncing off the wall. Every once in a while, an overhead fluorescent light would turn on. Her master would enter, usually to feed everyone. He was shorter than most men, always dressed in a tracksuit—pants and jacket in matching colors, a white stripe traveling from his shoulders down to his ankles. A bucket hat or a baseball cap covered his shaved head. He called her Jenna. Years later, after giving up on finding out his name, Wawa began to refer to him simply as Tracksuit.
When she was older, her master and some of his friends would take her out of the cage and into a yard along with the other dogs. It was so bright that her eyes felt as though they would burst. Her nose and ears tingled with unfamiliar sensory input: grass, dirt, leaves, wood, concrete, rusty metal, rope, tiny armored creatures that crawled on the ground, distant elegant monsters that glided in the sky above. The master leashed the dogs to a row of dying trees, which allowed them to get close to one another without touching. Other humans would arrive. These visitors—almost always young men—would gawk at the dogs, occasionally nodding in approval. Sometimes they would even point and smile at her. She barked at them as loud as she could to show them that she would protect her master. They would smile more, as if she had performed some trick on command. The men inspected the animals, squeezing their hind legs, holding their jaws and examining the teeth. Sometimes, after a lengthy inspection, they would take one of the dogs away. In the yard, Wawa learned the names of the others in her pack. Rommel, a brown dog who fought with the others whenever he got loose. Hector, a younger one, very agile and fast. Kai, another female who wheezed when she growled.
One evening, Tracksuit placed Wawa and three other dogs in cages and loaded them into the rear of a windowless van. She recognized her companions: Baron, Ajax, and an older one, Cyrus. He had a whitish coat with a few black splotches. His mottled tail and missing left ear suggested that he had been defending the pack for many years, second in command only to Tracksuit. He could quiet the others with a mere grumbling in his throat. One time, he protected Kai from Rommel, reminding the others who was in charge. He was the elder, the strongest among them. He would drink first from the trough in the yard and got the largest share of the food.
Wawa could not take her eyes from Cyrus as he sat in his cage, scratching himself, unburdened by what took place around him. After the van arrived at its destination, Tracksuit and his friend opened the door and led the animals out one at a time. The landscape was much different from the one outside her master’s house. The ground was flat, rough, and hard. Tall poles held lights that hung over a vast empty space. In one direction, a highway stretched into the distance. In the other was a square building, the front of which glowed blindingly white through giant windows. Inside, the linoleum floor reflected the light like the surface of a puddle. Brightly colored cans, bags, and boxes lined the shelves. A man stood behind a counter, eyeing Tracksuit suspiciously. At the top of the building, looming over it, were glowing red objects braced to the wall with bolts and bent into shapes Wawa did not recognize.
Behind the building, the parking lot ended at a wooded area. A row of trash cans, fragrant with a week’s worth of garbage, concealed a dirt trail into the forest. Wawa followed, her senses alert. In the failing light, Tracksuit’s outfit went from a navy blue to black.
The trail snaked its way to a house painted a dull green color to blend in. The curtains were drawn. Tracksuit knocked, and the door opened, releasing the sound of hundreds of voices along with the smell of smoke, alcohol, and sweat. Once inside, Wawa was lost in a moving forest of legs. Few of the people seemed to notice her arrival. Instead, the crowd circled around an arena in which a man stood. There was a wall that rose as high as the man’s waist. On the other side of the wall, Wawa could hear the unmistakable sound of two dogs thrashing at each other. A head and a tail peeked above the lip of the barrier. Each yelp from the combatants drew cheers from the spectators. Before she could get a better view, Tracksuit pulled her into another smoky room where four men sat around a table. Each wore a long white T-shirt that went almost down to the knees, along with baggy jeans and high-top sneakers. Glowing cigarettes hung from their lips. One of them had a porkpie hat and wraparound sunglasses. He did not speak much, but the others were quiet and attentive when he did. Wawa had been trained to be silent, but she wanted to warn Tracksuit that these men were enemies from another pack, constantly encircling them. She could smell it on them. And she could detect the anxiety seeping through her master’s sweaty outfit.
Tracksuit left the room, leaving Wawa alone to keep an eye on these predators. Minutes later he returned, holding Cyrus on a leash. Wawa was so overjoyed that she began to jump up and down, unafraid to bark at her friend. She stopped when she sensed the men walking past her. Each took a turn petting her. The man with the porkpie hat was last. With a meaty hand, he lifted his sunglasses to reveal two enormous eyes, one of which had a brown iris. The other was shaded over with a milky cataract. He smiled, exposing teeth that were the same off-white color as the diseased eyeball. He patted her scalp and left the room.
The men took seats in the front row of the arena. By then, Tracksuit had positioned Cyrus in one corner. Another dog owner—a fat man with a pit-stained T-shirt—brought his own warrior into the ring, a gray mutt. Both masters carefully washed the dogs using a bucket and a sponge placed in the middle of the floor. Cyrus’s tongue bobbed up and down while Tracksuit wiped his fur with a waffled towel.
The referee inspected the animals. He was a squat little thing with a goatee and a buzzed haircut. He resembled a dog himself. Cyrus sniffed him. I can inspect you, too, he seemed to be saying. The arena grew quiet, prompting Wawa to stop barking. Several people whispered into the ear of the man with the porkpie hat. He nodded, the fluorescent lights reflecting off his sunglasses.
And then it began. The two dogs charged each other, colliding in the center of the ring, snapping, growling, twisting about until they no longer resembled living things but malfunctioning machines leaking fluid. Cyrus attacked deliberately, while the other dog seemed unable to help himself. He clawed at Cyrus, spraying foamy saliva with each bark.
It wasn’t long before the gray dog made a mistake and allowed Cyrus to corner him. The older dog pinned him and bit his leg, tearing open the skin. After that, the gray dog was on the defensive. His wounded leg left bloody footprints, and a cut slashed across his face from his snout to his right eye. Through the cigarettes and spilled beer, Wawa picked up the bitter scent of it. Cyrus was exhausted but had the upper hand. He took swipes at his opponent, provoking helpless squeals from the gray dog. Cyrus did not need to kill this mutt, but he would if he had to.
Before he could finish the job, Cyrus froze, his ears pinned to his skull. While the crowd exhorted him, Cyrus barked at them, telling them to shut up and listen. Wawa heard it, too: something was approaching the building. Tires crunching the dirt. Footsteps and whispers. The smell of rubber and gasoline. Wawa let out a warning bark of her own. A malevolent presence surrounded the house.
A man rushed into the arena. He clapped three times. The sound cut through the din of the spectators. Everyone rose from their seats and headed toward the rear exit in a thunderous stampede of shoes and sneakers. Tracksuit pushed his
way through the crowd. Wawa barked, pleading for him to let her loose so she could run with the others, with Cyrus. He told her to shut up, a phrase she knew very well. As he untied the leash, the front door of the building burst open. The evacuation became more frantic. Everyone was shouting. Men in matching blue suits and hats entered through the front door, all pointing metal objects and barking like dogs themselves.
Tracksuit pulled Wawa into the meeting room and slammed the door. Thinking she needed to protect her master, Wawa growled at the door as the men tried to batter it down. With another tug of the leash, Tracksuit directed her to a window. Opening it, he ordered her to jump out. When she hesitated, he cursed, picked her up, and shoved her through. The wooden frame clipped one of her vertebrae. She managed to land on her feet. Tracksuit squeezed out and landed behind her.
Seconds later, they were running, the trail and the trees jostling with each breathless step. Tracksuit stumbled a few times. The noises and the scents of the building receded. Though she was more tired than she had ever been, Wawa kept up with the dirt-caked pant legs of her master as they trudged deeper into the woods.
They made it to the trail, which eventually returned them to the hard, flat surface. The sun was rising. The building where Wawa had seen the strange red shapes seemed to be sleeping, the glow now dull. The van was where they had left it. Tracksuit knocked on the window. His friend was napping in the driver’s seat. It took another knock to wake him up. The men spoke briefly. Then Tracksuit took Wawa around the truck and opened the sliding door. Cyrus was inside, sitting in his cage calmly like a sphinx. The other dogs were gone, lost in the confusion.
Tracksuit did not need to tell Wawa to get in. She went straight for Cyrus, sniffing him, licking his face and the base of ears through the metal bars. Cyrus reciprocated by snapping playfully at her. Through sheer will, he had defied the men who had descended from the night sky. He had survived the battle and found his way through the forest to where the sun rose peacefully. It was then that Wawa felt the primal urge of her species: to be a part of his pack, to be one of his people. To hunt with him, to taste blood and share it. To roam the forests, meadows, and mountains, claiming territory for her clan. To huddle together under the night sky in defiance of the cold, without cages to separate them. She would still die for her master, but she belonged out in the wild, without a rope tied to her neck, without canned food served in a child’s bowl. It was Cyrus who made her realize that she had been in a cell, and that the love and protection that Tracksuit bestowed upon her was somehow an illusion. She did not understand it yet, and the thought often fell out of her primitive brain whenever she felt the need to bark, eat, or piss. But the seed took root, and it sustained her through the worst times of her life. Even before the ants began their experiment, Cyrus showed her that there was such a thing as freedom.
On the way home, Wawa pledged her life to Cyrus. She would die for him if she had to. And she would kill.
“LUFF-TENANT,” SOMEONE SAID. Wawa knew right away that it was Archer, a raccoon who had followed Culdesac’s soldiers around for days before the colonel finally relented and allowed him to join the Red Sphinx. Archer insisted on using the weird British pronunciation of Wawa’s rank. When asked why he spoke the way he did, he claimed that he hid in the basement of the main branch of the New York Public Library after Manhattan was evacuated. He spent months learning the classics, watching documentary filmstrips, learning things that the ants could not program into his brain. Wawa had once seen him pick a bullet out of his thigh with his claws, wipe his hands on his tail, and keep fighting. He had earned the right to be a little snooty. Even though he still ate trash on occasion—a trusty survival skill, she had to admit.
“What is it?” she asked.
“First of all,” he began, “I should point out that this is not in jest.”
“Go on.”
“I saw a human.”
Wawa lifted her hands from the keyboard and swiveled her chair to face him. She wrinkled her nose and tried to think of what to say.
“I would not play games with this,” Archer said. “Certainly not at this hour.”
“Where did you see the human?”
“Bonaparte and I were on our way to the supply depot near the creek. The pig pulled over to urinate about a quarter of a mile north of the quarry. There was a man standing nearby.”
“You’re sure it was a man?”
“It could have been a woman,” he said. “It was the tail that gave it away.”
“The tail?”
“He was disguised as one of my kind. A raccoon. But the tail didn’t wave right. He wore a mask that he pulled over his face when he realized that I could see him. Then he ran away.”
“Bonaparte saw nothing, I suppose,” she said, “or else he’d be in here with you.”
“The pig can’t see at night like I can, Luff-tenant,” Archer said. “But he can smell just like I can.”
“Did you both smell a human?”
“No, we smelled raccoon,” he said. “But it wasn’t right. It was … fake.”
“Fake?”
“Dead, to be more precise. I could tell it was taken from a corpse. I’m good at smelling dead things.”
Wawa genuinely felt for Archer. He knew that he had no evidence, but they were investigating EMSAH, so even the unlikely sighting of a human had to be noted. Still, Bonaparte had refused to take part in this, and was probably snoring away as they spoke. She imagined the debate they must have had over whether to approach her about it. Wawa’s job often required her to be tougher than she really was. This time, she decided to be gentle.
“Corporal,” she said, “there are a lot of people moving in and out of this sector. They’re scared. Some of them are traumatized. Is it possible that it was a local who was trying to see what you were up to, and then got spooked and ran off? We are a little intimidating, and our presence has probably alarmed some people.”
“I trust my eyes, Luff-tenant.”
It was implausible that humans were willing to take such a risk when they could spread the infection from a safer distance. They had done it before. Archer, Bonaparte, and all the rest were probably exhausted, nothing more. After training for months to be the best soldiers in the world, they had been given the thankless task of running this sector, and it was probably getting to them.
“Archer, your report is noted. I’ll include it in my daily for the colonel. And we’ll send a team to investigate the area near the depot. Is there anything else?”
Archer hesitated. “Luff-tenant,” he said, “if something is going on in this sector that could endanger the Red Sphinx, you would tell us, right?”
“I fail to see the point of your question.”
“I mean, if there is to be a quarantine, we would have the opportunity to get out. You would not keep us here simply because you were ordered to.”
This raccoon was speaking out of turn, something she suspected would never happen with Culdesac. It was because of that damned Mort(e), the one with the special privileges straight from the Colony, slugging the colonel in front of everyone. Archer was aware that Mort(e) had been Culdesac’s chosen one, while Wawa was merely the latest replacement as the unit’s executive officer. Mort(e)’s first replacement, a cat named Biko, got himself killed within two months. The next one lasted longer, but caught EMSAH in the field. Culdesac had the grim task of putting him down and cremating the body. Both Number Ones felt obligated to mimic Mort(e)’s cowboy style of leadership, and luckily got only themselves killed rather than others. Wawa ran things differently, and this back talk was almost certainly a direct consequence of that decision.
She leaned in closer to Archer, who instinctively located the exit in case he had to make a quick getaway. “Corporal,” Wawa said, “we have sworn our lives to this cause, and we will follow orders. All of us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It would be in your best interest if I did not hear about this again.”
“Y
es, ma’am.”
She dismissed him and returned to her desk. It had been a rotten day, and she still would not be able to sleep. Twice now, she had been reminded of how she was stuck in this unending war with phantoms and rumors. She found herself once again thinking of Jenna, the person she used to be. She could not help it. It was more comforting than picturing the quarantine. At least Tracksuit’s basement was familiar.
The computer screen melted away, replaced with the white stucco wall.
WAWA WAS ASLEEP in her cage when the sound of the other dogs barking woke her up. Tracksuit stood in front of her gate, holding what appeared to be a squirming bundle of fur. It carried with it the scent of an intruder. Wawa backed away, unsure if this beast was somehow attacking her master. The others were going crazy. Tracksuit opened the cage, shoved the animal inside, and slammed the gate shut. The creature unfolded himself until his yellow eyes glared at Wawa in the low light of the cage. A muffled growl leaked from his mouth—this was definitely a dog, a mutt puppy. But there was something shiny attached to his snout, an alien prosthesis that prevented him from barking normally. Similar bindings were on the dog’s four paws. The dog tried to puff himself up in a vain attempt to claim his territory. Wawa was not afraid. She would defend the pack as Cyrus had done. She would bring this intruder’s carcass to him as an offering.
Wawa pounced on the dog with the voices of her brothers and sisters echoing around her. The dog tried to bat at her with his taped paws. She bit into him, feeling her teeth puncture the skin, feeling the animal’s pulse in her throat. The dog eventually surrendered. Wawa wrapped her jaws around his throbbing neck and throttled him until she felt the crunch of his vertebrae like a warm bag of broken glass. She dragged him to the front of the cage, where Tracksuit was waiting. Pleased, he opened the gate and removed the dog. The entire pack howled as one, but Wawa could still detect Cyrus’s voice among the others. She always could. She shouted to him, I am one of you.
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